GIVE-AWAY UPDATE: For those of you who haven’t left a comment yet, there is still time to hop on and be entered in our little incentive give-away. Just leave your quick thoughts before 11:00 pm EST Thursday when the random winner will be chosen. And tomorrow, I will be posting a yummy, healthy recipe to try this weekend….

Hello, Wednesday weigh in gals! I have been so looking forward to this day. Not because I got to hop on the scale and see if the red needle went down, but because I get to check in with all of YOU!!!!!

If you haven’t joined our little cyber group of girlfriends, don’t fret! Newcomers are always welcome.You can get caught up by clicking on Weight Loss Wednesdays in the side bar.  

And this week, we even have a little incentive giveaway I’ll tell you about in a minute.

Sooooo, how did it go? We were encouraged to figure out our calories, stick to the budgeted amount and then write down what we ate each day. And we said we’d move more. Walk, ride, aerobicise, etc… If we did these things, the scales would go down. 

Did they?

I was very hopeful as I hopped on the scale this morning. I kept track of my food, exercised 5 days at the gym for 30-45 minutes and my jeans were zipping up much easier than expected. So I whipped the scale out of its locked down location (I’ll post someday about my need to do this since hopping on the scale more than once a week proves often to be detrimental to me)

It said I lost …. 1.8 pounds.

A measly 1.8 pounds!

What!?!

I was sure it would say at least 2 or maybe even 3. 

I felt gypped.

And I felt like running to the kitchen to make a frozen waffle or two, slather it with real butter, spread it with some Peter Pan and douse it with a load of pure maple syrup to drown my sorrows.

Then I stopped and remembered what I felt the Lord wanted me to say to you this week.

Define your week by obedience, not by a number on the scale.

The scale does help measure our progress, but it can’t tell us everything.

It can’t tell us if the problem was too much salt of late that is making us retain a pound or two of water that might not otherwise show up.

It can’t tell us if we actually lost a pound of fat but gained more muscle from weight training that wouldn’t show up as a total loss on the scale.

And, (in my case this week) it can’t tell us what time of the month it is and then give us automatic credit for the extra two pounds or so that glorious few days brings to us.

So I had to stop.

I had to ask myself the following questions:

• Did I overeat this week on any day?  No.
• Did I move more and exercise regularly? Yes.
• Do I feel lighter than I did at this time last Wednesday? Yes
• Did I eat in secret our out of anger or frustration? No.
• Did I feel that, at any time, I ran to food instead of to God? Nope.
• BEFORE I HOPPED ON THE SCALE….did I think I’d had a successful, God-pleasing week? Yep!

So, why oh why do I get so tied up in a stupid number!!!!!! And why did I almost let it trip me up and send me to the kitchen for a 750 calorie binge? (Don’t worry. I had a yogurt and tea instead.)

Sweet bloggy friends, we need to define ourselves by our obedience, not a number on the scale.

Okay?

Pinky promise?

Good.

Now, how did you do this week? Leave your thoughts and how many pounds you lost (or perhaps gained) if you’d like, but you certainly don’t have to.

I am more interested to see what changed for you? Your thought patterns? Habits? Feelings of hope?

Hop on and leave a comment. Hop on again to encourage someone else who left a comment.

We are all in this thing together.

And we WILL get the weight off, even if it is 1.8 pounds at a time!

But first, for the little perk-you-up giveaway and this week’s assignment. 

(Fuzzy picture snapped with my cell phone. Can’t find the card reader for the camera, sorry!)

One of you will be chosen at random to receive a cute, clever and colorful notebook with elastic tie-shut  to record your food in each day as you log your calories. Also, I’ve included a pretty silver Breast Cancer Awareness pen, two bags of one of my favorite teas (Passion by Tazo) and two Soft-lip chapsticks. One in Cherry and one in Coconut Cream. Slick some of these on when you have a sweets craving and sip the tea with a little Stevia or Splenda  or even plain.

Yum…

And your assignment for this week (being Halloween when chocolate and all things sugary just float in front of your face screaming “Eat me!”) has to do with sweets.

Now I know some gals who lose weight by sticking to a strict never-will-any-sugar-touch-my-lips-at-any-time rule. And it works great for them. If that is you, bravo! 

However, for me, I had to learn to CONTROL my sweets; to have just a dab of them now and then; to learn to treat them as treats, not one of the major food groups. I was prompted to do this by a woman in my Weight Watchers class who had lost 167 pounds and was trying to lose 40 more.

She was an inspiration.

And, she ate chocolate every day when she shed those 167 pounds.

Yep, each night when the kids were in bed, she settled in to read, fixed herself a hot cup of black coffee and ate 6 Hershey’s dark chocolate kisses.  They are 20 calories each so her little treat was 120 calories each night.

She planned for it.

She ate it s-l-o-w-l-y.

She thoroughly enjoyed it.

You see, I really don’t think for me that just chucking all treats from my life is always the answer. There are times that I do refrain from eating certain things because they trigger me. Other times, I feel God is telling me that by just refusing to deal with them, I am refusing to take the test. He wants to test me to see if I can control the treats rather than the little buggers controlling me.

So here is your assignment this week (unless you really fell called to a no-sweets plan)

Eat a treat. 

No, this is not a trick…

Plan for it. Save the calories. Make sure you are really hungry when you do eat it. And, next week, tell us what happened when you did.

Just think this way when it comes to treats, “Less and less often” Meaning eat less (half a piece of pie rather than half a pie!) and do it less often (once a week rather than nightly.)

We can still see the scales move downward even with an occasional treat. And I know for me, it helps to keep me from chucking the whole weight loss thing because I can’t go out for dessert with the gals or try a small piece of the birthday cake or whatever.

So, this week don’t be tricked….you can have a treat! 

Okay, I now can’t wait to hear how your week went and to give away our little give-away

Comments, please…

Not-just-a-Number Blessings,