All posts by dotyness

I'm a mother, a hockey fan, a photographer, a sugar and nicotine addict, a non-smoking smoker, a struggler, a connoisseur of the absurd, a reader, a traveler, a writer, a student of light and shadow, a foodie, a daughter, a sister, a friend, and a crazy cat lady. I talk to myself more than I care to admit and perhaps even more than is healthy. I'm in a time of great change and turmoil so now I'm talking to you as well as to myself.
Cravings, Motivation

The Belly of the Beast

Leave a comment

After a full week of making more healthful food choices and avoiding nearly all processed foods, I feel fantastic! My energy level is up. My eyes are sparkling. A song perches on my lips the moment my feet hit the floor! I am practically Cinderella.

Yeah. Right. What a load of crap.

“And the noise was in the beast’s belly like unto the questing of thirty couple hounds” (Book 1, chapter XIX) -Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory, circa 1469

“Thirty couple hounds” is, I think, what my mother used to refer to as “forty, ‘leventy dozen.” Ever how many it is, though,  it is still the number of dogs that sound like they’re in my belly looking for something to eat. Maybe not dogs, but something else that’s growling and looking for snackage, for sure. Like Jabba the Hutt’s sarlacc (from its holiday portrait above), my stomach feels like an open pit ringed by teeth and tusks, ready to consume all ice cream, cup cakes, or Kaminoan bounty hunters that happen to come my way. I have been eating whole, plant-based foods all week and am jonesing for an Oreo Blizzard so hard that I’ve even dreamed about it. Seriously, I’m ready to make my way to the Crossroads to make a deal with Ole Scratch. I woke up from the dream feeling guilty even though I hadn’t actually done anything. It reminded me of when I quit smoking seven or eight years ago. I had the same kinds of dreams and the same kinds of guilt.

I was a moderate to heavy smoker for the better part of 20 years. I liked the ritual of tapping a new pack five times on each side before opening it. I liked the smell of the pack when I first opened it, particularly if the cigarettes were really fresh. The tobacco smelled wonderful! Then I’d put that first one between my lips and light it. The sulfer dioxide smell of the match entered my nostrils just as the sound of the sizzling tobacco burning reached my ears. Then I’d inhale and the nicotine would hit the pleasure centers of my brain, lighting them up. Fantastic. Just fantastic.

I know people who are social smokers. They can smoke a whole pack while out drinking with friends, then not pick up another cigarette for months. That’s not me. I’m a nicotine addict. I love the feeling of when that nicotine hits my brain producing the buzz and calming my nerves. (See? At least seven years after my last smoke and I can still remember the exact feeling.) Because I enjoy that feeling so much, I never experimented with hard drugs like heroin, cocaine or ecstasy. I was always afraid that I would like them too much. For the same reason, I steer clear of opioid pain killers. (Even with as bad as my foot and ankle have hurt these months, I’ve stuck to various NSAIDs.) What I have not steered clear of is ice cream. Or cake. Or chocolate. Or pastries. Yet, the sugar in those items hits the pleasure centers of my brain exactly like those other drugs would. And the lack of sugar causes withdrawal issues exactly like the lack of those other drugs would.

I have no doubt that heroin withdrawal is FAR worse than anything I’m going through right now; but, that doesn’t change the fact that I’m still going through my own thing. I’m cranky. I’m hungry. I’m unfocused .But mostly I’m cranky. I want a hit of Phish Food. Badly.

But I’m not going to go get one.

I’m not because I have my eye on my Why – to become able again, rather than remaining disabled by my own hand.

While I may never reach the happy nirvana of our morning songstress Cinderella, I know that my days of feeling like a subterranean Tantooine carnivore are limited. Just as surely as better health and (hopefully) healing are coming, so, too, is relief from the cravings.

Food

Comfort in the Cold

Leave a comment

I was scheduled to go for yet another visit to my orthopedist this morning; but, I woke up to the photo you see at the top of the page. My plans changed.

Just kidding. What I really woke up to was this:20170106_092740

But I live in Nashville where we have no snow removal equipment; so, it’s essentially the same thing. Change of plans.

On a morning like this, what I would have done last month would have been to grab some chips, leftover pizza, leftover chicken or whatever else wasn’t nailed down and park in front of the computer to watch a movie or crawl back in bed with a book. This morning was a little different. I had a wonderful bowl of cherry amaretto oats and a cup of apricot amaretto tea. I’ll be cooking more nutritious, whole-food, plant-based meals to put in the freezer and I’ll be hanging out with all the dogs and cats currently sucking up all the oxygen in my house.

It’s going to be a good day, remembering to find comfort in places other than in sleep and in the freezer section.

 

Uncategorized

What Do I Do?!

1 Comment

Now that I’ve identified my Why, great. But that doesn’t help me remember How! And How is what I need right now.

With each of my failures when trying to get back to eating healthfully, I’ve been both puzzled and frustrated as to why my current attempt was failing when I had succeeded before. Clearly, I could lose the weight at some point in history; so, why couldn’t I do it on that attempt – or the one before or the one after? What did I do differently the time I was successful?

question-markAfter much thought and examination, I have to admit that I’m still not sure. However, I know what I did in the failures that didn’t work; so, I’m consciously avoiding those behaviors this time.

These were the behaviors that I know fizzled:

  1. Eating on the fly. If there were no healthy meal options prepared when I was hungry enough to gnaw off my own fist, I stopped at a drive-thru for fries and a frosty – neither of which was small.
  2. Having a vague goal. I wanted to “lose weight” and “get back into my clothes.” Yeah. So how do you measure that?
  3. Figuring it out as I went along. I had neither a diet nor an exercise plan.
  4. Buying prepared foods. In an attempt to reduce fries and frostys, I bought “healthy” boxed foods from the interior aisles of the grocery store.

And I continued to gain weight.

Thinking about the things that I know didn’t work has jogged my memory. I remember these things did work:

  1. Prepping. When I got home from the grocery, I cut up peppers, onions, mushrooms and other veggies. Storing them in individual containers making them easy to add to salads, soups, sandwiches, eggs and whatever else. I also had salad greens waiting in a bowl to act as the foundation for the other veggies. I was my own sous chef!
  2. Setting a specific goal. I don’t remember where I got the number; but, I wanted to get down to 140 pounds. I stopped at 144 when I felt like I had lost enough; but, I had a hard number I could keep in mind and actually track my progress towards.
  3. Planning. I planned my exercise schedule and many of my meals beforehand. One gym bag was ready to go to kickboxing while another was ready to go to the pool. My workouts were planned, as well. Kickboxing was three days a week. Swimming was one day. Walking or running was two days. Resting was one day. Sometimes I would mix it up and go to the batting cages or driving range on a day, or sometimes I’d swim twice in a week and run once. Regardless, I had some kind of structure set up.
  4. Freshening up. While I would sometimes buy frozen produce or meat, most of it was fresh. The only boxed food I bought was steel cut oats. Otherwise, I bought nothing processed or boxed, regardless of how healthy the label said it was.
  5. Supplementing. While many studies show that supplements don’t actually have any health benefits, I still took them and I think that they helped me, at least mentally. Every Sunday night I filled my pill containers with the next week’s morning and night pills. I took fish and flax seed oil capsules, a multivitamin, probiotics, hyaluronic acid (for my skin and joints), Co Q-10, a D vitamin and extra B vitamins.
  6. Journaling. I used LoseIt! to keep track of every calorie I ate and every calorie I burned.
  7. Vegging. I made certain that my plate contained at least 75% vegetables and that those vegetables were not fried.
  8. Staging. I ate most of my meals using actual stoneware plates or bowls, and actual metal cutlery. I ate at the table rather than in front of the TV or over the sink.
  9. Appealing to other senses. I made a special effort to make my food visually attractive with a pleasant aroma and a variety of textures. I often listened to classical music that I liked while I ate. I made it a holistically pleasant experience.
  10. Avoiding whites. I avoided almost all white food including regular bread, white potatoes, white wheat and rice. If I ate pasta made from white flour or if I ate white rice, I was very careful with my serving sizes.

Would you look at that! It turns out we have at least a skeleton for the How. Well then. Let’s get started, shall we?

 

Body Changes, General Health, Thought Patterns, Uncategorized

The New Why

1 Comment

Way back on March 9, 2016, I shared with you that I had missed a night of work because of what I suspected was plantar fasciitis in my left foot. At that time, I had already been struggling with foot (but mostly heel) pain for months. Now, ten months later, I find myself at home on a second medical leave for that same foot; but, it’s more than just plantar fasciitis.

As you know, I work in an industrial environment for a company that sells EVERYTHING from A to Z. (Think about it for a minute and you’ll get it.) Anyway, on a typical shift, I walk from 15K to 17K steps (there are an average of about 2K steps in a mile). I know this because a friend gave me a Fitbit that counts them for me. In July, we have a ginormous sale marking the anniversary of the program we offer for our premier (or you might say prime, even) customers. That sale increases production activity dramatically for about three days. During those three days, my average number of steps jumped from between 15K and 17K up to between 20K and 23K. The grumblings from the labor force of my left heel spread to rest of the foot and ankle. And they got worse. You know that of course I ignored the grumblings until they became a work stoppage. My ankle and foot went on strike! After all, they were 49, far too old for this nonsense of walking those kinds of distances. On concrete. Carrying this fat body. The pain was absolutely excruciating! I couldn’t make it through an entire shift at work in spite of my boss’s efforts to make me as stationary as possible. On August 8, I went to see an orthopedist who diagnosed an inflamed subtalar joint (or, as my boyfriend says, a swollen ankle) and who put me in a walking boot with instructions to wear it all the time.

Yeah, because I follow instructions so well.

feet-comparison

I tried it for a week with poor results. By poor results, I mean that the pain was as gawd-awful as ever – see the photos above. By the unhealed abrasion on my lower left shin, you can see that the photos were taken in a short time frame. I bought some hiking boots and wore those instead. That was the tiniest bit better. The pain continued unrelieved by the meloxicam the doctor had prescribed; but, I continued my normal routine as best as possible. I worked at work; but, I did nothing at home. The pain while walking around was bad enough, but it was nothing compared to the pain of standing up after having been seated for awhile. There were times that I seriously considered just sleeping in the car to avoid having the make the walk into the house. When I did finally get inside, I went straight to bed where I stayed unless my bladder dictated otherwise. Clearly, the labor situation was not improving. My foot and ankle were still on strike. I was just existing. I had no life.

So, I returned to the doctor. An MRI showed stress fractures in the navicular and medial cuneiform bones, as well as a fibrous coalition between the talus and navicular bones. Some of my pain was still coming from that inflamed subtalar joint; but, some of it was coming from the stress fractures. He put me in a hard cast on September 26. (Luckily, the cast was pink and super-cute.) But it meant that I had to go on a medical leave of absence from work. After several days of being in that non-weight bearing cast, I was pain-free for the first time in months and having WAY too much fun zipping around on my borrow little knee scooter.

After a month, I was out of the cast, but the physical limitations set by my doctor kept me in a walking boot and off work until December 7. So, from October 24 to December 7, I walked no more than a normal person. Then, I went back to work. Because I could not walk the distances required in my normal job, I worked in a department that let me stand still more. Even so, between December 7 and 28, I was able to complete only one full work week. Granted, it was a 60-hour week because of the holiday season; but, I was still able to complete only one. I took a few days off while my son was visiting which gave the continually protesting joint some relief. On the 28th of December, I worked the eight-hour shift my doctor had limited me to; but, for those eight hours I got to do MY job. I was thrilled and I had an absolute blast! Then I came home and could not put any weight on my ankle for nearly 36 hours. I was back on crutches….and back on medical leave.

I can’t walk and it’s my own fault. My Why crystallized.

I have walked in excess of six miles a night probably 70% of the time over the four years I’ve been at this job; so, why has the trouble started only now? I’ve walked more at this job and been fine. I’ve been fatter than this and not had these kinds of issues. I’m older than I’ve ever been, sure, but, I don’t think that’s it. I think it’s a combination of the three things. I have never walked this much, weighed this much and been this old at the same time.

My age is my age. I can’t do anything about that. My job requires a great deal of physical activity (which, frankly, I enjoy). I can’t do anything about that. My weight. THAT, I can do something about.

Five years ago, my Why was getting healthy in order to take care of my son and to meet my potential grandchildren. In the intervening years I’ve had small Whys of a gorgeous red dress (hush, you don’t even know!), a pair of cute blue shorts, and an intriguing man with a massive chest and odd green eyes; but, I haven’t had an urgently compelling Why. Until now.

Five years ago my weight made me a potential candidate for heart attack, stroke, diabetes and some cancers. Today, my weight makes me an actual partially disabled woman. I went from a Maybe to a Sure Thing.

It’s time to stop messing around and take my life back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emotional Eating, General Health, Habits

The Whys Have It

Leave a comment

Yesterday, I said that part of the reason I stopped caring about my health was that I lost sight of my Why. That’s not a terribly complicated statement or concept; but, lemme tell you, it was a tough one to figure out!

I have tried several times over the last two years to get my head back in the game and to get this weight back off. Each time I start out with guns blazing, taking no prisoners, and showing no mercy. Then I run into my boyfriends Ben and Jerry and all bets are off. (I know people whose weaknesses are wine or chocolate or pasta; but, mine really is ice cream. I’m six. I know. However, no one understands disappointment, boredom, depression, happiness, PMS or Wednesday quite like Ben and Jerry. For me, they are Lex Luthor and they make kryptonite by the pint.) I’m so easily distracted and my efforts so easily derailed. Why?

because-the-why-mattersBecause I lost my Why. Without a reason, a strong enough motivation, I wasn’t choosing the kinds of foods and activities I needed to choose.

My first Why revolved around my son. I went for my annual Big Girl check-up, not feeling like anything was amiss other than that I was tired. At the time, I was working some 90 hours a week trying to get an internet start-up off the ground. Who wouldn’t be tired, right? You know how when you go to the doctor, they weigh you then take your blood pressure (tasks I have always believe were performed in the reverse of optimal order – of course my BP is going to be higher after I see my weight!)? Well, my BP was significantly higher than normal for me and the nurse practitioner would not let me leave until it came down. Hello. You have my attention.

At that moment, I realized that I had started down the road of permanent damage. I knew that I was approaching the time when I would either get healthy or get on a bunch of prescription drugs. With all of the heart-attacks dotting the landscape of my family history, I really began to take seriously the fact that I was headed for heart disease, which 25% of the time initially announces its presence with a fatal heart attack. In addition to the trees of heart attacks in my family landscape, there are quite a few shrubs of diabetes and some boulders of high blood pressure. My high BP that day put me in that landscape for the first time that I was aware of. I realized that if I was going to take charge of my health, I had to do it then since menopause was looming somewhere in the next decade for me. I knew it was time to act and I did. I got serious. I got it done. I got healthy.

Then I got cocky.

My Why was to be alive to see my son become a man, then perhaps a father. My Why involved meeting my potential grandchildren, baking cookies with them, riding bikes, reading stories and playing in the mud. When my son moved across the country, it became more difficult for me to keep my eyes on my Whys. I lost my focus, then I lost my way. (Understand that I’m not blaming my failure on my son for moving away. That would be absurd. I’m just giving a timeline for how and when I got lost.) Having good health for my own sake wasn’t a big enough Why. Sure my clothes were all too small, but I wasn’t sick or anything.

Until I was.

And that gave me my new Why that we’ll discuss tomorrow.

Emotional Eating, General Health, Habits

Eye Beam

Leave a comment

I say it regularly because I believe it so strongly: maturing is just the process of figuring out what a schmuck you’ve been up to this point. Yeah. So I’ve been doing some, um, maturing lately.

On August 19, 2013, I published a piece called What If You Were Dying?  Take a second to give it a read. I had some good things to say. Don’t worry. I’ll wait.

There are several things you need to know about that piece. First, the woman I’m sitting with in the photograph was my precious Aunt Jo. She died of lung cancer after having smoked for some 60-something years. She killed herself with tobacco. Second, all of the statistics I quoted in there are true (as far as any data used to prove a point can be true). Third, it was my opinion at the time that if you are deliberately doing something that is harming your health (whether it’s tobacco or Twinkies), you’re an idiot. And fourth, I’m an idiot.

plankeyeOver the last two years, I have regained at least 60 of the 94 pounds I lost. I say “at least” because, frankly, I’m too embarrassed and disgusted to get on the scales this morning and tell you exactly how many. At my thinnest, I was healthy and generally pain-free. Now, I feel lethargic and have been struggling with a foot and ankle injury for the past six months. I feel like garbage and guess whose fault that is.

Mine.

The weight gain started after a medical procedure – a side-effect of which was weight gain. (Note, I did not ask my doctor about the side effects of the protocol. If I had known about the weight gain, I would not have continued with the procedure. Henceforth, I will ask about side effects and I strongly suggest that you do, too. How else will you make an informed decision about whether the benefits of the procedure outweigh its physical costs?) The fattening started there, but it certainly didn’t stop when the side-effects were no longer in play. By then, I’d fallen off the wagon hard and was making poor food choices, regardless of all the right marketing words on the labels – healthy, low-fat, sugar-free, organic. I was almost exclusively eating processed foods marketed as health foods. Then, I just reverted to eating processed foods of nearly every kind as long as they were vegetarian. Then I even threw that out the window and just started stuffing my face with anything I wanted until, ta-da! I reverted to a seriously overweight woman at risk for many obesity related diseases: heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, certain cancers and even arthritis.

I was in a great place physically and I let it go. No, I didn’t let it go. It’s more like I used my spoon still sticky with Phish Food to toss that good health and feelings of well-being and strength out the door. What an idiot! What a schmuck. Why would I do such a stupid thing? I think it’s because I lost track of my Why. Without my Why, I just didn’t care enough to get back to good health.

I reverted to one of the people I’d so smugly started to judge for making poor food choices. Now it’s time to mature, stop being such a schmuck, and get corn dog out of my mouth and the beam out of my eye.

 

 

Social Issues, Uncategorized

Extra-Medium and Proud of It

Leave a comment

Many years ago, I worked with a man named Ray who was one of those quiet people who is also quietly hilarious – you just had to pay attention. Anyway, Ray was just an average sized guy. When we ordered new uniform shirts or whatever, Ray’s response to the size he needed was always, “extra-medium.” All the other sizes got special treatment; so, why shouldn’t medium?

Oddly enough, I think about Ray often when I’m out ordering coffee. It seems that “medium” has become something of a personna non grata these days, or, I suppose a verbo non grata (verbo non grato? Ms Rogers would be appalled at how little Latin I remember.) Anyway, don’t nobody call nothing medium anymore.coffee-sizes

It’s like the concept of medium indicates some kind of indecision, some kind of commitment failure on the part of the person ordering. In fact, this morning, I was out for coffee and the barista asked me twice if I really wanted a medium. If I had ordered a small, she might have thought that I was watching my girlish (guffaw) figure. If I had ordered a large, she might have thought that I really loved coffee. But, I did neither. I ordered a medium. What’s she supposed to do with that?! How is she supposed to know what kind of person I am if I order stuff that middle of the road?!

But, you know what? I am often a middle-of-the-road kind of person. I really do believe in live and let live, for the most part – you know, as long as no one person is harming another. And that attitude gets me more sidelong glances than I think it should.

For instance, I was recently involved in a political discussion (something I generally try to avoid) in which, I pointed out the utter ridiculousness of a comment made by a supporter of a particular candidate – a supporter, mind you, not the candidate themselves. The comment was taking President Obama to task for being at a party during the 9/11 attacks and for staying at the party even after he heard about them. Ummmmm. Clearly, the comment was made in ignorance. There’s just no way to defend that.

However, someone did. He responded like I had attacked his candidate and like if he were to agree with me that the comment was ignorant, he would be being disloyal to his candidate. He seemed to think that he had to support every facet of his candidate and his candidate’s other supporters or he was against them.

And I believe that is dangerous – regardless of which candidate you support.

If we believe in anyone or anything to the point that we are afraid to question it, I believe that is dangerous – even when it comes to religious beliefs. If you can’t question a belief of any kind, then how can you truly defend it? And if you can’t defend it, then do you really understand your “belief” enough to say that you actively believe it or is your “belief’ more of a habit or an heirloom?

To truly know that we believe something, I think that we have to be able to acknowledge its weaknesses or, if it’s a religion and cannot have weaknesses, then its tenets that may be perceived to be weaknesses. For example, I grew up Presbyterian and was once debating the Calvinist theology with a Buddhist friend. She was shocked when my speech was peppered with, “I can see how you would disagree with me; but, I believe because….” I understood my belief system and chose to believe it, not by default, but by active choice.

Still, there were (and are) those who would see my stance as being very middle-of-the-road and uncommitted – very extra-medium, if you will.

Well, in that case, extra-medium fits me just fine.

General Health, Thought Patterns

Child’s Play

Leave a comment

I grew up in Brookhaven, MS, about two hours south of where my maternal grandparents lived in Winona and about four hours south of where my paternal grandparents lived near Memphis. Christmas day at our house began REALLY early, with my sister waking first (always), sending me into the living room to see if Santa had been there, then both of us charging into our parents’ room to bring them the glad tidings that loot abounded down the hall! (Mother told me years later that, often, she and Dad had just gotten back into bed when they would hear our feet hit the floor.) After playing with our new treasures and having a little breakfast, we would pack up into the car heading for Mamaw and Papaw’s first, then to Nannie and Pop’s. Each of us were allowed to bring one new toy for the trip.

red-tricycleFor my second or third Christmas, I got a red tricycle. It was fabulous and it was the obvious choice to make the trip north. It stayed in the car for our stop at Mamaw’s, but, because we spent several days with Nannie and Pop, it came out of the car at their farm. (It had been a farm when they bought the place; so, even though they didn’t grow crops or raise livestock, it remained The Farm.) Anyway, although this shiny new three-wheeler came out of the car, Mother said that I was not allowed to ride it inside the converted barn that was my grandparents’ house.

However, in our family, like all families, there was a hierarchy where grandfathers trump mothers. And Pop said I could ride it in the house. I still remember Mother fussing at me and me taking her to Pop so that she could hear for herself that he had given the green light to my ankle-biter grand prix.

Oh! The glory of being able to ride my tricycle inside! In spite of having Pop’s permission, I felt like I was getting away with something.

Fast forward 47 years and I have my first cast. For at least a month I will be sporting this giant pink thing on my left foot. My first days on crutches were just miserable. I flailed around. I fell. And they hurt my ribs. I was miserable and not reluctant to say so. My cousin Jeanna recommended that I get a knee scooter. She said that it had made all the difference when her son Drew was recovering from ankle surgery. So, I rented one.

Oh! The glory of being able to ride my scooter inside!

I took it with me to run some errands and, in no time, I was zipping around Home Depot, Kroger, the library, and Lowe’s, where a man told me to be sure to obey the speed limit and where (like the consummate adult that I am) I stuck my tongue out at a jealous toddler.

Of course, I would rather have a healthy foot and, if the doctor is right, in a few weeks I will have one; but, for now, I have choices to make. Am I irritated because I have a 47 pound cast or am I grateful that I’m not in constant pain? Am I angry that I cannot work or do I take this time of forced inactivity to learn something new? Am I annoyed that getting around is much more difficult than usual or do I find ways to enjoy being able to get around at all?

Naturally, I’m doing my usual Pollyanna Glad Game thing! I’m thrilled that I’m not in constant pain and I’m learning how to make Excel do some neat things that I need it to do. I’m generally healthy. I have a good job and, truly, I have nothing to complain about. So, I’m going to take these weeks to do some self-improvement.

But first, I’m going to take my scooter back to Lowe’s and take a spin around the plumbing department!

 

 

 

 

Food

It Was There All Along

Leave a comment

Actual exchange with a coworker in September:

Him: It was in the last place you looked, wasn’t it?

Me: Of course it was, why would I keep looking after I found it?

Duh.

When you lay it out like that, it sounds kind of ridiculous – why would you keep looking for something once you’ve found it? You wouldn’t.

Except that we do.

key-in-the-sandWe do it all the time – in jobs and often even in mates. The grass is always greener, right? During the Great Reduction, I found a formula that worked for me. It was the same old formula that good doctors have been espousing for decades – make healthful food choices and get at least moderate exercise.

So why am I still tempted by all those get-thin-quick schemes?!

Because I want someone else to do the work for me, of course!

Folks, we’ve established (or at least I have) that it just doesn’t work that way. If I want the rewards, I have to do the work and, make no mistake, making big lifestyle changes is work. Although I tend to be a hard worker, I can also be quite the Tom Sawyer, looking for easier ways or for others to do the work for me – looking for greener pastures.

Well, friends, when it comes to making healthful choices, the only greener pastures that will get me where I want to go are in the produce section, right where they’ve been all along.

Food

Stracciatella Myself No

Leave a comment

As I said on Friday, I watched the movie Fat to Finish Line on Thursday night. In addition to reminding me that it is really all about getting up after you’ve fallen, the movie reminded me that lifestyle changes don’t have to happen all at once. It’s not an all or nothing thing.

I  knew this…..once. But I’d forgotten.

Last week was my first on a medical leave of absence that will continue for at least the next three weeks. I can’t even tell you the last time I had a full week off; so, I treated last week like a vacation – well, a staycation. A for-real staycation, like I stayed inside my house almost the whole time. I napped. I watched movies. I fussed about being cooped up. I complained about trying to walk with crutches. Then, because I got tired of my own cranky self, I napped some more. I didn’t try to eat right and I exercised only a little.

This week, vacation is over.

I went to the library and got books to teach myself to become an Excel wizard. My friend Sean has come up with an exercise routine for me that keeps me off my foot. For the next three weeks, my job is to learn and get stronger. To help me do both of those things, I must eat better.

That doesn’t mean that I’m going to eat nothing but salads, twigs and bark, though. I can’t do that. If I go completely off like that, I’ll lose what is left of my mind. I’m beginning with baby steps regarding my food changes. The step for this week is to eat no more ice cream – no more frozen desserts of any kind.

Although my system has always rejected cow’s milk, I truly love ice cream. And when I say that no one understands disappointment as well as Ben and Jerry do, I’m only half kidding – maybe not even half. If I ever own a chocolate lab, I’m naming it Häagen-Dazs. One of the first words I learned when visiting Italy was stracciatella (the gelato pictured temptingly above). Unless you offer me mint chocolate chip, I will eat any ice cream flavor you have – including red bean. (Hush. I had it at a Japanese restaurant once and it’s better than it sounds.) I love ice cream.

But, I’ve got to start somewhere; so, that’s it. Until Thanksgiving day, no more ice cream for me. I’m taking control again – one little thing at a time.

…….pay no attention to the whimpering.