Resolution 2 Be Healthier

Resolution #2 – Be Healthier

The second in a series of commentaries on personal resolutions for the New Year

“Love more, be healthier, forgive generously,
exercise patience and last but most importantly
build a legacy of kindness.”
Rockingrama - 2006

So, how do I go about “being healthier”?  There are some obvious answers that have to do with the human struggle to stay fit.  Some of these are diet, exercise, good sleeping habits, safe behavior and keeping on top of your regular doctor’s appointments.  

It’s hard in these busy times to make time for yourself.  It’s even harder to take guilt free time to take care of your health and well being.  Women are especially guilty of putting off their needs under the guise of being far too occupied with the welfare of others.  We tend to think we will get to ourselves later, but the later becomes later and later and fades to never or hardly ever.  As a result, the problems we experience are often much more complicated than they would have been if we had just made and kept a promise to ourselves to be healthier by paying close attention to our bodies and our personal needs.

My mother died of cancer in 1986.  I am remembering this today partly because of the subject matter, but mostly because she’s been gone from our lives for 20 years now.  She was 56 when she died (I am 58 now) and she missed so many important things she should have had the opportunity to enjoy.  My children growing to adulthood, companionship with her adult children, opportunities to grow in her own life….gardens to grow, places to go, love to express, faith to nurture and confidences to share.  She has been dearly missed and I know she is bringing joy to heaven.

Mom was a smart, lively small framed woman who worked hard all of her life.  She was never overweight, but she was a smoker and loved her beer.  She loved to have a good time, loved to do for others, but always put her self last.  When her shoulder began to hurt her and wouldn’t let up in October of 1985, she finally relented to a doctor’s appointment, but it was too late.  Her cancer was inoperable and was metastasized to most of the organs in her body.  Everything possible was done for her, but nothing was enough at that late date.

I’m telling you about her death because I want to make the point of how important your well-being is to every plan you have in this life, including the plans you have for being here to do for others.  People in the advanced stages of ill health and those who have already passed on are not able to do any of the things that we use as excuses to put off our reasonable and necessary routine for wellness.  We are responsible for keeping our bodies as fit as possible and no one else can do it for us.

Confession time: I am especially sensitive to this because I’m as guilty as anyone in procrastinating about the obvious.  I am at this moment overdue for my dental cleaning, needing to make an annual appointment for a mammogram and annual check up and putting off a much needed visit to an Orthopedic Surgeon to schedule a left knee replacement (the right one was done in 2003).  My exercise routine (I’m laughing), goes to hell in a hand basket at the slightest disruption and my diet habits range from severe to chaotic to anything goes.  My weight has been out of control for years now and if I do not take strict and serious measure to control it, I will be on that sick or dead list we’ve been talking about.

Thinking seriously about all of this is only the first step.  I tried to diet last fall and took off 10 pounds, which had dwindled to 6 by the time we were through the holidays.  So I’m back not quite at square 1, but still at the beginning of a new way of thinking about food and lifestyle that will extend and enhance my opportunities to enjoy the rest of my life in good health.  

I think that in the end, good health is what it’s all about.  It’s not about being a size 5, 7 or 9 (even though that would be nice); it’s about enjoying all life has to offer and being able to participate fully.  While this may seem like settling for something less, I think that it’s really about finally growing up and realizing your place in life and what it will take to make you function in a way that is pleasing to yourself and to the people you love.  If your body is growing at a greater rate than your mind, you need to get busy building your mind and minimizing the things that are causing the weight. I have a diet journal that I share in a different section, so for now my thoughts on this are generalities.

So I have a plan for diet and exercise.  The plan includes partners.  My sister and my cousin, who find themselves in similar situations and are close to the same age, have agreed to collaborate with me on changing our nutrition habits this year.  We are all following diets that we feel to be healthy for our own needs and we are in touch once a week to discuss weight loss, gain, problems etc. so that we aren’t doing this alone.  I think it’s an important step and one that will lead to success.  These are people that I care about and who care about whether I’m around to enjoy life with them.  Their participation gives me a reason to take responsibility for the words I say and the food I eat.  

Exercise is a whole other bag of problems for me with bad knees and minimal motivation, but I do have a plan.  The plan is to walk 3x a week in the mornings and swim 2 to 3x a week on alternate days.  I have no excuse to put off either since we have a health facility right here in our community and plenty of walking trails.  If I can get in this habit, I’m hoping to add a 30 to 45 minute fitness routine to the swimming days.  Once a month has passed, I’ll let you know more about how this and the diet are going.

Sleep has been an ongoing problem for me for years.  I can’t pinpoint when I started sleeping so few hours, but I’m sure it was in the early eighties.  That’s a long time with sleep deprivation, so if you think I’m a little nuts when you read these blurbs, there may be substance in your assumption.  For the last few weeks, I’ve been following a strict guideline to get in bed whether I feel sleepy or not by midnight at the latest.  Although it’s not sequential, I think I’m getting about 5 or 6 hours of sleep now.  I try to stay in bed until 8 so that I’m resting even if I’m not sleeping.  Perhaps with better habits, I will sleep more of the time that I am there. It’s much better than the 4 or so I was getting most of the year.

Last but not least, I think that optimal health is dependent on continuous development of your mind and skill sets. I believe that the most important of these is the ongoing enforcement and development of the practice of your faith.  God requires this commitment of us above and beyond anything else that we may do in life.  Concentrate on your life of faith, and then look at how you can expand your capabilities in life by adding to your knowledge and learning new and better ways to live your life.  A full life is characterized by satisfaction of the soul, the mind and the body and we naturally thirst after all of these.  You are never too young, too old, too fat, too dumb or too smart to add more knowledge, more activity and more life to your living. Identify at least one thing every year that you want to learn or improve and spend time making it happen.  

The quest for “happiness” can be a shallow run if you don’t define what happiness is for you.  In my view, happiness is tied to all of the things above in different ways, but mostly to the people that I love and who need me to be around for them.  When I am busy trying to make my goals happen, I don’t have time to be unhappy. Getting results makes me beam.  Whatever your goal is…however you define it, go for it.  You will make God smile.  I’m sure of it.

If you would like to share a goal, leave a comment.  I’d love to hear how you are doing and share thoughts on how we can do better together.

Paula