I apologize for the delay in sharing this week’s organization:  Feeding America, feedingamerica.org.  Many of you may be familiar with this organization under its old name, America’s Second Harvest.  Feeding America supports over 200 foodbanks throughout the US, and every dollar donated to them buys over 9 pounds of groceries. 

Their website is easy to navigate.  I really liked their statement of values, which includes: respect, stewardship and accountability, collaboration, service, integrity, diversity.  It also lists urgency as a value, which I found surprising and for which, honestly, I needed an explanation.  Luckily, they obliged, stating “We operate with an accute sense of urgency that reflects the needs of people struggling with hunger. We challenge our employees, volunteers and partners to embrace the same sense of urgency to accomplish our shared vision.” 

One feature I hope you’ll check out is that they tell stories of real people whose lives are being touched by the food banks and programs supported by Feeding America.  The stories are listed by state, and clicking on Iowa will take you to a story which is all too real for many families along the Cedar River.

I hope you’ll take a minute to check out the work being done by each of the organizations on our list.  While this project is not one that feels particularly urgent (more like “slow and steady wins the race”), the work our donations will support truly is!

Clearly, I have not perfected my photography skills, however, after numerous attempts, here’s the shot from 6:45 a.m. this morning! For my brother Matt, that’s 277.6, not 2776!

I was wide awake from 3-4 a.m. this morning.  I’m not sure what woke me, but once I was awake I was very conscious of my stomach growling.  I couldn’t stop thinking about how hungry I was.  I was H-U-N-G-R-Y!  The more I told myself to stop thinking about it and go to sleep, the less sleepy I felt.  My brain was in overdrive, thinking about food, then thinking about the fact that I will be weighing in tomorrow morning, worrying about what the scale would say.   After a while, I told myself that I could choose to get up, take a handful of steps to the kitchen, and eat something to stop the stomach pangs.  And that thought is what brought home to me the whole point of this challenge — I CAN choose.  And what a gift that is — to have abundance when others do not.  To be able to choose whether I eat now or eat later or eat at all.  These thoughts are what allowed me to relax into the moment and, finally, drift back to sleep.  Gratitude, the new sleep aid!

It is now just before 11 p.m.  In about seven hours I will be getting out of bed, stepping onto the scale, and uploading a photo of the digital screen so everyone who checks this blog will know how the first week of this challenge has gone.  I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little freaked.  I don’t have unrealistic expectations, but I’d like the scale to read less than it did on Thanksgiving.  I haven’t been weighing myself in between, just to keep from obsession.

I have been excercising daily and tracking my food intake — calories, fat, fiber.  I’ve been very healthy, so no one need worry that I’m eating too little.  I feel good about week one: and I will try to hold on to that feeling no matter what the scale reads in the morning.  Good night, sleep well.