The Physical Heart

Wow. It's been a while since I've been here. I started this blog for one reason only and that was to document my day-to-day to see if I could succeed in finally turning my life around. This blog would hold me accountable.

Well, let's see if this time I can stick to it. I am a reactive hypoglycemic. What that means is that I cannot afford the luxury of missing a meal or eating what I want. I generally do not miss a meal (even though so many times I want to!), but many times I eat what I'm not supposed to. My addiction to sugar is proving harder to overcome than anything else.

The blog is called The Physical Heart because it is the heart that I am most concerned about and need to take care of the most. I have a rare heart condition that warrants I maintain a certain weight for it to work properly and not lead me to an emergency room some years down the road. I just had my cardiology appointment this past week and my current weight is 170. The cardiologist would like me to be at 150 though he said that the weight I really should be at because of the heart condition is 130. I am 5 foot 5 and a half. At 150 I look thin. At 130 I think I may look too gaunt but who am I to argue. He is giving me three months to lose 20 pounds. I am going to go for the whole banana and lose the 40.

I know this doesn't sound like much to many of you but when you're coming from a place of a high-risk health problem, 40 lbs., even 20 lbs. is big. So....

I am 52 years old. The years are creeping up and with it the usual amalgam of health-related problems that comes with aging. Do I want to find myself under the operating knife anytime soon? No. Do I want to gradually decrease my quality of life because of my addiction to food? Of course not. But I'll be honest, sometimes that piece of milk chocolate or glass of soda with chips tastes so divine. And that's how it all starts. I had lost the 20 lbs. last year, but then layoffs happened at work and the stress of the job multiplied. I would come home exhausted and have no desire to cook. So I would pick up fast food on the way home and that was dinner. The stress of the job sometimes led me to munch on chips and soda or chocolate in mid-afternoon as a little pick-me up. Little by little the pounds crept back up again and again I find myself in the same boat.

I cannot afford this kind of lifestyle anymore. I cannot afford the negligence to health. I am an intelligent woman and know what I have to do, yet.....

Yet we try again because that is what we do. We keep trying until it becomes habit and I hope in 2011 it will finally be habit. I will find my way there by way of reading and learning and visiting other blogs and reading of the experiences and failures of others in the same situation so in that I learn. So that I will finally learn.

This is the year of finally getting it together. This is the year where I will begin to deconstruct what is going on upstairs that is preventing me from doing what I need to do. I will learn. I will lose. And I will keep it off....