June 28, 2011 +5.94 miles

I lay in bed this morning, dreading the day while feeling a wave sadness trying to well up from my heart. Today was the day that our daughters, four yr old grand daughter and 11 week old grandson leave to fly home from the reunion we've been having at my parents house in Arizona. I hate saying goodbye. Always have, always will..but still have had to do it so much in my life. I woke up tired because I had snuck into the adjoining hotel room when I heard little Lincoln cry for his night feeding and taken him back to feed him his bottle. My justification was that I was letting his mm and Aunt sleep . My real reason was I just wanted to fill up my senses with him. Holding him close, hearing him suck on the bottle, smelling his hair , feeling that grandma connection that wraps us both in a love-filled presence. I anticipated that he would eat, fall back to sleep and we would share one more lovely nap together before I had to say goodbye to him for a whole year. He slept next to me, but was tossing and turning and I spent the time worrying whether we would wiggle his way off the bed. (He is very strong for just being 11 weeks old.  Everytime I began to drift off into sleep one of his arms orslegs would shoot out and hit me. So I woke up tired but the loss of sleep was worth it!
   Early in the am, Aunt Wawa and I were awake and getting ready for our busy day, we walked over to the motel office to get our free coffee.. Our hungry baby had gone through the formula faster then we thought and I volunteered to run to the store to buy more for their day of flight home. I didn't know that a simple trip to the store would net me a significant addition to my walk mile tally. Kmart was closest so I parked far out in the parking lot and hurried in. ( parking far out in the parking lot is a habit I've developed over the last year to help me get exercise.)  To be continued ...Why did my simple formula trip to Kmart net me 2 miles toward my walking goal? 

What’s so BIG about that?

  A year ago, almost to the day, I set a goal to lose weight. I needed to. My health wasn't good, I was tired, exhausted , prone to injury and had been diagnosed as progressively going blind.  I hadn't recognized myself in the mirror or seen my toes in years. Not a lot I could do about going blind, but  I took a long, hard look at my future and figured I needed to change whatever I could change if I wanted to be able  to actively love and serve the One and ones I love for the rest of my life.  So, I bought a Wii Fit with the stipend I got when I won the “Love of Teaching Award” at the Middle School I taught at.  And I actually used it on a regular basis. My husband and I started a low carb diet, of sorts,  and we tried to take daily walks.

    During the past year, a year in which my husband and I unexpectedly found ourselves working in different countries for ten months, I went from weighing 227 on June 27, 2010 to weighing 165 on June 27, 2011. I shrank out of all my clothes. I felt a lot better. My recent blood tests showed that my liver enzymes, cholesterol and blood sugar are doing much better.

   The Wii Fit, however, still tells me “That’s obese” when I step on. It says my ideal weight should be 112 lbs. My husband thinks 112 would be ridiculous. My doctor says “Go back to a weight you feel most comfortable at.” I've decided to aim for 130 lbs.

    A few days ago, I rounded a corner, glanced at my pedometer and decided that I wanted to walk 1, 000 miles this year. Some people have told me that’s not such a big goal, that most people walk that much in a year. 1,000 miles is a big thing for me, when I consider that in the first half of 90's doctors didn’t know if I would ever recover my ability to move.** It’s a big thing to me because a year ago this five foot frame of mine was carrying so much extra weight that I couldn’t walk up stairs or around the block without becoming winded.

   Why 1680 miles? Because I want to stretch myself past what people think is normal. Years ago, I had a Pinocchio desire just to be a normal person. Been there, done that now, and found it greatly lacking. Also I needed to have a goal that I could possibly reach, if I stick to it. I used the formula based on an approximate burn of 75 calories for each moderately walked mile. I would like to walk off 35 lbs. I read that a pound of fat is equal to roughly 3,500 calories.

 

3500(calories) x 35 (pounds I want to lose)  =  1680 miles

 75 (calories burned in a mile from  walking)

 

Take it a step further :1680 miles /365 days = 4.602739726027397  miles per day.

    Today, I’ve shared the practical reasoning behind this goal of walking 1680 miles in a year. Add the fact that I plan to eat wisely and that’s about as practical as I’m going to get. More importantly,why am I blogging about it? Because I've learned that it's not only what you do but HOW you do it that's important . I'm going to try to walk those miles in meaningful ways. And I will need you to help me to add meaning and to stay focused as I  walk and write  my way through 1680 miles. Feel free to join me vicariously .

      Or, maybe, you’d even like to walk along with me....

**Years ago, Lyme’s disease left me progressively crippled with a series of “stroke- like incidents”  until I spent a year paralyzed. Then the next six years slowly, painfully inched toward recovery. It was hard on my whole family to have an invalid wife and mother. People prayed for me a lot, I worked hard; mostly though, my recovery was a “God thing”. I never would have made it through without knowing God loved and cared for me. Now, I still have  arthritic pain in most of my joints, but I can walk, talk and think clearly. :)