Midnight

I know it has been a long time since I have written. Things have been a little crazy with my dog having hip replacement surgery. Eve is doing well and only being 2 weeks out from surgery is acting like a new dog. It's amazing how good you feel when you are not in pain! She gets her staples out tomorrow. When it was time for Eve to come home from the hospital I picked her up on Tuesday afternoon and I took the rest of the week off from work to stay home with her. The first week she was on pain meds around the clock. I was having to stay up until midnight to give her the last dose for the day before I could go to bed myself. I found while I was waiting to dose her I started going through the cabinets and the frig looking for snacks. That started about 10:30pm and ended when I gave Eve her meds. Needless to say this was not good for the weight loss program! I wasn't hungry I was bored. Just looking for something to do to pass the time. Even though I over-ate I still forced myself to write everything down that I ate. So, even though I was out of control I was still trying to control it to a point. It must have worked because I still lost .4 lbs. I was really sweating the weigh-in last week.

As I was preparing to write about this, it reminded me of Paul and Silas in jail in Acts 16. How dark it was and being chained. I just know there is a tie-in with the midnight thing too. There aren't many people around so you are alone trying to deal with what ever you have to deal with. It can be a pretty bleak picture. Being a food addict as I am can be just a lonely. Instead of trying to go it alone we need to read the rest of the story of how God freed Paul and Silas. God can rock our world just as he did with Paul and Silas to free us physically, mentally, and emotionally. We don't need to turn to food for comfort. We need to learn to change this energy to do the wrong thing into energy spent with God, studying his Word, or doing good works, or even taking care of his temple, our bodies. So when it is late at night and you go searching for snacks I pray that each of you are sensitive to the shaking of the Holy Spirit to pull you back from the brink of over-eating. God wants us all to be successful in our weight-loss and we can be!

Take care until next time and I will be talking to less of you in the future.

Your Sister In Christ,
Lynne

Shaping

I bet you are curious. As you all know I am a dog trainer and I have been reading a new book on dog behavior. This trainer uses shaping to train her dogs and says this can be used to train just about any animal. She use to train animals at sea aquariums in Hawaii. Any way back to shaping... this technique is used in our everyday lives also. Shaping is changing the behavior by giving positive rewards for behavior that is desired. Isn't that what we are doing with losing weight. Our positive reward is wearing smaller size clothes, and she reinforced the idea of putting on paper our accomplishments. That way when we are weak we can review how far we have come. For myself I know that if I don't keep a daily diary I am not very successful with my weight loss. Even if you are not into dog training this book is a great study on behavior training (Don't Shoot the dog! by Karen Pryor.). As you read this book you realize that we are being shaped daily by all kinds of influences. Many of them you are not even aware of!

These simply techniques can also help us become better Christians. Such as reading our Bibles daily, and praying for others. The read through the Bible in a year is shaping our behavior. Or how about those that keep a prayer log when they pray for others needs. We keep a chart to mark off our daily readings or in a prayer log you date the prayer and when answered by God you put the answer date. Our positive rewards are reading through the Bible and seeing when God answers prayer. We learn more about our Savior and grow as Christians to be more like Him. That kind of behavior change I am all for!

What makes this book good for me now is that I am struggling with losing the weight. I have been at it since September and to keep motivated is hard. So any way that you can reward yourself for doing the right thing is good. I try to look for things that I would normally not do which makes it special and when I reach even a small goal I treat myself. Who would have thought dog training would fall right in line with training our daily lives. I love my dogs!

I am praying for you. And I know you can be successful. Let's do it together! Until next time I will be talking to less of you.

Your Sister In Christ,
Lynne