Emergence

My daughter had a meeting last Tuesday so I took g-baby Claire to her music class.

Cassie warned me that Claire’s music class MO is to take everything out of the diaper bag and bring it to her. Claire loves to go through my purse, too, so of course she brought me its contents throughout the class, too, until I got smart and put it up. (Remember, I was a mother of toddlers a LONG time ago. I’m a little rusty. My “duh” moment came when Claire called our veterinarian’s office on my cell phone. I hate telling Claire “no,” but I feared a long-distance call to Japan.)

In between diaper bag/purse mining, Claire and I sang songs, played tambourines, castanets and bells (I felt like Stevie Nicks for a moment), and we danced. A lot. I didn’t work out that day, but after 60 minutes of bopping, twisting, and lifting a 17-month-old kid, I had an idea for a new workout video: “The Grammy and Claire Dance and Sing Until Grammy Is Pooped Workout.”

Reason #493 why I am so devoted to maintenance: I’d have been WAY more pooped out 170 pounds ago.

Oh who am I kidding? I wouldn’t have even taken Claire to music class. We’d have stayed home and I would have missed out on yet another awesome once-in-a-lifetime precious moment that makes life so much fun.

On the way home, Claire sang the “Me” song she learned in class. The words are simple. “Me” is the entire first verse, “you” the second, and “we” the third. “Me” is one of the few words Claire says right now along with “wow,” “dat,” (a combination of “dad” and “Matt,” her dad’s name), and “uh oh.” Ask her what a kitty says and she says “mao,” like “Mao” Tse-Tung. Ask her what a doggy says and she pants. She’s brilliant, I tell you. Mensa material.

Her vocabulary isn’t quite enough to know what her speaking voice will ultimately sound like, but it’s exciting to listen to it emerge. What will she sound like in a year, five years, 20 years?

I thought about emergence as I cleaned out my flower beds yesterday and saw all the shoots emerging from the ground. As I raked dead leaves, pulled weeds, and bagged old mulch, I looked at my arms, thighs and calves and remembered when I was losing weight I liked watching them emerge. Even now, as I continue to challenge them with new exercises, I see muscles emerge in ways I didn’t expect. It’s still exciting. But I also wonder what they’ll look like in five years, 10 years, 20? Things will shift and change and am I prepared to watch a new kind of emergence, perhaps something not quite as optimistic as toned muscles?

I thought about the Robert Frost poem, “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Claire’s voice, garden plants, this emerging, changing body of mine. Nothing gold can stay, but all are here now in this moment to appreciate them for what they are right now. And right now, this body can still plant and tend a garden, and most importantly, dance with Claire to “No More Monkeys (Jumping on the Bed).”

Read More

Learning to Remember

I’m the poster child for bad posture. I lean on the water faucet when pouring a glass of water. I lean on the counter when I’m waiting for something to cook on the stove. I slouch. I cross my legs. I lean over too far on the elliptical. I’m a posture wreck.

I began my efforts to improve my posture a few years ago when I added functional training techniques to my workout. But in time, I stopped doing them, mostly because I switched up my routine and, I admit, it was hard (said in my best whine). In the last few weeks, I’ve reintroduced a few back into my strength training regimen, such as standing on one foot during bicep curls (alternating halfway through a set) and laying on an exercise ball during triceps work and chest presses. The purpose is to improve balance and strengthen the core, thereby improving posture.

Still I get lazy and lean.

I found some good articles online on how to improve posture. How To Improve Your Posture on WikiHow offers practical tips on how to sit properly in an office chair, stand, stretch, things like that. You can find help on YouTube, too. But you know and I know that we can read and observe and study until we’re blue in the face, but unless we remember to utilize what we’ve learned when we need that knowledge the most, all that learning is for naught.

So here’s what I’m doing to improve my posture: I’m learning to remember.

My body is an excellent teacher if I’d just let it be. I get so preoccupied with thoughts that I forget to pay attention to what my body is doing behind my back. By not questioning the sensations and listening to my body, my mind ends up making all the decisions. This inattention, in large part, is how I got to be 300 pounds, and it’s why I find myself day after day leaning, slouching and shuffling along.

Learning to remember to pay attention to my body helped me lose weight and it will help me improve my posture. I’m determined it will. Being aware of my hand leaning on the counter or spigot, listening to my knee stiffen up as I cross one leg over the other, feeling my back arch and my neck crack because they aren’t aligned properly – these are the things I have to listen to.

The path of least resistance (read: being lazy) is causing my body all kinds of headaches, so the leaning and slouching has to stop.

How do you remember to listen to your body? Have you made an effort to improve your posture? Any words of wisdom you’d like to pass along would be appreciated.

Read More

Scanning The Headlines: The Good, The Bad and the Inspiring

It’s about time: “Group challenges acai weight-loss claims.” The Center for Science in the Public Interest has gone on record challenging several company’s health claims that acai berries will help “shed pounds, flatten tummies, cleanse colon, enhance sexual desire, or perform any of the other commonly advertised functions.”

The state of Connecticut is getting on the bandwagon, too, by looking into claims of fraud.

"There are no magical berries from the Brazilian rain forest that cure obesity, only painfully real credit card charges and empty weight loss promises," Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said. "Aggressive acai berry pitches on the Internet entice countless consumers into free trials promising weight loss, energy and detoxification. These claims are based on folklore, traditional remedies and outright fabrications unproved by real scientific evidence."

While bloggers have been writing about this for months now, I’m glad authorities are finally looking into these ridiculous claims. I’m also glad I finally know how to pronounce “acai.” LOL

Another headline on CNN grabbed my attention: “Obesity can shorten lifespan up to a decade.”

While I realize BMI isn’t the be all and end all of fitness measurements, it’s still a pretty reliable tool in determining whether most people fall into the obese, overweight or normal weight categories.

“The researchers calculate that having a BMI of 30 to 35 takes to two to four years off the average lifespan compared with having a BMI of 22.5 to 25. Having a BMI between 40 and 45 (for example, being 5 feet 5” and weighing 240 to 270 pounds), they say, reduces one's lifespan by eight to 10 years. This reduction in lifespan is on par with being a heavy smoker.”

I began losing weight this last time mostly because I was afraid of the health repercussions and a little because of vanity. Actually, the two (health and vanity) collided in my imagination when I was 300 pounds and lived above my antique store – a very old 19th century building with long, narrow stairways. I thought, What if I need medical assistance and can’t get to the first floor by myself? How many people will it take to carry me down the narrow stairs? Could they carry me down the narrow stairs?

I don’t know what the long-lasting health affects I’ll incur from my obese past. There’s nothing I can do to change that. I can only do everything within my power to not become obese again. I may have already knocked off a few years of my lifespan. I don’t want to make any more contributions to that number. God knows science will probably determine I’m doing or consuming something that will surely do that for me.

In happier news, one of my Maintaining Diva friends, Sondra, is featured in next month’s Weight Watcher’s magazine. Her story is online now. Click here to read how she went from an inactive 242 pounds to a sleek 129-pound marathon runner. Please let me know if that link doesn’t work.

Sondra is encouraging and kind and realistic all at the same time. She’s also one of the healthiest eaters I know. Here she is after eating only half her dinner when the Divas met up in Connecticut last year.

I’m so proud of her and her marathon accomplishments. Mostly, I’m very blessed to call her my friend.

I’m heading to Pittsburgh for a few days to see Miss Claire and her mother and to visit Trader Joe’s. Maybe I’ll find some acai berries! LOL OK, maybe not. I’m sure they’re quite tasty, though, and would go well with Grape Nuts. I just won’t expect them to do amazing things for my sex life.

I’ll check back in in a few days. Be well and remember, don’t give your credit card to anyone promising to buff and shine your colon.

Read More

Let's Try This Again, Shall We?

I apologize for the disappearing post yesterday. Here it is again, almost in its original form.

I read an article by HungryGirl over on Yahoo called Attack of the 1000-Calorie Meals which spotlighted a few of the most fat-laden meals at chain restaurants. What made me angry and sad at the same time were many of the comments that followed. A good number of commentators held the attitude, “We’re all going to die. May as well eat what we want” and “The government can’t tell me what to eat.”

Many people also commented that outrageously high caloric food items are “special treats,” things people don’t eat “every day” and when they do, people just need to “work out more” to make up for it. First of all, it is quite clear just looking out into any crowd that fat-laden, processed and unnutritious foods are not special treats, otherwise 65 percent of our populace wouldn’t be overweight or obese, and people are not working out more to make up for it. Also, there are long-term consequences for eating high-fat, low-nutrient foods even as “special treats.”

It’s time to open a can of whoop-ass on this country’s dietary ignorance.

I agree that the government shouldn’t tell us what to eat, but I believe in serious food regulations. The government forced cigarette and liquor companies to place health warnings on their products. So, too, should restaurants. And I’m not talking nutritional information brochures in every restaurant. Nope. I want full disclosure under each menu item: calories, fat and sodium content, the whole nine yards. Now I realize many Mom and Pop places have complained of the financial burden this would create for them. OK, how about they give a list of ingredients, just like we see on food packages in the grocery store? The only thing they’d have to change is their menu or maybe buy a bigger chalkboard.

And if these seems too constricting for adults, too “big brother,” I believe we, as a nation, are morally obligated to do something to save our children. Obesity is slowly killing them and robbing them of quality of life.

Do we really want to live in a society with, according to a paper published last year by Johns Hopkins University, an overweight and obesity rate of 86 percent by 2030? As Barbara Berkeley wrote on our Refuse to Regain blog last week, “The huge burden of disease that will come along with such an increase is expected to raise obesity related health-care spending from the current $100 billion to over $960 billion per year.”

And we thought the stimulus package was expensive. This is an every year expense, folks, not a one-time deal.

Education and regulation are imperative. Now. This isn’t about thwarting individual choice. It’s about helping people make better choices, and if they choose not to, they need to understand the health and economic price that they and everyone will pay.

I had a few other questions go through my mind when I wrote this:

1. Restaurants have long said that they’re just giving consumers what they want when they create their high-fat menus. I argue they are creating an atmosphere of want. If more restaurants created healthy alternatives, I believe people would, in time and with education, choose those items, too.

2. Is it possible to create a culture of healthy eating? And if so, how?

3. Who is more culpable? Is it always the individual or do food corporations and restaurants have a moral obligation to stop creating foods that are potential carcinogens?

Leave a comment. I look forward to the discussion.

--------------------
Note to Anonymous who left a comment on yesterday’s erased post: I appreciate your passion and I thought you brought out some excellent points that I considered when reposting this blog entry sans the paragraph that set you off. While I stand by the spirit of what I wrote, I can see how the tone was biased and unfair.

Read More

Happy Vernal Equinox!

While there might be a dusting of snow on the ground this morning (I refuse to look outside), it’s SPRING, dammit, and nothing can take away the joy I feel now that it’s not officially winter anymore. Like a hemorrhoid, I thought it would never go away.

On one of the lovely 70-degree days earlier this week, I went out and inspected the garden beds. Beneath all the debris, chive shoots have emerged. Bright green spikes growing out of the ground and smelling sweet and oniony. I cleared away a few leaves and took a good whiff. Mmmmmm….I can taste them in my omelets already. It’s so nice to see green among all the brown and rot.

I think I’ll plant carrots this year. I’ve fallen in love with carrots again. We had a falling out for a few years. I used to eat them like they were mandatory diet food, the “Oh well, can’t eat anything else” staple in my “diet mind.” For years they reminded me of deprivation and drudgery because I was for so long in a “I have to lose weight NOW so I’ll eat a carrot” mentality.

But carrots no longer go bad at the bottom of my crisper, thanks, in part, to this fabulous recipe I found in an old Weight Watcher’s cookbook. Contributed by Sara Schrader of Faribault, Minnesota, which is close to my old stomping grounds, it features my favorite herb in the whole world: tarragon. The only thing I changed was the oil. I don’t add it, but the original recipe calls for a teaspoon of canola.

Tarragon Carrot Salad

5 carrots, cut into ½-inch chunks
¼ C orange juice
1 T minced fresh tarragon or 1 t dried
1 T tarragon wine vinegar
¼ t sugar
Pinch of salt
Pinch of pepper
1 onion, coarsely chopped
1 ½ C red grapes, halved

1. Steam carrots or cook in small amount of water until soft but not mushy. Drain and rinse with cool water.

2. Combine orange juice, tarragon, vinegar, sugar, salt and pepper. Mix with carrots in a bowl. Add the onions and grapes; toss to combine. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

Without the added oil, there are 2 WW Points for 2 servings; 1 Point for 4 servings. I’ve heard that if you eat the entire thing as a serving, it’s 4 Points, but I wouldn’t know that personally or anything. Ahem.

I feel like I’ve emerged from a black hole now that it’s finally spring. The finches are back, the crocuses are budding, life is buzzing all around. I’m getting my thighs ready for biking season and I’m itching to dig out the summer clothes and hide the winter boots in the basement. Spring cleaning is cathartic.

I think I’ll celebrate this first day of spring with a trip to the greenhouse and a batch of Tarragon Carrot Salad. What are you doing on this vernal equinox?

Read More

Hearing Compliments

Remember a few weeks ago when I had the root canal and temporary crown? Today I got the real crown put on – it’s porcelain and everything and polished with a real diamond finish. My new tooth is worth more than my Jeep! I always tell my husband I married him for his dental insurance.

Anyway, a strange and ponderous thing happened while my dentist was digging around in my mouth. He paid me a compliment, and I had to sit there and take it and not say a word because, well, his fingers and his assistant’s fingers, and a water tube, suction tube and a drill were lodged in my mouth.

First a little background. My dentist and my husband are colleagues. Dr. Jimmy is the founder of a medical research company called Clarion Research Group of which my husband is the vice president. It’s a new venture, but one that has great promise for creating products that ease post-surgical mouth pain and which already produces something called VeinStay, a device that looks like a fork and holds a vein in place during a needle stick when drawing blood or hooking up an IV. It’s a godsend for people like me with difficult-to-stick veins. (Click here if you want to see a spiffy photo of Dr. Jimmy with Larry and click here to read about the vein fork)

So, back to my story. Dr. Jimmy told me I was a great patient with a great attitude and that he was grateful for my support of CRG. My first thought was, “I’m nothing special. I just do what I’m told. I don’t move, don’t bite, don’t swallow too much…isn’t that what you’re supposed to do in a dentist’s chair?” Only I couldn’t say it out loud and had to sit there and let him say nice things about me without my rebuttal.

Then I thought, Why do I need a rebuttal? Why can’t I just hear kind words about me? Jim is sincerely grateful for my support. He thinks I’m a good patient. Let that be enough, Lynn. Let that warm your heart. Take it in and believe him!

Then I started wondering (because I had at least another two hours in the chair) how many times in a day, a week, a month that I hear, or rather DON’T hear, the nice things people say or appreciate the nice things people do for me without feeling unworthy of their kindness?

Answer? Probably every time. But I’m vowing now to change that.

I challenge you to do the same. How many times do people pay you a compliment about your hair, your clothes, your smile, your weight loss, your form in an aerobics class? Now how many times do you smile, say thank you, and really reflect that good feeling back to yourself?

The next time you are paid a compliment, pretend you’re in Dr. Jimmy’s chair with tubes and fingers in your mouth and you can’t say a word. Let their words sink in. See you from their perspective. I hope you find it easier to do than I did today, but I’m thinking it’s probably hard for many of you, too. But try. It will give you a whole new appreciation for yourself seeing yourself through someone else’s eyes.

Dr. Jimmy’s a good guy. His compliment meant a lot to me. But I wouldn’t have heard it and appreciated it as much if his finger’s hadn’t been lodged in my mouth. Sometimes it takes brute force to hear the good stuff about ourselves.

Read More

The Bear Coffin

The following blog was originally published on my writing blog, ZenBagLady, two years ago. After talking to my sister Debbie yesterday and with the weather being so sunny and warm today, I started reminiscing about our summer vacations. Besides, I just don’t feel like writing about anything related to weight today, and there’s no rule that says I have to, right?

Ode to the Bear Coffin

Camping season is around the corner and vacationers will soon take to the roads in their RVs or lugging their fancy fifth wheels or pop-ups, destined for state parks or festivals or some relative’s driveway.

When I was a kid, my family went camping, too, only we didn’t have brand-name digs. We had The Bear Coffin.

Dad bought this little homemade gem in the late ‘60s. It was built on a 1953 Buick suspension and it folded out on opposite sides to sleep four. There was a cookstove and water faucet up front and the only luxury was the little toilet that let us avoid middle-of-the-night runs to the campground bathrooms. This was particularly beneficial during fish fly season.

Originally aqua colored, Dad painted it the same color gold as our living room and added a roll-out tarp above the door. My brother recently inherited that partially filled can of 40-year-old Supermix gold paint when Dad downsized his garage, but Dad kept the tarp. Nothing goes to waste in my family.

It was probably my mother who dubbed it The Bear Coffin. When it was folded down, its half-circle top and flat bottom was certainly large enough to hold a bear. It caused a lot of rubbernecking as we drove down the highway and it was always the talk of any campground we set up in.

While the camper accommodated four people comfortably, there were usually five or more of us on any given trip. This meant that the leftover people either had to take their chances that they wouldn’t get stepped on (or if I was in a berth, plopped on – I fell out of bed all the time) if they slept on the floor between the berths, or they bedded down in the Chevy station wagon, which is what my sister and I had to do on one of our family vacations to The Black Hills in South Dakota.

Being 15, Debbie got the back seat and I, not quite 8 at the time, was stuck in the front seat with my pillow on the passenger seat and my legs carefully tucked below the steering wheel. We were covered in mosquito repellant because the windows were rolled down, but the crickets chirped and the stars were bright and my sister taught me camping songs and told me stories.

Debbie was always kind to me, even when I stole her crutches after she’d injured her foot and after she busted me tape recording her and her boyfriend’s private conversation. She was politically active and tried explaining Vietnam and Watergate to me even though I was more interested in watching Captain Kangaroo and hanging upside down from our backyard elm tree. Mom often made us matching clothes, and during that trip to South Dakota, we both wore what I called our Wonder Woman shorts. They had white stars on blue and purple stripes and I remember being jealous of my beautiful sister who was tall and thin and filled out her shorts in a way my 8-year-old body could not (and never did, for that matter).

(This is me holding a postcard of Mt. Rushmore IN FRONT of Mt. Rushmore. What a dork. Anyway, those are my Wonder Woman shorts.)

Being it was summer and we camped on the Great Plains, thunderstorms were common, usually in the evenings around the cocktail hour. Dad loved Scotch on the rocks and what better way to obtain “rocks” in nature than by reaching his glass beyond the tarp to catch hail stones as they fell.

The Bear Coffin’s canvas was sensitive to rain and Dad told us that there was a chance it could leak during a storm, particularly if someone touched it. That’s not what I heard, though. What I heard was, “Don’t ever under any circumstances touch the canvas when it’s raining because a flood as big as Noah’s will come and sweep you away and you’ll never see your family again.” My little brother knew this was my fear, so when it rained, he’d make sure I was watching and put his finger a breath away from the canvas. In horror I’d scream, “Stop it! Don’t touch the Kansas!” Of course I meant “canvas,” but I didn’t hear the “v” sound when dad said the word, and being the sensitive people they are, no one in my family has let me forget that.

We went a lot of places with The Bear Coffin, places everyone should see once in their life – Lake Itasca and the mouth of the Mississippi; Wounded Knee, where we visited a Native American school my mom and her green stamps helped buy a school bus for; the Badlands, where Mom said a tree probably grew where I peed, perched between the opened front and back doors of the station wagon; Wall Drug; Hot Springs; and Devil’s Tower. And while it’s been 35 years since we took it camping, I can still remember how the door sounded when it was opened and closed. At the end of the night, I’d lie in bed and listen to Mom and Dad outside talking to other campers, then they’d come in to sleep and when Dad shut the door it sounded like the sucking sound of a hatch of a space ship, sealing us in a happy, warm pod.

More random photos.

My towhead brother and me at Flintstone Park. There are several photos in the album of the two of us sitting on various cartoon dinosaurs, and of course, us in the face cutouts of Wilma and Fred’s bodies.

My skinny mother looking very exited to be sitting outside the Bear Coffin and drinking a Pabst Blue Ribbon.

An even better view of the Bear Coffin because it also features the family station wagon.

Read More