Health

I am gaining my weight back. Again. Like just about every person who has ever battled their weight, I have tried every diet plan imaginable. I’ve taken diet pills–over the counter and prescription–and for awhile I took Alli fat blocking pills, which was the grossest diet plan ever. Google that one. I’ve done Weight Watchers, now WW so you will feel like a winner, thank you, Oprah. It’s still Weight Watchers. I’ve exercised for a solid year; that, along with WW, which works if you work it, resulted in my losing the most weight I ever had in my adult life: 70 pounds. It felt so good! I got a complete new wardrobe and felt young again. I was so encouraged this time when I read that if I could keep it off for 3 years, I could keep it off for good. When it started creeping back after about year two–those crisp white shirts and modern-cut pants started feeling snug (a word of terror for fat people)–I looked that factoid up again. It had said five years, not three. I had weighted 168 for exactly 2 days, and as I creeped back up in the 170s, I told myself that my body wanted me to be in that range. Again, if you’ve ever been a weight warrior, you know the feeling in the pit of my stomach as I watched myself outgrow my clothes. Again.

My size 10 Levis were the first item to go, then my pants for going out. I donated my cute pinstripe suit after church one Sunday when a guy jokingly–it’s always jokingly, you know, but there’s truth behind it and it hurts like a sucker punch–said “Hey girl, you trying to show off those biceps?” I looked down at curved stripes on too-tight sleeves. Last year, I bought size 16 Levis, telling myself I still had not reached my highest weight–253, so 16 was okay. I was still under 200 pounds. Then came another holiday season.

I don’t even bother making New Year’s resolutions any more. What is the point? It’s always the same: lose some weight. Weight warriors, familiar? Knowing most people gain a few pounds over the holidays, and also knowing I didn’t have any to gain, I was determined to practice portion control. I didn’t gain during the month-long eat fest, but I began to feel my body change beyond the feel of my clothes. I put out of my mind that the size 16 roomy L.L.Bean pants’ waistband was getting snug. (oh no!). I was out of breath in the shower. I developed a candida fungus under my belly fat. Yes, that is so far the most embarrassing thing that I’ve ever felt about my body. Fat can be fluffy if you tell yourself enough. But a seepy, smelly rash made me feel nothing but shame.

This weekend an interview with Molly Carmel popped up on my newsfeed, and led me to her new book, Breaking Up With Sugar: Divorce the Diets, Drop the Pounds, and Live Your Best Life. I had do decide whether to add another weight loss book to my Kindle. I have books on insulin resistance, carbs, and the keto diet, for example. I know the science, and I know the “secrets” of weight loss. If knowledge were enough, wouldn’t we all be thinner and healthy? That, precisely, is Carmel’s point. I ‘m going to call her Molly, since the tone of her book is friendly and encouraging. I’m reading Breaking Up now, and I’m glad I bought it.

Here’s Molly’s About the Author on Amazon: Molly Carmel has made it her life’s mission to help people find a sustainable solution to the battle of obesity and related eating disorders. After battling her own eating disorder for over 20 years and finding no solution in available treatment, she created The Beacon, where she helps clients recover from similar addictions. Carmel received her Bachelor’s in Social Work from Cornell University and her Master’s from Columbia University’s School of Social Work. She has extensive training in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, addiction, and nutrition.

The chapters support the breakup/divorce/find a healthy relationship theme of the book. I’m on Chapter 3, “The Truth About Your Sweetest Love,” where Molly gives a summary of how sugar is in reality “Suicide on the Installment Plan.” I wanted to include her list of sugar’s lethal capacity here: But Sugar also negatively affects every single part of your body. Some of these harmful effects are more well known than others. Eating sugar has been linked to: inflammation, migraine headaches, anxiety, brain fog, trouble sleeping, weakened eyesight, gum disease, heart disease, increased cholesterol, asthma, suppressed immunity, kidney damage, nonalcoholic fatty liver, overworked pancreas, arthritis, osteoporosis, metabolic syndrome, and leptin resistance. There’s even terrifying research showing that Sugar increases the risk of developing certain cancers. And of course, let us not forget Sugar’s piece de resistance, glucose intolerance and diabetis…

And yet, knowing all of this and having encountered many of the effects on Molly’s list, I keep right on eating sugar and its evil twin flour anyway. I’m going to keep reading, but I’m open to the idea that I think and behave like an addict when it comes to sugar–and I suspect toward food in general. I looked ahead to see whether Molly had made me a shopping list and a suggested meal plan? She had? Ah ha, I thought, but are they easy or complicated? Maybe they were like keto, a list of foods and meals of stuff I really don’t like (how much butter can I eat?). Nah, Molly included good, whole foods. I felt healthier just reading the foods and plans, which are easy and sustainable. I went through her lists of proteins, fats, carbs and made a grocery list.

I’ve already started the self-doubt talk in my mind. I’ve done this before–so many times. What is different about this time? How long will I be able to eat this food, which I’ll get tired of, won’t I? It’ll take too long to lose this much weight, so what’s the point? But Friday is pizza night! You work so hard, don’t you deserve a reward?  Molly, though, has already thought of this–she describes how she herself heard those same voices. Of everything I’ve read so far, this passage has hit me most profoundly was about how rats respond to excessive Sugar–which Molly capitalizes to remind us that we really are in a relationship. After describing sugar DTs, she writes, What’s more, when the rats withdrawing from Sugar were placed in water, they were less likely to swim or climb out, and more likely to passively float. They had lost their will to survive. I’m going to keep reading, Chapter 4 is “Defining Your Relationship: How Bad Is It Really?” There’s even a quiz. I know already; it’s pretty bad. I have a food addiction. I’ll start from there.

Yesterday I was reminded by two different folks of my blog, which is the first item put on hold when life gets really busy. Blog writing–reflective essays, really–is my favorite kind of writing, and I always mean to do better about not neglecting it. If I could do this for a living, I believe I would. So here’s something for today.

When I opened the page to start an entry, I found the following two paragraphs that I had begun last year. Let me tell you, I was in a really different place then than I am now, so it is not the same entry I would do today. Still, as I read it, I thought it was important to show the contrast and reflect on that for a minute. The original title was Minding Mortality. I felt like that needed to change too, so I changed it slightly as you can see.

One unexpected realization of practicing mindfulness has been that I am more mindful now of my own mortality. That’s probably due to my coming to the practice at this particular age; I’m fifty-five. I used to tell people that weight, not age, was my worrisome number. There have seldom been days in my life when I did not think about how much I weigh. Still do. I am happy to report that with the discernment that has come with getting older–and with having a generous life-partner–I now have a more peace-full relationship with my body. I have healthier reasons for wanting there to be less of me. But, age. I didn’t mind turning 50; in fact, I was proud that I didn’t mind. I was traveling, meeting people, enjoying life. That year I had an extended episode of cognitive dissonance–a mid-life crisis, if you will–about the meaning of life. Not just “the meaning of life,” but the meaning of my life. That is why the title of this blog is so important to me. It indicates a moment at the crossroads when focused, deliberate thinking was imperative. I remember distinctly the day when I took a different path that led to here. I didn’t know then that it had to do with thinking about mortality, but I see now that it does. If I had been content that my life had been meaningfully well spent, the dissonance would have been a lot less jarring.

Three years later, at fifty-three, I began grappling with the awareness of not having as many years left as I have lived. I started expressing my consciousness of it in small ways at first~making joking references to being put in a nursing home by my kids as my parents had done. Confirming my beneficiaries. Then one day I told Sarah that I would really like to get a diy project done so that I could enjoy it before I was dead. And it wasn’t a figure of speech. 

So that was last year. Since then, some imbalances have righted themselves after a good deal of grieving, and I had a bit of re-adjusting to life to do. Once again, I felt like I was emerging from a cocoon to a new day of opportunity that beamed the question, Who do you want to be? Except this time, the question was not out there alone in the universe for me to orchestrate a response to it. The question that settled on me like a warm sweater is, Who does God want me to be? I gotta tell you–when a question like this is put in the way it was put to me–well, I commenced to find the answer. Trust me, I’ll work through more of it here; the way the path opened up is, at least to me, fascinating–sometimes a little scary.

What is a good ending for the post from a year ago? As with most things, age and one’s location on the continuum of birth-to-death depends on how you frame it. And for me, it’s the difference between the two questions, above. Lived for myself, each day, each week, each month would be “one less.” On the other hand, resting–existing, thriving, living–in what Marcus Borg might call the more-ness of God illuminates the moreness of life.

For Tracy. Remember:
Marty Robbins The Master’s Call

Prompt from Mindfulness: A Journal (Price, 2016)
Make a list of ten everyday activities that you find relaxing or soothing–even those as small as calling a friend or making a cup of your favorite tea. Try it! Do one of the activities on your list and write about your experience. 

The List, in no particular order:
1. read–theology, queer theology, JFK assassination theories
2. watch television–documentaries, period pieces, docu-dramas, biographies
3. having my afternoon cup of espresso made with my luxury-item coffee maker
4. playing piano
5. tidying up
6. singing
7. listening to music, which kind of music depends on my mood
8. reverie, including porch time with close friends
9. meditating with my Calm app

I realize this is probably a sad little list for many people. I can’t even think of a last item offhand. But I think my simple list hints at my capacity for finding joy in the simplest of experiences, noticing a blue bird, for example. This capacity, in turn, points to my state of being generally, happy. I have, though, always had a facial expression that belies this inner state; I found out it has a name: bitchy- or angry-resting face.  Challenge enough, without the surly-resting face that Bells Palsy begat. These days I have to work to put my best face forward.

It has almost been a year since Bell’s Palsy took over the left side of my face. I’ve written about it~the depression and frustration and then hope-full-ness. So, after a year I realize that I have some important takeaways from the experience. The most important is when God wants to get your attention, God finds a way.

What else have I learned? Well first, people look instinctively at the face for a clue as to how any given interaction is going to go, whether it is saying hello or engaging in conversation. I have learned to flex my smile muscles when I’m walking down the hall or into someone’s office or into a meeting. Otherwise, I can see in their eyes that they’re bracing themselves. This is different than before the BP~~now I can actually feel the muscles pull when I try to look pleasant, or when I smile. If, as the author of The Surprising Psychology of Smiling, below, is correct and smiles tell you something important about the wearer, I must intentionally craft a message of authentic friendliness if I expect folks to tell my important thing!

The Surprising Psychology of Smiling

I don’t have a poker face; I cannot remain neutral whether I am pleased or aggravated. The other day I learned the term for this: microexpressions. A microexpression is an involuntary facial expression that occurs in around 1/25 of a second and exposes one’s true emotions. Wikipedia tells us that they occur when a person is trying to conceal all signs of how they feel about an interaction or situation. Microexpressions seem to be universal; everybody has them. People with good social skills learn how to recover from them faster than others. Still, I am not sure there is much “micro” about my expressions. They go directly to macro. Now I actively practice relaxing my face so that it can achieve a neutral expression, and I savor the feeling of the muscles at peace.

My face isn’t always doing what I think it is. This is particularly noticeable in the morning when my face is waking up with the rest of me. It takes a second of extra effort to raise my left eye completely. One morning I looked at myself in the mirror while I was singing. The sound was coming out as usual–I sounded like myself. But only one side of my face was animated and expressive; the left side was still lagging behind. My mouth looked more like a “D” than an “O.” I’ve really had to practice this one. During choir, I have to work those same smile muscles in both my mouth and my eye while singing. And while it feels from the inside like I have a pageant smile on my face, it’s actually forming my old singing face. This reminds me of how you have to exaggerate expressions and voice on the stage during a play. It may feel like over acting, but it comes out sounding natural.

I have learned to take cues from my face. When I become frustrated or irritated, I can feel the large muscle in my cheek–the one that runs from my eye to my mouth, which makes it a serendipitous mindfulness check. Stress almost certainly triggered the BP in the first place, so I use its manifestation to my advantage. And, I continue to search for a spiritual meaning in it all.  For example, one charge to Christians is to see the face of Christ in everyone we meet, which is another kind of mindfulness cue~~one toward compassionate service, of love. I like the thought of this, of seeing the face of Christ in ourselves and others, but Jesus’s expressions were not just happy ones. He suffered from emotional, psychological, and physical wounds. Jesus got mad; he too was under stress. I guess that is really an important lesson I had not thought of~~to accept my new natural face. If ultimately this is the most muscle control I ever recover, which I reckon to be around 87% (when I can whistle properly, I’ll round it up to 90%), then I must lovingly cherish my face, deliberately, as I have not had to do before. I mean, of course I used to wish that my nose were pointer and my smile bigger, but it was my face and I loved it. I am learning to love it again now, and in the process I am learning so much more.

Billy Joel “The Stranger”

You make your plans, and God laughs. That’s what happened to me over the weekend. Let me go back, though, and start with discovering the Atlanta Freedom Bands, which I wrote about here in November 2014. I recollected how finding the band made me realize how much I had missed making music, marching in parades, performing in concerts. How after more than 30 years, finding the AFB was like discovering a new, yet long lost treasure. Last year, I marched my first season of parades in various Atlanta community festivals. It was wondrous. And at Christmas, I performed in my first concert playing French Horn in 35 years. Last Saturday morning, I marched mellophone with the AFB in the Atlanta St. Patrick’s Day parade. Afterwards, members of the band had lunch and drinks and fellowship at a local restaurant, which is the custom with this group.

Saturday night, kept waking up with what felt like a neck cramp. When I woke up early Sunday my speech was slurred, which I chalk up to needing a little more sleep, so I went back to bed. When I woke up again, I couldn’t blink my left eye. I ended up Sunday at the emergency room in Marietta. After they have ruled out a stroke, which was probably the best news I have ever received in my life, they told me I had a textbook case of Bell’s palsy. After a lot of googling I found out that it’s caused by virus, kind of like shingles. Likely because I had the flu, and that virus was in my system, it ended up attacking my facial nerve, causing it to be droopy and paralyzed. Like shingles, it was likely triggered by stress. In addition to facial paralysis–a word, like biopsy, fills me with terror–I have heightened ear sensitivity in my left ear, so loud noises, including my own sneezing, amplify like I’m standing in front of a Bose speaker. By all accounts, I will (should?) regain use of my facial muscles. Most well-wishers report success stories. It is totally unrelated to a stroke, and contracting it one time does not mean I will get it again. Those are the things I know. The worst part is that I can’t blink, so my eye gets dry and irritated. And that can lead to all kinds of trouble. I have to keep eye drops in it and wear a patch. Having only one eye affects depth perception and means I can’t drive. I can’t whistle or smile or buzz my lips. And buzzing one’s lips is essential to playing a horn.

Even though I realize I am very blessed in that this could’ve been so much worse, I’m still having to learn to deal with it. There are lots of adjustments I’m having to make pretty quickly. I’m learning how to have meals with straws and napkins. I’m learning how to turn my head in order to see better with an eyepatch. I’m learning to enunciate words using one side of my mouth. I’m learning how to encounter other people whose first response is to look away from me. I tried to go to the office yesterday, and by the end of the day I was exhausted from having to compensate physically in order to get from point A to point B, or participate in meetings. Talking and looking took a lot of energy that I had taken for granted. Part of the dealing with is going through my own stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

Sunday and Monday I was in denial. I jokingly made a list with Sarah of one eyed characters for costume parties. We go back and forth with one-eyed jokes. In case you didn’t know, there are many one-eyed one liners. Believing the doctors that taking the meds would speed up recovery by months, I thought, Well if I can’t play horn, I’ll just break out the old flute and play that! I tried for half an hour to form the embrasure to blow air across the mouthpiece.  I waited to blink at any minute. I planned to go to choir. Tuesday night begin my descent into anger. I kept a dinner engagement with some visitors to campus, old friends from my curriculum world. When I entered the restaurant, Marlows Tavern, which I had been to so many times over the past few years, the hostess looked at me and then looked away. Same thing happened when the waitress came to take my drink order. I realize now that I do the same thing automatically–probably most of us do.  The next day, I mentioned choir to Sarah, who slowly turned and looked at me and said, Honey, you’re not going to choir. When I looked back at her in one-eyed disbelief, she started singing a little bit of the Hallelujah Chorus, which we’ve been working on for a month. I thought my left ear would blow out. No, I wasn’t going to choir. When she dropped me at the office,  just walking from one building to the next took all my energy to keep my eye covered so it would not dry out. I had two meetings where it was very important that I be able to speak, and that was extra energy. My colleagues, wonderful people, tried very hard to look at me in a normal way–and for that I will forever be appreciative. Nevertheless, I feel different, I talk different, I look different. And that was psychological and emotional energy spent that I wasn’t used to spending.

I’ll let you know when I’ve moved from anger to bargaining. Till then, in order to work through some of that anger, in order that something generative and therapeutic might come from it, I decided to pick up the blog again. It’s always been my favorite, preferred mode of writing. Academic work is important, but it isn’t accessible, and it limits my flow of thinking since I have to measure my tone and phrasing as well as the thoughts themselves. Here, I can have a conversation, if only with myself. Plus, Sarah approves of it since it will help keep me out of trouble–like trying to do home-improvement projects with one eye that doesn’t need to get dust in it. Most important, this is all helping me put my life in perspective and put the parts of my life in priority. It isn’t an overnight revelation, but I realize that stress is counterproductive and can be harmful. I reaffirm that life is always already about the people in it. That being present and being mindful is living. I am intentionally choosing hope and happiness. Hope and happiness are not default properties, and being intentional about them makes a difference. As I think about it, coming to this place is a kind of bargaining. I will trade impatience for writing, frustration for processing, sight for insight.

Band friends at Sr. Patron’s

Mellophone

A mello-photo bomb