Or, Changes

In May of 2004, I decided it was time for a radical overhaul in my life.

I went on a diet.  At my max, I topped the scales around 250 pounds.

My cholesterol was inching higher and higher.  I was susceptible to high blood pressure and diabetes.

My culinary choices were keeping me from a healthy lifestyle.

I’ve always been overweight.  But, I realized, with two little girls that I owed it to them to do something about it.

I began a rigorous diet and eventually lost in the neighborhood of 70 pounds.

I began to exercise.  I began to run.

As a result, I began to look at life and the beauty of living a whole lot differently.

That was a huge accomplishment for the guy in the past whose idea of a healthy meal were extra onions on a hamburger and whose exercise regimen consisted of running to the refrigerator between commercial breaks. (I had wanted a house where the living room television was viewable from the kitchen. That would have eliminated any rash decisions of choosing what to eat before the game resumes. But, alas,it was not to be.)

I have since leveled off around 200 pounds.  I would like to lose that extra 20 back and am resolving again to eat healthier.

My running suffered a huge blow toward the end of last year.  After topping off at 10 miles, I hit the wall.  But, slowly, I am building myself back to where I was.

The reason this is part of this series is because of the added perspective living the healthy lifestyle has given me.

I began to be concerned about what I ate.  I began to be concerned about how the additives and preservatives in food contribute to the breaking down of the human body.

I began to be interested in organic and whole foods.

I realized that diet and exercise corrected many of my physical problems and that dependence upon pharmaceutical companies was unnecessary.

This new healthy lifestyle was the impetus for my environmental shift.

What’s more I began to ask myself some questions about the rest of my life.  If I could benefit from a physical makeover, what about a spiritual one?

Are there parts of my spiritual diet that need to be questioned?  Are there some long held beliefs that need to be overhauled?

Is Calvinism viable?

What about Democrats? Do they know anything?

I began to open myself to ask questions about every aspect of my belief system.

It seems a tremendous jump from a diet to questioning all of my beliefs.

But what that change of lifestyle did was open me up to the realization that I had been living one of aspect of my life so wrongly.  So maybe I was doing the same in others.

I am 75% of the man I used to be.

Next: The prayer that transformed everything.