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.