Tuesday Weigh-In: A Mixed Bag

Yesterday afternoon, I made it a point to watch Oprah's interview with six people who accepted the 2008 BestLife Challenge.

"Everyone had different results from a weight loss standpoint. But I think across the board, everyone here had a revelation inside and made some changes," trainer Bob Greene said. "It's more about inside. If you start to [think], 'Oh, I'll be happy when I'm this weight,' that's when problems start because one of two outcomes: You never reach that weight and you're not happy, or you reach that weight and realize it had nothing to do with your happiness." Good advice.

Well, my own computer trainer is red-faced this morning because I didn’t meet my exercise goals for the week. I admit: bad planning on my part.

Although I walked the neighborhood regularly, I shaved extra minutes from my schedule by not going to the gym every day. Not a very good excuse, actually, when I promised to make exercise a daily priority. And after doing a little clothes shopping earlier this week, I can see why I need to keep exercise a daily priority!

The good news is we’re still celebrating a three-pound and 1.75-inch loss this week (go figure!) bringing the Healthy You Challenge totals since January 15 to 47 pounds and 39.75 inches.

BMI: Start 33.9 /Current 26.3 /Goal 23.4 or less
(D-a-n-g, this thing goes down slowly!)

Waist-to-hip ratio: Start .94 /Current .83 /Goal .80 or less
(At least we’re still making progress!)

Beginning Friday, I’ll be on the road again - for nearly two months! Back to the hotel fitness centers!

Peace or Drama?

Getting started on The Best Life program was fairly easy. "Get a grip on emotional eating, eat breakfast, have an eating cutoff time, drink plenty of water and abstain from alcohol." Check.

Next, I got warmed up to the idea of becoming more active, simply by moving more - which for me translated into doing an extra "lap" around the living room-dining room-kitchen circuit of the house each time I went for another cup of coffee during working hours. (I office at home.)

Ten weeks into the program, I'm officially in Phase 3 of Bob Greene's exercise plan - which involves a minimum of five days aerobic exercise (150-249.9 minutes) and two days of strength training
(6 exercises each day). But once I found out that building muscle turns you into a fat-burning incinerator, strength training became appealing enough that I now do three sessions a week. And the payoff has been a loss of nearly 25 inches!

One thing that has sort of caught me off guard is how losing weight can leave you feeling exposed, vulnerable. This journey eclipses a mathematical formula of burning more calories than you eat. The real transformation happens inside, where you peel back layer after layer of stuff - most of which is a mask for what's really been hiding underneath a cocoon of fat.

Sarah Ban Breathnach declares it takes tenacity and daring to travel to the darkest interior of one's self:

"Our dragons are our fears: our day stalkers, our night sweats. Fear of the unknown. Fear of failing. Fear of starting something new and not finishing. Again. Or the real rear, the one that sends shivers up our spines: the fear of succeeding, of becoming our authentic selves and facing the changes that will inevitably bring. We might not be happy with the way we are living now, but at least it's safely familiar."

If you're following Oprah's "A New Earth" webinar with Eckhart Tolle, you're familiar with the illusory identity of the ego.

"Can you feel that there is something in you that is at war, something that feels threatened and wants to survive at all cost, that needs drama in order to assert its identity as the victorious character within your theatrical production? Can you feel there is something in you that would rather be right than at peace?" (Insert the nagging negative voice in your head.)

Dear friends, we are doing far more than losing physical weight. We are losing the trappings of what was not really "us" at all. By taking up the swords of Love and Light on behalf of our true selves, we are revealing the "what-I-AM-is-wonderful" us. And that makes it all worth the effort.

Quotes from Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy
and A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle

Inspiration: Meet Dr. George Monta

"I think I've become sort of like an ancient teddy bear to a lot of folks," George told me on the phone last week, speaking of his busy counseling schedule. It's been a tough year since his wife of 64 years, Adaire, passed away last summer.

Dr. George Monta is the sort of mentor everybody wishes for. I met him at a conference in Little Rock, Ark., nearly 15 years ago. In 2006, he ordained me to Christian ministry. Ironically, the book he and Adaire gave me to commemorate that event is Eckhart Tolle's
"A New Earth," the subject of Oprah's current 10-week webinar.

Dr. Monta, 83, is uniquely spiritual, but almost entirely non-religious. His counsel, while simple, is profoundly thought-provoking. Here's one of his classics: “When WATER is written on paper, it has an intellectual meaning, but is not useful in and of itself. All written truth becomes real only when lived out by experience.”

For today's inspiration, I hope you'll enjoy "meeting" one of the most important voices in my life. (Please excuse the short, but rather awkward introduction, which probably should have been edited out. The doting female voice is not mine, by the way.)

[Click the green arrow below to begin. After that, you can use your cursor to slide the green bar to the right to :59, where George begins talking.]

Powered by Podbean.com

Expletives Deleted

All I can say is not printable. I missed Lora's appearance on Oprah yesterday. Got busy working and slap forgot it.

Lora, please forgive me. I hope it was super, and we can't wait to hear all the luscious details.

Did anybody happen to record the show?

Weightloss "Secrets"

As we begin to lose weight, questions begin to crop up:
How did you do it?
What (fad) diet
are you using?

Effective weight management is no secret. After all, it's pretty much simple physics: what you put in versus what you put out (medical conditions excepted).

If you read yesterday's post, you know that why, what and how we eat is largely a function of what's going on inside our heads. Oprah says it like this:

"You've got to ask yourself: What kind of life do I want and how close am I to living it? You cannot ever live the life of your dreams without coming face to face with the truth. Every unwanted pound creates another layer of lies. It's only when you peel back those layers that you will be set free: free to work out, free to eat responsibly, free to live the life you want and deserve to live.
Tell the truth, and you'll learn to eat to satisfy your physical hunger as opposed to your emotional hunger and to stop burying
your hopes and dreams beneath layers of fat."

Here's what's working for me:
* Planning and eating an average of 1200-1400 calories a day from BestLife menu guides,

* Prioritizing daily exercise, including aerobics and strengh training each week,

* Building margin into my overall schedule to manage stress levels,

* Maintaining accountability by logging all food eaten and all exercise performed, plus weighing, measuring and calculating BMI once a week.

* Not eating after 7 p.m.

* Giving and receiving support through chatrooms and HYC blogs.

What's your "secret?"

(Oprah's quote from the preface to The Best Life Diet (Paperback) By Bob Greene

Gut Level Honesty

A short six weeks ago, I sat silent with laryngitis and the flu, watching Oprah's show for the very first time. It might as well have been church for me. At the end of Bob Greene's message, I responded to his invitation to accept the 2008 BestLife Challenge.

I was, as Dr. Phil says, at the crossroads, ready to get off the fence, ready to begin translating my insights, understandings and awareness into purposeful, meaningful, constructive action.

I made up my mind that 52 years old is not too late to begin. I was ready to wipe the slate clean, start over (again!),
and reclaim my health and my life...
no matter how much it hurt to change.

Then I read Oprah's preface to Bob Greene's book (see sidebar): "What I know for sure is that living an unconscious life is like being the walking dead. All my fat years - my unconscious years - are a blur to me now. It's only because I have photographs and diaries that I remember them at all. And sometimes, even then I don't remember being present, because I wasn't really there."

THAT'S ME, I sobbed. Every "fat year" I created was a real bummer in one way or another. Here I was again, making another
"searching and fearless moral inventory" of myself.

Dr. Phil says it this way: "Effective weight management demands that you require more of yourself in terms of personal integrity, honesty and maturity. Get real enough with yourself to say, 'I'm mature and honest enough not to play mind games with myself.'"

So...in learning to be accountable (again!), I am pleased to report that by following Dr. Phil's principles and The BestLife program of healthy eating and regular exercise, I have lost 17 pounds and 14-1/2 inches since January 15.

***And my DH has lost 22 pounds!!

(Dr. Phil's quotes from 2 Book Set: The Ulitmate Weight Solution: The 7 Keys to Weight Loss Freedom/The Ultimate Weight Solution Food Guide.)

Inspiration: Randy Pausch

Everybody has their own version of inspiration – usually tailored to a particular time in their lives.

Last week, two people sent me links to a
You Tube video with accompanying accolades for “the most amazing video ever” or something similar. I made a note on my calendar to watch the video over coffee Saturday morning, but, you guessed it, got busy and blew it off. Yesterday morning, another email arrived with the same link. Yesterday afternoon, I brewed a pot of green tea and pulled up a chair to watch it while Myron was on the golf course.

Randy Pausch, a young professor at Carnegie Mellon University, has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. His doctors gave him only a few months to live…last September.

Regardless how “amazing” you consider the video, Randy Pausch has a message for everybody. Here’s the short version, about 15 minutes, from a recent Oprah show.

Here’s the original version, his final lecture to students, fellow faculty and friends, about 76 minutes.

If you can’t squeeze it in today, please bookmark it for later.

A New Earth - An Oprahtunity to Grow

When I was formally ordained to ministry in 2006, my mentor, Dr. George Monta, gave me Eckhart Tolle's book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose.


This month, the book soared to new heights as Oprah's Book of the Month Club recommendation No. 61.

Beginning March 3, Winfrey and Tolle are teaming up to present a 10-week webinar to explore the tenets of the book.

"We will be studying A New Earth, but not as an academic subject or in order to acquire new theories or beliefs," says Tolle. "Our aim is to explore through the teachings of the book the most important question you can ask: What is the purpose of my life and how do I fulfill that purpose? It will be a course in self-exploration and awakening. It will help you see what the dysfunctional patterns are within yourself that create unnecessary conflict and suffering and prevent you from finding true fulfillment. Hopefully, it will also help you access a dimension within yourself that perhaps you didn't know existed or only caught glimpses of on rare occasions. Don't be trapped for the rest of your life within the narrow confines of your personal history and your conditioned personality and allow your life to be transformed from within, through the power of consciousness itself."

Want to join us?

Ho-Ho Hubby

Oprah and Bob's Best Life Challenge 2008 offers participants the opportunity to "make a contract with yourself."

Last night, during a commercial break in Comanche Moon, I presented a copy of the contract to my husband and asked for feedback.

After a quick read, he responded, "That is so nice." Click. Click. "Just remember, you're the cook around here. If you fix it, I'll eat it."

The weekend weather is predicted to be in the 20s, which should prevent his usual golf outings. Should be a good time to talk again.

In the meantime, I'll remain our household's Lonesome Dove.

P.S. I know why they tell you not to weigh in Phase I. I ate only 864 calories yesterday, but still gained a pound by this morning.

What is "The Best Life?"

The Best Life Begins

A bug bit me somewhere. Yesterday, I was so nauseated, I didn't even make coffee or turn on the computer. For me, that's the bottom rung of the "feel good" ladder.

Ironically, yesterday was the ONLY day in over a year that I've been sick.When Mom called to check on me, she asked if I had seen the current issue of Oprah's magazine. Well, no. I don't ever read it.

But when the show came on television at 4 o'clock, I was sitting in the living room with the remote in hand. So I watched. There was Bob Greene with Oprah introducing all these eyepopping makeovers. And I sat in my husband's easy chair, watching -- during the only hour I was awake all day.

This afternoon, I stepped on the scale to face the 45 pounds I regained during 2007 -- the same ones I lost during 2006. For the last hour, I've been perusing The Best Life web site, getting a feel for how it works and where to start.

Last week, I saw a sign: "I'm on a 30 day diet, and so far, I've lost 10 days." That's been the story of my life. Diet on. Diet off.
I'm miserable.

Well, here we go. I'm not looking for miracles. But I am willing to give it my best shot, one day at a time, beginning tomorrow morning.