Friday the 13th...

We have now made it through one complete week with our trainers, and as far as I know, no one has quit or died. Tomorrow they have planned to go walking at the Augusta Canal - the entire length - but most of our team is either working or out of town. I don't know about the blue team. I will hit the gym in the morning, and then to the church for a full day of work. Got wind of a rumor today about a photo shoot tomorrow, but again, most of us would not be able to attend. I do know that we have not had our group "before" photo, which will be displayed prominently at Omni and PHC. Yesterday morning I stopped to look at the before and after photos of last year's contestants - I hope they are all still living their life change.

Thanks to facebook, people scattered across the United States are sending me their well wishes and support on this journey. Some of them barely remember me from high school, I'm sure... some were friends in college, or friends in the ministry. I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to all of them, because their comments mean so much to me.

I've already been asked for advice on losing weight (as if one week of ABL has made me some sort of expert!) Two things come to mind that I do feel qualified to share, both of which I have learned this week. First of all, if you have a significant amount of weight to lose, your chances of doing it alone and being successful are slim to none. One of the first emails I got from a teammate said that if it had not been for the group support, she would have walked out of the gym. A year ago my doctor examined me and handed me a nutrition guide - I said to myself, "I'm not eating that junk", probably as I rolled through the drive-through at Burger King or McDonalds. On my own, I did not have the impetus to change.

The second thing I think I've learned this week is that if you make little changes in your life, you will get little results. If you make temporary changes, you will get temporary results. It takes revolutionary change to achieve revolutionary results. My changes in the past were changing from lots of pizza to a little pizza; double cheeseburgers to single cheeseburgers; three donuts to two donuts. The scripture that comes to mind is II Kings 13:18-19, where Elisha is on his death bed, talking to the king of Israel, Joash, about how he would win battles without Elisha's presence:

"And he said, Take the arrows. And he took them. And he said unto the king of Israel, Smite upon the ground. And he smote thrice, and stayed. And the man of God was wroth with him, and said, Thou shouldest have smitten five or six times; then hadst thou smitten Syria till thou hadst consumed it: whereas now thou shalt smite Syria but thrice." He had failed to plan ahead for the battle he could not see, and thus exerted little effort. Little effort produces little change and meaningless victories.

Did anyone see this week's episode of the NBC show, "The Biggest Loser"? Daniel, who had been voted off in season 7 and brought back for season 8, was voted off again. They showed him going to visit his season 7 partner, and he had gained back everything he had lost, and probably more. His explanation was, "I'm busy... I work every day. I'll lose the weight when I get around to it." I could only think, "what a wasted opportunity". I only beat out 400 people to be selected for this contest; he, along with Daniel, had been chosen from among hundreds of thousands of applicants.

I don't want to waste a single day of this tremendous opportunity.