We Can All Use A Litte "Self-Inspiration"

I’ve been “should”ing myself crazy these last few weeks. “I should eat more spinach,” “I should go for a walk,” “I should not buy those potato chips.” I don’t know if it’s the winter doldrums or just plain laziness, but asking anything of my body or mind lately is like asking grandson Luca if he wants jelly on his peanut butter sandwich. The answer is always a resounding, “No!” (Followed by a five-minute explanation of why he used to like jelly, but doesn’t anymore, and then making you pledge that you will never, never, EVER put jelly on his peanut butter sandwiches ever again because he doesn’t like jelly anymore. Just peanut butter. But not chunky peanut butter. Just plain peanut butter. And no jelly.)

Recently, a friend was explaining the details of a complex job he was working on, saying that a lot of people in his field go through the motions without ever knowing why. To him, he said, “It’s not enough to know how, but you have to know why.”

In weight loss and maintenance, that inquiry can be reversed. It’s not enough to know why, but you have to know how. I know why eating an apple is more healthy than eating a Pop Tart, but knowing how to choose the apple instead of the Pop Tart requires more skill than simply reaching for and biting into the apple.

Either way, bringing curious attention to both the how and the why is the only way to combat the “should”s. Asking “Why am I ‘should’ing myself up a wall?” is more difficult than mindlessly burying my nose in a bag of Kettle Brand baked potato chips, extra crunchy with sea salt (I don’t care how low fat they are…they are devil spawn), but in the end, a better choice. 

I’m going to be Ms. Obvious here: doing the right thing isn’t always the easiest. But planting reminders of what matters most along our journey can help when we run into the “should”s and the resounding “No!”s.

Writing – whether it’s in a journal or a blog – not only gives me clarity in the present moment, but over the last eight years, has left a paper trail that guides me back to my intentions when I’ve lost my way.

One of my blog posts that reminded me why it was imperative that I extract my face from the potato chip bag was, “What Is Your Deepest Intention?” from 2009.

“I had to decide if I wanted to eat my way to an early death or live the healthiest life I could for as long as I could. That decision became my deepest intention.
“Did I falter once in awhile? Yes. But ultimately, I always went back to the intention.
“That intention continues to guide me in maintenance. Without it, I’d behave the same way I always did when I got to some weight goal: by not paying attention to my food intake and slacking off on exercise.”

Creating a volume of writing is like creating a safety net, a place you can fall when you forget that what you’re thinking and doing has all been thought and done before. You just need a reminder that you’re not alone. You have your former self!

If you’ve kept journals or blogs throughout your weight journey, how often do you go back and re-read your words? Perhaps – in the doldrums of winter – you could use a little self-inspiration to help recall the whys and the hows of your journey, too?

Don't Forget The Inside

A friend said to me the other day that when we met a few years ago, I rarely looked him in the eyes when we talked. I thought about that for a moment and realized he was right. In fact, I didn’t look at anyone directly for more than a few seconds.

What used to be naïve vivacity had – over the years – turned into cautious reticence, and even though I weighed 130 pounds and was three years into maintenance, I felt like a fish out of water when I first moved to Pittsburgh in 2010. Self-judgment, avoidance, insecurities…you name it…followed me like a pack of lost dogs.

Cassie – my daughter with the grandbabies – made it her mission to get her old mother outside her comfort zone, and sent me an email about a yoga class that was starting at a local library.

“Yoga?” I said, sounding vaguely like a tired 2-year-old. “I don’t want to do yoga.”

“Mom,” she said with a sigh. “It’s not about yoga. You need to meet people, get out more.”

But…but…I liked the comfort of my new fortress. I liked sitting on my couch surrounded by my stuff. I knew enough people. Besides, it was hard enough for me to understand who I was. How was I supposed to explain me to anyone else?

Reluctantly, I showed up at Oakmont Library on Saturday morning, November 6, with a yoga mat under my arm and a Xanax under my tongue. I looked around the room. Skinny women with shiny hair, dressed in pink and yellow spandex and sipping water from earth-friendly metal water bottles, gathered in one corner. They laughed and talked and stretched their gazelle-like necks like gymnasts.

On the other side of the room were women like me, alone and wearing loose shirts and crop sweat pants. Dressed in my “Love is a four-letter word” t-shirt, I laid my mat a few feet away from a woman with short red hair and stunning blue eyes. Her name was Debbie and she’d never done yoga, either. Something about her made me instantly comfortable, and when our instructor had us fold our bodies into thread-the-needle and Debbie said, “I wonder if anyone’s ever farted in this pose before,” I knew I’d found a friend who’d get me, crazies and all.

Al Roker, in his book “Never Goin’ Back,” writes about weight loss that “…whatever issues you have will still be your issues. Losing weight will not take away those problems any more than it will make you more popular, funnier or more successful, or fix your relationship.”

Expanding a bit on my blog from last week, “The One About My Ass,” that last part about “fix your relationship,” was and still is true for me in regards to the relationship I have with myself (all of me, not just my backside). 

Who I believed myself to be prior to losing weight – years prior…all the way back to childhood – changed very little when I lost weight. By the time I moved to Pittsburgh, I’d figured some things out about food and exercise and how my body and mind responded to this new care I had for myself, but still I sweated and panicked walking into a yoga class.

For me, it’s the whole judgment thing, and no one judges us more harshly than ourselves. I remember meeting my daughters at a restaurant when I weighed 300 pounds and I knew, logically, that most of the diners didn’t notice I was there. But in my mind I imagined everyone thought, as I walked in, ‘Oh my, she’s big.’ And probably a few did, but certainly not everyone. Because I knew I was big and I felt big and I was ashamed of being big, I assumed everyone had those same judgments about me or anyone else who looked like me.

Stepping outside our self-judgments and holding them in conscious awareness is just as important as feeding ourselves well and exercising. The person at the bottom of the scale doesn’t have to have the same insecurities and fears that the person at the top of the scale did, but often it’s only the weight we think we have to shed, not our negative self-perceptions or inner conflicts. Those will somehow magically mend themselves when we get to goal.

I’m glad my daughter urged me to go to that yoga class two years ago, despite my trepidation. While I dropped yoga, I gained a friend. A dear friend who gets me, crazies and all.

We all need a Cassie and a Debbie in our lives. People who support us, accept us, force us outside our comfort zones. But more important, we all deserve the loving acceptance that only comes from within, no matter our size.

If you’re on your way down the scale, or even if you’re already there, don’t forget the inside, too.

Food Is Like Brylcreem: A Little Dab Will Do Ya

Sally Albright is my hero

All the while I lost weight and during my first few years of maintenance, I was married. Larry supported me (still does…he’s a great friend), and even lost 20 pounds himself. I didn’t have to explain why I was ordering a salad with light dressing on the side or ordering an entrée with a to-go box on the side so I could put half of the meal in as soon as it arrived. He didn’t mind that I asked questions of our server about how the food was prepared or requested the chef to please go easy on (or omit) the oil.

I touched on it in “Throwing Out The 300-Pound Pitch,” but until last week, I never gave any deep thought as to how two people co-exist in Foodland. Dating again, I was more concerned with how to explain the past seven years. And thankfully when I met Steve a few weeks ago and I recited the whole weight loss thing, he didn’t run screaming in the other direction. What he said – with a great big grin on his face – was, “I love to cook.”

Turns out, Steve’s a foodie. And I mean hard-core. He reads Wine Spectator, and studies the cookbooks of Paul Prudhomme (“Chef Paul” from K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen), Anthony Bourdain (oft smart-ass chef and author of “Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly”), Thomas Keller (award-winning owner of the Napa Valley restaurant, The French Laundry), Eric Ripert (world renowned French cook and owner of Le Bernardin in New York), and Lidia Matticchio Bastianich, whose restaurant in Pittsburgh – Lidia’s – is on Steve’s date list.

What I first knew about Steve was that he’s a union carpenter and owns a beautiful red Harley. He can match me song for song, artist for artist in music trivia. He wears cowboy boots; drives a pickup; looks smashing in a pair of Levi’s; holds every door open for me; loves his cat, Boo; and can drink a Starbucks latte as readily as diner coffee, and Budweiser as easily as 20-year-old Glenlivet. All of this I can deal with. It’s the butter, the cream, the Italian food that has my maintenance brain spinning. And not just any Italian food. “Good ‘country Italian,’” he said. “You know, that sort of rustic Italian.” Um…no, I don’t know. But I have a feeling I’m going to find out.

I talked to him about how I choose to eat and he assured me that wasn’t a problem….just before he said, with a devilish grin, “But you know I’m your food anti-Christ.”

I’ve loosened the chains a bit over the past two years, but other than using a bit more oil in my cooking and eating whole grain pancakes and consuming a few more sweets lately than I care to admit, I don’t stray too far from the plan that got me and keeps me where I am. When I go out, I order the safest thing on the menu: salad, or occasionally a garden burger, sans the bun. I haven’t ventured into many restaurants that employ several bona fide chefs, and I’ve certainly not dated a capital F Foodie who cooks with butter and cream and makes his own lemon sauce to pour over lemon cake:

Last weekend, Steve and I wanted to go out for brunch. We went online and looked at menus and chose The Cornerstone because it offered eggs Benedict with duck confit. OK, back up. HE chose Cornerstone because it offered duck confit. But I found something that looked interesting, too. A risotto made with wild mushrooms, butternut squash, and kale. After we were seated, I asked our server if the risotto could be made vegetarian. She said, “I’ll as our chef.” A few minutes later, she came back and said, “Why yes, we can make it vegetarian, but not vegan because the chef uses butter.” Not a problem, I said, and yes, I would like a fried egg on top. Toast? No, thank you.

The risotto was the first non-vegetable/non-egg-white focused breakfast I’ve eaten in more than 7 years. It was fabulous, but I felt a bit guilty, and I panicked about my plan for the rest of the day. Subsist on water, an apple, and some edamame for dinner? Walk five miles?

“Shut up!” I told my brain. “You can do this!”

And I did. I enjoyed the risotto, eating slowly and stopping before I was full. Steve didn’t care if I cleaned my plate. He only noticed because I pointed it out.

Remember how I said I was looking for someone who didn’t eat Doritos in front of me? Well let me tell you, Doritos have nothing on mussels sautéed in garlic and wine, bruschetta on French baguette, and bleu cheese dipped in honey. Steve eats these things, yet never pushes them on me. It is I who must be disciplined to eat one or two mussels, a bit of bruschetta, and a piece of bleu cheese. It is my challenge to taste all the flavor these foods have to offer without going crazy and consuming them all.

A few weekends ago, we went to Oakmont Bakery for coffee because What’s Cookin’ at Casey’s wasn’t open yet. I told Steve the story about how, when I was a little girl, my dad took care of my brother and I on Saturday mornings so Mom could sleep. He’d let us dress in anything we wanted (I was a stripes-on-plaid kind of girl) and he took us to the bakery for a donut before we went to the car wash. I always got a glazed donut with chocolate frosting. As Steve was paying for our coffee, he asked the cashier for a glazed donut with chocolate frosting.

My first thought? ‘OMG, I can’t eat that!’

My second thought? ‘Wow…that was really sweet of him.’

We took our coffee and donut to a table and I savored two small yet amazingly awesome memory-filled bites of glazed chocolate donut. I got teary thinking about those days and how much I love my dad. Not once did Steve say, “Come on. Have another bite.” He was just happy that he’d made me happy.

Food can be that conduit to memories, as long as we understand it is like Brylcreem: “A little dab will do ya.” Take the meaning and savor a bite. Leave the rest of the calories behind.

How do you navigate the really good, memory-invoking food waters?

The One About My Ass

I’ve been on this incredible weight-loss/weight-maintenance journey for more than seven years, and I continue learning more about myself than I thought possible. I’ve met inspiring people – virtually and in real life – who motivate me to think positively, to accept myself where I am in every moment, and to see myself through a different lens, one that’s not focused on weight all the time. I’ve listened. I’ve implemented. And although I no longer weigh 125 pounds, which was insane for me, I remain committed to being physically active and mindful of my food intake. I can stand in front of the bathroom mirror and say, “You look nice, Lynn.”

Then I walk out the door and sometimes it’s like the last seven years didn’t exist.  

The more things change, the more the past comes and bites me in the ass. And I mean, literally, my ass (the biting part is figurative).

I’ve never been comfortable with the shape of my ass. When I’m thin, it’s flat. When I’m overweight, it’s flat. I have absolutely no bootie. Paired with long, gangly legs and a thick waist, I’ve never found the perfect pair of form-fitting jeans.

This is a first-world problem, I know. White Whine. It’s like complaining I can’t get cell service in the Squirrel Hill Tunnel. I get it. But still…this self-perception is real and I want to work toward ass self-esteem and move on.

I found this on KnowYourMeme. Blogger Jessica Hagy drew it.

It started in high school. I remember climbing the stairs behind a cheerleader and her boyfriend. The cheerleader was a petite blond with large breasts and a small round butt. Her boyfriend was a football player who often picked her up in the lunchroom and threw her over his shoulders. I was behind the boyfriend who was behind the cheerleader when the boyfriend said loudly, “I’m making a sign for your ass that says, ‘Wide load.’” He laughed and laughed. The cheerleader turned around and playfully hit his arm, but I was horrified for her. Then I was horrified for me. If he thought his girlfriend’s ass was fat, there was no hope for mine.

I became the master of backing out of rooms, or walking sideways when I was in front of someone. After awhile, I did it without thinking. And the times when I had no choice but stand directly in front of someone, I obsessed over how awful my ass must look to whomever was behind me. Self-centered? Yes, kind of. But with a psychological bent that told me I wasn’t good enough because I had created in my head this belief that my ass made other people uncomfortable. Like people woke up that morning and prayed, ‘God, I hope I don’t see a flat ass today.’ Crazy thinking, I know, but seriously, don’t we all have some insecurity that makes us nervous? Cautious of? Hell bent on hiding?

You recall my last blog was about getting back into the dating scene after losing a lot of weight. I had the good fortune of meeting “Steve” a few weeks ago. Yesterday, he invited me to a 30-year anniversary party at a restaurant he’s been going to since it opened. I chose to wear a pair of jeans and a black knit shirt and a cotton jacket that would cover my ass. Only I accidently left the jacket at home because I couldn’t wear it under my winter coat. As you can imagine, and I knew, a lot of his friends and neighbors were there. Steve led me to the opposite side of the bar from the juke box and rest room, introducing me along the way. If I wanted to use the bathroom or play the juke box, it meant I’d have to walk away from Steve and past his friends and other bar patrons.

This is not me being egotistical. This is me responding to years of programming, advertising, and comments from people I thought cared about me that nothing short of a perfect body is good enough. Ergo, I’m not good enough. I’ve worked on those demons for many years and I’ve exorcised a good deal of them, but my 16-year-old insecure self still lives inside and she was all up in my head yesterday.

I fidgeted a bit in my chair, thinking about this first-world quandary, as Steve talked to a few of his friends. They were having a juke box challenge – who could play the worst song from the 60s and early 70s – and I knew exactly what I wanted to play: Tom Jones’ “She’s a Lady.” I’m competitive and I wanted to play that song more than I wanted to hide my ass. So I grabbed a dollar out of my purse and I walked around the bar, perhaps a little red-faced, but I held my head high and kept my ass in perspective. I plugged the song in the juke box and when it played, got a great big laugh from the crowd. I didn’t win the challenge, but I rose above the ass-hating, if only for a few minutes.

I logged online this morning and read Tippy Toe Diet Cammy’s blog and I thought, ‘Man…she’s in my head again.’ This graphic was at the top of her entry:

Reality check!

There are a lot of things about me that I’ve learned to love and accept. There are a lot of other things that need work. And I will work. Giving up, while it might linger in my head some days, is not an option.

I had a therapy appointment this afternoon. I’ve been seeing Julie on and off for two years. As I was making an appointment for our next session, she said her schedule was tight next week, so could I be flexible. I said my schedule is usually flexible. “That’s the beauty of me!” I said.

“That’s what you need to tell yourself in all aspects of your life,” she replied.

She definitely got me on that one. And we hadn’t even discussed my low ass self-esteem in our session!

I suspect we all believe things about ourselves that are either simply not true or that might be true, but we view them through a magnifying glass and not in their proper dimension. It can get in the way of our happiness, our goals, our hopes for whatever outcome we want to strive for.

I want a bootie and that ain’t gonna happen without major medical intervention. But more than that, I want to accept my bootie and every other part of what makes up the real me. And as I said before, I’m not giving up. I am who I am. And that’s the beauty of me.

Throwing Out The 300-Pound Pitch

In an interview in 2008, Neal Conan asked Carrie Fisher on “Talk of the Nation” why she wrote “Wishful Drinking,” a memoir about her experience with manic depression, addiction and ECT, particularly given its stigma. She answered: “The thing about telling it is, if I make it a secret, it has enormous power. Then I have to be scared. ‘Will they find out?’ And I’m, like, ‘If you find it out about me, I’ve already got there first, so you’re gonna hear my version.’”

Google my name and it’s easy to find me and my 300-pound truth. I put it out there willingly in 2005, hoping to find kindred spirits, people who were on a path to embracing their own truth about weight. With more than 1.5 million page hits since 2005, clearly there are more than a few of us out there seeking that truth.

I don’t mind telling you I was 300 pounds. You get it. It’s not so easy telling someone with whom you’re out on a first date and you’re ordering a salad and he’s ordering wings with blue cheese dressing and he jokingly says, “New Year’s resolution?” and I say, “Well, kinda.”

The story of me isn’t an easy story to digest, so to speak. It’s one thing to say, “I weighed 300 pounds seven years ago.” It’s quite another to say, “My weight impacts my life every day.” Some women seek tall, dark and handsome. Me? I seek someone who won’t eat Doritos in front of me.

In Pittsburgh, we call it “nebbing.” When you want to find out about someone, you neb. I have one of the nebbiest neighbors ever. He’s forever watching my house. There isn’t a light that goes on or goes off that he doesn’t know about. He’s harmless enough, but it’s a little unnerving having your every move observed.

That’s kind of how it feels when I meet someone new and they find out my name. They’re gonna neb. Heck, I do it, too! But I prefer he hear my weighty truth from my lips and not from a photo of 300-pound me in a purple dress contrasted with the me he has just met. Yes, my blog is my truth and my voice, but for someone who isn’t accustomed to reading weight loss blogs, my blog can be a lot of truth to take in without some prior warning.

While I don’t consider obesity a character flaw, many in this world do, especially the judgy mcjudgers who tease, roll their eyes, and all out hate fat people. So there’s an added chance of judgment I have to take when the “So tell me about yourself” convo starts.

A few years ago, I met someone who, after a few dates, asked me straight up about loose skin. “Do you have any?” was his exact question. My response? “You’ll never find out,” and I kicked him out.

Now while that sounds all bold and Go Me, in truth it was embarrassing and it made me wonder how many other men would wonder the same thing.

It wasn’t long after that that I met C and we dated for about 18 months. My truth became a part of our relationship, an almost non-entity except that he didn’t eat Doritos in front of me. Now that I’m single once more, I’m wondering if I have it in me to, as I wrote in 2011, “…roll my eyes back and throw it out there again,” a reference to that the scene in Bull Durham when Nuke is on the mound wearing Annie Savoy’s garter and he rolls his eyes back and pitches the ball.

My choices are either stay in and hide or get out there and try. I choose to try. After all, I was who I was and I am who I am and the guy up to bat has a number of options of what to do with that curve ball. If it’s to inquire about loose skin, then he isn’t worthy. If it’s to stick around, then I’ll explain the part about the Doritos.

Remember The Ant Farm!

Tara Brach tells a story of her son who, in first grade, received an ant farm for his birthday. He watched the ants living life the way they do, and in the process, he grew to know them. He saw fellow ants take their dead comrades to an “ant cemetery.” He watched them build homes and share food, and observed their interdependence. Then one day at school, he saw his classmates on the playground squishing ants and laughing. He was devastated. He couldn’t understand why they were killing the same kind of creatures he’d witnessed living their lives in his ant farm. His mother said, and I’m paraphrasing, that his classmates, unfortunately, didn’t know the ants like he did.

You can’t destroy that which you love or know intimately. And, on the flip side, you cannot love what you do not know.

So why is it that we do things that hurt ourselves, the person who should be our own best friend,  the person we love most in this world?

The hurt is often subtle. A bag of Cheetos, a donut at a work function, some ice cream after a long day. In and of themselves, these things aren’t “bad” when consumed mindfully. For instance, I chose to eat a few baked chips while writing this blog. I wasn’t subconsciously destroying my food plan. I’m PMSing and I recognized the craving for salt and crunch. It feels awkward to say I “loved” myself enough to eat baked chips, but satisfying that craving by consciously choosing to eat a small portion was, in a subtle way, an act of love.

Now the decision I made yesterday to sit on my ass all day and not exercise when my body was clearly needing movement? Not so loving. My excuses and distractions were like squishing ants on a playground. I was not intimately in touch with what was going on in my body. I put my fingers in my ears and refused to listen to what it was saying.

I attended a lecture last Saturday on the topic of how to change your life. I’m not looking to change my entire life, but there are parts that could use some tweaking. The speaker, Eileen Colianni, is the one who said, “You cannot love what you do  not know,” and she went on to emphasize that “knowing” isn’t enough. We must act, too.

I “know” eating carrots rather than carrot cake is a healthier choice. I “know” going to the gym is a better choice, too, than…say…going to Dunkin Donuts (unless it’s for a non-fat latte AFTER a workout!). I know these things and yet…sometimes something stops me from choosing the better path.

As Eileen said, we are often caregivers and are used to asking, “What do you want from me?” She challenged us to turn the question around and ask, “What do I want from me?” And to get what we want, she said, we have to decide something. De-cide. The root of “cide” is to kill. So in order to decide, we must (proverbially speaking) “kill” something to get what we want. For instance, if I want to lose 20 pounds, I need to “kill” the thought that floats around in my head that 20 pounds will magically disappear simply because I want them to. Therefore, the death of a negative thought or a misheld belief is the key to knowledge and, in turn, the pathway to love. Loving what we know.

(Maybe now is a good time to take a deep breath and reassure yourself that you don’t have to fully ingest or even accept what I just wrote. I know I get all tight in the stomach and I scrunch my shoulders and wince my eyes when I read convoluted philosophies about “how to” live my life. So…OK…take a deep breath. Hold it a few seconds. Let it out. Feel better? That, my friends, was an act of love.)

We all have it within ourselves to discover our own truths about what we truly want and need. And it is without self judgment that I urge you to examine what those somethings are. What good is self flagellation anyway?

If you need a reminder about not being able to destroy that which you love, remember the ant farm! Make it your mantra and do what it takes to love your bad self!

The Mental Price of Skinny (and how I’m finding middle ground)

It felt good to write and publish my last post, “Intentions and Confidence.” It feels right to have my voice out here again, even though it is a somewhat changed voice. But isn’t that what our voices do? Change, grow bolder, and perhaps wiser?

Ever since first grade, I’ve been honing my voice. (Read “The GleefleThat Sneefed” from my ZenBagLady blog.) I can shut it up for awhile, but it doesn’t take long for it to start knocking in my brain, “Let me out, damn it! I’ve got something to say that you (meaning me) need to hear!”

And so last week I let my voice out of its mind cage and resurrected Lynn’s Weigh. You see, months ago, I thought I’d written the last chapter of my weight-loss, weight-maintenance journey. I thought I had nothing thoughtful to say anymore. I wasn’t losing weight. Hell, I wasn’t even maintaining! I am 20 pounds heavier than my goal weight – weight brought on, in part, by arthritic and personal issues. But the biggest reason I’d gone blog rogue is, quite frankly, I was ideologically exhausted. I didn’t know what I believed anymore.

For six years I was a food purist. I became a vegetarian along the way and I ate a salad every day and two servings of fruit. I limited my carb intake, and shunned white sugar, white flour, white rice, white potatoes, Splenda and Tofurkey. I weighed myself every morning, naked and evacuated. Every point-something number mattered and was recorded. When the scale read between 128-132, I was happy. Anything more than 132, I panicked.

I ate, drank, and slept weight. I wrote about it, talked about it, and even got on camera a few times to show what losing weight looks like. Weight was a full-time job that didn’t pay the bills and left me emotionally drained.

Then I got divorced, and for the last two years, life has morphed into something very unlike the life I lived in the comfort zone of yore. Weight used to be my purpose. For the last year, it’s been more of a backdrop. It is my Intention to find a middle ground. A place I can lose or maintain without losing perspective. A place in which I can walk and chew gum at the same time.

This doesn’t mean I’ve changed my belief that good nutrition and balanced food choices and portions are essential to weight loss and maintenance. And I still believe in the power of exercise, both on our minds and bodies. Those themes will remain the same here. What I’m learning is how to set my train back on the tracks when I get derailed by physical issues and emotions beyond my immediate control. I listen much more closely to my body and treat it with even greater respect than I thought possible. I’ll share these insights with you along the way, as I’ve always done, but with less absolutes than before. Balance, I’ve learned, allows for some wiggle room.

I’m also back because I have the best readers in the blog-o-sphere! Readers who aren’t afraid to speak up, share, ask questions, and support one another. Call me selfish, but I need y’all (or “yinz” if you live in Pittsburgh). Thanks for sticking with me, and if you’re new here, welcome! I’ve posted 400+ blogs here in five years, so start reading! There will be a quiz on the material in a few weeks. Oh wait, that’s MY life. I’LL have a quiz on material I’ve read over the next few weeks. I’M the one in school. Everything gets so tangled up in my head sometimes :)

As a quick update, my daughter, Carlene, was married in October.

Luca is 3 1/2. Claire is a squish over 5.

Maelie (AKA MaeMoo) will be 2 in four weeks!

And my grandchildren keep growing like weeds!

Grandbaby #4 is due the end of February. My daughter, Cassie, amazes and inspires me every day. She teaches spin and a strength training class several times a week this late in her pregnancy. When I had 6-7 weeks left of my pregnancies, I went to work (in an office), came home, and plopped in front of the TV. I’m still guilty of that, and I don’t work in an office and I’m not pregnant! I have no excuse! 

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Congratulations to MariankaK for winning Carla “MizFit” Birnberg’s book, “How to Build Muscle and Lose WeightWithout Losing Your Mind.” As I mentioned last blog, I’ve been reading Carla’s blog for years and her down-to-earth approach to life, fitness, motherhood, you name it has grounded me many times, especially those times I didn’t realize I was ungrounded! Give her blog and book a look-see if you haven’t already.