I am still going on this journey of weight loss and health and MOST importantly Jesus worship!! Although, I admit that I am constantly having to readjust my focus to the latter and am more often out of focus than in. My self-imposed timeline of September 6th gets me quite off track in the Jesus focus, but also keeps me on the straight and narrow.

I think I will have to work more at keeping focused ALONG WITH staying on track between now and my next post. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I have lost 11 pounds as of this morning and 12.75 inches so far. I have 5 pounds and 5.5 inches left to lose. I have also completed the Alpha Phase of the T25 workouts from Beachbody. I think that is what I can attribute most of my lost inches to. I continue to track my calories on the My Fitness Pal app and have recently adjusted them back up to 1280 a day instead of 1200 at the suggestion of my accountability friend. I was feeling hungry all the time and dizzy sometimes. With that information and her suggestion that people never go below 1200 calories a day I felt it was best to up my calorie setting. I have trouble using up every single allowable calorie. I feel like I have to have a green number on the side of my totals at the end of the day. This way I can leave 20-40 calories on there and still get enough in my body for what I’m doing.

Like I said earlier, my focus isn’t always what it should be, but I’m working to get there. step by step. I am too grumpy about “deprivation” too often. However, it is up to me if I view it as deprivation or working toward a goal. I was just reading an email from Stephanie at Six Figures Under and although it was a budgeting tip from a budgeting blog, it fits for this journey too. She was talking about decisions we can and need to make today that our future selves will be able to thank us for later. And just like starting a new business or blog or setting up a budget or an IRA fund will give our future selves something monetary to thank us for, we can make health decisions that we can thank ourselves for later. We can budget our calories just like our dollars, we can start a fitness commitment just like a business, we can invest in groceries that truly nourish our bodies and sometimes even our souls just like we invest in an IRA. And then our leaner, healthier, happier and (maybe one of these days when I get my focus right) more peaceful future-selves will thank us for that, too!