Is more better?

Have you ever heard the old saying “more the merrier”?  If you are talking about cash, rubies, gold, diamonds, stocks, bonds or Internet access then more is good.  When you are talking about weight however more is only good if you are trying to anchor a boat or provide traction to your tires so you can get your vehicle out of a mud hole.  When it comes to personal body weight more is never good.  That is right, the heavier you are there is an increased chance that you are going to experience more health problems.  My day started out with chest pains that were brought on by not taking my blood pressure medicine and of course my carrying around more weight than my body can withstand.  The doctor told me today that extra weight on a body causes undue stress which can lead to all sorts of problems such as chest pains joint problems etc.  So, once again I am faced with the need to make a life changing decision.  It is pretty simple.  If you want to lose weight keep your ASS out of the refrigerator. I got this saying from a cute cartoon that someone sent me the other day.  I forwarded it to several of my friends but the picture was not sent out by gmail.  The picture showed a, you guessed it, a donkey with his head stuck in the refrigerator.  Life is short and we only have so many days on this earth.  Do we really want to shorten our days here just to have one more plate full of munchies?

So, how do we get here?  It seems that one day we are fit as a fiddle and then we wake up and it feels like someone has inserted an air hose and we look like the Michelin Man.    The problem is two fold.  How I look at the problem and how I choose to deal with it.  The weight did not happen over night nor will it come off over night.  I need to take it off the same way I put it on one pound at a time, one day at a time.  In other words I did not eat the whole elephant all at once and I am not going to remove the elephant all at once.  As one of my friends fondly quotes I need to take baby steps.  One moment at a time I need to make the right decision to eat less and when I do eat I need to eat the right things.

One of the problems that I have is that I like to sit in front of the TV late at night and there is nothing better than to watch the idiot box and stuff goodies into my mouth.  I do not know why I like to do that other than maybe I just like to eat.  One of the things that I try to do is when I get the munchies while watching TV late at night I reach for the sun flower seeds in a hope to minimize the calorie intake damage.  The extra bowl of cereal right before bed and the “seconds” plate of food during the meal only add to the problem.  One of my friends tells me that she turns to food when she is going through an emotional crisis.  She gets blue or depressed for whatever reason and then self medicates with a bag of Doritos.  I had never thought about this before so maybe I need to examine that aspect of over eating too.  I told another friend of mine the other day that one of the reasons that I have a tendency to throw up my hands and quit is because I just get so overwhelmed with the problem.  The problem looks so much bigger than I can handle and my defense mechanism is to just give up and look the other way hoping it will go away.  Luckily for me I have not taken that approach in every area of my life.  Somehow I need to believe that I can DO IT.  I need to look at this as a challenge and not run from it but meet this thing head on.  Instead of thinking negative and being ashamed of how I look I need to embrace my faith in who God is in every area of my life and believe that “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength”.  

This morning my body reminded me of the consequences of not taking my blood pressure medicine.  I thought I was going to have to call an ambulance and not go to some scheduled events.  However, after about 30 minutes the pains subsided and my blood pressure dropped enough for me to get on with my day.  This afternoon I went by Health First on Rivers Avenue and had them draw some blood, do an EKG and prescribe some blood pressure medicine.  Our health insurance will pay everything except for the 35.00 co pay.  I also found out that they have a diet plan that they can put me on to help me lose weight quickly and safely while being under their supervision and helping me to be accountable.  Can you believe that the insurance company will not cover a penny of this weight loss program?  They will pay for all of my exams and blood pressure medicine but not for something that is considered preventive that will cause all of the other costs to either be minimized or go away altogether.  This is simply amazing if you ask me.