Out With it

I recently heard a sermon where our Pastor said people use Facebook to show off the glamorous side of their lives and not the, “laundry basket I have been taking clean clothes out of the last three days” side. We are in the process of selling our house and not expecting any showings until we dropped the price of our house. We got two in a week! I had a 30 minute heads up for the first one and a 10 minute heads up for the second one. We had not one but four loads of clean laundry on the couch. The mountain of clothes on the couch was the least of our worries; our house was well ‘lived in’. I like to be different and I thought it would be funny to take a picture of our pile of clothes, put it on FB and tag my Pastor in it. After thinking that was Kristina’s pile of clothes too and knowing she doesn’t always ‘understand’ my humor, I didn’t put it up. I was not embarrassed by the clothes.

Last year I lost almost fifty pounds. I gained it back by this spring, every last pound! It’s hard to say that. I have been overweight, over 185 pounds, for most of the last ten years. I am not as embarrassed about being overweight, I am embarrassed about failing. I have lost over 30 pounds 5 different times in the last ten years.

I don’t advertise I am trying to lose weight. After a 10-15 pound weight loss people notice and make good comments and I try to downplay my weight loss. I would rather do something than talk about doing something. I don’t want to tell people my weight loss plan, get excited about and come up short. I have support from my family and I do the best I can, trying to be consistent.

Last year I didn’t talk much about my weight loss but I did do a lot of talking about our food system and the food I was eating. Well gaining FIFTY pounds back in the last six months I wasn’t living up to the standards I set for myself the year before. Every time I said the words ‘local and organic’ or thought how Monsanto is changing America’s face for the worse is coming back to embarrass me.

For the last six months I haven’t put a high priority on what I have been eating. I have had low-cost and convenient food diet. I even got a job at a major restaurant that wants their products to taste the identical in Minneapolis, New York, L.A., and in Asia. Part of my diet and job has to do with the state of our economy; but I will not try to divert the blame to anyone and I will be responsible for my actions and say it was a lack of discipline.

One of the things I like about growing older is you gain more knowledge and understanding of yourself through experience. I love local and organic food; I still get upset hearing what Monsanto is doing with our food system and sharing a bowl for fresh fruit with my family in a park is a great experience. This experience I have gained shows me one thing: What foods I eat and how active my lifestyle is has to be a high priority of mine for my family.