Tag: Chick Fil A Cullman

Dieting

“I’m going on a diet, starting tomorrow. By summer I’m going to have to introduce myself. I’ll be so skinny y’all won’t recognize me.”

Mom. Circa 1998.

My Mom was a serial dieter. My Dad was not. The first time she tried to make them go on a diet Dad would just swing by Nonna’s house and eat with them on the way home from work. When he got ready to go on home he’d say something like, “I guess I better go home. It’s time for my salad.” He gained weight on that diet.

Sometimes Mom would go grocery shopping after she got fired up about dieting and she’d buy a bunch of SlimFast shakes, and those chocolate devil’s food cake snacks. And then us kids would promptly eat all of her desserts in the next two days.

Have you ever noticed how many trendy diets there are? When I was just a lad the Low Fat Diet was popular. That one just sounds like it makes since. Then the Atkins Diet seemed to be the rage when I was a teenager. Later on there were a bunch of diets that I never really fully understood because I was not dieting at the time. Like the Paleo Diet, the Keto Diet, the Carnivore Diet, and the Tight Rope Diet. I just made that last one up. These diets are like a bunch of religions. Sooner or later you’ll run into someone that is spreading the good news of this diet-whether or not they have been changed by it. The funny thing is all of these diets have a “prophet” that did lose a bunch of weight and now you can too. The problem is only the people who are sold out enough to actually make the diet a lifestyle see any progress. The bottom line is any diet works not because you are eating all organic Vienna sausages, or gluten free cabbage steaks, but because you are burning more calories than you are consuming. I don’t care how you want to slice it, that is hard. It is also not fun.

I believe the main reason most of us don’t enjoy dieting-even though we know it works-is because it does not work fast. It’s that time of year though. A lot of us are thinking about dieting whether we are talking about it or not. If you are interested I’d like to share some weight loss tips that have worked for me in the past.

The most success I ever had losing weight was getting the stomach flu. It was the first or second Christmas that Sarah and I were married. She got it first and was having a horrible time. I wasn’t feeling great either. I told her that I didn’t think that she could hold it as well as I could. I would like to thank the Lord for allowing me to get back home-we lived 11 hours away at the time- before it really hit me. I think this method worked so well because I had no control over it. No seems like an insufficient word. At any rate, I lost 15 pounds in less that a week on the flu diet.

I also had pretty good success losing weight when I had my first kidney stone. It was so uncomfortable that I hardly had an appetite. On top of that, once I found out that it was a kidney stone I quit drinking all the sugary drinks and starting drinking about five gallons of water a day. When I finally got rid of the stone I had also gotten rid of some extra weight I had been carrying.

The most practical way to lose weight though is to get rid of your car and cycling everywhere like my neighbor does. It seems like he didn’t really have any input making the final decision about not driving so I don’t know if he is enjoying it. But he is skinny.

If you have kept on a diet this far into January I am proud of you. I want to warn you that Chick-Fil-A is probably going to be giving away free breakfast in February and that might shake your plans up a little bit. They do that on purpose. That’s why I’m waiting til after February to start dieting for real. By Summertime y’all ain’t going to recognize me.

Downhill Uphill

“He went downhill fast.” That’s the kind of thing we say when someone gets terminally ill and doesn’t recover. It is a difficult thing to watch people go downhill. This is one of the reasons that I dread visiting nursing homes.

I was thinking about this phrase this morning as I was going down a steep hill on my bicycle. It really doesn’t take much effort at all to go downhill. Everyone can go fast downhill. You just keep it in the road, if that is the course that is set before you. But it takes real work to go uphill. And to go uphill fast demands an extraordinary amount of energy.

Do you ever get caught in this situation? You are riding shotgun and the driver answers the phone and the phone call plays through the vehicles sound system. You become an involuntary, nonspeaking party to the phone call. It is not that you are intruding by listening, but you would be intruding by talking. You go through something similar in real life watching people make decisions. I guess that is some how wrapped up in minding your own business. Anyway, It is hard for me to not pay attention to a conversation. By the way, do you ever quit listening to someone that is talking to you because you overhear a more interesting conversation off to the side? That is something that I struggle with. I won’t go into the finer details of what the conversation was about but this line stood out to me.

Things are going well but its all uphill.

I guess that means that they are putting in the effort. It sure sounded like it. And that is the point I am trying to make: making progress is really just a gentler way of saying that you are doing a lot of hard work and it is paying off. And you know, work is fun to watch. Especially if someone else is doing it.

I remember when we added an education wing to the church in Winchester. Cecil and I met every morning just down the hill from the church before we started our mowing rounds. I was not the early riser that I am today and Cecil always beat me to work. I’d pull in and start getting the truck and mowers in order before I almost had to drag him away from the construction site. He would be up there talking to the workers, pointing at things, telling them God knows what. Checking on that construction site really made him grin. Old men and little boys can watch bulldozers all day. I think we all like to watch work because it is inspiring.

I catch myself doing it now. Man they didn’t waste any time getting that house built! (Is this how you talk to yourself?) Progress is exciting. My community is patiently waiting for our Chick Fil A to be rebuilt. We are all emotionally invested in the progress of that building. We celebrate at each milestone. They got the sign on the wall!

When you are actually working on the construction site, or really any kind of project it can be difficult to appreciate your progress because you are constantly seeing it. Watching children grow up is a similar phenomenon. You hardly notice it when you see them every day, but the folks that just see them at Thanksgiving are shocked by their growth. If you are working on something that matters, it is good to remind yourself every once that your labor is not in vain.

Galatian 6:9 And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.