I Want A Disciplined Life

These are some disciplines I want to maintain each day in no particular order. However I need order in my life or I'll get to feeling bedraggled.

(1) Do elastic band arm exercises, which keeps my shoulders from feeling tight in addition to helping to condition my upper body.

(2) Keep my apartment as neat as a pin. When I don't it just gets to looking worse. I'm so much happier when my apartment looks nice.

(3) Read the Bible online following Prof. Horner's Bible Reading System, reading at least half of the ten chapters each day. I love the staying in the Word and I miss too many blessings if I don't stay in the Word.

(4) Blog about what was most meaningful to me in my day's Scripture reading.

(5) Earnestly work on memorizing a Scripture acrostic. Knowing God's word well enough to recite it any time floods my mind with transforming spiritual truths.

(6) Eat 1,500 to 1,800 calories of healthy food each day. I can't feel my best if I don't eat healthily and I want to lose weight. Knowing I'm genuinely working on losing weight makes me more cheerful and optimistic.

(7) Walk or swim everyday if at all possible, unless I'm really tired and need to rest. Exercise makes me feel great and I want to stay at the top of my game. Aerobic exercise burns fat too.

(8) Avoid procrastinating on anything I really need to get done-- make it a priority. I think procrastinating can keep you from flourishing.

I may be adding more things to this list.

So Cold!

It's so cold today. I just about froze going to the gym today. I was planning on going grocery shopping but decided not to when the temperature dropped. The wind chill was 28 degrees! This is good sleeping weather. I took a long nap this afternoon, after a wonderful lunch with my mom and sister. My mom fixed beef stew, corn bread and sweet potatoes.

I walked on the indoor track at the gym for about a mile this morning. I took a walk a few days ago I had to stop every block or two to catch my breath; I have a lung condition that causes flare ups like this sometimes. Today I'm really proud to say I walked about a mile without stopping! It was a great work out! I love making progress in physical fitness. When I was swimming this week I thought it was great when I could tell my lungs were working better. I love it when I can surge though the water as fast as I want to-- so exhilarating. I still took a rest break after each half lap (only when swimming the crawl) but hopefully my fitness will keep improving. I'm excited thinking about all the calories I can burn walking and swimming now that I'm getting fitter.

The Perks of Exercising

This evening when it was time for my evening walk, I was a little tired and the walk seemed pretty strenuous, but after I got back home and did my stretches I felt wonderful. I swam about twenty-two laps yesterday, which could be why I was a little tired. I love it when exercise perks me up. Sometimes if I'm kind of lethargic, even just a little exercise energizes me. A couple of times though I've worked out so much with my therapists that I was disappointingly too tired to go for a walk or swim. When the therapist was here the time previously, stepping up on a high platform 30 times had worn me out. Doing thirty chair push ups used to take all the steam out of me but I can do them a lot more easily now. Yesterday I said I'd do my therapy exercises if they didn't wear me out so much that I couldn't go swimming. Then I was able to swim ten more laps than the last time I swam. I love it when my fitness really seems to be improving! It's one of the things that makes me happiest and of course makes me feel great!

Am I Seeing What My Eyes Are Telling Me I'm Seeing

Rain is in the forecast. It rained for a little while this morning. The sun is shining now although it keeps getting overcast. Watching the nuances of the weather is so interesting. I was looking out the glass doors to my patio and I saw something, which I thought was probably a squirrel, climb to the top of the lattice. Then I thought, how can a small stuffed tiger toy be on top of the lattice? Then I saw that it was a squirrel from the side view.

Today I'm baking some bread with100% organic graham wheat. It smells so good and it's not even in the oven yet. There is a lot to baking bread but it's something I enjoy doing. This weekend my sister said she remembered watching me roll out bread dough and shape it into loaves and that I looked so cute.

My sister invited me to dinner Friday night and we ate ate a sushi restaurant, which was only my second time eating there. I decided to try the California rolls. The California rolls are great. Are they considered sushi? From there we went to the closing session of my sister's church's statewide women's conference. It was wonderful.

I was late for church yesterday and it really couldn't be helped. I didn't get to hear the youth choir sing. Our pastor's message was wonderful and really inspiring. It was about being Easter people in our everyday lives.

I've gotten a lot more in shape over the past two weeks, having worked out 8 of the last 14 days. Fitness is such a blessing. My back is kind of stiff though. I'll probably do some yoga. I've been wanting to be fit enough to do yoga. I like the "Yoga for Dummies" book. I like to do the first set of yoga for beginners, which takes only five or ten minutes and it makes my back feel so good.

Pray While Counting Swimming Laps - wikiHow

I had a really nice swim this morning. A man in the next swimming lane told me that I had good technique. It made me happy. He said that his wife says he doesn't keep his feet high enough when swimming. On the subject of techniques, I was using a technique to both count laps and pray for someone while I was swimming. I wrote this WikiHow article about a year ago:

How to Pray While Counting Swimming Laps

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Have you discovered how important and immensely valuable prayer is? Is fitness also one of your priorities? For people who like swimming, here is a great way for quality prayer and exercise to take place at the same time. With each lap you swim you can be praying about different aspects of an important prayer need.

Steps

1. Decide on an important prayer need to focus on. It could be something personal such as a weakness you want God to help you turn into a strength. Maybe there is an urgency to pray for someone in a crisis or prayer is needed to help prevent or resolve a crisis somewhere in the world.
   
2. Begin swimming your first lap. Focus on your prayer topic and pray fervently for something (or multiple things) relating to it which begin with the letter "A". Swim your second lap while praying about anything pertinent to your prayer topic beginning with the letter "B" and so on.
   
3. Continue prayer swimming your way through the alphabet, until you've swam as many laps as you want to.
   
4. Count through the alphabet up to the letter you were on during the last lap of your swim. This is how many laps you've swum.
   
5. Begin the alphabet again if you want to prayer swim more. To count how many additional laps you've swum after you've already swam through the twenty-six letters of the alphabet, start counting the next alphabet set with the number twenty-seven.
   

Tips

• Pray with thankfulness and weave genuine praise to God into your prayer.
  
• Don't stop praying just because you stopped swimming.
  
• This is just one way of praying, you may like another method of praying better.
  

Related wikiHows

• How to Count Swimming Laps Creatively
  
• How to Pray to Jesus
  
• How to Establish Personal Quiet Time with Christ
  
• How to Avoid Sabotaging Your Prayer Life
  
• How to Exercise to Become a Better Swimmer
  

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Pray While Counting Swimming Laps. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

Meatloaf, Exercise & Bible Study

I swam today. I was gung ho yesterday and both swam and went for a walk. We've been having nice weather and I'm loving the extra hour of daylight now! Besides getting a new swimsuit, I recently got some new walking shoes. My past three pairs of walking shoes were given to my by my mom, and they were already broken in. This must have sort of spoiled my feet, because my ankles are quite ouchy since trying to break in my new walking shoes. I can't wait until this "ouchy"ness is gone and it seems to be a little better.

I've been busy working on my Ephesians Bible study which I like. It's taking a lot of determination and good time management for the homework part. This is the first Precept Bible study I've really participated in. Covering the Precept Study selected Bible book text, from a lot of different angles, keeps you immersed in the scripture you're studying, and really seems to help it sink into your mind, even if it's scripture you're familiar with.

I made a good tofu and ground turkey meatloaf this weekend. I love meatloaf! I thought the texture and taste was a lot like regular meatloaf. It had a mild but good flavor. My mom said it was good but she'd prefer it with more meat and less tofu. Here is the recipe if you're interested. This recipe is kind of random, since I decided to put a little of my piquant homemade BBQ sauce in it. Instead of the BBQ sauce you may want to try adding some Italian tomato paste, more Worcestershire sauce, or dry soup mix.

Ground Turkey & Tofu Meatloaf

1 tube ground turkey (I think approximately 1 lb.)
14 oz. extra-firm tofu in water, prefrozen & thawed
1/3 cup instant milk
about 3/4 cup water
1 egg
2-3 tbsp. of my piquant homemade BBQ sauce
3/4 cup rolled oats
8 dashes of Worcestershire sauce
2 cloves garlic pressed
1 small-medium onion, microwaved whole
vegetable oil spray

Slice tofu into 6 large cubes and try to squeeze all the water out of the tofu. Place tofu in a large bowl and crumble it. Add ground turkey and mix well. Blenderize water, instant milk, egg, Worcestershire sauce, BBQ sauce, onion and garlic. Add to tofu and meat mixture. Mix well. Add rolled oats (just enough for the right consistency). Place in a pan which has been sprayed with vegetable oil. Shape meatloaf (about 2 1/2-3 inches thick, for quicker cooking). Bake uncovered in 350F preheated oven for about 45 minutes or until done.

I Love Exercise & I Love Studying Ephesians!

I just got home from walking on the track at the gym. Outdoor walks are my favorite but my back needs the kindness of the padded walking track right now, especially since it'll be a at least a few days until I can swim. Swimming is great for my back. Yesterday while I was in the whirlpool at the gym, the whirlpool jet ripped my swimsuit. My swimsuit was old and faded so I needed a new swimsuit anyway. I had to order a swimsuit online and I should have it Friday. I got twenty-five dollars off the price of the swimsuit. While I was walking at the gym today I observed what looked like a Tae Bo class. It looked really fun and like it would be an excellent core work out. I think I want to do this when I get in better shape. They were skipping sideways too! I used to love to do this when I was a kid. I remember I used to say "I could do this forever!" I would need to lose weight before I could do it easily now. I'm trying to eat as sensibly as I can. When I'm able to do a lot of cardio exercise, such as swimming laps and walking, I lose weight. In the past few days my fitness level seems to have improved. It's nice to notice how my breathing gets deeper after a few minutes of aerobic exercise. This happened twice while I was walking today. Staying on track with my exercise is an important priority, which I notice more the older I get.

I've noticed that it really helps, when planning my day, to decide on and really focus on doing the things that matter the most. For example, if there is something I really need to do-- instead of allowing failure in making progress, to cause me to get depressed, I make it my business to make sure I've planned time in my day that will give me a good opportunity to make progress toward attaining that goal. For me this is often related to some kind of housework. Focused work toward attaining important goals is rewarding and the more you practice this the more success it brings.

I've got some catching up to do on my Ephesians Precept Bible study. I've completed one week since last Thursday, but I need to do one more week. I'm behind a week because I started it a week late. Studying Ephesians is a delight! A method used in Precept is distinctly marking different types of keywords in the Bible text. This is fun too. This makes it easy to compile a lot of facts from the Bible text you've marked.

The Importance of Being Limber

I'm so glad I'm getting flexible again. At the pool today I swam and did lots of flips, which I love to do everytime I go swimming. Lots of times today after doing flips I surfaced on my back while hugging my knees. This is fun and I think it's helped my flexibility-- something I've noticed really helps me feel better. I'm so thankful that God answered my prayer to help me to prosper in my efforts to get healthier. I'm also thankful for a wonderful weekend.

Health and Homemaking

This week I've begun exercising consistently again, which has such a remarkable positive effect on how I feel. I was in some kind of a mood yesterday though. When I was talking to my sister on the phone, she prayed for me without me even having to ask her to, and I really appreciated it. The mood comes and goes and I do struggle because of it, but I seem to be happier when I'm deliberately taking positive action that brings me closer to achieving goals. Right now I especially want to get my small apartment nice and clean and to be good at upkeep of apartment cleanliness.