My body, my identity

The church where Jay and I belong is focusing its Advent observance on hunger. Our "tree" is made of cans of vegetables for the church's food pantry. Our "Advent calendar" at home is a cardboard box, into which I will insert one non-perishable food donation per day, until the congregation members bring the boxes to Christmas Eve worship and lay them at the foot of the manger. I applaud the idea. And, for the most part, I applaud the spiritual exercises that Pastor Dean has suggested -- including writing a letter to a politician to advocate for the hungry, and writing a letter of thanks to a farmer. (My letter will go to the Arlington Agricultural Research Station, where University of Wisconsin researchers continue to seek sustainable methods to feed the 9 billion people that will occupy our planet, maybe in my lifetime.) But there's an angle that's been overlooked -- the connection between poverty and obesity. In Pastor Dean's sermon, he cautione...

Any "West Wing" fans out there? How about lawyers or law students? Or readers of the witty, vintage  Max Shulman short story, "Love is a Fallacy"? If you're one, two or all of these, then you know the meaning of "post hoc, ergo propter hoc." It translates, from Latin, as "after it, therefore because of it." As the erudite President Bartlet points out in the second episode of "West Wing," it's almost never true. In "Love is a Fallacy" (Quentin Kirk read it to our seventh-grade English class almost a half-century ago), the lead character, an arrogant law student, tries to teach his spacey girlfriend about critical thinking, and illustrates "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" with this example: "Let's not take Bill out on our picnic. Every time we do, it rains." The air-headed Polly, of course, misses the point entirely when she gushes about a girl she knows who ruins picnics by making it rain every ...

A poem, before my swim and surgical consult. Nov. 21, 2017 This is what physical fitness looks like. It has saddle-bags and side-boobs. Its BMI Is just shy Of obese. The gait doesn't glide. It might rely on crutches. Velcro-fastened SAS "nun shoes," Water socks and flippers Hide bunions and hammer-toes. And yes, Those are dark eye circles. That is a turkey neck. But this not-yet-surgically-altered  body can Swim 1,100 yards Bike 8.75 miles Conquer Fruitdale in 19 minutes and 25 seconds Lug a camera inside torn-up courthouses And shed 83 pounds without ease in standing or walking. This is what physical fitness looks like.

The recommended daily calorie consumption is 2,000. The typical Thanksgiving dinner has more than twice that -- about 4,300 calories, or so I once read. So what am I cooking, and what are we eating, at our Thanksgiving table? Well, the entree will be the same as last Thanksgiving, and every Thanksgiving of my life. It's turkey, of course. Turkey breast is one of the leanest, healthiest meats there is. But what I did last Thanksgiving, and what I'm doing this Thanksgiving, is a variation on the traditional oven-roasted bird. I'll be marinating turkey breast cutlets in a marinade whose principal ingredients are three citrus juices -- orange, lemon and lime -- then grilling the cutlets on my trusty George Foreman grill. Appetizers? I haven't decided yet. I'd like to get a raw veggie tray for myself, but Jay won't eat it. He might eat a few raw shrimp. So maybe shrimp cocktail. Shrimp, without all the breading and with just a touch of sauce, is low in calories...

I'm not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. So I'm in no position to say whether being overweight is the product of addiction. I can say, however, that many of the realities of my attaining a so-called ideal weight are similar, if not identical, to the realities faced by people attempting to recover from addictions like opioid drugs, cocaine, nicotine and alcohol. These are the realities: I can never return to my old eating habits, if I am to have any hope of maintaining my weight at the level where it is now. No more Papa Murphy's take-and-bake pizzas for supper. No more eating a whole pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream at one sitting. No more Vermont-style mac and cheese. No more Lion's Tap burgers when I'm in Eden Prairie, certainly not with fries. Maintaining my weight has to be my priority, always. I can never consider anything more important than that -- not avoiding insulting my hostess when she offers copious servings of fattening fare, not a craving...

One of the things I've come to realize -- and I hope I keep realizing it for the rest of my life -- is that I can never go back to eating many of the foods I used to love, certainly not in the quantities in which I used to eat them. But as a busy, commuting professional, one who doesn't always remember to bring to work a frozen, low-calorie "steamer" meal for the microwave, fast food is just a reality. And I do have some choices that won't make me outgrow my bikini, or require me to put in an extra hour on the gym bike. (Whoopee -- two episodes of "Property Brothers" on HGTV.) Thank God I am not sick of Subway. In fact, I crave it, still. Whether I get a 6-inch roast beef, turkey breast or oven-roasted chicken, on sunflower crunch or 9-grain wheat, the veggie choices are the same -- onions, green peppers and a few jalapenos. And if I go to the Subway in DeForest, Wisconsin, on my way to or from work, there are zero-calorie beverage choices without c...

There's a quip I'm making so often these days, it's becoming a cliche: If this is my so-called ideal weight, then why do I have to work so hard to keep it? Now a corollary has presented itself. Why does attaining and maintaining a so-called ideal weight cost so much? I've talked here at some length about the cost, in time, of holding onto health -- how hard it can be for a busy working woman to squeeze in not only a swim or gym session, but also the time to change clothes, shower and take care of other pre- and post-workout tasks. I've had the luxury, however, of not thinking too much about the monetary costs -- costs that are prohibitive to too many of my friends who want to eat well and exercise, but can't afford to. I have great health insurance; that's how I was able to have the physical therapy that put me on this life-changing path. Not long after I finished PT, the people at the pool lowered the monthly cost for pool access from $50 to $35. But ...