Here are my results for this week.
Current Weight – 277 lbs.
Previous Weight – 276.2 lbs.
Total Gain – .8.
Two weeks of gain in a row is not helping me, but I am not getting discouraged. I still feel like I am getting my act together, but it will probably feel that way for a while. The clothes are fitting well and we are making progress. I hope to start making bigger jumps in the coming weeks. My goal is still to be down to 250 by March 1st. 1 month to go.
How many times have you planned a family vacation with the intention of getting away for a while and taking a little break from your busy life? I always tend to see vacations from this perspective before we go, but in hindsight it never really feels like I rested. There may have been moments of rest on the vacation, but in the end it doesn’t seem that way with all of the work that goes into vacationing and hauling kids around trying to keep them entertained.
Faith and I decided last year on our way home from one of our vacations that it wasn’t fair to call them vacations. So we agreed that we were going to rename our family vacations to adventures. This makes more sense to us because an adventure is a change of pace from our normal lives, but not necessarily less work.
Have you ever watched Clark Griswold and family embark on another vacation with the intention of having great family fun and escaping for a trip to Wally World, Europe, or Vegas? Those are some vacations gone awry. Even their stay-cation for Christmas with all of the family coming over became a serious adventure. When everything is said and done at the end of those movies, do you think that Clark feels like he has been vacationing? I doubt it. But if the movie didn’t have some adventure and comedy then it wouldn’t be a very good movie.
Family adventures will not be perfect. You can plan all you want, but adventures come with a twist of the unexpected. Maybe it is the closed road on the way to your destination and you have to find your way around. Maybe somebody has to pee when there are no places to stop and pee. And sometimes you decide to play miniature golf and a thunderstorm makes it a memorable round. Yes, these are all true stories that happened during my adventures. We can choose to let the circumstances mess with us, or we can laugh and step up to the challenge of the adventure before us. It is more fun to tell a story about how we adventured through the circumstances than to let it frustrate us and leave a bad impression.
I have many adventure stories that are fun to share with people and I hope to make many more. So will you be taking a vacation this year, or will you go on an adventure?
Here are my results for this week.
Current Weight – 276.20 lbs.
Previous Weight – 275.0 lbs.
Total Gain – 1.2 lbs.
It was not a good week for the weight loss. No excuses can really be made. I just didn’t get it done. On a positive note, the elliptical machine is back out and being put to use again. Gaining weight this week should motivate me to try harder next week. I actually check my weight every day and I got to Thursday and just couldn’t make up the difference. Hoping that this will prove to help me during the next week. As promised, I will keep posting good and bad results every week.
A couple of years ago, Faith and I decided that we needed do something about our debt situation. We got on board with Dave Ramsey and since then we have been holding budget meetings every month to plan for next month’s expenses. Our monthly budget meetings have really started to evolve into more than that now as we have been planning more than just budgets. I am going to start calling them Team Walker Planning meetings. Not only will we discuss budget items, but also our intentions to do things together as a family. We don’t take vacations anymore, we go on adventures. We have begun planning short adventures each month while also looking ahead to much longer adventures in the summer. We are also looking way long term to adventure back to Disney World with the kids. This helps us to get things on the calendar in advance and begin budgeting for the more expensive things well in advance.
Our planning meetings help us a lot to stay on the same page. It used to be frustrating when things would come up that one of us didn’t know about and it would incur expenses that we had not budgeted for. Now we are able to get almost everything out there in advance. This helps us to say yes to our family more by getting those things on our calendars before other things begin to interfere. These planning meetings have done wonders for us in the communication department. It helps us bring things up that we wouldn’t normally discuss in everyday conversation. At first it seemed kind of formal and businesslike, but it has really become a very natural thing for us. If we delay or miss a meeting, things can get a little out of whack with our routines and our budget.
Do you have planned meetings like this with your family to deal with budgets and life in general?
Here are my results for this week.
Current Weight – 275.0 lbs.
Previous Weight – 275.0 lbs.
Total Loss – 0 lbs.
Ok, so I broke even this week. Maintaining is not bad, but I have to get better. It was kind of a rough week for me trying to get in rhythm. I didn’t get to bed at a decent time every night, so I have felt pretty tired all week. Still unburying my basement, so I haven’t really worked out. I am not happy with the results, but it could be worse I guess. This is why I am keeping track though and sharing it here. If I know that I have to keep publishing my results, it reminds me to keep working at it. I appreciate all of the encouraging remarks here and on Twitter. I am hoping for a much better week next week. Should get some pool time in with the kids this weekend and fewer opportunities to binge on junk, so maybe I will get a jump start to this week. Check back next week for another update.
Here are my results after the first week.
Current Weight – 275.0 lbs.
Previous Weight – 279.4 lbs.
Total Loss – 4.4 lbs.
Not too shabby for a week where I have felt out of routine. I worked 2 days from home this week which could have led to more snacking than normal. The carpeting was installed in our basement on Tuesday, so I have access to using the elliptical machine again, but have not made time to do so this week. I have been getting exercise moving furniture around in the basement and I also shoveled some snow last night. So I haven’t been completely lazy in the exercise department. I haven’t been as aggressive as I could be on counting my calories, but am doing a decent job of watching portions and such. I am very happy with my results this week. If I can keep up this pace until March 1st, I should be very close to meeting goal #1.
I like the Internet a lot. I have been visiting Google for 10 years or more now looking for answers to questions that I have. It is a great search engine and often returns good results for whatever I am looking for.
Lately I have been looking for answers that Google cannot provide me. I have many questions about life, direction, and what my next steps are. Honestly I have consulted Google on specifics of my life. But Google cannot provide answers to questions that I should be directing to God.
As I was scanning some Google results tonight I realized that I do not do a very good job of asking God for things. Then some scripture popped into my head.
If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! Matthew 7:11 NIV
Duh! I tell myself, “Hey dummy, why don’t you just ask God for it?” And not just the big things. Ask for the simple things that the heavenly father obviously would want to to give. So that is what I am going to do.