Medifast
October Newsletter

No Sneakers Allowed!

Autumn chill is in the air, red and yellow leaves are fluttering from the tree tops and as I write this, we’re packing Happy shirts, shorts and leopard print bathing suits in anticipation of our long-awaited MakeMeThinner Vacation in Kauai. When you receive this, we will be tanned, toned, slender, relaxed and getting geared up to return to the mainland.

I was a Sneak Eater – if you’re one, you know EXACTLY what I mean – I don’t have to explain.

I remember when I was about 11 years young; I grabbed a bag of chocolate chips from Mom’s pantry and ate them over the course of a few days.

In the 60’s my parents saved S & H Green stamps – they were premiums given at the time of purchasing gasoline or merchandise at certain department stores. They were saved by licking and pasting the stamps into books that were then redeemed for awesome items. Mom redeemed the stamps for a card table, a picnic basket, a badminton set and a treasured hand painted ceramic cookie jar that was adorned with a variety of cookies scattered all over it – it had a ceramic ‘walnut’ knob on the lid.

For a cookie sneaker, that cookie jar was my bane – the lid always clunked whenever I had grabbed a few cookies and tried to quietly return the lid to its proper place. That &%#@ lid always gave me away. I got caught stealin’ cookies many times!

My Mom always told me that someday she’d get retribution. Little did she know it would be in the form of her son-in-law. My husband taught me all about the frustration that comes with a quickly vanishing cookie supply! Imagine! A pastor suspected of snitchin’ cookies!

I used to get so cheesed at Terry because I would bake a ton of cookies, fill the jar and put the excess in the freezer for a later time. It got to the point where we had our own separate cookie jars. Yep – we HAD to have ‘His 'n Her Cookie’ jars because Terry would eat ALL of the cookies in the cookie jar and then there wouldn't be any for our drop-by guests.

His jar is a ceramic crock type container with a brass handle. He loves that jar - sort of a ‘grab it and go’ dealy-bob. Before Medifast, I would often find him fast asleep, cookie crumbs on his moustache and the empty bucket of cookies parked next to his recliner.

My cookie jar, on the other hand is a dainty clear glass jar with a small lid – it used to be my Grandpa’s humidor! I like using it because I can always monitor the cookie level in my jar with a quick glance. It bugs the puckies outta Terry because I can do a walk-by, check the jar and then I know if the Cookie Snitch has been messin’ with MY cookie jar!

I used to bake triple batches of several varieties of cookies, fill the jars and then would put the excess cookies in the freezer to keep them ‘safe’ for company. After I went to bed at night, some greedy Cookie Snitch would raid the freezer and eat the company’s cookies…

Of course I wouldn't discover they were gone until we had company on its way and then NO cookies could be found in the depths of the freezer. ARGH! Since we endeavor to live by the Perfect Ten, commandment # 6 is not an option for me: Thou Shalt not kill!

I had to be very creative if I was to have cookies for company. After I would bake, I filled Terry’s cookie jar, mine and then I would double bag the extra cookies in Ziplocs™ or Tupperware™ containers and hide them in various locations around the house – in the fireplace behind the screen, on the seats of the chairs at the formal dining table because the table cloth hung down around the chairs and he never saw them hiding there – or safely tucked inside empty Kotex boxes on the cupboard shelves in the linen closet! He NEVER thought to look in there! Leopard Woman IS creative, isn’t she? Hee hee!

The point is, sneak eating got Terry and I no where but porky.

Terry was 60 pounds over weight; his BMI was 32. A BMI over 30 places a person at risk for diabetes and heart disease. He was considered obese.

I was 130 pounds over weight, morbidly obese (a person 100 pounds or more over weight is considered to be MORBIDLY obese) and my BMI was 43.

We weren’t fooling anyone with our ‘sneak eating’ – it was apparent – all could see it in our triple chins, our flappy arms, the rolls around our bellies, our thunder thighs. Terry didn’t have just a spare tire – he had an entire eighteen wheeler! Those weren’t love handles – they were love grips!

Without the side effects and risks of gastric by-pass surgery and liposuction, together we lost our love handles, 195 pounds and gained the rest of our healthier lives together.

Funny how Foodies behave, isn't it? To keep permanently thin, we must make permanent changes in our eating habits...or we will be permanently fat and only temporarily thin.

You can Medifast for a moment – until you reach that certain size, or until that special occasion happens or you can do it for life.

In the 1920s, George Leigh Mallory led three expeditions to Mount Everest. Mallory wrote the following, “What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for.”

So often we live to eat and to make money. What good is it if we die early and never get to enjoy our lives at all?

Although he was an expert mountaineer, Mallory and his climbing partner Andrew Irvine made a 3rd attempt at the summit of Everest in 1924 and disappeared in heavy weather, never to return. They enjoyed the life they were given – they didn’t wait and wonder what it would be like to climb Everest, they experienced it!

The other evening we were looking at some pictures and videos of family vacations from several years ago. I observed myself being a watcher and not a doer. I was too embarrassed to wear normal vacation wear so I was standing on the shore in knee-length shorts and a big shirt watching the rest of my family snorkeling. I saw pictures of me watching other people kayak and swim in pools.

My bad food choices prevented me from enjoying our vacation. I had worked very hard and saved money - for what? My lard eliminated me from many cool activities. A vacation brochure indicated there was 220 pound weight limit for horseback riding…each morning I huffed and puffed and parked my ample 265 pound buns on my beach bench vantage point where I observed healthy people gallop by laughing and enjoying the enchanted allure of azure seas atop a beautiful horse. My horseback rides were only dreams…

I was mortified when I had to reveal my weight prior to booking our helicopter tour. I hadn’t told anyone how much I weighed; only my doctor and his loud-mouth nurse knew for sure!

The concierge indicated that people are seated on helicopters according to their weight and stressed the importance of knowing one’s weight for safety reasons. What?! I was gonna have to reveal my ACTUAL weight or Gulp! risk the safety and lives of my entire helicopter party! It was a hard decision for me to make…

(FYI, this is the first time in my entire driving career, I actually weigh what my driver’s license says!)

We had scrimped and saved for two years to go on that family vacation and there I was – observing others having the time of their lives and I was a porkette. I was a chunkette. I was more than chunky, I was morbidly obese and I had horrible pain in my heart of hearts because I did it all to myself!

My sneak eating had sneaked up on me.

I did not much like how I looked, how I felt, how I thought about myself, I did not like the pain in my feet and legs and I absolutely was not really enjoying the sheer joy of life!

My weight was not only shortening my future life – the length of my days – it was shortening my current life – our family vacation life.

In the pastorate we have had many opportunities to be with people during eventful times in their lives. We have experienced the joys of the births of long-waited for babies, the jubilation of high school graduation celebrations, the “sweet and sour” day young people go away to college or to serve in the armed forces, the dismay of divorce, and the devastation of sickness unto death.

We must concur with H. Jackson Brown, Jr., who is attributed to saying, “No one ever said on his death bed, ‘Gee, if I’d only spent more time at the office.”

I have been fat and I have been thin.

When I was fat, I always wanted to be thin.

Now that I am thin, I have never once wanted to be fat.

Nothing tastes as good as thin feels.

The person who buys a lawn mower really doesn’t want to have a shiny lawn mower in his garage. He wants to mow the lawn.

When you read my Newsletters, lurk on the MakeMeThinner Forum or order and buy Medifast, do you do so only to stock your pantry shelves?

Absolutely not! You want to reach a healthy weight, improve your nutrition and the quality of your life.

We have the best product and the best weight loss support system. The weight loss plan has been tried and true for nearly twenty-five years now. I lost 135 pounds in 7 months and have maintained my weight for 20 months now.

If you are serious about losing your flabbage for once and for all – then follow the program – no deviations – and you can be 40-50 lighter by January 1st! When you get this month’s Newsletter, it will be 12 weeks until the first of the year. The average weight loss on a 16 week program for men using Medifast is 67.41 pounds and for females is 47.5 pounds as substantiated by Johns Hopkins University Abstract. They also experienced significant reductions in blood pressure, cholesterol and triglyceride levels. Dr, Lawrence Cheskin is well known for his studies on obesity and has chosen Medifast products for many of his overweight patients for nearly ten years.

Six months from now, will you wish you had started today? Quit wishin’ – start shakin’ and make your dreams become your reality!