Today is our anniversary. My hubby
and I have been married for 22 years, and I'd like to THINK we've gained
some wisdom about relationships and good living in general.
One
thing I truly appreciate is that he and I are in this "health" thing
TOGETHER. We were talking just yesterday about how difficult a prospect
it would be to radically change our views on health and lifestyle
without the other spouse (eventually, at least) adopting the same or
similar views on the importance of bringing health into one's life.
For
us it is a non-negotiable. Our son's transplant docs (kidney) told us
that the BEST thing we can do to be good advocates and good caregivers
for our son (who is 9 now and has had his transplant for 6 years now) is
to be MODELS of HEALTH. When he told us that, we were already adopting
healthy habits and making health an integral part of our lives, and it
only confirmed what we already knew, that our family was best served
living in HEALTH and not in OBESITY.
You see, a transplanted
kidney is a finite thing (as the rest of us is also, but a transplanted
kidney even more so), and any EXTRA weight our son carries throughout
his life is an added stressor to his kidney. In other words, him being
overweight could shorten the life of his kidney, and consequently, his
life.
WOW. To have it presented to us in no uncertain terms was
very eye opening. I mean, we know in GENERAL that for ALL of us, being
overweight and obese can have negative impacts on our internal systems
and our longevity, putting us at risk for all sorts of obesity-related
diseases and co-morbidities.
But to have this FACT displayed in
such clarity with our son's situation really helped change our views on
health from having an "interest" in it to being "committed" to it.
We are COMMITTED.
And our son is reaping the benefit of being a healthy weight, and having 2 parents who are a healthy weight.
We
have organized our lives around what matters most to us. Our health.
Our son. Our lives even as a team, my husband and myself.
Twenty-two years. Wow.
For
20 of those 22 years I was overweight or obese. Class 3 and Class 4
Morbid and Super Obese for about 16 of those years. Our new life
together is beyond amazing. Do we still have stressors and our share of
"problems"? Absolutely, but I maintain that EVERYTHING is easier at a
healthy weight because my brain is not battling the obesity-driven
feelings of failure and obesity-related depression that came from
hauling around an extra person on my frame. From not fitting in to any
of the clothing in my closet.
Do you KNOW how many of those black
extra-large landscape bags' worth of clothing I have given to Goodwill
through the years? About 25.
Thousands and thousands of dollars
worth of clothing, none of which I LIKED, all of which were bought and
worn simply in the hopes that they made me look a little bit "less
big". Lots of black and grey. Lots of free-flowing fabric. Nothing
"cute" or "beautiful" or "stunning" or "flattering". Just "less bad".
Those were my options. And I STILL managed to stand in there crying and
trying on dress after dress for special occasions, in utter denial at
how big I had become.
I've been reading a book called "Ultra-Fat
to Ultra-Fit" about a Neuroscientist who conducted an experiment on
himself to lose weight and although he used some unconventional methods
in his actual eating plan that I would never recommend, his commentary
on obesity in his own life and what he observed in others (as a
scientist he couldn't help but observe and take note), as well as his
thoughts on "dieting" in general are profound. Here is an excerpt from
that book, taken from pages 212-214:
"On
a Proper Diet: Before I say anything else, it's important to clarify a
concept that can have a fuzzy interpretation: what it REALLY means to
go on a diet. The term has become something of a misnomer. To most
people, "going on a diet" conjures visions of a draconian, albeit
temporary, state of self deprivation, where cutting back on the daily
quota of treats is rewarded by a steady loss of ounces and pounds. In a
stereotypical sense, this is accurate. But what happens after you've
lost the weight? Certainly controlling what and how much you eat is a
lifelong process, rather than a temporary affair with defined start and
end points. Indeed, the conceptualization of dieting as a transient
inconvenience leads to significant difficulties in the formation of a
proper attitude for long-term weight management. A more mature
understanding of dieting views the process as the beginning of a
permanent alteration to one of the most basic components of your
lifestyle. To make this even clearer, if you make changes for a while,
you may get results, but only for a while. To get long-lasting results,
you must make accordingly long-term changes. Viewing a change to your
eating habits from a longitudinal perspective can make the decision to
diet even more intimidating. It's important not to make the process
overly daunting. Diets take time to mature; it's unlikely that you'll
immediately adopt the eating habits you will practice ten years down the
road. In this light, dieting becomes a series of stepwise alterations,
with each change aimed at producing a slightly healthier, leaner
person. The prominent role of a diet in daily life makes changing it
one of the most challenging lifestyle alterations a person can make.
Overeating and eating badly are medically recognized as legitimate
disorders. These encompass addiction to and/or dependence on food for a
sense of well-being. Thus, when embarking on a diet, you are
essentially launching a similar campaign to that of an alcoholic who
decides to put down the bottle for good. While struggles to break free
of alcohol and drug addiction are well documented, the challenges of
combating (over) eating habits are generally not given due
consideration. However, one can easily argue that some obstacles
associated with dieting equal or exceed those related to battling
alcohol and drug abuse. The major difference between breaking an
addiction to a particular substance and embarking on a diet is that it
is clinically impossible to quit eating food. To illustrate this point,
let us compare hypothetically a smoker who has decided to quit and an
obese person planning to lose weight. Practically speaking, the smoker
needs to reduce and eventually eliminate his cigarette consumption to
achieve his goal. The obese person must continue to eat, but eat less
and/or different food in order to become thinner. He cannot simply
abstain from the substances he struggles with, he must learn to deal
with them differently. In practice, it is a simpler matter for the
smoker to remove tempting substances from his life than it is for the
dieter to avoid the multitude of widely available junk foods. While
other deleterious behaviors can be straightforwardly corrected by
quitting, the dieter must not only excise his bad habits but must
replace them with good ones. To do this, a dieter must effect a
significant psychological overhaul of his relationship with food. This
fact is increasingly recognized by scientists, if not by the commercial
diet community. Indeed, recent studies have found improved efficacy in
weight-loss programs supplemented with behavior modification therapy.
Viewed in this light, dieting becomes inherently more complicated than
the comparatively simple act of breaking a particular pattern of
behavior, even a deeply ingrained one. The psychological challenges
faced by dieters can be illustrated again by comparing our imaginary
smoker and dieter. The smoker's goal is to stop smoking; the dieter's
goal is to lose fifty pounds. In their first acts toward their goals,
the smoker goes "cold turkey," and the dieter has a bowl of steamed
vegetables and goes for a walk. The next morning, both are craving
their vices: a pack of Marlboros for the former smoker and a heaping
plate of bacon and eggs and pancakes for the latter. Aside from sheer
willpower (an often finite resource), what does each person have in his
arsenal to help him battle his cravings? One of the most important
psychological tools for lifestyle changes is the ability to validate our
actions by examining the results they produce. This common tactic for
behavioral reinforcement clearly is more effective in the case of
substance addiction. The smoker can now legitimately say, "At this
moment, I have accomplished what I set out to do. I am a non-smoker. I
have only been one for a day now, and it's still unpleasant, but I have
achieved my goal." What can the dieter say to justify his methods? He
is still on his diet, and is no doubt suffering as much as the smoker,
but he is still fat. He cannot say that he has accomplished his goal or
even made significant progress towards it. Thus a dieter faces the
added challenge of staying motivated. As is evident in my account, much
of a new dieter's time is spent trying to do just that. The bottom
line here is that a diet has the potential to be one of the hardest
things you can ever attempt. Only from understanding and accepting this
can the prospective dieter fully appreciate the situation,
acknowledging the scope and difficulty of the challenges he faces, and
commit to fixing the problem. Succeeding must be your top priority, and
must take precedence over other confounding life factors. Though it
may sound overly dramatic, when the dieter begins to equivocate, he
begins to fail."
OK Wow. That was a LONG excerpt.
But I didn't want to include just snippets of it. It really
encapsulates that this has to be a lifestyle change, it really
encapsulates that this is possibly the biggest and I would argue the
most important challenge we obese or overweight people will have to face
in our lives.
This is one reason why I include so much about
what my life is right NOW. I want you to see the stark contrast between
what WAS and what IS, and that staying on plan JUST ONE DAY matters a
great deal. In fact, it is of primary importance.
I submit to
you that if you stay on plan TODAY, you can be EXACTLY where you want to
be EVENTUALLY. Someday, provided you stay on plan TODAY, you will be a
healthy weight and will be living the life you have always wanted. And
if you view this proess as a joy instead of a drudgery, if you view
each day in a positive light of what you get to create with your health
instead of one big deprivation, the likelihood of you achieving EXACTLY
what you set out to achieve is high!
It is a mathematical certainty, actually! And all it takes is staying 100% on plan TODAY. Then tomorrow?
Rinse and Repeat!
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