I've finally made it. I'm a pastor. I've spent the last 8 years of my life working towards this goal. Here I am!
I've spent the last 8 years filling up my mind and my soul to the point that they're ready to overflow. That's a good thing. Unfortunately I've also filled my stomach.
It started out with the freshman 15. Then the sophomore 15. Then the junior 15. . . . and here I am.
It's not hard to see how I got here. For six years in a row I ate in a buffet style cafeteria for just about every meal. Oh yeah, those cafeterias also had soda. Somewhere along the line I discovered beer. A little farther down the line I lost my other ACL. Shortly thereafter I found out what micro-fracture was. Oh, and I spent at least 60 hours a week at a desk doing school work. All this worked together to put me in a pretty unhealthy state.
Some of those things were out of my control, but that's no excuse. What I have been I able to control, I've failed to control. I still can't control everything. I have arthritic knees that won't let me exercise the way I want to. I'm still probably going to spend about 60 hours a week working with my mind. Those things aren't going to change. But what I can control and what I'm going to change is what I put in my body.
Here's the way I'm going to change that:
With some encouragement from my wife, I decided to use the Whole30 program. Except that I don't plan to stop at 30. Well, I will stop for a day or two to get my fill of all the delicious things I can't have while I'm on the program. But I plan to continue using this plan from time to time until I've done 150 days of it. At that point I'll evaluate how things are going and whether or not things need to change.
It's currently 4:08 on Day 11. Day 11 is supposedly the day on which a person is most likely to quit whole 30. It's easy to quit on day 11 because the novelty has worn off and you haven't exactly seen a ton of the benefits that you're supposed to see on this program. I'm definitely feeling that way. I've got tons of meat and vegetables in my fridge, but I don't feel like eating them. I've got to preach two different sermons on Saturday, and I haven't yet started on one of them. I would love to grab a quesarito or a couple slices of pizza and some form of caffeine to keep me focused for the next few hours so I can get a lot of work done. But I'm not going to. I'm strong enough to get it all done without artificial energy. But that doesn't make it fun.
Supposedly day 12 is supposed to bring the boundless energy that was promised at the beginning of the program. I sure hope it does.
Wish me luck!
