Lent Day 17

Sometimes I just have a hard time getting going.  Sometimes it is not because I don’t have the energy; rather I may even feel like I don’t need to. 

I think the problem with seeing too much success in anything we do is that we get overly confident and even feel like we need to reward ourselves.  I think this is why so many diets fail.  We eat salads, vegetables, and all that good for us food for a few days and then we justify that one not so little bowl of ice cream.  Then we get frustrated because we don’t see any results from all that dieting.  Heck, after four or five days of rabbit food and one dessert we may even gain a pound or two.  Why diet and gain weight when I can eat crap like before and not gain anything?  Besides, don’t we always gain more weight after a diet than we lost during the diet?  Sometimes it seems like a little success can lead to a lot of failure. 

This is definitely not a diet and exercise plan for me.  No, if it were, I would not have gone exercising tonight.  I felt fairly proud of myself for losing ten pounds in 16 days.  I actually feel better about myself today than I have in a long time.  I even felt like sharing my success story with people today, as if I am so very accomplished.  Apparently my weight loss was not enough of a reward . . . Well, I have not hit the finish line and this is a journey much longer than 16 days. 

So, yes, I am feeling a bit confident with my success.  Maybe I could even skip one day . . . surely God isn’t going to punish me.  Since I got home late tonight and it was already going to be dark when I started running, I decided to postpone it until after the game of “Trouble” with my family.  Then after Blake won and the prayers had been said, it was time to reconfirm my commitment to God.  This is about my dedication to God; this is definitely not about losing weight and exercising.  Those are positive rewards God shows me for keeping my promise to Him.

For some reason, we really need to feel like we need to measure up to something.  Watch two children play together for any amount of time and you will wonder if you’re watching a sporting event and try to figure out who’s winning.  I went shopping before I got home and acquired some new bicycling gloves.  (I think they double as racing gloves and jogging gloves and pretending to punch someone gloves and . . . they are really comfortable and make me look tough.)  I also purchased a pedometer.  This is a cheap Wal-Mart one that counts steps, calories, time, distance, checks my pulse, and like every other electronic gadget, it has a flashlight built in.  Yep, my resting heart rate was 65 and my jogging heart rate was between 125 and 135.  It said I went 2.0 miles in 31 minutes.  However, it did not count my 40 push ups.  So, am I any more successful now that I spent that $14?