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Ready for Waist Reduction
Most people start diets in January. I am starting now. Why?
I have had a love affair with food for as long as I can remember. Many good books have been written by people who think we'all who are overweight just don't know enough about nutrition. Dr. Mehmet Oz has a wonderful book called YOU: On a Diet. Thanks to him, I can focus on my waist size and not my lbs, among other excellences. Nutrition advice isn’t really my problem. I teach Anatomy & Physiology and can recite more nutrition information than the average person has ever heard in their life, and that’s quite a lot. Some people don’t realize that they are using food as a substitute for what they really want and need, but don’t dare admit or ask for, or which they just can’t get. I’m not one of them. I have a master’s in Psych to prove it too. My problem isn’t lack of knowledge. It’s also not lack of willpower. I have plenty of willpower. I was unhappily married for umpteen years and never considered dishonoring myself and my word by cheating. I have enormous willpower for resisting alcohol, regardless of the social pressure to partake (it’s a religious/ethical thing). I can stare down a two-year old and I can get cats to eat food they don’t want. I went homeless for eighteen months to save money to finish college. Don’t tell me I don’t have willpower.
What I lack, during the times when I fall off the vegetable wagon and sink into pizza and chocolate ice cream hell, is hope When I have unsolvable dilemmas, I am sick and alone, need help and don’t have it, and I need solace more than I need oxygen, I reach for the only solution that I can control, at a primordial level that easily overwhelms purely cognitive willpower. In the last ten months, I have relocated x-country and then a second time x-state lines – that’s two DMV visits in one year, folks. I have had pneumonia and several other health problems that precluded exercise. I landed in a new town with no friends or help. Intense pressure in a temporary just-a-paycheck job while I re-created a new life coaching business. Strict financial diet to pay for relo. I was trying to see real estate in a down market ten states away and stepped into a hellacious family battle that I had almost no control over. And when I was at my sickest, or scaredest, or lowest, I had dessert for dinner. When you are past menopause and your metabolism has slowed to a trickle, you can’t fall off the vegetable bandwagon and expect to get up unscathed.
Thirty pounds.
I won’t lose them by willpower alone. I will regain my health by providing myself what it needs and what has been lacking.
Love. In large quantities. I am a Master practitioner of Reiki energy healing, which can improve your health, calm your fears and allow you to listen to the wisdom of your body and of the Universe. Ah, the beauty of listening. The only reason I could not head off my year’s worth of avoirdupois with Reiki is that when you’re sick your ability to heal yourself is limited. You need another Reiki practitioner’s help. I am finally in a physical location where other Reiki practitioners abound. I have met the love of my life. I am still working a lot of hours, but my work is now congenial: life coaching, wellness seminars, teaching at local colleges. I have regained a social network.
My svelte former self will be back soon. Not without hard work. Not without nutrition information and exercise and scads of scheduling. But it will be done.