Monday, November 29, 2010

Watchin' Weight

I'll try to catch up on those spiritual blogs soon, but I have something I've been dying to say.

I have been on a diet. I didn't wanna announce it here because my mom hadn't told my family and Thanksgiving was kinda my big reveal, you know? But now that's over, I kinda wanna gush. See...background:

The night before I flew home at the end of my mission, I had to weigh my luggage to make sure it wasn't over 50 lbs, right? Well, to do that, I had to weigh myself, and then pick up my luggage and then subtract the two numbers. Needless to say, I had to do that a LOT and consequently, how much I weighed that night has been burned into my BRAIN. Upon coming home, I overheard my dad at one point talking about how much he weighed and much to my horror, I was really close to the same, and my dad is not a small man. I was fairly disgusted with myself and begged my mom to get me started on Weight Watchers, which worked extremely well for her.

Long story slightly shorter, this past Tuesday (BEFORE Thanksgiving, mind you. Haven't weighed myself since then. We'll see how things turn out tomorrow at my meeting. I kinda expect it to be ugly) I weighed in at a Watcher's meeting near my grandma's house and I have lost a total of THIRTY POUNDS since my mission! I've actually been surprised as I've been going to the meetings and I've been successfully losing weight. I guess I'd just never really tried before, but I've really been surprising myself by this.

Is it vain that I'm posting an entire blog about how much I DON'T weigh anymore? I'm by no means skinny but I've just been feeling really good about myself because I've lost a pants size (granted, that was before Thursday. I haven't tried those jeans on since. XD Hopefully, I'll be able to get back into my new jeans in a week or so. Yeah...that's embarrassing...) and the fact that I've been actively trying to make myself better and it's actually working. Hasn't really happened before, so I'm kinda happy. Just thought I'd say that.

Oh, but here's the clincher. I'm finally getting to the point where I can look at foods and estimate fairly accurately how much I should eat and how many points they are (Weight Watchers works on a points system. All foods, depending on their calories, fiber and fat content are given a certain point value. I am given a number of points a day to spend on whatever I want, so long as I don't go over) and then I get an e-mail today that they're CHANGING THE WHOLE SYSTEM. So now, I've gotta start all over. *sigh* I guess it's to keep me on my toes. Best not to get too complacent, right? I think it's funny that they didn't introduce this change until after Thanksgiving. Coincidence? I think not.

Yeah, I'm sorry for being so vain. I'll move along now...

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

I've been thinking lately that I haven't told you guys anything about my mission, and that makes me sad. I got an idea the other day, inspired by my friend Heather ho posts an inspirational journal every Sunday. I decided to do something like that; to share a little tidbit of my mission experience once a week. Hopefully that'll keep my blog from rotting anyway.

The first thing I thought I would say was a question I was frequently asked (besides where I'm from.) There were a lot of people that would ask me why I wanted to go on a mission.

A little background, here. For missionaries, it's common for the local congregation to volunteer to feed them dinner (even lunch sometimes) to help ease the financial burden of feeding themselves (stateside missionaries get $150, or less, a month for the essentials like food, laundry, postage, etc. Sometimes, it just doesn't go very far) and it also helps the missionaries get to know the people. Well, when I was little, I remember my mom having the missionaries over on a fairly regular basis. And whenever they would come by and we were sitting around the table, I always remember asking them to "Tell a missionary story!" That also applied to my dad and no matter how many times I heard the same stories, I thrived on them.

So of course, I grew up always thinking that I was going to go on a mission. In church our teachers would talk about going out and telling people about Jesus, we'd sing little kids' songs, and I would collect pictures of Sister missionaries. In college, when I was nearing 21 and could finally submit my papers to sign up for a mission, I practically avoided guys, not wanting to be distracted. Heh.

Well, that's basically why I wanted to serve a mission. I grew up on "missionary stories," especially loving anything my dad could tell me about his mission in Norway and the things he learned about there. I'd always wanted to, and so I did.

^_^