Yesterday we surprised the kids and brought home a puppy!! They have been begging for one for years and we felt like the time was right to bring one home.

Meet Angus 🐕 He's a Golden Retriever/King Charles Cavalier Spaniel mix. He's 11 weeks old and currently weighs about 8 pounds, he should be around 35 pounds fully grown. I know it will be an adjustment for a while as he gets potty trained etc but we are so excited. 😂 Wish us luck! 🤪

Cheese is good! I ate a block of chipotle oven baked cheese with lunch yesterday and it was divine. I love it, but know that it halts any progress I'm making, and will even trigger eating in excess to where I'll gain weight. It's sad but I have accepted it. If I eat it in small quantities with a meal, it's ok, but I really have to work to keep it in check.

What's your favorite cheese? How do you incorporate it? Do you see negative results when eating it?

Happy Sunday! Sharing a video today from our week, one of the highlights. This was Wednesday evening church, normally they have a more casual prayer meeting where someone plays the guitar, but they were doing some construction in the fellowship hall so they had their prayer meeting in the sanctuary. No one was there to play the piano so my my Grandma did it, she's been playing the piano in church for probably 80 years.

For context, she's 88, she had a really bad fall 5 years ago now and hit her head and ended up with a lot setbacks, similar to having a stroke. She has a lot of dementia like symptoms also (I am sure related to her Type 2 diabetes), she really can't read music anymore, and she has trouble seeing well, and she needs to wear hearing aids to hear but hates wearing them, so on this night she didn't want to wear them. My 93 (almost 94) year old grandpa takes care of both of them on their farm. Anyway, on this night she sat down on the piano and led worship as people called ...

Happy Tuesday!! Thanks to everyone that hung out on the Livestream last night. One of the things we talked about is how stress effects you, and how we need to heal our bodies from that stress before we can lose weight. Healing your body and weight loss really have to be 2 totally different approaches to your food, you truly can't address both at the same time.

Healing requires rest, and excess fuel, focus on sleep, and regulating your nervous system. Things like fasting, exercise, and calorie restriction are great for weight loss, but they can actually make stress in your body worse. We first have to eliminate the stress, then focus on healing and regulating out body, and then FINALLY after we've done all that can we focus on weight loss and expect to see good results.

Are you in a healing mode or a weight loss mode? Or maybe just maintenance?

Happy Monday! How was your weekend? We are almost halfway through July already!! I hope you are feeling good and crushing your goals, but if not...there is still time to reign it in and make some good progress by the end of July. I am doing a Livestream tonight, so if you are needing some motivation or have questions come join us at 7pm EST (4pm PST).

What is your non-negotiable for this week?

Accountability for Monday, July 13th: Got up early and got my 3 mile walk in before the heat adversery went into effect

Breakfast: cut up a brat and mixed it up with 4 scrambled eggs.

Right before we went to the funeral home, I tried to eat 2 very warm hot dogs (I was in a rush). Visitation went well. After the prayer service we could share memories of Mom. I had prepared something. I did really good until the end and got choked up a little.

Supper: a few of us went to Culver's to eat. I had a North Atlantic Cod sandwich and a scoop of the flavor of the day in honor of my Mom - Andes mint avalanche. She would have liked it. When I got home I needed something more. I ended up having a cold brat. I allowed myself to go off track a little bit today and I am fine with that.