YOLO!

On Friday, I thought I was having a moment when I was quite contentedly walking around Sedona, Arizona, and climbing up a hill to explore the church that Lloyd Wright built right into the red rocks. The view from the top of the church was breathtaking and the crimson of the rocks made me feel as though they were pulsating with life. Everything was alive (despite what you may think of the desert) including me. I wasn't bouncing around in Spin class or trudging my way through a run that day, but I could feel their lasting effects on me, physically. But this wasn't my moment, not even when I was inside the sacred, albeit small, space of the church itself with its tall windows overlooking Sedona. I didn't even have a moment when I went running the next morning on one of the four machines at the hotel in Fountain Hills (although going for a run at all, let alone on vacation, is a miracle in itself).


My moment came, not surprisingly, on the dance floor at my Aunt Judy and Uncle John's 50th Anniversary party. I have no idea what song my cousin Tom was playing, but it was good and it was fast. Beriah (brother-in-law. I usually omit the in-law, though), Kim (sister), Hank (cousin), and I had been dancing in a cluster together when my Uncle John twisted in with us. And then a few minutes later I was bouncing my hip against my Aunt Judy (we kept a pretty fantastic beat if I dare say so). It was one of those mental polaroid moments that you just keep with you for times when you need to think of something, anything that will make you happy again.

In that moment with my family, I came to a kind of understanding about something that's bugged me for years. Whenever I turn on TV specials about men or women that weigh half a ton (and I don't watch these shows much) I am struck by how often I hear the same thing: I don't know how I let things get out of control/this bad. I am grateful to God that I have never gone past 250. I'm not celebrating this fact, mind you; I'm pretty sure that when you're 5'2 there's only so much weight your frame can take before your rolls just start spilling over. I wasn't yet in spill over mode, but all the back fat was starting to make me look like Heimlich from A Bug's Life. Because losing weight has been so difficult and paaaainfully slow, I have a tremendous amount of respect and awe for anyone who has been able to lose 100 lbs or more. But getting back to the question of wondering how, how do we let our physical health slip through our fingers and lose control of the one thing that is truly our own: our bodies.

Based upon my own life experience in conjunction with what I felt on that dance floor with my family, my answer is (not simply) this:We take our lives for granted (the we is intentional).

Because I woke up, drew breath, and saw that the sun rose again, I live indulgently in the comfort and ease of knowing that this will happen again and again. Right now it's today and there will always be another tomorrow for me to atone. Except that when my life became one big today, with plenty of holidays and weekends to enjoy before seriously thinking about my health, that's when I gained these 120 lbs of reminders that what I do today does matter. One of the most annoying/amusing things that my youth group teens will shout out occasionally is "YOLO!" YOLO=You Only Live Once. Unfortunately, for their generation this usually translates to: Make Stupid Decisions Now Based On Your Sporadic Emotions And Heightened Hormones That You Will Come To Regret Later. That acronym doesn't fit well on the butt cheeks of beach shorts, though. For my generation it means don't give a crap about what you're doing to your body because we're all gonna die anyway so you may as well enjoy yourself. Except that enjoying yourself shouldn't be the only dominating behavior; it should be in harmony with responsibility and self-control. I lived 27 years with very little care or concern towards my long-term health. I made myself morbidly obese (by medical definition) because I always assumed that at some point I would buckle down and magically regain model health.

And now I'm buckling down and it's so. freaking. hard, even at my age. My friend recently asked me how she should advise her daughter to change her unhealthy habits. My first thought was "I am definitely not in a place to give health advice. I am a long ways away from being truly healthy myself". My second thought was one of regret. If I could go back to age 12 and change, I would. I wish that I had started earlier so as to avoid having to undo so much damage. But everyone has to come to these conclusions for themselves and in their own time. I could give this girl stats and personal testimony until my lips went numb but it truly is her decision. I only hope that she doesn't wait as long as I did.

That said, I cannot fixate on all the regretful behaviors that have led to the 120 lbs. If I fixate, without making any proactive changes, I will only continue to wave off my health with "Once I get past this _____, I'll have time to ______, and then I'll be able to concentrate on losing weight". It doesn't happen this way. Something had to really slam me onto the bathroom floor so that I could find the strength to change. And then I had to shimmy my hips with my Aunt Judy and Uncle John on another floor in order to understand just how precious and meaningful life can be. It is true that you only live once and after my weekend in Arizona, I hope that my life resembles that of my aunt and uncle's. I hope that I continue to be surrounded by loved ones, that I will take advantage of my travels, and that I show others the same kind of love and compassion that I have been shown. But I cannot live up to this kind of potential if I do not first work on me.

So if you, too, are struggling as I am, and you do want to change here's what I'd recommend first: a change of attitude. I do believe that at least half (if not more) of exercising/eating well is about your mind over your matter (or mass in my case). As I've said before, if I just focused solely on the big number in my mind and on the scale, I would (and have) failed before I even started. I have had to condition myself to treat each day as a gift (not a right) and each gym class or meal as an opportunity for improvement. Even if that means telling myself over and over that I will be the kind of person who will run, Spin, dance, HIIT, pilox, yoga for fun (HIIT will take more convincing). I go into my classes with a good attitude and try to smile as much as I can, even if it's through clenched teeth. For me, though, it's hard not to have a good time when you've got awesome classmates and instructors. But the main thing is developing a positive attitude towards eating well and exercising regularly, even if it means smiling through clenched teeth.

My Zumba instructor, Chrissy, is sort of amazing at noticing the small details about the people in her classes. In Spin class, she will angle her head or hop off the bike so as to better gauge how many people are "cheating" or lowering the resistance on the bikes (in my defense, I rarely cheat and then it's only out of sheer self-preservation). In Zumba class, she knows when people aren't really dancing and having a good time, but just going through the motions. When this happens, she will occasionally turn down the music and shout, "If you don't want to be here, there's the door!" And I think that this one sentence sums it all up. You either want to be healthy or you don't. You are either in it with your whole being, or you are not. But I've played that middlish ground where I'd go through the motions of saying how badly I'd want to lose weight and then...French fries would happen, or birthday parties, Christmas, etc. You are either happy being a big girl/boy (and as I said in my first post, there are happy big girls/boys, I'm just not one of them) or you are not. If you don't want to change, then stop complaining and be content with your choice. If  you aren't happy, then be prepared to change. I just got to the point where I was tired of seeing myself to the door.


I want to be here.