Jude Smith

* joke originally cracked by the very witty MJ Knight. This post is mainly because a few people have asked how I have done the weight losing thing. I'm not sure this is wholly comprehensive but its a few thoughts. Three stone in 20 weeks! Thats about 2.1 pounds a week, around about a kilo. It sounds dramatic but the weight loss has been pretty steady. Its mainly been achieved by upping my metabolic rate, so that I am burning calories more quickly and more consistently. Thats been achieved by: 1 Eating within half an hour of waking up each morning. So eating a small breakfast before getting in the shower. 2 Eating little and often, so more like five or six small meals than two or three big ones. Supplementing that with fruit or veg snacks so that I eat about every two to three hours. 3 Exercise. Only really three sessions a week of about an hour each. I think that accounts for some of the weight loss but there have also been diet changes. 1 I cut out sugar in all hot drinks ...

Man its been a week. 17 services- I think somewhere in the region of 15 homilies. Easter in an Anglo- Catholic setting is really something else! I have genuinely journeyed through Holy Week at a whole other level- and have emerged on the other side with a sense of newness but also of exhaustion. I have also emerged three stone lighter than I was in the middle of November. Lots of people have asked how I have done it and that is the stuff of another post- but suffice to say it is done and I am happy! Last week was manic. It was busy in a wholly different way. Its left me with so much to think about how I would do things next year/ in my own church/ ever. But I want to hone in on maybe one aspect. On Monday of last week I rushed into church for a Eucharist that I was preaching at. I had come straight from school and my purse was in my bag. Which I left in the vestry and in the rush did not lock. A guy was hanging around at the back of church- and even walked halfway up the aisl...

The answer is.. not yet. All the component parts are there. I have kept the diet, I have exercised. But the scales have not yet declared it. I have been a pound off. I have been a pound and a half off. Its interesting journeying through Holy Week this week. As I write I have just completed my Easter Sunday sermon. I know that Sunday is coming. But Friday is here. The die has been cast, the decisions made. We just wait and watch as the agony of Good Friday piles on. Will we make it through? Must the dream die before resurrection can come? My thoughts are fuddled because I am in danger of making too much of this weight loss thing. But it genuinely has been the place where God has spoken to me in the last four months. Sunday is coming. I hope I can declare that it has happened. But if not I know that I live somehow in the hope and reality of something bigger than my trivial pursuits. p.s. Will post some of my Holy Week sermons here..