Promises, Promises

 

Every year begins with a slew of resolutions for many people. People load up on more resolutions than they can possibly keep track of, and they’re usually just vague enough to guarantee failure by February.

Lose weight. Give up smoking. Be nicer. Exercise more.

However, those are not goals; they’re headings.

Lose weight? How much weight? What’s your strategy? What’s your time frame? Is it a sensible amount that you can reasonably expect to lose?

Give up smoking. I’m told this one is quite difficult. I don’t know since I’ve never been a smoker. Still, how to go about it? Use a non-smoking patch? Go cold turkey? Gradually decrease the amount you smoke until you’ve reached zero? Again, what’s the strategy, and is it reasonable?

What does “be nicer” mean? Nicer than what? How are you going to achieve it? How will you know when you’ve arrived?

I grew up in a time that, to quote George H.W. Bush, was a kinder, gentler time, even though we had global fears: Someone else dropping the bomb, the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War. But children showed respect to their elders (or else), and were not catered to as if they were in charge. “Please” and “Thank you” were expectations, not requests. People were not seen in public in pyjamas. People held doors routinely for others.

Some people still adhere to these rules, but they appear to come as more of a surprise in a world where a large portion of the population rarely looks up from their phones.

Exercising more is easy to put into a routine. How many times a week, how long each session, and precisely what exercise will be done?  It can be as simple as taking a break every 20 minutes or so from work at the computer to stretch and walk across the room and back to start, or walking around the block. Or, it can involve a gym membership or working out with weights.

With our electronic gadgetry, many people already insist on a certain number of steps in a day. Personally, I look at mileage instead. I have a goal of 2 miles a day as a minimum, although some days that doesn’t happen.

The problem appears when the resolution remains too vague or the individual is too gung-ho to begin with and takes on too much. Jumping into weight training with too heavy a weight can lead to sore muscles or even injuries, and that, in turn, leads to slacking until the pain subsides. Sometimes, even after the muscles stop hurting, the exercise program is forgotten.  Gym memberships are at a peak in January, but gyms are far emptier by the middle of February, even when snow isn’t a factor.

Overcoming procrastination is the biggest obstacle to success where New Year’s resolutions are concerned.

I’m in the “lose weight” category. My strategy is that I have a fixed amount I wish to lose. I know approximately how much I generally lose per week when I’m trying, and I have figured out when I expect to reach the goal weight. Of course, I’ve always been plagued by plateaus, so I still have to figure out how to make weight loss work for me when I hit a plateau.

One thing I absolutely will not be doing is using the highly popular diabetes medications currently being touted as weight loss drugs. I am not diabetic, and I prefer the “less is more” attitude about weight loss. I don’t want to have to rely on a drug for the rest of my life to maintain weight loss. I don’t want to treat myself for a disease I don’t have.

Granted, some people can only achieve weight loss that way, but I’ve demonstrated in the past that I am able to lose weight with a proper eating plan and no drugs. I’m not putting anyone down for using them. They’re just not for me.

I also have reasons for wanting to lose weight, and being the hottest-looking senior on the beach is not one of them. Besides, that’s not even an achievable goal for me. Instead, I want to reach a point where I won’t have to take medications I’m currently prescribed, and I’m also trying to keep from developing type 2 diabetes. So, the eating program is of key importance in my weight loss journey. It’s part of an overall health improvement goal.

My second goal is related.  I want to become more consistent with my exercise routine, both number of times per week that I go to the gym and types of exercises I do. I need to add exercises to improve my postural muscle function, balance, and flexibility. I’ve been thinking about adding tai chi to what I already do, but I need to find out more about it. I already have a variety of exercises I plan to use.

I have also decided to learn French. I know, Irish and Welsh aren’t enough? But I can’t find classes in either of those, and the programs, either online or in apps don’t meet my needs as far as learning strategies go. For example, I completed the Rosetta Stone program in Welsh (which has been discontinued) and still can’t speak the language beyond a few phrases. Our local high school’s evening adult program offers the basic foreign languages (Spanish, French, German, Italian, and now Chinese) in classes over three levels and two conversation classes. With instruction, I stand a better chance of learning. I know how I best learn a foreign language. This will involve more than a year, but resolutions don’t have to end with the New Year’s Eve party.

I think three is the absolute maximum – for me, at least – number of resolutions. More than that, and the whole idea of turning over a new leaf turns into planting an entire tree (i.e. overwhelming and unachievable).

I’ll check back in next year to report on whether or not I’ve succeeded in following my own advice.

The Trouble with Change

Change is hard. Sometimes remaining the same is harder.

People tend to use things like the new year or a new month – or even Monday – to make a change, be it start a diet, an exercise program, be a nicer person, or whatever. Usually they bite off more than they can chew – losing weight, quitting smoking and starting Alcoholics Anonymous, for example – all at once.

Often, the goal is something vague, like getting into shape. Come on, round is a shape!

But what does getting into shape mean? Is there a weight number attached, a clothing size, a number of bench presses?

And why do we humans tend to want to start at the beginning of a year, which is usually when resolutions are put into place?

New Year’s Day, people, is a holiday in most places. That means the intention is usually pushed off until the second.

New Year’s Day is for sleeping in, not exercising. It’s for getting over the hangover for some. It’s a stay in your jammies and fuzzy bunny slippers kind of day. And besides, there are probably still potato chips and dip left. It would be a waste to just throw that out, wouldn’t it?

I am, I admit, one of those people. Yes, I love my onion dip, even without the chips. I might let a few veggies hang around until they wilt, but let potato chips get stale? Never!

I have, for years, wanted to lose weight. I’ve even managed a bit of it at times, but I’ve never been back, even for a visit, to what I considered my best weight.

I get partway there, and something always happens to knock me off the good eating habits.

You would think, that having been bullied because of my weight as a child – my mother insisted I wasn’t fat I was just taller than my peers, which is why she bought me the next size up and hemmed the trousers – that I’d be more conscious of any weight gain.

My mother never bought me chubby sized clothes because I “wasn’t fat,” but she also never discouraged me from having cookies as a bed-time snack, or candy as an after-school snack.

My mother used to watch a half-hour TV program called, “Exercise with Gloria,” in which said hostess, in the 1960s version of exercise outfits would lead the way with sit-ups, toe-touches, side bends and other gym-class-type exercises (ladies did not use weights in those days!). My mother would encourage me to join her in these floor exercises when the show was on and I wasn’t in school. The fact that I could easily do all of the exercises simply proved to her that I was not overweight.

Still, my peers, in part urged on by not-so-well-meaning parents told me I couldn’t play on certain toys in their back yards because I weighed too much. It should be noted that I was a year or so older than most of the kids I played with because there were no girls my actual age closer than 4 or 5 blocks away, and I wasn’t allowed to play with the boys.

So, when I graduated from college and managed to lose weight and get into a program at the up-and-coming gym, I was suddenly able to wear the types of clothes I’d never fit into before.

Other things changed in my life, as well – like getting asked out, and actually having a boyfriend for more than one date, although never for as long as a year until I met my now-husband.

I managed to maintain what I considered a decent weight – my mother thought I was too thin, but the weight/height guides had me pretty much where I should be – for about 10 years, despite my mother’s attempts to sabotage my weight maintenance whenever she could.

Then I turned 32, a stressful time in my life, when I returned to university to get a degree that would actually allow me to have a decently-paying job. I tried valiantly to study and keep up my exercise program, eating as I had been doing since the weight loss at 22.

But my weight climbed, for no reason I – or my doctor – could find, despite my best efforts. I gained 30 pounds in about 6 months despite anything I tried to keep it from happening.

It’s been an uphill battle ever since, to not only lose weight, but also to keep weight from going ever higher. It’s been a battle I’ve lost many times.

I was the thinnest bridesmaid in a friend’s wedding in my twenties. By my own wedding at the end of my 30s, I was a pudge.

Still, I soldier on, each new year determined that this will be the year.

But New Year’s Day, as I’ve said, is left-over chips and dip day. One more for Old Lang Syne. And January second is a dismal failure, even if it occurs on a Monday.

But hey, whoever said you couldn’t start something on, say, Wednesday? In February.

Lent. Yes, there’s the ticket. A time of sacrifice. Sacrifice those chips and dip. Six weeks, at the end of which is usually my birthday. Let’s see. Two pounds a week times six. Twelve pounds. Goal set.

Sounds like a great plan.

I cannot tell you how many people must plot to undo my best laid plans.

There’s the person who shares my treatment room, who likes to also share whatever snacks are in the faculty lunch room. I tend to avoid the faculty lunch room because of those snacks.

Then there are the monthly – or more often – staff meetings of the OTs and PTs I work with. And people tend to bring a variety of junk food to those meetings to share.

I have asked, begged, that they not bring things like that to share. How about veggies or fruit? No.

If it’s fruit, it’s chocolate covered strawberries.  And what good are veggies without dip? Or I’m told that crackers and cheese are “healthy” snacks.

Sure, you’re thinking, Well, just don’t eat any of it.

Have I mentioned how much I like things like crackers and cheese?

I have tried. I’ve even tried bringing my own piece of fruit to eat.

And sometimes I get almost to the end of the meeting before someone passes me something, and well, just one little piece…

I’ve told people that bringing snacks to a meeting I’m required to attend is the same as having an AA meeting at a bar.

I’ve thought of wearing a sign that says, “Please don’t feed the OT,” but people think I’m just a little over the top about things anyway.

I know the way I eat is not good for my health. If I could only convince myself that I am not allowed to eat these things, I could perhaps convince others to question me anytime I start to put any of the “forbidden fruit” – or more accurately, the “forbidden junk food” – into my mouth.

I’m not sure that would work, though.

Well-meaning friends seem to feel a great need to share food. And one of the other therapists made a big deal of going on one of the many advertised weight loss programs one year. She did lose some weight, but had not reached her stated goal when I saw her eating a couple of doughnuts during our end-of-year filing sessions that we do each June.

I didn’t want to make a big deal of it and embarrass her by saying something, but I did mention it to one of the other therapists. She laughed and said, “You didn’t actually think she was dieting, did you?”

So, my colleagues aren’t the ones who will necessarily help me with a word or two about how I’m supposed to be dieting.

I guess I’ll just have to surround myself with photos of myself that should go on the fridge to keep me out of it, and that one really great one at my friend’s wedding.

It could work.

Even if the diet starts on a Wednesday.