Back to Basics

It's been two months now since I left California for Texas.  I'm as settled as I'm ever going to be, and therefore have no further excuses for poor nutrition.  The move is officially over.  

The culture shock is nowhere more dramatic than on the plate.  The regional diet of Texas is so vastly different than California's.  In San Luis Obipso, there were 3 donut shops in town.  In Dallas, I saw 3 donut shops on one single intersection!  I'm not kidding.  

It's not that you can't eat healthy in Dallas.  It's just that the fried, fatty and fabulous foods are in so much ostentatious profusion here.  Even my weekly Toastmasters meeting is held in an All-U-Can-Eat Chinese buffet.  Try making a speech with the aromas of fried shrimp and wontons wafting through the room.

Food is everywhere!  What's a weight-watching girl to do?

Answer: go back to the basics.

WATER.  Use the 8x8 Rule.  8 glasses of 8 oz each, which is approximately 2 liters per day. 

FRUITS & VEGETABLES.  At least 5 per day.  And I don't mean starches, no matter what Texas restauranteurs try to tell you.

ACCOUNTABILITY.  Any method of counting and rating your food intake will do.  My personal preference is the Weight Watchers point system, but lots of people are using My Fitness Pal successfully, too.  The third-party weigh-in at Weight Watchers is the objective scorekeeper I need.

DAILY EXERCISE.  It was 103 degrees when I got here in August, but October is a perfect month to be outside, even in Texas.  Whatever it takes to get exercise every day is worth it, for mental as well as physical fitness.  

I'm on a campaign to get to my "race weight" by the end of the year, in time to ramp up training for the Cowtown Marathon on March 1.  Care to join me, for the weight loss campaign, the marathon or both?

Say Yes

I was going to give this post a dramatic opening like, “Sometimes life gives you an opportunity to start over.”  But then I realized, Life is ALWAYS giving us chances to start over!  (I frankly think that Life has given me more “Start Over” passes than I really needed, but I’m not the Grand Hoohah in Charge of Everything.) 

Every moment, every situation is a decision point and we either say “yes” or “no” to it.  Most of the time, we just keep doing what we’ve done in the past, so it doesn’t FEEL like a “yes” or a “no” but it actually is.

When you got up this morning, you fixed your coffee.  You could have had green tea.  You could have had water.  You could have had Jack Daniels.  But if you’ve made coffee every morning for decades and decades, well then, you probably had coffee.  But it was still a decision. 

Let me more accurately say, then, that sometimes life’s circumstances more or less force you to make a decision to start over.  And it’s not easy, ever.  Even if you had the chance to move to the French Riviera and work as a sous chef while living on the yacht of a benevolent millionaire, it’d still be hard because you’d be leaving where your comfort is.  Your home, your friends, your habits, your niche in the world.  You’d be going out to carve a new niche in an unfamiliar place among strangers. 

Human beings resist change.  We just do.  In travail were we born, and in travail are we re-born. 

I believe most of you know that I have packed up my toys and moved back to Texas, where my family lives.  I had always planned to return to Dallas when needed; I was only "on sabbatical" in California.  But after eleven years in the Golden State, it is a grand-scale starting over for me.  And I’m not going to be a hero and say that it’s easy.  It’s stretching me way beyond my tensile strength.

But here’s what’s great about starting over.  It strips away all your faces, who you are to friends, what you’re good at, what you like to do, who you know, what others think of you.  When you leave everything behind, all you have is you... the you so far below the surface as to escape notice most of the time. 

It’s desolating to strip away all the coverings, to be simply and solely myself, not any role I might have played as a friend or employee or member of a group.   But starting over gives me the chance to just “be” for a little while.  I’ll get busy soon enough and feel like an adult again but for now, I’m just my interior self, a child. 

There is something profoundly good about that state, despite the ache.  It’s the state to which we are all destined: going forward into the unknown with nothing to recommend us but who we are inside.

I wouldn’t have asked for this, my insides fought and resisted it, I was scared silly.... but it is good to be a child, a blank slate, in the loving hands of One who has promised to be with me and for me, now in my practice forays, and later when I leap into the unknown for the last time.  Life is giving me the chance to say “yes.”

Back Up on the Horse You Go

When I was a Weight Watchers leader, I remember talking to many people who’d fallen off their personal wagon because of various life stressors, family issues, unexpected upheavals.  And of course, I always counseled getting back on the horse, as soon as possible, before overeating became one more issue in a long list of issues that would need solving.

You can think you’re solid on local whole foods and mega fruits and vegetables and gallons of water, but life can throw things at you that make you yearn for the simple comfort of a hot (white) roll dripping with butter.   Why are useless carbs and fats so comforting?  I have no idea, but there it is. 

It just happens.  I am there now, trying to deal with issues that have no answers aside from endurance and acceptance.  No wonder garlic breadsticks look so good... they take little effort to digest, the salt and garlic wake up my senses and the bread is like a soft pillow upon which to lay my heart. 

Broccoli isn’t doing it for me right now. 

So I’m enlisting the WW Me to counsel the beleaguered Me.  The WW Me says, “I understand.  You’re overwhelmed.  And weight is one of your least concerns right now.”  Phase I... empathy.

“Are you happy with your body weight right now?  Do your clothes fit comfortably?  Do you have sufficient energy with which to face each day?  Are you sleeping restfully?”  Phase II... reality.

“What do you need to do to be at peace with your body so that you can deal most adroitly with your life at the moment?”  Phase III... brainstorm.

“So you’re saying that if you get exercise every day, drink at least 6 glasses of water and have at least 5 fruits and vegetables every day, you will feel better?  If you make your own physical self a treasured and finely cared-for instrument, then all the other challenges in your life might be best answered?  That the genuine love and nurturing you spend on your very own self is perhaps exactly what you’re looking to the hot roll and butter to provide?

And for today, only today, the next 24 hours, you can exercise, get water and fresh produce and give yourself a dollop of self-appreciation?”  Phase IV... commitment.

Alright then.  Get out there and do it!  Because only you, in the whole world, know what you know, can carry what you carry, and can appreciate the entire cost and effort of your life.  So go be truly, extravagantly good to yourself.  Get back up there! That horse is going to take you where you want to go, even if you can't see it yet.  

Comfort

We all get knocked about from time to time.  Our hearts get broken, friendships are lost, loved ones develop medical problems.  As Roseann Roseannadanna used to say...

For some reason, when our hearts hurt, we want to eat.  And not just any food, but comfort food... hot bread, macaroni and cheese, cookies.  Poor us!  We want the food that brings back our childhood, when we depended on someone else to solve our problems. 

I don’t know anyone who flies to Swiss chard or hard-boiled eggs to make their hearts feel better.  It’s more often high-fat, high-carb combinations.  I suspect it’s something built into us for survival. 

When our well-being is threatened, as when we lose a loved one, the evolutionary response is flight-or-fight.  Built into us is the hardware that is able to burst into a sprint from the saber-toothed tiger or turn to fight it.  The flight-or-fight response is heavily dependent on fats in the bloodstream to fuel that instant strong response. 

So when you heart breaks, it makes a weird kind of sense that you might drive yourself down to Old West and order up a giant cinnamon roll with double white icing. 

And it actually does seem to work in the very short-term, which is all that flight-or-fight response is meant for. 

But then we have to notice that comfort food does not actually solve the pain.  It doesn't take it away; it postpones it, and very briefly, at that.

Isn’t it interesting that when we suffer emotional pain, it registers in the body?  We try to solve our spiritual pain with a physical solution... food.  What we suffer in our minds and souls is also somehow a part of our bodies.

Here’s the other side.  There really can be a physical analgesic to emotional pain.  You know what I’m going to say.  Activity.  Food is the easier, more immediate go-to, but we all know it only lasts a few moments.  A hike, a bike ride, a jog around the block lasts so much longer and has nothing but good consequences, whereas a food fest... well, you know the consequences.  Guilt, remorse, recriminations. 

The consequences of seeking comfort in activity are strength, serenity and a fatigue that helps you rest at night.  All things that really do help us survive difficulty in life.  It's harder to get up and do it when your heart aches, but so worth the trouble.

If you see me walking up and down the Irish hills at all hours, riding down Los Osos Valley Road into the wind, running circles till I drop… it lasts longer than Chips Ahoy and it's less expensive than therapy!

Risk

Earlier this month, my dad who is 79 years old and currently the oldest pilot in the country certified by the FAA for low-level airshow aerobatics, performed in the Fort Worth Air Power Expo, alongside the US Navy Blue Angels.  He performs snap rolls, barrel rolls, hammerhead stalls and a lucy-goosey maneuver called a Lomcevak that looks like the plane has lost all control of itself. 

Some people think he’s crazy to be doing such things.  He’s an excellent, experienced pilot who has been flying for decades. 

He has always told me that you can never really avoid risk in life.  You examine it, you take action to minimize it, you weigh the rewards and then... you go for it!  

What does risk have to do with weight loss?  Here’s my premise: if there were no risk involved, we would simply eat the precise number of calories needed to fuel our day, exercise to the optimal point of health and poof!  That’d be the end of it.  None of the back and forth, up and down, excuses; no meetings, backsliding or regrets.  We’d just do it.

We see the body and the associated lifestyle that we want; why do we not simply reach out and take it? We want that sleek figure, the one with no extra handholds, the one that looks like it could do any physical feat in the universe.  We want to have energy, sleep well and, let’s admit it, ladies... we’d kinda like to be admired for our physical beauty. 

What stops us?  What is the risk we're avoiding?  We’re very complicated, but could it be that some part of us is afraid to be living “that” life, in “that” body?  We say we want all that energy and activity and admiration, but are we also a little unsure about what we’d do with it if we got it?

I have seen over and over and over, many too many times for it to be coincidence, people who lose impressive amounts of weight and just as they’re about to reach their goal and make that lifestyle permanent... they turn back.  You Weight Watchers, you’ve seen this happen, right?  Someone is on the verge of a major goal and they stop coming to meetings, and it’s never a good outcome. 

What is that thing that makes us turn back from the very thing we’ve worked so hard to get?  Have you done this: made progress and when you realized you were succeeding, somehow scared yourself back to your original weight?

We all cling to the familiar.  It’s why Americans travel thousands of miles to experience Europe and end up eating at McDonald’s.  It’s familiar.  It may be oil-laden, too salty and drip all over your suitcase, but it’s home.

Would it help to acknowledge and think about the risk?  What is it, on the other side of the weight loss line, that scares us?  Are we afraid to lose the weight because we might gain it back and disappoint everyone… especially ourselves?  Do we think that bread and chips and cookies really might be the only things standing between ourselves and despair?  Do we fear to lose friends when we start behaving differently than we used to?  Does that sleek lifestyle look like something we can’t really sustain, something that is meant for someone else?

Do we want to end up at McDonald's for the rest of our lives??

Give it a think.  We’ve all got something in our closet that is keeping us from claiming the lifestyle we really want.  What might it be?  What is the real risk?  What can you do to minimize the risk? 

Then it will be a matter of weighing the risk against the reward... and going for it!

Springing

Carrizo Plain, northeast of SLO

Even on the central coast, where winter lies lightly upon us, there is something magical about spring. 

The first day of spring fell last week; did you notice?  Go outside today and breathe in deeply; take spring in.  There are scents in the air, new colors, and I am not kidding about this, the birds sing louder.  Go quiet and listen.  It is something about their mating habits, I believe; their songs are quite insistent.

Spring is a force of nature.  In our automotive, technological, white-noise lives, we may not notice, but when the whole top half of the planet is doing a wake-up dance, it will have its effect on us whether we notice it or not. 

Our bodies, inasmuch as they are part of the natural world, are also awakening to spring.  It just happens.  We don’t cause it; we can’t regulate it; it just is. 

We can rejoice in it, though!  We can make the most of it.  

When winter, even California winter, begins to recede, we come alive in a way that is different from all the rest of the year.  Our “hibernation” instinct goes dormant.  Have you noticed any lessening of your appetite?  That often happens very subtly in the springtime. 

Do you notice that your interest in fresh fruits and vegetables is sharper?  Are you a little more prone to choose something fresh than something processed?

Are your feet beginning to get restless?  That slightly uneasy feeling you may have... could it be yourself wanting to get outside and work your body a bit?  Could it be a craving for more fresh air, more sunshine, more walking? 

Everything that happens naturally as a result of springtime is great news for those of us pursuing health and well-being.  The forces we’ve fought against all winter... early drowsiness, craving for comfort food, that “slow” feeling that keeps us inside under a blanket with a book in our hands... are in retreat. 

And now, we feel a little call from the outdoors.  Suddenly, a hike sounds like a really pleasant idea.  The produce aisle has more colors, berries are coming back.

Go outside!  Be a part of this wonderful process of spring that comes to us each year, renewing our spirits and bodies.  See if you can feel the whole natural world waking up.  The wildflowers will soon be out in force.  The bees and hummingbirds are revving their engines.  The hills are getting greener. Everything is growing. 

If you have an ache in your heart, take it outside for soothing.  If you have a lowness of spirit left over from winter, let nature minister to you.

Even if you have been outside every day this past winter, go outside today with fresh eyes and a fresh heart.  There is something wonderful happening out there, and we are a part of it. 

Today, be springtime!

Filling the Hole

If you’ve ever studied art history, or visited a medieval cathedral or read Dante, you have come across the concept of gluttony being a sin.  A deadly sin, no less. 

In our own modern culture, gluttony is more a picture of the Good Life, enshrined as a standard for holidays like Mardi Gras, Thanksgiving and SuperBowl Sunday, when all good citizens eat until the buttons pop.

How did we make such a long leap, from capital sin to near-virtue?

I could make my case against profiteers, but that’s beside the point.  The only thing that really matters here is us, and how we can make better lives for ourselves. 

Most of us are carrying a lot of shame around overeating.  We may even do it in secret, late at night with no one around, and then go to some trouble to hide the evidence from our families.  We’re embarrassed, but we do it. 

I’ll bet every single one of us has been at the grocery store, seen someone we know down at the far end of the aisle, and done a quick sweep of our basket to see if there’s anything incriminating in there.  Maybe thrown a jacket over it, eh?   

We compare ourselves to magazine ads and movie celebrities, and come up so far short, it’s like they’re a whole different species. 

So what do we need with the idea of sin??  We’re already ashamed!

Here’s the great thing about sin: it has an answer.  

If all we ever are is ashamed, and we can’t pinpoint the source of our eating compulsions and we can’t get rid of them and try over and over again and nothing is working... that is a prescription for despair.  It all seems hopeless.

But if we think of sin as a force in the world that is eager for our destruction, we can easily see it as the enemy.  In my Christian worldview, it genuinely is the enemy; it is a personal power who would like to keep me from reaching joy in God, out of jealousy, perversity and spite. 

Whatever your world view, I think we can all agree that there are forces at work that pull us away from our highest good. 

Perhaps overeating is one effect of those forces. 

Overeating, first of all, chips away at our self-respect.  That may be its very worst harm.  We don’t go out into the world as much. Our capacity for doing good is handicapped because we’re not there; we’re hiding.  Our relationships are diluted because we don’t want anyone to know what’s deepest inside.  Shame is a powerful captor.

When overeating leads to overweight, then our health is at risk.  We deny ourselves the pleasure of activity, of moving freely in this beautiful world.  Our lives are narrowed by illness or incapacity, then shortened. 

Do you see why a good and loving God might not want that for his precious ones?

So we come back to sin, not in terms of a punishable crime, not one more thing to be ashamed of.  But sin as a danger signal, as a sweet and loving parent saying, “Don’t go there; you’ll get hurt.”

I think the root of overeating for many of us is the lack of love at some point in our lives when we badly needed it.  Someone failed us or wasn’t there, and the wound is still inside, crying to be filled up. 

As long as we keep ourselves to ourselves, not allowing Love to come in our secret doors, we continue to overeat.  No wonder; we’re trying to fill that hole!  It actually makes a whole lot of sense.  We’re behaving very understandably if there is no Love in the world that cares for our ultimate good.

Whatever your religious beliefs, somewhere in them is a loving power.

You have to follow your own path to that love.  Do something this week to more firmly connect with the power of Good.  Find a book or a prayer or perhaps a childhood memory of a time when you were connected to the source of love.  Stay there awhile and let yourself be loved. It's harder than it sounds. It may even sting. Stay with it. It will begin to fill in the hole. 

The Crucible

Tomorrow is it, the day I’ve been waiting for.  Tomorrow, I take my newly-carved feet out to the track for a running workout. 

Well, alright, I won’t be exactly running.  More like shuffling.  And I only get ten minutes on my feet.  But it’s a start.  It’s the open door back to the life I love.

I’m pretty excited!

I’ve been in this incubator for a long time now. 

It’s got me thinking about those periods that come to all of us, when we’re, for one reason or another, unable to live the life we want.  Grief, illness, injury, loss of a job or a friend.  Something is taken away and we’re startled to find ourselves living at half-mast.

I remember days in my surgery recovery, waking up in the morning, and groaning!  Every day was so much work; just getting bathed and dressed took most of my day’s allotment of energy.  And then I had to face another day of doing precisely none of the things that I am accustomed to doing.  (Yes, it was fun for a few days, but the luster wore off quickly.)

Brave friends tried to tell me that the universe had something to teach me, that I would look back on those days as “privileged.”  I didn’t bite any heads off, but I didn’t exactly believe them, either. 

Brave friends, you were right!  From the other side, I can see that it genuinely was a great privilege, one that most people never get (and wouldn't ask for): the experience of being stripped down.  When you can’t DO anything, you have to come to grips with your simple BEING. 

I don’t say that it’s comfortable, but it’s an experience I now see as priceless. 

Two great men who, in their ways, changed the world for the better were formed by periods of forced bedrest: Francis of Assisi and Ignatius of Loyola.  Both were military men, understanding themselves as men of action.  That was their self-identity, and self-identity is a painful thing to be stripped of, more painful than losing a foot or a leg. 

Everyone knows Francis and the legacy of love he left.  Ignatius became a deeply religious man, whose “spiritual exercises” have formed millions of people over the last 450 years.  The society that grew up around him, the Jesuits, gave the world a fine man we now know as Pope Francis. 

Both Francis of Assisi and Ignatius of Loyola were shaped in the crucible of injury or illness.  They entered the sickroom as soldiers; they emerged as something quite different. 

The “sickroom” is a good teacher.  It takes away so many of our props that we are forced to look at our hidden foundations. 

As grateful as I am for my period of recuperation, I don’t recommend surgery as a journey of spiritual awakening!  No, there is something less costly and closer to hand. 

It’s called Lent.  And it begins this Wednesday.

Lent is a deliberate submission to a stripping-down of your person.  We give up some pleasure or crutch in an offering that says, “I’m a little nervous that I  may not be able to function without this thing, but I'm open to possibilities.  I’m ready to be taught more about who I really am, though I may not like the answer entirely.  I'm willing to rely more on goodness and love, and less on myself.”

Some of you have been practicing Lent your whole lives; others may have stopped after childhood, and some may have never practiced it at all. 

I encourage you to think about it.  It can be a transformative experience.  It’s not really about giving up a particular “thing”; it’s more about simply giving up.  Giving yourself up to what God wants for you: richness, blessing, love.  Giving up the urge to control some small aspect of your life. 

I don’t know the significance of me getting my run back on Tuesday, the very eve of the season of self-denial.  Just as I’m preparing to enter 40 days of austerity, I’m receiving an extravagant gift.  It’s one more lesson in giving up control.  Our God of love knows better than I. 

I wish you all a wonderful Lent, whether it is your tradition or not.  Use this season of blessing.  Let Love in.

Ultimate Triumph

I was recently asked about the title of my blog.

The phrase comes from a speech that Teddy Roosevelt once made.  See what you think...

“I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these, wins the splendid ultimate triumph.”

How do those words strike you?  Exciting, shivery wonder... or dreary, difficult drudgery?

When I first read them, they made me want to go charging up a hill at high speed and break into an Italian aria at the top!  A mission! A purpose! A victory!

Maybe that’s because I know a little bit about Teddy Roosevelt, so I understand the heart that expressed itself in those words.

Did you know that he was a sickly child with severe asthma who suffered near-fatal attacks over and over in his childhood?  He was a fragile little creature not expected to reach adulthood. 

But he had a curious mind and a great love of nature and a tenacity that drove him beyond his illness.  He read voraciously and became a student of life.  He put himself on a regimen of exercise to build his strength, and after having been bullied by some older boys, took up boxing lessons.

Roosevelt became a naturalist, an author, a soldier, an Amazon explorer, a larger-than-life, ebullient optimist.  He had adventures enough for half a dozen movies.  I’ll let this picture tell the story... he’s riding a bull moose (not known to be one of nature’s pussycats) across a river.  Umm.  File that under “D” for Danger.

The “strenuous life” was all there was for Teddy.  If he hadn’t taken that attitude, he would have been dead before his 18^th birthday.  Instead he had a glorious adventure of a life.  It was full of setbacks and heartbreaks as well, but it was a resplendent life.

When we limp along in ill health, we’re missing the wondrous exuberance of a full life.  This culture is not looking out for our health!  If we don’t take personal charge of what we eat and what we do with our bodies, we will be that sickly child that gets beat up by life.

And it’s hard work.  That’s the bottom line, and the real reason for my blog.  Weight Watchers, bless its corporate heart, tries very hard to make weight loss pleasant and palatable for the greatest number of people.  But we can sometimes be lulled into thinking that it is therefore going to be easy.

It’s not.  And as long as we expect it to be and hope for it to be, we’ll flounder; maybe lose 5 pounds, relax, fall back into old habits, resentfully surrender again, lose that same 5 pounds... you know the drill.

It’s hard work.  It’s “toil and effort, labor and strife”.  It’s even “bitter toil” sometimes. 

And it is so worth it.  With all my heart, I wish for all of us that “splendid, ultimate triumph”... our health, the gift of being fully alive.

Read My Lips

Don't you inwardly groan whenever the subject of weight loss comes up?  In conversation or on tv or in a magazine? The mere mention of it makes me a bit melancholy.

We have a lot of resistance to the whole idea of weight loss and fitness, even though it's one of the things we want the most!  How can that be??

I think it's because our minds are at war with themselves.  There is the "comfort" part of us that wants to eat hot bread, salty chips and cookies until we're wrapped up in them like a warm blanky.  In the opposite corner is the "mature" part of us that wants to be able to move freely, wear cute clothes and be full of energy.

So doesn't it make sense to try to reconcile the two parts of our mind so that we're all-ahead-full in pursuit of our health goals?

That's why I think a big component of weight loss and fitness is your BRAIN rather than your body.  After all, your body just follows along with whatever flowchart your brain comes up with.  We may not be spending nearly enough time training our brain for weight loss, bypassing it straight to the body.

One of the easiest ways to engage your brain for weight loss is… reading.  Get some good books about health, fitness, weight management and scatter them all around your house, wherever you spend time: near your comfy chair, by the bedside, next to the computer, even in the bathroom.  Everywhere!  Then as you go through your day, pick them up and read a few pages while you're just sitting there.

Good books are Portable Game Changers.  If you were to read about weight loss three or four times a day for a few weeks, I fully expect you would lose some weight without even thinking too much about it, because your subconscious mind has been engaged.  It's deep down there, working away at a goal without you much noticing.  You have set it on its track by what you've read.

Obviously, you'll lose weight faster when you fully engage both your conscious and subconscious but the power of the mind is so great, I think you could lose weight on reading alone!

If you're currently on a dietary program, or you're tracking or otherwise formally attempting to lose weight, try adding books to your diet (read them, don't eat them) and see if it doesn't smooth the way.

There are tons of good ones but here's a quick tour through some of my favorites.

More reading, less eating!

The Month of the Kid

This month, February, I'm on a transformation expedition!  It's one month until I can take my new feet out on a maiden run.  I spent all last year working up to surgery and recovering from surgery, and soon it will be time to reap the benefits of surgery!  

To give myself the greatest chance of success in March (earliest date my doctor will allow me to try running), I'm spending February in concentrated, dedicated focus… highest-quality nutrients, in weight-reducing amounts, with strength and flexibility training and increasing aerobic exercise.  

That all sounds a bit UN-fun, so to balance it out, I'm going back to my childhood.  

Remember your own childhood?  When you were little, did you ever want sit still for hours at a time? Could you even be FORCED to sit still for hours at a time?  Would it ever have occurred to you to overeat as a recreational activity?  

Think about it.  What did you love to do when you were little?  What gave you the most excitement? Chances are it wasn't food. Chances are it involved the outdoors and had some element of physical activity… but we didn't call it anything as joy-numbing as "physical activity."  It was PLAYING, as in "I'm going outside to play" or "Can you come out and play?"  What are your best memories from your childhood?

I remember playing so intensely that our parents had to drag us in when the sun set.  I remember the freedom of finally getting a two-wheeler, and biking farther than my mom could track us.  I remember staying at the swimming pool so long that my fingers and toes were pickled, and belly-flopping until I was nearly flayed, learning how to dive.  

It seems that all the habits that sabotage our health developed much later.  As children, we were always on the go, and food was not something we really spent much time thinking about.  It just sort of appeared at the proper times.  We didn't have to think about calories or hedonic hunger or the food pyramid or fat grams or ghrelin or leptin or Points.

As children, we ate to live.  It takes an adult to think up something as weird as living to eat!

So I'm going back to my childhood this month.  This is my icon.  I'm remembering this little person, who never realized that the bike was too big, who was always looking for the next adventure, who only came in for meals when called, for whom bedtime was a serious imposition.

I wish you a month of play, too, as you remember the little person you have inside of you, who never had to think about pursuing a healthy lifestyle because you were too busy living it.

What's Your Word?

Every year around this time, I choose a “word” for the new year.  It’s not a goal or a resolution; it’s more like a theme.  And most years, the word chooses me, rather than the other way around.  The idea is that you open your mind to what life, the universe or God seems to be telling you; a whisper or an intuition about the direction you might take this year. 

I started this tradition with my friend Karen about 15 years ago.  We’d read about it in some otherwise forgettable “chick lit” novel.

There was something magical about it, we found.  We’d adopted our words at the beginning of the year, then promptly forgot about them for the most part.  But as New Years pulled around again and we got our words back out for inspection, we found that the year just past, while nothing like what we’d expected (they never are) had somehow managed to be all about the words each of us had chosen. 

We told other people about our New Years words, and gradually more people began to adopt their own words for the new year.  One of my favorite activities is to get together with friends at New Years and review the year just past.  Very often, the experiences of their year were somehow colored by the word they’d chosen.

I remember a friend who chose the word “followthrough” one Jan. 1.  In the summer of that year, he was hospitalized with a rare illness and required a long period of rehabilitation.  As he tackled therapy to start walking all over again, his followthrough was epic.  How did he know that the quality he would most need that year was followthrough?

Another friend chose the word “sacrifice” once.  During the year, she was called upon to share her home with a runaway, and she did so with grace. She was somehow prepared for what was asked of her.

One year, I chose the word “focus” as I’d noticed that my attention was often fractured by doing too many things at once.  That may have been the year I turned 50 and started hearing all the jokes about mental middle age.  During the year, I developed strategies like note-taking and review to keep my attention focused.  And I stopped believing that middle age was some sort of inescapable disease of the mind (still working on this word.)

The year I chose the word “light” was the year of my pilgrimage in Spain.  I had no idea that my experience on the Camino would be such a bright light in my life.

This year I have chosen the word “free.” I’m done with my foot surgeries, and the most obvious freedom of this year will be the freedom to walk and work and carry things and move about at will (which I will never take for granted again!) 

Even greater than physical freedom, however, is my yearning for freedom of spirit. 

The children of God are free, but I often live as though I’m not.  This year, I want to live in the reality of my freedom.  Free from fear and negativity, because perfect love casts out fear.  Free to choose the good.  Free from encumbrances that I place on myself.  

Granted, freedom does take a bit of work.  The freedom to do anything well takes discipline and training.  Mental freedom requires the ability to say “no” to the things that try to crowd the mind.  Spiritual freedom can only be experienced in an atmosphere of love and quiet. 

It’s like running.  When you first begin to run, it feels crummy, yes or yes?  New runners think that an elaborate hoax has been perpetrated on them.  “THIS is what all those people do for FUN!?!?”  Your breath stutters, your legs are heavy, your mind is sluggish and you want to go home.  It takes everything you’ve got to keep going.  But if you persevere, if you discipline yourself to follow a schedule of gradually increasing load, you get to the point of freedom...  you’re free to run as far as you want, up and down mountains, fast or slow.  It is an exquisite freedom, but it takes hard work to get there. 

I believe it’s the same with mental freedom, for instance, freedom around food.  So many of us have “issues” about eating.  We eat what we don’t really want, we regret our choices.  Food has some sort of power over our better judgment.  

I think freedom around food might require the same sort of training that running does.  Eating healthy may not feel good at first.  Our lazy old habits still call to us.  (“Kale?  Is it even food??  Or is there a Candid Camera in the produce aisle taking pictures of how many people are falling for the Kale Hoax?”)  But we can put ourselves on a program of gradually increasing load (like substituting a vegetable for a snack food each day for a while, then another, and another.)  

At New Years, the national diet holiday, we tend to go all-out on a new program (which is great, YAY for total commitment!)  It also helps to remember that human beings tend to operate on a training principle, so changes take hold gradually, not in an instant. 

We actually are free.  This year,  I’m training myself to realize it.