No Slayed Gluten and Sugar Dragons...Let's Talk Crucifixion...

Umm...today started that I was going to write about slaying gluten and sugar dragons to go along with my gluten and sugarfreeness of life, but got sidetracked.  Life happens.

And when it does, because it will, somehow I find myself writing about crucifixions, shame, and humiliation.   No easy to digest homilies...but, stay with me, please, because there is good stuff to share at the end. 

The cross today is a simple symbol that represents hope and renewal to Christians today. 
In Christ's time, the cross was a symbol of shame and fear.   It represented crucifixion which was the ultimate, humiliating punishment to the person being punished and the family, if they were still willing to claim that family member.

I am a Christian.  I believe Christ was crucified and endured the indignity gracefully so everyone in the world who believed in Him could have a relationship with Him and God - not the thundering voice reigning down on you as you cower under the bed type of relationship, but the type to join you under the bed and say that things are going to work out ok. 

He didn't come to shame the world.  He rose above what the world defined as shameful to be an example to give us courage to withstand the shame of the crosses from the world.    I feel the crosses of the world.  You know the feeling, too.
 
That feeling when... you don't have the right kind of car...your dress is a 'classic'  - kind of like your car...your spouse has been having an affair and wants a newer model instead of the 'classic' he has...you've lost your job and are worried about bills...your kid is failing in school...your long kept secret

Yeah, this stuff happens, but this connection to God, that was bridged through scorning the shame of the cross, can fill you up with hope, joy, and peace.  It doesn't matter if your connection to God is hanging by a piece of lint or a tree planted by streams of water.    It all starts with a simple conversation under the bed, in the bathroom, in your car...anywhere is fine.  "Hi, God."

God will give lavishly to you hope, joy, and peace.    

What would you say to encourage someone's LIFE?

When I was in my 20's, I thought 40+ was sooo old.    My plan for life would be a good one to make it easy.   My friends had similar plans, too.  The plan looked like:  go to school, get good grades so I could get a good job, work hard to climb up the ladder of good job, get married, have kids, have a great marriage and a great career.   This is life on Easy Street. 

Today, I'm in my 40's and just living.   I'm still looking for Easy Street, but I think it got washed away into a ditch.    So, I'm on this road called LIFE.   There have been pit stops and 'learning opportunities.'  Often times, I've said, "I didn't go to school for THIS!"   LIFE doesn't like to follow textbooks. 

I have a friend whose LIFE isn't going according to plan.   She lives with obstacles and sometimes limited choices.  Her LIFE is truly just living it one day at a time.    I have run out of encouraging words for her and simply just listen to her story and circumstances that move at glacial speed.    My prayers seem to have hit a rut.

So you ladies who have LIVED and discovered that LIFE can be a challenge whether through your own experiences or just walking it with your mom, sister, or friend, what are words of encouragement would you give or were given to you?   Was it a Bible verse, a quote, or a saying?   Please leave a comment so that I can share with my friend so she knows she's not alone on this road:  LIFE.  

Gratefully,
MooWoo


  


 

Gym-der Land: Forever Young

The gym can be an intimidating place.  Some of the weight machines look like medieval torture devices. People wear the emperor's clothes - practically naked in designer sportswear with holes all over them.   The economy is different.   It's measured in the weight of barbells or plate weights heaved, pushed, or pulled.   You have just landed on foreign soil with a different language and customs.  You either proceed cautiously or decide to return to your own borders.

Let's stop.  There is another choice. 

EMBRACE IT!!

You have just found the fountain of youth!

Scary machines?  They are just strangers waiting to be your friend.   Ask someone how to use them.   

Still not sure about the machines?   Go to a class with an instructor and play Simon Says. Just copy what she's doing.  

Not comfortable in clothes that even a homeless person wouldn't wear?  That's ok because everyone is too entranced with their own reflection in the mirror to pay attention to the fact you are wearing actual clothing.   

Not sure how to throw your weight around?   Just choose the weights that are comfortable to you.   Different muscle groups require amounts and size of weights.   It's not the size.  It's how you use it.    ;)

Here is where you find your non-scale victories - victories that aren't measured by a needle moving to smaller numbers.    Victories are more energy, strength, and inner confidence!

Hardly ever will you regret going.  (How many other activities could you say that about?)

Don't expect perfection - give yourself some grace and drink from the fountain.

I'm a Church Fly

"See?  It WAS fun!!" my friend laughed at me when I gave her my positive conclusion of tonight's evening.

 

The previous day I asked her to pray for my bad attitude stemming from pressure and panic of folding a hundred pieces of paper into origami flowers for a church dinner the next day.   "Are paper cuts and glue gun burns really a God assignment?"  I texted her.

 

Inspite of my injuries, the evening was fun and a great time to hang out with girlfriends. My friend and I talked underneath the parking lot light afterwards to catch up and laughed about how 24 hours could change someone's attitude from bad to good.

 

Months had gone by without a good chat with each other - different kids' schedules, church schedules, and life, in general, just interrupting.    So there we were in the parking lot and talked and talked.

 

But, it was here that I realized that if you step up with your sisters in Christ to God's table, He doubles the portion of grace in your life that comes from fellowship with these women.   What was sour is now sweet.   What seemed horrible is now pretty funny.   Paper transforms into flowers.  The black night is brightened by light-hearted conversation.

 

The hour was getting late and sleep time was slipping away before it would blur into a day full of activities and errands and carpools.  We left with the hope to meet up next week.   

 

I pulled out and rounded the corner to the darkened front of the church.   No lights were on inside.  No cars in the front parking lot.   The pastor's wife, women's ministry director, and all the other guests had left long ago.

 

That's when I realized with a chuckle that I had closed down a church, but never had closed down a bar.     

 

And that is a wonderful gift that comes from Table Grace.

My Best Trick or Treat

It wasn't a compliment from a guy about how I looked.   It was a compliment from Stacey Keith saying that my legs looked really awesome.     She is my instructor who loves muscles and who I stalk around town because I really enjoy her class torture.   (i.e. 100 reps of tricep curls & 600 reps of a variety of squats - and that's in one class.)  

 

Lest you think I'm going to launch into a leg modeling career, mine are not the type to appear in a magazine - long and tapered thin.   Mine are more like the sturdy, short, tree trunk brand.  

 

Stacey's compliment was really a great treat, but the trick behind it has taken me 780 days of one baby step after another.  It's called hard work to get blubbery muscle to tone and tighten up.   It's going to class when I don't want to.   It's ignoring the flames when my muscles are BURNing.   It's adding on that little bit of extra weight to the bar to push myself even though I won't finish the set.   It's taking off some of the weight to finish the set.  

 

The older ladies were right.   After a certain age, women's bodies have a mind of their own about where south really is.     Photographic aesthetics isn't what motivates me now.  It's being strong that gives me the lift to keep reaching higher. 

 

Just keep swimming!

Moowoo

Yeast Free Diet - Hard Core Challenge

Honestly, I have to go a little bit further than just gluten and sugar free for the next 90 days.   I'm going yeast free.  What's a yeast free diet?     Why the heck would you want to torture yourself?  So glad you asked.

 

The first question is easy.   Here's what I avoid the next 90 days:

No yeasty, starchy, bready foods or veggies

No sugary foods

No vinegar, pickled, or moldy foods

No alcohol

No dairy

No High sugary content fruits or dried fruits

 

These types foods basically breakdown into sugars and provide fuel for the growth of yeast in a person's system.   Avoiding this stuff is not so easy.     On the bright side, I can eat meat, most fresh fruits and vegetables, and nuts.

 

The answer to the second question is:   I am just bored and just thought this would be fun. (Ha!)  

Everyone has good and bad yeast in their systems, but, I have an overgrowth of bad yeast in mine and that causes havoc on my system, although outwardly I cannot tell.    My gastro-intestinal system constantly fights this invader which prevents my body from fully absorbing vitamins and minerals which creates a chain reaction of (obvious and hidden) problems and, then, leads me into my chiro/nutritionist's office exasperated and frustrated about what is wrong with me?  

 

Yeah, not a real sexy answer but that's it in a nutshell.  

 

I have done this 1 1/2 other times before.   The first time I managed to get 60 days under my belt that was becoming looser and looser.   It all ended at the end of the school year party with a bender of meat lover's pizza and several slices of cake with tons of frosting.   I remember it fondly, except, all that cheese, flour, and sugar just made an atomic bomb for the yeast's population to explode.   That day yeast hit the lotto.

 

The half attempt this past summer was a joke that lasted about two to three weeks before vacation.   When we got to Vegas, I completely lost all self-control at the buffets' ice cream bars.   Visiting the Coca Cola store and sucking down 16 different types of international soft drinks, high fructose corn syrup is money in the bank for the yeast to never leave. What happened in Vegas didn't stay in Vegas - it followed me home.   I never really hopped back on the GS-free wagon.   I just sort of jogged along side it and sometimes would climb on for a little break.  All the while, the yeast never went away.  

 

What I learned from these attempts is that this restrictive diet works and my system starts functioning better.  The first time around the pounds came off  easily  - ok, well some days were a struggle to not gouge my eyeball out with a spoon in search of ice cream.   I took lots of naps to get my mind off of food, but then I dreamt about it, BUT, it was easy since I did not have to workout like an Olympic athlete.  

 

Weight management since this summer has been impossible with a slow upwards creep.  It was this creep-iness by the beginning of the school year that made me realize I need to persevere and hang tough this time while marking off these 90 days on the calendar.   

First grade math and mini lemon bundt cakes: numbers never lie just the person

I've been sliding and sliding down the hillside into the ditch of gluten and sugar.    I didn't think things were such a big deal.   I keep thinking I am committed to eating gluten and sugar free because I know it is so good for me.    I have paid mucho dinero for test results that tell me that gluten and sugar wreck havoc on my body, but I settle.   The cookie here.   A small bag of chips there.   Another cookie to go with the ice cream here.    The old way of eating starts again with a slow roll and picks up speed to becomes a boulder crashing down in a rock slide.   All good, hard earned new habits are smashed.

All this realization started with 6 mini lemon bundt cakes.

 Let me start the scenario.I purchased them for lunch with my friend Joan, her daughter Bella, and my kiddo Abby.    I ate one and so did Bella.    Joan was being good and passed.   Abby took a bite and didn't like it.    To keep up with the math, this leaves me, Miss Sugar Addict, with 3 whole and one partially eaten bundt cake.  

And what do you do when you're left with minis? There's only one thing - and that's eat them!!  They're small and mini.  It seemed so worth it until I was shamed into hiding how many I ate.

Scene:  Me sitting in the kitchen next to empty container.  Abby, my first grader, enters and sits next to me.  
Abby:  What happened to the cakes?  Bella had one.  You had one.  Did you eat mine?   
Me:  Yeah, no one wants to eat after you except for me.   (Pragmatic mom thinking:  Waste not want not - I paid good money for this crack.  I was left with no other choice.  I ate it.)  
Abby:   Where are the other ones?   
Me:   (Are you the bundt cake auditor?)   I ate them.
Abby:   You ate....(starts counting container's empty spaces) you ate 4 more?!
Me:   (This doesn't look so good.)    No, I didn't eat 4 more.   One fell on the ground and it's in the trash.
Abby:  Oh, yuck.   Did you eat the other 3?
Me:  (Why am I starting to sweat?)  No, no, Auntie Joan changed her mind and decided to eat 1.  No, she ate 2.  
Abby:  Oh, that's six.  

Ok.Here I am LYING to my 1st grade math genius because I am ashamed that I surreptitiously scarfed down FOUR mini bundt cakes in one sitting.  (They were pretty good, too.)  I know lying is bad, but what I am really ashamed about is my lack of control even though I know that this stuff is crack and just SOO terrible for me.    Also, the guilt of letting myself down AGAIN is bad.    It's time.  

This is when The Time is here and now.   It's time to kick Miss Gluten-Sugar out.    I know when this witch shows up - when I start lying to my 7 year old, when I start hiding wrappers and containers in the trash from myself because of denial (it ain't just a river in Egypt), and when settling for mediocre and wanting better starts to really wear on me mentally.   And it seems like Miss GS is here E.V.E.R.Y.D.A.Y and has decided to move into my house.    It is time to kick her to the curb.   And that's no lie.   

Texas Woo Crew Blog Starting (again)

Hi,

I'm starting a blog (again).  The first time was just an announcement that I was starting - and that was it - just an announcement and it was in 2012.    So, really, I'm starting again.    Here's why.

The next 90 days I will be throwing myself into the ring to eat healthy which means for me - no gluten, no sugar, and, temporarily, no vinegar or alcohol (this part will be easy since I'm a water snob.)   It's my stories about what happens during the next 90 days when I try to go for the full 10 rounds in this tough fight when practically everywhere the menu is set against me.   Wheat is in everything.  Sugar is my kryptonite.   GMO Corn is in omnipresent.    Rice is not my friend either and I AM CHINESE.   My whole lineage has eaten rice.  We've last this long so what's the deal?   Well, the deal is that food is made differently than ever before - but I'll save that for later.

So I invite you to join me on my (mis)adventures about something that everyone does every day.  Eating!!  I'm not promising perfect.  Although, this does feel a little impossible despite, you know, boot straps and pulling and all.    (On an aside,  I truly hope this encourages you to start doing that thing that you've been wanting to do that you think is impossible.)

In the meanwhile, I'm just concentrating on this one day and not the rest...and so here we go, count it down with me...90....

xoxo,
MooWoo