Do As I Say

I don't know who you are, but I know what you're up to:  you're breaking your New Year's resolution to eat better and lose weight.  You've lasted five days, but darn it, it's Saturday night, and you really need a nice evening out after all the frenzy of the last few weeks: holiday parties, family gatherings, and treat-making for the kids.  No prep and no clean-up at home.  I understand.  It's OK.  If you've lasted this long, you've already beat most of the people who made that resolution to begin with.

I don't usually make resolutions.  Why set myself up for failure?  The only resolution I consciously remember making in the last 20 years was in 2000, when I set out to write an essay a week, similar to what I'm doing here.  I'd have to go back another 10 years, to New Year's 1990, to the only year I really resolved to lose weight.  I say "really" because it was more than just a random wish; I had a plan, one of my own making, one that I would never, ever suggest.

Each day, I allowed myself 1000 calories.  In those days, I didn't eat breakfast---or more honestly, breakfast was a diet soda and a couple of cigarettes before I dashed off to teach my morning classes (this was back when I was a hall manager and adjunct instructor at NSU).  For lunch, I had salad (lettuce, carrots, celery), no dressing, or a little bit of Miracle Whip if I added tuna, which I could actually stand back then.  I would cut up a slice of some kind of diet cheese to top this tasty mess, and I could have 6 saltine crackers.  If I skipped the cheese or Miracle Whip, then I'd have a frozen diet brownie, one of those original Weight Watchers things, I think.  (This was 23 years ago, and many brain cells have died.)  I almost always had lunch with someone. which helped keep me honest.  Dinners I am a little fuzzy on remembering, but I think this is where I first started eating some of the frozen Lean Cuisine dinners.  Yes, I remember that now: there were only a handful I would touch, but spaghetti and lasagna and sweet and sour chicken can get you a long ways.   No matter what, I relentlessly tracked calories and would not go one single calorie over goal.  The kicker for the plan was walking:  I had to walk a minimum of three miles a day, but I often walked a lot more than that.  The inspiration for this project (a man, you might have guessed) and I trekked all over Tahlequah in the evenings; it'd be hard to find a single street that we didn't walk down at some point, or several points.  On even the wettest or coldest days, I'd be at the NSU track, Walkman in my pocket, striding briskly to Don Henley's End of the Innocence album. 

And it worked.  In six weeks, I lost 40 pounds.  I could wear clothing sizes I hadn't worn in years, and styles that I'd never been able to wear.  People noticed, and certain people noticed more.  I remember getting one of the best compliments I'd ever had at that point in my life:  "You're the ONLY girl I've ever met who could resist a McDonald's french fry, even just one."  To a 26-year-old food junkie, that was high praise, especially considering the source---even better than when he told me I'd "be the hottest thing on the dance floor this spring." 

But plateaus arise and springs pass and smooth talkers leave town...and no one of my age, height, and size could live on 1000 calories a day.  It couldn't, can't, be maintained.  Slowly I went back to my old habits, and though it took a few years, all the weight lost came back and brought some friends to the party.  Up until that point, other than migraines, I had been blessedly healthy.  Afterward, everything began to break.  I trace many, many of the problems I've had health-wise back to that episode:  ulcers, GERD, gall bladder attacks, triglycerides, blood pressure, and diabetes came calling in the next 10 years.

If I were truthful, though, I'd need to admit, I always knew about some of those things.  My papa was diabetic; I can remember watching him give himself his insulin shots when I was very little.  Of his four brothers, I think at least one of them was diabetic, but I think it was more.  An uncle and several cousins all had or have it.  Because of the genetic predisposition, I'd always been told to watch out for it and to be tested regularly.  But like most any young fool, I was cavalier about it because I WAS so healthy.  I loved sweets and paid no attention to how much I consumed in balance with the rest of my diet, and it never seemed to cause a problem, except for the number on that dang pesky scale.  None of the things that would come to ravage my body because of my weight seemed more than a single distant cloud on a sunny horizon---until they all swept through, one storm after another, laying waste to that happy good health. 

I've not been resigned in the face of it.  Diagnosed borderline diabetic in 1995, I quit pop cold turkey and didn't have to change anything else, until I had to start taking oral meds in 2003, when Laura was dying.  Told that my triglycerides were so high I'd have pancreatitis if I didn't go very low-fat in my diet, I spent the summer of 2001 experimenting with very low to non-fat cooking----an enterprise I don't advise, but I did bring my numbers down and have kept them very low since.  I gave up smoking and was able to cut back on my blood pressure meds by half.   My A1C blood sugars have been well below the 7.0 that Indian Health wants diabetics to maintain for several years now.  And for three years, I've been concentrating on being healthy as possible in every way: finally finding an exercise I WANT to do every day (water aerobics, which is NOT as easy as many think), training myself to drink water and giving up even diet soda,  looking for ways to get more protein in my diet, and getting a C-PAP machine that gives me better quality of sleep.  None of these changes everything, but everything changes something.  I take whatever steps I can whenever I can.

That's what I wish everyone knew as they set out at the beginning of each new year to "really get in shape" this year.  It's a job not cut from whole cloth; it's pieced together, particularly for those of us who will always have a long road.  If I ran into that 26-year-old, and if she would listen, I think I'd have to tell her, "Don't worry about your weight; think about your health.   Don't go looking at those People 'Half Their Size!' cover stories.  Look in the mirror.  There's YOUR story.  Write it---and don't write it for anyone else.  Your opinion is the one that matters, the one you'll live with for the rest of your life.   Be wise---be well---get started." 

You, too, friends:  Be wise.  Be well.