Haven't even been very active on FB. But I thought I'd post a health update. I've now lost a total of ten pounds since I changed how I eat. I've also been incorporating more activity, though still not a regular routine. But I feel better overall. Still have those downer days, but they're manageable. I think I'll do even better now that the holidays, along with getting back into the swing of things after the holidays, are over. I did binge a bit during and after, but not so much that I gained anything, which surprised me! I managed to maintain, and then finally begin losing again. So.
I'm teaching 4 classes this semester and keeping busy with house stuff, painting (yes, I'm painting pictures again!), going to French meetups and art events, and the general everyday things that keep one busy. But not so busy that I can't relax, which is what I'm soaking up.
So, 3 years ago my doctor told me I was prediabetic, which spurred me into action and I lost 30 pounds, 25 of which I have since put back on. But last week I had another scare, and there cannot be any going back for me. I have changed my lifestyle. Luckily, I already had most of the groundwork covered. I have my tracking tools, my guidelines, my exercise routines, etc. I created it all over time to best fit my abilities. I mean, let's face it, there's no way I'm going to go to the gym and do a 30-60 minute workout regularly. Not even to save my life. But I will do yoga 3 times a week and go walking or cycling 3 times a week. Or dancing. One day that will become part of my routine. When I have money again and can justify the cover charge.
I have no choice in the matter. The only thing to roll back diabetes, and it can be rolled back but you will always have it (it's like being an alcoholic) is diet and exercise. No more refined sugar, ever. Lots of fruits and vegetables and good carbohydrates (no starchy white foods).
So after reading up a little more thoroughly on the disease, I'm very glad to know that I'm not having to start from scratch in creating a plan for myself. I just need to implement the things I've already created. I use a combination of a neat little book called The Ultimate Pocket Diet Journal and sparkpeople.com for tracking my foods and their nutritional values. I've been entering foods into my Sparkpeople database over the last 3 years, so I'm not always having to do that now. The only new tool I've created is a chart to check off my suggested number of servings of the various food groups and the colors of fruits and vegetables I'm taking in. I should be getting a good variety of colors, so this is letting me see my weak areas so that I can work on them. I already know that legumes and dk green veggies are tough for me.
Sparkpeople also helps you track your fitness plan, so I can figure out how many calories I'm using up with various activities. It's trés cool. If you like the idea of social networking to help you with your weight/fitness goals, Sparkpeople is the best free place I've found. I don't do the social networking, though. I get enough of that w/FB. Don't need more. Don't want to talk about my new lifestyle all the time, I just want to do it. Which is what this post is about. I'm doing it. And so far, it's a-okay. My biggest problem is cutting out the fat grams now. Basically they're coming from dairy products, and occasionally nuts, both of which I love, but I must be more careful with the dairy. Cut back to fatfree milk. Doing lowfat cheese. But still, there's too much.
I'm also vegetarian again. I was one for two years, I went off it for one year, and as of Nov. 1, I went back to being one. Even though I like meat, there were days when it kind of nauseated me when I thought about what I was eating. I decided I really didn't need it after all. And I'm doing great with that. Now that I have to watch everything else as well, well, I guess I'm relearning how humans were meant to eat to begin with. We really don't need a lot of meat, we're fruit, vegetable and grain creatures. Plant creatures. We can exist completely on what grows from the earth, and our bodies like us better for it. And not processed stuff, either! Fresh, though cooked is okay.
So anyway, we'll see. I want to see the kind of success Nancy achieved. I've admired her tremendously for her self-discipline because I know how difficult it is. But I AM NOT going to get up at 3 am to exercise. I'm just not!
Maybe no one. Maybe I will get there. But it ain't lookin' so good. Paris, I mean. It might just remain a dream. I don't even have a passport. I meant to get one last year when I still had some money to do it, but money just seems to slip through my fingers like water.
I could be happy right now if my finances weren't in such a mess. I like teaching. The hours and the work suit me. But I need more of it. As an adjunct at only one college I can only teach 3 classes, no more. And the subject I teach isn't one to which they assign a full-time position. I haven't been able to get on teaching the same thing (college success to college newbies) at the other colleges around here. I need a doctorate to teach education classes in the universities in this area. I need a doctorate like I need a hole in the head. That's one of my financial worries, my student loans. But they're deferred for now.
Why have I made it my life's work to educate myself in areas that are useless? That provide very few opportunities for finding work? First an art teacher. Now adult education and eLearning design. Oh, there are eLearning jobs out there, but without 5+ years experience in the field no one wants to look at me.
There are a couple of other issues that I can't write about because they involve others in my family, but suffice it to say, we're all stressed right now. Really stressed. And Christmas is coming. I know money isn't the basis of Christmas, but it sure helps to make it merry, doesn't it? :-( At least I'll see my parents and brother at Christmas. But my kids won't be there. One son is in Afghanistan, another one will have to stay here working, and my daughter has the opportunity to spend it with her boyfriend, which, if you knew my daughter and what her life is like you would realize is a major deal and a good one at that, though it's a little anxiety ridden for all of us.
My foray into tutoring entrepreneurship was a bust and it left us deep in debt. Now I can't find a decent paying job and my husband's job, though pretty secure, doesn't support even our small family of 3. Especially not with the debt I incurred. Not only that, I would like to see a doctor. I need to see a doctor. But I have no health insurance.
Add to the mix my ongoing experience of "the change" which leaves me with memory gaps, unpredictable mood swings, and crying jags that come and go without warning.
I'm generally in good spirits when I'm distracted from thinking too deeply about all of this...when I'm not experiencing the depression part of the change, that is. But I'm so very, very tired all the time.
Heavy sigh.
(Facebook readers, click the link at the end of this note to see pics and video)
I like doing yoga. I like that you do the moves in a flowing, stretching, almost dancelike way. I like that the classes that I go to use relaxing, meditative music. And I love coming to the end with Savasana, the Corpse Pose, where you just lie there in tune with your body, relaxing. Yoga has become a replacement for what I would sometimes get at church, but the benefit of yoga is that you're never made to feel guilty, or like you're not measuring up to God's standards. Yoga is about listening to yourself, to the rhythm of your body, and paying attention to the sensations. It quiets your mind so that you can go deeper within to a place of calm and peace. When I'm doing yoga regularly, I can cope with my life better.
It also helps to put the right nutrients in my body, and though I haven't lost any weight since my last post about loving myself, I feel so much better in my mind because I've replaced a lot of bad foods with good ones. I've discovered that cherries are the perfect food for me when I begin to crave sweet foods. And I bought a bag of clementines the other day. Those are so delicious! As I peeled the first one over the sink, I realized that the smell of tangerines is Christmas to me, which is probably why I love them so much. I love the taste, of course, but when I smell them, all the things associated with Christmas flood my mind. That's also why I love chocolate covered marzipan. It's a Christmas treat, so to get it in the middle of the year gives me a feeling of my favorite time of the year.
Anyway, eating cherries and tangerines makes it easier to stay away from the sweet stuff, though I have an allowed limit of 3 Hershey's miniatures a day if I feel I need them. The last 3 days I definitely have. The time of the month approaches soon.
Yoga, though, isn't so easy because it requires some discipline. There's no discipline involved in going to the refrigerator and grabbing some fruit instead of going to my stash and grabbing some candy. In fact, I keep it hidden so that my daughter isn't tempted, and I can't just go to it any time I want because she could discover the hiding place, so that helps to keep it from me as well. But in order to do yoga at home, I have to push the coffee table out of the way, make sure the floor is swept and mopped, pull out my mat and block, and then set up my computer so that I can either watch a yoga DVD or put on my special music and do my own sequence of moves. It's so easy to let other things get in the way of doing yoga at home.
But I'm going to show you how easy it is for me to go to yoga class, as well as it's being a delightful place to go. It's called The Lotus Pond, and you won't see the inside or the back on my video, so here are some photos from their website. Through the windows inside you look out onto the pond, which isn't in their photos, and I don't know why because that's a big draw of the place. The room you see is their great room. They also have a smaller one, the lobby, the office (where I have a feeling a kitchen is also located), and a loft. It was originally someone's home.
This is from the front looking over to the right side of the building. If you go on around you'll see their organic garden and the pond, and then you can look back to see the back of the house:
The dark part of the house on the right is the great room, which has windows all the way around. This view looks out onto the garden (which is about where the person taking the picture must have stood), and the end view at the right looks over the pond. I always try to position myself so that I can view a statue of buddha out on the pond as my center point of vision for when I need to focus.
Those are the windows that look over the pond, and to the right are the windows and a porch that you can see in the previous picture. And now to show you how easy it is to get there.
We had to move her heavy bed, and bring a board from the garage room to lay across the slats to make a more stable platform for the mattress, which of course meant moving the mattress off. A few trips back and forth from bedroom to living room carrying pillows, books, and just stuff to make room for the drip plastic. Go find the stepladder and carry it in. Go find the paint and tools and carry them in. Pry off the stubborn paint can lid (while nursing a right arm that doesn't work right due to tennis elbow) and stir the paint. Then up and down a few times on the stepladder and lots of bending over as I do my share of the painting-the ceiling edge, the corners, the baseboards, and the door and window trim. My daughter gets to do the fun part using a paint roller on the nice, open middle area of the wall, but that's because she takes after her father when it comes to things like this, and though she tries, she's just not the semi-perfectionist that I am. I can't say I'm truly a perfectionist, but I'm the closest to being one than any one in this family. I get it from my mom.
Now get this. I've only done one wall, so far. The one with the door. And only the first coat. And I'm ready to hang it up and continue tomorrow. This is so unlike me. Once I start on a project like this I go, go, go until it's finished or I simply cannot move another muscle. My elbow is aching, my neck and back are aching, and I'm so winded I can compete with the fans in keeping the house cool. While I've been writing this, C has been doing her part of the wall. She just now said she's finished, which means I need to go in there and start on the other wall. And then come back to the first wall for the second coat. And again on the second wall.
I don't think I can do this. :-(
So C says, let's just do the first coat today, and finish the second coat tomorrow. I can do that.
This is from the front looking over to the right side of the building. If you go on around you'll see their organic garden and the pond, and then you can look back to see the back of the house:
The dark part of the house on the right is the great room, which has windows all the way around. This view looks out onto the garden (which is about where the person taking the picture must have stood), and the end view at the right looks over the pond. I always try to position myself so that I can view a statue of buddha out on the pond as my center point of vision for when I need to focus.
Those are the windows that look over the pond, and to the right are the windows and a porch that you can see in the previous picture. And now to show you how easy it is to get there.
