Jammin for Jesus
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Saturday, October 24, 2009
Faith band
Faith Ministries from Faith ministries Savannah Ga
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2nd Annual Jammin for Jesus event
If you are near 1540 Camp Road come out to the 2nd annual Jammin for Jesus event at Epworth United Methodist Church. Admittance is one canned good or non perishable food item. All proceeds from this event will go to My Sisters House. My Sisters House is an agency serving victims of domestic violence. You can visit their website at http://www.mysistershouse.org.
We want to thank Mike Lennartz with L&G Christian Sound stage for sponsoring Jammin for Jesus 2009 and providing the sound equipment and labor to pull this together.
The following bands will be providing the praise and worship music between 11 am and 6 pm today.
Seacoast Church James Island
Faith Band with Faith Ministries International Savannah Georgia
Eman tha Profezzor from Charlotte NC
Xposed from North Palm Ministries N Charleston
Six Day and a rest Epworth UMC James Island
Friday, October 23, 2009
Better choices
I am on day 11 of making better choices for life. As of day 11 I am 15 lbs lighter and I am happy about that. I contribute my success thus far to making some very tough decisions. The criteria for what I stick in my mouth is simple. Is this healthy food or is this junk? Am I really hungry or am I just being an emotional eater that needs to have a quick fix and feel good? The Medifast meal program is forcing me to limit how much I eat and it is changing my eating habits one day at a time. The key to my success will be my understanding that my need to lose weight far outweighs my want for the food I am used to eating. If I want to lose weight I must make drastic changes. Only I can do this, no one else can do it for me. My desire to lose weight is growing as I watch the lbs come off and the clothes I have fit better. Some other motivational after affects of my new and better choices is that my blood pressure has dropped several points and stayed down. My flexibility has improved some as well which is nice. My short term goal is to lose 20 lbs so that means I need to lose five more lbs. My medium range goal is to lose 40 lbs which will be awesome if I can keep this up.
I am on week 9 of the fall semester at Trident Technical College and I am doing very well much to my surprise. I have managed to figure out a system that helps me to stay organized with all four of my classes and I have a set schedule that I follow. I am glad that I have been able to keep up with everything thus far and have managed to make good grades.
Better choices
I am on day 11 of making better choices for life. As of day 11 I am 15 lbs lighter and I am happy about that. I contribute my success thus far to making some very tough decisions. The criteria for what I stick in my mouth is simple. Is this healthy food or is this junk? Am I really hungry or am I just being an emotional eater that needs to have a quick fix and feel good? The Medifast meal program is forcing me to limit how much I eat and it is changing my eating habits one day at a time. The key to my success will be my understanding that my need to lose weight far outweighs my want for the food I am used to eating. If I want to lose weight I must make drastic changes. Only I can do this, no one else can do it for me. My desire to lose weight is growing as I watch the lbs come off and the clothes I have fit better. Some other motivational after affects of my new and better choices is that my blood pressure has dropped several points and stayed down. My flexibility has improved some as well which is nice. My short term goal is to lose 20 lbs so that means I need to lose five more lbs. My medium range goal is to lose 40 lbs which will be awesome if I can keep this up.
I am on week 9 of the fall semester at Trident Technical College and I am doing very well much to my surprise. I have managed to figure out a system that helps me to stay organized with all four of my classes and I have a set schedule that I follow. I am glad that I have been able to keep up with everything thus far and have managed to make good grades.
Well, that is about it folks, have a good weekend!!
Monday, October 19, 2009
New week new day
Today is day seven of my Take Shape for Life program. I am glad that I am mentally adjusted to the program and that I will not be shocked to find out this morning that most of my meals will consist of tiny little food bars that have 110 calories and lots of water. I am eating scrambled eggs with my decaf coffee to jump start my day.
One of my dear friends from Tennessee made mention that I should be doing this for Christ’s sake. I understand the spiritual implications of what he is saying but I have to say that I have much more motivation to do this for my sake. I am motivating myself to make better decisions for life. Take shape for life to me means to make better decisions so that I can continue to live a better less rounded life. In our society where more is better my decision is to say less can be even better. I must die to myself and stop gratifying the flesh and giving in to its wants and desires. The sin of gluttony is just as ugly as any other sin that you can think of. In the book of James in the bible it tells us that when sin takes it full course it ends in death. The sin of gluttony can kill me and I know that unless I get it under control and captivate my mind and renew my thought processes with good information and better decisions that I might get to experience some of the more critical and possibly life ending consequences of obesity. No one wants a heart attack or stroke and I am not any different. I do not want to have my life prematurely ended because I was too lazy to stop poking bad things into my mouth. I am not saying that food itself is bad but what I am saying is that when we eat too much of it and the wrong kinds of things that our bodies get out of balance and that is when it gets bad.
Just last week I caught myself wanting to self medicate with food. Some would say that being an emotional eater will lend towards being fat and I would have to agree with that. I found myself in a stressful situation where I was not happy about something and the first thing that popped into my mind was to go to the general store and get some food. The thought of doing that was very pleasant and happy. The problem with the thought is that I was telling myself that in order to experience the stress of the moment that it would be better if I experienced the stress of the moment with some of my favorite foods in my mouth. Luckily for me I overcame the thought process and caught myself before I acted on it. I told myself that eating something I wanted was only going to do me more harm and give me a setback with what little progress I made last week with this program. So, I made the right choice in that moment and did not do what I have been programmed to do all these years.
This is day 7 of my new Take Shape for Life program and I am happy to be where I am. I am happy that I have the opportunity to make the right decisions and for those good decisions to take me closer and closer to my goal of shrinking the incredible me. I want to be half the man that I am today and I mean that in a literal sense. This may take me 6 months to a year to accomplish but I am convinced that I can do it. I CAN do this. I can do this. I want to do this. I need to do this. I will do this.
For those of you that are my friends I would ask that you continue to pray for my ability to keep on keeping on with this. I am clinging to Phillipians 4:13 that says I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. This is a hard thing for me to do but I am determined to do it despite my past history of failures. I want to thank each of you for your continued support and encouragement as I move forward with this goal.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Lunch
Dear food nazi, chicken and green beans for lunch with unsweet tea.
:)
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Saturday, October 17, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
Making adjustments with the diet day 5
This is day five of my 30 day trial of the Take Shape for Life diet. This diet provides you with 5 nutritious meals and you are allowed one lean and green meal one time per day. I have not followed the plan 100% however I am seeing results.
- I feel so much better
- post lunch comas are all but gone
- flexibility is slowly getting better
- joint pain in my left knee is there but much more bearable
- my clothes seem to fit better
- I have watched my blood pressure go down slowly
All of this has been motivational for me however the biggest motivating factor happened Thursday night when one of my computer customers who had not seen me 8 weeks or longer complimented me on my weight loss. The first thing he said was " you are losing weight, good job". I was like, you can notice? He said,"absolutely you are doing something right, keep it up." Now talk about some motivation folks, that is really motivating. Someone at work also mentioned to me today that she could tell that I was losing weight. Wooohoooo now that is wonderful.
Even though I have not followed the plan 100% I have made some tough decisions which are leading to some big adjustments in my diet. The first thing I am doing is drinking much more water than normal. I am supposed to drink 64 oz of water per day and thus far I have been getting around 48 oz on most days. In five days I think I hit the 64 oz mark once so I need to improve on that. I am using Crystal Light to give me some taste to make it a little easier to consume it. I am also using Dasani flavored water and Poweraid flavored water.
The five delicious meals that I received in the variety pack turned out to be mere snacks to me. I understand that according to the "plan" the five meals are actually THE meals I am allowed to have. My brain is having to adjust to the fact that I really do not have to eat as much as I used to. I have also noticed that if I eat the bars and drink plenty of water that I am really not hungry. When I am not hungry it makes it easier to not eat food that I should not eat. I have also discovered that the only thing in the variety pack that I can tolerate or the snack bars. Thus far the other stuff like the chicken and noodle soup or the shakes are just gross. I even tried the chocolate pudding and it did not taste very good. I know that I need to get better at sticking with the plan as closely as I can. The closer that I stick to the plan the more weight I will lose and the faster it will come off.
This week the adjustments I made was to not eat any of the following.
- ice cream from McDonalds
- ice cream from a grocery store
- cheeseburgers from anywhere
- prime rib wrap from King Street Grille
- sausage biscuit with egg and cheese from McDonalds
- sweet tea
- bread of any sort
- ham and cheese sandwiches
- ham egg and cheese sandwiches
- french fries and fried shrimp (used to eat every Friday for lunch)
- fried foods
Now, I know, some of you might be saying big deal. You should not be eating that garbage anyway. I would say to you that is correct, I should not have been eating that food and thanks to eating it over the last 15 years it has led to where I am now. For me to chose not to eat this type of food is a big adjust ment for me. I am HAPPY that I have been able to make the right choices this week even if I did not follow the plan 100%. So, with that said I need to try and do better this new week. I think that things are going to get easier for me as time goes on. The first two to three days were pretty rough as I was getting over the shock value of what a meal is on the plan vs my expectation of a real meal.
Several of you have been very supportive of me in prayer and in verbal encouragement. I have to say that I could not do this without the prayers and your encouragement. My food nazi/life coach friend has been a proverbial pain in my back side but I do appreciate her motivational talks and reminders to drink that water even if I was a bit snarky about it. You know who your friends are when they stick by you both in good times and bad times.
IMG00502.jpg
Me thinks I need the chimney cleaned out. Cough
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Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Medifast meals
One of the most difficult things about a diet is the self discipline involved in making it a success. Yesterday was day one on the 5 and 1 Medifast program and I have to say that I was not that successful. I did good up until about 9 pm last night when I gave in and had a portion of chicken pot pie that my wife had made for the rest of the family. I also had a bowl of honey nut cheerios around 11 pm. The good news is that I did not gorge myself even though I was pretty hungry when I got home. I understand that a lot of people have lost a lot of weight on this program and that in and of itself is testimonial itself to the success you can have. The problem that I am struggling with is that I am going to have to be willing to starve myself in order to do it. I understand that the "plan" calls for 5 meals during the day every three hours and then a lean and green meal at the end of the day or whenever you would like to eat it. The problem I am having with this plan is two fold. Problem one is the meal is barely a snack. The portions are VERY tiny and they leave you with the desire to have three times the amount of the suggested serving. The second problem with the plan is that the meals suck. If you listen to the marketing hype about the program you are left with the belief that you are going to enjoy the tasty meals every day and not even notice that you are eating prepackaged food that comes in little silver pouches. I think that I have missed out on the brainwashing session where they were supposed to convince me of this. This is day two and I am going to go forward and do the best I can. Today I am going to try the chicken and rice soup for lunch and hopefully it will be better than the chicken noodle soup yesterday. All in all I think that this plan will help me to get away from fried foods and sweets and breads. Even if I do not follow the plan 100% I think that it is going to help me begin to moderate what I eat and how much and hopefully that in and of itself will help me to start lose weight.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
This is the day the Lord has made rejoice and be glad in it
Good morning Posterous friends. :) I have some new subscribers to my Posterous blog and for that I am thankful. My hope is that the thoughts that I share on my blog will bless you and encourage you in some small way. I sometimes wonder why anyone would subscribe to my blogs. In the blogosphere I am one of many voices that are out there and I always figure that there are folks out there that are much more entertaining or informative than me. The important thing is that I do blog and you like to read it. That fact alone helps me to keep writing I suppose.
I noticed this morning that I could add a theme to my blog and do some advanced customization. I hope you like the new look and feel of my Posterous blog. I am not familiar enough with CSS to do any advanced customizations so I will just stick with simple. I think that simple is better sometime. The nice thing about Posterous is that your blog is not all gummed up with advertisements from who knows where trying to sell you some thing or service that you have no need for or the money to spend on.
I am sitting here in my recliner drinking my first cup of coffee and watching Willie chew on his bone. Willie is our new 9 month old Lab puppy who is so full of energy. Willie thinks that the cats and Frodo are his wind up toys. Frodo who is our miniature weiner dog gives it all he has and plays with Willie who towers over him like a giant. Angel who is our 9 year old female lab is not that impressed with Willie and she is not shy about letting him know about it either. I think that in time everyone will get used to one another and be just fine.
My last three days off from work have been nice and I have needed the time off for a rest. I did not do anything extraordinary but I did enjoy hanging out with Katy and running errands and such. I am sure that Katy will be happy when I go back to work on Monday so she can get back to her normal routine. Katy is more of a home body than I am and when I am around the house I like to go do things. You could call me Mr Spontaneous while Katy likes to plan things out and know what she is going to be doing at least one day in advance. What is the fun in that?
Take Shape for Life starts tomorrow and I have mixed emotions about it. The good thing is that I will try to stick with the program because I do want to lose weight. I really need to get the 100 lb gorilla off of my back. I think that is a good word picture for me to think about when I think about losing weight. That gorilla has been on my back for way too long and has been causing more problems than he is worth. I am not sure if it is a male gorilla or a female gorilla at this point but it probably does not matter. What matters is I am tired of carrying this thing around with me everywhere I go. Instead of being fearful about change I will try to have a positive mental attitude and realize that change has to happen for me to get rid of the gorilla. If I can stick with this the changes will be lowered blood pressure and not having to take BP meds every day. Increased mobility and flexibility will be back in my life. I will have more energy to play with my kids and Willie. Hopefully I will be extending my longevity here on this earth.
Katy and I went to N Charleston last night to attend an awards ceremony for one of my friends son who was recieving the Boy Scounts Acheivement award. My friend introduced me to her husband for the first time and we had a good time chatting. Brian and I have several things in common. One of those things we have in common is the need to lose weight. I told Brian that as time marches on I am getting older. I told Brian that I had noticed that I have not ever seen any older people who were obese. If you ask me that is a wake up call for someone like me who is knocking on the door of 50. It is only going to get harder and harder to do what needs to be done. Brian told me that he can lose weight when he puts his mind to it and has done so on several occasions. He also told me that he will be very interested in hearing about my progress. My hope and dream is that I can lose weight and keep it off. I also hope that my doing so can encourage others just like me who need to do the same. The motivation is to be healthier and to feel better physically and emotionally.
Now it is time for me to get off my rear end and get ready for my trip over to Grace Fellowship Church in Duck Ditch. I know it is silly that I can not seem to disassociate myself with Grace Fellowship but after 9 years of going there I have grown fond of the people there. There is a bond there that will not just go away. We may not be able to make it over there every single Sunday but I want to continue to go there as often as I can. I hope you have a beautiful and peaceful stress free day.
God bless
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Thursday, October 08, 2009
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Four day weekend starts NOW
I am so happy that I have a couple of four day weekends ahead of me for the month of October. I was planning on going out of town to visit a friend of mine in Denver for 4 days but that plan fell through. So, instead of taking 9 days off I am going to hold off on the out of town visit and just take some extended weekends instead. Hopefully in January I can make the trip to Denver.
My experience with going back to school has been pretty good thus far. The hardest part was just making the decision and going through the hassles of getting registered and providing the school with all of the paperwork involved. Six weeks later and I am finding myself getting into a rhythm and figuring out when I need to do what. I work during the day and then I take a break and then hit the books. It makes for some long days during the week but if I get most of my stuff done during the week then I can have most of my weekends to myself.
For several months now I have watched a friend of mine at work lose weight using Take Shape for Life program. From what I can tell she took the weight off and has kept it off. Granted, she does not have to lose anywhere near what I need to lose but it works. Last week I made the decision to give it a 30 day trial. I bought my first months worth of pre packaged meals , snacks etc and starting on Monday I am going to give it a whirl. I have been reading on the support website of the men who have had a lot of success with this program as well. The key to the success is to stick with the program as it is designed and not cheat. During the day while I am at the office I should not have too much problem with this program. At night and during the weekends that is when this will be the most difficult. I may have to buy Katy a tranquilizer gun or a taser to keep me in check. I am thinking that once I see the pounds coming off that will be all the motivation I will need to stay on the program.
Saturday, October 03, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
Dallas who ?
Has the billion dollar fish bowl gone to the cowgirls heads or what? I just sat through one half of a football game to watch the Dallas field goal kicker miss a 40 yard field goal and the Dallas offense is sputtering worse than a two bit lawnmower with bad gas. The offensive line is going to get Tony Romo hurt if they dont do a better job of protecting him. I am also thinking that the coaches need to teach the players in the Dallas secondary how to tackle someone. You can not tackle someone that is the same size as yourself or bigger by slapping them with one hand on the waist line. This is not touch football girls this is the NFL. If you can not tackle someone please go sit on the bench and let someone else that can tackle get on the field. If Dallas can not beat the Panthers tonight then the season is absolutely over for them. How in the world will they be able to compete with some of the more high powered teams in the NFL? The answer is they can not.hope to compete playing like this. If Dallas plays like they did in the first half then they will lose the game. I wonder how it felt to the Cowboys when they got booed at the end of the first half?
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
Out of money?
How often do you go to the bank to cash a check and they turn you down because they are out of money? I got off of work early today to go to NBSC on Folly Rd and when I showed them my student loan refund check they told me "we are sorry but we are out of money until tomorrow afternoon when the Brinks truck arrives". I thought that certainly there must be some mistake for a bank to be out of money. Make no mistake sir the teller said, Trident Technical College gave out all the refund checks at once and gave us no warning whatsoever. That means that it was a first come first serve situation at the bank today. All of the brances for NBSC were out of cash , not just the one on Folly Road. I was told to come back to the bank tomorrow afternoon and they might have enough money to cash my check. I am thankful that I just got paid and I can be patient while the bank replenishes its supply. No, I do not want to depost the check in my account so my bank can put a 10 day hold on it. I would rather just cash it and put the cash in my account.
I am surprised to see that I have 7 people subscribed to my posterous blog. I can understand why my wife and close friends might want to hear my driveling but what about the rest of you folks? In order to reward you for your subscription to my blog I have in turn subscribed to your posterous blog as well. Thank you for tuning it to my occasional drivel about this and that.
So far my adventure back into the halls of academia has not been overtly painful. The experience of getting registered was more than irritating but with tons of patience and keeping the phone lines hot I managed to come through that process ok. Financial aid came through to pay for school for this semester and next semester so I now join the ranks of students out there that now owe a student loan once we get out of school. Yeah me!!!
The first three weeks of school were busy but I adjusted my free time schedule to where I spend most of it studying but still have time to do a couple of things I like to do. It basically works out this way. I study for 3.5 hours four days a week and then I use the weekend to finish up any papers that are to be written or project assignments that must be done. When I read a chapter I go over the chapter summary notes and then I go straight to the quiz and take it while the material is still stuck in short term memory. That seems to work better than reading the chapters on Monday and Tuesday and then having to wait until the weekend to study the notes all over again to refresh my short term memory and then take the test. I guess everyone has their system and as long as it works for you that is all that matters.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Windows 7 and XP dual boot
In the last couple of weeks I have been using Windows 7. Thanks to being a student and an associating between MSDN and our school we have access to download the OS and take it for a spin. I installed Windows 7 on a Dell Latitude E6500 with an 80 gb hard drive and 2 gb of ram. I downloaded the ISO file and burned it to a DVDRAM disk with iamgeburn which is a free image burning utility. The install process took about the same amount of time as any other OS. During the disk partition selection process I carved up my hard disk into two separate partitions so that I can dual boot Windows 7 and XP professional or Linux depending on what strikes my fancy later on.
I was very impressed with the install process which gave me no problems to mention. All of the drivers for my E6500 were found and I have been running Windows 7 without any incidents. I was highly impressed that the Cisco VPN client for Vista installed and worked with no problems. I installed Office 2007 , MIRC and several other programs that ran just fine. Windows 7 has the same look and feel of Vista but I have to admit that it runs much better. One of the features that I like on the start button is the ability to type the name of the program and it will give you a selection of applications you can click on. Another program that I love is the Snippet Tool which is similar to SnagIT 8. The Snippet Tool allows you to take a screen shot of any portion of your sreeen that you want. This is a very useful tool if you are doing any kind of documentation and you need to show people screen shots of what you are talking about.
Today I had a break in the action so I made the mistake of installing Windows XP Professional SP3 on the second partition of my hard drive. Everything went just fine and then the laptop rebooted. Windows XP came up just fine but access to Windows 7 was gone. POOF!! Luckily for me I had not mistakenly overwritten the wrong partition during the install phase. I installed XP to the second partition but I guess that XP overwrote the boot.ini file and replaced it with one for itself. Needless to say I was a bit panicked after all the hours I spent installing software and configuring Windows 7 to be my primary OS. I did what I always do when I have a technical problem and I started surfing the Net on the different techie forums looking for the answer. I found a lot of information however I did not find the answer I was looking for. I fixed the problem by booting the laptop to the Windows 7 install media and it gave me the option to repair Windows. Repair windows had five or six options and one of them was to fix the boot up process. BINGO!! I selected that option and a dos prompt popped up in the bottom left portion of the screen and it magically fixed the issue. I rebooted the laptop and now Windows 7 is once again available to me.
I still want to dual boot another OS with Windows 7 so I will have to do some research on HOW to do this and then I will let you know what I find out.
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