HAPPY CANADA DAY!

Canada Day is here, and I’m celebrating by going “Walkabout”.  Here are the details:

Jenolan Caves to Hill End
Your Blue Mountains journey begins in Jenolan Caves. Jenolan Caves is home to the oldest discovered open caves in the world, approximately discovered in 1835-49, featuring numerous Silurian marine fossils and calcite formations. From Jenolan Caves walk to Gulgong a gold rush town which was founded in the 1870s and then on to Mudgee in the Cudgegong River valley, which is now a wine producing region. From Mudgee continue on to Hill End which was established in the 1850s as a gold rush town. Hill End is also classified as a historical site by the National Parks and Wildlife Service.

The GREAT NEWS is that you can join me, because I’m only walking “virtually” using this very cool website:

You just create an account (choose to join the step log on the bottom left), then go to the “I-challenge” link, and sign up at whatever level you’re comfortable at.  With the training I’m currently doing, I’m going for the second level.  I should be able to accomplish that.  Then get yourself a pedometer and get walking.  Every day log your steps and the rest is done for you.

Pretty cool, eh?

So sign up, find me as a friend on there, and we can walk together.

Happy Walking, Happy Canada Day!

Darlene

PS: I’m still looking for sponsors for my walk on the 5th of June – can you help? Just click the badge below and you’ll go right to my page

I’m still looking for sponsors for my walk on the 5th of June – can you help? Just click the badge and you’ll go right to my page.

Countdown To Race Day (5 km)

Thanks so much!  Both I and the kids benefitting from your donations greatly appreciate your generosity!

So I’ve completed my first week of “The Lord’s Table” and here are my results (note, I didn’t lose 7.5 pounds in a week. I didn’t weigh myself before I started, so I simply picked up where I left off in the last round of weight loss. I would guess I’ve lost about 3 lbs. in total this past week):

This is an amazing course for any of you who are struggling with the weight loss yo-yo and with getting rid of those stubborn pounds that wont’ budge. Not only does it deal with food, but it also deals with your mentality, your heart, your focus, and your sin (yeah, sorry, overeating needs to be called what it is: the sin of gluttony. Doesn’t sound so nice when it’s put like that, does it?)

The course encourages “feasting”, but the feasting it encourages is feasting on the word of God. Here’s an excerpt from the course materials last week:

Crave the sweet food of the Word of God. That is the beginning of holiness–to crave God’s Word. Is it worth craving? I shout an emphatic, “Yes!” Crave it, for it will satisfy. Food hasn’t satisfied you for but a nanosecond; God’s Word will satisfy you from this moment on, even throughout eternity.

Read the Word, until you long for it. Read the Word until missing your time in it in the morning is unthinkable. Read the Word until you pant for it. Read the Word, after you have tasted that it is good.

Read the Word, until you have read every book of the Bible and have favorites. Read the Word, and cling to the promises of sanctification. Read the Word that you may grow up in your salvation.

The Word is the key to holiness, to growing up in your faith. If you love the Word and God’s commands, you will become more and more like Jesus Christ. Read the Word that you may become holy.

Teen Talk, by Sarah Visser from “The Lord’s Table“

I would encourage any of you who are frustrated with your weight to take the course. It’s free, and is just so incredibly encouraging.

Darlene

“A change is as good as a break”

Sometimes we need to make a big change in order to get a fresh start.  Such has been the case for me!

Last week I finally came off a 40 day computer fast. That was a challenge, I assure you.  It’s hard to imagine how much of a fixed place the computer has taken in my life.  It’s a good thing to let go of from time to time, though!  Amazing how much free time I had each day!  I got lots of deep cleaning done both in the house and in my soul.  New revelation, amazing experiences, and a fresh start.  I feel like a new woman.

So what’s come out of this (besides a clean house)?

1. I was able to practice the art of consistency and discipline in those detail type things that have been a consistent burden – only to find that consistency and discipline make them much easier!  We did more school, cleaning, hanging out, and connecting than ever!
2. I had time to explore some great teaching on Biblical health and prosperity – stuff I’ve never heard even though I’ve been in the church for almost 50 years.  I’ve met some very committed Christians who are living the most amazing lives.  No boring dogmatic faith here!  They are also folks who know their bibles better than anyone I’ve ever met, and they’re taking it at face value (what a concept) and living lives that amaze and excite me!  They have been taking me by the hand and walking me through the process – and I’m seeing HUGE changes in my life, my circumstances, and my relationship with God.  Very exciting!
3. I read dozens of books on health, nutrition, prosperity, finances, spiritual growth, and the like.  I’ve also listened to hours and hours of recorded teaching in these areas.
4. I explored  – and took up the challenge – of going back to school.  Online.  I have a VERY messy university education – 5 years, 4 universities, no degree.  I found an accredited online university that will create order from my chaos and move me into those things that God is opening up for me in the area of healing/health/finances.   They are letting my kids sign up as well, and so we’re pursuing a bachelor’s degree in ministry,  altogether – how cool is that!
5. I’m also training as a Biblical Health Coach and doing a Leadership Certificate in Ministry which will enable me to jump start some areas while I’m working on my degree.  It will give me some practical hands-on training so I can begin practicing some of what I’m learning, while I earn my degree.
6. I am also learning some deep and practical truths on finances that are going to help me both deal with my own finances in a more God-honouring way, but help others to do the same.  Some VERY cool and practical teaching here
7. I have received some very cool revelation about how to proceed with PraiseWalker and other areas of my life, probably by creating an umbrella organization under which these other areas of ministry will fall.  PraiseWalker will be one of those areas, though as I’ve been researching fitness and nutrition these past few weeks, I can see a number of areas where I will be re-vamping that program.
8. I have potentially found a new business partner (she’s checking things out right now and will get back to me) which means I have someone to bounce ideas off, gain instruction from, and create some mutual encouragement and growth.  This is the coolest bit of all!

So, there you have it!  Keep watching this blog for the results of all this amazing learning.  I have something very cool in the works right now, and hope to have something to show for it in about a month’s time.  In the meantime, I’ll be “unpacking” some of what I’m learning and have learned here on the blog.  I hope you’ll join in the conversation!

Darlene

Last week I told you about Praise Moves – a great Christian Alternative to Yoga.

Today I want to tell you about another great fitness program that also incorporates faith (isn’t it wonderful how many people have figured out how to work faith into fitness? Very cool!)

This program is called “Fit for Faith” by Kimberley J. Payne. I’ve had the pleasure of a couple of conversations with Kimberley, and I really like her humble, down to earth style. Great lady.

Kimberley has published a workbook called “Fit for Faith – 7 weeks to improved spiritual and physical health”. It’s kind of like a gentle boot camp that teaches you how to:

1. become more physically active
2. improve your prayer life
3. make healthy eating a habit
4. read and study the Bible
5. stretch your body
6. write a journal entry
7. dispel common myths

Not bad for 7 weeks! The workbook is well laid out, and you can get a copy for just $25.95 at her site. She has some other goodies there, too, so take a minute to check out her site and see if it doesn’t inspire you to great things!

Darlene

Well, how are the resolutions coming?  Have you broken them all already?

Did you try to do the “drop 40 pounds in a month” diet, along with the latest “Best Abs/Butt/Thighs in only 3 minutes a week” fitness plan, on top of the decision to improve your housekeeping, love your kids more, spend less money, pay off your debts, and dress complete with makeup every morning all starting on January 1?

I’ve tried that too.  So far, it’s hasn’t worked for me.  I guess I try too hard to be a hare, and end up losing the race.

I’ve been doing a lot of study on the art of Kaizen (sorry about the sales letter, but it explains it for our purposes better than anything else I’ve found on the web!)

So this past year I’ve been researching and testing the most efficient habits for weight loss, fitness, and great mental, physical, and emotional health.  I’ve shared some of those discoveries here already.  I’ve also been constantly tweaking and improving my PraiseWalking Primer – a program that helps you take the “Tortoise View” of developing habits via the Kaizen method.  Every two weeks for eight weeks you get a specific area to focus on, and small, very doable habits to practice one at a time, so that at the end of eight weeks you’re creating great nutritional, fitness, and mental/spiritual health habits that last. I’ve now completely re-vamped this program to make it even easier and more comprehensive!

AND . . . I’ve been testing a weight loss program with my husband, and we’ve both had GREAT success with it, in spite of “life” interrupting us with coffee dates, dinner guests, celebrations, and other diet pitfalls.

SO . . . The long and short of all that is that I am releasing BOTH the diet plan AND the PraiseWalking Primer FOR FREE (yes, you heard that correctly – not a single penny!) and you can download both of them instantly by clicking the banner below.

So if you’re a tortoise, trying very unsuccessfully to be a hare, or if you’re a complete wash-out for your wellness resolutions, or if you’re simply tired of the roller coaster and want something stable that actually works and makes you feel GREAT, download your copy right now and get started!

No point in waiting until NEXT January to get it right, now, is there?

Happy walking!

Darlene

If you’re going to get in shape, it’s important to somehow keep track of what you’re doing and how you’re progressing.

Life is much more “mobile” than it used to be, and I find that I need something other than a notebook and pen, so I’m going to share some of the tools I’m using to keep track and keep me motivated.

First off, let me tell you about a fun program you can put on your iPhone or iPod Touch.  It’s called “My Weight Loss Coach“.  Now this isn’t an app for serious workout logs, but it’s a fun game-type application where you can keep track of steps walked, food eaten, physical activity done, and it also has games, coaching, quick challenges, and some great motivation tools.  It will track your weight and BMI and it makes keeping track fun.

Every time you enter your results for any of the categories, you earn “miles” (or kilometers – whatever you prefer).  The miles “take you” to great places around the world.  So far I’ve climbed Mount Everest, walked a marathon, walked the distance of a Formula 1 race, walked the length of Cox’s Bazar Beach, walked the length of the Suez Canal, and the length of the Murraylink cable.  It’s fun to then look these things up and find out more about these places.

Now, this is kind of a “fiddly” app.  You need to take a good few minutes to enter things in, so I usually log in every morning to get my challenges for the day, and then at the end of the day I log in my food and activity.  It’s also more of a “girly” app, with cute pictures and sound effects, so for you guys out there reading this, this would probably drive you nuts.

You can get a free version (My Weight Loss Coach Lite) but it won’t keep a running tally of what’s going on.  It’s worth spending the $4.99 to get the complete version.  Also, you’ll want to take a good hour or so to familiarize yourself with this before you start

using it.

“In every job that must be done

there is an element of fun.

You find the fun aaaand SNAP!

The job’s a game!”

The success of any lifestyle choice seems to require that it has a certain element of fun to it.  We can handle just about any kind of stress, if there’s a way to smile through it.

This is the same principle for fitness.  If it’s no fun, it’s not going to motivate you to keep going.  That doesn’t mean the fitness plan shouldn’t stretch you – you do need to get outside your comfort zone to live a healthy life – but there should be some joy in it somewhere.

Make sure that your diet gives some room for foods you truly enjoy.  Make sure you do something in your fitness program that’s fun.

To get you inspired, let me share this cool little video with you: The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun!

Enjoy!

Darlene

PS – what tips and tricks can you share that bring an element of fun to your wellness program?  Share them in the comments section below!

http://www.eightprinciples.com/

Yep, that’s my new motto – “Be a Total Loser”. Why?

Ok, here’s the truth.   I’ve been overweight for my entire adult life. That’s a long time to struggle with weight issues! I’ve done the yo-yo thing, the crash diet thing, the eat healthy thing, and nothing has worked permanently. This past year I have worked out a fitness program that works for me, but about half the weight is still there, even though I’ve managed to get much fitter and – in some parts of my body – much leaner. However, that lovely middle aged spread is still spreading in spite of walking, watching what I’m eating, and getting other forms of exercise. So disheartening!

Over the years I’ve researched nutrition, weight loss, and diets, and have tried just about everything out there. The problem, as I see it, is that most weight loss programs tend to be:

1. too complicated and overwhelming (9 Day Wonder Diet)
2. too monotonous (ask me about the cabbage soup diet – better yet, ask my kids!)
3. require too drastic a change right from the start – (Fit For Life)
4. require me to focus on detail – I’m a “big picture” person – like calories and fat grams
5. take too long too see the results I need (GI Diet)
6. create weight loss that is mostly muscle/water loss instead of fat loss
7. cause me to have the strongest weight loss in places like wrists, fingers, and feet (I kid you not – jewelry is the first thing to fall off!) instead of where I need it most – in the middle!
8. give me lists of odd foods I have to eat and prepare
9. make it impossible to enjoy a restaurant meal or meal at a friends house without doing several hours of research ahead of time.
10. make me feel guilty about eating any of my favourite foods ever again
11. desperately unhealthy (think “Ensure”)
12. make me jittery, overwhelmed with cravings, think constantly about food, and make me weak and tired

Then, when the diet is over, I don’t have a realistic way of maintaining my great results (if there were any) and end up back where I started.

Now, to be fair, as I’ve researched and tried out various plans and systems, I have found things that work well, but only bits and pieces of certain plans – rarely does the “whole system” work the way I want or need it to.

So, I’ve decided to cut and paste my own system together – pulling the things that worked and putting them all together in a plan that I can manage without needing an engineering degree. I looked for things that were:

1. dead simple (don’t want to over-tax the ol’ brain at my advanced age! LOL!)
2. designed to be followed anywhere – at home, in a restaurant, at a friend’s house, while traveling, etc.
3. healthy
4. fat burning, not muscle burning or just water flushing
5. uses everyday foods that we, as a family, already eat and enjoy
6. teaches me to create and maintain a healthy lifestyle in a way that I can manage

I won’t tell you exactly what I’m doing – yet – but I will share the results every Monday here on my blog. If it works well, I’ll release my plan at the beginning of March, and you can follow along with me, one month behind.

My goal? To PERMANENTLY lose about another 30 pounds. I’ve never actually been my ideal weight as an adult, so I don’t know exactly what that “magic number” is, but I know what I’d like to look like, and I know what I want to feel like, and that will be my ultimate goal.

So, come along for the ride, and watch to see what happens. Keep me on the wagon if I stop reporting what’s going on!

Wish me luck!

Darlene

The Lord gave us two ends — one to sit on and the other to think with. Success depends on which one we use the most.
~Ann Landers

The New Year will very soon be upon us, and with it, all the great resolutions for the best year ever.

The problem, as I see it, is that every year, on January 1, millions of people somehow hope to wake up as a completely different person. New Year’s Resolutions in hand, they begin on that first day of the New Year with bright hopes that they will conquer all the bad stuff in their lives, and release all the good stuff, instantaneously, simply because it’s January 1. By lunch time they’ve failed, and all their good intentions go into the trash, only to be revived a whole year later on the next January 1.

Why does this happen?

Well, let’s take a look at what people are trying to change. The top ten New Year’s Resolutions are apparently:

1. Lose weight

2. Stop smoking

4. Save more money

5. Find a better job

6. Become more organized

7. Exercise more

8. Be more patient at work / with others

9. Eat better

10. Become a better person

And many people have ALL of those on their list, hoping to change the whole lot of them with nothing more than a wish and a prayer to back them up.

As we approach this coming January 1, we need to realize that those kinds of problems didn’t come about in a day, and they won’t disappear like magic on January 1. We need a plan. More importantly, we need a plan we can stick to.

Enter the art of Kaizen (that site has the best definition of Kaizen for our purposes, that I was able to find on the net).

At the end of the war when Japan was in ruins the Allied Forces were given the task of rebuilding. This was a massive task, and so a method was developed called “Kaizen” which means “small and continuous improvement”. Through this system Japan rose from the ashes and became a country to be reckoned with.

You see, we can tackle that list of resolutions in one of two ways:

1. We can “Go for the Gusto”, waking up on January 1 and deciding that we will join a gym, exercise for two hours three times a week, eat only vegetables, cut up our credit cards, clean the house from top to bottom, never stop smiling, and flush all our cigarettes down the toilet starting at 7:00 am – guaranteeing overwhelm, burnout, frustration, anger and failure.

Or

2. We can practice Kaizen. On January 1 we choose one small step. Perhaps we’ll only smoke ¾ of our cigarette instead of smoking right to the filter. Maybe we’ll wake up and put on gym clothes, but then change right away into our normal clothes without working out. Maybe we’ll practice greeting our co-worker with a smile. Perhaps we’ll get out of the elevator one floor below our office floor.

You can see that the art of Kaizen encourages us to perform micro-steps to our goal, enabling us to develop small, achievable habits that build on one another. They’re too small to fail at, but each step is important enough to be able to build a foundation of success upon it.

So, what does this look like??

* Take that gargantuan list of resolutions, and write it out in the order of priority.

* Take two months per item on that list and break them down into daily micro tasks. For example, a goal to get fit might look like this:

o Day 1: set alarm for 5:30. Turn it off, go back to sleep.

o Day 2: set alarm for 5:30. Turn it off, sit up, stretch, go back to sleep.

o Day 3: set alarm for 5:30. Turn it off, sit up, stretch, drink a glass of water, go back to sleep.

o Day 4: set alarm for 5:30. Turn it off, sit up, stretch, drink a glass of water, put on exercise clothes, take them off again, go back to sleep.

o Day 5: set alarm for 5:30. Turn it off, sit up, stretch, drink a glass of water, put on exercise clothes, walk to the bedroom door, go back to the bed, take the exercise clothes off again, go back to sleep.

o Day 6: set alarm for 5:30. Turn it off, sit up, stretch, drink a glass of water, put on exercise clothes, go out the bedroom door to the exercise machine/car (to drive to the gym) or street (to go for a run/walk) go back to the bed, take the exercise clothes off again, go back to sleep.

o Day 7: set alarm for 5:30. Turn it off, sit up, stretch, drink a glass of water, put on exercise clothes, go out the bedroom door to the exercise machine/car (to drive to the gym) or street (to go for a run/walk), and get on the equipment/start the car/walk 10 steps, go back to the bed, take the exercise clothes off again, go back to sleep.

We haven’t gotten very far in a week, have we? And yet but we’re probably farther ahead already than those who started with full gusto, crashing and burning by day three. With this plan we’re developing very do-able habits that will build a solid foundation for success. We may not achieve the whole list in one year, but we will do a great job with the first 6.

For those of you who are interested, my PraiseWalker Primer (and all the following levels, not yet published) works on this principle. You are building habits so slowly you don’t even realize what you’re doing – which involves next to no will power – and suddenly you find yourself fitter than you’ve ever been in your life. Try it – it’s free!

Darlene

Ok, this is too cool to miss, so I’m sneaking in another extra post this week!

Take a virtual walk through Europe in the month of December! Go to 10,000 steps and register for an “Active Lifestyle” membership (it’s free) and then select the “Join an I-Challenge” link from the left hand menu, scroll to the bottom for December’s goals.

I’m still at the beginning of my walking program (following my own advice in the Primer) so I chose the shortest choice, the “Germany and Austria” one.

Come join me, and become a walking partner!

Darlene