The Wish



The other day I visited the Scottsdale Contemporary Art Museum or SMOCA where I had the chance to see and actually participate in an interesting exhibit. I entered the exhibit room and from floor to ceiling hung hundreds of colorful ribbons suspended by tiny wholes drilled into the walls. Each ribbon had a printed wish. The wishes ranged from the happy—“I wish to go to Bahia,” to the serious and upsetting, “I wish that it is benign,” to everything else possible in-between. My daughter and I spent a long time in this exhibit reading the rows and rows of wishes. One feature of the exhibit was the chance to participate. Anyone who cared to could write their own wish on a small slip of paper, roll it into a tiny tube, select an existing wish ribbon and replace it with their own.

So I selected a wish. The one that made the most sense was: “I wish to take better care of myself.” Tying it on my wrist I became strangely attached to the person who made this wish—someone I would never know and never see and had no connection to other than their wish—the heart’s desire of a stranger.

So I started to wear the wish. I realized that wearing a purple ribbon on my wrist was going to be a bit of a hassle. It gets in the way. It gets wet. It falls into whatever it is I am doing. It bothers me when I prepare food and when I eat. I have even bathed with it. It’s often annoying—like this quest I am on.

Getting fit and losing weight is difficult and, like the ribbon, it’s something constantly with me even when it’s not my immediate focus. Every time I look at it I think about how I can better take care of myself. Not only physically, but emotionally. 

In the last two weeks my ribbon has lost its printed message and is beginning to be tattered. I have a feeling it will be around my wrist all summer. While it is with me I am going to honor it and my journey and take a moment each day to wish this fellow traveler—the wisher—a happy, healthy experience. Each day I will remember to thank this unknown friend for the chance to help them on their way by remembering my own.

Stats

It’s been two weeks of high stress related to some family issues and nothing seemed manageable. My program definitely took a hit as I lost sleep, made poor food choices, and basically got off track—so off track I missed a post. However, it’s the recovery and getting back on track in these sorts of circumstances that makes a successful program. I definitely feel back on track in the last day or two.

Weight loss—Nothing this time, but plateaus are inevitable (and I know what happened) so I’m not worried.

Water, fruit, vegetables, etc.—I could do better with the water since it’s suddenly hot here again water is far more important. Also, I have replaced one meal a day with a whey shake. I think this is a great alternative for me and really helps with energy for exercise.

Exercise—Both Pilates and yoga with some time at the gym doing cardio. I am definitely working my way back to an hour of cardio on the elliptical since my illness. Last night I did 40 minutes—a ten minute increase over my previous time.

Attitude—Back on track. 

Until next week—may your wishes come true! Go Red!

Note: The exhibit is called “I Wish Your Wish” by Rivane Neuenschwander

http://www.artnet.com/artists/rivane-neuenschwander/

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&biw=1419&bih=617&gbv=2&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=i+wish+your+wish+rivane+neuenschwander&aq=1&aqi=g2&aql=&oq=i+wish+your+wish

Hall of Shame

Warning: The following pictures have been gathered here to provoke contemplation. Many of them are shocking, most of them are stupid and cruel, and all of them are examples of the rampant bias against people of size in the media today. View at your own risk.

FAT PEOPLE ARE FUNNY

Jack Black, himself always an example of fitness, examines the actual size of his lover's panties, proving to the audience that true love renders him actually blind.

Cartoon media exploiting women and people of size. Most of the fat person humor in the media is aimed at women.

Much of the media art available with strong size bias also has a sexual taint to it--and most of it is designed to imply that fat women are easy, desperate and slutty.

Fat bias and a sort of "carnival sideshow" attitude about fat people has been in vogue since the early days of media.



Interestingly this woman would simply be considered overweight and not obese--but that still makes her a target.



A major organization selling animal rights. (Imagine using any other minority for this advertising campaign.)

And, finally, the truly despicable. Who created this and for what possible reason?



I have been amazed by the rampant hostility toward fat women in the media. I believe normally caring, unbiased people become desensitized to it and unaware of it. Awareness is a funny thing. Once I began to gather this research I began to see examples of this sort of "humor" everywhere--including mainstream media, television shows, and even news programming. It's a frightening realization that in our collective mentality as a nation we are very close to accepting and even condoning this sort of sideshow mentality. Awareness is the best way to begin to see things differently. Posting these images today is my effort to make the readers of my blog aware of this bias and sensitive to it.

Pieces of Me

I am great in a crisis. I will bandage your various bleeding extremities, I can call 911 and give directions without flinching or forgetting where I am, and I can spot a citizen who needs help a mile away without the benefit of glasses that I vainly insist I don’t need. What I am not so great at are everyday trials and tribulations. The spilled milk, the rude counter help, the windshield wiper that the car wash trashed—in short, those every-day frustrations and irritations that seem to reduce our morale by pieces.

Individually, petty annoyances are just that—petty. It’s just when they are relentless over a long period of time that they make people postal. Case in point: Yesterday at Starbucks.

Case in Point

I love Starbucks. I consider it one of the must-stop places along any journey I undertake from the corner to shop to the other coast on a road trip. I think there is something to be said for a clean restroom and some very potent caffeine. The fact that at Starbucks I can find these with usually happy service people, and that my very own Droid has an application to find me the closest Starbucks anywhere I happen to be, makes the experience handy, positive and fun. But yesterday I must have had the rudest Starbucks barista ever. When I asked politely for a straw (which he forgot) he threw it at me in rushed silence. I told him after I saw him react far more politely to a cute teenager that he needed some customer service feedback—and I politely but firmly gave it to him. Did he respond politely then? Was he sorry, or even the robot-trained-counter-help version of sorry that would have resulted in him offering a pretend apology to placate me? No, he was not sorry, and he muttered about me audibly to his coworkers as I walked away. Basically, he was a pathetic excuse for a person working with the public and my mother would have taken her business elsewhere.

So, yeah, this is meaningless in a sense. It’s one moment with one stranger in one place of business. People are rude all over the place. It’s the nature of minimum wage and unskilled counter help the world over. People who aren’t working at places they feel passionate about aren’t living their dreams. This has a tendency to make them rude. So be it. I get it. Whatever. But, when this takes yet another piece of my hard won positive mental attitude and throws it into the trash can with the coffee grounds—I have to react.

Have a Cookie, Mister Postman

In my past life as a person of size, I would have soothed my ruffled nerves with something edible.  You know, when you are sad have a cookie—that sort of thing. But now since I can’t eat that cookie—or choose not to, I have to give people the opportunity to share learning moments with me. And I have to do it in the moment. A polite confrontation in the moment means one less cookie I have to eat later. It’s simple math.

Maybe I could be positive to the next rude person and say, “Look, I just lost about 85 pounds, and I’m trying to make it 100 in the next 8 weeks and there is a very good chance if you are rude to me that I will not only bite your head off but chew it up and actually consume it.

I just wonder what response I would get from the insolent dude who so audibly mocked me as I walked away yesterday. Would he laugh? Would he get a grip? Would we share some precious moment of humanity and connection and both walk away better for it? No. No way. He would react exactly the same way as he did. His personality is as carved in stone at 22 as many an older man. I give up with him. (The Starbucks online feedback form, notwithstanding.) But I do know that proactive, assertive and polite action makes people feel better about life, more in control, and less demeaned by the slings and arrows of outrageous but ordinary crap. And those who handle things in the moment have less emotional fallout.

So next time someone gives you less-than-human treatment, invite him to share a learning moment with you and then get on with your life. You won’t need a cookie and you will have taken a proactive step. And I am even hopeful that somewhere, somehow, my little learning moments will eventually impact the world for better—and if not, at least life’s petty annoyances don’t get a piece of me.

The Moral:

Never teach a pig to sing it frustrates you and it annoys the pig.

STATS!

Lost: 3.4

Total loss: 9.0

Fruits, veggies, water and other good stuff: You betcha.

Exercise: Yoga and walking my dogs in an effort to get them to like me best!

Rude clerks: 1

Feedback opportunities: 1

Cookies: 0

When I am Upset I Really Want to Eat Wonder Bread by the Slice—The Tale of an Emotional Eater

Practical Magic

The Tale Of an Emotional Eater

When I was four years old, my mother, (as I have mentioned in a previous blog), went from stay-at-home mom and aspiring writer to full-time employed teacher and divorced mother of three. This threw my world into a tailspin. My mom who had previously been there for me everyday making life fun and safe and wonderful in a very hands-on and connected way was forced by circumstances to make life safe and fun and wonderful for me in another way—by earning a living. The changes for me were many and sudden and severe. My best friend and trusted companion and source of all comfort and security was suddenly gone far more than she was there.

The emotional upheaval in our house was dramatic and intense. My amazingly strong and brave mother took her change in circumstances with as much integrity and fortitude as anyone on the planet, but in my childish perception, she was just gone. She was suddenly absent from before I went to kindergarten in the morning until around 6 o’clock each night because of the insanity of a system that didn’t take into account any sort of work/life balance that forced her to complete her student teaching in a city far inland.

A good-hearted next-door neighbor and her best friend at the time, a lady named Pat, filled in as babysitter. Mornings, however, became a fend-for-yourself exercise since she was busy getting her own kids ready. I used to walk through the treacherous bird-of-paradise bushes between our lawns before school so she could buckle my shoes and button the back of my dress. This woman obviously saved my mother’s life, but she was busy and had two kids of her own, my older brother was already becoming “a handful” in response to circumstances, and she wasn’t my mother. She was a saint to help us whatever it looked like. It was as simple as that.

So, all of this started right before I began kindergarten. I was unfortunately an “early starter” with my birthday rendering me able to attend at four instead of five and because of circumstances I was going to have to make the three-block walk by myself each morning. I clearly remember my mother following a few feet behind me in her car as I walked to school alone. I knew and didn’t fully understand why she was behind me watching me walk. I can just imagine the emotion that she felt doing this—I also realize now my baby brother was in the car and she was on her way to drop him off at a place called “Happy Land” where she told me years later she would arrive a half hour early so she had time to sit in her car and cry.

So, it’s easy to see what was going on for us as a family group. By second grade my grandmother who had recently lost her husband had relocated to live with us and things got a lot more comfortable, but there was this two-year period between four and six where I learned to eat emotionally. It’s amazing that a child of four could manage this, but I could and did.

Enter Wonderâ bread.

I found at the tiny and tremulous age of four that I could sneak into the kitchen and steal piece-by-piece an entire loaf of Wonderâ bread. I would scurry to a hiding place and eat this—sans butter or jelly or anything else—just feeling that the emotionally hollow pit in my missing-my-mommy tummy would briefly feel better. (This is that food/mom connection that infants make looking into the eyes of their loving mother while breastfeeding. See my previous article, If You Feed Me Do You Love Me @ http://bit.ly/eOnmdl ) In my childish way I was trying to replicate that food/love/mom connection. As I write this today it makes total sense. The connection between comfort and food was forged early for me.

Fast Forward—This Week and Reality

Moving forward from four to some age that, unless you know me personally from back in the day I will never reveal, I spent week three of my Go Red! Challenge feeling very emotional and dealing with a lot of stress and exhaustion and other stuff. Several of the days of my quest I sort of blew it and at least once I found myself at the cupboard of my kitchen metaphorically stealing Wonderâ bread and running away to eat it behind a chair. As I ate I felt that, of course, it wasn’t helping and in fact I had all the regret and tension that comes with denying my own best interests and not being true to myself, but I didn’t really see the connection—not completely. Emotional eating is a catch phrase that every diet program loves to bandy about, but until you understand your very own story and moment when food became a drug to you, those words are just the dogma of the diet industry. Today I think I get it and while the “aha! moment” will come and go—even a beginning understanding is the opening of a small door where light shines through.

So Happy Mother’s Day to you and to me—and especially to my own mother, whose bravery and fortitude made me the kind of person who stands in my own life willing to break down barriers. She made me brave enough to face my demons and strong enough to face them every day if necessary. For that, and for everything else on earth, I thank her.

Stats—Yes, I Am Giving You Stats

1. Loss—1.4
2. Total loss—5.6
3. Water—yes.
4. Veggies—oh, yes.
5. Exercise—yoga twice (2 hours total and still too low).
6. Attitude—yes.
7. On track? Indeed. In the words of some very dated song from you-know-when: Keep on truckin’!

Disclaimer: Wonderâ bread is a quality food from a quality company that is obviously a part of a healthy diet if not eaten by the loaf in one sitting while hiding.

Pal Jack and I in the same place about 1.5 years between photos

My compliments to the fascinating and talented Jack Kelly for posing unwittingly for this blog post picture set. Please contact me if you think you want me to shop you or even to sue me. I probably owe you a beer for this. LOL J