I have a dear friend at church who has lost over 50 pounds! She puts my feeble attempts to shame, especially since I haven't been doing anything lately. She was gracious enough to share her testimony with us.
Weight loss success story….in the making
My dear friend Missy asked me if I would write my testimony in regards to losing weight as we hit this New Year and so many of us make weight loss a resolution…a resolution that for many of us tends to fall by the weigh-side(pun intended) within weeks of the New Year.
Not so for me, weight loss is not my resolution but for right now in my life it’s my journey and my number 3 priority behind serving the Lord and caring for my family.
I thought a great way to tell this story is to tell it with pictures. I have a long history of being overweight, not as a child or teen but right at the time I hit college with an unlimited meal card…I won’t bother to go into the history of what I did and didn’t do to lose weight during the last 24 years…..yes, that’s TWENTY FOUR years of being overweight/obese/fat, whatever the word you like that’s the most comfortable for you. This journey really starts in March of 2011. In a nutshell, I was done being fat. I was done not feeling comfortable in my skin, done not feeling comfortable in my clothes, done with the size of clothes I owned, done being the biggest in the room, done feeling so self conscious of how I looked, done with the mixed message I was sending out to the world. You see, I am very health conscious and for several years I have had a very good diet, all natural/organic, no processed junk, no msg, high fructose corn syrup, minimal to no cane sugar…natural foods, natural healing yada yada yada….yet I am fat. All the knowledge I have of health did not match up with my lifestyle and my healthy diet….while my diet was quite healthy, obviously I was getting too much of a good thing and I was not exercising consistently. In a nutshell I was a glutton and slothful, in plain English I was greedy and lazy…both of which are sins. I praise the Lord for a pastor who will preach the whole Word of God, when is the last time you went to church and your pastor preached on being a glutton? Out of the biblical knowledge came conviction for me for how I was living and what I had done to my temple. I also praise the Lord my surfeiting(overeating) did not cause me physical detriment, but the weight I was carrying, physical problems were inevitable. So on March 28, 2011 I started to track my food and exercise on a site online as well as an app on my iphone called Sparkpeople and I haven’t looked back since.
So, on with the picture show(please know that I modestly adorn myself with dresses and skirts but I do exercise privately at home with workout shirts and pants and I do run outside with leggings but with a running skirt over top for modesty)
This is me in March 2011!!
These are progress pictures as I diligently have exercised my body and exercised portion control.
I’ve even started training to run a 5K race, my kids help me out too!
And today I am 63 pounds lighter!!!
How am I doing this you ask? I am tracking my food, exercising portion control, exercising at least 5-6 days per week and most importantly, I am making no excuses. I eat right and exercise; I do not deny myself any food, other than food I just don’t eat because of health or religious reasons. I make the choice daily to do this. During this journey I have realized that I DO have the choice to be healthy or NOT. I still have more weight to lose but I am confident I will reach my ideal weight by this summer, hence the title of my testimony “…success story in the making” It may be cliché but if I can do it, anybody can.
Thank you Clarissa for sharing such an amazing story with us!
God bless you!
Missy
