Music has been one of the most important sources of joy and creativity in my life. My dad was a lost soul, an alcoholic, a person who saw darkness in every corner, but in music… in music, my dad created light. My father’s only moments of carelessness and weightlessness came while fishing and while playing the guitar.
Music has always been there for him and for me when other pleasant things were lacking.
My dad named me Melody because he was a musician, and he was a hell of a musician at that. My dad could look at a stringed instrument and give it a few strums, all of a sudden an expert. He played the acoustic guitar by ear, tuned it by ear, and taught himself completely. He played the mandolin, and I remember loving to hear “Amy” from those 12 strings.
As he got older, the singing became quieter, more ragged, and hoarse, but it was the most beautiful sound to me. It was real. It was raw. His voice and his music were the essence of his beautiful soul troubled by a life of restlessness and toil.
Music was always there for us.
I remember the many times that he played “Here Comes Peter Cottontail” on his guitar to entertain me, and I remember a LOT of the Eagles. “Witchy Woman” might not be a piece of appropriate music in the repertoire of any regular young girl, but it was in my collection of songs to which I knew all the words. My dad was always real with me. He was always honest.
He was honest when he told me that he’d been out drinking or fighting or selling things he ought not to be selling. He was always honest when he told me about our family’s history or why I couldn’t come to live with him. He was most honest when he played music for me. His guitar reminded him of his drinking days. He’d buy a guitar and sell it a few years later, haunted by the memories the chords evoked for him.
My dad bought me a guitar and let me decorate it with paint markers and stickers, a cheap little $50 Rogue that didn’t stay tuned all that well. He’d tune it for me and watch me learn, correcting my fingers. Once I knew a few chords, I played repetitive country songs while he’d ad lib over it and accompany me. I was never wrong to him, and my notes were never sour. He loved my voice. He was the best teacher.
We didn’t always know how to talk about serious things, my dad and I. Sometimes, you just stay quiet and play. That was our way. As long as the music was still there, we were still tight, no matter the circumstances. We could be angry, he could be disappointed, and we could still make music.
At his graveside, I sang for him. I was so hurt, so insulted, that he’d relapse into alcoholism. I was even more hurt and guilty that he’d killed someone and himself while drinking and driving. Everything was so hopeless and negative during that time. I did the best I could to keep sane and function like a normal person. I didn’t know how to say what I wanted to say. I didn’t know how to put things like these into words, so I sang.
I sang because I knew that he was finally free from his torture. I sang for him, not for the people attending. I sang because we have always sang. I make music when I don’t know how to do anything else.
My life has never been simple or normal or without discord, but my life has always had music. For me, music has always been the anchor keeping me steady in an unforgiving sea.
When all else has failed, there has always been music. There will always be music. Thank you, dad, for the music. Thank you for my sanity.
It has occurred to me… or really, it slowly crept on me, that by logging my food every day and striving for the perfect calorie goal, I am simply trading one obsession for another. I either compulsively over-eat or I obsessively diet, accepting nothing but black and white. Logging works great for most people. Logging worked well for me initially.. I just wonder if maybe logging my food has caused a mental rift in my mind between “good” and “bad” foods and “good” or “bad” days.
It’s like I believe that my nature is inherently always gravitating to the “bad.” My knee jerk reaction is to make the days I don’t log the ones where I frantically, excitedly, guiltily scramble to fit in every “bad” food I have been missing over the past few weeks of meticulous calculating and logging everything I ingest.
I made the decision to learn to eat better without logging during this past week. I was having a conversation with my roommates at the dinner table about my habits, my likes, my dislikes, and my overeating issues. One of my roommates, who has always been able to think of just about anything objectively, suggested that I attempt to wean off of logging and look at food as just food. The suggestion was appalling at first; “Logging works,” I thought, “There’s no reason to fix what isn’t broken.”
His suggestion planted itself like a seed in my mind and grew until I realized that my goal was never to be so obsessed with losing weight. My goal was to learn healthy habits, to get to my goal weight, and to look the way I wanted. It occurred to me that my logging obsession is just as mentally unhealthy for me as overeating is for my body. An unhealthy mind cannot make a healthy body. My solution was to utilize something I learned from a class for adoptive and foster parents that I had to take for my job. In order to run an orderly household, parents need to make clear, concise, simple rules that govern the household, such as “be kind,” “be respectful,” and “be honest.” I needed to make rules like these for my lifestyle so that I could simplify it rather than over-complicating it with numbers and figures.
1.) Only eat when hungry. This is a habit that logging completely broke me of doing. I got into a groove with logging that led me to believe that I should eat every 2-3 hours on the dot and that I should eat only what fit into my macros. While this is effective for some, I lost some of my ability to recognize hunger signals and deal with hankerings for random food items by replacing them with healthier options. The result is that on days when I didn’t log, I ate whatever I damn well pleased because that’s what I felt like having. This does not lend to a healthy lifestyle throughout. I can’t only be healthy when I log; I need to be making healthier choices all the time. I’m trying to create a lifestyle, not a cage.
2.) Try to keep each meal under 500 calories (estimated). Eating smaller meals as a guideline helps with portion control and allows me to spread my calories out over a long day at work. Since I’ve been logging for so long, I know what most of the foods I have been eating lately contain as far as protein and calories. This also keeps me from trying to meet a calorie goal for each day and gives me some flexibility. I may only feel like eating 1,000 calories one day but feel like eating 2,300 the next day and have all the energy for a workout.
3.) Eliminate as much sugar as possible. I know that sugar is the enemy, you know that sugar is the enemy, but we still eat a lot of sugar in our coffee, in snacks, and in sauces because it’s freaking delicious. It also causes cravings and helps our bodies to retain fat, so it has to go. As I let go of the logging process, I want to try to replace sweet food items that I normally would have eaten, especially at the end of the day, with something just a bit less sweet but still satisfying. I’ve also been trying to steadily drink my coffee just a little bit darker each day so that I can eliminate the daily use of sugar in my coffee as well. Sugar is a trigger for me, and I have avoided eliminating its evil from my life for too long.
4.) Get a fruit or vegetable on every plate. This rule follows my sugar rule because fruits and veggies have fiber that help break down sugar more slowly and help with digestion. Not only that, but a fruit or veggie with each meal can help me feel full longer, give me essential nutrients, and gives me a reason to try new things. Whether I slap spinach on a turkey burger, avocado on my scrambled eggs, or replace pretzels with carrots, getting something colorful on each plate encourages healthier habits and a healthier body.
5.) Drink a lot of water. I carry a 32oz bottle of water with me all day long, drink about two of those, and then have another couple of glasses of water at dinner. Some days I drink more than others, especially if I’ve been sweating a lot in the gym. Water is the magical elixir of life. Just drink it.
6.) Forgive yourself and move on. If I had a particularly rough day with food choices, no one is going to know it but me, regardless of how fat, sluggish, and gross I feel. No one can tell that you just ate a pint of Ben & Jerry’s in 5 seconds flat just by looking at you. Put it behind you, make your next meal a healthy one, drink lots of water, and just get over it. Move on.
Maybe it’s just my recent interest in yoga talking, my nervous anticipation about being ridiculously busy with graduate school beginning this summer, or maybe I’m just having a moment of clarity, but this is what I have always wanted. I have always wanted to forget that food is the enemy and realize that food is power. Food is fuel, but food is not an emotional dam for my anxiety or disappointment. For the next couple of months, I expect to be more aware of my body and its signals. I don’t expect to lose a lot of weight. If I do, that’s great, but I think that the most important makeover that needs to happen for me is in my mind.
I am hoping that by forming a more friendly relationship with food and with my body that the rest will fall into line later. Here’s to hoping.
For the month of April, I made a promise to myself that I’d make it through all the emotions and turmoil I knew I’d be surrounded by during the first anniversary of my dad’s death. I knew that the month would be hard and that emotional eating would be possible. I vowed to use my color coded calendar to track my eating and exercise habits. I wanted to make every single day of April green, meaning that I got all my exercise in and did not go over my calorie goal each day. Well, I DID IT. As an incentive, I put a deposit down to get a tattoo on the last day of the month as a reward for my dedication. I didn’t lose any weight during this period of time; in fact, I gained three pounds, but I did lose about half a pant size. I primarily lifted weights throughout the entire month and did heavier cardio if I wanted a treat but had to earn it. The month was a huge journey for me emotionally and physically. I made progress on my physique and fitness levels, which was surely my primary goal, but I also gained some perspective on how to deal with emotional eating and the language I use when I talk to myself about my fitness goals. I learned to use more positive language and a “can do” attitude when I self-talk internally. Instead of saying to myself, “I can’t…” I would say, “I don’t/won’t.” This changes my perspective from being deprived to being empowered by my food and exercise choices. Instead of saying, “I should… go run or lift,” I said, “I will.”
Yesterday, I got a tattoo that is important to me because it has been my mantra throughout my entire fitness journey. “Comparison is the thief of joy.” I go to the gym twice a day more often than not, and I’m surrounded by a lot of different kinds of people there. Some are skinny, some are not. Some are fit, and some are not. I made an unhealthy habit of comparing myself and my journey to the physiques and lifestyles of people who had nothing in common with me except for one thing: the desire to be better today than we were yesterday. I would allow my envy for the girl who could run marathons or the guy who could do twenty unassisted pull ups to consume me with jealousy and poisonous anger, preventing me from fulfilling my ultimate goal of becoming better every time I hit the gym. We can’t choose the conditions or genetic pools into which we are born, but we CAN control how we respond to the hand we’ve been dealt. Resilience. Even though I’m nowhere close to where I’d like to be, I am stronger, faster, and healthier than I have ever been. The only person I should be competing with is me.
It is not yet finished because it was quite detailed and in a tender spot, so we’re finishing the color in about a month. Overall, I’m ecstatic about how it’s looking. It’s absolutely perfect, and he really captured what I was thinking when I asked him to design it.
I was completely unaware that when I set out to meet my goals consistently for the entire month that I would also gain so much understanding and self-reflective knowledge. I understand more thoroughly how I function under emotional stress, such as the anniversary of my dad’s death. I met all my health and fitness goals on that day. I got up early to work out, knowing that I would be going to his grave later in the day. I cried. I was upset, but I also learned to channel my sadness into both my workout and into creativity. I made a beautiful wreath to take to his grave.
I really didn’t expect this month to be so emotionally and mentally rewarding. I was expecting to be miserable, worn out, and depressed. Instead, I feel empowered, strong, and capable. Resilience is a funny thing.
I’ve been MIA for a while due to vacation and a crazy tornadic storm that hit my hometown and damaged my roof, but here I am again!
So, I still write a column for our work newsletter every month that’s completely health based. I’ve written about how to eat well when dining out, the best ways to be healthy, and what to eat. This time, I wrote about how to calculate your basal metabolic rate (BMR) and how to factor activity and goals into that rate for personal calorie intake each day. Using the most up-to-date formula, I composed an article explaining how to use the formula to customize calorie intake.
Here’s the article below:
“Most government and medical websites provide cookie cutter guidelines for daily caloric intake. As I was beginning to write this article, I googled, “how much should I be eating?” The results were overwhelming, and each automated calculator gave me different answers. However, there is a more accurate way to calculate how much we should be eating each day based on age, weight, height, goals, and activity levels. Learning to calculate your basal metabolic rate, or BMR, will help you find a place to start with controlling portions and food intake. Your BMR is the number of calories it would take to run your body in a completely neutral environment, such as lying in bed all day. To find your BMR, use this formula:
For men: BMR = 10 x weight (kg) + 6.25 x height (cm) – 5 x age (years) + 5 For women: BMR = 10 x weight (kg) + 6.25 x height (cm) – 5 x age (years) – 161
Obviously, we cannot stay in bed every day, so we need to take activity into account. To calculate the amount of calories one would need in order to maintain his or her weight taking activity level into consideration, multiply your BMR by one of the following options:
Sedentary (Very little exercise/desk job) 1.2
Lightly active (Light exercise on 1-3 days a week or 2 hours of walking a day.) 1.375
Moderately active (Moderate exercise/sport on 3-5 days a week or 3 hours of walking a day.) 1.55
Very active (Hard exercise/sport on 6-7 days a week or 4 hours of walking a day.) 1.725
Extremely active (Hard daily exercise/sport and physical job including 5 or more hours of walking a day.) 1.9
This is the amount of calories you would need to maintain your weight while doing that activity. To lose weight, we need a caloric deficit. A pound of fat is worth around 3500 calories, so a 500 calorie deficit each day would yield a one pound loss each week. It’s safest and most sustainable to lose weight slowly, so a deficit of more than 1000 calories a day is not recommended. Keep in mind that this formula does not take into account any lean body mass or body fat percentage, so it’s only an estimation based on the average person of your weight, height, and age. As always, if you need extra help deciding how much to eat, have your doctor refer you to a nutritionist.”
I get that it’s not optimal to have to convert Imperial measurements of weight and height to metric measurements, but it makes the most sense. We can convert pounds to kilograms and inches to centimeters pretty easily just by typing it into Google. You just type it in and Google provides an automatic calculator. It’s so simple!
It came to my attention that recently the FDA approved a device that is essentially a pacemaker for your stomach and esophagus which sends electrical pulses to interrupt hunger pangs. The device has been tested in real live humans, and the FDA approved it. There are multiple reasons that this device and its approval are completely flabbergasting me and enraging me. The approval of this device was conceived in greed and will exacerbate the laziness and instant gratification mindset of our entire nation. In a place where 3/4 of the population is overweight or obese, this device is a far cry from the solutions needed to make our nation healthy.
The first problem with this device is that it most likely made multiple people affiliated with the FDA a little richer. It’s no secret that the FDA has repeatedly made decisions that do not benefit the public’s health while it does benefit their members’ wallets. Check out Food Inc. and tell me that you don’t think the pharmaceutical and agricultural industries had anything to do with this or the thousand other ways the FDA presumes to treat obesity without attacking the source of the problem: what we eat. Someone was paid well to pass this design and approve its use.
How do I make the assumption that the approval of the device was the product of corporate greed? In an experiment testing the effectiveness of the device, called Maestro, the placebo device performed almost as well as Maestro as far as total body weight lost in 100 patients. NBC news stated, “The FDA wanted the device to be 10 percent better, on average, than a placebo but has approved it anyway.” The experiment was safe enough, but did have many adverse side effects that are usually included in any Pepto Bismol advertisement. Well, yeah, an electrical device that pulses through your stomach and esophagus when you decide you feel hungry… wonder why? Seriously.
Let’s talk about how effective this device would be at sustainably reducing weight in its hosts. NBC wrote that the device would only be available to those who had tried weight loss programs and failed with a BMI of at least 35 to 45 points, but they would also only qualify if they also had an obesity-related health issue like heart disease or diabetes. Okay, cool, we’re narrowing it down, but this device will do jack-diddly-squat for heart disease and diabetes. The device only controls hunger pangs, not the actual kind of food you put in your mouth. If you only eat 500 calories a day but that 500 calories is always a nice greasy burger, you’re still going to have heart disease. Hate to break it to you, but skinny people get heart disease and die of heart attacks too! The device also wouldn’t stop you from eating only 500 calories worth of doughnuts a day and remaining diabetic. One more blow to your lower abdomen: skinny people are diabetic too! This device, this Maestro, only addresses calorie intake and not actual health. It will literally do NOTHING for someone who isn’t consciously making the decision to eat healthier foods.
This device also only intercepts hunger signals, not depression or boredom, so emotional eating and boredom binging are totally still on the table. Not only that, but Maestro is controllable by its host, so you can choose when you’d like to be hungry. Presumably, anyone could develop an eating disorder and use Maestro to reject their basic instincts saying, “hey, feed me before I eat all the necessary visceral fat around your vital organs and send you to the ER!” The device will not address any issues with food addiction or overeating. It will simply allow its hosts to ignore hunger. That is useless.
Needless to say, someone just invested a whole lot of money into something that will be completely obsolete and will cure nothing. Sure, it may help some people lose weight for a while, but it won’t teach them how to make better food choices or how to plan meals for weight loss.
This time, money, and energy would have been better spent by the FDA in trying to figure out how to get their heads out of their asses and their hands out of agriculture and pharmacy’s pockets long enough to figure out that they’re killing us all one dollar at a time.
This post isn’t the kind of post you think you’re going to read. It’s not about over-eating or binging and feeling guilty. This post is about a relationship between a father and daughter and how it has impacted my weight loss journey.
There is some back-story to this post in a previous blog I wrote. Long story short, my dad killed a mother of twin girls and himself while drinking and driving. A lot of complicated events led up to this relapse of his and most of it isn’t my business to tell, but the main idea I want to convey is that he was so very troubled. He struggled.
Today, I read an interesting post from Humans of New York. (If you haven’t liked them on Facebook, then you are missing out on the most beautiful and sincere pieces of humanity in the world. It’s a lovely project. Check them out here: HONY) A man who was photographed for this project said to the photographer, “No matter how much we tried to help my brother, he wouldn’t quit. We tried being there for him. Then we tried to throw money at the problem. We tried to set him up with rehab, doctors, psychologists, even a job. Then eventually we just sort of threw up our hands and stopped associating with him, thinking that the alienation might shock him into changing. I hadn’t spoken to him for two years when he killed himself.” Many of the comments on this post were supportive. Anyone who hasn’t known an addict or been in a personal relationship with an addict can’t understand the helplessness one feels when they are no longer of use. They have expended all of their time and energy into helping and have only been met by rejection and disappointment. I thought to myself, “If I were photographed in New York and he asked me what my biggest regret was, what is it that I would say?”
When I got the news that my dad had died in a tragic and violent collision, the one thing I wished I had done was ask him out for a burger. Just one meal. Maybe if my dad had known that one person in this world cherished him above all else and truly valued him as the person he is rather than judging him for the person he was becoming… maybe he wouldn’t have wanted to drink that night.
If I could have stopped my busy life for one moment to give him the affection and connection he deserved, then maybe he would have thought twice. I had always been his reason to stop drinking before, so why not now?
I felt guilt after he died for that one thing. I had the opportunity to make him feel important, and I missed it. It was the one thing I kept telling myself over and over, and it was a big reason that I gained so much weight after he died.
I’m not an outwardly emotional person. I don’t like to be seen crying, and I don’t like to bicker in public. I hate confrontation. I’m an extreme introvert. Everyone thought I was being so strong, but really I was just saving it for later. It took quite a long time before I went a day without crying. I’d cry in my cubicle. I’d cry in my bed. I’d cry in the shower. And I ate. I ate to fill a hole that nothing could fill, and I still haven’t filled it. It just scarred over.
This brings my to my next point: Weight loss is just as much mental as it is physical. I can, at any given time, make the decision to eat junk. I can logically choose to eat well or destroy my progress; however, it’s never as easy as all that. The way we treat our bodies is a direct reflection of how we feel about ourselves. Some express that violently or sexually, but I eat. Overeating is just another form of self-harm for emotional eaters. We loathe ourselves, we see ourselves as hideous, so we literally feed that.
I hated myself for giving up on my dad. I felt badly about whining when he asked for money or when he vented to me, but I was missing out on a beautiful relationship that only required my time and nurturing. I was his person. My dad confided in me and trusted me to help him, to listen when no one else would. What a treasure I ignored and rejected.
For a long time I thought I was ashamed that he had killed someone else, a young woman with children who needed her. Yes, I am ashamed of that, but it wasn’t my doing and it’s not my fault. I know that. I was ashamed because I wasn’t being half of the woman he taught me to be. I wasn’t doing the next right thing, and I wasn’t being kind or generous.
For that, I ate.
I’m not here to whine and broadcast the message that I need sympathy. I just feel like admitting my regrets is an action that will bring me one step closer to achieving my goal of losing 100 lbs, which has been 4 years of hard work.
I lost 5 lbs this weigh-in, and I’ve been working out in frigid temperatures in my garage. Damn, I feel good about that.
There’s not much else to say except that facing my demons is helping me to become a more compassionate and empathetic person. It also helps me to be more objective about events that have happened since then. Little things like a bad day or a ruined party are so much easier to handle now that I’ve been through something that legitimately broke me from the inside. There have been blessings in this curse.
I guess if I could hope for one thing, it’s that someone would read this and find some little nugget of wisdom in it that would help them make it through the day, make it to their goals, or simply to help them live more fully and passionately.
My dad’s death awakened something in me that feels, truly feels everything. It has inspired me to tackle life and my dreams with a renewed fierceness that I haven’t known before.
You know that sinking feeling you get in your stomach when you’re on a roller coaster, careening over the crest of a hill and suddenly gravity pulls you down? There’s that moment where, frozen in time, you draw in your breath and prepare for an onslaught of turbulence ?
That’s how it feels when you learn that the person you love most in the entire world has died.
This blog post has nothing to do with positivity, weight loss, or good feelings for at least the whole first half so let me just take a Lemony Snickett moment to tell you that if you don’t want to read something depressing and completely awful, turn back now.
I woke up on Easter Sunday to missed calls from my closest family members, no voicemails, and timestamps reading ungodly hours of the night. I remember that fitful night of sleep, aggravated at our neighbors who were drunk and arguing — again. Thinking back now, I am almost positive that I was awake and aware of a premonition that something bad was happening somewhere else in the world the very moment that my dad took his last breath. I immediately called my little sister, somehow already knowing that the conversation I was about to have would not be a good one.
My dad had been an alcoholic for as long as I remember knowing the word and even before that. I spent most of my life before I was 10 visiting him in halfway houses or at my grandparents’ house during supervised visitations, but I never once stopped seeing him as the most gentle, loving, generous, resilient man I’d ever known. I couldn’t be angry when he was in prison, when he was far away, when he asked me to keep secrets, or when he took me along for drunken joyrides and got caught. I spent a hell of a lot of time in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings as a kid, breathing in the cloudy, smoky air and reciting the Lord’s Prayer with the many hopeful and newly sober alcoholics and narcotic addicts, holding hands in a circle of acceptance and forgiving.
When I was about 10 years old, my dad got sober for good. I remember so many beautiful things. I remember “Peter Cottontail” on the acoustic guitar, The Eagles, being saved from yellow scorpions near the pool, the way that the cracks in the windshield of his old, orange, beat up truck formed an elephant in my imagination. I remember a lot of really boring fishing trips that I’d take again in a heartbeat. I remember fish fry dinners with hush puppies and how even when I was losing weight I never turned down my dad’s fish. I remember a lot of truly good people with truly horrific pasts. I remember love, warmth, and his endless gratitude for me. At every AA meeting, at least during the ones at which he spoke, my dad always mentioned me as his saving grace, his only reason for coming back and repeatedly accepting that heavy, gold 24 hour chip from his sponsor. “Keep coming back, it works if you work it.”
It worked. I spent 12 blissful years supported by my dad, my biggest cheerleader. He always praised me for a job well done. He encouraged me to sing and to play instruments. He accepted every coloring page and drawing with admiration and awe. He looked at me with bright eyes, reflecting my own smile, our appearances so much alike, and say, “That’s MY daughter.” He used to marvel at how a guy like him, presumably meaning an alcoholic who never went to college or left his hometown, could have a daughter like me. He was always so impressed at my intelligence, wit, and talents. He loved me completely unconditionally, and I loved him the same. I still do.
I never really blamed him for relapsing. Sometimes I think he just struggled with some demons that couldn’t be conquered.
When my sister told me that my dad had hit another car head-on and died instantaneously, the floor fell from beneath my feet, time stood completely still. I crouched in the floor of my kitchen, not really sure how I got on the floor. I agreed to come out to the house later, where family would be waiting, and I went back to my bed. I woke James, who, through groggy-eyed sleep, grabbed me up and cradled me as I rocked and cried, “My daddy, my daddy…”
My mom and step dad came over and took us to Village Inn for breakfast. I could tell you what I ate, where we sat, but I can’t describe to you the overwhelming feeling of injustice and grief I felt, sitting there in a restaurant where the entire world was unaware that anything had changed at all while my entire life had been turned upside down.
The worst part was reading the comments. I know, they always say you should never read the comments. Under a news story about a drunk-driving crash that killed two women (I can’t begin to explain how upset I was that they hadn’t even gotten his gender correct) overnight on our local news’ Facebook page, people posted malicious comments intended to chide a dead man for making a mistake that cost him his own life and the life of a young mother of twins. People assume that the families might be too busy grieving or dealing with the pieces left over to really read those comments, but I saw them all. People should really think before speaking, but they’re so brave behind a keyboard.
We planned the funeral over the next few days, and it really was beautiful. We made a slide show of all the photographs my grandmother kept for each of her children and grandchildren with songs that my dad would have loved to hear playing behind the images. I even sang at his graveside service, “His Eye is on the Sparrow” and tried to make it as beautiful as I could over my wavering chin and tears. Over the next few weeks, my little sister and I struggled to find closure by trying to remember him, getting a memorial tattoo, making a wreath for his grave on Memorial Day, using his t-shirts to make a quilt, but it’s not really ever enough.
Even though I had lost such an impressive amount of weight in the past few years, I began a self-destructive mission to eat anything that I could get my hands on as a form of control. Any anxiety or depression that I have ever felt in my life cannot compare to how I felt the couple of months after all of these events. I ate like I wanted to kill myself with food. I cried most nights. I gained about 30-35 pounds of the weight I had worked so hard to lose right back onto my body. My will to keep myself healthy and keep losing weight completely disappeared because my biggest hero and cheerleader was no longer there to help me continue by supporting and encouraging me.
Time has made it easier, but I know that nothing is ever going to fill the spaces left behind by his presence. Over the past 6 months, I’ve been able to put my life back together slowly, and I am trying to remember him in a positive way. Every day is a struggle to continue to be the happy, healthy, and vibrant person I used to be. I’m getting closer all the time.
Recently, I joined a boot camp class that I really enjoy and haven’t lost much weight but have gained a lot of confidence and have definitely done some body re-composition. I’m happy to report that in the past month and a half I’ve lost about 2 inches all over, 4% body fat, and a pant size. I’m applying for admission into a degree program to get my Masters over the next couple of years, and I’m celebrating a year at my big-kid job in just a couple weeks.
Even though I’m doing fine, sometimes I’m just not doing well. Man, how I wish I could pick up the phone and let him know how everything I do every day is in an effort to make him proud. I’m not a particularly religious or spiritual person, but I like to pretend that when I’m near water, he can see me and know that I think of him in the serenity of the ripples and waves. Water was the only thing that could calm his tortured spirit, and I see him there on the banks, smiling and squinting into the sun, reeling in a giant crappie.
One day, I hope we can be reunited on the shore of some giant, blue lake in the low valley of some beautiful snow-crested mountains and just talk about nothing in particular, with the sun on our backs and our loved-ones around us. I hope that the end isn’t a goodbye and that it’s just a see-ya-later. Whenever we ended our phone conversations, my dad always said, “Glad you got to talk to me, talk to me again.”
I really hope it’s that simple. Until then, I’ll keep studying, sweating, singing, working hard, learning, hoping, smiling, remembering, and loving to the deepest and fullest parts of my heart. Until then, I’ll be seeing you.
Folks, this weekend has been rough.. Really rough. My cousin, Jason, has been in and out of the hospital recently with pancreatitis, and it finally took his life on Sunday night around 7 p.m. The pancreas, inflamed and filled with cysts, began releasing enzymes into Jason’s body that broke down all of his internal organs. He lived only and hour and a half after they pulled the plug. Jason was 36, the oldest son of my most cheerful and happy-go-lucky uncle. He was just as much of a jokester as my uncle. The point I’m getting to is that Jason was too young, and my family is completely distraught. I arrived at the hospital with my dad, sister, and step mother only a few minutes after Jason passed, and I was able to visit the room as he laid there. I kept watching his chest, sure that he was just playing, waiting for it to rise and fall. It never did.
Jason leaves behind several siblings, a father, a mother, step parents… His father, my uncle, was the most upset. He didn’t cry, but he wanted to. He didn’t act sorry for himself, but he wanted to. You could see in his eyes the hopelessness that comes with the realization that yet another life is extinguished from the face of the planet. He was angry. Who could blame him? He said, “I’m a little mad at the man upstairs right now. It’s kinda one of them things that I want to know why or what the plan is.” Something to that extent. He said he’d like to hurt someone, not anyone he knows, but he’d walk into a bar and pick a fight with the baddest dude in there. My poor, sweet uncle. He does not deserve this. No person should ever have to bury a child whether he’s 6 or 36. This should not have happened.
This event has been heavy on my mind lately, and I’ve admitted before that I’m an emotional eater. I eat my stress and my sadness. Sugar is the comfort of choice. The day I found out they’d be taking Jason off of the ventilator, I was on a walk with my dogs on the river. I opened that text message, processed its information, and ran. I ran for Jason; I ran long and hard until my lungs burned and my breath caught. I turned my emotions into the energy I needed to fuel my body for my run. I focused, and I really saw. I looked with clarity at the river, the sun shining off of the tiny waves caused by the stark wind, and I saw. I saw life being short, I saw love as a state of being, and I saw that stupid, trivial things in life are just not what they seem.
I wanted to eat, but I ran. When I did eat, I burned it off. Yesterday, I went to a gas station and bought a maple frosted cinnamon roll. It was 520 calories of sugar and fat that definitely didn’t need to be in my body. I ate it, and I immediately felt remorse. I know better than that. I ended up going to the gym later to burn it off, and I did; I burned nearly 700 calories. During the past couple of days, anytime I hear a song that reminds me of Jason or if I think about it, which is way too often, I push harder. I put extra energy into everything that I do because I still have life, love, and my health; I treasure that.
Love your body, keep it healthy, live with purpose. Keep yourself healthy so that no one ever has to worry about burying you too early. Fitness and health isn’t just so you can look good or feel good… This is about your life. This is about keeping your heart in shape and your body in good enough condition to LIVE.
heartathome8219 