Coming Soon!
All authors know that writing can be a
lonely occupation. They also know that sitting for hours with a computer is not
good for them. It’s easy to get lost in the flow of writing. The upside is –
the book gets finished. The downside? All that sitting may add a few extra
pounds. It is so easy to forget about taking the exercise we all need in favor
of just adding a few more words to the work-in-progress, and those words can
weigh heavy.
I
have a love hate relationship with weight. Photographs show that I was a child
of average build and size, but all that changed when I was eight years old and
had a three month long bout with pneumonia with much of that time being spent
in bed.
I apparently did not have much of an
appetite and the doctor advised my mother to not worry about what I ate as long
as I drank plenty of milk which, in the early 1950s, was whole milk.
Consequently, by the time I got out of bed, I was almost as round as I was high
and so began my life long battle with weight.
It didn’t seem to matter what I ate,
there was the potential for another inch on my hips. Through my teens I managed
to keep a regular weight with numerous activities – horse riding, swimming,
badminton, archery and good old rock ‘n roll.
As a Mom with a young family, I
burnt a lot of energy keeping up with my three kids. Then I experienced a
complete metabolic flip-flop when, after a divorce, my weight plummeted. Family
and friends encouraged me to eat – and I did. Anything, at anytime, anywhere.
It made no difference. At my lowest weight I was 87lbs and it took me two years
to regain a somewhere-near right for my then age, height and build of
about 120lbs. Once I reached that weight, I maintained it for several years but
it was a constant balancing act.
I lost weight again, naturally enough I
suppose, when I immigrated to Canada. My husband was a true blue, dyed in the
wool steak and potatoes loving Canadian but he was also a man who loved to
cook. How could I refuse to eat a meal so lovingly and carefully prepared for
me? From chicken wings (I’d give you the family marinade and sauce recipes but
my DH would probably come back to haunt me if I did) to planked salmon, chili
and sea food dishes, he tried it all. If he didn’t cook at home, there were a
variety of restaurants to be enjoyed.
And life was changing. We became so busy
that what we were doing was more important than what we were eating so, you
guessed right, I started putting weight on again. Breakfast was about the only
meal we ate at home. Dash here, grab pizza on the way. Dash there, oh we’ll
just pick up coffee and donuts. Then
there were the days when we didn’t make time to eat until the evening by which
time we could have consumed half a cow because we were so hungry.
Everything changes, and life changed
again when my husband passed away. Being a consummate shopper, he did the
shopping for what groceries we did have at home. Faced with not much more than
an echo in my fridge, I had to start taking care of myself again and I reverted
to what the cashier in my local grocery store laughingly referred to as
‘English shopping’. I bought fresh produce on a day to day basis which is
almost anathema to the average Canadian shopper. I started eating more meals at home, boring
and time consuming though preparing food for one person was. I’ve never been
fond of frozen meals, and could easily live without a microwave, so my meals at
home were mostly salads.
Now being more mature than I’ve ever
been, in years anyway, it really does matter what I eat. Over the years I’ve
weathered the various theories that have been touted around. You know- the ones
like apples-are-bad-for-tooth-enamel versus eat-an-apple-before-each-meal, coffee-is-bad-for-you
then one-cup-in-
the-morning-is-fine. It all boils down to eating sensibly. A
little of everything does you good as my grandmother used to say, with the
emphasis on ‘little’.
And where, these days, do you find
‘little’ of anything? Supersize this or that, MSG-laden pre-packaged food
products and the question about a bag of chips, ‘Can you eat just one?’ I have
discovered for myself the truth nutrition gurus have been telling us for a long
time – diets don’t work. Diet programs are great for initially losing weight,
but how many people actually learn the lesson of smaller portions of the right
foods aligned with exercise? Many don’t so, when they stop the program, the
weight piles back on.
So where am I on a scale of 1-10? I must
be honest. I’m pretty low on the totem pole actually. I know I could and should
pay more attention to my diet. I know I could and should take more exercise
than my walking and yoga. With each book I start I plan to take my exercise
first thing in the morning to get it out of the way, but my characters have a
siren song and I often find myself sliding out of bed into a housecoat and sitting
down at the computer to get to grips with them. The walk can wait until later
in the day, the yoga stretches I’ll do in a minute.
I’m starting another book now. I have a
schedule up on my white board of how each day Monday to Friday is going to be.
By the time I finish this one I hope to have lost the few pounds I put on with
the last one. Come December I’ll let you know how I did.
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