weight update

Don’t have much to say.  Weighed in at 259.2 today.  It’s nice to go down into the 250’s… I feel like it’s slowing down a little but I really would love to be 220 by the end of the year.  We’ll see how that goes.  Going hiking tomorrow…not necessarily a great workout hike, but it’ll still be good to do it.  I’ve never been there, so it could be a little tough too… i dunno.

it started with a comment about my t-shirt

While at CHIC this summer, I ran into an old friend from my CBC days and he noticed the shirt I was wearing was an old Soviet Union shirt – red with the letters CCCP and the hammer and sickle on it.  He made the comment that one of his friends way back when told him something like this: “You know communism is a mis-interpretation of the the Bible, but capitalism is an outright sin”.

His comment to me was one that I didn’t take lightly at all and I’ve thought about it for a while, mostly because it is so appropriate to think about at this current time in our country and in this world.  Our country is so polarized right now by the left and the right and there is a general sense that there’s just no middle ground.  Politics is more and more a battle field spurred on by ridiculous “news” reporters on networks like MSNBC and FOX News.  How can you call a partisan network with an outspoken agenda anything resembling “news”? You can’t.

Anyhow, since president Obama came into the spotlight, we’ve heard him called a socialist time and time again, especially in this time where he is pushing for centralized, government run, health care.  I took a test on facebook a few months ago called, “what political party do you belong to?” and after a couple of short sighted questions that could never come up with a perfect solution, it told me I must be a socialist.  Why?  Because i care about the poor and destitute and think that they have a right to some of the good life I experience?  Because I don’t operate from a perspective that says we ought to have to earn everything in life and that means there have to be losers in order for there to be winners?  Because I believe that all people were created in the image of God and are therefore just as deserving of having their needs met as I am?  That doesn’t make me a socialist.  My beliefs don’t come from a political paradigm.  I might agree that certain political stances have been built upon different belief systems and that things like communism and socialism are great ideas when applied by individuals, but as soon as you put it into action and force it upon people, it will always fail.

Besides, I don’t believe that Christians are called to live primarily within a democracy with a president or within a communist system where everyone is supposed to be equal.   If we claim allegiance to the Creator of the universe, we belong primarily to a monarchy and our King is the King of every king and government and system that ever has been or ever will be.  But here’s the deal… My King loved me enough to become one of us and to treat the poorest and the most outcast people with dignity and benevolence and he would love to see the same from me.  That’s why I feel the way I do.  I’m not asking you to legislate it for me.  That wouldn’t solve all our country’s problems anyhow.  But I would invite any and all to join me in living out a grateful life in response to what our king did for us.

If I’m gonna be honest…

I’m pretty honest about my weight and my weightloss progress, but I’m also honest about when I kinda fail at it too.  Today however, I want to brag a little.

I went to buy a tea this morning because I have sore throat and the cashier asked me how much weight I lost.  I don’t normally even pay close attention to things like who my cashier is but apparently he’s been my cashier for a while now because he noticed I had lost weight.  That made me feel pretty dang good.  And yes, this is bragging, but the answer is 51 lbs.  Now the sad part is, I’d still like to lose that much more.  But hey, right now I’m in weight loss mode.  I still haven’t figured out what weight “maintain” mode will look like once I get to where I want to be.  I know that this whole workout and eat right lifestyle has got to be just that – a life style… but I really am pushing it pretty hard core right now and it’s hard for me to imagine that I can keep up this pace for the rest of my life.  I literally go to the gym for 1.5 hours to 2 hours, 5 days a week minimum right now.  I see that as necessary right now, but I don’t see that as a healthy lifestyle forever.  Maybe I need to.  Maybe not.  I guess I don’t know yet.

weight update

Can’t take much time, but before I forget… I weighed in at 261.4 today.  Any progress is good pogress and I am happy.  Peace.