What can ya say when you’ve been off the grid for a good four months! I just couldn’t let my birthday go by without a peep here. Yeah, after all that turning-40 hullabaloo last year, I nearly let 41 go by unmentioned. But really the silence speaks volumes. It’s been a significant year for me all around. I lost patience with the “not quite getting around” to the life I wanted. From August to January, I focused in on losing 30 lbs. I can’t tell you what a blessing it is to be able to walk for an hour without pain. I knew that I was stuck career-wise and until just recently was absolutely miserable despite significant efforts to find the right direction.
Love Your Body
Correcting my Vision
So I’m continuing to lose weight, but I’ve noticed that I can’t see it. At first I did and I was really enjoying it. But now it’s like I’m starting to see myself with those same old critical eyes that were never satisfied no matter how bone thin I was. This is exactly what I … Read more
Life’s Little Triumphs
Tonight I celebrated my long awaited triumphant return to my beloved bellydance class! It was delayed two weeks by my shoulder injury. So far I seem to be no worse for having danced my heart out. Nuff said about the simple pleasure of moving your body to music. The fact that I was 20 lbs … Read more
Small Changes, Big Impact
Walking home from my Pilates session today, I was thinking about my success with losing weight. Fifteen pounds may be the most I’ve ever lost. I can remember losing 10 lbs a few times with great effort and sacrifice and then feeling stalled, discouraged and having a hard time keeping up what I was doing … Read more
“Thin” Gene: Discovered by a woman 50 years ago
Today’s headlines include: “Scientists discover ‘skinny’ gene” with the story of a study that finds a gene which, depending on how good of a copy you have in your DNA, controls whether you are one of those “skinny” no matter what they eat people. If you feel like you have been battling your biology, you … Read more
Emerging from Silence
My voice hasn’t been present here for a few reasons, one being the sudden and wretched loss of my computer. I still await its return and use a feeble hobbling old computer for limited online activity.
To tell you another reason involves reluctantly revealing the fact that I am on a diet. Yes, for me, a dreaded reality because I have tried to avoid succumbing to behaviors that I do not think are healthy – such as focusing on deprivation and being skinny. I have spent years now trying to undo the mind-warping concepts of women’s beauty in our culture and trying to accept myself unconditionally. The inner critic given the opportunity will try to drown out all semblances of self-acceptance. I have tried to focus on building healthy habits in terms of exercise, eating and stress-management. To some degree it feels like a failure to be “on a diet.”
However, being overweight developed from 10 plus years of health problems and injuries. Once you end up on that road it becomes a downward cycle, especially when you have a hard time getting the proper diagnoses and treatment. Then just as I reached a certain level of wellness and tried to get back to actively exercising, I developed a chronic foot injury after which my weight gain doubled. There was tons of stress which also helps you to store fat and ironically more fat produces more stress hormones so on it goes. When I was on vacation, the extra walking and standing aggravated my foot injury. With my return to work and school, I realized that adequate focus on healthy cooking wasn’t realistic. In order to be able to increase my exercise, I would need to make some significant progress on getting my weight back down to normal.