Some Things Take Time

Patience with oneself...
that is a toughie for me.

This summer has been a whirlwind of travel with no real home base to steady myself. I had high hopes for June, July and August - juicing, eating balanced meals, running - but going place to place with two children in airplanes and driving long days in borrowed cars isn't very conducive to establishing a healthy routine. That would have required more planning than I had time or energy for.

I know how to be healthy but I just couldn't cut it this summer.
Patience, Sarah, patience.

Well... I'm home now. I'm home and I'm ready to recalibrate. After months of shuffling kids, organizing sleeping arrangements and plopping down on couches after over-large summer meals, I'm looking forward to facilitating some healthy choices. I know what to do. It starts by getting out the door in the morning in a pair of tennis shoes and finishing the day with water instead of wine.

Ready? Set? Go forward with patience.

source

The "I Did It" List

juiced three out of seven mornings

filled my fridge with lots of healthy veggies

skipped the ice cream and popcorn isle while visiting the grocery store

wrote two articles on deadline

enjoyed two dates with my husband sans children

tried a new raw dressing recipe

ate lots of greens

Blogging and Not Blogging

Hello dear readers! I'm back home in Dallas after four weeks of traveling - first to the East Coast for a design job and then to the Pacific Northwest to visit my family. Traveling with a wheelchair bound three-year-old and a curious and fastidious five-year-old is tiring at best, but we all managed to have a great time!

Today, I want to address my inconsistent posting here at Smaller Sarah. I recently received an email from a dedicated and loyal reader gently scolding me for my on-and-off-again blogging. First allow me to thank you all for making space in your life for Smaller Sarah. I'm always thrilled to hear that my journey has been of use to my readers, inspiring their own life choices and motivating them to take charge of their body image and weight issues. That kind of interaction is a fantastic bi-product of my blog and I'm so grateful to all of you who have joined me on my path to healthfulness. But inspiring others is, in fact, secondary to my mission, which was to catalogue my own weight loss journey and remain accountable during my one year, 75 pound weight loss goal. That initial goal was reached 13 months ago.

Have I maintained my 75 pound weight loss since?  No, I haven't. I have slowly gained back 30-plus pounds since October of 2012. Life has been unruly (and wonderful) and I have been undisciplined in this area. I would love to post everyday with inspirational thoughts and funny self-effacing anecdotes - really, I would! But in these past quiet months, I've had my eye on some big picture goals that require my undivided attention. I hope you understand.

So what's next? To continue, of course! I'm always optimistic - even to a fault. Now that I'm home from my summer travels, I can begin to reign in my sloppy eating habits and rejoin my friends at Positively Fit Lake Highlands. When the Dallas heat breaks (it was 109 degrees today) I can begin running in the mornings again. I have high hopes for fitness and healthy nourishment this fall. And when I am able, I will certainly post about it here. I may be woefully out of practice, but I know what to do because it's all written down here on the blog.

And to my reader who sent the email scolding me for my inconsistent blog posts, thank you. Thanks for reminding me that I am supported and for encouraging me to check back in with my beloved little blog. Onward.

Kayaking Up Stream

I have just returned from a three day weekend in Las Vegas where I was teaching an art and writing workshop at Selah - an art salon in the Fremont district. I had a marvelous time with the six participants who joined the class and loved working with the women who own and operate Selah. If you're ever in the Las Vegas area looking for something creative and uplifting, please check out their workshop calendar!  Here are some photos from our class, where everyone created a self portrait:

This is my last full week in Utah before heading home to Dallas! The time has flown. I've been thrilled with the quiet, the open space and the time to be with my little family. It's such a boon to run away every summer, peel off the daily appointments, medical meetings and hassles and live each day for itself.

After my last post, where I was feeling defeated and generally lost at sea, I received a few poignant emails from friends and readers. One in particular offered a beautiful message. I don't think she'll mind if I post it here, because it will benefit you just as much as it benefited me.

"I'm thinking more about the general struggle of it all (weight loss, health, etc). Here's what I think: its like swimming upstream. You can do it for a while, but it is exhausting and overwhelming and never ending. And eventually you tire and get pushed back downstream. But I think there is another way. When I was a kid my dad taught me how to cross a river in a kayak. You don't paddle straight there, you aim your boat in a diagonal so that the current helps propel you across. I'm sure there's a term for it. This is sticking in my head as a good metaphor for what I am trying to do."

I love this idea of allowing the river to help propel you in the direction of your goal rather than risking a full capsize by steering directly in the direction of you goal. My life right now is such that I cannot give 100 percent of my attention to weight loss. This, however, doesn't mean that I can't make healthy choices as I move towards my goal.

I am juicing. I am walking. I am resting well. I am creating art. I am writing. I am working. I am mothering my children. I am cooking at home. I am traveling. And I am following three or four other dreams as well. Through all of this, my weight is holding steady. I am going to let the river help propel me forward. Like my brilliant friend wrote above - "there is another way" than steadfast focus on weight loss.

The "I Did It" List

taught an art and writing workshop 

painted a self portrait

sold some artwork

visited with dear friends who I haven't seen in years

went on a date with my mother and shared a bottle of wine

drank green juice most mornings

cut down on my coffee intake

ate some lovely fresh food

drank lots of water

took a long walk

took my son to swim lessons

had a casting meeting with an artistic director of a theater

answered some important emails

got a raise with one of my freelance writing jobs

helped someone else's baby fall asleep

hugged a bunch of people

Lift Off

The first few weeks of a shift in behavior can feel like a real slog. Getting out the door every other day (and sometimes every day) for a jog or 40 minutes of cross training takes fortitude when its preceded by a pattern of inactivity.  Hell, it takes fortitude even when you're in the groove.

But for me, there is always a day, a wonderful moment that I call "lift off", when your body and your brain finally align and what seemed like an unbearable slog the day before becomes easier. Notice, I didn't say easy.  It's never easy. It just gets a little bit easier.

The past two weeks of dragging my ass to the juicer and then lumbering out the door for a jog shifted today. I awoke, rested. I looked in the mirror and noticed that my skin tone was better. I met my husband in the kitchen and he said my waist looked slimmer, as did my face. (Compliments always help "lift off".) I drank my green juice, ate a banana, snuggled with my son and then went for a run. And today it wasn't shitty. It was nice. Ladies and gentlemen, we have lift off!

P.S.  Looking for an awesome healthy snack recipe?  

To make the fruit and nut bars below, click HERE.

Something I can live with.

My fitness instructor, Mallory, gave me some good advice last week.  Whatever weight loss measures I take in the next four months, she urged me to make changes I can live with long term. When I began losing weight in June of 2011, I made small changes and slowly added more as my stamina and readiness increased. I didn't know what I could live with because I had never tried it.

I want to make a distinction here about what "I can live with" and what is "comfortable". Initially, getting healthy was not a comforting process. I had to fight my brain - a brain that was comfortable with overeating and inaction. It was hard work. But working outside of my comfort zone for something important was good and necessary. Was it sustainable? For a time, it was. But now I have to go slower because of where I'm at in the process.

The "comfortable" part of the weight loss process came later after I'd had a chance to learn what I was capable of and found a healthful rhythm that suited my lifestyle. But again, I had to be open to change moment to moment, day to day. When I operate at a strenuously high level of fitness and nutrition, I loose lots of weight (duh). But then I crash and burn and spend twice as long picking my tush off the floor.  Mallory always uses the same word to encourage and advise her clients.  Balance. Our lives, our bodies and even our brains are ever changing. "Something you can live with" will undoubtedly change as you do.  For me, choosing a weight-loss or weight-maintenance plan will always be a process of assessment and evaluation.  The goal is balance.

A Manner of Traveling

I've been slowly chipping away at this past week.  Some juice here and there, a quick boot camp, a salad or two, and water bottles stashed in the car for traffic-logged moments.  Its tough to make healthy and serene choices when you're stretched as thin as I am right now.  It's tough, but worth it. Sometimes a healthy breakfast and a workout squeezed in after the carpool and before the therapy appointment means the difference between a successful day a red-alert melt down.  Sure, it's not the ideal schedule, but doing a little of what you planned is better than tossing the whole routine. 

After my pseudo-juice fast I developed an ear infection (an allergy based thing I get every spring) and had to start a round of antibiotics - not really conducive to juice fasting, eh?  When I'm done with those nasty drugs, I'll begin the juice fast again.  But until then, I'm eating whole meals and maintaining my spring weight loss which is now at 11 pounds!  My life, like yours I'm sure, can feel like a runaway train. I just have to remember that I am in control - I am the driver, the crew, the track and even the train itself.  I decide how fast it goes and I choose the station stops.

P.S.  I took a physical assessment test at Positively Fit this Monday. I ran my mile in 11 minutes and 25 seconds - not bad for a winter of brisket and beer!

P.S.S.  Got a minute?  Read this marvelous post entitled Cellulite: It's Time We All Just Get the Hell Over It. 

Want it? Go get it.

The title of this post is my motto for the remainder of 2012. What is it that I want?  Time.  I want some time to really give my creative work the attention it needs to be successful and fulfilling.  I'm still in the process of writing a manuscript and I'm also painting.  However, I feel like I have to steal time from my family to do my work.  I'm know a lot of stay (work) at home mamas feel this way.  After all, it's the topic of a gajillion news articles with inane headlines like, "You Can Have It All" or "Are you Mommy Enough?" or "Oprah's 6 Question Test will Reveal Your True Calling" or "How to Get Everything Done and Still Have Time for Sex". I mean let's be real, it's all bullshit.

Every woman (and man for that matter) has to decide what it is they want, what they're willing to sacrifice and how they're going to get it.  I'm still in the "what am I willing to sacrifice" stage.  I know what I want.  But there are only so many hours in a day. I have to give up something to move forward in the direction of my dreams. So I'm making a game plan.  As my father always says, "more news at eleven."

I bought jeans.

Do you remember a year ago when I said I wouldn't buy a pair of jeans until I felt that I was at a comfortable weight?  Well, that time has come.  Yesterday, a little Eddie Bauer package arrived in the mail with my new jeans!  They fit well and I'm so happy I might buy a second pair in another wash.  My husband took these photos and insisted I give you both the front and rear view. So if you're offended by a little denim-wrapped keister, you know who to blame.

The New Normal

Life.  

Its an overwhelming experience, isn't it?  

Last night I was up with a cranky two-year-old at an hour when he's usually sleeping and I am having a little "me" time, which usually involves mindlessly scanning Facebook over a glass of cheap white wine. But instead of clicking the "like" button and sipping Chardonay I rocked a sobbing baby into a state of exhaustion until he finally flopped off to sleep.

But you know what? Rocking the baby down was good for me.  A little reminder that yes, life if overwhelming, but eventually the screaming will pass and for a glimmer of a moment, you get to hold your silent, sleeping child and feel the rise and fall of his chest against yours, grateful for the peace he feels.

This morning, the alarm went off at 6am. After lying in bed for 10 minutes deciding weather or not to go to my exercise class, I threw on my running shoes and headed out the door. I wasn't alert. I wasn't pretty. And I certainly wasn't motivated to work out.  But you know what?  Alertness, attractiveness and motivation - these are not class requirements.  All that matters is that I show up. Show up at my son's bedroom door when he screams in the night. Show up to my work out class in the dark morning hours. Show up to therapy. Show up to preschool.

This is my new normal. 

Feeling overwhelmed?

That's okay. Just show up.