What Makes You Smile? Wednesdays

I'll tell ya what makes me smile...losing weight!!! I'm sure you girls (and the few guys that follow this blog) can relate! I got on the scale the other day and saw a number that I hadn't seen in probably 5 years! Now, I'm not going to tell you...I wouldn't be a lady then, now would I? But I was thrilled to say the least. And tonight while walking around, I kept having to pull up my pants they were so loose! I'm thinking I may have to get one size smaller because so many of my pants are just falling off! That makes me smile!!! : )

For the past 2 months or so I've just been eating when I'm hungry...that's it! I eat whatever I want whether it's sweets, a burger, a few crackers, whatever the baby's eating, anything...but only when I'm hungry. Then I stop when I'm satisfied, and I've lost close to 20 lbs! I've found a lot of freedom from this way of eating and from this way of thinking. For most of my adult life, I've struggled with my weight. I'm pretty much an obese person. And for a lot of years, I've felt like a slave to food and to what Oprah or Bob Greene says to do, to what the new diet book author says to do, to whatever strenuous exercise is hot at the moment, to the calorie counters, the fat gram counters, and heaven forbid you ever eat a carb! It's almost maddening! I've asked God a million times to make this easy for me, to give me a simpler way to lose this weight, and in His perfect, still, small voice He answered, "I already have. It's within you and you've had it from the time you were born." Wow! Could it really be that simple? Yes it can, and yes it is. And look people, you're talking to the queen of emotional eating here! And I'm telling you, once you do it God's way, He frees you from all those old habits and dependencies and all those wordly food lies. He satisfies you with a contentment that is indescribable. You're totally free! After all, if you're hungry and you want a Snickers, you can have one! And you might just find that you don't even eat the whole thing because you were satisfied with just half. I've been able to do that lately believe it or not! It's amazing!

So let me tell you a little about how this works for me. Hunger doesn't hit me first thing in the morning (I've beaten myself up a lot over the years for not eating this "most important meal" but I'm just never hungry that early...and neither are a lot of you I suspect, but you're guilted into eating it because that's what you've always been told to do). It usually comes in the afternoon between 12 or 1 pm. So I think about what I've been wanting or craving, or just look to see what's in the house to eat, and I don't stress over it. I eat my meal, sip some water or diet soda and simply stop when I'm satisfied or slightly full. Not "stuffed," "satisfied." And drinking sugary drinks isn't a good idea because it raises your blood sugar and affects that "true hunger" feeling, so I avoid those. Then usually around 5 or 6 pm, I'm hungry again, and I just eat whatever we're having for dinner. If I'm not hungry again that day, I just fix dinner and do something else while my husband eats. It's really no biggie.

Eating this way has allowed me to slow down, enjoy my food and keep tabs on what "full" really is. My mind isn't consumed with how many calories, points or carbs I'm eating, or the guilt of wondering whether or not this food is on the list of "acceptable" foods. I mean, who's the judge of that anyway? I'm just concerned with if my body's hungry or full...how simple and how liberating!

The way I see it is God made me. He provided the perfect "cues" to keep my weight and health in check. He gave me the feeling of hunger when I'm supposed to eat, the feeling of thirst when I'm supposed to drink, and the feeling of fullness when I'm supposed to put it away. I've heard diet experts say that by the time you feel thirsty, you're already dehydrated, or that if you're depriving your body of calories, then its nature is to store fat because it thinks its not going to be fed again. What a bunch of bologna! If you burn more calories than you take in, duh...you're going to lose fat. It's just simple input and output! I teach that to 3rd graders! But the bottom line is God's ways are not the world's ways. He made me, He knows what's best for me, and He made the solution pretty simple! He said that His burden is easy and His yoke is light! His way really is freeing!

So again, what made me smile was the fact that I'm proving His system right and seeing that scale go down, down, down, until I'm the exact weight He wants me to be. I'll keep you posted!

What made you smile today?