Big Change!

It is time to make it blog official!  I have recently resigned from my position at school and have taken a new position at my church to start a daycare/preschool and eventually grow the program to an elementary school.  This decision came after careful consideration of pros and cons (yes, I made that list), but most importantly, after much prayer and seeking God's will for my life.  That has led me here...to one of the biggest changes in my life and at times, one of the scariest changes.  However, one thing has been whispered to me over and over...Trust Me. And at this point, I have nothing left but to trust.

Why has it been scary?  Well, simply because I have taught in the same place for the past 13 years...all of my professional career.  It is all I have ever known.  I have been blessed with many great relationships there with children, parents, and staff members.  I have loved seeing how my young, sweet children that I had in school have started becoming young adults - one of the blessings of social media.  I worked there during some of the happiest times of my life and also through some of the saddest/darkest times of my life.  The outpouring of support I received from my school community when my father passed away will never be forgotten, and it was a tremendous light to me when all I could see was darkness.  However, I have to remember that I am not leaving those memories or those relationships, I am just leaving the building.

This has been a dream of mine for years.  I remember going to a Christian daycare before and after school when I was younger, and I loved it!  The women that worked there saw something in me even at that small age that I believe has helped to point me in the direction I chose as an adult.  They saw even then how much I enjoyed working with children, and my "reward" was tutoring and working with the younger kids.  Best. Reward. Ever.

I know that my love for children and for teaching is a gift from God.  One that I want to honor Him with at all times.  I have gone to my church for almost 16 years now, and my pastor has mentioned numerous times that this was a vision of his.  Every time he would mention it, I would feel that little nudge in my spirit, but I wasn't ready.  I did things to prepare myself - like going to school and getting my administrator's license - but I always thought this was something I would pursue later in life.  I thought I would do this when I was married and had children of my own or when I was a little more financially secure.  But God's timing is not my timing.  Something I am learning over and over through this.

For the past several months the Lord had been dealing with me in doing more for Him, something different for Him, using my gifts, trusting Him, not waiting for perfect circumstances, and the list goes on and on and on.  Then one day at lunch my pastor said something to me about starting the daycare/preschool at church, and I knew.  It was time.  God used my pastor to speak so many things to me while I was making this decision through his Sunday's messages.  One of my favorite quotes was this one:

This is exactly where I was.  Change is hard even when you know it is God's will for your life.  I am stepping out in faith, and I am believing that great things will happen - all for God's glory!

I appreciate all of the support and any and all prayers through this new journey of mine!  I am very excited to be opening The Blended Tots daycare SOON!

1,000 Mile Challenge

You know how I love a good challenge!  Last summer I completed 75 miles in the month of July.  I set a goal, I worked at it, and I reached my goal.  Setting and accomplishing goals makes me feel so good.  That is when I saw this challenge I knew I had to check it out.

What challenge is it?  It is the 1,000 mile challenge - 1,000 miles in one year.  The challenge is to walk, run, skip, etc. 1,000 miles starting June 6, 2015 and ending June 5, 2016.  You can track your steps by using a pedometer, running / walking apps, Fit Bit, Vivo Fit, or other tracking device.  I will be using my Vivo Fit to track my miles.   If 1,000 miles seems like too much, you can form a team and divide the 1,000 miles between your team.  It averages out to walking 2.73 miles per day.  That seems doable, right?

The best part about this challenge is that if you do it, and register online using the website, 50% of your registration fee is donated to a charity.  You can select your charity from a list of partner charities.  You even have a chance to earn extra donation money by using a specific tracking app.  I probably won't do this just because I don't want to use the data to run the app each time.

One reason I was so successful with my 75 miles in July challenge is because I had people completing it with me.  There truly is strength in numbers.  I have one friend signed up.  I would love to see more!  Here is the link for the 1,000 mile challenge if anyone is interested in completing it.  Act quick!  Registration ends at the end of June.

1,000 Mile Challenge


Set a goal, make a plan, and work at it!  Action!

P.S.  I will be looking for people to help by walking/running with me...any takers?

Thank you, Anonymous!

Well, it has been awhile.  My last post was the end of March.  April and May kept me pretty busy with the end of the school year, but I could have made time to post.  The problem is that I lost focus.  I didn't make it a priority.

My word for 2015 is action.  During the month of May in particular, there was a gap between my intention and action, and it all boiled down to one word - priorities.  I found this quote and it really made me start thinking:

Your action (or in my case lack of) expresses your priorities.  My inaction for the month of May showed that my priorities changed.  I no longer was making myself a priority, and I was suffering because of it - mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally.  All facets of my life were affected by my inaction.

I am not sorry that I lost focus in May.  It was another learning experience for me.  It has taught me that if I don't make myself a priority that I cannot be my best self.  If I am not my best self, then all of my family, friends, ministries suffer.  I am just giving them all different broken pieces of me.

One priority I let go is blogging.  Then, one day I had an e-mail saying I had a comment on my blog.  I thought this was strange since I hadn't made blogging a priority, and then I went to check the comment out.  The comment said:

I was blown away for a number of reasons.  One, this particular post was written on August 26, 2013 - almost two years ago.  Another is that it reminded me why I blog.  I blog to sort through my feelings and struggles, but I also blog so that other people know they are not alone in this journey.  I mean, here is this person that probably did the same thing I did (which for those people that didn't know I googled whether or not fat people could complete the Warrior Dash, completed my first Warrior Dash, and then shared my experience) and stumbled upon my blog.  I hate that this person left an anonymous comment because I would love to follow up with him / her and see how the Warrior Dash went for him / her.  I want to thank this person for commenting because this anonymous person reminded me that I needed to start blogging again and sharing my journey - no matter how messy and off track it can be.  It reminded me that we need people to encourage us and be real with us and share the struggle with us.

That brings me to my goal for June.

So what does making me a priority look like?  It means that I am back to meal planning and that I schedule time to meal plan.  It means that I workout daily, no excuses.  It means that I work on my blog - even if it takes time.  For example, I have been working on this post for several days now. It also means that I become better about using my passion planner so that I achieve the goals that I set for 2015.  It means that I have to commit to myself and maybe say no right now to some other things.

I absolutely love this quote and plan on printing it off and putting it in different places to remind me what I have to do.  

Thank you, Anonymous, for helping me to get back on track!  I know you rocked your Warrior Dash!   .  

My, How I've Grown

It has been awhile since I have blogged, and now that my spring break has officially started, I have time to get back to something I love - writing and blogging about my journey.  In the weeks I have not posted, I have made notes about upcoming blog posts so no worries, I have plenty to write about.

Today, though, I just want to share something.  Something that I noticed this week.  Something that the more I think about it the more I am really proud of myself.  Somewhere along the way of this healthy food journey, I have changed.  I can't pinpoint when it happened but this week it became evident that it did.

This week I have not been the best at following my food plan.  First of all, I didn't plan out my meals for the week like I usually do, and to make it worse, I was really, really busy and hardly at home.  Needless to say, my eating suffered.  Normally, I would spiral out of control and use it as an excuse to binge as much as possible.  That is when I noticed that this time I did not do that.  Did I still make some poor food choices?  Yes.  Am I beating myself up over it and continuing to punish myself by binge eating as much as humanly possible? No.  After each poor food choice that I made, I made a conscious effort to make better ones at the very next meal.  That is growth.

Even though I was busy and not prepared on the food end, I still made working out a priority.  I continued to wake up early and workout every morning.  That felt pretty amazing.

So I noticed that I am more forgiving of myself.  I don't have the all or nothing mentality that has sabotaged me my entire life.  I have finally realized that this is a journey and it is going to have bumps and bruises along the way.  I just needed to change my reactions to those bumps and bruises. Somewhere along the way I have done that, and I couldn't be prouder.

March Challenge

Well, hello March!  I love that today is March 1st and we had over 7 inches of snow here in Indy.  I was so lucky that I got to shovel my driveway not once but twice today!  Waking up on March 1st to this much snow reminded me of the saying: 

Then I came across this beauty:

And I knew.  I knew that with this month comes a chance for me to enter beast mode.  I am at that point in my journey that I have been at many times before.  I see success for awhile and then either I become complacent or discouraged or distracted and I end up falling off the wagon and gaining the weight back and sometimes even more weight with it.  

Not this time.  

Something I am going to try is a new photo challenge for the month of March - one that I hope will be fun even though I know it is going to be challenging at times for me.  I found the challenge on Pinterest and decided to give it a try..  Here it is:

So, there it is - the photo challenge.  I started it today and plan on continuing it daily for the month of March.  On the 31st day of March, I plan on posting a picture of how much weight I lost during the month.  

I posted my first picture today.  I went back and forth a lot on how many pounds I wanted to lose this month.  I wanted it to be achievable but also something that I had to work at.  Since I posted the picture I have had doubts on whether or not I can achieve the goal I set.  It doesn't matter now - I put it out there, and I am going into beast mode to achieve it!  

Anyone else want to do this photo challenge with me?    

Not By My Strength

Okay, I have a confession.  I am weak...so weak.  Every single day is a battle.  I wage war in my thoughts, in my surroundings, and in my actions.  I want to quit.  I want to sleep in and not work out in the mornings.  I want to return to former eating habits - mainly eating out or grabbing fast food on the way home for dinner.

But I don't.  It has nothing to do with me, and it has absolutely everything to do with Him - Jesus.

 
Thank God for this verse!  How many of us are weak and weary?  How many of us need strength and power?  In at least one aspect of our lives, I think we ALL can say that we are weak and need an increase in power.

This week this was brought to my attention time and time again.  I had so much going on - busy evenings, had to attend a funeral that brought back many memories of my own father's funeral, had headaches and was tired most of the week.  There were times this week I wanted to turn my alarm off or hit snooze just one more time.  On Thursday this week it was a huge mental battle for me.  All afternoon at school I just started thinking about stopping at Steak-N-Shake on the way home and grabbing my dinner.  What did I do instead?  I prayed.  Hard.  Then I drove right by that restaurant and every other restaurant on the way home, and I ate the meal I had prepared earlier in the week.

I love Jesus, and my ultimate motivation to get healthy is for Him.  So I can be better used for His purposes.  I saw a quote once, and I continue to come back to it time and time again.

Lord, help me to always honor You in all that I do.

Non-Scale Victories

Last week I kept noticing non-scale victories, and on Sunday, I figured out why.  I didn't lose very much weight.  I still lost weight - but I lost less than one pound - 0.8 of a pound to be exact.  This is by far the smallest amount of weight I have lost since I began taking control of my life and actively working towards a healthy lifestyle.

Old Allison would have been bummed.  I know - ridiculous.  New Allison celebrated that small victory, but she was also so thankful that the she was reminded of all of the non-scale victories throughout the week.

What is a non-scale victory?  You will sometimes see it abbreviated as NSV.  It simply means that you notice other changes in your healthy lifestyle journey that are not related to the  number on the scale.  Here are some examples of non-scale victories: 

So what were some of my non-scale victories?

*A pair of pants that I would wear but couldn't get zipped all of a sudden were able to be zipped last week.
*I went from wearing jeans with elastic to jeans that zip. Jeans that previously did not fit me!
*I was able to increase the weight of the weights I was using in my workouts.
*I noticed while I was working out last week that my legs looked more slender and so did my ankles.  See?

 

*I don't have exact measurements yet (because I plan on taking them on Sunday or Monday), but I KNOW that I have lost inches, particularly around my waist.  

*Saying no to junk, junk that has ruled my life for longer than I care to remember, is not as tempting as it once was.

*And the best non-scale victory?  People are starting to notice and comment on it - lots of people! I. LOVE. IT.  That is probably the most encouraging thing to me right now.  

I think these non-scale victories are important to document so that when I do get discouraged I can reflect back on how far I have come.  I am striving to remember this: