Exercise and Weight Loss Challenge

or alternatively, Win an In the Pink Mug

This started off as a challenge just for my KoD, but I want you all to feel challenged too, to change your life for the better. The KoD feels that he needs to lose some weight and get into better shape. I have refrained from agreeing or disagreeing with him. What? I am gonna tell my husband “yes you need to lose weight”?!! …. I want to live, darn it!! What I have told him repeatedly is that if he feels he needs to lose weight, instead of grumbling about it – DO something. Get to the gym, start a diet, be proactive. I, as you know, am a big walker. That’s had the kibosh put on it due to my current broken pinkie toe – but I am intending to get back into the power walking as soon as I can.

So, my darling KoD, and others who wish to take the In The Pink Challenge, here is my challenge for you.

Firstly – please post how much weight you want to lose / gain / or if you just want to maintain.

Secondly – you must choose at least one activity to help you with this weight loss – swimming, walking, going to the gym etc, and post your goals about how often you plan to do this.

Thirdly – keep track of what you are eating. I am not saying to go on a specific diet – but eating healthy and eating smart is certainly the way to go. (perhaps, my RD husband, you can give us some basic diet tips?) LiveStrong can help you keep a food and exercise diary.

Fourthly – Shabbat is your day to cheat on the diet and to not exercise. Use it wisely.

Every week I will be asking you to check in with me here on the blog, and let me know how the challenge is going. If you are a fellow blogger, please feel free to link to your blog here and write about the challenge and how you feel it’s helping you.

The Prize? The prize is feeling better about yourself, knowing you worked hard to get where you want to be. (excuse me a sec….yeah I know Trep gave away a mug, but not to me…ok Fine, push a little more why dontcha??!!)

Ahem…There will be a prize of an In The Pink mug. You, my readers, will vote for who most deserves it, once the challenge is over. That way there will be no accusations of nepotism.

Challenge will be 2 months long. Starting12.00 am EST September 1st 2009 and ending October 30th 2009 at 11.59pm EST. That gives you all a few days to get yourselves in gear.

So, who is joining us? Post below…….

ETA – I have been told this challenge is too difficult so I am suspending it…will create a new easier challenge soon.

Announcing

the launch of the In The Pink store at CafePress. Now you can enjoy your coffee from an In the Pink mug while wearing an In The Pink Hoodie….So come on over and swipe your credit card……Happy Shopping!!

Mixed Emotions

I didn’t want to see him the way he was. I wanted to remember him the way I saw him in my head. I wanted to remember his big belly hanging over his jeans with the bull belt buckle, his hairy chest with the gold chains around his neck peeking out from his shirt. Even the ever present cigarette dangling between his lips or his fingers. That was my father. That was how I wanted to remember him, but those memories were supplanted against my will.

I had spent almost every day of the past five weeks sat at his bedside having totally one-sided conversations. Conversations where I imagined what his responses would be, should be. I was an adult, yet still a teenager. I was too young for this, too fresh and too innocent, too newly born. But are we not all too young when a parent is dying? My innocence disappeared the moment I first saw him comatose and non-responsive, a wizened man in a biological shell. He was so young – how could God do this to him, to his family, to me?

Nothing prepared me. Words can only paint a picture, they don’t prepare you for the reality of a dead parent, lying there gone on his hospital bed. Move, I wanted to yell, let me at least see your chest move, prove to me that you can still breathe, dammit! Fight, fight so that you can walk me down the aisle, fight so that you can hold your future grandchildren, fight so I don’t have to name a son after you, fight fight fight – why did you give in? Why didn’t you tell God you weren’t ready? Why did you let yourself die?

I wanted to run from the room, but I was told I must say goodbye. What was the point? He could not hear me. His soul had departed from his body. I felt sick. My father was dead. When someone dies you are supposed to say Baruch Dayan HaEmmet – Blessed is the true judge. How does one say God is just and true when he takes a man in his early 40s, leaving behind a bunch of children? How do you tell a 19 year old girl that this was God’s will and she has to accept it? How does that girl accept that her dreams for any kind of relationship with her father are over? There is no comfort in words, in prayer, in funerals or mourning. Not for her.

This week this girl celebrates the barmitzvah of her son, the one she named for her father. His name lives on, his bloodline continues with many grandchildren. Still she carries pain in her heart for what could have been. What should have been. But it is the comfort of her husband and her children that bring her hope for the future. That have assuaged the pain of her loss and suffering.

Baruch Atah Hashem…..Shehechyanu Vekiyamnau Vehigiyanu LaZman Hazeh – Blessed are You, Eternal One our God, who has given us life, sustained us and brought us to this day.