Association Of Catholic Bloggers

Congratulations to Jared Zimmerer for his Honorable Mention win in the Gender Issues category at the 2015 Catholic Press Awards! Jared's book  Man Up! Becoming the New Renaissance Man  is a gathering of twelve voices who speak to a variety of topics.   They include:  Fr. Dwight Longenecker: Foreword;  Jared Zimmerer: Where Have All The Good Men Gone?;  Jesse Romero: Do Not Be Afraid of the Culture of Death;  Marlon De La Torre: Theological Manhood; D eacon Harold Burke-Sivers: Biblical Manhood and many more! Author Zimmerer  is an avid weight lifter and sought-after conference speaker whose first book is the popular   Ten Commandments of Lifting Weights . 

Did I say “confession”?  I'm sorry... I must have been mistaken (!), but I have found that having a sense of humor is very helpful to me!  I just wanted to talk a little today, though,  about a potentially big issue for many of us.  It's about the matter of an “ All-or-Nothing ” approach—because, unfortunately, this approach can have some very negative consequences at times that relate directly to our health & wellness. Now THAT would be A MISTAKE THAT TRULY MATTERS! It’s just that waiting to be able to do something the “right” way , or at the "right" time , with 100% effort & compliance [such as with a diet & exercise program], can easily mean never getting started at all— Or, if we have already begun, it might cause us to 100% give up! My Note to Self--EF So, on that note, I spotted a recent story in the news [noted below] that offers encouragement for positive perseverance, even when we think we can’t give it our “ALL”...

I’ve always had some sort of exercise routine—even if it wasn’t much of a “routine,” per se. Eating well and staying fit has been part of my life more out of necessity than desire. It rises from chronic illness rather than vanity. The catalyst for me “working out” has been my calling to live out my vocation as wife and mother and never how I look in a bathing suit. In fact, I use the term “working out” rather loosely since the same chronic illness that requires me to monitor my bodily well-being hinders my ability to really drill down and push myself to any physical limits. It’s not that I haven’t tried. I have—but there are always severe consequences. So I’ve had to find that balance between “working out” and not killing myself in the process. Enter yoga. Or the idea of yoga. The appeal of the gentle movements and stretching of yoga really drew me in as I searched for the perfect exercise routine that would tend to my body but wouldn’t break me, and so I began researc...

I'm going to go ahead and review Mary DeTourris Poust's latest book, Cravings: A Catholic Wrestles with Food, Self-Image and God, without having finished it. This is a wonderful book. This a book on the relationship of spirituality to food and the first, its publishers say, written from a Catholic perspective. Keep Reading...

For years the only person who knew I suffered from a chronic illness was my husband. Over time, and out of necessity, a few more people were allowed into my world of health issues—and yet no one really knew the severity of what I went through, except my husband. What I’ve come to realize is that I prefer my world be divided into two clear parts: the private, reclusive Cheryl and the author, writer, teacher, social Cheryl. Mostly, though, at the heart of who I am is the private, reclusive Cheryl. My quiet, alone time is important to me—even more so since I began spiritual direction a few years ago and sought to understand the movements of God in my life and live accordingly. I need to be with God in a very real way and have learned how to respond to the ache for Him through my prayer life and “down time.” As the years progressed and I understood that my physical suffering had value, I began sharing bits and pieces of what I was going through: severe joint problems, nights of di...

The path to Hell is paved with good intentions. I don’t get that. It seems to me that good intentions ought to be worth more than a ticket to Hell. Having said that, I definitely get that the good intentions I have for any number of things can always be a hellish path. Exercise comes immediately to mind. As does dieting and just keeping fit and well at 53 years old. I am filled with good intentions, but turning those passive good intentions into successful achievements is another story. I suppose this also falls under the Scriptural category of the-spirit-is-willing-but-the-flesh-is-weak. So maybe the whole path-to-Hell-is-paved-with-good-intentions does make more sense than I am willing to admit. Either way, I have come to realize that while the initial good intention is a necessary first step to health and wellness, a viable course of action must accompany it—preferably something not too painful, boring, or time-consuming. My goal this year has been to find the right-...