Weighty Challenges

January is coming to an end and it concludes my first full month at the gym. I checked in at Viquest today and the FittLinx machine told me that this was somewhere around my 25th work-out, I don't remember exactly. I can't believe that I've consistently been going to the gym 5 times a week. And you know what? The one day here and there that I miss doesn't feel right. I actually miss the gym, I miss the work-out. I never in a million years would have ever thought that I could ENJOY exercise. I don't know why, but for some reason I always associated exercise with torture. All the laps we had to do, suicides and running up and down stairs during my years of athletics in middle school and high school; I thought the coach was just punishing us, but in truth it was conditioning. I didn't appreciate the value of conditioning until I got completely out of condition.

I don't want to make this sound like it's been easy though, because it hasn't. Yesterday was difficult for me. I was at my mom's house and not being in my home environment was tough (I sound like I'm a science experiment or something). At home I'm always certain not to buy any junk food, but you can never be sure what's at someone else's home. Not that my mom had lots of junk food, but it was stuff I don't get at home...a pimento cheese sandwich (two actually) and baked lays. Not horrible choices, I know, but still, more than what I would've eaten at home. I've got to praise my mom though because she cooked a really healthy lunch for me and my brother! The real struggle came on the drive home, the drive home is where I would normally sneak some fast food. I wanted to go to Dairy Queen so bad and get a hot fudge shake, like I used to do, but I talked myself through that craving. Then, when I got back into Greenville I wanted to stop at Arby's to get some fried mozzarella sticks. Talked through that one and then I wanted a digorno pizza, another treat I used to enjoy whenever Steven was on-call, which he was last night. Oh, the temptations and the old habits to be broken. I'm thankful that my mindset has been completely changed about food, I'm conscious of my calorie intake and it's just not worth blowing all of my hard work. Again, just so thankful for the mindset, but I so wish that the temptations would go away.

I wanted to share some things that have helped me through my temptations, especially the ones during the hours of 8:30pm-11pm, which are my toughest hours. When I'm really struggling with craving I'll watch an episode of Heavy on A&E, or a clip from a success story from the Joy Fit Club, I'll read blogs of people going through a similar battle with weight, start looking up healthy recipes from Cooking Light or enjoy a calorie free cup of green tea.

I know that I'm probably way over sharing, but my hope is that if you're having a similar battle with truly getting healthy, that this post will be an encouragement for you, that it is possible to create change in your life. I don't take any credit for it, I know that God has changed my heart and my mindset and I am so thankful to Him!

You know I can't have a blog post without sharing about my babies. As I mentioned above, we took the twins to my mom's on Sunday. I have to share one little bit from the day. I was trying to get the twins ready to go to church and was telling Meredith to come to me, she of course went the exact opposite direction and started walking down the hallway. I began ranting, like every parent does, telling her to obey and come to me. I was getting upset because we were going to be late. Meredith looked at me in a very matter-of-fact way and looked back down the hallway. I was getting really upset by this point and then Meredith started gibber jabbering and at the end of the sentence she pointed to my dad's room and said "bye-bye," she then proceeded to go to my dad's doorway, tell him bye-bye and blew him a kiss. She did all that with no one telling her too. It doesn't get any sweeter than that.

In other Meredith news, she actually ate corn today...the girl who hates vegetables. She also ate black eyed peas and chick peas this weekend. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that she might actually be getting over her food pickiness.

Berkley is saying sentences now and even if they don't make sense, they're precious. I know I don't have as much info on Berkley as I do Meredith, but did you know that Berkley is the most beautiful boy ever created?! That's right, my son is the most gorgeous boy ever and I'm madly in love with him...so are Daddy, Grandma, Joe-Joe, Mima, and Papa, just to name a few. I'm not saying my Meredith isn't the most beautiful girl in the world, because she is, it's just I want to give Mr. B a little spot light:) Oh, and Berkley has started saying "Hu" for his cousin Hutch's name. Anytime he sees a picture of Hutch now he'll say, "Hu." And tonight he said truck and actually enunciated the "ck" on the end, that was pretty cool!