A Trip Down "Memory Lane"

The weekend is now in full swing and we have just begun to scrap till we drop. Yesterday we arrived a few minutes after 3 pm and the conference room was already full of 20 other women who were already sitting at their own personal six foot table with piles and piles of pictures, Cricut cutting machines with their cutting cartridges, scrapbook paper, scissors, embellishments, and every tool under the sun to help them turn all of their mess into a final work of art.

Now when we arrived we didn't do anything differently. We unloaded our "everything we brought but the kitchen sink" filled to the brim boxes, bags, and totes with all of our pictures, paper and supplies. It took at least an hour to sort through all the items and get some sense of organization before we could even get started.

But that was my biggest decision of the day so far. Where to start? I had brought a great variety of pictues with me to scrap all sorts of seasons, events, people and places, but when I started going through all the pictures that I had brought, I had a chance to take a walk down "Memory Lane".

I found picture after picture of my husband and I at Christmas, on vacations, with our family, with our grandchildren, having fun with our kids, and spending time with my grandparents and his relatives too. In every picture I stopped and really concentrated on one specific person in the the picture and that was Me!

There were a great many changes that had happened to me over the years. Clothing styles had changed, hairstyles had changed, the way I wore my make-up had changed but the biggest change was in my appearance, my size to be exact. I can't remember seeing any pictures where I looked thin, you know a person of normal healthy weight. In every picture I had the same bright and shiny face. I had a positive attitude and an outgoing personality and it showed in the pictures. But what I saw that made me sad was that there were times that I had yo-yoed from being "On the right track" to "Falling off the wagon and eating everything in sight".

There is no one to blame but myself. It was my inability to really understand why I was "Living to Eat" instead of "Eating to Live and enjoy a healthier lifestyle". With my new found commitment to myself, I will continue to eat my 1400 calories per day and increase my activity.

I am learning more about myself every day. I, like many others, have a mental block when it comes to excercise. Well I believe the Lord is showing me that my seditary job and lifestyle have contributed to my weight. It is not just in excersing that I can lose weight but by becoming a more "active" person in general. Parking my car in the fartherest (Is that a word?) parking space and walking to my destination would help me burn more calories than mindlessly driving around the parking lot for twenty minutes waiting on someone to leave in a close up parking spot. In all of the diet and exercise books that I have bought in my lifetime, I have never seen a calorie burn recorded for driving around a parking lot looking for the closest space to park.

This weekend has given me so much to think about. And one thing is for sure, I never want to see pictures of me with the 40 pounds that I have lost in them. To the "40 Pounds" I say; "Good-Bye and Good Ridence".