Sojourn: Day Nine

  Today, I've officially lost 12 pounds.  I weighed in at a whopping 201.5.

  I'm also feeling it a bit today, I'm a bit tired slightly dragging but that could be due to a few middle of the night wake-ups as well as no coffee to balance out the tiredness.

  As I began this journey, I had my doubts as to if it would mean anything to anybody and if it mattered but I've received so much encouragement, love and comments since I began that I see it's worth more than I thought to many people.  It's sometimes hard to see it mattering when you throw it all into cyber-space and hope it lands somewhere, so for those of you who've ben encouraging and loving me through with kind words and prayers, I say thank you!

  When I look at what I'm learning through this process I am astounded that it took something so drastic to show me how ridiculous I've been with my eating as well as my addiction to coffee.

  Today as I reflect on everything, I see how I've allowed my  coffee drinking to effect my sleep.  This may not come as a shock to many of you but it has been a revelation to me.  For years now, I've ben drinking a lot of coffee, so much so that I can trick myself into thinking I am not tired when I am.  I've been accepting less and less sleep because I didn't think I needed it when I had the drug of caffeine pumping through my veins.  Now I realize and feel (especially today) how my body really is doing on less sleep.  Sure I can muster the energy to go through my day and get things done but I am dragging on little sleep.

  I see that I've been forcing my body to do something it can't sustain...on a drug.  Now don't get me wrong, I can't wait to get my morning pick-me-up February 1st and I will enjoy every second of my full blast dark roast cup of amazing java (can you tell I miss it?).  My point is that I was drinking so much of the stuff that I would literally lose sleep over it.  I now can see how un-healthy my caffeine intake really was.  I would grab a cup at 8pm and be up til 1, wake up at 6:30 or 7 grab another cup and do it all over again.

  My body is not built for that.  Nor is yours.

  Then, as I'm thinking about waste and money and the hungry in our world, it's even more convicting because of the money spent on the coffee I was consuming, that I didn't need.  We in American consume many things we simply do not need in portions that are way too large!  It's mind boggling.

 What if we decided to eat only the food we needed and a little bit that we wanted?  What if we did the same with coffee, soda, beer, wine, and juice?  Would our wallets, lives and hearts see a difference?  I think the answer is yes.  Yes in fact I think they would.  We are not people of moderation but we are people of over-consumption.

  We feel the need (myself included) to stuff our faces when we watch TV, yet we are mindlessly consuming hundreds of calories and barely remember what it was we ate.  We feel the need to constantly have a cup of something in our hand (more often than not it's NOT water), or candy in our mouths.  Then we complain about our weight and complain that we don't have money.

  My favorite phrase when I was grazing and hungry was: "there is nothing to eat in this house" yet I just looked in a cupboard FULL OF FOOD...there just wasn't something I wanted to get fat on is all...or nothing "worth the calories".


  LOTS of learning I'm going through.  Tomorrow, I will re-highlight my friends and their efforts to raise awareness and funds for hunger as well as AIDS in our world, because while I was stuffing my face, there were kids dying of starvation...