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Sending Love to My Foreign Readers I know it is unbelievable to you because it is certainly unbelievable to me, but I have a host of foreign readers. There are people in over 13 countries that follow my blog. It is hard to know how many countries because my stats only show the top 10 at any given time. I even have readers from Russia (collusion do you suppose)???? Anyway, the reason I am writing this is because there are readers who do not go through facebook, they have been following my website. With the new blog system my website has changed and I do not want to lose my readers. So I am posting both websites so that you can change to the new one if you have been following the website.  If you get my blog through facebook, you will not miss anything. It is business as usual. This is just for those who go through other means. I hope you will keep following along. The success stories that I have been made aware of are amazing. We have to control our health---our very lives depen
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Day 37   Strike That Pose!!!!!! It is amazing to me how we develop beliefs and philosophies in life. Sometimes I stop and think, “Where did that come from”? It is kind of like the story about the young bride who cut off both ends of the ham before she baked it. When someone asked her why she did that, she answered by saying that was the way her mother baked a ham. When the mother was asked, she said that the hams she always bought were too big for her pan, so she had to cut it off on both ends to fit the pan. So some things we do just because someone else did it that way and we do not ask questions. That is all fine most of the time. But somewhere along the way, we have lost the passion for the word “why”---you know-- the word that our three year learned to say every time we made a statement? Well, I am bringing that word back into my vocabulary on this health journey. The first big hurtle I had to get over was the fact that doctors are not God. Just because they tell you somet
Day 36     Walk, Don’t Run----Like a Hamster!!!! This journey of exercise has been in a word---interesting. I will just say that I have been very confused all my life and have literally been spinning my wheels, (no pun intended) and wasting my money. I literally feel like one of those hamsters who spent hours on the wheel. My motto has been “calories in, calories out”, or “eat less, move more”, and I have written about the fallacy of this for me, in previous blogs. So what did this “calories out” and “move more” actually mean to me if this was my motto? It meant I need to run more, twist more, cycle more, your know--- “sweat and sweat and sweat”. So why was I sweating and not losing inches, and not getting healthy? Here is the story of how I got off the hamster wheel and stopped the fight or flight. I wish I was confident enough to say, “If you will do what I say, you will be successful”. But I think it is an individual journey that you have to take and find your way. I have fou
Day 35    Just Breathe… and While You Are At It---Meditate. I have had moments in the past when I would be passionate about something and my body would become animated. It could be that I was mad, or it could be that I was just on my soapbox. Either way, during a moment like that, I have had people say, “Dereatha, just breathe”!!!! They were being funny I know, and their funny remark would make me momentarily stop what I was doing.   I would think about what I was saying and in that moment it would ease the tension in my body.   In my research about stress, I have found out that this thing called breathing was a very important part of relieving stress. Stress relief has probably been the hardest part of my journey. I am never still. I simply do not know how to rest. If I have to sit to watch television, I will generally find something else to do like fold clothes, balance the checkbook, work a crossword puzzle or some other activity like check email or facebook. You would thi
Day 34      Don’t Let the Lion Catch You, Or Maybe you Should Before I begin I want you to know my summer schedule of blogging. I’m a lot busier than I thought, so I will post one blog a week on Monday. Some of my followers say they are missing some of the blogs and then have to catch up. I think this is because they are so random. So I am going on a schedule of having one ready every week and it will be posted hopefully Sunday night, but Monday morning by the latest.   Thanks for tagging along. My last blog, (Day 33,duhhh), told you my story of how I let strong emotions effect my eating. I just want to illustrate (by bad example) how it was true in my life.   Larry and I were taken out to eat last night by a prospective bride and groom. Larry is preforming their wedding ceremony in June, and he was nailing down the details.   It was a great night. We laughed, shared life, shared Jesus, and shared some principles of life to help them understand what marriage is all about. We ha
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Day 33----Make Love, Not War Yesterday after mine and Larry’s devotion, I noticed he was “zoned out”. I asked him what he was thinking and he said, “I am preaching in my mind”. So when I asked him what was his sermon about and he said, “The most important word in the Bible”. He went through a list of all the words that people might say were the most important words, but he said the most important one was LOVE. And after studying about sugar spikes, I have to agree. So how have I learned to make love and not war? I’ll be honest, it has not been a road easily traveled. But first, some background. Just like when you eat too many carbohydrates or too much of anything (Blog 32), your blood glucose rises when you are under stress and your body secretes high levels of stress hormones, (adrenaline or cortisol), into the blood stream. It can be triggered by physiological stress—illness, pain, infection, injury or it can be emotional stress—fear, anxiety, anger, excitement, tension. Al