Tag: Diet

Climb Any Mountain

 

The road from our driveway down to the main road winds around our hill, creating an idyllic s-curve framed by the trees that line the horse farm near the bottom of the hill. Since the bridge at that bottom closed, I haven't seen my favorite S-Curve much, but a few days ago, I took it into my head to incorporate more hills into my run and, instead of running the quarter mile laps around our house, I walked to the top of the driveway and then down the road. It's hardly the path not taken, but it's rarely done on foot, let alone at a decent pace, and that made all the difference.

Swinging my arms, music turned off so I could hear the woods around me, I marched down the hill at a good clip. There's a fallen tree in front of the defunct bridge at the bottom of the hill, and I decided it was a good place to turn around.

Katy, my wonder dog (she wonders about everything), had run our trail back and forth several times and wagged her tail as I started back up the hill. She bounded up the first swell in the road, stopping at the orange barrels and 'Road Closed' sign just as the sun climbed high enough in the sky to begin casting long purple shadows on the road. Shadows still covered my part of the dirt road, but Katy was now silhouetted in silvery gold, and the mountain behind her was completely illuminated. I couldn't see the rest of the hill I had to climb, and as I started back, I felt as though I was entering new territory.

This is a place where I make time for fitness and where fitness propels the other things in my life that matter. It's a place where I take the time to savor the simple things around me.

By the time I walked back to the middle of the hill where our driveway begins, I was huffing and puffing, but I was still climbing. The climbs have gotten easier each day, and each day I add a little more hill and a little more road to the routine.

I still do my dance at the scale – finding triumph or shame on any given day. On any given day, I may find Katy, neighbor's dogs, sweltering heat or soothing cool morning air on the trail, but I always find some reason for triumph. And I never find a reason for shame.

 

Sinner on the Tread of an Angry Scale

Some mornings I feel like I’ve joined a cult. Every morning I step on the scale, hoping to see the digital digits in decline The amount of decline, however, can vary with the time of day or what I’m wearing or even where on the scale I step as I try to disperse my weight over the greatest possible surface area. I perform my ritual dance – tap to zero, step up, step down, repeat as needed to produce desired results. Sometimes the ritual can last as many as five minutes, but most mornings my devotions are rewarded.

There are a more than a few days, however, when I creep to the altar. Like a penitent kneeling in the confessional, I slough off every possible bit of mass before stepping, naked, onto the scale. Sometimes I think I can hear it speak to me.

“You seem troubled…”

“Forgive me, it’s been three days since my last weigh-in.”

“So I see. Have you anything to confess?”

“I’m too embarrassed.”

“There’s nothing to fear. Step closer. After all, you know you can’t hide your sins from me.”

“No. Well, I have sinned. It started with this pint of Ben and Jerry’s. See, I was trying to eat local and – ”

“Everyone makes mistakes once in a while. Except for me, of course. I’m 100% accurate. Just step on and see.”

“Yes, well there were several once-in-a-whiles this weekend. It’s a bit of a blur.”

“Step on and we’ll see what your penance will be.”

I do a mental rundown of my sins in the last twenty-four hours, wondering what the penalty will be and quietly greatful the scale doesn’t come with a buzzer or alarm of any kind. I tap-to-zero and then step on the pads between the outlines I’d drawn years ago. My penance began immediately and painfully as the numbers climbed by whole numbers. I dance a little longer, but the number only increases with my rationalizations and excuses.

A few minutes later, chastened, I creep from the treads of my angry scale. But unlike an unburdened magdalen, I don’t leave the shame with my confessor. It follows me, gnawing at my faith in the possibility of another possibility. But, while my faith is shaken, fear of the numbers will bring me crawling back in another day.

 

 

 

 

 

The Family That Plays Together

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The diet is mine.  Fitness is a bit of a family affair – or at least it’s a team effort as far as my life coach and son, six-year-old SuperDude (he really does have super powers), is concerned.  Trailing me on my morning runs up and down the driveway and around the parking circle, his endless chatter and questions distract me from any aches or exhaustion.

We walked and ran this road a few years ago when I was on my last diet.  Pound after pound, SuperDude chased me around my makeshift track, hugged me, and greeted the morning sun with me as we Downward Dogged and Mountain Posed our way through the summer.

He’s older now, but while wisdom threatens to peel some of the fantasies from his vision, his primary power is stronger than ever.  Even as I sit down to write and draw, he’s at the video cabinet finding the perfect routine for tomorrow morning.  And in the morning he’ll cajole and pull me off the couch.  He’s half my size and his chirping and chattering will be powerful enough remind me once again that every gram of muscle I rend from my own fat is not converted just for my own sake.

The Light Switch

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It’s like turning on a light switch that had been weighed down by despair and self-loathing.  Like a compact fluorescent that gets brighter and brighter, however, I’m feeling my own power over my life.

I’ve lost about fifteen pounds (with a hundred still needing to go), but things began changing well before this morning’s penance at the scale.  The outward signs of the change are still small.  When you’re seriously overweight, it takes more than a few pounds for the loss to show outside, but I am feeling in the change inside.

The Big Guy gets credit for a lot of things, but he especially gets credit for telling me I’m beautiful when I’m significantly overweight.  I don’t believe it, but he makes me believe he believes it, and that’s everything.

Being overweight in this country has become almost a moral failing, but when I start to lose, I don’t suddenly feel more moral or even more beautiful.  I breathe better.  My body begins to function better.  Mostly, even though my jeans are starting to need a belt, I can’t squeeze the loathing in as easily.

The trick now is not to turn on the switch, but how to keep it on this time.

Magic Pills, Ills, and Long Forgotten Cures

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As I’m lying down with my little one for his bedtime snuggle, I’m realizing that I haven’t retreated to the fantasy world that gets me through depressions lately.  At first I though it was the magic pill I’ve been taking, but I think something better is happening.

When I first started taking the pills, I tried to get in and I couldn’t.  Something was blocking the door.  It wasn’t me, it was the pill.  But in the last few weeks I’ve begun taking care of my physical health, and while that switch took a herculean effort to move to the on position, it’s like watching a compact fluorescent’s power grow as it absorbs powers.  At first it’s only little successes, but then a sense of physical well being takes over, charging the mercury until all the rooms in my head are bright, and my vision is clear.

Now running about a mile or mile 1/2 a day, hoping to get up to three so I can run with my sister in August, I’m starting to feel the effect of a natural magic pill.  As I was lying next to my beautiful sleeping boy, I noticed I still couldn’t get into the room, but for the first time in a long time, I didn’t need or want to.  Some of that need may have been quashed by pharma, but it’s nice to know that at least some of that lack of desire may be my own doing.

A Journey of 5000 Meters

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Diet-wise, this year is looking pretty much like last year and the year before – two pounds forward and 2.5 back.  There was one year where I did have diet success.  It was more of a lifestyle victory than a diet.

One spring about three years ago, I started a job with abysmal pay and benefits but lots of walking around the building.  I added a walk to my lunch routine.  An app junkie, I found a calorie counter and began controlling my portions. Summer progressed, and getting really serious, I started running.  With the aid of  another app, at summer’s end, I ran my first 5K with my sister and her kids.  It would turn out to be my only 5K.

That fall I headed into one of the periodic depressions that have plagued me since childhood, and I fell off the the diet and exercise wagon.  I fell hard.  Even with a better job with great people, pay, and benefits, I started spiraling down in early fall.  I knew the mental health benefits of daily exercise, but I could not get myself to run (after 40+ years, I’m still surprised that depression isn’t always rational).

This winter has been a lot like that winter three years ago.  Work was good.  Life was good, but every single day was a struggle to get out of bed and, once out of bed, not give into the temptation to dive into a permanent oblivion.

I plodded through winter, knowing the cycle would progress eventually and getting help when I knew I needed it.  I’ve been coming out of this curve for a few weeks, seeing pieces of the moderation and even the mania that will follow.  Spring is coming.

Outside, spring is here.  As with the last two years, sun has inspired thoughts of exercising again (dieting is a more distant goal).  Last Monday, however,  news of the Boston Marathon Bombing took all attention away from spring and diets and work.

Tuesday it rained.  The weather fit my mood in the aftermath of the tragedy.  It didn’t inspire running, but it became a good day for reflection.  Knowing little would change during the day, and that there was even less I could do to change things, I’d already decided not to gorge on news of the bombing.

The kids home for Spring Break, so working and keeping them busy helped divert me.  Thing1’s improved report card had won him back some forfeited computer time, and Thing2 embarked on a new construction paper sculpture.  We all worked quietly for a while.  Then, forgetting it was a rainy day, I accidentally broke the relaxed rhythm.

“Why don’t you two go outside?”  It was an automated question, timed, after all these years, to go off when children have been inside for too long.  “Go do something. You’re wasting your lives in here.”  Thing1, with the perfect amount of pre-teen sarcasm, quickly reminded me of the downpour outside.

Rebuffed, I lumbered back to my desk.  I sat down, my girth forcing air out of the seat cushion with a sharp whooshing sound.  I didn’t, as usual, automatically push from my mind the irony of a behemoth of a mom telling two wiry kids to get moving.  Today, I reminded myself, once again, that they deserved a mother who could keep up with them now and into their futures.

I shook off the irony and clicked on my email.  Then, despite my resolve, I clicked on a Boston webpage.  Pictures of Monday’s victims flashed on the screen.  Below, there were life stories of people who had been physically whole until the day before.  Then I saw a story of a school trying to raise money for the wounded.  My spirit lifted a bit as I found another story of a man who had never run a mile resolving to run the marathon next year to fundraise for the survivors. Through all the stories ran a theme of people trying not only to help but to live fully.

I got back to my email.  I’m physically whole, but I had to admit that I take a lot of my life for granted.  There are even some parts of it, like my health, that I toss aside very casually.

Wednesday morning I got up before the kids.  The rain was gone.  Without waking the boys, I slid on a pair of running shoes that hadn’t seen daylight since October 2010 and slipped out the door.  For the next 30 minutes I ran when my app told me to run and walked when it told me to walk, and there were times I had to stop.  I doubt I’ll be in that marathon group any year, but, chasing my acorn-squash shaped shadow through the woods around our house made me hope that I was taking the first steps of a better journey.

Laugh, Cry, Diet

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It’s the eleventh of February which makes this almost the 41rst first day of my new diet.  

It’s not a fad diet.  I know those don’t work.  The only ‘diet’ that’s ever worked (for me) was keeping a journal on paper or on my iPod and keeping myself accountable.  But the part of dieting I really hate is not the calorie and fiber tracking.  It’s not the preparation – I’m a surprisingly decent cook for someone who’s built a blog around being a bad housekeeper.  It’s not the exercise which can be addicting once you get going (those endorphins are better than prozac).  It’s not even the food itself – a lot of healthy food is actually pretty tasty.  

The thing I hate about dieting is that it’s not a diet.  It is recognizing that the bag of sour cream and onion chips I’m having for breakfast really does have to be off the list – forever. (Maybe not for everyone, but for me the salty sweet stuff is like crack to a drug addict.)  It is accepting sensible portions for the long haul.   It really is about making a life change.

My early adult years were characterized by many things, but one of them was not restraint – in any part of my life.  I played. I partied.  I sinned.  And I ate.  I ate anything I wanted.  Food – especially good food – was my drug.  When the Big Guy and I first married, we moved to Boston’s Italian North End, and I denied my palate nothing.  When we travelled, indulging in local flavors was as much a part of the experience as the art and the sights.  In my early twenties, youthful metabolism and a lifestyle centered around dancing and walking helped my body combat the effects of my food lust.  I look at pictures of myself from back then and can’t believe I thought I was fat as a size 6 or 8 (does anyone ever NOT thing they’re too fat).

A few years after we were married, I took an office job that had me driving to and from work for an hour a day.  Not surprisingly, retribution had an easier time catching up with me in a car than when I was walking to work everyday in the city.  But when my jeans got tighter, I didn’t get wise.   I got new jeans.

Now, many years and sizes later, I’m still trying to get my fat butt on the diet wagon and find a way to keep it there.  I know that my issue food is not just about flavor.  It is about fullness, however.  I know that there’s been an empty part me for as long as I can remember, and I am sure I am not the only person who uses food to fill that void – even when my body is crying uncle.  The worst part is, the more you try to fill it, the bigger it gets because you’re also filling it with shame and loathing.

I used to tell myself the big jeans didn’t matter.  Being good at my job matters.  The Big Guy matters.  Thing1 and Thing2 matter.  

But as I watch twelve-year-old Thing1 pour out my Diet Coke when he thinks I’m not looking (don’t let your kids read about all the things that could cause their mother cancer or diabetes), I realize the big jeans do matter.  So far, I’ve dodged the diabetes bullet and a lot of the other ailments that go along with being fat.  What I don’t do, however, is get out on the ice with my kids at skating practice.  I don’t go one walks or take slides down the sledding hill because I’d have to climb back up it.  And worse, I let shame dictate how I interact with the people who interact with my kids, and that does affect them.

Most of my diets start in the morning and are over by dinner.  Today I’m trying something different and clearing out the crap before the family comes home.  Dinner will be on a salad plate, and the kitchen will be closed at 8PM.  And when I’m tempted by the cookie jar, I’m going to get out my journal and write a note to myself that it matters because they matter.  

It wouldn’t be bad to be able to zip up that little number that’s been hanging on the back of my closet door for the last three years either.

 

 

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