How do I

Get to a new place in my life! I have accomplished a lot of things in my life and yet here I sit frustrated with my weight and the inability to get the rest of this ick off my body. I feel fAt ugly and undesirable and for what food!

My BODY!!

Today I was looking at a co-worker and thought, if I lost all my weight and had surgery there is a chance I would have a similar frame to her. It doesn't matter that she can eat anything she wants and stay thin, it doesn't matter that she doesn't have to exercise at all to keep her figure. I just looked at her and kind of sized her up and then wanted to kick myself. When I eat things not on my plan, when I don't get out and exercise, and not just simple exercise but the kind that gets my blood pumping and burns the calories, when I don't drink enough water...it's then that I wish that the images of these people would come to mind. I had an actress in mind a while back that would fit my body type, thin. I won't tell you because you will probably laugh but regardless I saw it and unfortunately until I reach my goal weight and have the excess skin removed I will never know.
The most frustrating part is it is a never ending battle, I like want to get to a point where it all is just easy, where I don't have to think of what to eat that it will just come to mind easily. I struggle every single stinking day to eat right. Right now I want to get below 184, which right now is about 32 pounds, which for someone who has lost 200 pounds should seem so easily achievable but truthfully it feels like I am trying to lose another 200 pounds. I have been caught up with this cold for the past week and a half, first thing in the morning and late at night is the worst, I feel like I can't breathe so I haven't spent anytime exercising. I have given myself until Sunday to get it together, I need to get back to a strict everything, not because I have to but because I want to. There are 6 weeks left in the year, and while I won't get to my goal in that time I can make a huge dent in my weight including getting possibly below 200 pounds, leaving me another 6 months to get to my goal weight by my 40th birthday on June 1st. Sometimes I truthfully want someone with me 24/7 shutting my mouth, I guess I really have to trust God to guide me in this.  There is some vanity to this but more than anything its totally about at least finishing a goal I started (5) years ago this March. It would be great to be 173 by March 2013, then I can literally say I lost 200 pounds in those 5 years. While I will have achieved so much more, to be there would be AWESOME!!

Rest

I can't remember the last time that I was sick enough to be home for days and to really feel like staying at home. I went to bed Tuesday night feeling kind of a sore throat, woke up sounding like I swallowed a frog. Then by Thursday morning my nose was running and the cough was coming on, still went to work both days, but by Thursday night the feeling of a semi truck driving over me came on me. I called in sick for work Friday morning and then awoke Friday morning with almost no voice at all and needing just to simply stay in bed much later than I would normally stay in bed. I eventually left my bed for the respite of the couch, where I would stay for the remainder of the day. I needed rest, my body, my vocal chords and my simple being needed a moment of silence and rest. So here I am Saturday night with the full realization that tomorrow that rest will be continued. While its hard for me to miss church, at the same time this will give my body a chance for a full recovery and a chance to go back to work on Monday actually feeling revived. So I've done some school work, played some games talked to my kids and just kind of "vegged" out. The no talking for a day was actually quite difficult for me but apparently very necessary for me to have a chance of recovery today. I recognize that God calls for a day of rest because we need it, not to just keep us house bound or to give us more rules and regulations to be one of His but because He made us and He knew that rest is simply what we need. When we do not rest, our bodies physically, spiritually and mentally become weary. I know I do, I know I end up doing too much and then have to pay for it.

I am not grateful for this cold/flu or whatever it was however I am grateful that because of it I had to slow down and just rest. The very thing my body needed me most to do for it, for once I actually listened and rested. I am hopeful that this will be a lesson that I won't have to get sick to rest but that I will take the opportunity to just sit in silence from time to time and rest.

Silence

A friend of mine pointed out that my greatest weight loss success came when I stopped talking about it and just did it. In 3 days I graduate from college not because I talked about what I would do but because I did it .
Tuesday I discovered there is a great chance the pain in my leg Is arthritis and that it could get more painful; the only way to help myself is to lose more weight. So for right now my goal is to only share my journey here and to keep silent everywhere else. My friends and family must grow weary of my constant banter about weight loss. And so silence and journaling is the best response for me.

Blessings

Blessings are a huge part of my life and I feel immensely grateful for all that I have and believe I should take more opportunities to state out loud what I'm grateful for. My life in Christ has enabled me things I didn't have before a true commitment to Him, I have Peace in times where Peace seems to not be found by others. I have Joy, I have unwavering belief that Jesus died for me and that He is coming back one day to get me. On top of all those things that are offered to all that believe in Him, He has walked with me through some truly rough and dark paths, He was there when my first husband died, when I had to leave my second marriage, He was with me when I was walking through a dessert land as a single mom of two children who had just lost their father. God has never left my side, I have been blessed with two beautiful children, with a beautiful home in a nice neighborhood, friends and family that love me. I have a good job that I love doing, I have finished school and am on my way to having a profession not just a job. God has taken care of me through it all, He knows me and still loves me still walks this road with me even on those days when I act like a spoiled brat and don't want to do what I'm supposed to do or go where He needs me to go. I have been surprised by unexpected blessings, amazed at how GOd shows up just in time and in Awe of how He never stops being faithful.

Just some thoughts

I must honestly tell you that writing is kind of a passion for me and yet I always feel the need to pay attention to what I write with the audience in mind; however for this post I truly just want to write what I am feeling without a thought of anything but getting what I am feeling on the inside down on paper. I have been a single mom off and on since my children were 3 and 5 years old, they are now 15 and 17 years old. My first bout of single mom-ness happened when their father and my husband of 5 years, passed away suddenly. At the time of his death I was 27 and I had been the bread winner of our family, I had worked 70-80 hour work weeks and my children had been mainly in daycare and now I was responsible for taking care of these two fragile human beings who were grieving the death of their father. At 3 and 5 they still didn't truly grasp the knowledge of what had happened to their father they just knew he was never coming home, on my good days where I could get out from the covers and focus on their beautiful little lives one of them would come to me and tell me they wanted their daddy back. I will tell you vehemently that while moving back in with my parents was hard it was also essential for my recovery, I made some bad choices while living with them but I think the bad choices would have been worse if I hadn't moved back home when my husband died. 2 years into this journey of single motherhood I would fall in love and marry my second husband. I had a (in my opinion) a fairy tale wedding and for a few months what seemed to be a fairy tale marriage, within a year of our wedding we would move from California to Florida, it would be a move that would truly be a test for me. I didn't know anyone there and wasn't sure how we were going to make it and yet today as I write this blog I am still living in Florida almost 9 years from the move and almost 5 years since my divorce.

God is faithful even when we don't make the best decisions, 5 years into our marriage (exactly 2 days from our 5th wedding anniversary) I left my husband and took my children and moved in to another house across town and begun my second stint as a single mom. My children were now 10 and 12 and they were now older children grieving in a different way. While there are many things I feel need to be said I don't feel details of my marriage or divorce serve a purpose to helping anything heal, I know what took place and the reasons I felt it necessary to leave. I have held on for many years the guilt of those years and how they affected my children, however we have now been on our own for almost as many years as I was married, and it is now my responsibility for how my kids are being raised. I love them and I love the fact that they know their mother made hard decisions even if it meant I would have to raise them on my own, however sometimes the difficulty of our lives together seems almost too hard and I don't want to do it anymore. I want sometimes to have the ability to just turn decisions about money the kids health and so on to someone else from time to time. Not that I don't love being in my children's lives I just sometimes need a break from being the only go to person in their world. I have friends that have in my opinion beautiful marriages and I honestly go through a period of regret for not listening and waiting on God for a spouse and now trying to date almost seems impossible. I just carry too much for some, I have to constantly be willing to state the blessings in my life or else I will become overwhelmed with responsibility and guilt over the things I didn't do right.

Two weeks from tomorrow I will graduate from college with my Bachelors in Psychology, I will walk across the stage with my diploma with the ability to know that I have come so far and accomplished so much and now I am ready for a new phase in my life. I am ready to fall in love and get married and spend the rest of my life knowing what it is like to love and be loved by someone who wants to be with me. The difference is that this time I will wait on God and allow Him to make the difference in my life and not try and do it on my own. Life is hard but it gets better as I trust God more, I don't always understand what comes next, I get frustrated because I'm not sure how to do the next thing or where I'm supposed to do it and so on and so forth but as long as I keep turning to God for the answers, I will never go wrong. This time of my life is all about walking day by day and step by step and sometimes I will make a misstep but in the end I will keep trusting God to move me and trust that He will never leave me regardless of my mood that day...

Just some thoughts

Almost a month ago my 21 year old nephew went to be with Jesus, in the course of time since his death I have done a lot of thinking about my life. Where I am and where I am headed, why I make the decisions I do and why I sit lazily around and allow life to sometimes just take me by surprise. Right after his death I discovered some issues with my foot and gave myself permission to not run as often or as long, and now I have had some other leg issues and I wonder if the feelings I have are affecting my running. I have to be free, I have to be able to find joy in running or its just work for me. my weight has gone up again. I keep going back and forth, I find myself eating things I know will damage my successes and I can't honestly admit that I have made efforts to be successful I sabotage my own success. I was down to 186.5 and I was running a 11 mm and I was doing 10 mile long runs. I was wearing a size 10 pair of dress pants and I was only 11.5 pounds from my goal weight. At this point  I am 212, I am back in a size 14 and I am running about a 13 mm and my longest distance is 3 miles. I am angry and I am frustrated because I can't really decide what it is I want. Everything is coming to its end, for example once I get to my weight goal then what? where do I go from there, when I run a marathon what do I do next. I have spent my WHOLE life in the midst of a battle, a struggle and a lot of fight to prove I was something more than how I feel. I spent my life around mean, belittling people who let me know on a consistent basis I had no value and no worth. I lived in a world of having to defend my ability to be more than the words they spoke, I was always in a drama filled world and now those people are all gone. I now live in a world that I am not picked on, no one uses the words of negative tongue that I had experienced, now I hear words like Amazing, wonderful, beautiful, smart and so many other nice things and honestly there are days I just feel like such a fraud. I want to scream out ....Please stop, I am non of those things, all those people that told me I was worthless, ugly and stupid they must have been right to an extent, I recognize being a child of the King means I have more  value than I could ever have on my own, but some days that just doesn't feel like enough.

I feel like a disappointment to some of those people around me, people who have stayed by my side for all these years while I keep fighting for a weight loss goal that never seems attainable. I get it weight loss and anything else in this life if I am trying to get there for others I will never get there. It is time for me to decide what I really want. I need to admit out loud, I like attention (the good kind) and yet I don't want to be a burden or a person who needs constant attention. I want to get to my goal weight this year and earn the right to be the State Queen in TOPS with a chance for International Queen and yet I have felt bad for wanting that. If being a Queen will be the thing that keeps me motivated for a while than at least I can start there. So for today there are two things I am sure of, I want to be a teacher and I want to the be a Queen or at least a Queen runner up! I have no clue about the rest or when this will transpire but I will not give up. So tonight I go to bed knowing I ran and I ate my best today!

Sometimes

I get overwhelmed by emotions, and I get overwhelmed by the state of the world I live in.  Even in my studies of education I discover how selfish we can be. I am so often put in a tail spin of emotions because I think someone has dismissed me, is uninterested in my life or has forgotten me, that I get into this poor me attitude. The truth is I have found something that is so Amazing, so wonderful, I have found a compassionate, loving, grace-giving, mercy-offered, Savior and that should be something that consistently floods my mind. I have a new mantra (it may seem silly) that I am learning to use in moments of distress and selfishness, first the human side of the mantra, I will not analyze, project or predict every situation in my life, and then the Christ side of my world is to focus on praying for someone like me. I know that I am not the only one out there that gets preoccupied in their own feelings that they lose sight of the importance of life. I know people that spend their days trying to help someone else, that wake up each morning looking forward to what the day holds for them.

I don't want to be selfish or self-serving I want to be more like Christ, I want to be able to seek out ways in which I can honor Christ in the way I live each day. I want to change my focus from the external to the ETERNAL side of life.

This is who I want to be...

Embraced by Grace and Humbled by Mercy!
Stephanie Stephan

Choices

It all comes down to choices, I have to choose everyday how I want to live. I have to choose if I want to do what God has called me to be or if I want to stay under the covers and pretend that this life is all about me. I have freedom in Christ before I was enslaved to sin and the world that my sin belonged to. I am under the blood and redeemed at the cost of death on a cross, I am anticipating something so much greater than what this earth can offer. With that said the goal is to bring as many people to Christ as possible, and how do I do that? I do that by living for Him in a way that sets me a part, that makes people take notice and maybe every once in awhile say "why are you loving, forgiving, encouraging", why do you show grace when others are angry and condemning, because I was once lost and now I'm found. I want like any person that is found to be grateful for being found, for being loved, for being wanted. Today when my alarm clock goes off I have a choice whether I will get up and shout His praises or whether I will stay in bed or in my pity, or in my own selfish ways, because I am not able to bring others to Christ under my covers, I have to live out of the covers I have to be out showing love, grace and mercy to others. I have to spend my days with my children, with my friends, with family and with others loving them in such a way that Christ gets glory and I am a witness to the God that gives me grace who loved me first so that I could love others.

Forgiven by Grace,
Stephanie Stephan

07/31/2012

Two weeks from today I will have finished my college degree in Psychology and will have returned to work at the elementary school that I work for and will be preparing to get my temporary teaching certificate. WOW! That's the only word I know to say, I am amazed at the journey I am on. However here is the point I must bring out. I love Ho Ho's, I love pancakes, I love anything with the word cake, chocolate or cream in it however what I want more than anything is to finish this year at my goal weight of 160-170, that would actually make it way more worth it to say I gave up cakes, chocolates and creams because there was something that was so much greater to me. I know if you know me long enough you know that this goal has been there for awhile, but for the first time I really understand what it means, I understand what it means to not get there, what it means to get so close and what it means to utterly fail and gain back 44 pounds, so here I sit with 30 or less pounds to lose and its my choice now how I let this play out. I can choose to make it matter, I can make my life something more than just what food I can eat next to how can I utilize this new day, this new creation that is my life be lived in a way that is more productive and gives God the glory that He and He alone deserves.

My life, my weight loss, my running is all about giving God glory for turning my life inside out and making it new, making it worthwhile. I am valuable to God, the world may not see me that way but GOD DOES!

Mirror Mirror

Mirror mirror on the wall what do you see? 4 years ago, I looked at the mirror and asked that question, and while my mirror didn't talk back to me like Snow White's evil stepmothers did, I recognized I didn't like what I was looking at. I saw a woman that was sad, angry and frustrated with who she was, I was 370 pounds, divorced raising two kids on my own and completely lost. I lived to go to work, eat and sleep, that was my life in March 2008 before I began my journey to a better me. That day everything changed for me, I didn't like the story the mirror showed me. I had overcome being a widow, living through an abusive marriage and taking care of myself and my kids financially on my own, I had moved into my own place and was taking care of the necessities of life but it wasn't enough. It was time for me to make more changes, I needed to make health a priority, I had to become more than just an existence but to really live. So that day I made some huge changes I became part of a 12 step group for food addiction, found a sponsor and made a determination to do things differently, I surrendered to God, I decided He had to know better than me. Nothing and I mean nothing has been the same since that day 4 years ago.

Mirror Mirror on the wall what do you see? I see a woman who has lost 200 pounds, who has run 3 half marathons, who regularly exercises and runs, who is 4 weeks away from a college degree, 4 weeks away from a 2nd year at an elementary school, I see a woman who has believed that God is all she needs and is the strength to get her through any situation. I see a woman that is for the first time willing to face her fears one by one, a woman to do challenging things including training for a full marathon right before she turns 40 years old. I see a woman that truly believes what Ephesians 3:20 says, that God truly does things that are more than we ever expected.

In 4 years my entire world looks different, I am not only not the same size but the inside is filled with joy, hope and anticipation of what God has next. The journey isn't always easy, but how would I ever know how strong my God is if it was always easy. I have embraced challenges and in the process discovered a woman that I am proud to look in the mirror and see. Because I no longer see me, but Christ who lives in me.

Mirror mirror on the wall, I hope you always see the Stephanie God wants me to be, no less!

Just a 7 mile run

I recognize that for many people running 7 miles whether it's all running or a combination of running and walking, cannot fathom doing so if they haven't done it in a long time. Well my friend found out through a status update that I posted that I was going to be doing a 7 mile run and she volunteered to come out with me. When she came with me the next morning my trainer asked if she had done it before she said no but that she was up for it, when we went out she did great, however at one point to stick to my training routine I had to leave her behind, but I said I will just go up and come back, well on my way up I realized I would have to cross this major street, so instead I made a left instead of crossing over the major intersection. I never looked back to see where she was, if I had I may have realized she was coming up on me faster than I knew, anyway I thought of her for a second and thought oh I can do this quick enough that I won't miss her. I turned around and came back when I had the right amount of distance to  give me the 7 miles. I didn't see her, and as more distance passed going back to where I started I became more nervous about her having gone and crossed the street. I had decided I would just go back to my car as quick as I could to get her. Eventually as I was running back I could hear her come up from behind me. She did exactly what I was afraid of, she went over the major intersection and kept going for a while until she realized that there was no way I was that far ahead of her, so she turned around. For both of us we recognized we lost our partner and while we both just did what was the important thing to do, go back to where we started so we could look for the other, it was a scary moment to realize you don't know where your partner is. This is important in the Christian race I run too, it is important to know where my brothers and sisters are, is there ways to keep them on the path, to stay beside them, however if I need to go ahead for awhile to know where the other is, but most important to run back to the source Jesus, who will help locate and reconcile those to him that get lost. I learned a valuable lesson out there that day and I truly didn't like that feeling.

Hard

Sometimes I want the world to know how hard it is to lose weight. I think I want to throw a temper tantrum in the middle of the street sometimes and say...Hey look at me, don't you know how hard this is for me? I can't take it sometimes, I can't take that if I choose to eat one thing off my list I end up 5-10 pounds heavier in a weeks time. My body truly can't take the junk of the world on, it does not like to have the yucky food in its path, my body does the best with whole foods. I eat things like fruit, yogurt, vegetables and from time to time grains but usually they are in the form of potatoes, corn, peas and from time to time Ezekial bread. It's so hard for me to admit that I will have to eat this way for the rest of my life, but red meat even chicken at times has an adverse reaction to my body. So I have to make sure I'm getting enough protein in the other forms I eat it in. I know that this has Spiritual implications as well, I have a song that I love in it there is a verse "I'm not who I was when I took my first step, I'm clinging to the promise your not through with me yet", that has biblical connections "He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it" and another verse that I love for me is where Paul is talking about spiritual food, we once ate like a baby and now we are grown and we eat more substantial food. For my soul I also do not want nor does my body want the same feeding as it took when I was first saved. I need more substantial, healthy food to make me strong and able to make it day in and day out in a world that just doesn't get me. Biblically speaking the word makes mention of testing ourselves, taking an inventory of our day, in the old testament in Joshua, God tells Joshua to meditate day and night on the book of law that God had given Moses saying he would be successful if he did that. I don't believe anything changed, God still wants me to meditate day and night on His word if I want to find success, and success is God's terms not man's. This life both in reference to spiritual and physical is hard, it requires discipline, it requires me making choices that honor God and in order to do that and to get through the hard I have to spend my time with Him daily so that I am daily fed spiritually and then can be disciplined enough to get through the hard of the physical discipline of making my body the temple he wants it to be. So it's hard, I'm a complainer from time to time, I at times act like a big baby, but in the end I am fully aware of who's in charge and who's I am.

I can't believe I'm here

Here I am 10 weeks into the new weigh in year, I started this year at 229.75 and as of last night's weigh in I weigh 211, I have lost almost 19 pounds in 10 weeks. I have a goal to be at 190.5 by May 31st of this year, which would give me a 200 pound loss since November 2004, with the program I work with for my weight loss they honor you when you keep a 100 pound loss after you keep it off for a year.  This year at our yearly recognition I will get my 3rd recognition for the first 100 pounds, so I want to have my year anniversary the day before my 40th birthday. So I am working really hard to be at 190.5 by May 31st. I want to get off the rest of my weight by the end of the year, but just keeping off this next 100 pounds for a year will be fantastic. This week my exercise will be off so I want to make sure my food is intact. Goal for next week is only a pound, which will leave me another 19.5 pounds to lose within the next 11 weigh ins. I have to keep reminding myself how much I want this.