Survival Mode

I've been exhausted for six years now, ever since my mother died. Though the scale doesn't reflect more than about a 30 pound gain, my stamina and health have gone to hell.

Just about everyone can say they're in survival mode and identify with this meme. So would I have done ten years ago. But then my life got serious fast when death came knocking and took three of my five immediate family members. I didn't get it, back then. I don't think anyone does until tragedy comes for them.

They say you eat your feelings and I've had boatload of feelings to chow on these last six years. I think even worse than my gluttony has been my sloth. Just before it all started I was in catering and event sales and walked my ass off. Literally. Our biggest client was Johns Hopkins University and I was all over that place planning menus and events with different department heads. It was forced exercise but exercise nonetheless.

I tell myself I'm lazy all the time, especially when I look around at my disaster of a house. But the truth of the matter is that picking stuff up and putting it away, much less really deep cleaning, is hard as all get out to do when one weighs over 350. At my worst I'd hit just over 360 so it's really no wonder I've been nothing but a slug.

But here's the plan: I continue to eat the way the Optavia plan says and I get small enough to get on my exercise bike. It's recumbent and it's in the den with the TV so there's really no excuse. I'd lost a lot of weight and kept it off for years by doing the Hilton Head Metabolism Diet. The key to that was eating multiple times a day - just like I do now - and twice a day, just after eating, I rode a bike for 20 minutes. Easy peasy.

So my thinking is that if I add that exercise plan to the way I'm eating on Optavia, my weight loss should be even better. Plus I'll have some stamina again. It gives me hope for a better life than the one I've struggled with lately.