My body, my identity

I don't make New Year's resolutions, much less keep them. Well, once I did both. At the close of 2016, I resolved that, in 2017, I would learn to walk again. In recent days, when my FitBit counts my steps and documents my exercise, it's hard for me to fathom that, two years ago at this time, I was crippled. Every step hurt. Even walking from the bed to the bathroom in our hotel room; even taking a shower; even getting into the passenger seat of our rental car in Phoenix -- everything was effort and agony. Now, I'm looking toward another New Year. And I'm approaching it not with a resolution, but with a watchword. Three words, actually: "Because I Can." I swear, I thought of these words, and chose them for 2019, long before I saw (while watching "Beach Life" on HGTV on the gym's stationary recumbent bike) a commercial for the new Diet Coke campaign. Hey! They stole my slogan: "Because I Can." And as much as I like Diet Coke (th...

My husband Jay and I share a deeply-held wish, that this Christmas, and however many more Christmases we may have, may be transcendent. By "transcendent," we mean we seek a deeper connection with the awe-filled mystery of a Creator who is so much greater than ourselves, yet who knows what it means to inhabit a body of flesh, blood, nerves and bone. We seek to know better the First Cause, who set stars light-years apart in a universe more vast than we can fathom, yet who knows the number of hairs on the bodies of every creature the Creator made and loved. We crave paradox. We seek mystery. And miraculously, at times, we find it in ordinary life. Let me name the ways I have experienced transcendency in this holy Advent season. By participating in my church's Advent focus on eradicating hunger, I have food-shopped for struggling families and bought them foods that are more healthful and wholesome than many so-called "poverty foods" -- foods like apple sa...

Our church's Advent meditations on hunger will inevitably turn toward the topic of gluttony. I hope the discussion of this deadly sin includes more depth and nuance than simply asserting that some people starve because other people eat too much. And I hope it's clear that not all overweight people are gluttons, and not all gluttons are fat. If all that were true, then I would have, in my many years of living with extra weight, have been singularly responsible for the starvation of people who could have consumed all my excess calories, if only I'd said "no, thank you" to them. That kind of guilt-focused thinking doesn't feed the hungry, and it rarely changes behavior. Nor does it address the perception that is a day-to-day reality for the majority of people in this nation who carry excess weight. Large people tend to be perceived, even by health-care professionals who should know better, as waddling, indulgent, undisciplined images of their own greed and g...

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...