Weight Loss Workout – Grease on the Griddle
August 23, 2007 by Kim T
Filed under Get Moving
I was jumping rope this morning and in the middle of it, hot and sweaty, an image suddenly flashed into my head. I saw a scoop of shortening melting on a hot griddle. It made me smile because I suddenly saw my muscles as like that griddle: the only way they are going to be able to melt fat is if I heat them up!
Now the reason I brought this up is that I know plenty of people who say that they can’t lose weight. They say they walk for exercise, but nothing seems to be happening. Yet when I see them in action, their walking pattern is like a Sunday stroll and their muscles never heat up.
So my question is, are you working hard enough to turn up the heat in your griddles (muscles) to melt the grease (excess body fat)? If you want to melt a lot of grease, then you’ve got to use big griddles. In your body, those griddles are the muscles of your backside and your thighs. You want to work out at a level in which you feel challenged, but still comfortable.
If you are challenging yourself enough to melt grease, but still not seeing results then you need to take a look at your eating pattern. Are you adding grease back into your body as fast (or faster) than you melt it? Are you eating excess fat in the form of fried, fast, or junk foods? Are you eating or drinking a lot of sugar? Those excess calories will be stored as fat if you don’t burn them off. Usually, all it will take is keeping a food log for a few days so that you can become aware of what you are really doing nutritionally rather than what you think you are doing.
It is very easy to deceive ourselves. I know one time, I thought I was only having a candy bar once in a while. Yet when cleaning out the trash bin in my car, I was startled by the number of candy bar wrappers I saw. It’s really hard to deceive yourself when the evidence is staring at you in the face.
So I urge you this week to start thinking of ways that you can get rid of some of the extra grease in your body. Do you need to heat up your griddles through exercise? Stop piling on additional grease? Just a few simple steps practiced consistently will yield amazing results over time. But don’t take my word for it; prove it to yourself and I guarantee you will have a lot less grease to haul around this time next year.
Patty,
You rock! Thanks for being so open and real.
Jon
Patty,
I want to comend your courage…..This is my first time posting a comment as well. In Feb. I decided to stop trying to use the ‘get thin quick’ tricks and do it God’s way. My sister told me about Kim’s website and we have now decided to do this together with God’s help. I am struggling with insecuries and low self esteem but I am determined to win this race. Please keep me in your prayers and will be sharing my progress…….Be Blessed my Sisters
Thank you all for your responses. Kim, I know you are probably tired of my singing praises of you, but it has been good for me to interact with you and others who are using your program (well, God’s program). For those who have prayed for me, Thank you! Maybe that is why I have been trying to workout more and have journalled my food intake recently. I have even rejoined Sparkpeople.com where I am recording my daily actions. I have been smaller (size 10) and it allowed me the opportunity to experience people’s feelings toward me in both states. Slimmer I was treated as if I (my life) had value. Fatter I am invisible. It was as if people did not want me to exist.
Kim, you bring up an interesting point. You mentioned in your responses that you felt self-conscience as a large person. My question is why? Why must the fat person feel this why? To feel this why implies a lower value of your person as it is. Did not Paul say that it was good to be content in one’s present state. I know that does not excuse the gluttony or slothfulness, but I am sying or trying to say_Why must the fat person be devalued, mistreated, ridiculed, and have their livelihoods sanctioned because we look unpleasing to the eye?
I did not appreciate my good health when I was thick and healthy. I walked miles daily yet was over 200 pounds. I was in very good condition. Now, I am so large that my joints hurt in certain places and I have edema. I don’t like this at all. Thank you al for responding and caring enough to respond with Christian concern and wisdom. Some of the advice has been hard to hear, but the Bible says that a wise man hears rebuke and rejoices in it. I am trying to rejoice. Keep praying.
Hi Patty,
That is awesome that you are taking steps to take care of yourself. I know Sparkpeople is a great site and you’ll find lots of support there.
I do want to address something you asked me in your post. You said, “Kim, you bring up an interesting point. You mentioned in your responses that you felt self-conscience as a large person. My question is why? Why must the fat person feel this way? To feel this way implies a lower value of your person as it is. Did not Paul say that it was good to be content in one’s present state.”
Obviously I can’t speak for every obese person – I can only speak about how I felt during that period of my life. While I didn’t devalue myself as a person, my self-respect was impacted. In my mind, I was keenly aware that my binge eating and poor health habits that caused my obesity was destroying me. I knew better, but felt powerless to do better. I knew I was settling for what was easy instead of what was best for me. Now if I had decided to continue binge eating and was willing to accept the consequences of that (for me – living in an obese body, having to pay more for clothes, having health problems, worrying about fitting into average-sized chairs) then perhaps my self respect may have remained intact.
But Patty, I did not want to accept that life. I wanted to become a better steward of my body and appreciate it as a precious gift. I knew if I did that, my weight would take care of itself. Even if I remained a larger size than I wanted, at least I would know I was doing my very best with what I had. I wanted to be able to climb stairs without getting out of breath. I wanted to be able to run, jump and play. I wanted to send a message that I am worth the effort – no matter how hard it got or how many times I stumbled in the attempt.
Most of all, I wanted to have the ability to look at myself from the neck down and that was something that I could not bring myself to do for a long time when I was obese. When I looked in the mirror, I focused on my face because at that time I did not want to face the truth of what my eating was doing to my body. Now I see that I avoided making eye contact with others because I was sure I would see in their eyes the condemnation that I was already heaping upon myself.
Because I became an invisible woman in my own eyes, others saw me as invisible too. Now – was this right? No…but it is the truth of where I was at the time.
You also asked “Why must the fat person be devalued, mistreated, ridiculed, and have their livelihoods sanctioned because we look unpleasing to the eye?” I think it is a byproduct of our fallen world. The bible says that man looks on the outside but God looks upon the heart. People do make judgments by what they see – particularly people who look different from them. We all do it. The fact is that some people are prejudiced against obese people, the same way some are prejudiced against the disabled, some against women, and some against minorities. We live in a fallen world with sinful people in it.
The only hope any of us has for redemption is in the person of Jesus Christ. He can give us a new heart and mind. There is no condemnation in him. The key to my turnaround was learning to see myself as he saw me…and projecting that to others while I was still in my larger body.
While we can’t control what others think about us, we can control what we think about ourselves and that should be in line with what God thinks about us – because his thinking about us is the truth – regardless of what other people think, say, or do.
So ask yourself: “Do I mentally or verbally devalue, ridicule, mistreat myself or restrict my livelihood options because of the way I look?” Because again, you can never control THEM – you can only control YOU.
God bless you on your journey, my Sister!