Why so many things?

Sometimes I wonder why my body is causing me so much trouble. The quick answer that a doctor will tell me is that it’s because I’m morbidly obese. To medical people, everything that goes wrong with a fat person’s body is because of the fat.

Most of the time, though, I think about what and not why. I can only face one thing at a time and try to be pragmatic with a good sense of humor. Being angry or weepy doesn’t fix anything even if it does release some pent up stress. I research new problems thoroughly on Dr. Google, focusing on the Mayo Clinic website but also reading articles in PubMed or other scholarly resources as long as I don’t have to look up every other word. I walk through the tests and problems knowing that God is with me, and that sometimes the answer to “Help” is just that: to be with me, not to fix things. I accept that “No” is an answer.

I also realized soon after everything crashed for me in 2021 that God may not be trying to teach ME a lesson through these difficult things, but to use me to reach others. I try to be straightforward and honest about what is happening with my body here on the blog, and I also know that people watch me rolling around in the chair. They see me have to take the long way around to go from points A to B because the easy way is too narrow, or know I just can’t go certain places because the space configuration doesn’t work or the bus chair lift is broken.

But they also see and read that I’m still doing things and don’t hibernate here in the apartment just because my legs don’t work right. I’m out eating in the dining room with friends, or wheeling into the library to work on our collaborative puzzles. I watch movies, do exercise classes, chair the Dining Committee, and am now about to take on the community newsletter. I bake cookies and dye my hair pink. Being differently abled doesn’t mean I sit around like a vegetable.

There a lot of things going on lately, though. My leg is still swollen and tight, with a puffy foot and hugely swollen right thigh. The ankle is bad and I have two blood clots. My shoulders and upper body hurt most of the time, and the wrists are also sore. I had a hospitalization and a retina tear. Oh, and Covid. Have I mentioned that I can no longer feel my right heel? And I’m also still morbidly obese.

Let’s be clear: I want to know what’s going on with my body, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I want to do anything to fix the problems. That depends on what and where they are. I don’t have a death wish, but I am not afraid of death or what comes after. I don’t know that any of my current problems put me on that path, but they are a wake up call to be sure that my affairs are all in order and organized so that my family can find what they need. No one organizes quite like a cataloger, so that one’s a sure thing.

Stray Genealogy Bits and Pieces

I have two boxes of pictures and decades-old printouts and notes on assorted people in my tree. I’ve been working on my lines for over 50 years and some of this stuff dates from the early days of my research which has been either confirmed or thrown out the window by subsequent research that’s properly sourced. Many of the pictures are duplicates of things I’ve already scanned, filed, and added to my tree. Others aren’t but they’re of people I barely know – and if I don’t know them, I know my brother won’t have a clue who they are. And we’re the only ones left.

I find myself wondering why I’m bothering to review all this stuff again. If the boxes disappeared, no one would know what went with them. I’m not sure I would know after all this time. And I’m not sure that anyone would care. You have to know what they are and whether they fill missing holes to care. I’m the only one who knows what they are and even I don’t care about most of it.

So why am I doing this? Really, why? Is it not enough that I have better images already scanned and sorted? I understand the value of all the scraps of paper that have given me genealogy treasures in the past. And it’s not THAT big a project to go through them all, search online, check files, etc. to see if I already have these pieces in a digital form.

But I just don’t want to do it, which is why they’re still sitting in their folders and acid-free boxes waiting for me to look at them again. I took the first step and moved everything out into the living room, but I still don’t want to do it. Maybe tomorrow.

There’s Been an Attitude Adjustment

It’s like a switch was thrown inside of me.  Instead of treading water in an endless spiral of griping about being fat and eating food I didn’t really want or need, I’m going somewhere – and for the first time in a long time, it’s not backwards.

I rejoined Weight Watchers, yes.  But I already knew all the WW drill, as well as every other diet and foodplan option on the planet.  Okay, maybe I missed one or two.  Knowing the information, the reasons,  the medical complications, and consequences of failure aren’t enough until you actually want to do something to change.

I don’t have a timeframe or even a real weight goal.  Right now it’s about getting comfortable with making changes and then following through on them long enough for them to become new habits.  Little things and big things that you know as well as I do — journal, eat less, healthy food groups, moving more.

But it’s also about being balanced and not feeling deprived.  I don’t deal well with that and don’t have to go there; there are plenty of options that let me feel satisfied and happy as long as I take the time to explore them.  One thing that’s critical for me is the balance between what I eat for lunch and what’s for dinner.  Lunch is my most social time, when I go out with friends and colleagues, and I want to be able to have choices at a variety of places we’re likely to visit.  Voila!  I do.  In exchange for eating a larger lunch, I eat a lighter evening meal.  Planning the night before lets me do both.

Obsessing over food never was healthy for me and it feels paradoxically as though I’m being more aware and careful while also not thinking about it every waking minute.  The weight will come off in due time – but first the attitude had to change.  It has.  And it feels good.

I Don’t Blog My Whole Life

Dear Staci,

Thanks for the “thoughtful” comments on my last blog post. For those who missed them, you said:

Mmm… nothing says “mature, self-directed and dermined woman” like cutting words out of magazines and making a collage. Then photographing it. Then posting the photo online. Then discussing it..

and

I still don’t get it. In all the time you ladies have spent cutting images out of magazines and making collages, you could have spent taking *real* steps towards losing weight like driving to a gym, taking a tour of the facilities, signing up and doing a workout. Or making up a food plan and shopping list, then buying the food. Or maybe you like making collages so you won’t have to think about actually exercising or dieting?

Let me explain something to you.  I don’t have to, but I’m annoyed and want to set the record straight.  I don’t post on this blog every day.  I have a real life and spending a lot of time blogging about everything just isn’t what I do these days.  When I do blog, I do it for myself and not anyone else.  I’m not trying to be an example, just to put some words to what’s going on.  I found over the last three years that blogging every day, and talking about food all the time, was not helping me stick to a foodplan and actually lose weight.  So I don’t do it now.

Collages are useful for me and for others to help sort out thoughts.  Hey, it’s not for everyone.  Criticizing us for doing it doesn’t help us though it may make you feel a lot better and more superior.  If I sat around and make collages every day, I’d agree that it was a pointless thing FOR ME to do.  As it is, I made one collage in three years.  How is this a problem?  It isn’t.  For me, anyway, though it seems to be for you.

You wanted to know why we didn’t get off our butts and DO something.  How do you know that we didn’t? That I didn’t?  In fact, I rejoined Weight Watchers last Saturday and have been carefully following the food plan all week – for the first time in a long time.  I’ve been cooking and eating careful meals with measured portions of healthy things.  I already belong to a gym and yeah, I could have gone this week but didn’t.  I’m walking at lunchtime instead for now.  Not your idea of a workout?  It is for me, who haven’t moved much for the last two years.

I’m not pretending to be someone I’m not.  I’m also living my life, not blogging it.

Sincerely,

Anne

Making a Thought Collage

Thought collage

I’ve been in a stuck place for quite a while now where my weight and body are concerned.  I know what to do, and I wanted to want to do it, but I just didn’t.  I finally got tired of it and decided to get my act together and take a step.  The one I chose was to go back to Weight Watchers, which I did last weekend.  I’m not particularly concerned about time frame or goals; I just want to refocus and take one step at a time to get healthier.

One part of that was sitting down and creating a new thought collage.  I used to make these every 6-12 months, or to mark a particular point in my journey.  Some were happy, others full of rage and pain.  Although I’d cut out things a year or more ago, I never got around to finishing the collage, which is the final part of owning the thoughts and feelings.

I collected some magazines and cut stuff out yesterday, adding in some that I found in the envelope of previously snipped pieces.  Most I couldn’t use because I’m simply not in the same place anymore.  This is a much healthier place  to be.

Since I’m busy posting motivational things today, go take a look at the lessons from the road in Do You Suffer from Diet Rage? over at Sparkpeople.com.