Like a lot of little girls, I grew up loving horses. I was obsessed with the few animals that lived in my grandmother's pasture and was constantly feeding them apples, grass, carrots ... anything they would take, really. When asked what I wanted for birthdays, Christmas or any other occasion, my answer was always, "I want a horse!" I had thousands of My Little Ponies, Breyer model horses and any other horsey thing I could get my hands on. I had pictures, scrapbooks, drawings and even a subscription to Horse Illustrated magazine! And, when I was around 13 I got my first horse!! He was a beautiful bay 3-year-old Arabian that a 13-year-old girl who had only started longingly at horses from the other side of a fence had no business being anywhere near and within a year was sold for a much calmer gray Quarter Horse. And then, a few years later, a wonderful blue rhone Appaloosa, who really was the perfect horse for me and will always be dearly missed.
You can learn a lot from horses. Confidence. Self-Esteem. Calmness. Freedom. You can also learn stark raving terror, frustration you've never known you could feel, pain and heartbreak. I believe that owning, even just working with, horses is good training for life. If you have the chance, do it. Don't question it - just do it.
As a horse person - or even as a non-horse person - we've all heard the expression that when you get bucked off you need to just get up and get back on. I can tell you, when you're laying in the snow looking up at that big animal and your back and hips and knees and head and all sorts of other pertinent body parts are screaming at you to just lay there and not move for a while, the last thing you want to do is get back on and do it all over again. But then the horse comes back over, bends down and sniffs your face and nudges you as if to say, "I didn't mean it, let's try again" and so you get up to try again, even knowing you might end up right back in the snow.
My journey with my weight is a lot like that bumpy horseback ride that ended me in that snow drift. I was trotting along, doing great. I was journaling daily, recording my food, going to the YMCA three times a week. I was flying! And then there was a bump in the road. I started to get frustrated. I found myself staring at the drive-through menu and feeling angry and resentful because I couldn't have what I really wanted - that food was off-limits now. Oh, I knew I could have it. But now I know how many points are in those nachos and cheeseburgers and I know what eating them costs. And I felt angry just because I knew what that food cost. I also hated getting up to go to the Y on Monday mornings. That has traditionally been time that I spend with Rayne because it's her day off - our day off, really, and I resented giving that time with her up to go do something like exercise. So I gradully started missing Mondays, and then Wednesdays, and befor I knew it I'd missed two whole weeks! As you've noticed, along the way I also stopped working at my blog and posting things here. I told myself I was too busy, that I had other things to worry about. The holidays were looming, after all. I had to get out there and get prepared! I didn't have time to blog!
Then, the final straw. I got sick. I craved (and ate) sugar and junk food like a mad woman, I stopped writing anything down in my journal, I didn't make any effort to exercise - because I was sick. You don't have to write things down when you're sick. You can eat what you want when you're sick. I can see that that was the beginning of the end, because, of course, as soon as I was semi-healthy there were the Holidays - crouched, waiting to pounce. As soon as I started feeling better, the Christmas favorites were all around. Mom's fudge. Home made almond brittle. Hickory Farms cheese and crackers, special candies only available "for the season" that I just couldn't miss out on. And, of course, Christmas dinner featuring turkey & gravy, prime rib, mashed potatoes, and - my true downfall - LOBSTER MAC & CHEESE! I was truly dead in the water at that point.
And, because I was already "off" because of being sick, I gave myself permission to indulge. In everything. I didn't even try to make healthy choices when we ate out. I had some of everything at Christmas dinner - and not just a small bite, I mean a mountain of potatoes, a slab of prime rib, a whole big serving of mac & cheese .... AND cheesecake. I didn't even try to plan healthy meals at home, reverting back to our old standard of "which Hamburger Helper are we eating tonight?" And going to the Y? Forget about it! I'll deal with that after the holidays!
So, here I am. Laying in the snow. Staring up at the big diet monster, thinking about getting up and SO not wanting to. It's so much easier to just lay here, not thinking about what I eat, not worrying about getting exercise in. It'd be so much easier to let that 20+ lbs I lost in 2009 creep back on, to let my health continue slipping away as my weight keeps going up and up and up as it always has.
But I know I can't do that. I know I have to get back up.
So, I've named Tuesday morning D-Day. Or, maybe a better name for it would be L-Day. I don't want to continue the "on a diet / off a diet" thinking. I don't want to feel like I'm "being good" or "being bad." I just want to be. So, I guess the right name might better be RoML-Day, because it really is the rest of my life we're talking about here, not a fad that I'm going to follow for a while and then quit.
I'm going to take the rest of my weekend to clean out the remaining "junk" in my house, make some solid meal plans, get set up back at the Y and make a plan for 2010.
Are you with me?!? I'll be checking on Tuesday!
~ The Shrinking Diva
