I'm a Luddite at heart. Although I've been a newspaper journalist and columnist all my adult life (plus a good-sized chunk of my adolescence), I'm inaugurating a blog to explore what happens to the soul of a 60-year-old woman when her body size undergoes a major change.
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimates that about 160 million U.S. people -- about three-quarters of the men and a little less than one-third of the women -- are overweight or obese. I was one of the overweight, and by some measures I still am and always will be. The health risks associated with excess weight are very real and numerous. Heart disease and diabetes come to mind first, but in my case, the extra weight I've carried for most of my adult life (plus a good-sized chunk of my adolescence) resulted in osteoarthritis -- the wearing-away of the cartilage in my left knee, resulting in significant pain and impairment of my mobility. About one of two adults will have osteoarthritis at some time in their lives.
Long story short: During a trip to Phoenix with my husband between Christmas 2016 and New Year's Day 2017, I could not walk without agony. My first night in Phoenix was spent in an ER, where my condition was diagnosed and I was discharged with a pair of crutches, a knee immobilizer and a narcotics prescription. For the rest of the week, I rarely left our hotel suite. Even movement within the rooms was an agonizing effort. Not long after I got home, my company's human resources director ordered me to take disability leave from my job as a community newspaper journalist, until my doctor confirmed I could walk well enough to do the basic tasks of my job, like walking around farms and fairgrounds with a notebook and a camera. I resisted the forced sabbatical, and so did my editor. But by the time it ended six weeks later, I was grateful for it -- because this is when I underwent what I now understand to be a conversion experience.
I don't know how it happened, or who made it happen, but I know where it started.
The protocol for treating my condition, according to my doctor, entailed trying physical therapy first. At my initial PT appointment, I inquired whether water therapy would be an option for me; I've always loved swimming. So I was prescribed two 30-minutes sessions per week, for three weeks, in the 94-degree water of a therapy pool. A physical therapy assistant stood on the deck and guided my aquatic exercises, including walking with various gaits, balancing, working my leg muscles with a buoyant resistance ring around my foot and an activity I came to call "Riding the Seahorse" -- straddling a pair of foam pool noodles and bicycling or cross-country skiing across the pool without touching bottom.
By the end of my guided therapy, and during months of continuing the regimen on my own, I noticed a change. My swimsuit started to get (pardon the expression) swimmy in what my therapist, Dan, called the "glutes" -- with no change in my eating habits. But even more profound was the shift in how I viewed myself, no longer as a lumpy, clumsy fat lady, but as a graceful, smart, insightful and joyful woman. Maybe it was the sheer joy and grace of moving in the water. Maybe it was the rapport that Dan and I discovered; we seemed to have a knack for bringing out the best and brightest in each other. Maybe it was the similarity I noticed, almost immediately, between the thought process of my water exercises and the experience of contemplative prayer. Maybe it was all those things, and more.
This much I know for sure: The change in my body followed the change in my soul. It was as though I began cultivating a leaner, fitter body to conform with the active, confident woman that I now saw myself to be.
In the next year, I would gradually change my eating habits. By choosing foods that are fuel and not just ballast, I wasn't so much counting calories as making calories count.
Maybe because I'm one of the lucky people who experience endorphin-induced euphoria, I began to enjoy moving my body -- first in the warm-water pool, then in the lap lanes of the "big pool," and later in the gym, mainly on a recumbent stationary bike.
In a year, I dropped almost 100 pounds.
The weight loss didn't alleviate my knee pain, but it sure helped my recovery from the knee replacement surgery I underwent late this winter.
As I write today, my total weight loss is about 120 pounds. (Yes, I continued to lose weight during my recuperation from surgery, when my activity was curtailed considerably -- and I wasn't allowed in the water until my incision healed.)
What happened to my body followed, and stemmed from, the unbidden and unexpected sea-change in how I saw myself. I didn't "get skinny" and then learn to like myself. I liked myself FIRST. Getting skinny -- well, skinnier, anyway -- followed.
That's why I titled my blog "My body, my identity." And that's what I hope to explore here.
I will talk, I'm sure, about my eating habits and my exercise regimen. But I would caution against looking to me for "the secret to weight loss." For one thing, I'm not a health care professional, and what I did, and what worked for me, may not be right for your health or effective for you. I would urge people who seek to change their body sizes to consult a physician, a physical therapist, a registered dietitian or all of the above -- preferably in a clinical setting and not through a weight-loss program or fitness-center regimen, because there are a lot of fads in nutrition and exercise that are unhealthy and even dangerous.
But what I most want to explore -- for myself as much as for any readers I might attract -- is the relationship between body size and psychological, spiritual identity.
Body weight, body type, body shape...none of these are solely physical phenomena. As you'll see in subsequent blog entries, this is something I really, really wish the Western medical establishment understood better. I expect I'll have a lot to say about my experience with medical professionals -- the few who "get it," and the many who don't.
My next entry won't be this long. Promise.
Now, let's see if this Luddite can figure out how to post this thing. Maybe I should ask for help from a Millennial...or a kid.
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimates that about 160 million U.S. people -- about three-quarters of the men and a little less than one-third of the women -- are overweight or obese. I was one of the overweight, and by some measures I still am and always will be. The health risks associated with excess weight are very real and numerous. Heart disease and diabetes come to mind first, but in my case, the extra weight I've carried for most of my adult life (plus a good-sized chunk of my adolescence) resulted in osteoarthritis -- the wearing-away of the cartilage in my left knee, resulting in significant pain and impairment of my mobility. About one of two adults will have osteoarthritis at some time in their lives.
Long story short: During a trip to Phoenix with my husband between Christmas 2016 and New Year's Day 2017, I could not walk without agony. My first night in Phoenix was spent in an ER, where my condition was diagnosed and I was discharged with a pair of crutches, a knee immobilizer and a narcotics prescription. For the rest of the week, I rarely left our hotel suite. Even movement within the rooms was an agonizing effort. Not long after I got home, my company's human resources director ordered me to take disability leave from my job as a community newspaper journalist, until my doctor confirmed I could walk well enough to do the basic tasks of my job, like walking around farms and fairgrounds with a notebook and a camera. I resisted the forced sabbatical, and so did my editor. But by the time it ended six weeks later, I was grateful for it -- because this is when I underwent what I now understand to be a conversion experience.
I don't know how it happened, or who made it happen, but I know where it started.
The protocol for treating my condition, according to my doctor, entailed trying physical therapy first. At my initial PT appointment, I inquired whether water therapy would be an option for me; I've always loved swimming. So I was prescribed two 30-minutes sessions per week, for three weeks, in the 94-degree water of a therapy pool. A physical therapy assistant stood on the deck and guided my aquatic exercises, including walking with various gaits, balancing, working my leg muscles with a buoyant resistance ring around my foot and an activity I came to call "Riding the Seahorse" -- straddling a pair of foam pool noodles and bicycling or cross-country skiing across the pool without touching bottom.
By the end of my guided therapy, and during months of continuing the regimen on my own, I noticed a change. My swimsuit started to get (pardon the expression) swimmy in what my therapist, Dan, called the "glutes" -- with no change in my eating habits. But even more profound was the shift in how I viewed myself, no longer as a lumpy, clumsy fat lady, but as a graceful, smart, insightful and joyful woman. Maybe it was the sheer joy and grace of moving in the water. Maybe it was the rapport that Dan and I discovered; we seemed to have a knack for bringing out the best and brightest in each other. Maybe it was the similarity I noticed, almost immediately, between the thought process of my water exercises and the experience of contemplative prayer. Maybe it was all those things, and more.
This much I know for sure: The change in my body followed the change in my soul. It was as though I began cultivating a leaner, fitter body to conform with the active, confident woman that I now saw myself to be.
In the next year, I would gradually change my eating habits. By choosing foods that are fuel and not just ballast, I wasn't so much counting calories as making calories count.
Maybe because I'm one of the lucky people who experience endorphin-induced euphoria, I began to enjoy moving my body -- first in the warm-water pool, then in the lap lanes of the "big pool," and later in the gym, mainly on a recumbent stationary bike.
In a year, I dropped almost 100 pounds.
The weight loss didn't alleviate my knee pain, but it sure helped my recovery from the knee replacement surgery I underwent late this winter.
As I write today, my total weight loss is about 120 pounds. (Yes, I continued to lose weight during my recuperation from surgery, when my activity was curtailed considerably -- and I wasn't allowed in the water until my incision healed.)
What happened to my body followed, and stemmed from, the unbidden and unexpected sea-change in how I saw myself. I didn't "get skinny" and then learn to like myself. I liked myself FIRST. Getting skinny -- well, skinnier, anyway -- followed.
That's why I titled my blog "My body, my identity." And that's what I hope to explore here.
I will talk, I'm sure, about my eating habits and my exercise regimen. But I would caution against looking to me for "the secret to weight loss." For one thing, I'm not a health care professional, and what I did, and what worked for me, may not be right for your health or effective for you. I would urge people who seek to change their body sizes to consult a physician, a physical therapist, a registered dietitian or all of the above -- preferably in a clinical setting and not through a weight-loss program or fitness-center regimen, because there are a lot of fads in nutrition and exercise that are unhealthy and even dangerous.
But what I most want to explore -- for myself as much as for any readers I might attract -- is the relationship between body size and psychological, spiritual identity.
Body weight, body type, body shape...none of these are solely physical phenomena. As you'll see in subsequent blog entries, this is something I really, really wish the Western medical establishment understood better. I expect I'll have a lot to say about my experience with medical professionals -- the few who "get it," and the many who don't.
My next entry won't be this long. Promise.
Now, let's see if this Luddite can figure out how to post this thing. Maybe I should ask for help from a Millennial...or a kid.
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