I feel a little frustrated.

I have stated, and am sincere about, the fact that I don't care if I'm never "skinny", but that I merely want to know I'm healthy and being a good steward of this body I have been given.

That said, the scale has been stuck at about 353 for two solid weeks now. I'm doing a good job of staying close to 1,800 calories a day, and I've been working out HARD. Yesterday on the elliptical it was much harder than normal, but I pushed through it and more sweat exited my body than I knew my overworked glands could produce.

It's frustrating, because in the first 3 weeks I dropped 17 pounds- I was even 349.8 one morning when I weighed in. Then, I leveled out to about 353 despite upping the intensity of my workouts. I can say I've been less strict with food, but I was only eating like 400 calories by 6 pm for a bit and now I'm into a schedule. I'm pretty honest about my eating, and I don't think that literally 5 cashews (about 70 calories) caused me to stop losing weight.

As a side note here, I am in the works of seeing about visiting an endocrinologist. A doctor friend who has been practicing for upwards of 25-30 years recommended that I look into metphormin (sp?) and get specialized tests to really look for possible thyroid and blood sugar problems. I can say that I feel hungry ALL OF THE TIME! Even after a meal, I'm still hungry. And not my-mouth-wants-food hunger, but actual stomach-pains hunger. But if I ate until I no longer felt hungry I'd creep back up to pressing 400 pounds. That's scary.

As another aside, I do need to schedule my 5 personal trainer sessions at 24-Hour Fitness; I will work with them to figure out how many calories a day my body actually needs. A normal woman's body will go into starvation mode if she eats under 1,000 calories and actually burn muscle and store fat. I know that on The Biggest Loser Jillian told a 240 pound woman that she needed to be eating at least 1,800 calories a day to keep her metabolism revved up. Since I weigh 110 pounds more, I wonder if I'm eating too little. But then I checked an online BMR calculator (it only takes height, weight, and age into consideration and I know that I am more muscular and have a large frame, so this is just a rough estimate) and it said my body needs basically 2,400 calories a day to maintain this size. SO... ARGH! I need professional help to figure my body out. It just sucks to not be losing weight after pushing my body beyond all limits!

I know that what matters is that I press on, and know that I'm working hard, but I want my physical body to represent the internal changes going on. Tami two months ago would have done 5 minutes on the elliptical, found it more tiresome than normal, and begged Jason to leave the gym because she felt miserable. Tami last night pressed through, reducing the resistance and incline by 1-2 levels until she hit her second wind at around 13 minutes, and then upped them higher than where they were when she started. I want my body to reflect that hard work!

This brings up a point I have often pondered... as a follower of Jesus Christ, I know that Christians tend to focus on their struggles. We all have at least one area that we struggle with in particular throughout our lives. As I've said, dealing with painful rejection through food addiction has been mine. The consequence is that my area of "sin struggle" is obvious as soon as you see me.

This is really tough. On the one hand, people judge me all of the time. I see it in their eyes. Even some "godly" Christians get a film of loathing and disgust on their face when they look at me, because they just can't fathom how any person could be so weak as to let themselves look this way. To be fair, non-Christians have done it, too, and many others have been loving and accepting regardless of their faith system.

A friend of mine found my blog yesterday, and she opened up about some of her weight struggles on her own blog. I have to share a quote with you, because when I read it this morning it resonated deeply with me:

I can't help but wonder what we would all look like if our spiritual struggles were evident through our physical bodies, and how much more level the course might be as we run this race together.

I love this. I've thought a lot about how my sin is evident, hanging in an excess of 200 pound son my body. What I've never thought about is this:

• What if every person who is prone to constant issues with anger had their skin turn various shades of red in proportion to their struggle?
  
  
• What if those struggling with envy and greed had the same skin issue, but in the color green?
  
  
• What if people steeped in pride developed hideous warts and nasty open sores all over their body to represent how ugly pride is to God?
  
  
• What if Christians who condemn the gays, and "heathens" who live together without being married, yet who are sleeping with their "godly" Christian boyfriend who is studying to be a pastor, or who are a man who is addicted to porn and masturbation, had a big flashing red A on their forehead and the word "hypocrite" covered their body like a thousand tattoos?
  
  
• What if "Christians" who worship their religion and their own quest for personal holiness possessed an overpowering stench to all who came within 100 feet of them, the same way their rotten souls smell to God?

I could go on for awhile more, but I think I've made my point. I would hope that instead of condemning those people as a hopelessly lost cause we would come alongside them, get over our own fear that their blatant sin would rub off on us, and encourage them to run this race toward eternity even harder, leaving the past behind and pressing on toward what is ahead.

I doubt any other sin will ever be quite as evident as loving food more than Jesus Christ, but it's something to really ponder. I'd love to hear your insight, and I thank those of you "little Christs" once again who are coming alongside me, refusing to fear the ugliness that is my food addiction, and pressing on toward the prize with me. And if you're not a Christian, it may sound crazy, but I'm sure the points I made have application in your life, too, regardless of your faith stance.