neepeople.com

Yes, there are mounds of what look like glacial ice in my front and back yards.  Frankly, I don’t want to talk about it.  I’ve never seen so much snow in my life and I spent three years of it living in Maine.  In fact, if I never saw a snowflake again, I’d be happy.  My poor children actually want to go back to school.  And they have Monday off for President’s Day.  I suppose it would take a constitutional amendment to send them on Monday, regardless of a scheduled day off.  Anyway, enough of that.

As I entered my mid to late thirties (I’m firmly in the late period now), I put on a little bit of weight, probably 20 pounds or so.  I decided not to worry too much about it, which is of course, nearly impossible in America today, but I tried.  My cholesterol, blood pressure and sugar levels all were well within normal limits.  Many of the women in my family have/had body types just like mine, extremely pear shaped with smaller waists.  If you have to have extra weight, mine is the best kind to have, one, because it puts less stress on the heart, and, two because it’s easier to hide.  It was easy to “be reasonable” about the whole thing.

Until my feet started hurting so badly when I got out of bed every morning I wanted to cry.  I had experienced this to some degree when I was pregnant with both kids.  After I delivered the babies, my feet stopped hurting in the morning.  My mom told it was probably plantar fasciitis.  The pain went away for years and then came crushing back last year towards the end of the school year.  It wasn’t just in the morning either.  Every time I got out of the car or up from sitting for any period of time, my feet hurt.  I figured it would just be part of “getting older” for me, like those grey hairs that keep appearing just above my left temple.

At the time, we were still on a COBRA insurance plan and paying $1200 out of pocket each month for insurance.  I didn’t want to see a podiatrist and possibly incur even more medical costs, so I waited until we had employee-sponsored insurance again and made appointments with a podiatrist and my gynecologist for a yearly check up.  The podiatrist confirmed my Mom’s suspicions.  I did indeed have plantar fasciitis.  The gynecologist appointment revealed that I had gained 14 pounds over the past year.  I now weighed as much as I did when I was pregnant with the kids, the last time I had such pain in my feet.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this one out, now does it?

I decided that at least *some* of the weight had to come off, at least enough to relieve some of the pain.  Had I a desk job that allowed me to sit most of the day it wouldn’t have been such a big deal.  But, as a speech therapist to sometimes very wiggly developmentally disabled preschoolers whom have a tendency to jump out of their chairs and start climbing on anything available, I needed to be able to move quickly.  You can’t hobble and perform my job.

I won’t bore you with diet/exercises plans.  These are quite google-able and there are a million of them, but I would recommend eating more protein and not worrying quite so much about fat.  You feel more satisfied with real food and you don’t need to eat as much.  Period.

What amazed me as I entered this season of weight loss was how much I had come to let food control me.  I love to eat, really love to eat good food on special occasions.  But I discovered as I started planning out what I would eat every day, that eating had almost become a sort of a habit.  I once thought I was an emotional eater, and I do think there is a degree of emotion tied up in the whole thing, especially when I think I *must* have chocolate.  For the most part, however, I ate because I thought I had to, not necessarily because I needed to.  Or, I ate because I thought I wanted something to eat, not because I was hungry.  I didn’t even always taste what I was eating or stop when I felt full.

Eventually, I started to really appreciate what I did eat.  I started to look forward to that special snack or that little bit of chocolate I allowed myself (every day I ate chocolate-the darker the better, drank small glass of wine, *and* lost weight, good food is good for you!).  I became very grateful for food, real food with texture, smell and taste.  And then I found that I didn’t necessarily need quite so much of it. During this short season of shoveling snow, I’ve felt more hunger, and I’ve allowed myself to eat out of plan.  Somehow, I’ve reconnected a little bit with my body’s natural signals.  This is a good thing, I think.  For the first time in my life, it almost seems “healthy.”

Losing weight is never easy and I’m sure I have much more to learn about my relationship with food.  I’m sure the upcoming Great Lenten fast will teach me even more, especially as, led by my husband, we are trying to eat more protein, less carbs and more “whole food.”  But I did learn that parts of my relationship with food continue to be disordered and I continue to need to work out how it is bound up with my spiritual life.

And if you’re wondering, yes I did lose weight.  My feet don’t hurt any longer which is absolutely wonderful.  I’m hoping that I will find a weight that I can maintain without too much of my family life being taken over by trips the gym, etc.  I think balance is one thing I will struggle with for the rest of my life.  Food is just one of the more obvious signposts of that difficulty.