Sitrep: Che Caique...( loosely translated from Guarani - "Without Want". No motivation!)
A lot of things lately have made me think humans are a bunch of ostriches with our heads in the sand. I read a great Thurber quote (I'm re-reading a bunch of his stuff. The "Flood" story from "My Life & Hard Times" can still make me laugh helplessly.) Anyway. I read a great Thurber quote that brought ostriches to mind (I'll post it later) and was kind of my ah-ha moment that brought together a lot of things I've been musing over the last few weeks.
1) Discovering my little's mom has been paying interest-only mortgage payments for ten years. OMG. It took a lot of doing to get her to understand why she's upside down in her house...with the girls looking on. I just wanted to shake her and yell at the girls that if I ever catch them doing something so stupid...Not once in those ten years did she add up what she'd paid, or even look at the balance remaining on her mortgage statement...
Thwump...there goes her head into the sand.
2) News story on giving cholesterol to children as young as one year old if high cholesterol/obesity runs in the family. Apparently that's considered safe. WTF? Are they serious? Geez. Both my parents have high cholesterol, yet aren't obese. I'm overweight yet my cholesterol is excellent. So instead of actually implementing programs such as incentives for parents to exercise with their kids from a young age, assistance for poorer families to buy fruits/veggies, insisting on physical education in school, nutrition classes in school (can combine into all sorts of other classes as well, like math - you use math in recipes, figuring out calories, etc). Do they actually think putting these kids on cholesterol meds as young as one years old is the right thing to do? What potential side-effects would that have!
Thwump...there go all our heads into the sand.
3) Tom's post the other day on Charlie Mike. I've read it a few times and each time I feel like I'm hearing this giant THWUMP. Me sticking my head in the sand. [g] In particular the last few days I've been focusing on his last line "what lifestyle do you want to be trapped in?" Judging by the last few weeks, one of indolence and food. [sigh] But that's not what I want to be trapped in. I used to say to myself (and others) that if only I lost 20 pounds, I'd be satisfied, I'd be healthy, etc. Well, the truth of it is that I've lost - and kept off for over a year - those 20 pounds. And I'm not satisfied. I'm happy, very much so, but it's not enough. There's another 20 pounds for me to hit the healthy mark. I think where I've been stumbling is that I've been setting short-term goals. Things like "this is what I'm doing this week". Which is good, but without having that larger goal beyond the smaller one, it's too easy to lose focus. I want to be trapped in a lifestyle where exercising several times a week is normal, part of my routine. A lifestyle where I have energy and am healthy. A lifestyle that my little sister can look to and think she can do it too.
So this ostrich is pulling her head outta the sand and taking a look around.
My goal: lose 20 pounds by July 15, 2009.
I think that's a pretty decent amount of time to get this accomplished in. Short term steps to get this done are to get back on Spark People. Daily journaling of my food/exercise helped. A lot. I'm also setting weekly goals and monthly "rewards" (ie, Starbucks, Books, Music) for meeting those goals. This week's goal: climb Mount Helena.
