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December 23, 2011 in
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Entertainment Center
http://tallahassee.craigslist.org/fuo/2758587043.html
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Sleeper Sofa
http://tallahassee.craigslist.org/fuo/2758600248.html
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Dining Table
http://tallahassee.craigslist.org/fuo/2758611533.html
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Dresser and End Table
http://tallahassee.craigslist.org/fuo/2758620837.html
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Chair
http://tallahassee.craigslist.org/fuo/2758630122.html
May 11, 2011. 398 lbs.
November 11, 2011. 331.8 lbs.
You can see more pictures of this journey at my Facebook photo album, Worth The Weight.
You can click on each picture to make them larger.
Furniture For Sale
I am selling a few items before my move to Asheville. Here are pictures of the items and links to their listing on Craig’s list. Let me know if you are interested in any of them.
Greg.
Planting Roots in Asheville
When I was sixteen years old I felt the Holy Spirit’s call on me to full-time gospel ministry. As I have developed and grown in that call through the last seventeen years God has blessed me with various ministry opportunities. Looking back over those years I can see where God has allowed me to experience many different seasons all filled with great joys and, at times, biting pain. It has been through those experiences that my faith has been strengthened and my will to make His renown known, assured.
For roughly two years now I have felt a stirring within me to plant a church. When I first felt this call I set my sights on Charlotte, NC. Up until a month ago Charlotte was strong on my radar. So strong, in fact, that last year I had put a deposit down on an apartment there. But through God’s sovereignty I have not moved. This desire of mine to plant a church has been bathed in prayer and counsel. It is through that prayer, counsel, and God’s gracious hand that I realize I have more to learn before I plant anywhere as a lead pastor.
At the end of next month I will be moving to Asheville, NC to be a part of a church my friend, Lance Crawford, is planting there called, Grassroots. Lance’s vision for the church in Asheville corresponds with mine for Charlotte. When I first heard about Lance’s desire to plant in Asheville, I was excited for him and his team but never considered being a part of Grassroots outside of supporting them through prayer. I felt God had called me to Charlotte and that was where I was going to be headed. But, in the spirit of Proverbs 16:9, the steps of my plans are being established be God.
For about a month now I have been wrestling with a desire within me to move to Asheville and be a part of Grassroots. This desire has completely taken me by surprise. As I began to pray about the possibility of moving to Asheville and being a part of Grassroots I felt the Lord pressing upon me that it wasn’t about the location but about the message; the Gospel.
I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am to be a part of Grassroots and sharing the love of Jesus to Asheville. This next season of my life will be unlike any other. I am excited to see how God will move in Asheville, and through that, move in me.
Greg.
Six Month Update
Six months ago, on May 11, 2011, I started my journey to a healthier lifestyle with the AdvoCare 24-Day Challenge. You can read more about my results from that challenge here. In some ways it is hard to believe six months have passed already. I can remember when I first started this journey I wanted to lose a pound or two a week. “Only a pound or two a week!,” I would frustratingly think. But I couldn’t be more thankful for the slow, steady, and healthy way in which I have been losing weight. I have tried the quick fix diets only to be back to my starting weight, if not heavier, within days of stopping the diet. Being able to change my eating habits and getting regular exercise has allowed me to be smart about my weight loss.
As of this morning I have lost sixty-six pounds and thirty-nine total inches. When I stop and think about that I just shake my head. I have always wanted to lose weight, but was never able to imagine myself losing any significant amount of weight. Honestly, if you would have told me I would be down sixty-plus pounds in six months, I would have figured you too be a very optimistic person. But, man, I am here. Crazy!
Measurements
(Beginning/Today)
Biceps: 20″ / 15″
Neck: 20″ / 18″
Chest: 62″ / 54″
Waist: 54″ / 44″
Hip: 56″ / 49.5″
Thigh: 32.5″ / 27″
Calf: 18.5″ / 16.5″
Total: 263″ / 224″
As people started to physically see a difference in my appearance, they would ask me how I have been able to lose the weight. So I thought I would share some of the changes I have made in my life to help in the weight loss. I will give a brief look at each of these with plans to write a more in-depth blog post for each soon.
AdvoCare 24-Day Challenge. It all began here. The weight I lost in those 24 days was the catalyst I needed to continue on my journey. I can’t say enough about the challenge or AdvoCare products. The other products from AdvoCare I use are: Catalyst, Omegaplex, Meal Replacement Shake, LeptiLean, MNS Max E, and Spark!
H2O. This is 95% of what I drink. Literally. I never thought I would be able to say that, ever. I have always needed something to drink with flavor whenever I ate a meal. Not anymore. Truthfully, as weird as this sounds, I actually crave water.
Nutrition. This is a massive part of my changes. They say in weight loss its 80% nutrition and 20% exercise. I used to have it the other way around thinking I could work off of super-sized fries and double-cheese burger. Not so. In past if I was eating something green it was probably a candy of some sort. Now, just about every meal I have has a green vegetable in it. Recently I have been concentrating my nutrition around a Paleo diet. I would say I am eating Paleo roughly 85-90% of the time.
Exercise. This has been key in my weight loss. I have had weeks where I would eat well, but didn’t exercise and I won’t lose much weight, if any at all. I try to do a cardio workout at least six days a week with muscle development workouts mixed in.
LoseIt! I have never been a fan of journaling my food intake. But for some reason I love using the LoseIt! app on my phone and web to track what I eat. You can invite friends to join in and track each others progress. It has been a good motivator when I start to crave something unhealthy. Knowing it will show up on daily and weekly tracker has discouraged some food choices on more then one occasion.
Holy Spirit. I am no fool to think that I could do any of this without the power of holy spirit within me. Left to my own vices I would keep eating how I have been without a care in the world. But I knew that my previous eating and health habits were only hindering me and my quality of life. I have much more to say on this in a later post.
Thank you all for your encouragement along the way and for the road ahead, it never gets old.
Greg.
Foto Fantastic 5
I neglected to post any pictures last week, so this week might have a few more pictures then normal. Oh, and I all but stopped using Instagram now. I have found an app for my phone I like much better, Snapsneed. Enjoy.
Greg.
Foto Fantastic
One of my biggest inspirations in photography is Chase Jarvis. While he uses expensive equipment I will probably never be in the same room with, much less ever use, he also takes awesome pictures with something as “cheap” as his iPhone. He has said, “The best camera is the one that’s with you.” (He even has a book about that very saying.) Recently I noticed that he did a photo project in New York where he would take pictures with various cameras and post them on a wall where the public could view. He would then change them out every few days and add new ones. I thought the idea was really creative and wished I could do something like that.
Then I gained some more inspiration from another photographer I am always learning from, Elizabeth Birdwell Photography. She is an Instagram queen and takes some super cool pictures with the app. I have used the app for sometime now, but only sparingly. The past two or three weeks I have become more and more familiar with all that Instagram is. Only last week did I realize you could ‘follow’ people and comment on their photos. There is a whole community on Instagram that I was unaware of.
The photography bug has been biting me for awhile and I have been taking a lot of pictures with my iPhone. I have taken inspiration from both Chase’s New York project and Beth’s Instagraming and created a new project on this blog called Foto Fantastic. Using the Instagram app, each week I will post pictures I have taken from the previous week and post them as a picture collage here on the blog. I hope to post the pictures every Monday or round bout close to then.
So, without further ado, here is the first installment of Foto Fantastic. Enjoy.
Greg.
Be Mastered By the Word
Earlier today I posted this to my twitter:
“The aim is never to become a master of the Word, but to be mastered by it.” DA Carson, on devotional vs objective bible study; do both.
I realize that sometimes 140 characters is not enough to convey a point. I believe this is one of the times. After I posted the above tweet I felt it needed further explanation.
This qoute is from an excellent book I am reading by John Piper and D.A. Carson, The Pastor as Scholar & The Scholar as Pastor: Reflections on Life and Ministry. In this particular section, D.A. Carson, the professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, is writing from the perspective of his life in academia.
I was drawn to this quote because Carson was summing up a subject I have struggled with from time-to-time in the past and have been dealing with recently during my studies in seminary. Carson was speaking to the idea that there are essentually two ways people read or study the bible: devotionally and obejectively. Devotional study usually envolves simply reading the scripture with little to no study helps. Objective study envolves reading the scripture with an objective in mind, typically employing a few study helps (commentaries, dictionaries, etc.).
He pointed out that it can become common place for someone to start reading scripture objectively and slowly lose sight of their devotional reading. Or, when they are reading their bible devotionally, their mind tends to be drawn towards seeing those scriptures objectively. He points out that many students have come to him and other professors asking how to remedy this overlap and keep the two seperate. His answer:
…forcefully put, is to resist this disjunction, to eschew it, to do everthing in your power to destroy it. Scripture remains Scripture, it is still the Word of God before which (as Isaiah reminds us) we are to tremble — the very words are to revere, treasure, digest, meditate on, and hide in our hearts (minds?), whether we are reading the Bible at 5:30 a.m. at the start of a day, or preparing an assignment for an exegesis class at 10:00 p.m. …
…So when you read “devotionally,” keep your mind engaged; when you read “critically” (i.e., with more diligent and focused study, deploying a panoply of “tools”), never, ever, forget whose Word this is. The aim is never to become a master of the Word, but to be mastered by it.
As someone who often finds himself trying to seperate these two ways of reading the bible, whether in personal or academic study, I need to remember that the bible is ‘living and active.’ While I desire to dig deeper into God’s Word, I pray that I will allow that very Word to dig deep into me.
Greg.
Setting A Course
A short while back I mentioned in this post that I would outline my new workout routine, sans gym. As the weeks have passed since writing that post I have had a dickens of a time getting a tractor tire. I will keep looking, but recently, as in yesterday, a different approach to my healthier lifestyle has emerged.
A friend of mine asked if I wanted to be accountability partners in our pursuit of living a healthier lifestyle. I jumped at the chance. To be honest I have not been very consistent with my eating and exercise recently. I have not done P90X, as I was originally doing, in roughly a week or so. I was being more and more lax in my food choices, although the choices were not horribly bad, they weren’t on par with what I had been eating. Because of my recent lack of discipline I have been stuck at around 44 – 48 pounds lost. I haven’t been able to break that 50 pound barrier.
In talking about what we both wanted to accomplish in the months ahead we wrote out our goals and plans of attack. I wanted to share mine with you all in the hopes that you will, ever so graciously, keep me accountable as well. These goals will certainly change from time to time, and truthfully, may be a little ambitious in some ways. I will adjust as need be, but it has been good to actually see these goals written down and not simply floating around in my brain tissue.
Goals: (keeping in mind I have lost 44 lbs since May 11, 2011)
- Break the 50 pound mark by my four month anniversary, this Sunday, September 11, 2011.
- 100 pounds lost by January 11, 2012 (eight month anniversary)
- 150 pounds lost by May 11, 2012 (one-year anniversary)
- 173 pounds lost by my birthday next year, September 14, 2012. That will put me at my goal weight of 225 lbs.
Eating Plan:
- 2,755 calories a day.
- Focus on lean proteins, fruits, vegetables, and nuts in my diet.
- Try to eat the majority of my carbs and sugars in the morning.
- Lower my salt intake, no additional salt added to food.
- Water only! (with the occasionally exception of a diet soda when a restaurant’s water is horrid).
- Limit my grain, dairy, and legumes intake, think Paleo when making food choices.
- Keep a daily diary of my food intake using the Lose It! app and website.
Exercise Plan:
- Before I do anything, I want to spend time with the Lord. I have a tendency to plan my life and fit God in where I can, which ends up being no where most times. If I lose sight of this, my healthy lifestyle will become an idol.
- Thirty minutes of cardio everyday, except Sunday, my rest day.
- Modified P90X Lean Program, substituting extra cardio in replace of Yoga.
- Will have to wait until I loose more of my gut before I can complete the AB Ripper X.
- Rest from cardio and P90X on Sunday.
- Get an honest 7 hours of sleep each night.
Thank you for your continued support and encouragement.
Greg.
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