{Boyfriends} How to Show Your Affection When You Aren't Married - Part One

As young Christian women living in the world today, knowing how to go about relationships in a modern yet Christian way can be very difficult. How do you find a balance that isn't too "old fashioned" but incorporates all of the wholesome and traditional elements of finding your sole mate? How do you act around the man you think you want to marry?  How can you show your care and affection for him without compromising your values sexually?  I know from experience this can be hard - and your parents are right when they say it gets harder to abstain when you know that you have found the guy you want to spend the rest of your life with. However, with the power of prayer, accountability, and a very transparent relationship with Christian adults you can trust (in my case with Josh, it's my parents that we look to for help) it is NOT IMPOSSIBLE to be intimate with your significant other without sex like the world says it is.

Naturally, everyone's comfort-ability level with physical intimacy in their relationships are a little different, and it is up to you and your man to set those boundaries from the beginning. I personally am only okay with going as far as sharing kisses with my darling, but I definitely understand that some people don't even want to go that far and it's totally alright!  I just wanted to preface my post, so my readers will know where I am coming from when sharing how I choose to care for Josh in our relationship. My prayer for you no matter how old you are is that you will be blessed and inspired to care for the man in your life to show you love him with out compromising your purity.

PRAY FOR HIM!

I can't stress this enough. it should be bold, underlined and italicized 100 times. When you are looking for a Christian man, it is imperative that you pray for him. I have personal testimonies about this from both my current and previous boyfriends. God is ALWAYS faithful to answer your prayers when you keep Him at the center of your relationship. Whether its giving you guidance on your decision to get married or break up, the Lord never fails to give you peace of mind about your decision as long as it is His will. It keeps peace in your relationship. The Lord was able to show me with a previous boyfriend that it was time to move on, and with my current boyfriend, Josh, that he is the best thing that has ever happened to me.

It's hard to think that your Superman who is so amazing and lovely to you could have flaws; in love we can all have the tendency to be enamored and caught up in those fluttery gushey feelings. I'm sorry to be a killjoy, but at one point or another, you will realize that he is great and awesome, but definitely has his flaws.  When you choose to pray for him and bring what bothers you to his attention kindly, you'll find that it goes MUCH farther than picking him apart constantly. Which brings me to my next point.

BUILD HIM UP CONSTANTLY 

It's easy to brag on your man to your girlfriends, but how often do you tell him that he's great? Yes, they want to hear how much you love them, but they also need to hear specifics of what you love about them and how they treat you. In the same way that it is important to tell him if something he is doing is bothering you, you need to positively reinforce what he is doing that is good!  Even if it's something like, "I really love it when you hold the door open for me," he will appreciate that his efforts to treat you like a lady are being recognized. It's well known that women like to be complimented on their physical appearance, but did you know that men like to hear when they look nice also?  If you like it when your man wears a certain color or shirt, TELL HIM!  He may be tough and manly, but inside he needs that boost of confidence to know that you find him attractive and that the choices he is making are on the right track.

LET HIM KNOW YOU ARE THINKING ABOUT HIM

Part of the "old fashioned" element of my dating ideals is that the woman should be pursued by the man. As a Godly woman I should be sought after by a Godly man, not vice versa. However, once your man has done the chasing and you are dating, it is not only okay but it is GREAT for you to take initiative in some things. This is something that Josh definitely taught me after a few months of dating. I still like the fact that he is the one who mostly takes initiative in our relationship, but he needs to feel appreciated for doing so. I like to plan surprises like getting tickets to a game or concert I know he would like, offering to occasionally pay for dinner or our date to the movies, our even by planning a surprise date day where we do a bunch of cool things but he gets to relax and doesn't have to drive or pay. Other small ways you can show you care are by sending him the first text in the morning rather than waiting for him to text you, telling him randomly throughout the day that you are thinking about him or a specific thing you did together, and by boosting him up to friends so when they meet, they can say, "Hey, I've heard a lot of great things about you!"

BE THERE FOR HIM

Like I said before, even guys who are tough and manly need an emotional release sometimes. Most won't just come right out and let you know when something is bothering them so it may take some gentle questions to crack your man's tough-guy seal. Try something simple like "Hey, are you okay?  You've been acing a little ____ lately and you usually do that when something is on your mind. I'm here for you if you want to talk about it."  He may or may not take to it, but knowing when to ask the right questions goes a long way. When he feels like you are safe to share with, he will open up - and when he does, you HAVE to keep it under wraps. The last thing he wants is for you to run to your girlfriends and tell them all about his personal business. Be his shoulder to cry on and his go-to person to laugh with.

The other thing about guys is that they're kind of big babies when they get a cold. If you offer to bring over soup and a movie and just snuggle and relax, chances are he will probably love it. Josh has Chron's Disease, which is a chronic intestinal issue. When he is having a flare up, I know he needs rest, Gluten Free pretzels, and a lemon-lime Gatorade. Usually I'll stop by Redbox and get a movie we've been wanting to see and take it over to watch with him. Little things like that are the things that help you bond and will show him that you really do care about his well-being.


This is just the first part of the post on how to care for your man when you aren't married. Check back soon for the second post!

How to Start Your Fitness Journey in 7 Steps

If you are feeling inspired to start your journey to good health but are unsure of where to start, look no further!  I will be posting tips, thoughts, inspiration, and work-outs (physical and spiritual!) to help get you started. Keep checking back for updates or just click the follow button to make it easier on yourself!  

Set a Goal 

Whether you want to tone up for your class reunion or lose 100 pounds, its important to set realistic goals. First start by coming up with your overall goal, then break it down into smaller goals. So let's say you want to lose 25 pounds and you'd like to tackle those pesky flapping under arms, first start by setting a date you want to accomplish your goal. For 25 pounds, 2 months is realistic. Pick a special date (a cousin's wedding, vacation, ect.) and get started. Having a date in mind will help you to envision how great you will feel at the event and will help you stay motivated to eat right and work out when you have allotted time to do so.

Side note - if you aren't sure what your goal should be, just talk to your doctor. It's a good idea to do that before getting started anyway in order to avoid injuries.

Make a Plan

A goal is great, but you have to have a plan of attack in order to make it to your goal!  Looking ahead at your overall goal can be really disheartening, so break it down into smaller goals and have a mini-celebration every time you hit a milestone along your path toward your big goal. When I was starting out, I eliminated all dairy products from my diet... this was hard because I LOVE ice cream and cheese. I hated exercise but knew it was necessary in order to get to my goal, so every Sunday - as long as I had exercised for at least 45 minutes three times that week, I would reward myself with a little bit of ice cream to help me stay motivated. 

Mix Up Your Workouts and Your Music

In order to stay motivated to work out, mix up what you do and what you're listening to while doing it. I started by walking and biking then graduated into going to Zumba with girlfriends and doing cardio/toning DVDs. Have a playlist ready on your iPod for your different routines so you can look forward to and get motivated for each different workout when it's turn comes up. It helps it not get monotonous.  

Get a Friend to Do it With You

Losing weight and getting in shape CAN be done on your own, but it is so much more enjoyable and fun when you have a friend to join you in success!  This helps especially when you don't like exercise to begin with. Going for a walk/jog with a friend is more like hanging out and provides a distraction for the fact that you are pouring sweat and burning fat. 

Sooner or later, you'll be able to go it alone, but in the beginning, it's helpful to have that other person to lean on, complain about how badly your back hurts with, and also to share recipes for yummy, healthy snacks that you love. 

Pour Your Heart into It

With weight loss and getting into shape, you have to give it 100% effort. Pour your heart and soul into your work out. You are only cheating YOURSELF and YOUR results by giving half effort. You want to get to your goal and you want to be PROUD of the hard work you put in to get there. Over time, I have grown to love my workout time because its the time of day that I get to release all anger and anxiety from the day and take it out on my body in a healthy way. Some people go to the bar, I work out - it's healthier AND it's cheaper :)

Take Pictures!

When I first got started with my journey, I needed to lose 80 pounds. I took my first journey picture and was absolutely disgusted with myself and how out of control I let myself get. This picture not only served as a wake up call, but it has helped me to be able to see where I came from and keeps me motivated to NEVER GO BACK!  You may hate it, no one has to see it, it can even be a cell phone picture, but just take it!  And take one every time you feel like you are having a good day with your journey so you can scroll back through your phone to get inspired by yourself. This is a journey to fitness and to seeing yourself how God sees you; God thinks you are BEAUTIFUL!  The pictures are just there as a visual representation of the work you're putting in to make your outsides match your insides. 

Pray

As God daily for strength to over come Satan along your journey. That piece of chocolate cake sitting on your counter is temptation to stray you off your path to becoming the best YOU can be for God. Pray for diligence, physical ability, and for God to bless your efforts to get healthy so you can serve His kingdom better. When you keep God at the center of your goals, He will bless it, friends!  I am a living testimony to that!  You can do it with help from God and the people who love you. 

I'm praying for you!

Becoming Fit: Inspiration for Finding the Best You!

The worst picture I could find of myself
at 230 pounds. 

Many of my readers are friends who follow me on Facebook and know my weight loss testimony. However, I am aware that many of my readers may not know me in person, so I want to take this opportunity to share my journey and my hope for the inspirational future of this blog. 

A common misconception with weight loss is that the journey starts the day you decide to make a change. It's a misconception because it doesn't take into account the reasons that led you to be the weight that you are so unhappy with. If you don't address what is causing the problem, diet and exercise will only be a band aid for the issue. It will only fix it symptomatically and everyone knows that leads to even bigger problems. With that in mind, I will begin to tell you about my story. 

At age seven, I was diagnosed with Tourette's Syndrome. When people hear that someone has TS, they immediately think "Oh, that's that swearing thing."  Well, that is true, but there are a few different types of TS, and that kind only affects about 2% of the TS population. My manifestations were always with muscle movements that we like to call "tics" and vocal tics that are more like repetitive noise making (NOT swearing). With the help of my family and peers, it didn't take long to realize that I was different and that it was pretty annoying. The ridicule led me to question what I knew about God and why He would allow me to have something like this.

Junior Year.

By age ten, my body was in pain. My neck and shoulders ached from the constant uncontrollable muscle movements that just seemed to slip out. The more I became aware of it, the worse it would get. The more people would comment on it, the more sad I would become because I couldn't help it. Somewhere during this time, I realized how easy it was to make myself feel better with food, so I would eat. Chips, ice cream, Cheese Its, chocolate, anything I could get my hands on because in my mind, I was always hungry. I was ten and couldn't make the distinction that I was hungry to fit in, not psychically hungry. 

Because I was a kid, the amount I ate every day didn't really start to affect me until my teen years because I was really active. I played sports and was involved in a lot. Over the summer between my 6th and 7th grade year, my body changed into a woman's shape which was earlier than most of my peers. While most of the girls in my grade were just barely out of training bras I was shopping for a C-Cup in the women's department. This led to more tormenting because people make fun of what they don't understand and what they are jealous of. I hated the fact that I was a size 8 in 7th grade while all my friends were still between a 2-4. We all hated the fact that I had a chest but for different reasons; me because I was ostracized and them because they wanted the attention I got. I HATED IT!  I wanted a boyish body so I could be like everyone else. 

My mom always told me that some day I would appreciate the body that God gave me. That it was designed especially for the husband He had picked out for me and that he would be a "Honey". I wish I would have

Most people say I wore 230 pounds well and
that they couldn't tell, but I definitely could!

believed her back in seventh grade before I began years of tearing my self down part by part and cell by cell. 

High school was especially hard. I made the decision to be home schooled/ cyber schooled so I didn't have to deal with being made fun of on a daily basis. I always tell people that it was because I liked to work during the day babysitting, but if I were to be honest that was a beneficial result of my being so self-conscious that I would cry at the thought of even setting foot inside Peters Township High School. 

I played softball and volleyball and that was pretty much what kept me active, but it slowed down as I got older and lazier and my interests changed from running around in the yard to reading and crafting. My senior year, I was able to eat a foot-long from Subway all in one sitting and could eat a brick of cheese in a day. I landed my dream job working in a photography studio in Canonsburg about half way through my senior year and loved it until my boss started projecting her own weight insecurities on me by commenting on what I would eat and how my outfit choices made me look heavy - an aesthetic she didn't want for her studio. Finally one day, I had enough and decided to quit. Right about that same time a person that was very dear to me say some really hurtful things about my weight that ignited a spark in me to make a change. It was the "I'll show you!" Spark. Regardless, it made me wake up and realize that being 230 pounds at 18 was ridiculous. 

The first thing I did to lose weight was eliminating ALL dairy products. Cheese, ice cream, yogurt, sour cream, milk. GONE. Over a month and a half I dropped 30 pounds with out exercise. I plateaued and realized I needed to lose more in order to get under the 200 pound mark. If you have ever weighed over 200 pounds, you know the excitement that comes when you hit 199 on the scale. I rejoiced privately though, because I was so embarrassed about having been over 200 pounds in the first place.

After so much hard work, I finally got to where I wanted to be
but it was hard to keep up with such ridiculous habits.

The next 40 pounds came off with exercise - obsessive exercise 2 times per day 6 days per week. I biked a lot and bough SELF Magazine after SELF Magazine, did countless OnDemand exercise videos, walked with friends, swam, hiked, anything that burned calories. During this time is when I discovered my love for Zumba and would go 3 nights per week to various classes.

After I got the hang of what I was doing, I would create my own exercise routines and Zumba choreography which helped me to lose the last few healthy pounds I wanted to get off. Two summers ago I was in the best shape of my life. 

My goal weight was 145 pounds. It was the lowest weight in the BMI index for my height and I was on a mission to get there no matter the cost to my body. I really regret being so reckless with it now, because it has caused a variety of heath issues I am still working on. Even though I got down to 155 unhealthily, when I finally got help for my problems, I gained back ten pounds and am usually settled around 165 now. 

This is me now, on the right. I'm happy with who I am and how
my body looks. I still workout almost daily, but I'm so much
healthier now and I've gained so much self-confidence. 

I realized that 16 of that 165 pounds is chest and it makes me feel a lot better about accepting my body because I know that I was intended to be this weight. There is nothing else I could possibly do that would get me to 145 pounds and I have embraced it. I found a man who adores my curves and thinks I am the most beautiful thing in the world. 

On this side of of my transformation, I can say that I am genuinely a lot happier than I used to be and I know it shows. So many of my friends have witnessed the results of my hard work and have chosen to make a change for themselves!  I love it when people ask me to help them lose weight because it allows me to share my testimony with them of how I changed physically and how the physical change helped me spiritually. It might sound crazy, but on those nights when I really didn't want to work out, I asked God for the strength to get through it to be the best I can be for His kingdom. 

This guy is my motivation to stay healthy!
He is so good to me when he knows I'm
starting to feel down on myself again. I thank
the Lord for him every day. 

I know exactly what I am supposed to do with my life now, and it is to help people make the change that I made so that no one has to feel the pain that I felt when I was younger. Being bullied by people who are supposed to be your friends and even some family members is scarring, and if there is something I can do to help put an end to it, I will and that is what I am dedicating my life to... helping others see themselves how God sees them - as beautiful creatures. I am getting my Zumba Instructor Certification next Friday and want to eventually finish my degree in health and physical fitness so I can help women lose weight, get healthy mentally and spiritually and begin to love themselves how the Lord loves them.

On your own, it's really hard, but together and with the power of the Lord we can do it!  My hope for the future of this blog is serve as an inspiration for your personal goals for spiritual and physical fitness. I hope that we can be an encouragement to each other through the process so if you have something to say, I would LOVE to hear it!