2010 December |

Losing Weight — A Work in Progress

At the beginning of this year, I joined Loser Moms in an attempt to lose weight for barefoot water skiing. I was heading down to the World Barefoot Center in March and I wanted to lose a few pounds before getting on the water. Part of the requirement to join was to post a picture on a personal blog. So with a heavy (yeah, pun intended!) heart, I went searching for a picture to post. I had to close my eyes when I hit the “publish” button.

The thing is, by the time that picture was snapped, I had already lost a few pounds. I’m estimating at my heaviest, I was probably 215 pounds. I wouldn’t know– I avoided the scale, the mirror and the camera every chance I could. The only exercise that I got around to doing was playing a weekly volleyball game in a league. A local bar sponsored our team, so we were obligated to head over there after the game and hang out. I filled up on appetizers, sometimes late at night.

I grew up waterskiing and barefooting and I really missed those activities. My niece convinced me to try water skiing again on July 4 in 2008. I got up on two skis and kicked off one. I went back and forth across the wake a few times and called it a day. I was out of breath and had no strength to continue. It was one very short ride on the water. I was in a size 16 jeans and wearing 2x tops. No, it wasn’t pretty. You would think after seeing this photo on my niece’s Facebook page– that I would be motivated to lose weight. I wasn’t.

Ever hear the saying by Buddha: “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” Well, that’s pretty much what happened. The teacher turned out to be Keith St. Onge, from the World Barefoot Center. Keith went through a metamorphosis of his own several years ago. He was packing on too many pounds as a professional athlete and wasn’t feeling healthy. He became serious about his health, made some changes in his lifestyle and eating habits and went on to win two World Championships. At the end of May, Keith sent me some eating guidelines to improve my health. I was ready, finally ready, to make some lifestyle changes.

“You have to cut out pop,” he told me.

I loved my Coke and Pepsi. I lived each day for the moment I could sip the soda. Every time we went out to eat, I ordered soda. And now it was time to kiss it goodbye. My friend Sue had kicked the pop habit and she was trying to get me to kick it a year ago. But now, I was ready.

I wanted a lifestyle change, not a diet. Keith’s guidelines fit right into that. I made healthier choices, but I enjoyed the food. Instead of boneless chicken wings, I went for grilled chicken on a salad when eating out. Salmon with asparagus. I went for more fruits and vegetables and less of the processed stuff. I found ways to cut out white flour– but I have a weakness for Panera Bread’s sourdough rolls, so eliminating that completely felt like death. So I saved it as a very rare treat. And I got hooked on quinoa. “Keen-wa”– the whole grain with funny name. I introduced my book club to it one day and they liked it. I brought in almond and coconut milk and the kids went crazy for the almond milk.

I also had two other barefooters who provided support and encouragement, Joann O’Connor and Judy Myers. Both of them had wonderful weight loss stories of their own. I joined Donna Cutting’s weight loss group on Facebook, and it helped tremendously to be surrounded by others walking the same journey.

It’s a work in progress– as I still eat emotionally and I deal with that all the time. It’s a work in progress, I remind myself again and again– as I still have a ways to go to get healthy and lean. In a weak moment this fall, I texted Keith after I had scarfed down two rolls at a fundraiser. “Always bring healthy snacks with you for moments like that,” he said. Then he shot me a modified Dave Ramsey quote: “If you want to live like no one else, make decisions like no one else!”

I put my fork down when the dessert came.

I had two incredible highlights this year: the day that I learned to go backwards on the water… and the day that I slipped on size eight jeans. Thanks, Keith, for both of those highlights.

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The “Second” That Lasts a Lifetime

I came across the tweet on Twitter: “Thought Of The Day: It only takes a second to make someone feel special, but that second may last a lifetime in their mind. The tweet was produced by Steve Harper, a guy who specializes in teaching The Ripple Effect: Maximizing the Power of Relationships for Life & Business (Second Edition).

Funny, I couldn’t get that tweet out of mind. I copied it and saved it, because I knew a blog post was brewing from it. I thought back to one of my religion school teachers, Mrs. Marshall. She taught a class that prepared a group of us for our confirmation at St. Mary’s Church in Dolton. One Saturday morning, the class was being especially rowdy that day. The boys were boisterous and creating havoc in the classroom and Mrs. Marshall was quickly losing control. All of her attempts to settle down the class were falling on deaf ears. She finally resorted to raising her voice and losing her patience. Everyone eventually settled down to do some paperwork that she handed out. Mrs. Marshall sat back in her chair and I saw tears in her eyes.

My heart went out to her. I got out a sheet of paper and quickly wrote her a note. To this day, I don’t even remember what I wrote, but I wrote a couple of paragraphs about the situation in the classroom and that I thought she was a wonderful teacher. I handed her the note after class had ended.

At the start of the next class, Mrs. Marshall came up to me and thanked me for the note. After my Confirmation in May, she sent me a thank you note for the flowers that I gave her. In the note she shared:

Congratulations on your Confirmation! My wishes for you are these:

When you are lonely, I wish you love.

When you are down, I wish you joy.

When you are troubled, I wish you peace.

When things are complicated, I wish you simple beauty.

When things are chaotic, I wish you inner peace.

When things look empty, I wish you hope.

And may the gifts of the Holy Spirit help you to have all of these throughout your whole life. Thank you so much for the lovely flowers. I wore them with so much pride. And I was so proud of you. Sincerely yours, Mrs. Marshall.

In July of that year, my father received a phone call. “Mrs. Marshall died on Sunday,” he told me when I arrived home from a friend’s house. “She had a severe asthma attack, followed by a stroke. Her son called to tell you because she had your letter in her hands when she passed away. You were her favorite and that letter was special to her.”

She was only 56 years old and left behind a husband, three kids and a grandson.

Which leads me back to that quote above. “It only takes a second to make someone feel special, but that second may last a lifetime in their mind.”

I never forgot Mrs. Marshall, but I had forgotten the note she wrote to me. I found it a year ago, when it fell out from the back pages of my bible. I passed the words on to a friend who was going through a difficult time in life. There’s a powerful lesson here– taking just a moment to tell someone that they are special can last a lifetime in their mind. Thanks to Mrs. Marshall, that ripple goes on.

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Getting Into a Wetsuit

From:

Your SENIOR Magazine:

Overheard at the doctor’s office: “I feel like my body has gotten totally out of shape, so I got my doctor’s permission to join a fitness club and start exercising. I decided to take an aerobics class for seniors. I bent, twisted, gyrated, jumped up and down, and perspired for an hour. But, by the time I got my leotards on, the class was over.”

This cracked me up! Then I thought back to the second time that I went to the World Barefoot Center back in April. I had to buy a wetsuit and I went into the pro shop to buy one. Judy Myers took a women’s size 14 off the rack. ”Here, try this on,” she said.

I looked at the wetsuit and shook my head. “I haven’t been in a size 14 since I had kids,” I told her.

“Try it on,” she insisted. ”Wetsuits are always very tight when you try them on dry. When you get in the water, they stretch out.”

I tried on the wetsuit and couldn’t get it over my shoulders. It went back on the rack. ”I’ll need a men’s size,” I said.

Judy pulled off a men’s size medium. I looked at it and shook my head again. ”That’s not going to fit. I know my body and I can’t get in that one!”

“You gotta try it on,” Judy said. And hey, when Judy tells you to do something, you do it. She’s a former gym teacher –and I was afraid she would make me drop down and give her ten pushups if I didn’t obey. I dutifully stepped into the wetsuit and slipped one arm in. I had to “bend, twist, gyrate and jump up and down” to get the other arm in. Judy remained positive throughout the ordeal. ”We can zip this up!” Keith St.Onge was standing in the corner, trying not to laugh.

I looked at the half-donned wetsuit. The zipper was a long way down and the two halves of the wetsuit were parked near my shoulders. I didn’t see how it was possible to get the female parts of me into a too-small, men’s wetsuit.

“This ain’t going to happen,” I told Judy. ”Let’s go up a size.” She pulled a bigger size off the rack.

“We can zip this up! I promise you, once you get this in the water it will loosen up!”

So there we were– Judy trying to zip up the wetsuit while I tried to minimize my upper chest. The zipper only went up a few inches. ”Here, you zip it up while I pull the suit together,” Judy suggested. We wrestled with the suit for a few more minutes, inching the zipper up a bit more. Finally, out of desperation– or perhaps it was the eagerness to get on the water–Judy stuffed the puppies in while I managed to zip it up.

“Um, I can’t breathe,” I said.

When I look back at my year of getting back to barefooting again, I realize that the hardest part wasn’t learning to put my feet back on the water– the hardest part was getting into the wetsuit.

Photo credit: Lynn Novakovski, Waterskier Magazine

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Lipreading Strangers at the Door

The short woman at the door was of Asian descent. A teenager stood by her side, I assumed it was her son. “Oh you’re here for the dog cage!” I said. “Come on in!”

The woman shook her head and said something. Said a few more things. None of which I could lipread. “I’m deaf,” I explain. “I read lips.”

The woman said a few more sentences. Nothing made any sense, it wasn’t anything I could lipread. “I put a dog cage on Craigslist, are you here to pick it up?”

The woman shook her head. More mumbo jumbo. Every once in a while, I encounter folks that are just physically impossible for me to lipread and this was proving to be one of those situations. “Oh! Are you here to pick up your daughter?” Lauren and her friend were standing nearby, and her friend happens to be Asian.

“That’s not her parents,” Lauren told me.

I was stumped. I couldn’t figure out why this woman was at my door. She tried again to help me to understand why she came knocking at my door but it was futile. I couldn’t lipread even a single word. Then the gal whipped out her iPhone and started a movie. As it turned out, she was from the Church of God and she wanted to tell me about God, our Mother. She brought a bible out of her purse and pointed to the scripture of Revelations that made reference to God, our Mother.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I won’t be able to understand the movie, I’m deaf.”

She pressed play. The movie was captioned.

After she left, I just had to smile. Accessible movies– we’ve come a long way. Now all I need is the Accent/Lipreading Translator app and I’ll be good to go next time someone knocks at my door.

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Losing Weight — A Work in Progress

The “Second” That Lasts a Lifetime

Getting Into a Wetsuit

Lipreading Strangers at the Door

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