All posts filed under: Getting Started

How I continue to choose fitness every day

  “There is pleasure in the pathless woods.” -Byron The smaller pictures are me putting together my very first rifle last week, from springs, screws and pieces into a full gun. In the last few years, I’ve had a growing desire to become an excellent distance marksman. You know the Biathlon event in the winter Olympics? It involves cross country skiing and rifle shooting. Perhaps, it’s some latent nordic bloodline in me or something left over from when I lived in Rykkinn, Norway as a young girl and cross country skied everywhere, but that sport rocks! Biathletes, here I come! 😉 Fitness was like this for me a year ago; it was a far off dream. Life is full of function. If we aren’t careful, our dreams can become like a distant, Italian love song that is vaguely familiar in an alley somewhere outside our window. For various reasons, some of them wonderful ones like raising my seven beautiful children, I realized last year that I had stopped dreaming. And, that’s when I decided… It is time, …

And Then There’s This Guy… Counting Calories 101

So, that hulk in the picture above is my eldest, football playing son, Joab. Boy, was he aptly named! His goal is just a wee bit different than ours. How? He aims to eat 4,500 calories a day to bulk up for football. 4,500! That is a male concept that I will never understand. 1. I have never in my life eaten like an absolute hog (I mean, don’t get me wrong, I can down pizza like nobody’s business but I mean eating when you feel like you’re going to puke already) and 2. I would never ever be willing to gain weight for a sport. But, our family has always been comprised of very masculine men and exceptionally feminine women. There are many days where the girls and boys almost face off, giving each other that quizical, deer in the headlights look that says, “What planet are you from again?!” I gently (because I am always a total lamb), sat my boys and husband down this week and told them God made the female gender too …

How I Ate to Lose 50 Pounds

The temptation for all of us is to put on a veneer, to present ourselves like everything is always perfect and we are shiny and flawless. However, this blog isn’t just about physical health. To get to the gritty issues that are involved in the health of the human heart, honesty is required. While I hope you will find my blog very encouraging to your personal fitness, it will also tell of my journey to be healthy before God in all areas. It’s a lifelong journey, isn’t it? “Sanctified” could really be defined as “made fully healthy by God.” On that note, 2014 was a hard year. Very. Did I add the word “very” yet? During one run this week, I heard God say, “You have been running away from pain. Now it’s time to run towards me.” It’s not that God wasn’t in my line of sight but that my focus has been heavily on the pain, which I believe is ok for a season but not a great place to camp out for a long …

Where it begins, December 2013…

“…but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” IS 40:31 A year ago, I found myself overweight, often feeling like, “the way I look and feel is not who I really am,” feeling like life strain and stress was ubiquitous and with seven beautiful kids and the body to show for it (Ok, so, some days I feel like we are remaking The Hunger Games but when I tuck them in at night, they are, after all, beautiful kids who haven’t killed each other). I would mentally hearken back to my fit, cheerleading days like Uncle Rico sadly reliving his football stardom on Napoleon Dynamite. Some people are advocates for the idea that if we eat properly (fresh, “Paleo” or close to nature type food) that we will go down to our proper size naturally. However, I can tell you, after eating that way for 7 years and not getting rid …