It's a jungle in here!

In addition to recommitting to fitness and clean eating and all that crap, I've also recommitted to taking a daily photo. I'm going to do my best to take it with the Rebel instead of the BlackBerry, but honestly, some of my BB photos are pretty amazing. Like this one:

I was walking up a hill, turned to check out the view and saw the glow of the sun
just coming up over the mountain. I did not, however, actually see the sun,
which is what the camera saw. I love this picture.

I'm going to use the photo blog this year for food pictures, probably just one meal a day. I know there are weight-loss/photo bloggers out there who hold themselves accountable by snapping a picture of every little and big thing they eat. But I'm not dragging the Rebel out every time I eat an orange, and I want to use the good camera for Project 365. I certainly get the idea of recording your daily intake with pictures, though. There's even an iPhone app that will count the calories you've eaten by analyzing your photos.

I'm not limiting my Rebel photos to food, though, which is what today's post's title is all about. All of our talk about losing weight once and for all, all the weight-loss and gym commercials cluttering up television this month, and even the discussion yesterday about Weight Watchers then-and-now seems very dark and tangled and mysterious.

The tangled jungle that is
the spider plant in my
living room. 

All we're doing is trying to find our way through the tangled jungle of advice out there. We look back at what has worked in the past. That first iteration of WW was indeed strict, but you almost couldn't get hungry. You could eat as many heads of lettuce as you wanted (as a WW leader, I had a member tell me she ate six one day. I nearly barfed at the thought!), and lettuce wasn't the only "free" food on the list.

Interesting, isn't it, that fruits and vegetables are zero-Point foods on the current WW plan?

I could get very analytical, but I'm not in the mood right now and I doubt either of you would find it very compelling reading. I simply want to figure out (and writing about it really helps) what seems to be the best way to chop my way through the thicket of plans and processes and programs. And I think the plan I outlined yesterday is not only effective (it was effective in October, just THREE MONTHS AGO, and then I abandoned myself to the holidays), but doable. And also because of the whole I-don't-want-to-be-old-and-immobile-thing-so-I'd-better-start-RIGHTNOW-to-eat-better-and-move-more commitment.

Baby spider plants.

The spider plant in the photo is big. It started out very little, just about six inches tall in a huge pot and it looked ridiculous. It now fills its container and the leaves cascade down the sides and it's beautiful. It has sprouted about a dozen little babies, all tangled up with each other. I'm tempted to snip the babies and root them and let them get big, too, but I don't have room for all those plants. I'm happy with the ones I have.

I've watched this little rescued spider plant thrive since I brought it indoors for the winter. The mint, rosemary, chives and citrus are all doing well, too. They get fertilizer, water and sunshine on a regular basis, which is exactly what they need.

Perhaps gardening is the metaphor I need to take care of myself. I have no problem caring for my plants. They can't take care of themselves. I knew what I was doing when I brought them indoors. No one but me can make me work out or eat right or drink water or do any or all of those effective Things On The Plan.

But I'm glad, as Denise said, that the road is crowded.

Wise words

I was struck by a sentence Jen wrote yesterday:

"… exercise is about self-care,

not about proving myself."

I don't consider myself particularly competitive. In fact, I might do better with the whole weight-loss effort if I were more into winning and rewards and beating my time/reps/miles. But it's the first part of her sentence that really got to me.

I guess I don't think of exercise as self-care at all. Brushing my teeth and hair is self-care. Showering and eating fresh, healthful foods falls into the self-care category. But exercise? That's something I feel like I have to do and I never feel like it's doing any good. Theoretically, exercise is taking care of oneself. I certainly urged my father to walk a little bit every day in order to take care of himself.

To no avail, I might add. When you live with pain and it hurts to walk, well, it's easier to let your wife take that 20-step walk to the mailbox. My mother's mother did the same thing – when her osteoporosis and osteoarthritis became too painful for her to walk across the road to the grocery, my mother and, later, my sister and I shopped for her. She stopped getting her hair done once a week. She sat in her chair and let life happen around her as she watched.

They are my fitness legacy, my father and grandmother, and each of them spent the last 10 years of their lives in pain, immobile, my grandmother on oxygen all that time and my dad using it for part of his final years. Dad began his decline when he was 70, Grandma was 80.

They ended up that way because they didn't take care of themselves.

I don't know many 60-year-old women who can walk three or four or five miles daily. And since I can and do, I guess I think I am taking care of myself. But the other legacy my father and grandmother have passed down is the propensity to gain weight. They both fought that battle most of their lives, as have I. As long as I continue to accept that this is the way it is, I'm clearly NOT taking the best care of myself that I can.

I would love for today to be the last New Year's Day I wake up, weigh myself, gasp at the number and say "NEVER AGAIN." I've said it every year for too many years. I would love for today's motivation and inspiration and drive to be as strong a month from now as it is today.

Because – no doubt about it – I'm motivated. But I need to reframe my purpose from one of LOSING THIS WEIGHT ONCE AND FOR ALL to simply caring about my health.

My children don't live close by. They're not going to do my shopping for me, or fetch my mail, or take me to the doctor.

If it is to be, it is up to me.

~ William H. Johnsen

I made some delicious little nibbles for my husband and me to enjoy last night as we watched football and then rang in the new year. (I didn't make it – it was lights out by 10:30. Again.) I took photos as I was making them and I edited those photos this morning and I had a whole post planned around bacon and cheese.

But it just didn't seem appropriate after I read Jen's wise words and started thinking about what that would say about me. Writing about mini-quiches and stuffed dates might be entertaining – and let's face it, lots of food is all about the entertainment value. But it's not quite in line with how I feel now, this morning, this first day of a brand-new year following a year I'd rather forget and seeing a number on the scale I never want to see again.

All of my efforts to lose weight have gotten me here – fat, uncomfortable, depressed, desperate. What more can I do? I guess that's what I need to figure out, right? And the sooner the better.

And so I raise a tall glass of water spiked with lime juice to you, and wish you a happy new year. May all your wishes for this year come true. Speaking strictly for me, I hope 2012 KICKS ASS!