Yippee! Another good weight loss week. FITness level also seems to be improving -- less trouble with hip pain, much more energy throughout the day, good energy on waking. Wonderful, since I am a morning person.

FIT of many things has changed! Noticed yesterday my favorite belt is being cinched up one notch smaller. The FIT of my eyeglasses has become loose (does this mean I had a fat head?). The FIT of my favorite blouse changed enough that I had to wear a brooch at my throat, or risk showing more of my "goodies" than I feel comfortable with. I never considered how the extra weight I was carrying sat all around my torso; with much of that weight gone the blouse actually hung lower on me.

While I'm happy to be active most days (my goal, usually met, is minimum of 30 minutes of activity six days per week); I have not been willing to engage in regular strength training. My trips to the gym have left me in such misery of soreness in the days following workout, it has been hard to be motivated to return. Again, I think I was doing too much too early. At this time, I still think regular gym workouts would be too much. Today's reward for how well I've been doing so far: dumbbells! I think I need a set of 10, 12, & 15 pounders. I can do a complete body workout with those, knowing that when the 15 pounders get too light I'll be ready for regular gym workouts.

I found a great starter dumbbell workout this week: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWLr-_dvzms
May take me this week to learn, but my goal is to do this weight workout 3 times per week (surrounded by 7 minutes warmup, 7 minutes cooldown). FITness, here I come!

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Great Lenten worship and devotions this week. We're learning about the paradox, in Jesus, of being Fully Human and Fully Divine. Which I believe each of us carries. I struggle with how we can be both, and realize I may even assign levels of goodness or badness to people instead of accepting this paradox. Tried to see the divine in each person I interacted with this week -- the human is all to easy to notice, it is the divine I forget. Some pleasing success, some disappointing misses. Glad to be on the journey.

Visit with my spiritual director this week was astounding. I think I'm finally "getting" what a spiritual director is for ... I'd been perceiving the director as a therapist. But the Spiritual Director is there to LISTEN, QUESTION, remind me to look for the DIVINE. My great lesson on that this week: my personal penchant for details (minutiae) can make me blind to the bigger picture. This about my nature has been damaging to personal relationships in the past, and can make for the rough spots in my marriage. Learning to beware the details and remember to look at the bigger picture was my spiritual gift of the week.

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Lots of good, thoughtful, inspiring material out on the CK Blogs. I've had a few friends ask about my change in weight, and I talk up CK a lot. While I love the diaries (details, again), and the University has been very helpful, the big thing that keeps me coming back are all the blogs. I'm not great at commenting, yet something about all this honesty around me, all of us working towards the common goal of healthful lifestyles and self-improvement, it all buoys me. When I'm having a blue day, a gray day, a slow day, all I have to do is visit my favorite blogs, investigate a few new blogs, and I'm ready to refresh and renew my committment to change!

In Gratitude to CK mates! -otter