So you’ve decided to square your shoulders, lift your head and get healthy.  Everyone you know is going to be supportive, right? Wrong.

The pretty one. The smart one. The athletic one. The funny one. The fat one.  We all have people in pigeon holes and we all fit in someone else’s cubbies.  It’s kind of a Cosmic Spice Girl thing without the platform shoes. When we Fat Ones decide to climb out of our cubbies, we sometimes meet resistance.

None of us makes the decision to change in an instant.  We gave it a lot of thought before we changed our lifestyles. We got used to the idea internally before we ever floated it out there in the world. By the time we get the idea into action, it’s not new to us anymore; however, to those around us, it may very well be. The aren’t used to it and, frankly, they may not like it.  We are upsetting their cubby system. We are all set to mess up their pegboard.

Fortunately, the wonderful people in our lives will make the adjustment from surprised to supportive to willing to revamp their own pegboards in just moments.  The toxic people in our lives will not. They are the ones who will say things like, “You’re so fat, what does it matter if you miss one day at the gym?” (Someone actually said that to a friend of mine. Can you imagine?) They may say, “What are you doing? Starving yourself again?” (Again, an actual quote.) Those statements are, as my mother would have said, about as helpful as a case of the clap.

I know that it’s unrealistic to remove those kinds of toxic people from our lives 100%. We might want to, but it’s not possible in a social, familial, or professional sense. The keys to handling toxic people, I believe are:

1. Identify them – knowing what they are and knowing that their toxins are their own issues reduces their power,
2. Limit exposure to them – if I put myself into a toxic environment – say a room with dangerous levels of carbon monoxide – I must limit the amount of time I spend in that environment else I will be overcome by the poison.  The same thing is absolutely true with toxic people.

We have changed (are changing, are maintaining) our lifestyles so that we can live healthier, more comfortable lives. Our relationships with anyone who doesn’t support us in that quest really need to be examined. How can they not want us to be healthier? How can they not be supportive each time we try, even though we often fail? How can they not want us to continue to strive to live better?

Looking at it another way: what kind of person wants us to continue to poison ourselves or to be in physical pain that is reversible?

I know that it’s not easy and I have honestly never had to do it, but I wonder what the response of the toxic person would be if we countered their derision with, “Exactly why is it that you want me to continue committing suicide with my behavior?” Let’s try it!  C’mon, it’ll be fun.

Listen, ultimately, we have no control over them or their behavior – their trash is their trash. Let’s leave it to them deal with it. Let’s do what is best for us.

Square pegs unite!

I’m having a tough time with some things at the moment and, yesterday, failed miserably in dealing with it.  I was down on myself and ate until I literally felt greasy and sick. I went to an Indian Bazaar and got a Picnic bar, a package of dry fruit chikki brittle and a package of puri for bhel. And I ate it all. 1530 calories of nutritionally bankrupt food. Today is a new day and I begin again. Because I need a good pep talk today myself, I’m going to share one of the best I’ve ever read:

It is not the critic who counts; nor the one who points out how the strong person stumbled, or where the doer of a deed could have done better.

The credit belongs to the person who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; who does actually strive to do deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotion, spends oneself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at worst, if he or she fails, at least fails while daring greatly.

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those timid spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

-Theodore Roosevelt

I’m not sure I’m back to Roughrider status today; but, with conscious effort, I will be soon.  I will be strong enough to once again dare mighty things.

My mother was in treatment for mantle cell lymphoma for nearly three years before an oncologist told her outright that her disease was terminal.  By that time, the disease and the treatment had left her largely unable to process that information.  After that meeting, I told Dr. Steffens that if Shakespeare was right, that all the world’s a stage and we are merely players, then he should look into a new screenwriter because he had seriously crappy lines. However, I appreciated his courage in delivering them.

For years, I had a truly abysmal internal dialogue.  The script inside my mind was unhealthy, destructive, and (I thought) permanent.  Guess what.  I was wrong on that last thing.  Whew!  Right?

It turns out that I can be my own screenwriter!  Or, at the very least, I get to write my own dialogue.  I don’t always get a say in what situations I find myself; however, I do get a say in my own responses. Last week we were doing some training at work.  In the middle of my bit, I panicked and choked.  I mean, completely choked.  I forgot what I was supposed to do.  On the stage of my life, I forgot my lines. As it turns out, I’m also my director and, boy! did I give myself what-for for flubbing my lines!

But, wait!  That’s the problem, isn’t it – that I give myself what-for when I flub anything – my lines, my dinner, whatever.  Two years into this and I still speak to myself in ways that I would never speak to another or in ways that I would never allow someone to speak to my son.  So, why do I continue to do it?

I am happy to report that, although the struggle continues, it is less constant than before – which is great because, frankly, it’s just exhausting to police and eliminate that kind of language and attitude.  While it is frustrating that I still struggle, it is encouraging that I struggle less than I did two years ago. Just as with diet, baby steps in the right direction in attitude are progress.

This week, as I work through some course corrections, successes, failures, some undefined and some unrealized expectations, the temptation is strong to lapse back into the unhealthy script and its attendant unhealthy eating. Last week, I ate too few vegetables and too little overall. As a result, I was exhausted, cold, and mentally weak.  Over the weekend, however, I prepared some nutritious meals that I can quickly warm up when I get home in the evenings.  In addition, I reached out to my local support group, making me stronger this week.

You see, my play has a heroine (me), a villain (a rotating role), a couple of dogs, waaaaay too many cats and a massive supporting cast who are kind enough to write me into their plays, as well.

I may be my own screenwriter; but, my play is far from a one-woman show.

Okay, so I’m totally going to share this even if it sounds incredibly self-serving.  I share it because it’s a lottery moment, an I-never-thought-that-would-happen-to-me event.

I went to a networking thing last night.  It was a wine-tasting and, because I’d never been to one and didn’t want to look like country comes to town, I went home and changed into an almost cocktail dress before I went to the event.  When I got there, I was WAY overdressed; but, I like the dress, I liked the people there that I’d already met and I was ready to have a little wine and a good time.  I relaxed and began to enjoy myself.

Sitting next to Shelley, who has a wicked sense of humor, I was rolling the entire time!  After the formal part of the event was done, several of us were standing around chatting. Of course, I brought up my blog (since it’s kind of my baby and all) and a woman I had just met said the funniest thing to me!

Y’all ain’t gon’ believe this.

Now, in the South, that sentence usually means that you’re about to hear a story of alien abduction, Aunt Elma’s ghost or some coon dog with supernatural powers.  Not today, friends.  Today, that sentence leads into my very own don’t-hate-me-because-I’m-beautiful story.

While we were chatting, Anita said that she had been all set to dislike me when I walked in on account of I was overdressed and on account of my overdress is pretty flattering. I was THAT woman!  For the first time in my life, I was her!  While we talked she was all like, “Girl, you are wearing the hell out of that dress.” And I was all like, “Girl, you don’t even know! Lemme show you when I was a jumbo-tron.”

Alright, so we’re not 14 and it didn’t go exactly like that, but, at 46 years old, that is exactly how I felt.  I felt like the pretty girl at the dance and, I’m not gonna lie, it was amazing!

Throughout my life, I’ve been fortunate enough to have people who were kind to me and who said uplifting things.  For a multitude of reasons, I didn’t believe them.  I saw only my own shortcomings, faults and less-thans. As Vivian Ward says in Pretty Woman, “The bad stuff is easier to believe.”

In the Deep South, we are reared to NOT toot our own horns.  We are NOT to be proud or vain.  Somehow we’ve taken that too far.  I felt like I looked pretty last night and other people thought so, too.  And, let me tell you: it was pretty freaking awesome.

As most things are, there is a fine line between giving myself appropriate credit and being proud, vain or a braggart.  I’m not sure where that line is and when I find it, I’ll let you know.  However, in the meantime, I’ll give myself a little more credit and enjoy that feeling.  This isn’t ultimately about weight loss: it is ultimately about being healthy.  If healthful choices result in some weight loss and if that weight loss results in increased confidence, then both body and mind benefit.

Plus, it’s such a rush to have that moment.  Even if I never have another, it was fantastic and totally worth the work!

What is the “day that will live in infamy?” Pearl Harbor Day.  Quickly – what is the date?  I’ll admit it.  I had to look up the year even though that day led us into World War II.  It was the worst event in the collective American memory….until 2001.

There are all kinds of theories surrounding both attacks, claiming that the US government knew that they were coming, but allowed them to happen because the government needed an event that would justify war.  Maybe. Maybe not.  I don’t know and, frankly, I don’t care.  My thoughts today are on our memories.

It was the worst day in the history of our nation, said many.  Now, 78 years later, most middle-aged Americans can’t tell you what that date was.  Young American adults my son’s age REALLY can’t tell you. We don’t remember.  The horror has faded.  For many of us, that horror was replaced in 2001.  That infamous day won’t suffer Pearl Harbor’s Day fate if only because it’s impossible to forget the date of the September 11 attacks.  But, my grandchildren, in middle-age, may have to look up the year.

It’s a fine line, isn’t it, both personally and collectively? How long do we remember hurts, slights and attacks and in what way do we remember them? Do we remember them forever and allow them to embitter us? Do we remember them forever just so that we can avoid the experience again? Do we forget about them and move on?

How many of our political nightmares are the remnants of centuries old wrongs? The Irish only recently stopped killing each other over actions that began with James II in 1687, but really got cranked up in 1919.  Roots of issues within the Middle East go back literally to the Bronze Age.  For issues between the West and the Middle East, cast your eye back to The Crusades, at least.  These are not new conflicts.  They are very, very old ones that have claimed the people who once claimed them and the conflicts continue to kill.  And, for what? Clearly, I don’t get it.

That’s the macro view.  For a micro view, there’s the sociopath who lied to get me fired, the man who married someone else while we were dating or the one who threw me away. The very mention of some people’s names causes my stomach to burn and these events happened decades ago!  How stupid is that?

If I hang onto those hurts, who suffers?  I do.  Those people have moved on.  They probably don’t even remember the incidents that make my blood pressure rise. So, I ask again, who suffers?

I do.

I stayed fat to be invisible.  I punished myself with food. I committed slow suicide with cigarettes.  And with every bite, with every puff, I gave them more of my life.  And, guess what? They didn’t care then, either.

So, it’s time to forget our old Days of Infamy. It’s time to learn the lesson, but let the horror fade. It’s time to live our lives in ways that are best for us and for those around us.  Easier said than done, it’s crucial for, until we let go of that hurt, we continue punishing ourselves and we deserve better than that.

 “I love this thing you’re doing with your hair.  It’s so… down-to-earth and natural-like.  I wish I could be more like that.”

Bobbi-Claire Akins says that to Birdee Pruett in Hope Floats (you know that movie where Sandra Bullock is adorable and Harry Connick is delicious?).  Anyway, you and I both know that what Bobbi-Claire means is that Birdee’s hair looks like a cat has been sucking on it and Bobbi-Claire wouldn’t be caught dead looking like that.

I told you yesterday that we were going to talk about Bobbi-Claire and so we are.

The backhanded compliment is truly an art form, I think.  I’ve never learned how to deliver one particularly well, but I can appreciate it when someone else does.  I can appreciate it from a distance, that is.  Up close and personal, I find generally them cowardly and unattractive unless they are delivered in the voice of Julia Sugarbaker, then they’re pretty impressive.

I believe that we all know people who deliver them, don’t we?  You know the people I mean – they look all positive and fresh upon first meeting; but, the more time we spend with them, the more negative and stale they look.  We end  up feeling tired and drained after too much time in their company because, while they appear to be kind, they are really not.

Like the lye my sister once made for some kind of home ec project, these people will eat at us and eat at us until we’re left feeling raw and burned without a clue as to why.  They damn with faint praise. They deliver slights so skillfully and so deftly, that we’re not entirely sure they were slights at all.  Maybe they are corrosive people, but maybe we are just being too sensitive.

Clotille Jones says that we’re not and that we need to get away from those people!

Lyers, those most insidious of the negative and corrosive, are a special breed.  They likely have some particular personality disorder or another; but, I’ll let one of my psychologist friends define all that.  I truly believe, though, that they are forged that way – either in the womb or in early development.  In either case, they have been that way FAR too long for anyone else to change them or to even defeat them using their own weapons of choice, those backhanded compliments.  The only way I can deal effectively with them is to recognize them for what they are and to limit my exposure to them.  Even after I identify a snake, I still have to beware of its poison.  Some venom can be absorbed just by exposure.  It’s important to remember that.

Clotille says that if you wrestle with a pig, you’ll both get dirty and the pig will like it.  (That’s not exactly appropriate here, but I like it when she says that.) What is appropriate is when she says that when you lie down with dogs you get fleas.  Or, in this case, when you lye down with negative people, you come up the less for it.

Last week, it was a real struggle to remember that I am the Positive Thinking Blog Goddess.  My spirit was more Gorgon than goddess, for sure!  Friday evening finally arrived – a day or so late, but it got here. At home, I relaxed awhile, then dissected my nasty attitude to see what could be done about it.  Even two years after I initiated my lifestyle changes, I still struggle with some of the same bad habits – stress eating among them; so, I run self-diagnostics all the time.  I have to really keep an eye on my stress levels or, before I know it, I’ll be on the evening news as the source of disorderly conduct in the frozen food section. In my Friday evening diagnostics, I identified a few stressors that were contributing to my general curmudgeoniness and devised a plan to eradicate them.  The first stressor was the state of my home.  (Sorry, Hoarders, I’ve already been busy with the front end loader; you’re too late to start shooting.)

Yes, Fall cleaning has begun at the Doty Hjem!  And, the house is in worse shape than ever.

But, I’m okay with it since it’s all part of the process.  Since Cinderella’s mice didn’t show up while I was sleeping, I started with my son’s room, removed all the furniture, washed it, cleaned the carpets and am (at this minute) waiting on the carpets to dry so that I can restore the furniture.  I’ve washed ten loads of clothes, towels and bed linens, I’ve vacuumed, dusted, washed, sorted and scrubbed.  I’m exhausted and feel SO much better!

There are myriad stressors I can do absolutely nothing about, making it even more important that I affect the ones that I can.  My job is stressful. My schedule is stressful. My son’s departure is stressful. Those are largely out of my control; however, cat hair dust bunnies are totally within my dominion.  In wrangling them, I am able to manage some portion of my world, decreasing my stress levels.  AND decreasing the likelihood that I will stress eat.

If you know me, you know that I’m not a fastidious housekeeper.  (If you know me well, the word fastidious likely has you shrieking with laughter.  Just know that I’m sticking my tongue out at you.) I do not get my jollies dusting, vacuuming or polishing.  And I would almost rather take a beating than iron clothes. Still, I knew that I had to clean the Hjem thoroughly for the betterment of all mankind; so, I rounded up some friends to help – Tatu, Shakira, Disturbed and, yes, Ricky Martin.  I shimmied, boogied and jammed my way through all manner of vile and tedious housework.  The time went quickly and I got a lot done.

So, as I wait for the carpet to dry, allowing me to finish that room, I salute Mary Poppins – you got it, chica! A spoonful of sugar does help the medicine go down – drinking out of The Cup of Life makes it just that much better.

We are so busy, busy, busy!  More than once, I’ve shared my thoughts on our need to disconnect,  to unplug from the external stimuli that constantly bombard us and plug into ourselves.

You hear divorcing people talking all the time about a changed spouse – “waking up with a stranger.”  What if the stranger you woke up with was yourself?

After losing my job in North Carolina, I moved to New Orleans where I learned that I like to garden. I like to sew. I remembered that I enjoy taking photographs.  I remembered myself.

I got busy when I moved to Tennessee and forgot those lessons; but, have recently been learning them again, in spite of my business and my busy-ness.  If I lose myself, what am I left with?

Read more on Tuesday’s Nashville.com – Missing the Trees for the Forest.

Whew!  Yesterday was a battle, let me tell you!  As I wrote, I woke with a negative attitude.  Everything I wrote was ugly; so, I just shared some pretty photos with you.  Yesterday, my wolves were fighting and it was a real struggle to feed the right one.

As I’ve shared with you before, I do not believe that happiness, or even attitude, is completely a choice.  I do, however, believe that my focus and my expressions are 100% my choice.  I can choose to share those negative emotions or I can choose to keep my mouth shut.  I can choose to be nasty or I can choose to be silent. It’s like I told my son when he was little, “You have every right to feel angry and to express that anger.  I have every right not to hear it.  Go to you room and have at it.”

I met with my new friend Nicole yesterday afternoon (get ready because in a few days, y’all are going to meet her and you’re going to love her!) and we talked about blogging since she does it, too.  I told her that I had chosen not to write much yesterday because I just couldn’t seem to write anything that was edifying. The news, movies, magazines, televisions shows, etc., are all doing a fine job of tearing us down, making us feel less than, arming us with snarky little phrases that we then sling at each other. I choose not to be a part of that cycle.

She holds a similar philosophy.  We choose not to be manipulated by the media.  We choose not to splatter other people with our own bile.  We choose to edify.

Or we try really, really hard to, anyway.

Nicole has lost well over 200 pounds!  Go ahead.  Read it again.  It’s just as amazing the second time. And the third, and the fourth….. Like me, she found that attitude and focus were essential in getting the weight off.  At my biggest weight, I was mostly invisible. At her biggest weight, she was the object of scorn.  Some of her stories made me feel ashamed to be human, I tell you!  But she didn’t let that scorn or other people’s doubts or even any of her own doubts get her in way.  She held her focus and lost more than half of her body weight while growing her spirit at the same time.  Amazing! She refused to allow other people to splatter her with their bile and she refused to splatter anyone else with her own.  She remained positive and, as a result, is victorious.

That is my goal: to remain both positive and victorious.  To do that, I must take care not to splatter others.

I’ve written three posts for today and I don’t like any of them. They are neither edifying nor positive nor enlightening.  In writing them all, I have, in fact, become Empress of Planet Crankypants.  Rather than populate my planet with other cranky people, I think that I will keep those posts to myself and, instead, share with you some photos I took last weekend in Kentucky at the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area.  Pretty scenery makes things better.  That and ice cream.

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