It’s not only Thanksgiving Day, it’s Valentine’s Day. I had a lovely valentine’s gift this morning– lavender and chocolate with a card full of love from my cousin. I am overwhelmed.
I’m going to do something a little different, and talk about my body. About fourteen years ago I went hiking on the Appalachian trail with a group of much younger colleagues. I was appalled at how out of shape I was. A Lucille Roberts gym had just opened pretty much within sight of my apartment, and I decided I’d better join.
[update] The timing is wrong here. I joined the gym about nineteen years ago, but I guess I wasn’t yet working out hard enough to make a difference. And yes, I checked the notes I’ve kept from my workouts, and I checked for when we did the Appalachian trail hike. So it’s just my memory, I guess. I’m reminded of the introduction to Samuel R. Delany’s The Motion of Light in Water.
I considered about blogging about this a long time ago, but I didn’t find time, and events have since taken their course. In a nutshell, I didn’t weight myself for weeks, but when I stepped on the scale I found the number frightening. I decided that I was going to work out, and see how well I could control my weight that way. It was helpful, but not sufficient. So the next step was to change my diet. I was determined to make no change that I wasn’t sure I could live with forever. The first big change– and it definitely paid off– was to exchange my take-out lunch for a salad of greens, yogurt, cottage cheese (which normally I hate), and fruit (flash frozen, except during the summer).
Over the next several years, I continued to lose weight very slowly– a few pounds a year– by making very small changes. I adjusted a portion by some very small amount. I added resistance or time to my cardio routines. Also over time, my workout schedule changed from three times a week to four days a week, to a routine of “never more than three consecutive days; never skip more than one day”. Along the way, our co-op built a fitness center in the basement; I joined, and soon was working out six days a week.
There were a couple of times that I lost weight noticeably. The first was when I switched to salads for lunch. The second was in 2005, a year after my sweetie retired. In his first year of retirement he’d gained weight, and he did our cooking, so when he changed cooking styles we both lost weight. But otherwise, truly, I’d hope to break some barrier by New Year’s, or my birthday, or whatever, and, generally, not do it– but I’d be closer than I’d been earlier.
This is not a regimen for the impatient. It wouldn’t have been a regimen for me any earlier. But doing it this way didn’t really cost me anything, because I never gave anything up completely. And I also figured (rightly or not) that I’d be more likely to hold onto skin tone longer if I didn’t drop too much weight too soon.
Anyhow, by my birthday I felt I was within five pounds of where I wanted to be. I barely held that level over our vacation trip, so I really wanted to drop a couple of pounds by the fall. Of course, by the end of the summer I wasn’t feeling well, and then I did start losing weight frighteningly fast. And now my skin is (suddenly?) quite wrinkled, especially where I’ve lost a lot of muscle (biceps, triceps, quadriceps). Fortunately, my sweetie doesn’t seem to mind at all, as long as I’m still here. And, wrinkled skin or not, my figure is spectacular.
As for today, it was busy and productive. I did manage an outdoor errand, but my inability to flex my ankle makes walking very inefficient and therefore tiring, which is a nuisance. I’m working on the ankle. I did get it back once, so maybe I can again.
And this afternoon I got a beautiful card from a dear friend (one of the Californians we didn’t get to see last autumn) with an even more beautiful note. It’s not exactly a valentine, but it might as well be. I realize that it’s not just the expressions of love I receive from my family and friends that sustain me, but, perhaps even moreso, the love I feel for all of them.
Happy Valentine’s Day, and Happy Thanksgiving.