Wow, I didn’t even notice, June was a perfect month. At the end of the month of June, not only was I hitting a solid 3 year streak of tracking a 15 minute activity every single week, I also tracked an activity every single day that month.
So, I just scrolled back through my log on RunKeeper. Even though I had (still have) a perfect streak of tracking something at least once per week for the last 3 years, rarely have I tracked an activity every single day for an entire month. Without a deliberate intention to track something every single day, there was usually a few days each month, here and there, where tracking an activity just wasn’t going to happen. A good example is a day I was getting on a plane to go traveling, getting up early, maybe even with a stopover to change planes, and arriving late. Then getting there, greeting family, unpacking, etc. That is a perfect example of a day where I just wouldn’t bother to also add “track a 15 minute activity” to my to-do list.
During the month of July, I have been casting about for something new to motivate me. I have done a lot of counting how many kilometers I walked in the last 3 years since this accident. But this month I have struggled to keep up the pace, so to speak. I said in this post, we cannot stay at the pinnacle of our health indefinitely. In fact, thinking that we can seems to be a narrative that I see in the social groups around me. Someone completes a 5K race, and they are immediately asked, “Now what? A 10K?” And then after the 10K comes the half marathon, the full marathon, ultra marathon…it can go on and on. But it has to end somewhere, doesn’t it? When is it good enough? When are we done?
The pressure we can put on ourselves to beat our own selves…
Of course, when it comes to staying healthy, we are never done. Working on our health is a daily practice, which we must continue to do, if we are enthusiastic about that kind of lifestyle. However, sometimes we realistically need to adjust. We cannot always be striving to do more and more. But how do we adjust activity, if the need arises, without feeling that doing less somehow makes us less?
I’ve been trying to figure that out. I have been doing less, and unfortunately, I have been allowing myself to feel less.
But then I saw that absolutely perfect month of just 15 minutes a day, for a whole month, and well, I cannot resist making that a goal for August. I am excited, I now have some deliberate intentional motivation to carry me forward. And it’s only 15 minutes of activity to count for the purposes of RunKeeper’s log. 😊
I am still experiencing the “good walk/bad walk” issue I wrote about here. In this picture above, the “bad” walk (yesterday) was actually slightly shorter than the “good” walk today. Is was basically the exact same route both days, but today I added in going to the mailbox too. Today was actually slightly more of a walk than yesterday, both of them only being around 2K, on flat ground, between 9:00 and 10:00am, and not even hot outside. Very easy walks. And yet, my experience of both of those walks was entirely different.
But I have come to realize this unpredictability is just my new normal. And I can’t let this unpredictability stop me from getting out there and going for these nice easy walks, to do my best to maintain my cardiovascular health. Sure, with the discomfort I feel during a “bad” walk, I am not really enjoying myself in the same way I used to. But I have to stop comparing myself to myself, (the person I was last summer, for example, where every single walk was a “good” walk, how spoiled was I??), and just move on with my new normal.
I need to be thankful for how good things still are. And really, for the most part, things are still quite good. 😊
Part 1 (of what is turning out to be a 3-part series) is here. 😊
I have decided to surrender to the fact that we all wear out as we age. I am simply wearing out a little faster than average. And writing about it in this blog is my therapy.
But certain things wearing out and giving me a bit of a scare (hernia), is no longer a reason to continue making bad choices.
The bad choices I have been making are daily giving into thoughts of “what’s the freakin’ point in trying to slow progression of something that is entirely out of my control,” and then surrendering to my good old vice of overeating.
Sigh.
A person is never “cured” of their old habits, they must instead decide to make the better choices, each and every day. My husband went to a movie the other day. His choice: the habit of having popcorn at the movies. Myself, I must make a better for my personal health choice than that, and stop giving into the adage, “Old habits die hard.” Just because an adage is a traditional, well-known saying that expresses a common observation or a general truth about life, does not mean I have to let that be my truth.
Vice is an interesting word choice. Vice is “A practice, behavior, or habit generally considered immoral, depraved, or degrading. It broadly refers to a moral failing or weakness in a person’s character.” Maybe vice is a harsh word for unplanned food eating, but it has been, most certainly in the past, a bad habit of mine, one with detrimental consequences. Eating unplanned food is the whole reason I, so many times in my life, have been medically classed as overweight or even obese, followed by times of disciplined eating resulting in weight loss…over and over and over again. Not about how I looked, but about how I felt, and what I could do. I am done self-judging how I look. But I know how I feel with extra weight, and I do not want to return to old habits that will lead me there.
For me, unplanned eating (overeating) leads to unhealthy weight gain, so yes, I would say it has been a vice of mine. Ever since talking with my doctor on June 23 about my low ferritin, RBC, hematocrit, and sodium, I have been indulging in a bunch of overeating, instead of planning, preparing, and eating with intention. With my current health concerns, I believe that keeping unhealthy weight regain OUT of the equation is important. And yet, my thoughts for the last two weeks have been mostly the opposite, “it’s not important at all, it’s completely pointless, I might as well eat what I want.”
Sigh.
Sure, I said no one is coming to save me, only I can save me. But what does “save me” even mean? I cannot save myself from certain medical symptoms and discomfort, I can only stoically live through them, (they come and go), and be thankful for the incredible health and abilities I still have.
I have decided if I simply accept and surrender to a few new limitations, (hernias, some worsening eczema, ocular migraines—the connection between migraines and mitral valve regurgitationis well documented), that will help me focus on and preserve the health and abilities I do have. Instead of slamming up against the rock (in matters of my health) in the stream, I must figure out how to go around it. It’s the impeded stream that sings.
Unfortunately, being diagnosed with the chronic diseases of mitral valve heart disease and hEDS, do NOT have the drastic health improvements attached like Celiac disease did, where all I had to do was go strictly gluten free, (not easy, but doable), and positive health improvements were the result. This is different. This is a slow decline, (just like with all aging that everyone experiences, I am NOT special in this regard), but just with a little faster pace. There are not really health improvements I can look forward to. And not accepting that simple fact is actually holding me back.
I get the power of positive thinking, and I use that power when it comes to the really good health (all things considered) I have now. But thinking (waiting, hoping) it’s going to somehow get better? Well, that thinking is not serving me. Simple. It’s not serving me in a positive way. If I accept a certain amount of decline, (instead of getting depressed about it and going off the rails with unplanned eating), then I can once again move forward with healthy choices.
There is nothing I can do or change to affect the same level of positive health results, like with going gluten free for Celiac did, with what I am dealing with right now. And I am dealing with it for the rest of my life. So, when the negative voice in my head asks why bother changing my identity in some positive way, if it won’t really improve my health in the end? I must instead embrace that I have the power to not speed it up, and that, in and of itself, is a form of improving it.
I am still figuring this all out. But I know that there is a happy and productive middle ground where I need to find myself.
Between the two extremes of:
If I just try harder I can fix this! (Like with weight loss and going gluten free for Celiac).
And
What’s the point in trying at all if this is NOT fixable?
I thank myself in advance for bearing with myself while I figure this out.
And I thank anyone else out there who is reading this too.
Most of us gals that got together for the reunion that I wrote about here, are on Facebook. But the reunion was just for us, so none of us really felt the need to post on Bragbook, oops, I mean Facebook, about the events of the reunion, by sharing some of the hundreds of pictures we took. The weekend was just for us.
For me, in addition to making those connections again, (which was so amazing, I cannot believe I ever worried about it), I wanted to get those ever important “great pictures,” which I did. 😊
Because this blog is in a fairly quiet little corner of the internet, I think I will share those wonderful pictures here.
And tell a funny story about my husband.
The morning of the reunion, my husband dropped me off with my back pack of clothes for the weekend, and with another back pack with pajamas and snacks for the sleepover. He wished me a fabulous weekend, and headed home with our dog and cat for his own weekend of fun and sun on the lake, (because the weather was beautiful!)
But before he left he said, “Now, make sure you don’t let them talk you into doing anything you are not comfortable doing.” Bahaha, what did he think I was, a teenager who may succumb to peer pressure? I think he has watched too many chick flicks. I never should have let him watch Bridesmaids with me, lol.
It was because of that comment, that after our very quiet lunch out at a winery on the Saturday afternoon of the weekend, I had one of my friends take a picture of me in front of this party bus. I texted my husband this picture with the caption, “Well…we did a thing…”
The truth was, after lunch half of us—the out-of-towners—went to the big shopping mall, and the rest of us went back to the townhouse, where we all took a nap, true story! At first I was going to just scroll my phone on the couch while the others laid down for a bit in some of the bedrooms, but then I actually fell asleep on the couch! You see, we had the sleepover the night before, and what did we do? We stayed up very late watching Netflix, so I was more tired than I realized!
Anyhow, it was the best weekend ever, I am so glad I was there for all 3 days.
So, here are the pictures of me, and then the group, first these are the ones from last year, June 2025:
And here are the pictures from this year, June 2026:
And 50 years ago (50 years!) this was our kindergarten picture, which included almost all of us:
Even if not everyone was in this kindergarten picture, 5 of us were. Wow. And the reunion included two others who had joined the group when we were in grade 1 and 5 respectively. Add in another of us from across the street that was just one year behind the rest, and even throw in a little sister, and a cousin that came and played on our street every summer, to round out our 2026 group beautifully. 😊
I like to compete with myself. I cannot always exceed my own self at whatever it is, but occasionally I have a string of successes where I “win,” and it lifts me up in spirit.
And with fatigue from low iron stores, I will grab a pick-me-up wherever I can get it.
In July of 2024, I taught my last online class at my university. After 3 years, they were discontinuing my classes as an online option. Unless I was going to move a province away to a big city and teach on campus, I was done. I was truly grateful for those 3 years. I loved being what I considered, not just an instructor of the creative writing curriculum that I wrote myself, but a cheerleader for those students, “Be seen, be heard, tell your story!” Because I worked for the Faculty of Continuing Education, I worked with aspiring creative writers during those 3 years from ages 18 all the way to 70! I really connected with almost every student, especially one in particular, who subsequently thanked me in the dedication to his self-published book!
I will admit, however, losing that job sent me into a serious funk. I had zero motivation to do anything, really. But somehow I still managed to walk to the mailbox everyday, log it on RunKeeper, (old habits die hard), and I didn’t break the streak that I did not even know I was in the process of creating. I only completed 30 kms walked that entire month, but it was just consistent enough to count.
Good lesson there, even a little is better than nothing.
Then early in August of 2024, I did an 8 kilometer hike with my sister, (yes, up a mountain, moderate difficulty), made even more difficult because for the entire month of July just prior I had walked so little. When I was checking out our elevation gain, time, etc., (because prior to that I had only been walking exclusively on flat pavement since about 2021), I noticed on RunKeeper I was almost at 10,000 all time kilometers walked since I started using the app in 2012. That lit a fire under my butt, and the push was on to hit that 10,000.
At the very end of August, 2024, I did two 10K walks, two days in a row, and hit that goal.
I also did two more 10K walks about a week later, (ensuring one was actually 12K), so that all four walks combined equaled a full marathon. I had done something similar four years earlier, completing my only two 20K walks ever, (ensuring one was actually 22K), so that both walks combined equaled a full marathon and match that it was the year 2020: two 20’s in 2020.
Anyhow, earlier this year that I noticed RunKeeper congratulated me on reaching a 130 week streak, (a little notification red dot had appeared on the bell icon that I hadn’t noticed before, and I clicked on it). I quickly did the math and realized that if I kept it up, 156 weeks would equal 3 years, and I would arrive at that milestone around the end of June, 2026.
Well, this morning it happened. I logged and completed a walk, and I hit 3 years of consistent weekly walking! (Including 14 hikes last summer with my sister, yes, I counted them, I love to count things, can you tell from this post?)
I also have already walked over 142 kms this month, (two more days to go), which beats last year June where I only walked 141 kms the whole month.
I also walked more kilometers in 2025 than I had ever before logged on RunKeeper in any prior calendar year.
Now what? I am only 65 kilometers from 13,000 all time total, so there is that to look forward to in the next few weeks.
Walking is the best (and least stressful) cardio activity I can do to help keep my heart strong while it deals with the extra burden it is dealing with. The moderate amount of daily walking I do does NOT actually add to that burden, because the heart is both an organ and a muscle. The primary tissue that makes up the bulk of the heart is cardiac muscle, which allows it to contract continuously. The worst thing I could do is let that muscle weaken over time by NOT gently “flexing” that muscle with healthy activities, (as discussed with my cardiologist).
Even when I am not motivated, tracking streaks keeps me going out the door. 😊 Not sure what will keep me going after 13,000, but I am sure I will find some new streak to count.
Well, this explains the extra fatigue and the extra shortness of breath I have been experiencing throughout the spring. Thank goodness those extra symptoms are less likely to be a worsening mitral valve regurgitation problem, and are instead being aggravated by my very low iron problem. (As well as my low red blood cell count, hematocrit, and sodium, all flagged low, but I only took a picture of my ferritin—iron stores—for this post). Because these days, it is so easy for me to jump to the conclusion that every chest twinge, stitch, flutter, and huff puff moment, is my heart. Ug!
Everyday, I was taking my iron supplement with my lunch, and usually waiting at least 2 hours before my next cup of black tea (many teas being full of iron absorption blocking tannins). This is because taking it in an empty stomach would upset my stomach. Add in that I have slow gastric emptying due to hEDS, that has probably been partly why taking a ferrous gluconate supplement has not been helping me according to my recent blood tests. What a waste of tablets!
My doctor has suggested simply taking it at night, (with a vitamin c source), but that I should also space it out away from when I take my progesterone, (which I am on as part of HRT to slow my bone loss), so I am giving it the best chance that nothing interferes with it.
I think I am becoming quite high maintenance to myself, lol.
I know it’s not my doctor’s job to be alarmed or concerned by my flagged low numbers. Her job is to work the problem and suggest changes I can make that may help. But ever since talking to her…I have been craving something. Some unmet need now feels hungry, and I finally figured out what it is. I feel unwell and vulnerable, and I guess I hoped she would step in with a guaranteed solution for me, like an iron infusion (but obviously, I am not unwell enough to need an infusion, despite feeling listless and lethargic at times). Instead, it’s all up to me, myself, and I. No one is coming to rescue me except me. That is perfectly reasonable, but still left me hungry for someone to take care of me, because on a certain level I feel too fragile to take care of myself. But I am not that fragile. I am still doing really well, (despite crappy iron levels).
I am still quite healthy overall despite any and all of my health diagnoses. I have to remind myself of that more often.
I think I also felt that way when I saw my cardiologist at the end of March and discussed the changes between my 2 echocardiograms. She was happy with the numbers, even though they were technically worse than they had been, so I was confused. No alarm? No upset? No alarm, because I now realize that when a cardiologist or medical professional looks at my numbers, they see a heart with severe MR that is compensating exactly how it is supposed to. Therefore, I was sent home with…nothing to do except continue doing what I am doing. I really see now why I was left feeling…like no one is doing anything for me, I felt so alone! I see clearly now that it’s my heart that is doing all the work here, (not the doctors). And it’s entirely up to me to just continue to support my heart. I feel a lot better today realizing what has been going on in my mind about this situation, and the subliminal assumption I had that anyone other than me needs to be doing anything about it.
That stops now. No one is coming to save me but me, and that is okay. Even though I feel…vulnerable, at times, that is more about the past than the present. This is the present. I need to quit looking outside myself to have my needs met. That is where I went wrong with the doctor. I didn’t realize it prior to the phone call, but I was looking to her to fix it. But no one can fix it (improve, but not “fix”) because it just is. And just like with most things, it’s up to me to fix what I can, and live my best life with the things that cannot be fixed.
All this “high maintenance” will be worth it if I feel better and getting my iron back up will take some of the additional pressure off my heart. This was a disturbing realization, that anemia is even worse for someone with my issues, but I need to feel empowered to try and solve it because good chance this is actually something that is solvable! And I am the one to solve it, not the doctor. Fingers crossed.
“Your heart’s primary function is to deliver oxygen to tissues. With mitral valve regurgitation, your heart has to work harder because blood is leaking backward instead of moving forward into the body. When you are anemic, your blood’s capacity to carry oxygen is severely reduced. To compensate, your heart has to pump even faster and harder to deliver the same amount of oxygen to your organs. This puts extra, unnecessary stress on a damaged mitral valve and can accelerate the progression toward heart failure.”
My resting heart rate is up a bit in the last month from what is normal for me, and I want to see if I can get it back down. 😊
Picture on the left, (also included on the “My Story” page): Revelstoke Dam tour, June 2023. Picture on the right: Revelstoke Dam tour today, June 20, 2026.
This post is connected to my other post from one month ago today, that said, “You don’t have to lose weight to be happy, but it’s okay to be happy that you lost weight.”
I’ll go one step further: it truly helps if you are happy, so that you can lose weight.
Happy first, weight loss second.
I experienced this years ago, when I had a big weight loss in the year 2004. I had to first get happy so that I could lose weight, not lose weight so that I could get happy. It is really, really hard to hate yourself thin, because it’s such a negative place in which to be. Long term sustainable healthy lifestyle changes can rarely be achieved by hating yourself. I can speak from experience, loving yourself into a healthier body is way better.
When my husband took that picture of me in June of 2023, I was happy. It was a beautiful sunny day, we had only lived nearby for 1 year, so we were still having fun playing tourist in our own new area, and I was genuinely loving life and happy to be spending the day with my husband.
I look in a full-length mirror everyday, so it’s not like I was shocked at the size of my thighs when I saw that picture. (I’ve heard about people who stopped looking in mirrors and then get shocked when they see a picture of themselves, that is not me).
But…
Because we decided to ride our motorcycle to Revelstoke for the dam tour, it’s about 40 minutes from where we live, I only had a few choices for pants that day that would fit me. Even though I was relatively happy and content, I still wished all the clothes in my closet fit me, (at that time they did not). And I had (finally) started to love myself at any size, but that day I still wished that I was more physically comfortable on the back of our motorcycle.
It was only a few weeks after that tour in 2023 when I really started to again pay attention to regular intentional exercise. In fact, I am only one more week away from the hitting my 3-year streak on the RunKeeper app, which started just after that picture was taken. And that summer, I started again consistently using the LoseIt app to keep track of what I eat. I truly find I have to keep track, even after 3 consistent years, or it’s just too easy to see my weight start to creep up.
I love myself in both these photos. But I feel better in the second photo. My clothes fit, and I am very comfortable on the motorcycle seat, and getting on and off the bike. Yes, looking good is nice, but feeling good is even better. So, you don’t have to lose weight to be happy, but it’s okay to be happy that you lost weight, especially if you feel better doing the things you love to do.
A while ago on this blog post, I mentioned a comedy sketch done by Rosanne Barr I recalled from years ago. I am now viewing what she said through a new lens. Many 80’s moms were influenced (in part) by the diet culture in the greater North American society around them. And they were influenced by their own mothers. The result was many of them passed onto their daughters (and sons too) dysfunctional scripts around food. Yes, I have identified I have some messed up thoughts around food, which started with my mom giving me different foods (low calorie alternatives) than what she gave to my brother. But I am done blaming her for the messages I created around that, that I was somehow less than, not good enough, or not worthy, or that I had to change myself (get thinner) to be worthy of love and approval.
That was the story I just told myself.
But that is not the real story.
The real story is different, especially when I step back and look at with the benefit of different points of view. The stories I assumed about others were far different than I thought. Having some deep conversations with women this past weekend has taught me a lot.
Back to Roseanne Barr (I am paraphrasing from memory): “When you’re sad, fat moms are so much better than skinny moms—because do you want to know my advice? Here, eat this whole cake, and when you wake up from your sugar coma, it will be a whole new week.”
I met a gal over this past weekend who went on binges with her mother just like Rosanne was suggesting. Her mom specifically took her through drive-thrus or the store to buy her a bunch of treats. But then her mother would turn around and pay for her to go to Weight Watchers, saying “Your dad says you’re getting fat.” Upon hearing her story, I was heart broken on her behalf. Her mother contributed to both sides of the equation. First, by providing and encouraging her to eat excess foods. And then second, by communicating to her she was not good enough just the way she was, basically confirming her dad’s opinion that she was “fat,” by then paying for her to go to Weight Watchers.
I have decided right now to stop complaining about my mother, and what she did (or did not do) for me in terms of my food consumption.
And it’s about time.
It’s not like I ever thought I had it so terrible, or worse than anyone else. This blog is my story, my point of view, and I really only ever compared myself to myself. So for me, I wish for my younger self that I had felt that I was on equal footing with my brother, as to whether or not I was lovable in my current form. I wish my younger self had not thought that the different foods or different presents (chocolate for him, non-edible stuffed bunny toy for me) meant I had to change something about my body to be worthy of love. Because that is just the story I told myself at the time.
And now it’s finally time to change the story.
And because I usually go inward, comparing myself to myself, only knowing my own experience with my own mother, I had not thought about the other possible stories around food that other girls experienced with their mothers. And I had not thought about their fathers either. I knew they had a story, but it was easy to assume their story was similar to my story. Thanks to some shared vulnerability over the weekend in a large group of women, I know that all our stories are wildly different, even if the very same struggle was the same. We all grew up thinking we had to be constantly aware of our diet.
My dad never, to my knowledge, ever said anything about my weight. My experience was he was a neutral party, completing unaware of whether or not I was eating anything different than my brother. I don’t think he was monitoring my plate and what I ate at all. And I until I heard this gal’s heartbreaking story this weekend, I had not imagined walking a mile in someone else’s shoes where the message coming from both her parents, (and a mixed messages at that with her mother providing and encouraging overconsumption), was that she needed to change her weight to be worthy and/or lovable. Brutal.
I truly believe my mom only gave me diet foods and different gifts because of a simple truth: excess calories that we don’t otherwise burn off through our daily activity, will put excess weight on our bodies. I believe my mom was body shamed when she was young. First, she was body shamed for being too skinny, which in her experience in the 1950’s implied something shameful and negative, namely poverty. Second, she was body shamed for an unplanned pregnancy, and told to not come back (from her exile) having gained any weight whatsoever, “You better not come back ever looking like you may have had a baby, because we are going to keep that a secret for the rest of your life!” And then third, after marriage and two planned pregnancies, diet culture shamed her for not losing all the baby weight, and/or for “letting herself go” and becoming a frumpy housewife. Thus, she joined her first Weight Watchers meeting, and started a cycle of yo-yo dieting, eventually achieving a lifetime membership, but never achieving peace around food or her body.
I believe when my mom tried to limit my calories, she was simply trying to spare me her own heart aches around her own body that she herself experienced. She had no idea how I was internalizing the message. And I don’t think she realized (nor did I) that I was in part being driven by undiagnosed Celiac disease, which drove a certain amount of the desire to overeat because of nutrient malabsorption. I was overfed and undernourished, (and years later I have the resulting poor bone density to prove it). All she could see was my desire to overfeed, which led her to try some gentle restricting. She was never cruel, and instead provided all the low calorie substitutes I could want. But I snuck the foods that I was not otherwise “allowed” to eat, and got pretty messed up in my thinking around food. I was not naturally slender (like my brother), so with the extra foods I snuck, I gained weight. And yes, my mom paid for me to go to Weight Watchers when I was 15 years old. She was trying to help me learn how to shed the little bit of excess weight I could never seem to shake.
I have had a good amount of messed up thinking about food that I have written about on this blog. But I have to face the truth. At this stage of my life, none of my overeating to soothe emotions is my mom’s fault, or society’s fault, or even my fault, for that matter.
Because it’s not about fault.
It’s about choice.
I have simply chosen to eat foods, at times, for the wrong reasons, and it has led to weight gain, and subsequent dieting to loss excess weight, a constant yo-yo that has to stop. And I may still occasionally choose the wrong foods moving forward. I am not perfect, or perfectly intentioned, with every single morsel I put in my mouth. But I have decided right now to stop complaining about my mother, and what she did (or did not do) for me in terms of my food consumption.
And it’s about time.
Another gal, a childhood friend I’ve known my whole life, who was naturally slender and so was her mom, shared her experience also. I never knew her mom projected onto her a whole bunch of different messed up thoughts around foods. Sure, she never outwardly had a “weight problem,” but that was because she was constantly monitored and denied her own share of treats. She was expected to be the “perfect” daughter, and perfect daughters never gain weight in the first place. She said she was the only girl in her dorm at university who was sent there with a bathroom scale, so that she could closely monitor herself to ensure she did NOT gain the “Freshman 15.” She said word got around she had a scale, and random girls (no doubt with their own forms of disordered eating) would come and knock on her door and ask if they could come in and weigh themselves.
When I heard that, my heart broke for her too. Broke for anybody who ever thought they were not good enough the way they were, or that they were only good enough just as long as they never changed. An impossible standard on both fronts.
I have decided right now to stop complaining about my mother, and what she did (or did not do) for me in terms of my food consumption.
I am going to stop calling myself a life-long dieter, instead I prefer to think of myself as a Healthy Lifestyle Enthusiast.
Yes, I started dieting very early, learning to count calories from a little book and being given diet foods like SugarTwin, which was different than what my brother was allowed to eat. And I continued to weight cycle up and down, always “going on a diet” for the next 40+ years, yikes! That’s where I was getting the term “life-long.”
When I found out I was Celiac at age 40, that helped me adopt certain food choices that directly affected my health, with the realization that these were permanent changes I was making. And then again at age 48, I saw a huge health improvement going grain free, because there was strong evidence I had become cross-reactive to grains like rice. But I was not going on a gluten-free diet, or a grain-free diet, at the end of which I would go back to “normal.” Instead, I was making permanent and sustainable dietary changes, by finding foods I loved that did not contain gluten, and then those that did not contain grains either, and eating those and only those foods instead, for the rest of my life.
So, I had to become a healthy lifestyle enthusiast to accomplish all of this, and it is the same with a permanent reduced weight into a healthy range.
Moving forward, it’s not “diet obsession” driving me. It’s not body dysmorphia or living and dying by the numbers on the scale. I know that constant weight monitoring can look just like those conditions. But for me, it’s 100% about the daily effort I put into making healthy choices around food that I want to focus on. Just like with gluten free, and then grain free, it’s eating minimally processed and weight maintaining foods only, instead of letting negative emotions rule my choices. No “pass the bag of gluten free potato chips” for me. Maybe I shouldn’t self-judge, but I do evaluate my efforts, and feel better about myself overall when my choices are ruled by a desire to be as healthy as possible. My day does not land the same when it ends with an unplanned overindulgence prompted by wanting to soothe negative emotions.
Maybe it’s not a good thing, to self-judge at all, but I realize I do self-judge my worth each day, (because I conflated weight loss with being worthy of love), based on my food choices. I ask myself, did my choices today reflect how I valve my health? Or did I let negativity suck me down into the “what the hell” effect? I will be honest and just admit it. I have attached my self-worth to that effort I put into achieving healthy results. It’s the success I feel in completing a day of healthy choices, and not about the resulting number on the scale, whatever that may be.
Of course, self-judgement can be detrimental, but some self-judgement is just asking if I am making choices that support my identity as a Healthy Lifestyle Enthusiast, versus when I skip exercise and sit around on the couch all day, or eat something I did not plan. It’s normal for me to judge my behavior and say, “Hey, wait a minute, you are not acting in a way that aligns with your identity. You can do better than that.”
That’s also how I feel about my upcoming DexaScan numbers tomorrow. It is not about the actual numbers, just like it is not about the actual numbers on the scale. The metric is my effort, like what I wrote about here. And my overall effort in the last year has been very good, despite medical, and yes, sometimes emotional struggles too. Struggles are natural, as I have been working through a lot of identity shifting health diagnoses. Yes, it is an identity shift to find out things about yourself that you were completely clueless about. Some days I still don’t feel like I can be a person with heart valve disease, or osteoporosis, or hEDS, but it is my new reality.
In theory, your identity is your choice, but sometimes fate intervenes and changes some of your choice in the matter, especially when it comes to your health. Just like with embracing my identity as someone with Celiac, I am also a healthy lifestyle enthusiast.
This post made me think. It was prompted by someone who has been shamed for celebrating her own weight loss, as if that has to do with how she “must” perceive others, and how dare she.
But her statement is true, on all fronts. We don’t need to lose weight to be happy. It’s an individual choice how we measure our own successes. And it has nothing to do with anyone else. But public declarations, well, they are directed at an audience, and the audience will have assumptions they make about the assumptions of the poster of the declaration.
Myself, I never judge bodies larger than mine, because I know what it is to be judged, AND what it is like to live in a larger body. But someone once wondered if I outwardly judge people’s bodies, because I certainly inwardly judge my own body. But really, I used to judge myself for a bad grade without ever giving a thought to someone else’s bad grade. What we deem a “bad” grade is so individual. I believe some of that judgement (maybe all) correlates to our effort. For example, like me with French verbs, omg, I worked sooooo hard for the B minus that I got, that I never, ever thought for even one second that my B minus was not the most incredible accomplishment ever!! But for everything else, yeah, I was very disappointed that my Master’s degree consists of 15 A’s and just one A minus. Rats on that lone A minus, could I have worked harder? Maybe.
So no, I don’t judge others just because I judge myself. Because for me, the metric is effort. I know my effort. I do not know someone else’s effort. And I certainly know, firsthand, the effort involved in keeping weight off. It is very…involved. Frankly, at times, it can be a very intense struggle, especially in our current food environment, when a box of grain free gluten free cake mix is just one click away on Amazon. It involves intentional choices every single day. I have not always won this war within myself, and so I self-judge. And on the other hand, I have celebrated on this blog all my wins in the last 3 years.
The moral of the story is really don’t judge others, and don’t assume self-judgment, or self-congratulatory either, has anything to do with anyone else.
“It doesn’t matter how well you eat, you can still end up sick.
It doesn’t matter how much you rest, you can still end up sick.
It doesn’t matter how strong you are, you can still end up sick.
It doesn’t matter how much exercise you do, you can still end up sick.
It doesn’t matter how positive you are, you can still end up sick.
It doesn’t matter how hard you try, you can still end up sick.
And chronic illness isn’t impartial. It isn’t biased.
It doesn’t care how old you are or what religion you practice.
It doesn’t matter how much money you have or where you grew up.
Chronic illness is hard.
We grieve our old life. We wish we were normal. We live life sick.”
But it absolutely does matter.
I matter.
And my attitude going into today is ALL that matters.
I can simply choose to have a good day, despite feeling physically crappy. It’s still a good day to be here, breathe fresh air, clean a house that is my own, eat delicious food, hug my husband, and pet my cat and dog.
The Bio Joy Diet 