Normally, I write the Karmic Savings and Loan in third person, keeping myself detached from the personal side of the metaphysics that I discuss. However, for this discussion, I am making it personal, because weight loss is an extremely personal endeavor and this discussion is a bit intimate precisely because it is extremely personal to me.
On October 9, 2008, at the height of five feet, one inch tall, I weighed roughly one hundred and eighty pounds. At the age of 58, I had fallen into the rut that many women and men my age fall into, that of focusing so much on family, friends, making a living, and the day to day requirements that so dramatically fill our lives, that I had forgotten about myself.
Weight creeps up on you. When I retired from the Navy in 1992, I weighed about 120 pounds. Once retired, I could shed the requirement to ‘fit into that khaki uniform’, and wear civilian clothes. So I did. Over the almost 18 years that I have been retired, the weight began to creep up on me. I tried taking it off here and there, but as you all know, life is what happens to you while you are working on other things. Life, situations get in the way, your figure, you, yourself, sometimes end up taking a back seat and that is what happened to me.
I also believe, that part of carrying excess weight, is carrying the emotional weight of what is going on in the lives of those around you. At some point, I had to decide that I just didn’t need to carry anyone else’s emotional weight. Frankly, I am not alone in believing that I wasn’t consciously aware that I was doing it. Now I am.
I was not happy with how I looked. I knew I needed to change, but I am so busy! There is always a crowd to cook for, travel to do, lunches to go to, a holiday or birthday to prepare for and oh, books to write and publish!
Over these many years, my daughter Jeanne Marie grew up into a long stemmed American beauty rose. Literally tall and slender, she has such a perfect figure that a burlap sack would look good on her. We are extremely close and so we go shopping together all the time. The clothes she tries on looked fantastic. She looks incredible. I found myself lamenting that everything looks good on her and that it is tough to go shopping and see this all the time. . . and, I said it out loud, and I said it more than once.
One day, Jeanne Marie got tired of hearing me say this and something important happened. She actually got mad at me. She challenged me to do something about my weight! We had a very frank discussion. She asked me why I didn’t exercise. I explained that I hate exercise. It is great for other people, but since I don’t sweat, never perspire, that exercise is extremely problematic for me. [I have heard that other people use the excuse that they sweat profusely and for this reason they hate exercise too.]
I told her that I did want to lose weight but that I had trouble keeping it off. I also had tried walking but had never seen any change in my weight. She said that she would be willing to be my coach if I wanted her to and she would help me. I decided that this was an offer I could not refuse. As another incentive, I had just gotten my first book published and I knew that I would eventually be making public appearances and I wanted to look better than I was looking at that moment.
So we embarked on a plan. In part 2, how we developed and executed the plan.
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