"Lettuce Lose Weight"

You know you have taken more time off from weight loss than you needed to, when you can't even remember the password to your weight loss journal.

I stopped my diet back when I went to campmeeting in September.

Thankfully, I maintained my weight loss ....

Well, I did until the Christmas/New Year's holidays.

I added some back then.

I do not look upon my new year as beginning on January 1-- my new year for implementing resolutions, that is-- because after the holidays, I go straight into working huge amounts of overtime to get ready for inventory.

So I have arbitrarily set my own new beginning as February 1.

That gives me a little bit of time to catch up on some stuff I got way behind on...
like housekeeping
and grandchild "sitting"
and getting back in contact with friends
and... whatever.

And also it gives me time to think about just what NYRs I want to implement.

The "experts" say keep it down to one or two. Get those established as habit before moving on to something greater. If not, you are "doomed to failure". Most of us are just not good enough at making radical changes in our lives to incorporate a half dozen at one time.

I could make a list of a dozen that I'd like to implement immediately.

But I think weight loss and exercise need to be high on my priority list. The exercise gives me energy. And, of course, it could be used as a tool for weight loss also IF I'D DO ENOUGH OF IT, but that ain't likely to happen. Energy is enough. I need energy.

I took a lot of time when I was doing my 1600 Calories a Day blog to look up the calorie count of everything that I ate and faithfully record it. If you read my blog, you know that I said more than once that keeping that blog was like taking a second job. It took me awhile to do that.

I really don't want to put that much time into weight loss at this date. I think that I should be able to make some headway even if I don't count every calorie.

Or, by eating meals that have been precounted.

One thing I learned from my 1600 calorie effort was that I did not have to stick to 1600 calories EVERY DAY. I could have some Wendy days. But, on the other hand, some days I ate less than that as well.

I turned back to Spark to see what they might have to offer. I liked Sparks motivational articles. But I abandoned their program when I found Calorie-Count because C-C fit my needs so much better.

Spark-- or at least their advertisers-- inspired my title. "Lettuce Lose Weight One Meal at a Time" was the slogan used by Fit N Fresh, advertisers on Spark.

I'm going to throw in here a part of a eulogy I read by a Spark member. It comes off her blog but I liked it. It has applicability in many directions--even in the area of encouraging those who want to lose weight. This is her eulogy; this is what I took from it:

I told her [her, being her grandmother] that I was seeing suffering in everyone, that everyone was in pain, and I couldn’t help everyone. I just couldn’t find beauty in anything. I was feeling very overwhelmed.

She looked at me and said, “Honey, God knows there is suffering and pain in the world. However, He created us to see the beauty and joy in His creation. God is big enough to take all the suffering on himself. Just give it over to him every time.”

Then, she went on to say, “I just read a story in my Guidepost. A man was walking the beach after a huge storm had swept hundreds of starfish onto the shore. He saw another man up ahead pick up a starfish and throw it into the ocean. He watched as the man did that several times.

Curiosity got the best of him and we went to talk to the man.
‘What are you doing?’ the man asked the one throwing the starfish back into the ocean.

‘I’m helping them get back into the ocean.’

‘How can you possibly make a difference when there are hundreds on the beach?’

The man picked up a starfish and threw it into the ocean and said, ‘I just made a difference in that one’s life.’

Nana went on to say, “Kristi, it’s God’s job to save the world. You just have to make a difference in someone’s life.”