Stories of Adoption

In the summer of 2007 I went on my first trip to a developing country, Mozambique. It was there that I first encountered orphans. There are few things that get to me more than children without parents.

While standing on that red African soil, holding the hand of a little one whose parents had both died of AIDS, it resolved within me that someday I would adopt a child. A child somewhere in the States or abroad that needs a home. It has been set upon my heart.

I know that it’s not something that everyone is meant to do, but it’s one of those things that when you know you just know. I have researched it enough to know that it is a very difficult and complicated thing. And I know that not every adoption story is a good one.

But I find certain blogs of parents who have adopted or are trying to adopt to be so awesome.

Would you like to be inspired today?

Here are two incredible stories of adoption:

Photographers Jen + Chris are not only very talented, but they have a beautiful story of adopting two little girls. Read about it here.

Ashley Campbell of Under the Sycamore is also a great photographer and storyteller. Her family is in the process of adopting a little one from China. Read about their ongoing journey here.

I am amazed by their sense of purpose, perserverence, determination and strength.

Journey to Healthy: Food is Comfort

 

 

[Please note this berries n' cream gelato and heart and pac man pizza are not endorsed by Journey to Healthy. They are here to help illustrate a point. Thank you and goodnight. Just kidding about that last sentence you should keep reading.]

 

Comfort food has its name for a reason you know.

Another thing I have discovered while working to get to the roots of my issues with food is that to me, food is comfort.

I am, in many ways, the definition of a goody-two-shoes. I have never once been drunk, and never done drugs. My idea of a good time is generally playing a board game with friends, or going to a concert and staying completely sober so I get the full experience and don’t forget a single thing, or having a little heart-to-heart conversation, or reading a book about Betty White and then turning out the lights at 9:15. I can’t help it. Baby, I was born this way.

My point: food has been my comfort. It has been my way to rebel. My way to de-stress. My coping mechanism. I turned to the comfort of unhealthy food in excess so that I would feel better. For a moment, while I was chowing down super fast, I wouldn’t feel anything. I would numb out. And everything would feel ok. I was comforted. 2 minutes later I would regret my choice and tell myself that I would start eating healthy tomorrow.

It was a horrible cycle for me. It felt like I wouldn’t be ok, I wouldn’t be comfortable unless I binged on unhealthy food. I hated the habit, and I hated myself for doing it. But I wanted that comfort. I craved it. And I didn’t know how else to find it.

I was, far underneath the surface, telling myself that there was no other way that I could be comforted, no other way I could be safe and make it through the day. I needed to overeat.

On my journey to healthy I am realizing that food cannot be my comfort. This is one of the very hardest things for me to work through. Because when I’m having a bad moment, or a bad day, I want that comfort of food. I really do still want it sometimes. And I just have to keep working through that.

Food cannot be what I turn to for strength. Food is also not the enemy, healthy food is important. It is fuel for my body. A necessity yes, but not an obsession. I am working on retraining my mind to believe this. I am working on believing more and more that my comfort is in Christ and love.

Because I have decided that food cannot be my comforter anymore.

- – -Journey to Healthy is a series that chronicles my steps toward fitness, weight loss, and health. This journey is a tough and beautiful one. And I share about it here several times a week.

Journey to Healthy: Women, Food & God

“Our relationship to food is an exact microcosm of our relationship to life itself. I believe we are walking, talking expressions of our deepest convictions; everything we believe about love, fear, transformation and God is revealed in how, when and what we eat.” – Geneen Roth

I wasn’t too sure about this book at first. Roth’s approach to one’s relationship with food is pretty drastic. But I came around to it. I learned so much about relating to food (and myself) through reading this book.

Roth’s general beliefs: Get to the bottom of your issues that you are medicating food with, work on those issues, feed your body what it naturally craves. It’s a lot more complicated than that, and it sounds strange. Let me explain a bit further, Roth believes that if you truly work through your issues you can get to a place where you are at peace with food. Then you steady your mind on eating when you are hungry, without distractions, and until you are satisfied. Interesting right? It sounds like you should just be able to eat oreos all day long– you know, it seems like it’s easy. But Roth insists that once you work through your issues and problems, you no longer have to comfort yourself with food. Meaning that you crave food when you are hungry, and it’s generally healthier food.

I think it sounds fantastic. It sounds natural, normal and healthy. And the more I have thought about it, the more I realize that I am working toward this. Boy howdy, I am not there yet. I know that right now I still need my daily calorie limit, healthy foods within that limit, and hardcore exercise that I’m still making myself do 6 days a week (since it’s not yet fun, but kicking my tush). However, I really think that as I work through my issues I am also working toward peace with food. It’s quite the process. But I believe that the more I work at it, the sooner it will happen. I am very much convicted that this is vital to my success and ability to persevere for the long haul.

The biggest concept I would say I learned about in this book is working through things without binging on food. Roth writes “Compulsive eating is an attempt to avoid the absence (of love, comfort, knowing what to do) when we find ourselves in the desert of a particular moment, feeling, situation. In the process of resisting the emptiness, in the act of turning away from our feelings, of trying again to lose the same twenty, fifty, or eighty pounds, we ignore what could utterly transform us.” She also writes “…compulsive eating is basically a refusal to be alive. No matter what we weigh, those of us who are compulsive eaters have anorexia of the soul.” Yikes! This is so true for me. When I was abusing food, I was abusing myself. And refusing to truly live my life.

Just a couple other thoughts: “You might as well learn how to pay attention now. How to inhabit the life you’ve chosen. How to take up every inch of your skin… You already have everything you need to be content.” Man- yes!

Final thought: “The shape of your body obeys the shape of your beliefs about love, value and possibility.” Yes. Mhm.

— Journey to healthy is a series that chronicles my steps toward fitness, weight loss and health. This journey is a tough but beautiful one. And I write about it here several times a week.

A Girl and Her Bear

Remember my friend Abby that I lived with in the safe house last summer?

Well she’s in Italy for this spring semester. Which is awesome! I’m so excited for her. That girl is an adventurer at heart.

Before she left we went on an IKEA adventure (you know how I’m a sucker for that place.) I wanted to get Abby a going away present. And I found the perfect thing. A stuffed bear that cost me a whopping 75 cents. Win! I asked her to pose with him in Italy and send photos home. And I also asked her pose with it in IKEA. A lot.

You have to keep life interesting and fun, you know? Go on adventures and be silly. Explore. Laugh.

Here are the IKEA adventures of a girl and her bear (images are fuzzy because I was laughing so hard I couldn’t hold my phone steady, so I’m not pleased with the quality. But they just have to be shared):

Just two kids venturing about. I know they have a bright future together!

Miss you mucho already my dear friend! Italy is lucky!

Journey to Healthy: No Snooze, You Lose

Sleep and I have always had a love hate relationship. In my adult life it has felt like most of the time I love it and it rejects me.

I was sleeping for an average of 4 hours a night.

Up until I started my journey to healthy I tried all sorts of things to sleep better (legal ones, mind you) and nothing seemed to work.

It only fed my problem of being unhealhty and exhausted.

And I learned on my first week of journey to healthy that not sleeping much was directly correlated to wanting to make bad choices with food, and not feeling too hot about life in general. It is very difficult to try to lose weight and get healthy when you’re not sleeping enough. And I said to myself “Amanda this must be remedied.”

So here’s what I did:

Step No. 1: make time for sleep. I had to cut a couple things out.

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Step No. 2: keep eating healthy and getting regular genuinely good work outs in.

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Step No. 3: get on a  prescribed, mild, non-addictive sleep medication. (I know that’s the scandalous part of this equation. I had tried everything else though, I tell ya. It had to be done.)

=

Blissful, beautiful, restful, incredible sleep 90% of nights. Most nights I’m sleeping about 8 hours. (So thankful!) It is life changing. I have much more of an ability to make better choices about eating and working out. Plus I just have more energy overall during my waking hours. Life looks a whole lot brighter.

I’m not a college kid anymore. I’m an adult who’s trying to get healthy. And I know now that sleep is essential to becoming that healthy adult.

I am so very happy to get my sleep on.

- – -Journey to Healthy is a series that chronicles my steps toward fitness, weight loss, and health. This journey is a tough and beautiful one. And I share about it here several times a week.

Journey to Healthy: Food is Love

When I began my journey to healthy, one of the things I made myself do was work on figuring out the roots of my problems with food. Because in order to fix a problem sometimes you have to fully understand it.

One of the realizations I had is one that is kindof hard to explain so hopefully the message comes across as I intend it to: as a child it somehow clicked in my mind that food is love. Meal time brings everyone together. It means that we all sit down in one place and connect with one another. And in my mind, this attributed to my affinity for food in excess. Because food was a component to connecting, to being together and love. 

For example, here’s one side of my family over this past Christmas:

Yes that’s a lot of people. Yes we’re all related. No everyone is not even included in this photo. Yes my cousin’s little daughter is glaring at me (she’s precious though, promise).

Do you know what we ate that morning as we do every year? Homemade donuts made by my Aunt Jane. (Making donuts for all those people every year? The woman deserves props.) They are fried and fatty and one of the most delicious things one could ever put in their mouth. Also, my huge family whom I love dearly is all together in one room. It’s loud and chaotic and fun and hilarious. It puts so much joy in my heart. And what I know is that at some point at functions like this, my mind resolved to the idea that food correlates with family and community. And I took that too far without knowing it. Overeating bad foods was somehow something that I did in part to get back to that feeling of being with family whom I love.

Here’s something that the other side of my family does at Christmas:

Ebelschiever feast. (I know I’m spelling that wrong. Don’t tell my Grandpa the proud Dane. He’d be ashamed of me.) Ebelschiever are round pancakes. They are fluffy and wonderful. One can put a variety of things on them: brown sugar, powdered sugar, syrap or jelly. It is the champion of carbs. And when I eat them I am hanging out with my sarcastic, fun, and sweet family. Eating this meal is always a time filled with laughter and warmth. And I swear that for me, it contributed to understanding that food is love. And I began to overeat more because I was trying to get to that feeling.

Now I know that this is not true for most people. I also know that it is not an excuse, but rather something that has to be worked through. And I’m not about to say that we shouldn’t eat together. Because I believe that eating together is important.

One of the things I’m working is retraining my mind to believe: food is not love. Being together with people you love is love. I am learning to focus more on relationships when I’m with people, rather than the food on my plate.

Because for me, food can’t be love any longer.

- – -Journey to Healthy is a series that chronicles my steps toward fitness, weight loss, and health. This journey is a tough and beautiful one. And I share about it here several times a week.

Whitney & Etta

Whitney Houston and Etta James were two of my favorite songstresses. Seriously, just so stinking talented.

The music world is better because they contributed to it.

Here are a couple of my favorite Whitney and Etta songs:

So ‘long ladies. You will be missed.

This is the Current Favorite

The new song that’s getting the most play on my musical devices at the moment:

Journey to Healthy: Passing the 1 Month Mark

Last Tuesday I passed the one month mark on my journey to healthy. Woohoo! I am so grateful that I charged through the first month. I know that no month will be easy, but the first one is a big one.

Here are a couple of the things that I learned:

I had to work through the hunger. This was huge for me. For the first month I was often so hungry that I felt nauseus. It was distracting. I was feeding my body a very healthy amount of calories and healthy foods (as I still am now), but my stomach needed time to shrink. My stomach and I were at war. If I was by myself I would literally look down and say to it “I am feeding you well. Be patient. Please.” And then I would pray “God please either help my stomach to stay full or help me to be able to ignore it.” In my weaker moments I would curse it of course “Why do you hate me stomach? What is wrong with you!?” I wanted to abandon it, and there were a few times that I wanted to abandon ship altogether. I learned that I had seriously stretched my stomach and it had gotten used to being fed horrible foods in horrible excess on a far too regular basis. I had abused my poor little tummy and it needed time to heal. And truly I wondered if I was always going to feel this hungry. How could I maintain this if I felt nauseus so much of the time? But then, as I neared the one month mark, I realized one morning that I had altogether skipped my morning snack… Because I wasn’t starving. I noticed it all that day, that I would get slightly hungry when it was time for my next meal, but I didn’t have hunger pains. And then the next day too. It was awesome. I felt so much more freedom once I finally got out of the “constant starve” phase. And I realized that all the other times that I have tried to diet in my adult life, I couldn’t make it even two weeks for many reasons, but two big reasons 1: my lack of determination and prayer over it & 2: I couldn’t work through the hunger of the first few weeks. I had to work through the hunger, and I’m so, so glad I did.

Realizing and working through the roots of my issues with food. I just finished this book. I have learned a lot from ‘Women, Food & God’. (I’ll write a post about it soon.) It was a process in the first month, and will continue to be– working through my true issues with food. I have to get to the root of it. It is not an easy thing, but I know it’s a big component to truly being healthy and staying that way.

Mastering my eating habits. For me, it’s not just about eating healthy and staying within a healthy calorie limit. It’s the little parts of my eating habits that are actually big parts. It’s about figuring out what healthy foods taste good to me so I’m not punishing myself. It’s also about timing my meals in a way that works best for my schedule. I tried for about a week to not eat carbs after 3pm. I know it has worked wonders for some people. But right now, it just doesn’t work for me. I have a lot of day left to live after 3pm, and healthy carbs like fruit help me out big time. It’s also about trying new things so that I don’t get bored with what I’m eating. I am learning to do what works best for me. Because it’s about mastering my eating habits. It’s personal. And the only person that it has to work for is myself.

Working out = pushing myself. I will write more about working out soon, but one of the biggest things that I learned in the first month is how important it is to push myself… to try harder, to sink into the moves I’m doing, to keep going when I’m tired and sore, to give it all I’ve got, and not just go through the motions. I have learned to make my workout time truly count. Every day I’m tempted not to, but I have to push through that. I have a long ways to go before I am a “fit” person, but it all comes from working hard when I’m working out.

Remembering this is spiritual. I recently wrote about how I need God in everything, and especially in this. Every day I have to remember that this is spiritual, and I have to stay connected with Him. It is totally imperative for me.

This ain’t easy. There is nothing easy about my journey to healthy. Literally nothing. Some days I just plain don’t feel like doing this anymore. But I have decided that this getting healthy thing is not a choice at all- it’s what I’m doing. No choice. No turning back. Sometimes it just sucks, and it just feels like a plain old uphill battle. But I refuse to let myself go back to what I was before. No. Going. Back.

Hey… I think I feel better! At the end of the first month I realized how much better I feel in so many ways. I feel better because my jeans are a bit looser. I feel better because I have more stamina. I feel better because I’m working out every part of my body and strengthening it daily. I feel better because I don’t feel bloated or overly full. For so many reasons, I just plain feel better.

I know that every day my body, mind, spirit and heart are getting just a little bit healthier. And it feels so good, and so right.

Here’s to Month 2!

- – -Journey to Healthy is a series that chronicles my steps toward fitness, weight loss, and health. This journey is a tough and beautiful one. And I share about it here several times a week.

A Love Letter To You

Dear Pomegranate Seeds Readers,

Happy Valentine’s Day!

For some of you it’s a day that you have greatly anticipated. For others of you the mere thought of it makes your stomach crawl.

At my age and position I look at Valentine’s Day and am choosing to think: why not spread a little extra love around today? Tell people I love them, do something nice for a stranger, be a little kinder etc. Things I’m always at least trying to work on, but it seems like today is an especially good day to focus more on this stuff.

So even if all the Valentine’s displays make you want to crawl under the covers with a big box of bon bons, I say try to make the most of today by sharing some love. And do it again tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that…

First thing of the day for yours truly is to tell you sweet readers that I have love in my heart for you, and I hope you have a beautiful day!

Love,

Amanda

P.S. Maybe you should also make this today? Even though I’m the Journey to Healthy gal I can recommend that you allow yourself a treat in moderation on Valentine’s Day! Let me know how it is. By this time next year I hope to be in my maintenance phase, at which time you’ll find me enjoying a small one of these on V-Day!