Cleopatra_Nik

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Mall walking counts as walking! So how are you walking off those turkey day indulgences?

I have a tendency to abbreviate so that could also be showed as mi/min. If you are working on a treadmill most of the time it'll tell you how long it will take you, at the current speed, to do a mile. If you do interval...well I don't know how you'd figure that out. Perhaps just pay attention to your distance and time elapsed? If there is a better way I am interested in knowing it!

What's your time?
 

Hey everybody! I'm still figuring out how groups work and I want YOU to define how this one will work. So I guess perhaps a good first step is to do a roll-call of some sort. How about: Name, Are you a runner or walker? And anything else you want to share!

My name is Nikki (Cleopatra_Nik), I do both but most often I do interval. Currently I am working on busting through the 10 minute mile where I seem to be stuck and I look forward to learning more about running!

A website challenges you to tell your story in six words. I challenge you to tell your WLS story in six words. Can you do it? Will you try. For inspiration here’s mine:

"I hate food. I love eating."

Try it! You know you wanna!

ETA: that's not exactly true. I've revised:

"Food is immaterial. Eating is bliss."

Are you enjoying all four of your senses?

 

(Pause for head scratching and the inevitable question: What the hell does that have to do with inspiring me???)

 

Let me ask again. Do you enjoy all of your senses?

 

This may seem unrelated to inspiration especially because I am careful not to talk about eating a lot in my inspirations but I think it actually is pretty important. We are given four senses which function like four pieces of a puzzle. When even one piece is missing, the puzzle is incomplete—we cannot enjoy the whole picture, we are always focused on what is missing. So let’s go through the senses and do a little inventory, shall we?

 

Let’s start with the most obvious one for us—taste. Our tastes change after surgery but also our feelings about our “rights to taste” change. There is this pervasive myth that “food is for fuel, not for enjoyment” and that we aren’t meant to enjoy the taste of food. We worry when we enjoy the taste of something too much—is it a trigger? Can I control it? What if I can’t? The problem is that we have spent our whole lives liking certain things a little too much and not liking some things enough.

 

When we pay attention to all our senses, we don’t put such a stress on the sense of taste, I find. But aside from that, it is ok to enjoy the sense of taste. It is ok to have preferential tastes. That does not automatically equal danger. You don’t have to be afraid of taste, but at the same time you should recognize the balance of all senses so that you don’t overdo taste. It is the one sense where if you “overdo” it, you can very easily negate it.

 

Touch. We seem to have a hard time with this one but it is so important. Humans are built to be touched—it’s scientifically proven. We like to touch things and we like to be touched. We enjoy texture—the roughness of a wool sweater versus the softness of mohair, the squishiness of a lump of clay versus the smoothness of a piece of wood, the slickness of a rain coated car versus the stubbliness of a husband’s cheek.

 

My favorite touch sensation is the initial shock of getting into a hot bath. The feeling like I am almost burning but at the same time every muscle in my body is melting down out of its tense clamps and I feel fluid. Recognizing your sense of touch is especially important after surgery, I think, as we learn our new bodies. The scale may present a skewed picture but our bodies tell the tale perfectly. New bones to discover, newly developed muscles to marvel at. Every morning I make a point of patting around my pelvic area just to feel the bones. It pleases me to know that they can be felt so easily.

 

Smell. This one is one, on the other hand, that I find big folks latch onto. I would venture to guess that the obese community in the U.S. is among the largest sectors of people who buy aromatic products—body lotions, essential oils, etc. I hear lots of big folks saying “if I can’t look my best, I can always smell my best!” It is also an open defiance to the myth that fat people smell bad.

 

In life as well as in food the sense of smell is important. If you don’t believe me, try eating your dinner with a clothespin over your nose—I guarantee you won’t enjoy it as much. My point here is that smell and taste work together very closely. So you can get as much enjoyment from the aroma of something as from the taste of it. And you can get enjoyment from smells that are not food based. A flower, a nice cologne, freshly laundered sheets—and those inevitable smells that take you to another place and time.

 

Sight. Ah sight…we rely on this all day every day (for those of us who have sight), however we rarely use this sense to the fullness of its abilities. After a while life tends to be the wallpaper against which we live our lives. When was the last time you marveled at the sunset and really contemplated the colors of it? Or the last time you picked a wild flower because you thought it was unique. When is the last time you examined the grain in a fine piece of wood (there’s a picture in there, you know…) or inspected your toes and fingers. Too often life’s wonders slip by our vision. Take time to really see the world around you—what it is made of and what makes it beautiful. And look at yourself. Really look at yourself. The more you look the more you will see who you really are instead of who you used to be.

 

I’ve given enough assignments for this inspiration, so that is all! Have a great week.

Edited to add:

 

My good friend Megan pointed out to me that I missed a sense! Perhaps because it is the one I struggle with the most—hearing. I have had bad hearing for a long time and often cannot hear things at certain decibel levels. But what a gift sound is! I love music. I love to sing (my children don’t like it when I sing but that’s a whole other blog post). I love the quiet of the early morning and in Baltimore it is not spring until the first car drives slow down the street with the bass thumping. I especially love the sound of my babies sleeping. So my apologies for the omission! Go out and make beautiful noises!

 

 

 

We talk about epiphanies all the time but have you ever really had one? It’s an exciting experience to say the least. I claim to have epiphanies often but really they are not—in those instances usually I’m merely recognizing things I could not or would not recognize before, but that I have always known.

 

Well this morning I had an epiphany.

I was walking to work. It is a brisk fall day today in Baltimore and I am just getting over a nasty battle with germs. I wore a dress, some thick tights, and a jacket that is a few sizes too large but still manages to look cute on me. I was rocking my super-chic leather booties (trust me…this is going somewhere) and I had all my accessories and jewelry perfectly put together so that I looked like a hip, boho chic mama! As I walked past rows of houses on my way to work, seeing my reflection in the glass of people’s storm doors, it hit me: “I am EXACTLY who I always wanted to be!”

 

And I stopped and I thought about that. Because it’s not just about fashion my friends. Although fashion is very important to me, it is more about the mindset. I was walking tall, with a confident stride, looking cute, knowing I looked cute, smiling to people as they passed by, NOT avoiding my reflection but relishing in it…and finding myself extremely satisfied with what I saw (and, better yet, unable to wield one piece of meaningful criticism at myself).

 

THIS is who I wanted to be!!!!

 

But that brought on a second wave of thought (as epiphanies usually do and rightfully should). See, there’s a difference between being and doing. Anyone who is a parent knows that. Most anyone capable of coupling with someone can BE a parent. DOING the parenting is another thing altogether. So although in many ways I am being the person I want to be, am I doing the things that person wants to do?

 

I’m not so sure.

 

To grasp that I guess I’d have to look back to my conception of how this chick is supposed to be living. I always fancied myself a curvy, hip, boho chick who is confident, who loves to dance, listens to jazz music, knows the taste of a good glass of wine, knows the company of fine mine (fine character…get your minds out of the gutter!), is well traveled, and has something to say to the world and something to say for her life.

 

Using this definition…I got some work to do! But I don’t take that as a statement of success or failure—I take it as a challenge! Now that I can see myself in that role, it’s time to play it! Lights, camera, action! This is what I’ve been waiting for…so what am I waiting for???

 

So what does this all have to do with you? Well, very often we get caught up in one or the other—being or doing. Being skinny. Doing what we want to do. These things aren’t mutually exclusive but they are related. There are some things you quite simply would not have done as a morbidly obese person that you said you’d consider as a simply overweight person or a “normal” sized person. Are you doing them? If not, what are you waiting for? If you have a list somewhere, blow off the dust and get to it!

 

 

DO YOU!