Well, I am a sanctimonious asshole.

What the title says. Therefore, a few things: 

1. I have no hard answers or solutions to pretty much anything.  Physically, I know what works for me but there’s a lot more to learn.  Things keep changing.  More on that later.
2. Getting healthy in any way is in my limited experience not a one-size-fits-all sort of thing.  It is intensely personal and malleable.  It is also incredibly fragile.   It’s one of the reasons why I started this blog and also why I think those diet industries make 60.8 billion a year.  
3. Mother Teresa is an inspiration.  I sure as hell am not.  In fact, most days, I’m a poster child for HSM (Hot Shitty Mess.) It’s a miracle my son has survived to be almost 10 with such a mother.
4. These observations I have are solely my opinion.  I am an expert at nothing.  As I educate myself, I will share because knowledge is power.   I realize that by taking on controversial subjects, I attract wrath. Take what you want and leave the rest.   Take nothing at all.  Or tell me to go to hell, if you want.  It’s just my opinion and I am often wrong.   
5. My writing is not intended to prod or poke or make fun of or put down anyone else's efforts towards health.  Anyone who is trying to grow healthier physically, emotionally, socially, financially or any other "–ly" should be applauded and supported.  Whatever motivates them to start and persevere is an awesome thing.   I am 100% behind them.  
6. Where weight loss is concerned, I adamantly do not believe in diet industry driven programs anymore as sustainable measures for long term physical goals.  I think they are great jump-starting tools and that’s about it.   This is my own personal conclusion.     
7. With that said, if a diet program sustainably works for you, that’s great.   Again, this is fragile and personal.  One size does not fit all. 
8. I have thought about this blog for a very long time.  In doing so, I have had many conversations with many, many people in the last six months about this subject.  My dissatisfaction with the media portrayal and the marketing of weight loss couple with the dissatisfaction I hear from those I encounter along with my own personal dissatisfaction with results in the past is the driving factors here.    

So for any who took offense or thought I was criticizing or who wanted to knock me down a peg, I’m knocked.  Mea culpa and true apologies offered.  It is my sincere and humbled hope they might be accepted. 

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I considered naming this blog, “Things No One Tells You” but settled on the more incendiary title because it’s what I tell myself about everything most days.  Still, “Things No One Tells You” struck a chord  because I’m doing the perio-menopause thing.   I have been for about two years.  And you know what?  A lot of what is happening, has happened to date, no one warns you about.   As a dear woman I love to pieces wrote me this morning, “Who knew your giblets are the boss of everything? And I mean e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g!”

It scares me, this looming iceberg of uterine change that from all telling disrupts your life from the ground up not for a month or so, but for years.  Women get through it every day, of course.  For some, it is simpler than others.  For some, there is wreckage in its wake.  Here’s a fact:  menopause and its’ inevitable outcome scares me.  It seems to me that I just found a me I’m vaguely happy with upon the brink of potentially this incarnation going away again. I am scared I will not be able to sustain a healthy lifestyle through menopause.   

No.  Strike that. I’m terrified.  

I also fret about changes other than the proverbial “change of life.”    Life change scares me for it has derailed me in the past for long periods of time. 

<navel-gazing portion of blog>

I had lost weight a number of years ago before my wedding, (which is where the name SYHGOYA comes from as I lost twenty pounds in about three months by exercising and eating a strange diet.  My friend, Su said she and I should write that book and had a good laugh about it.) Then I lost my job, my husband was denied entry to the US after going to renew his visa because he had married a U.S. citizen and had “intent to immigrate,  I got pregnant on a visit to Canada to see him.  He re-entered the U.S. a week before our son was born. 

And during that time, even with an excellent support network in Chicago, stress took its toll.  High stress job.  Bills on one paycheck. Being pregnant, all on its own.  It was in my third trimester I decided Oberweiss ice cream was good for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Therefore, I was 198 pounds when my son was born, up from 150 lbs at the start of the pregnancy.   And for me, breast feeding did not take that weight off.  The truth is, I did nothing to help it off either.  Ice cream is still good during post-partum and well into the first year, too. 

The next eight years brought a series of crazy changes.  Motherhood.  Premature hyper-tension.  Moving from Chicago to Ohio.  A dream job that became a nightmare.  Separation from my husband. Unemployment.  Divorce.  Single Parenting.   Navigating a new dysfunctional and highly political work environment requiring a 3+ hour commute each day.  A new unhealthy relationship. Foreclosure.  Lawsuits against mortgage giants.  General insanity. 

(Note:  I look at that list and think, “Jebus.  Really?   That sounds like a bad Lifetime movie of the week.”  But yeah—all of that happened.  Still, we had a lot of fun during it. My life has been pretty good to date, even all the definite crap of it withstanding.  Also, 95% of the nasty situations I encountered I had a hand in creating.  If you make questionable decisions, questionable things happen.  It’s a fact. No pity there.) 

There was no question that in the “healthy living department,” I was completely derailed.  Food was the only constant.  It was my offering to myself and to those I loved.  Cooking was something I wanted to excel at as it seemed I was struggling with everything else.  So, food was comfort.  Food meant love.

 

I did attempt Weight Watchers a couple of times during those eight years—lost 15, gained 20, lost 10, gained 22.  I was never serious about it though and I knew that while I did it.  I wanted to lose but knew I couldn’t sustain.  I simply did not want to give up the one thing that offered consistent pleasure.  I remember thinking, "Man, I can't wait until I lose this so I can eat again."  Oh and there was no exercise.  Really at all. I left too early and got home too late. 

Then in 2009, after attending a reunion, reading an article and seeing a picture, when all seemed to be out of control, I started controlling food.  That’s the truth of this.  Then, a new job came, a half an hour commute began and I started working with people who talked about going to the gym and I realized I could do that now.  So I tried it.  This time, it stuck.

   

</navel-gazing>

The point of all this is I have derailed many times in my life from health simply from the circumstances of life. My current big focus is financial health these days.  It’s a monster in my life of my own creation and one that has to be slaughtered all on my lonesome. 

Still, I’m afraid it will happen again.  The only thing constant in life is change and I do fear something life-wise will happen and I will lose the ground I’ve fought for over the past two years.  So.  Yeah.   Gotta love the hard light of reality, right?

I want to know how does one keep up when the unexpected comes into play? These circumstances happen all the time to people more disciplined and better equipped to deal with crisis than I.   Me?  I have no answers.   Question of the day:  does anyone else?  How do you mitigate changes?  And how can you stay on track?