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Bottling it

Don’t you wish you could bottle some emotions? I don’t mean bottle them up and ignore them, I can already do that. What I mean is how good would it be to bottle up an emotion to be able to go back to and remind yourself exactly how something feels?

I think it’s so much easier to remember how a negative emotions feels than a positive one. Maybe that’s my personality? Or my outlook on life?

I’ve been pondering how useful it would be to be able to just open a bottle and remember exactly how somethings feels as a top up to willpower.

Willpower is such a fallible thing. You can have huge amounts of it in one moment and then none in seconds. Willpower is a finite thing to be fair. If you use it all up without replenishing it then it fails.

In a moment of achievement you feel like you can achieve anything and everything. Like that positive feeling will carry you through even when it’s tough.

Problem being it doesn’t stay. That positive moment fades and the willpower takes a life battering and all of a sudden you’re striving to just cope let alone win.

For me it’s food. Seems to always be food. I find myself wondering if it’ll always be food that I fight with.

[^^^ that thought just there is what I’m talking about when I talk about losing the high of achievement or the willpower runs low. The negative ‘I-will-always-be-this-way-woe-is-me’ thought.]

I lost 4lb last week after an amazing week of discipline and high willpower. 4lb took me to 11.8lb away from my first proper target minus 5.5 stone. And 4.8lb away from a mini target. In that moment I have the confidence to feel like I could achieve anything. Less than a stone away from a big milestone – I could easily do that in like a week?! (No one said I was being realistic – ha!)

But 6 days later I find myself battling myself with little willpower. All the things I found easy last week are hard this week. I’m hungry, but I know I’m not actually hungry. I’m finding it hard to be disciplined. I’m finding it hard to have a positive mental attitude. And because of that my willpower is battered and so I’m giving in, being dejected. Frustrated once again.

What bugs me is I can reason with myself I can do this. I can reason with myself that I’m worth the effort. That the food won’t help. That I don’t need it. That I was so pleased last week when I did well and achieved. But with that thought in my head I still eat the food…. WHY? Makes me cross with myself and the world around me.

So thats why I want to bottle that emotion of ‘I-can-achieve-anything-ever’ and just pop it open and REALLY feel it. Really remember how well I can do.

What also bugs me is as I think about this topic and as I work through the thought processes I KNOW there is another way of dealing with this all with God’s help. The problem is that I’ve never really worked out how to do this whole God and weight loss thing. I don’t know how to turn to him in the moments of weakness and depleted willpower and say ‘God you gotta help me’.

If I could work out how to do that then maybe that would be a little like bottling up the emotion to tap into but perhaps even better.

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Vulnerability

What feelings or thoughts does the word vulnerability stir up in you? For some maybe it doesn’t do anything because it’s something they wouldn’t even consider doing or ever necessary. For some the idea of vulnerability causes such a negative response. For others it’s something they’ve done before and been stung by. Perhaps more wish they could be more vulnerable but can’t bring themselves to do it.

For me vulnerability has become a necessity. Vulnerability has often been the start of friendships and relationships. It’s been the start of growth or changing of a path. It’s opened discussions, freed me from thoughts and actually often helped me to realise I am not alone.

When I started my weight loss journey properly back in March 2016 I was looking for inspirtational quotes to fuel my way. I found one that has always been in the back of my mind since but has become very real recently.

The quote read: aim to inspire, not to impress.

The defintions of those two words are very interesting to me

Inspire: fill (someone) with the urge or ability to do or feel something
Impress: make (someone) feel admiration and respect

I love that to inspire is to help someone feel a hope for themselves instead of impress which causes someone to feel something for you. Who doesn’t want to be a person who helps someone to be something they desire to be by inspiring them?!

Recently I’ve had a number of people tell me that they have been inspired me or spurred on by me to make changes or decisions. What an honour. What an honour for God to use something that I am doing anyway to inspire people.

As i spent time with God this week I felt God say to me ‘you can’t effectively inspire without vulnerability and getting onto someones level’.

Vulnerability makes change seem possible not unattainable. It shows that it can be hard to make the changes but that it’s doable. Without the vulnerability you can inspire a desire to change; “I wish i could do that” but you probably won’t inspire a belief that it is doable.

Vulnerability and relationships are so important to grow and change and to be real. They are beneficial to the individual and the people around them. It creates the opportunity for community and support systems. It can remove loneliness and fear of being ‘different’.

Vulnerability is to take a risk that the person or people that you are sharing with will respect you. It’s not something to be done without consideration but in the right circumstances it can create and inspire beautiful friendships and wonderful communities.

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Like learning to ride a bike

Have you ever tried to teach someone to ride a bike? I hadn’t really until today.

We got our three year old a bike with stabilisers for giving up his dummy and so we now start the process of learning how to do it. He happily asks to have the bike out from the garage, puts on the helmet, climbs on the bike and then he just sits on with his feet on the pedals going nowhere fast, or at all to be honest!!

I tried to help. It wasn’t pretty. It was the end of a long day with the kids and my patience was low, maybe bike riding should not be a post 6pm activity! Anyway he would put his feet on the pedal and push one foot down and start to move which sounds and looks promising. He would then take his foot off the pedal that he next needed to push to keep moving. He would lose the flow and he would have to start again.

It did not matter how many times I would tell him that he needed to keep his feet on the pedal, he would still keep taking that foot off and that lead to me getting more and more frustrated with him, losing my patience, raising my voice slightly, all the usual ugly moments you wish you could go back and change.

After a little while of attempting this and repeating the phrase you need to keep your foot on the pedal to no avail, my lovely husband came outside and I exclaimed “I just need to go inside for a few moments!”

As I sat down exacerbated by really quite a short exchange I just felt God say “that’s what you do”. And as I thought about it I realised it is in so many situations. I request to do something, get all kitted out for it, get lined up to start, take a small motion towards it and then I take my foot off the pedal and God’s somewhere in the background shouting “STOP TAKING YOUR FOOT OFF THE FLIPPING PEDAL” – to be fair He probably isn’t shouting that but in my head that’s what I think he is shouting.

It’s so easy to lose momentum. Something gets hard. Something is boring. Something is frustrating, The weather changes. You get injured. People distract you. Life gets in the way. Another ‘thing’ needs our attention and it seems more important. Priorities get confused.

The thing is that I am sure that there are things in everyone’s life where we keep coming back to that very same issue, and keep making a start and then taking our feet off the pedal without even really meaning to sometimes. If you keep going round in the circle to the same situation chances are you keep starting and then stopping.

I can think of a few things where I do this but weight loss is the most obvious. It’s easily been 10 years of starting and stopping. Getting distracted, giving up, life causing issues, children. I’ve all the excuses in the world and many of them are justified but for me weight is an issue. It’s something that need to be dealt with. It’s a physical, emotional and spiritual area of my life which needs me discipline, attention and effort. I need to keep my foot on the pedal.
I’m doing better with this. I’ve got further than ever before but my mojo has disappeared a little. My discipline is lacking. My focus fuzz. My attraction to chocolate stronger. I need to spend time getting back that self control and discipline so that God doesn’t have to keep shouting to me about my feet on the pedals! I can’t do it alone but I’m so blessed to have friends and family who have my back and maybe I need to start by asking for help!

Keep your feet on the pedals because you never know just what you might achieve if you stop pulling it off at the most important moment. Just imagine the progress and then maybe gaffa tape your feet onto the pedal which I will confess was what I was tempted to do with the three year old!

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A divided heart? 

Are you expecting bigger results than your commitment?! 

I totally am! I listened to a talk this evening whilst running about having an undivided heart for God. The talk asked what in my life gave me a divided heart. That got me thinking about my weight loss journey. What is giving me a divided heart at the moment is chocolate! That sounds really shallow but let me explain! 

Because I am walking more and running I am earning more calories and so it is far easier for me to fit excess chocolate into my calorie allowance. The problem is that I’m almost certain that it’s causing me to mentally find it harder and that I am finding it harder to lose weight because I am eating that excess chocolate. I’m within my allowance, I continue to be obedient to what I feel God is calling me to do in losing weight and I continue to be disciplined in sticking to my calorie allowance but the freedom of extra calories means that my obedience and discipline is now half hearted. My heart is divided between the chocolate treat I want to eat and can have and the wanted to lose weight. The discipline is lacking because I CAN have both. 
I am looking for undivided heart results of weight loss with a divided heart to the discipline.

My problem is that I can’t find a way out of this half hearted discipline. 

I suspect part of the problem comes from the fact that for 51 weeks I’ve been living in a world of restriction, obedience and discipline. I see results to that world but that world is hard to stay in for such a long time. It’s almost like half of me is trying to find the way of the strict world by making excuses based on the truth that I have the calories to eat the extra chocolate – thing is just because I can doesn’t mean that I should.

I am hoping this revelation to my divided approach to my weight loss is specially when it comes to the food side of it all, will help me to find some focus and help to pull back towards God and the journey is laid out for me travel. 

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What am I doing?

Someone asked me what I’m doing to lose weight. I thought I’d share my response!

I’m almost at 2.5 stone off in 6 months. There’s a few things I’ve done.

1) The biggest thing was learning that I’m worth the effort and therefore not to just give up. I’ve spent all my adult life trying to lose weight and getting nowhere because when others needed something that got in the way I’d give up.

2) I read a book called Made To Crave by Lysa TerKeurst. It changed my mindset about diet towards it being a journey of discipline with God but that he’s the one who defines my worth and not the scales. SO worth reading.

3) I’m using the My Fitness Pal app on my phone to track my calories and write down everything that I eat. I’ve done slimming world and weight watchers over the years and they just don’t work for me. I find I give up and all I want is the banned food. With my fitness pal I can eat whatever I want as long as I am within my calories for the day (though I have found that I have naturally fallen into making healthier choices because it normally means fuller for longer!) and if it gets to the end of the day and I want to eat something I don’t have enough calories for I go for a walk or I pave around the house to earn the calories. If I don’t want to earn them I don’t get to eat it.

4) I got myself a Fitbit. I started by aiming to walk 5000 steps a day and I really struggled. I now manage between 10000 and 15000 a day. I pace while I read my bible or a book to gain more steps!!

5) I have friends on my fitness pal and Fitbit who keep me accountable. I also make it very open that I’m trying to lose weight including posting my weekly weight losses on my Instagram feed. It means that if I went off plan people would notice because my habits would change and so someone would ask me and bring me back in check!!

It’s a really hard journey and there are so many things that get in the way. I’ve always been a comfort eater and I’ve always been an all or nothing person so I’m either fully on plan or not at all. I’m trying to change both of those things and have seen real breakthroughs partially because of the book.

I’ve been to a BBQ and a baby shower recently where I knew if I started eating the food I wouldn’t stop. Before the BBQ I ate dinner. I wanted to go to the BBQ for the company not for the food. Before the baby shower I told both the mum to be and the friend I was going with that I wouldn’t be eating anything. The sense of achievement I had at walking away from both those events having stuck to my plan was incredible.

 Sorry to have rambled on for so long!! Any questions or anything else please do feel free to message back. It’s something I’m incredibly passionate about and empowering other people to make process in their journey is so important to me too!! So anything I can do to help just shout!

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Perception or more?!

This is mostly a rant at myself but you know I can rant at you too if it’ll help?!

Why am I so easily influenced by the worldly perception that showing weaknesses is failure? Why do I let that perception rule my internal thought processes? Why do I seem to think that only perfection is enough for those around me. My whole emotional existence seems to be easily destroyed by such simple comparisons, comments, observations and overthinking.

I’m tired of trying to be wonder-wife, supermum, the incredible friend, captain weight loss and any other super hero you can think of.

It can be putting myself down as a wife because I failed to clean the bathroom or didn’t finish dinner at the time I was aiming for.

Or berating myself because the supermum I aspired to be first thing in the morning turned into the toddler watching almost an entire serious of Fireman Sam whilst the baby naps instead of doing fun activities like making a fire engine out of a box! (and I somehow still didn’t manage to clean the bathroom?!?)

Or a rubbish friend because I forgot something like sending a message or not encouraging someone enough.

Or even just as a person aiming to lose weight. I *should* have lost more. I *shouldnt* have eaten that.

My overthinking mind influenced by a perception from somewhere, where I don’t know, tells me I am not enough and I cannot be enough until I am always achieving.

One of closest and most valuable, lovely friends sent me this the other day.


What if I could live in that mindset?! I don’t really know how it would help me get the bathroom cleaned, the fire engine made, the messages sent or the weight lost but I suspect somewhere God would make it work!!

Achieving is important. Achieving gets things done. Achieving motivates me to do more achieving but the perfectionism and the negative impact that goes with that achieving will destroy me.

So when I feel overwhelmed with an under whelmed soul and an overthinking mind maybe I need to just stop and remember I was made for me!

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10 years in a bin it, don’t fix it world 

Have you seen the picture of the elderly couple on social media with the quote about why their marriage lasts? The one where they say it’s because they come from a generation where you fixed something when it was broken not throw it away?

It always makes me think about the world around me. How sad that we live in a world where often relationships are treated in the same way as ‘stuff’. When a relationship isn’t working the way we think it should or is hard to make work it would seem that is somehow OK to throw away and start again somewhere. The sad thing is that often people take the issues that made the first marriage hard or not work properly with them into the next.

Today marks our 10th wedding anniversary.

We were 19 and 20 when we got married and suspect there were a fair number of people around us who thought we were crazy but we firmly trusted that God had his hand over our lives and that our marriage was by his design.

On the whole we’ve had a good marriage so far. But there have been many times when we have just survived. When we’ve made it through tough situations, whether created by our own actions or thrown at us by God and the universe, by the skin of teeth. Infertility, money, death of a parent, trust issues, newborn baby phases and lots more have all left their mark on us and on our marriage. But the thing is we fight for it to make it work. We’ve learnt, far more slowly than is logical, to turn to God for his strength and guidance. The classic wedding verse about three strands being harder to break than two is not just a bible verse, it’s fact!

Marriage is more than a piece of paper you get to mark a good knees up with friends and family. Marriage is a piece of paper which marks a covenant that you make to each other in front of friends, family and most importantly God. It’s you saying that through the easy and the hard, the joyful and the crap, the you-are-amazing-I-want-to-live-in-your-pocket moments and the argh-get-out-of-my-face moments, the two of you will stick together. You’ll fight it out, find the solution, say the sorries, grant the forgiveness, learn from the moments and grow to be better people both as individuals and together.

If you go into marriage thinking the other person will change or that if things go wrong you can just walk away then you’re setting yourself up for failure.

Marriage changes you. YOU. But only if you let it. It’s not about checking something off a list in life to pass to the next level. It’s not about mr right or changing someone to fit to your criteria.  It’s about learning to love someone else first, to build them up and to be the best version of you that you can be in any situation. If we could all manage that then this world would be happier and more full of love [cheesy].

So although this past 10 years have been too filled with moments of just about surviving we come out of the other side of those 10 years changed. Bruised in places, blooming in others but changed mostly for the better.

My prayer for the next 10 years is that it’ll be filled with moments of more than just surviving, that we will find ourselves, our marriage and our family thriving as we keep learning to step in time with God in this crazy marriage adventure.

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Key words [God loves a trier]

Are there key words that motivate you to do something? 

I’ve recently discovered with my two year old if I use the word try he’s keen to have a go at doing something that’s initially been reluctant to try. Instead of ‘have a go’ leading him to say I can’t do it, ‘have a try and if not we will try together’ seems to motivate him to see if he can. He’s becoming a trier and discovering there is much more he can do than he’s realised before. All because of one word. 

And I am incredibly proud of him every time he tries. I love his awe when he realises he’s managed it. I love how he asks me to help him try when he can’t quite get there. I love my trier!! 

As an aside note I realised as I was writing this that it’s entirely how God sees me and you! God loves a trier. He loves us to take risks and to challenge ourselves to take steps out of our comfort zones for him. He loves us to have a go knowing he’s encouraged us and he loves it when we turn back and ask for some help from him when we find its hard or overwhelming. 

In fact as I write I find this post talking to me in an entirely different way. See I started this post to think about what motivates me, and you. If there were key words someone could say to you get you fired up or key passions?! But actually as I write in finding God speak to me about something I’m struggling with today. 

Today my self esteem is low and my tears are flowing easily. I’m finding myself frustrated and like my weight loss mountain is too high whilst my self esteem is too low. 

But how do I agree with something I’ve just written myself?!? God loves a trier. Simple. 

GOD LOVES A TRIER. 

If I give up on my journey I stop trying because it’s hard and it’s overwhelming. If I keep going shouting at God to help me in my frustration and low self esteem then I’m a trier and he’ll be there with me. 

The past often makes me feel like a failure. If you look back at my history you see how long this journey last and you see I’m worse off now than when I started. It’s hard to not let that infiltrate your heart and cause you to despair. 

But I keep trying because it’s important. It’s important for so many reasons

  • I want to see change in myself and be the best that I can 
  • I want to honour God with what he has given me, my body being a good place to start!
  • I want to be disciplined in my life and my choices
  • I want to be healthier and more able physically 
  • I don’t want my boys to bullied because of how their mum looks (kids are mean!) 
  • I want to see my boys grow up and if for any reason that doesn’t happen I never want them to wonder if I’d taken my weight loss more seriously would life have been different
  • I want to achieve what so often feels I achievable. 
  • I don’t want to feel like I keep failing in this journey 

There so many more reasons which I haven’t  really thought out because this post has taken me a little by surprise. 

I want to be a trier and not a quitter or a failure but man alive do I need Gods help from him and from the community he has placed me in – especially on weeks like this one. 

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Who goes with you?

IMG_2454Community is a beautiful thing. Real community is there in good times and in bad. They stretch us and encourage us to grow and become better versions of us. They keep us accountable and they hit us with spoons when we do stupid things – normally metaphorically not literally!

I’ve found myself pondering my small group of friends and I found myself feeling sad that I have so few friends in recent days and weeks. I know a lot of people but I’m not sure I have that many friends.

I know this sounds like a sob story and truth be told for much of the time I’ve been pondering my friendships and community I probably have been looking at it as more of a sob story.

However, there’s a but, a big BUT. The friendships that I have, the people who I spend my time with, the people who spend their precious time with me and invest in me are precious and amazing friends.

They are the types of people who I want to help, invest in, build up, encourage but also to challenge to do more, different, less, change and just generally be the best that they can be. I want that because whether verbally or through their actions that what they do for me.

Who goes with you? Who challenges you to be the best person you can be? Who really wants a bunch of yes men around them who pay lip service but not heart service.

Yes my group of friends is small. Yes there are times when I wish I had a bigger pool to pull from (to be less of a burden more than anything) but this group are friends are the perfect group of friends for who I am now and where God would have me go.

I am BEYOND grateful.

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Bottom of the pile or worth the effort?

Do you see yourself as worth it?
For years I, without knowing it, did not believe I was worth it. Now by it I mean the effort from myself or from others.
For years I tried to lose weight using weight watchers, tesco diets and slimming world. For years I would lose a bit of weight and then stop and start putting it back on.
For years I put myself at the bottom of the pile thinking that everyone else’s needs were more important and needed to be met before my own.
For years I put myself down and thought negatively about everything I did and everything that was said to me as a compliment.
Then after a life changing moment of heartbreak and the encouragement of a friend I started to realise that I was worth effort. I was valuable and mattered. My feelings didn’t always have to be compromised for the sake of others. My losing weight was important and worth putting effort into because I was worth putting effort into and it mattered to me.
The key phrases from the course Freedom in Christ ;
“I am accepted
I am secure
I am significant”
I began, with a whole lot of help from God, to change a mindset that which had been so deeply instilled in me from so many sources which should have been instilling the complete opposite that I had not spent any of my adult life believing any differently. In conversation that made me feel down and insignificant I would repeat in my head the three phrases above. When a negative thought came into head I would remind myself of those phrases.
I also had prayer and that opened the freedom from negative thoughts using what I now know to be God’s whisper to correct thoughts of maybe even 15 years history. Whispers from God about being worth time, him seeing me as beautiful, wanting the best for me, looking after my heart and building me up those helped to change my mindset!
So having had my mindset changed and having found a way of losing weight which worked for my personality type I started to see progress in something that meant so much to me. I invested time in myself and what I needed to do to stay on track and I was proud and encouraged by those around me.
Do you believe that you are worth the effort? Chances are if you consistently put yourself right at the bottom of giant pile telling yourself you do because you are called to serve others that you don’t recognise your need to made to feel worth it. It’s exhausting to love from a tank that is empty.