El Roi , God sees me

El Roi ( Row ee)
God sees me.
How profound just that statement is. God sees me. It doesn't matter where I am , or what I am doing, He sees me. He sees you. Broken, abused, rejected? He sees you and He loves you. How awesome is that? I can't hardly fathom the depth of that statement.
In the Bible there is the story of Abraham and Sarah and how God had promised them a child. Years had passed and Sarah grew inpatient. She saw that time was passing and she was getting past the age of being able to have children. So she had Abraham and lie with her handmade, Hagar with the thought that they could have children through her. But when Hagar became pregnant, Sarah was jealous. It didn't help that Hagar was a bit prideful and probably taunted Sarah that she was able to conceive when Sarah couldn't. So Sarah mistreated Hagar to the point that Hagar could not take any more and she ran away into the desert. This is where God found her. He sent an angel to tell her that he saw her in her misery and he was going to help her. The angel instructed her to go back and be obedient to her mistress and God will bless her. He saw Hagar in all of her misery. She was abused and mistreated and God saw her. When she ran away God saw her. Sometimes we run away from our problems. The housewife running from the daily grind,  the housework, laundry and dirty dishes, the  husband running from the responsibility of paying bills,  lifeless marriage, the kids. Everyone is running from something. But God sees us where we are and he rescues us.

Lesson Learned: God cares and sees us where we are and He will rescue you!

Start craving God instead of Food

Psalm 5:1-3 says:
 
Listen to my words, Lord,
consider my lament.
Hear my cry for help,
my King and my God,
for to you I pray.

In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice;
in the morning I lay my requests before you
and wait expectantly.
 
 
God craves to hear from us. He wants to spend time with us. I have been trying many different diet programs and found some that work. But I also found that they take a lot of time; planning meals, snacks, exercise. It all just became too time consuming. Before I knew it that is all I thought about and much to my friends and coworkers dismay, probably all I talked about for a while. It occurred to me one day, what if I craved God as much as I craved food? What if I spent that time of planning what I was going to eat, with prayer and seeking Him ? When you feel tempted to give in to those old unhealthy eating habits take that craving to God. Start praying every time you have a craving. He wants us to come to Him with everything, no matter how big or how small. I challenge you to do this for a week and you will find that you will stop craving the foods that are unhealthy for you and start craving God!

I came across this sugar free frosting and wanted to share. I purchased Pillsbury's reduced sugar cake mix. It has 50% less sugar and is sweetened with Splenda. So if you are watching your calories or diabetic this is an awesome cake topped with this great sugar free frosting. It is worth a try.

Sugar-Free Frosting

Ingredients

1 (1.4 oz.) pkg. sugar-free instant pudding mix 1 3/4 cups milk 1 (8 oz.) pkg. cream cheese 1 (8 oz.) container of sugar free cool whip,thawed

---

     

In a medium bowl, combine pudding mix and milk. Mix well and let stand until thickened. In a large bowl, beat cream cheese until smooth. Add pudding and mix well. Finally, fold in whipped topping.

 

Getting Fit with Jesus

Week One of Getting Fit with Jesus was a success. We shared scriptures, talked out our goals, weighed in and exercised to encouraging and uplifiting Christian music.

 Encourage yourself daily with these scriptures:
Philippians 4:13 " I can do all things through Christ who gives me Strength".

3 John 1:2
Beloved I pray that all may go well with you and that you be in good health, as it goes well with your soul.

God wants us to be healthy and fit. When we are physically healthy we can then be more spiritually healthy.

1 Corinthians 10:13
No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

Satan puts temptations out there in form of food. Because when are bogged down and overweight we can not do our best for Jesus. We are too busy feeling bad, sick, tired all the time and just unhealthy. And that junk that we have been tricked into making part of our daily diet taste so good. How can we resist? But this scripture tells us that we can overcome this temptation and that He (God) will give us what we need to overcome.
Speak this word out loud every day and you will soon find yourself overcoming the temptation to eat all that unhealthy food.

 

Tip of the Week

If you have a sweet tooth like me. Keep a bag of chocolate kisses in your freezer and if you are overcome by temptation eat just 2 of them , slowly letting them melt  in your mouth. This will cure your craving without all the calories.


 

This was the favorite song of the week. Great way to start your day! 

Good Morning

 

 

Visit us on Facebook

Shred diet, Nutrisystem, or something else?

This week we are having our first meeting at church for Getting Fit with Jesus. We have all been caught up in the "diet" cycle. We go on a diet lose weight and then go off and gain back twice as much , twice as fast.
Getting fit with Jesus is going to help us overcome that cycle. We are going to use scripture to learn self control and encouragement. We are going to support eachother with tips,  and recipes  And we are going to exercise. But most of all we are going to have fun. I say it doesn't matter what avenue you take to lose weight as long as you have the right motive behind it. Our goal is to get fit spiritually and physically so we can be healthy and share God's love.  Each week I will be posting our scripture of the week and share the tips  and recipes that everyone brings to the group. I hope you will be inspired to Get fit with Jesus, too.

Love my family

Sometimes things happen in our lives that make us step back and appreciate the family and friends that we have. We experienced that moment last week. In events that left us realing and wondering how can a man father a son and then turn his back on him? But through it all we know that God has his hand on us and the situation. It reminded us that we have 4 beautiful daughters and 4 great sons in laws and 8 wonderful grandchildren whom we love with all of heart. We have been blessed beyond measure. My husband also now has become reaquanted with his Uncle whom we all fell in love with immediately.  So , he may not have been able to have that relationship with his own father but he is a great dad himself and my girls couldn't have asked for a better dad. Everything happens for reason.

Lesson learned: Don't take for granted those whom God has placed in our lives. Love them everyday and tell them. Appreciate what you have and don't fret over what you think you have missed out on.

Week 24

We had to go out town this week for a family emergency and didn't take any of our food with us. Thankfully, a few months ago Meredith sent  me a list of what to eat it you don't have nutrisystem food. So we did really good. I found that in that stressful situation that my husband is stress eater. The  more stressed he got the more he wanted to snack. I had to get really creative with getting some healthy snacks. But he kept his sugar down and we made it through the week without gaining weight.
I have to admit that I missed our nutrisystem snacks, desserts and lunch bars and wished I had taken the time to grab some before we left.  We tried to stick to the plan but we did  go off  a couple times. I started feeling all bogged down and tired. I don't think I can ever go back to eating the way I did before nutrisystem.

We are ready to get back on track and look forward to eating our planned meals and snacks.


Want to lose weight and get healthy on Nutrisystem? Join today by calling 1-888-853-4689 or by visiting http://www.nutrisystem.com/nsblog

*We are trying out the Women's Success Select Program and Rick is doing the Nutrisystem D program for person's with diabetes, both free of charge.  All opinions are 100% our own*

Week 23

We decided to take a week off from nutrisystem  and try something different to see if we could get out our slump. We made it 2 days before realizing that it was too hard, even though the diet was using regular foods that we buy everyday. It took way too much planning and work. With nutrisystem , you just have to pick which meal you want and fix it. Sooo much easier.  Plus , I didn't lose any weight. So we went back to our nutrisystem plan. Easier to follow and  it works! We know it works.


Want to lose weight and get healthy on Nutrisystem? Join today by calling 1-888-853-4689 or by visiting http://www.nutrisystem.com/nsblog

*We are trying out the Women's Success Select Program and Rick is doing the Nutrisystem D program for person's with diabetes, both free of charge.  All opinions are 100% our own*

Week 22

We have been doing some experimenting with eating healthy foods. I tried baked salmon for the first time. I have only had deep fried fish dipped in batter. I can't say I didn't like it but I didn't love it either. I didn't realize how much the batter and grease change the taste.
We are back to losing again with each losing one pound.  This is a really busy time for me for work so I am loving the lunch bars. My favorite is the Peanut butter bar.




Want to lose weight and get healthy on Nutrisystem? Join today by calling 1-888-853-4689 or by visiting http://www.nutrisystem.com/nsblog

*We are trying out the Women's Success Select Program and Rick is doing the Nutrisystem D program for person's with diabetes, both free of charge.  All opinions are 100% our own*

Big Lesson Learned in 2012

So tomorrow is my birthday again and marks one year since I started blogging. I have had a lot  of changes  this year. My biggest accomplishment was losing 22 lbs on Nutrisystem which I got free because of my blog. So I am really excited about that. I also started ministering in church which is not something I ever thought I would do. I was asked to be the president of the ladies ministries in our church as well and have been working on that. This year coming up I expect big changes and I am really excited to see what God is going to do in my life. I have big plans for the ladies ministries, I am also working on starting a rehab program in our church called Celebrate Recovery. Our community has a huge drug abuse issue and when people come to our church needing help, we need to be ready to meet that need. So after lots of prayer and research I found the Celebrate Recovery program that has excellent success rates. I have asked some others to join with me in getting ready for this program and we have been working on it for awhile now. We hope to be able to start it up sometime in the spring. We moved 3 times in 2012. Can't say I want to do that again.

I still enjoy spending time with my grandchildren who are the light of my world. I am continuing to work on my Master's degree in rehab counseling and I work full time. So all of that along with church and ministries, I have had a busy year.   I am going to try to posts more blogs that are not Nutrisystem related. I know that I have gotten pretty slack in that area. But I am going to try to do better this year.


Big Lesson Learned this year:  Don't make plans that you are not willing to change. God's plans are not always the same as mine and when He changes things, I will go along and be a willing vessel that He can use the way He chooses.

Is there a lesson you learned  in 2012 that you are willing to share? I would love to hear about it.

Week 21

Happy New Year!
We plan on making this the best year ever. I have to say that I am pretty happy with  results of the last year and our weight loss. I feel like we have gotten into a slump. Rick hasn't lost any weight in a few weeks but  he is still maintaining low blood sugar levels. We have decided that what we need to help get out the slump is to get some outside support. So we are going to start a fitness group in our church and call it Losing it For Jesus. We are going to ask others who are also interested in losing weight to join in and meet once week. We can share weight loss ideas, recipes, etc and then end the meetings with exercise. We are hoping that by getting others to join in we can limit the temptations that are always being thrown our way. We have had several people in our church ask about Nutrisystem so we have been sharing some of the meals and desserts so they can try it out and hopefully make the decision to join the Nutrisystem family.

Want to lose weight and get healthy on Nutrisystem? Join today by calling 1-888-853-4689 or by visiting http://www.nutrisystem.com/nsblog

*We are trying out the Women's Success Select Program and Rick is doing the Nutrisystem D program for person's with diabetes, both free of charge.  All opinions are 100% our own*

Week 20

This week was Christmas and boy did I go off the diet. We had Christmas parties, family gatherings and tons of left overs. I gained 4 pounds in  week. But on Christmas night I got a stomach virus that has been going around and was up sick all night and the next day and lost the 4 pounds that I gained. So not an  ideal way to lose  but at least I can start the New Year without having to lose what I gained. I am currently at 140 pounds. So a total of 22 lbs. lost since we started this journey.
We also got a huge snow storm (which I loved) but that slowed down my walking outside.  I only missed one day and that was the day I was sick.
I took it easy with eating for a few days  ( lived on saltines, jello and 7 up )but now I am back on track  full force.
I have found that I love the honey wheat bagels. I slice them and put in toaster ,then put low fat strawberry cream cheese on them. Yummy!

Even with all the eating , Rick's glucose level  only went over 200 one time during this Holiday splurge. We both know that we can't go back to our former lifestyle so we are working hard to stay on track.

Want to lose weight and get healthy on Nutrisystem? Join today by calling 1-888-853-4689 or by visiting http://www.nutrisystem.com/nsblog

*We are trying out the Women's Success Select Program and Rick is doing the Nutrisystem D program for person's with diabetes, both free of charge.  All opinions are 100% our own*

Week 19

I am still making it. I have to admit though that going off the diet during Thanksgiving has made it hard to get back on track. And the busy hustle and bustle of Christmas made it hard to stay on track. But I did the best I could and increased my water. I didn't lose but I didn't gain so I am happy. I have found that my favorite dinner is the flat bread pizza. I add my own veggies  add a salad and have the perfect amount for dinner. It is quick and easy. I have also turned it into taco pizza by putting lowfat refried beans on in place of pizza sauce and adding a Tablespoon of taco meat and cheese then topping with lettuce ,tomato, and onion.
Rick is still managing his diabetes and keeping it under 200.

Want to lose weight and get healthy on Nutrisystem? Join today by calling 1-888-853-4689 or by visiting http://www.nutrisystem.com/nsblog

*We are trying out the Women's Success Select Program and Rick is doing the Nutrisystem D program for person's with diabetes, both free of charge.  All opinions are 100% our own*