What can ya say when you’ve been off the grid for a good four months! I just couldn’t let my birthday go by without a peep here. Yeah, after all that turning-40 hullabaloo last year, I nearly let 41 go by unmentioned. But really the silence speaks volumes. It’s been a significant year for me all around. I lost patience with the “not quite getting around” to the life I wanted. From August to January, I focused in on losing 30 lbs. I can’t tell you what a blessing it is to be able to walk for an hour without pain. I knew that I was stuck career-wise and until just recently was absolutely miserable despite significant efforts to find the right direction. Months ago, I placed the following poem on my online calendar as inspiration and it is finally sinking in:

I will not die an unlived life,
I will not live in fear
Of falling or catching fire,
I choose to inhabit my days
To allow my living to open me
To make me less afraid,
More accessible,
To loosen my heart
Until it becomes a wing,
A torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance: To live.
So that which comes to me as seed,
Goes to the next as blossom,
And that which comes to me as blossom,
Goes on as fruit.
~ Dawna Markova

I feel funny saying anything about winter here in Southern California, but it’s been kinda cold and dreary lately. Especially since the time change. I was doing really well on getting out for afternoon walks, but that was when it was still warm and sunny when I got home from work. Now it is overcast in the morning and dark when I get home. Getting out for a little sun and fresh air was part of my motivation for walking. Now I’m trying to get myself into a different frame of mind because I’m not getting as much walking in. Meanwhile on the YOU: Staying Young special, it was suggested to take cod liver oil as a good source of vitamin D. I decided that I would try it since I’m not getting as much sun right now. It’s day two. I had it once on my salad and once mixed with vegetable juice.

In a moment of synchronicity, I turned on the television to find the Oprah Winfrey show with Dr. Oz of the YOU books on it. I haven’t watched Oprah in ages, but I was curious to hear about the new YOU book. I love their diet and exercise approach to wellness and it was amazing to see the dramatic improvements to the participants’ health. It was in the final 10 minutes of the show that it happened… a woman suffering from Fibromyalgia said she was out of pain for the first time in 7 years. Dr. Oz announced that while the medical community used to not admit they exist, Fibromyalgia and CFS are do exist and they now have solutions.

“I hope a lot of the audience members’ eyes [are open] now to a problem that afflicts 8 million Americans,” Dr. Oz says. “You don’t have to live with that agony.”

If that wasn’t enough, Dr. Oz said that Dr. Teitelbaum who specializes in Fibromyalgia opened his eyes. This was amazing to me because it was reading Dr. Teitelbaum’s book From Fatigued to Fantastic that led to the second significant sea change in my health. (My introduction to Hellerwork created the first.) I was also reading Fibromyalgia & Muscle Pain: Your Self-Treatment Guide by Leon Chaitow N.D., D.O. Both books helped me to put together a treatment plan that helped me pull myself out of the last major downturn into being in the best health I’ve been in over 10 years and returning to a normal life. I’m still working hard to continue to improve and keep any major downturns at bay.

Walking home from my Pilates session today, I was thinking about my success with losing weight. Fifteen pounds may be the most I’ve ever lost. I can remember losing 10 lbs a few times with great effort and sacrifice and then feeling stalled, discouraged and having a hard time keeping up what I was doing (then of course I gained them back plus more). This time I’m putting in some effort but it feels more relaxed and rather than keeping up extreme diet habits, I’m building ones that I plan to keep on an ongoing basis. For instance, I have yogurt with my breakfast now and for an afternoon snack, I have an apple and a low-fat cheese stick. I have always enjoyed eating apples and yogurt, but instead of eating them randomly I now have a sense of where they best fit in during my day. I’ve also focused a great deal on exercising before with frustratingly little impact – sometimes I did two Spinning classes a day!

Now I’m doing lots of small things – diet, relaxation, exercise – and together they are having a big impact. It reminded me of the quote I have had on my email signature lately:

“Perhaps what we are called to do may not seem like much, but the butterfly is a small creature to affect galaxies thousands of light years away.” ~ Madeleine L’Engle

Within the complex system of my own body, the small efforts I’m making are like the butterflies whose movements can create big waves of change.

My voice hasn’t been present here for a few reasons, one being the sudden and wretched loss of my computer. I still await its return and use a feeble hobbling old computer for limited online activity.

To tell you another reason involves reluctantly revealing the fact that I am on a diet. Yes, for me, a dreaded reality because I have tried to avoid succumbing to behaviors that I do not think are healthy – such as focusing on deprivation and being skinny. I have spent years now trying to undo the mind-warping concepts of women’s beauty in our culture and trying to accept myself unconditionally. The inner critic given the opportunity will try to drown out all semblances of self-acceptance. I have tried to focus on building healthy habits in terms of exercise, eating and stress-management. To some degree it feels like a failure to be “on a diet.”

However, being overweight developed from 10 plus years of health problems and injuries. Once you end up on that road it becomes a downward cycle, especially when you have a hard time getting the proper diagnoses and treatment. Then just as I reached a certain level of wellness and tried to get back to actively exercising, I developed a chronic foot injury after which my weight gain doubled. There was tons of stress which also helps you to store fat and ironically more fat produces more stress hormones so on it goes. When I was on vacation, the extra walking and standing aggravated my foot injury. With my return to work and school, I realized that adequate focus on healthy cooking wasn’t realistic. In order to be able to increase my exercise, I would need to make some significant progress on getting my weight back down to normal.

Years ago I read about the low-glycemic approach of Nutrisystem and thought that if I did decide to diet again, I would give it a try. So that’s what I’m doing. So far so good. I’ve set a conservative weight-loss goal because as I get closer to my normal weight I would like to transition to focusing on basic healthy living and enjoying being more active. One thing I like about Nutrisystem is that it is not about counting or deprivation. It also focuses on the types of eating habits that I prefer like eating whole grains and more protein. It just organizes it all for me and makes it easy. I know that as time goes on the unhealthy cycle with reverse, I will be able to exercise more, my stress levels will go down, and I will have more energy. Maintaining a healthy weight will be easier and I will have less chronic pain – perhaps even rare or none!

Ironically, the diet is relatively easy for me. I’m not someone who likes to think about food a lot or gets a lot of cravings. (I know people assume you are like that when you are overweight.) Because of my health problems and limited physical activity, my body just ended up turning into a fat-storing machine. I can feel the difference already and yes, I’m losing weight. Just don’t expect regular reports of how much I have lost. I’m doing enough of that on the Nutrisystem forums. And it is not about how much I weigh, but how healthy I feel. My soul wants to dance and be well.