Food, Weight, Weather

Food:
I have made a big lifestyle change concerning food, as of 01/01/18 I am a Vegan. I made this choice for three primary reasons and will write a little about them below. The reasons are in order to have a healthier body,  to support my weight loss goals, and to cause myself to become more mindful of what I put into my body

• Healthier Body: As I continue to learn to love and respect who I am, I find that I have a stronger desire to live to an advanced age, I would love to live to see 100. I know that in order to do so I need to take care of the one and only body I have been entrusted with. It is my responsibility to care for this body.  The human body is in a much healthier state when not subjected to meat or animal products. 
• Becoming a vegan supports my weight loss goals by eliminating foods that are not easily digested my the human digestive system. As I continue lifting weights and doing Cardio. This change of lifestyle supports my efforts.
• Becoming more mindful: Now that I am a vegan I need to think about everything I eat, yes as time goes on it will become easier and I will know more about what I can and can not eat, I need to think more creatively about variety, taste, texture and more since I do not have the flavors that are provided by meat and other animal products. This leads to being more mindful about what I eat , long before I even get around to eating it .

Weight:

I have hit a stuck point in my weight loss I am stuck at about 246 lbs. I had started this adventure at 269 so progress has been made. Just not enough to satisfy my expectations. Logically I realize that these stuck points and set backs happen, however, logic is not enough to pull me through right now. I am feeling discouraged and disappointed in myself. I have slacked off on my gym attendance partly due to weather, partly because its hard to motivate to go when Kevin is in my bed sleeping. I am aware that the only way through this is through it , that I simply need to do what it takes to push past this stuck point; go to the gym daily , watch my portions, cut myself some slack, and most of all trust the process.

Weather:

It has been a while since I have had to deal with a typical Minnesota winter, and here I am mid-January and it is already getting to me.  It has been at least 17 years since I had a winter like this, I was away for 15 and the past 2 have been mild. The cold and snow used to not slow me down, or even bother me, but that was then and this is now. Winter seemed like it was not going to show up, at least that was my impression, and then all of a sudden we were hit with bitter cold, and a lot of it. There was a time when I would thrive in the below zero temps. Now my body hurts when it gets cold. I try my hardest to not let on, to not let others know that I can no longer deal with the cold as well as I once could. I feel weak when I give into the weather. I worry when it snows, I do not want to fall and hurt myself, last year I damaged my rotator cuff twice within 16 days because of snow and ice. I feel like I need to pretend that I am not bothered by any of it "I am big strong Norwegian viking I love cold and snow" sounds much better than "I'm getting old I need to take it easy".

A very unexpected holiday season

As stated in the very first entry in this blog my intention is to share about all aspects of my life, because I firmly believe they all work together in making me who I am.  So this entry, as late as it is, will be about my experience of the Christmas and New Year holiday season.

I thought I had grown accustom to spending the Christmas holidays alone, I was used to the fact that my family of origin does not want me around, for reasons I really can't figure out, on Christmas or ever really. This year however it was different, not having someone to spend Christmas with was bothering me, I was depressed, I was angry, I was having a hard time keeping it together. I was actually feeling the feelings involved rather than staying numb to them.  What I really wanted to do was to just get and stay drunk from mid afternoon on December 24th until the morning of December 26th. It turns out I did not even have one drink. My traditional church plans were not even exciting me, and that is very unusual for me.

Then something very unexpected happened; Wednesday December 20 I was at home feeling lonely and decided to take some action to at least try to change that; so I went to a weekly event that I had been telling myself for months that I was going to check out , and had not done so. The event is called bear coffee and it takes place at a coffee shop a couple of blocks from my home. I was nervous but went anyway, a big step for me.

I got to bear coffee, my friend Paul was there so I sat by him, there was an available chair that was easier to access at the other end of the table but I did not take it.  I made eye contact with a man named Kevin, who I had chatted with on-line and by phone a bit a couple of years before that.  Someone, I think it was Paul, suggested a group picture because it was the last meeting before Christmas, every body lined up, Kevin was behind me and ended up with his arms around me in the picture. Something was happening.

When it was time to leave, I walked out the door with Kevin, we chatted a bit, I kissed him, he kissed me back. I invited him over to my place however he had to say no because he had things he had to do in the morning. I gave him my card and asked him to give me a call sometime. We kissed again and parted ways. The next morning, there was a message from him asking for a rain check, I assured him my offer for him to come over was a standing offer.

I need to provide some background information at this point so the rest of the story has the intended impact.

Over the past several years I have been in one painful, dysfunctional, abusive relationship after another. This was because I had the belief that in order to count as being someone I needed to belong to a man, I needed to be in a relationship in order to prove my worth. While in the Journey program over the summer I realized that was not true, that I did not need to be in a relationship, so I had made the choice that I was not going to be in one. I had gone as far as to decide that I was going to live a life of celibacy.

Kevin and I had our first date on Saturday December 23rd. On my way home from the gym that morning I saw a man walking down the street wearing a Santa hat, I stopped him and said "Santa I know I am on the naughty list this year, in fact I am sort of proud to have made the list, but could you please bring me something anyway" he said " Consider it done".  While Kevin and I were having dinner that night we talked about what we had planed for Christmas, neither of us had anything going on so we quickly figured out a dinner using things we each had at home. He came over on Christmas day and as much as it sounds like a Hallmark Christmas Special we have been dating ever since.