The Wax

Disclaimer: The following article is written expressly for my woman readers. This is going to get intense, guys, so if you secretly read on, you have only yourself to blame. BnB ;)

 



Ritual is a lovely thing. It implies that survival is under control enough to indulge in something a bit higher on Maslow's hierarchy. Beauty ritual is that for me. It is a way to state to myself and to the world that I have handled the emergencies well enough and effectively enough in my life to be at a place where I can  think about adornment. It's not a superficial thing, no. It's a way of acknowledging distance from personal emergency.

Case in point: I recently had some dental surgery with what has turned out to be, yet again, another dentist I absolutely will not want to work with again. After feeling for several days after like I had been taken out in a back alley and beaten within an inch of my life, I went to the emergency hospital. A series of blood work ensuring I am not dying of a staph infection resulting in an uncovered 350.00 even though I have the "best" insurance on the planet, leaves me rethinking surrendering to any emergency short of flat lining. I am sick of problems, frankly. As people approaching midlife we are experiencing human frailty. We are seeing that we should have taken better care of our teeth, that we should have flossed. Or we are seeing that inactivity and sitting behind a desk has caught up with us, or that the human animal's original life expectancy has not evolved enough on an evolutionary scale to include parts that last. Illness in all of its forms just simply sucks. It is the ultimate time waster, I resent it. I resent giving my time and energy to it. I resent having it as focus.

So when it has to be a focus for us--whether my allergies or asthma, or dental work, or your ulcer or diabetes or anything else, it occurs to me that we are giving away the precious seconds to it. We are trading moment by moment our lives away. How will we focus? I would far rather focus on something beautiful, something above survival, just for the sanity it brings.

And who is to say that a positive focus doesn't change reality? I think it does. "That which we think about expands." I refuse to think about things I don't want in my life. That includes illness. So enough said, onto the WAX.

For about a billion years women have been adorning themselves. Cleopatra was no stranger to the henna rinse of the rings of eyeliner, Marie Antoinette had some pretty serious dos. Women have always wanted to gild the lily. I am all for it. Maybe it's spa mentality, maybe its just knowing that if I can take a moment to get a massage or do my hair, or fix my make up or buy perfume I am enjoying living in my body and enjoying the pleasure it gives me. It means I have some pride in myself, I have some healthy ability to indulge myself.

Now obviously this can be taken to an extreme. I just reread a recent news story that pops up occasionally about some twisted woman who has had multiple plastic surgeries in an effort to look like Barbie. In spite of the awesome shoes, Barbie, you are seriously plastic. However, I do commend her attempts to run a veterinary clinic, teach underprivileged children, pilot an airplane and keep up a dream house, all while working some serious damn "f-me" pumps. You go, Barbie. Now Barbie's real-life twisted sister with all the plastic surgery, naw. This girl is messed up and I have about a million different better uses for her money like first a great shrink and failing that a very large donation to a soup kitchen. So, while I am not about to get cut into pieces for a beauty ritual I might get dyed and plucked and sprayed a bit for the joy of enjoying my own skin.

Enter the WAX. (This is your last chance to leave, gentlemen, I suggest you do.)

I have been in recent years someone who has given up the eyebrow pluck. It is just a huge pain and as all of us ladies know in recent years it's a very tricky thing to see the reflected and offending eyebrow hair in a mirror clearly. So I have taken to eyebrow waxing. It's relatively inexpensive, its quick and easy, unless your stylist has some sort of DTs they can't mess it up too much (Ha, more later on this one!) In short, it's a great fix to an annoying problem. And Voilà! I am suddenly five years younger looking with these great big baby greens all open and wide-eyed.

So being a fan of the eyebrow wax it has occurred to me that being an animal I have lots of other interesting places I can wax. This alarmed me and embarrassed me. I had all sorts of preconceived notions about "who" did this and how they must look and that they were probably all porn stars or at the very least extremely young in un-lived in (but adult) bodies. I see everyone who has ever had anything other than an eyebrow wax as about 27 and a supermodel. Even though, I still really wanted to give it a go. I thought it would be a perfect bathing suit solution. I just had it in my mind that I wanted to do it. A friend of mine (younger, thinner, not sporting a post-baby body) did it and raved about the results. I thought I would do it when I reached some perfect pinnacle of perfection. I had some magic number in my head about weight, I had some ideal number of months of workouts being consistent in my life that would render me worthy of this beauty ritual.

And then I went to California on a trip and happened to see the waxing studio near my Massage Envy and I thought I could do this in an out of town location and if something horrible happened it would be like the ultimate in Vegas slogans--what happened there, stayed there. So I booked an appointment.

Now it is true that when I had the eyebrow portion of the treatment done an out of control wax brush dripped wax on my beautiful haircut and the technician was actually forced to give me a manicure scissors so I could cut the wax-covered wisp of hair near my forehead off myself. I am sure she was mortified and frankly I'm no snob--I have taken a manicure scissors to my shining glory for far less. I assured her it was no big deal.

The other part. Well, let me tell you. If you are going to get a bikini wax, a full or even the ultimate Brazilian, do not, for the love of God, watch people doing it or reacting to their first time on YouTube. There is such a thing as too much information. Do what I did. Take a number of Ibuprofen. Have a cocktail or if you object to drinking and driving take a half a Valium. And go. Don't judge yourself. These people do this for a living. They expect you to patronize their establishment. They don't think you are walking in to have your cards read, they know you want hair ripped off your body with hot wax. Live a little.

So how do I feel? I think it has been some combination of a silky mermaid swimming lithely through the ocean feeling the water move against my skin in some sort of natural whole-body embrace and a female superhero. Or maybe I feel like you do when you have incredibly sexy lingerie under your business suit. You know and they don't know, but the secret energizes you. It adds some subtle power to your movements; you are self aware in a luxurious, almost decadent, way. If I was candy, I would be Godiva. I feel seriously pleased with myself.

But more than the thing I did itself is the realization that I reached some sort of level of self acceptance where I suddenly felt I didn't need to hide, where I could revel in my body for itself with its flaws and its history and its own special tattoos of life experience.

Do  I suggest you do it? Not necessarily, but I do suggest you do that one thing you have put off that you would really like to do for yourself, for your indulgence, for your body--and I suggest you do it today.

Love--
Beauty

Being Lost

There are times in life when you feel lost. The things you valued before seem to slip away and the things you are currently focusing on don't seem to have the personal gratification they once did. Life seems to lose focus and days slip away. Something captures your attention, whether trivia or minutia, whether stress or illness, whether time-wasters or even focusing on others to the exclusion of yourself--and suddenly the direction and the motivation you once had seems to slip from your fingers. You don't even have the wherewithal to regroup and figure out what it is that draining your energy.

This lack of direction and loss of time flies directly in the face of something terribly important. Time is short.  Jim Croce said it best when he said, "There never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do, once you find them." He was far too right about that sentiment. I imagine him spending the last moments of his life reciting the lyrics to Time in a Bottle and thinking, "Damn, I really have got to learn not to take everything so literally."

One of my favorite movies is Harold and Maude. I love over-the-top humor, especially if it's eccentric with an underpinning of sentiment and kindness and joy. Harold and Maude has all sorts of things for me. Harold is bizarre and creative and plays with his death and mocks his own and everyone else's life while taking everything incredibly seriously and with earnest amazement. Maude is a young/old soul in an ancient body who manages to be incredibly beautiful and sexy and earthy and insane and innocent and wise and loving and realistic at once. It's a love story full of breaking rules and the union of two lost souls, two quirky and should-have-never-met people who some how, some way find each other. We should all be so lucky to find that one-in-a-million love, that soul mate who reaches into the very depth of us and validates who we are, who sees us and with whom we share precious instances of pure joy. Gallows humor and joy and innocence and love and irony all go together in life. Harold and Maude fall in love and express it physically, making a taboo age difference irrelevant. What other people think about them becomes as ridiculous as forgetting your own name or that the sun rises or the smell of a rose.

I probably relate more to Harold than Maude today. I see something wildly amusing in pretending to hang one's self while sporting a Hello badge" with the message, "HELLO MY NAME IS: Goodbye Cruel World. He is all farce and yet deadly earnest as he doles out macabre punishments to his mother on a daily basis, punishing her for not seeing him, for not recognizing him and for having such detailed and exacting expectations about who he should be.

Add to that a Cat Stevens, pre-terrorist [!], score and suddenly the movie is filled with a radiant joy and some sort of supernatural understanding that seems only to happen in darkened theaters making you feel, if for an instant, that you have some perfect knowledge of How Things Should Be. It usually ends about the time the credits roll, but before they do there is an unmistakable and glorious sense of rightness with the world that just never lingers when the lights go on.

So back to being lost. Harold is lost, I think. I think he finds himself through Maude; a wise and loving friend who loves him completely and then leaves. She leaves to die. And even though, for some, this might be the ultimate betrayal, she knows something that Harold senses. She knows that life is eternal and simply floats away like a weary and beautiful butterfly. The lesson is that we all take responsibility for coming and going as we please in this life and that true compassion and love aren't about attachment but about loving while letting people live in your life with an open door policy of being invited to stay, but not your prisoner.

Maybe being found is really just taking the time to pay attention to yourself. In a world of stupid demands and really tedious circumstances it's easy to stop listening to your own decreasingly loud cries for help. Your frustration and pain and anguish and bitchiness are more often than not, just your own cries for your own attention. No one can hear you but yourself and if you aren't listening you are the architect of your own abandonment. The first place to get seen, to get heard, to get acknowledged and to get forgiveness, love, acceptance, and a friend is the mirror. It's not an act of narcissism, it's an act of self-preservation. We spend our lives shouting, "See me!" When really all we need to do is see our selves.

In this high-tech interweb world that I still think is the single most amazing thing to happen in my lifetime, we have a tendency to social media ourselves into personal submission. I think I simply ceased to be in my quest to be heard. I have gone away now to listen to myself. I have spent years trying to bang pots and pans together loudly and consistently enough to never, ever hear my own soul's pleading.

And so in closing, maybe something from Cat Stevens who I still think is a great tragedy of some sort that I can't quite put my finger on. If anything, just the fact that he stepped away from his music to focus on his religion seems confused and unnecessary. After all, music is a form of God in expression. I miss him. But this isn't the time or place to lose focus again and go off on poor Cat. Let him seek his own voice while we take a moment to listen to his heart:

 



Oh very young what will you leave us this time.

You're only dancing on this earth for a short while.

And though your dreams may toss and turn you now.

They will vanish away like your Daddy's best jeans, denim blue, fading up to the sky.

And though you want him to last forever you know he never will, you know he never will.

And the patches make the good bye harder still.

Oh Very Young, c. Cat Stevens, all rights reserved, Earth Tour, 1976

 

 

The short dance to me means it's high time to get my tutu on.

 

 

Love--

 

Beauty



Dreaming of Yoga

They say dreams are symbols. That may be true. I certainly remember some of my dreams, and have throughout my life. Some are fraught with fear and make my pulse quicken with a sickening feeling of dread when I think of them even now. Others are funny and strange, or so symbolic it's actually laughable.

I remember once I dreamed I had a leaf-shaped key chain lying on the center console of my car, and with great dreaming awareness I turned it over. (Yes, that's right, turning over a new leaf.) I never have interesting dreams, not me. They are either terrifying or distorted—or so lame I cringe. I have dreams I remember since childhood that are vivid and horrible. I remember not only each dream, but also the resulting horrifyingly wakeful night, the rush into my mother's bed and my wide-eyed exhaustion. I remember my fearful focus on the bedroom window, wearily outlasting sleep to see the first muted colors of sunrise; the soft reassuring coo of doves outside signaling a safe moment to finally close my eyes.

I have sort of a running debate with my daughter about dreams. It's a family legacy for the daughter in any mother/daughter duo through the history of our family to be very into her dreams and for the mother to be resistant. The resulting debate: my daughter recites her dreams in detail while I remain steadfast in my position of uncomfortably advising her not to focus on dreaming at all. I wonder what the matriarchal dream aversion is in my family? Maybe it's just too many years of disturbing dreams. Maybe too many women in my family have suffered through years of prophetic dreaming and overly vivid imaginations. My dreams often seem like a forced acid trip might seem to a person in recovery.

For many years I have had what people call prophetic dreams. I have seen the face of someone in a dream unknown to me who I then meet the next day. I have dreamed that I would have a flat tire and the following morning, sure enough, yes. (My mother used to refer to this as my "psychic bullshit.") We matriarchs are also fairly circumspect about the psychic ability in this family as well. In my previous incarnation as a would-be actress in 1980s Hollywood, I even used to dream that my agent called and I needed to get in touch as soon as possible, and then the next morning would call only to find I did, indeed, have an audition.

Oh, yes, and then there are the recurring dreams. Do I dream that I am being followed through a labyrinth only to find a different way out each time? Of course not. I dream of floating trash. That's right, I am viewing trash as it is windblown through a car window. It's a recurring silent movie of floating trash. Fellini would have loved it. Ha.

So with all this preamble into the nether regions of my psyche, then why did I dream last night that I was doing yoga? Well, besides the fact that I have gotten out of my practice and need it, I am also screaming out for balance. You don't have to be a silent trash-viewing, leaf-turning matriarch of a great psychic-experience-denying family to get that one, baby. You only need the basics. Sometimes we dream about what we need. Sometimes we do in dreams what we wish we were doing in real life. (I can hear those three special friends who consistently read my blog filling in the words "Joe Manganiello" after the words "wish we were doing"—and shame on you.)

I wish I were in the balance and peace of yoga.

So where has yoga gone in my life in the last months? Yoga can fall away. I think for me it fell away through a long bout of bronchitis and then stayed away because of a feeling that I didn't have the strength to begin again. But I am forgetting an important aspect of yoga that many of us forget. Yoga is a personal journey. And I don't care how many “fitties” in your health club class sneer at you because you can't keep up or you’re clearly a novice. (They probably aren't actually sneering; they are probably victims of your own "self-hate-colored glasses.")

Yoga is personal. In the best yoga classes I have seen people who have been at all different levels, happily, comfortably, and peacefully. The best yoga teacher of my life started class by having us all turn around and face the back windows. No mirrors. She felt (and rightly) that yoga is not about judging. Yoga is about embracing where and who you are—right then, in that moment.

I remember when I got this. There is a lot of bending and twisting (writhing) in yoga. You get to see the parts of your body that you don't spend a lot of time contemplating. For example, it was in yoga that I first became very up close and personal with my toes. Not my greatest feature, and a source of consistent judgment and unhappiness in the litany of my-messed-up-body-parts song and dance.

So, one day while I was there bent in a position to very closely commune with my toes, and my teacher (guru) said:

“Let go,
 Accept where you are,
 Love and appreciate your body for being the vehicle that gets you here to yoga."

Suddenly, I got it, and I was filled with an embracing love for my previously considered flawed appendages. My amusing little toes and my 52-year-old live-in-them legs were quite frankly a miracle in getting my soul around. Amazingly useful, incredibly wonderful, particularly blessed toes. They stood me up, they made me walk, or run, or dance, or climb, or anything else I wanted to do. They rubbed the fur of my dog as she sat under the table, they squished sand in between them on a hot summer beach and they got me to yoga—in that moment.

A lady who can embrace her toes can embrace herself—warts and all. Our bodies are blessed amazing instruments and they are incredibly necessary. And hating them and hurting them and avoiding them and disregarding them can only stop at the moment we embrace ourselves and say, "Bless this little toe."

So here I am today with my bag of issues, my sack of problems, my hat full of worries and my pocketful of miracles. Loving ourselves enough to open the way to greater self-care starts small. It's loving the flaws first. It's just perspective.

Maybe we can all turn over this new leaf (sorry) and give it a try. Today my toes, tomorrow the world!

With all the love there is,

Beauty

The Summer of (Self) Love

Photo Credit,  Joni Mitchell, For the Roses

I am not sure how many of my readers were around to experience the real Summer of Love. As a child in the late 60s I remember it, however, I certainly did not have any of the awareness of a teenager or young adult deeply moved by that moment in history. I think this photo of Joni Mitchell symbolizes what I imagine personal physical freedom to be; what I imagine self-love to be in photo expression--a complete relaxation of self, unadorned, free, naked--feeling at home in one's body and soul and in harmony with one's surroundings. At its best the Summer of Love seems to have been a time of love consciousness. The concept is interesting to me as I think about what I would like the rest of this summer to be for me.

When I look at this picture of Joni Mitchell I can imagine what it would be like to be transported. On a rock experiencing the spray of the Pacific ocean and the heat of the sun immersed in a private and personal joy. I see someone who feels well and serene. Health is directly related to how we feel emotionally. Stress or sadness, emotional turmoil, or even negativity play a part in overall health. Why this is seems fairly simple when you think about it. Emotional pain is exhausting--whether it's the pain brought on by loss or just daily and unrelenting stress. Emotional pain can be about how we feel about ourselves. People live lives that are out of sync with their values. People often don't see themselves as worthy; they see themselves as flawed instead of as children of God. There are many reasons we can get stuck in emotional pain. Once we are stuck it seems like physical issues follow.

So, how to deal with this? The logical and easy answer is get over the pain, get over the exhaustion, move forward into a good attitude and healthy habits.  For people in pain or experiencing stress that seems like a huge mouthful. Like someone saying, "Hey, just change your whole life and you will be able to get it together. Oh, and do it now. Oh, and I have no idea how. Gotta go."

But any task can be completed by simply breaking it into doable pieces. By making it underwhelming and manageable. When things are manageable they seem less stressful, when stress is reduced happiness increases. It's just a matter of giving ourselves the same rational and calm help we would give our child or a cherished friend. How do we treat ourselves with love while at the same time nudge ourselves into a workable, reasonable plan?

To metaphorically drop one's burdens of ill health and emotional baggage and stand before the ocean naked on a rock. This summer is about getting naked on that rock. (Yes, I am laughing, but it does have value.) How do we get to be our best selves, our healthiest selves, and how do we do it this summer? I am excited to see how. I am open to the new experience. Willingness is the first step.

Enjoy a Joni classic and have an amazing, sun drenched day--and a summer that makes you remember the peace of the Pacific Ocean and the paradise of California.

Love--
Beauty

Welcome to the Carnival

I got an anonymous message last night from a would-be reader and commenter regarding the pictures of obese women that I posted in a previous article. The message was negative and cruel and stupid and a lot of other adjectives I could list. As I have the settings for comments set to allow me to review them before they are posted, you never have to see this as a reader. Lucky you.

After I posted the article with the series of pictures of obese women I noticed an interesting phenomenon. This article gets the most hits of any article I have ever written--by far. Clearly when people search on "fat people" or "fat women" many of these pictures undoubtedly come up and obviously some are linked to this site, but I think it says a lot about what motivates people that this is the one post that has had literally thousands of hits.

I thought long and hard about removing it. But I am operating under the optimistic and perhaps unrealistic hope that the occasional circus freak aficionado who travels to my blog with the idea of spending a few minutes laughing at other people will somehow, through my commentary about the pictures, have some kind of an "ah ha" moment.

I do realize, however, it is probably like the old adage: "Never try to teach a pig to sing--it annoys you and frustrates the pig."

In my writer's fantasy what I write has an impact for good--and I have the ability to make people think, if even momentarily, about my message. I am going to throw a thought into the universe that for every ugly soul who comes to gawk a few will be transformed into thinking just a little bit differently about people who are, after all, fellow human beings.

Compassion will always be the most important of human traits. While once I would have said that compassion makes us unlike animals, my recent experiences rescuing so many dogs make me say that I don't want to insult animals by likening them to humans without compassion. Humans without compassion are a breed unto themselves.

So to "anonymous" I say this: I am sure that my words can't touch you, but I am ever hopeful that the right person will see those pictures and take away a message of kindness. Thank you for reminding me that my words have value, even if not to you.

Have a blessed day.

Beauty

A Happy Man

I am at my brother Chad's house in Florida. I am here because I am lucky enough to get to attend my nephew's first birthday. Today we spent the day in preparations. Sheila, his wonderful mom, baking a variety of different cakes to accommodate all the different dietary needs of friends--including the vegan kids--so no one would be without a cake to eat. I went from store to store picking up last minute items, buying out the stock of Fisher Price and basically having a blast. Tonight I had a chance to go to dinner with Raven who is probably my "step niece" but I make no distinction between step and niece. She is an amazing and beautiful young woman and it was a lot of fun to sit at dinner with her and my brother and watch how their relationship is evolving into a budding mutual friendship and a respect they have both actively worked at. Pretty amazing stuff for a man who up until his mid-40s never had a family.

So, now, because I am on Arizona time, I am awake while everyone else is asleep preparing for the big day. We have an unknown number of kids and parents arriving at one in the afternoon, a trampoline to assemble, a house to clean and decorate and some large number of dishes to prepare. It's going to be a very big deal tomorrow to get all this done.

I am thinking tonight of my own daughter, who is about to turn 20. I remember so distinctly her own first birthday and what a magical moment in my life that was--and how much I efforted to make sure it was all perfect. At the time I was a recently divorced mother and the preparations were all my own. I lived alone with my precious baby daughter and hosted a large gathering to commemorate the day. But up until everyone arrived, it was just we two. And even though between the two of us we generated enough love to light a small city, and I was doing what I needed to do to make the best and sanest life for my daughter possible, it was just less fun and loving not to have a great partner in the picture who could share in the joy with me. This is what I see when I look at my brother and his family. I see a family who loves each other and I see a man who realizes he is happy in the moment.

I think that it is incredibly rare for someone to realize they are happy and feel the gratitude of their circumstances in the moment. So many people live life with their family everyday and don't take that moment to acknowledge the gift of their family. The blessing of having found the right person to love, and the amazing fact of making a child through that love. It really shocks the senses to see it in action when someone is consciously aware of it--right as it happens.

Maybe it's that my brother waited a long time to have a child. His life experience and maturity might have some bearing on his awareness. I am sure it is partially that, but it's also that my brother, even while he lives his life in sort of one big happy, light-hearted joke that only he knows the punchline to, is really, beneath the humor, truly one of the best, most trustworthy, courageous and honorable people I have ever known.

As I am sitting here tonight while the household sleeps (there is some special peace about a house with a sleeping baby in it), I am taking it all in. Above me on the wall hangs a letter that Chad wrote to his family; his wife, his stepdaughter and his one-year old son. It is truly one of the most lovely, most loving, eloquent expressions of love that I have ever seen come from the heart of a man. I am extremely proud that the author of this loving tribute to his own family is my brother. He is taking the moments of his life and holding them to the light, second by second like pieces of crystal--watching with awe and amazement as that bright white light pours through him and around him. A man who recognizes his blessings as they are bestowed upon him has captured the elusive butterfly of happiness. It rests on his finger and he watches. He is a lucky man.

But more so, I would say, the lucky one is baby Carlos. Tomorrow he turns one year old in a family who love each other and know it and share it and are grateful for it in the moment. That is Carlos' biggest and most glorious birthday present. This is the real deal. The ultimate gift that won't come in a big bright box, but is more real than anything he will receive. And with this sort of family around him to nurture him he has every chance of growing to up to be a happy man.

Carlos, I love being your aunt.

Love--

Aunt Teeny

Comfort



The last week shook my cage. As I reported here, I recently lost a friend very quickly and tragically to a fast moving cancer that shocked our community. I am still hearing from friends and blog readers who have reacted very strongly to his death not only because of the incredible loss such a great man was to his community, friends and loved ones, but also because of the sheer shock of the rapidity of the events. He simply was here with a lower back complaint and then gone to a terminal and totally destructive cancer. In 11 days.

While it almost feels like I don't want to continue to write my blog about something so seemingly trivial as my weight loss and fitness issues, at the core of these issues is my deep desire to live my life with as much passion and health as humanly possible. It literally is a fight for life--and while it's not dramatic on a day to day basis, it is at the core of my personal needs and desires. I basically spend each day focused on improving my health and my ability to live a long and productive life.

After some contemplation, I realize the best I can do to honor the memory of my friend is to live my life with as much intention and commitment as possible. So that is what I have endeavored to do this week. I knew on the day that I heard of his death that I needed to do something to ensure this news wouldn't turn into a down hill spiral for me--in essence, a food bender. When enormous loss strikes any life people react. Often the chink in one's armor is the place that falls apart first. Emotions, especially strong and sad emotions, often translate to the need for physical comfort of some kind--sometimes that of possibly negative and damaging behavior. In my effort to live without damaging myself I knew I needed a more comforting way to eat--at least for a time.

The way I have been eating for the last couple of years has been incredibly challenging. I have maintained a very low calorie diet using whey shakes as meal replacements to increase protein and eating "lean and green" the rest of the time. This works extremely well for weight loss but in my case I had become almost continually hungry. Unless I was hungry it wasn't working. It's hard to be hungry all the time. It simply hurts.

So last week I revisited Atkins.

In the long ago day my mother tried Atkins and loved it. She was the ultimate carnivore and this program allows for all the protein you could possibly want. Once called "The Drinking Man's Diet" the original literature about the program enticed potential dieters with promises of sizzling steaks, salads slathered in blue cheese and hard liquor. (As I write this, this actually sounds pretty good to me.) The new Atkins adds more non-starchy vegetables, low carb fruits, increases the use of good fats and limits calories--although only slightly compared to what I have been doing.

It works like this: If you keep your carbs under 20 grams a day and eat under 1700 calories for women and about 2000 for men, you will lose weight and you will not be hungry. This is heaven for those who can stick to it, but even a tiny stray in a carb--like nondairy creamer in your coffee or a donut will throw all your hard work to hell in a hand basket.

But for me, right now, this is what I need. It's allowed me to lose the pound I have been gaining and losing for a month as well as four more in a week. It has allowed me to feel optimistic and in control during what has been a very sad and emotional week. It's allowed me to choose something to consciously control and regulate what I was doing--which is vital for anyone who sees food as a way to deal with emotions. In short, it works--but only if you do it.

This week I have lived my life with personal commitment by honoring my goals. I feel very successful in the wake of some extremely tragic circumstances. I write this with the strong belief that my friend Kirk and anyone who cares for me would want me to live as well as I can with purpose--every day. While I might not be slaying dragons, I am fighting my own battle daily. This week I am winning.

I wish you confidence and personal power and a feeling of knowing you can keep your commitments.

Love--Beauty

http://www.atkins.com/New-Book.aspx

The Good Man

In honor of our friend and classmate Kirk Knipp.

Yesterday I spent the day in a vague and depressed sadness. I have been carefully watching the updates about my friend from Costa Mesa High School days, Kirk Knipp, as he battled the last and perhaps most painful battle of his life-- that of metasticized cancer.

His illness was a shock to me. Even though we had not been close over the years I always felt his presence as a cheery lighthearted and lucid soul on this magical connection device we call Facebook. And in fact, once in the early days of Facebook "apps" I posted a list of people who were reading my page on a regular basis. He was one of them and his one word reply was, "Busted." It made me feel good to know we had that connection and that he enjoyed what I had to say. The feeling was mutual.

When I think back to Costa Mesa days I see him even then as a good man--a good young man. Someone who marched to his own drum, someone who was obviously raised well and was taught and cared about integrity and values. He wasn't showy, he wasn't loud or grandstanding. While he played sports (cross country) he didn't try to secure a place for himself in the popular crowd. He had a small group of loyal and intellegent friends and he went his own way. Being kind and being true to himself  even then. He was someone you knew, even if you didn't know the details of his life well. I knew him because I have always been attracted to kindness. Goodness and kindness and morality are magnets that attract. He quietly walked the walk--even then.

When graduation time came around he and one other classmate had been accepted to prestigious military schools. West Point for Kirk. And that achievement showed his classmates that he had given 100% of his energy to making a success of his scholarship and he had not wasted his time in high school. That alone is remarkable for a teenager. That sort of focus and commitment is hard to come by in far more mature men. His achievement was a feather in our collective cap--he was someone we could feel proud of. And we did.

Later we all went our separate ways. We knew of each other through friends, we occasionally heard something about someone, but before social networking we were never truly connected to our class as a whole. But about the time we all made it to our thirty-year reunion for the class of 1977 we had figured out social networking and the reunions and gatherings brought us together. We formed a virtual high school of alumni who shared each others joys and triumphs on a daily basis. The sense of community for our school exists and is tangible because of Facebook. And in the last years of his life, this is how I knew Kirk.

Facebook gives us snapshots of a person. Unless we are close friends, we don't know all about them but we see their humor, the things that scare them, and bring them joy. The political and religious affiliations that they share with others and feel strongly about. We see bits and pieces of their daily life. That Kirk enjoyed sweets--a lot. That he made lighthearted and low key jokes that let you know he noticed what you were saying and that he was virtually waving at you. This is the truly valuable gift of Facebook. But more than the daily hellos we all share, Facebook allows us to have a clear and immediate access into each other's pain and heartache. More so than any other time in history we know when our friends and acquaintances are suffering, in pain, in fear, in need--and yes, dying. We see it posted on their statuses. Kirk posted that he had a "tooma" less than three weeks ago. A jest in the face of grave danger. That was how he lived.

I can imagine in his military career and from the posts others have made to his page that he was a kind and fair leader, asking those who followed him to reflect on their choices. It was clear to me that his light shined through, that his goodness shined through in everything he did. Every day. He walked the walk.

And even though it is quite clear to me that we had different feelings toward politics and perhaps even religion, we shared a commonality. We both believed in and tried to live with goodness, awareness, kindness and with a spirit of reaching out to others. I see his life as a short life utterly well played. He did life right in my opinion. I wish that he had longer to grace us with his presence, but knowing that I would never want him to endure the pain that he clearly was battling in the last few days, I can see his release as important for him and a good ending to a good life. No matter how tragic it seems to me today.

As I look at the surrounding community around Kirk I can see that most of his friends are very secure in their faith. I am sure that this amazing knowingness for them brings them great comfort. I, on the other hand, find this sort of thing to shake my faith. I have ahead the process of trying to put this in perspective. I have to grieve his loss. I have to realize the sadness and regret I am feeling is part of being human. It's part of the human experience. And while I am spirit, I am in human form and must deal with the pain. And today is an incredibly painful day to all those who simply wish he was here.

I keep hearing the words "only the good die young" in my mind.  Although we aren't "young" I would say as a group we are certainly not at the end of our lives by any means. So, young to us is someone like Kirk. Someone who gave the world his absolute best and who we wanted to hang out with us--spreading his goodness as long as possible.

So, now what? His loved ones who can are there to mourn and celebrate him today as they supported him through life and through this last ultimate challenge. And his friends from the past and his Facebook friends mourn him here--in a digital format. On Facebook, in email, in blogs and on the Caring Bridge.

On Valentine's Day I sent him a letter while he was still lucid about needing to know why he wasn't fighting, why he was not choosing any sort of treatment, and expressing my wish for his happiness. He responded almost immediately thanking me for my loving and passionate letter and promising a response to all of us who were confounded by recent events and were hoping for clarity. His subsequent post made his dire situation completely clear. We could stop struggling and start moving toward peaceful closure together. And so we have all tried. We have all prayed, we have all thought about him. I am happy that his birthday just past was a day when he knew he was so totally loved and appreciated for what he brought to this big party called life.

 Kirk's last words to me were to thank me for my "loving and thought-provoking letter" and "for my friendship and asking the hard questions."

My response to you Kirk as you make your amazing transition to a place beyond our time and space is--Thank you. Thank you for being a role model and a good man--and thank you for being my friend.

Love--

Grace

Help--I have fallen and I can't get up!

My daughter has this video game called "Harvest Moon" that I was seriously addicted to once upon a time. In this RPG you played the part of a farmer or rancher and you had the chance to travel down the floors of a mine looking for hidden gems. It was a lot of fun but naturally being a video game it wasn't that simple. In the mine you tried to avoid pitfalls which would send you either plummeting down or spinning out of control back to the beginning, stopping your good progress and often taking you back to square one. The thing was no matter how you tried, no matter how skilled you got or how you practiced, pitfalls were sometimes just impossible to avoid. You fell down or you  spun out of control and once you did you had a choice. You could keep playing and start the sometimes tedious and painful process of beginning again, or you could bag it and turn off the game.

Diet and fitness are just like that. I would even venture to say life is like that. Life is a series of journeys in which you get waylaid, sidetracked, trashed, sick, tired, confused, hurt, and lost. Each time you lose your way you have to determine how to get back on track. Based on your skill, your commitment, your overall energy, and anything else you have managed to store up in your bag of tricks for emergency usage, this can be simple or complicated.

I think everyone has their own private pitfall. That thing that takes them kicking and screaming by the scruff of the neck and tosses them down, down, down, until, in a crumpled heap on the floor, they beg for mercy. I would say life sucks, but I know it doesn't. More truthfully: circumstances often suck.

So how do you go on? How do you move forward from that thing that throws the monkey wrench into your happy little diet and fitness program?

1. Give Up Completely
There is a part of all of us that does this. For me it's the Pasta-with-Oil-and Garlic-Diet. You know what it is for you. Giving up can be a welcome release for a day or two, or even a week, but as a lifestyle I am pretty sure it won't work.

2. Create Peace--Even Artificial Peace
There is something to be said for getting back on track by creating a situation of peace. In my world it is hard to think past the barking, so every once in a while I have to create peace. Peace can look like a latte and a good book in a half hour trip to Starbucks (Nonfat short latte, 100 calories). Or, if you really need to bring out the big guns and you have the wherewithal, a short "spa vacation" can do wonders. A spa vacation doesn't have to look like Housewives of Orange County. Relaxation and renewal can be walking on the beach and resting in a moderate hotel, or walking in your own neighborhood and a good, uninterrupted nap. The point is, when you are hurting, when you have fallen and you can't get up, treat yourself as someone you should healthfully baby for a time; don't take a baseball bat and try to bludgeon yourself into improvement. Being angry at yourself for tripping up only adds anger to disappointment and guilt.

3. Remember Every Second is a Potential New Experience
Even if you have completely messed up, the next second can be the beginning of change. In my world up until recently I saw failure as something I had to emphasize for myself by continuing to screw up until I got that I was a failure. It's a sort of self-defeating thing I am great at and it can become a spiral of despair. But it doesn't have to. You can just start the next second with a different expectation of your personal reality. There is forgiveness in this. In order to move forward you have to forgive your failure.

4. Lower Your Expectations
This isn't a joke. Sometimes you have unrealistic expectations. Maybe drop the bar a bit. What happens if it takes a bit longer to get fit but you are happier during the process? What happens if you eat 1500 calories a day instead of 1200? What happens if you have a "free meal" once a week? I know! You end up happier and less stressed and less likely to fall down into some huge failure experience. It's okay to lower the bar. And it's okay to raise it. The key is your comfort and heck, even enjoyment. Life is supposed to be fun. Okay, it's supposed to be a lot of things, but if it isn't fun too, then something is missing.

5. Just Grow Up and Do What You Said You Would Do Before Your Regrets Multiply!
It is far easier to lose 20 pounds than 100. That being said, there is something to say for just pulling yourself up by your boot straps and doing what you said you would. Now of course there is a fine line between being a rational disciplined being and babying yourself into a corner of self pity. We are all looking for the path that works. The main thing to do is adjust until you have a comfy fit.

And momentum is a precious thing. Once you get yours back guard it carefully. Look for people and situations that support your goals. Look for motivation not criticism. Protect your fledgling positive attitude like a baby bird until it can fly again. Guard your positive energy. And remember you can get up--and you will. I wish you a lovely day, a renewed sense of what works, a hot latte and a hug.

Time to Wake the Hell Up.

Friends--

Please read and sign.

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/