Mind on Other Things

It's been two days now that I've been eating "clean" and trying to add in more regular exercise.

Two days.

Like a kid in the backseat, all I can do is whine "Are we theeeerreeee yet?"

Sigh. No.

But I have stuck to my austerity plan for two whole days! That's two days I didn't have before. The plan is my usual eating habits, but a more veggie-filled lunch, and a smaller-portioned dinner. The hardest part is the last part -- I always have trouble controlling that evening meal.

I have to pull myself back to the here and now almost continuously. My mind keeps racing ahead -- six months, eight months, asking, will I be where I want to be then? It's a real effort to wrench myself back and ask, "are you where you want to be now?" Never hurts to reiterate that arriving at the magical "there" place depends utterly and entirely on what I'm doing now.

In my mind I have a picture: we visit my family again in March, and I am fit and light enough to go kayaking with my dad. I didn't go over Christmas because I was secretly sure that I would sink the kayak. Can I really get to the point where those fears will be banished forever? I want to believe it -- but I can't quite convince myself.

I want to get down to my almost lightest adult weight ever -- it's where I was this spring, about 20 pounds ago. Then maybe I can be brave enough to take the next step. I got a boost tonight when I worked up the courage to put on my skinny jeans -- which I half suspected would no longer fit me at all. They still fit -- and almost exactly the same as before Christmas.

There's no rational explanation for this. I definitely gained some weight over the holidays. Maybe the rush of skiing and ice skating while the nephew was here helped burn some extra pounds. Either way, I'm sure if I didn't start my austerity program, those jeans would be popping within a week.

My apologies for this rather flat post. I wanted to put something up, but my heart is elsewhere tonight. I'm thinking of a young woman I know -- someone I once worked with -- who has been putting up a very brave fight against breast cancer for over three years. She was 33 when diagnosed, and went through a radical mastectomy, hysterectomy, chemo, multiple procedures and more... only to be told last year that the cancer she thought was eradicated had returned. We were not close friends, but after she moved back to her parents for health care reasons we kept in touch via Facebook and through her blog, which is hysterically funny even though it deals with the raw reality of her fight with cancer.

I've just gotten word that her latest treatments for the second bout were not particularly successful. She fell ill over the Christmas holidays. Yesterday her family put out a call for prayers for her -- she is in bed, in and out of consciousness.

I have been humbled by her spunk in recent years. I complain about having to get out of bed to go to the gym. She turns her chemo visits into fodder for a humorous blog that brought together cancer fighters and survivors from all over the world. I moan about pinched nerves in my feet. She made light of her double mastectomy with a tongue-in-cheek photo shoot and had the chutzpah to post her pics online.

I want her to be whole and well again. I want her to be at peace. Life can be damned unfair.