Speaking of Plans

I should have known that naming my blog "Where My Plan Ends" could be an omen that this whole pursuit of a healthier me might not go - wait for it - as planned.

Thanks, kid.

Family stuff trumps my personal health goals, unfortunately. So does the daily drudgery of this life I call mine. When your child decides to draw on every vertical surface with a red crayon just as you're starting to put together a delicious salad, and those vertical surfaces are in a house you rent, and the owner of the rented house is not known for her even-headedness or forgiving nature, you drop what you're doing and go on a red crayon hunt with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser sponge. When you had planned to go on a hike and spend your days doing walking lunges around the house but your grandfather ends up in the hospital and has surgery, and your grandfather is your grandmother's only caregiver, you drop what you're doing and go stay with your grandmother because that's what family does. When your washer is not moving the way it's supposed to and your husband is very valiantly lifting and scooting that washer outside to fix it, you get off the yoga mat and go dutifully stand next to him, so he doesn't have to do it alone.

Life. It just gets in the way sometimes.

I'm pretty sure this will be the site of my demise.

That being said, I only got on the treadmill once since my last post. And it about killed me. Really. Didn't I used to be able to throw on my shoes and run 4 or 5 miles straight in under an hour and still have energy to doll myself up and go dancing for hours the same night? No, I didn't have kids back then, and I was also able to sleep as long as I wanted. But I'm still me. I've added some things to my life (2 kids and a husband, oh and responsibility) and subtracted others ( mostly sleep). But I've always been on the move. Until now.

Now I jog for 2 minutes at a 16 minute/mile pace and I feel like my insides want to come outside and my lungs have both collapsed. I stop, walk, catch my breath, and start back slow and easy and get going but once again, after 2 or 3 minutes I feel like I'm being waterboarded and fighting the stomach flu. Am I just out of shape? Is this what aging is like? Did I just imagine the athleticism of my previous decade?

To be honest, none of this makes me want to give up. It makes me frustrated, though. Even the 2 pounds I subtracted (despite the 1 pint of Ben and Jerry's I added...shhh) doesn't feel that great because I don't feel any healthier. I don't like what I see in the full-length mirror and my jeans don't fit any looser.

That extra second doesn't count.

Achievements? I've started doing sit-ups and lunges with the girls in the afternoons. I can feel my butt cheeks simultaneously loving and hating me. And every day I've made a plan for how I'm going to get my 2 miles in (obviously not always successfully but at least I'm attempting to make it a part of my day, every day). Also, on the one deathmarch I made this week, I managed to get my time to exactly 30:00, which was a goal I set for myself last week.

I'll keep planning. The plans will probably keep being altered and interrupted and sometimes cancelled. But I"ll keep planning. Because if I keep planning, eventually it's going to work out.  And somehow, so am I.

 Weight: 194.2

Why I'm Here

This is probably my twelfth attempt at starting - and continuing - a blog. I've gotten excited about things I have to say in the past, but eventually it waned and I abandoned my blog, sometimes with only one post to its name.

Here I am, once again giving this a go. I hope this time it's different.

This time, it's not so much because I have something to say and I want people to read it and be impressed and think, "Wow, she's so deep and introspective, and I wish I could be more like her."

This time it's because I want - no, NEED - to make a record of this life because it's about to change and I want to be able to come back one day in the future and, I sincerely hope, be proud of how far I've come. (I really hope I don't come back and say, "Man, I was so energized but never went anywhere with it. And I'm still exactly where I was when I thought I was about to change things.")

The name of my blog, "Where My Plan Ends," is in reference to a quote I read that said, "Adventures start where plans end." What I'm about to do, what I'm hoping to do, is look at the oncoming changes in my life as an adventure rather than a stressor. I had plans for this life but as with many of my plans in the past, sometimes they need to be set aside.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines adventure as "1 a:  an undertaking usually involving danger and unknown risks b :  the encountering of risks <the spirit of adventure> 2:  an exciting or remarkable experience <an adventure in exotic dining> 3:  an enterprise involving financial risk".

Yes. This adventure will be exciting, risky, remarkable, and maybe even a little dangerous. I'm not climbing mountains or swimming with sharks here. At least, not yet. But the emotional turmoil I anticipate will happen at time is dangerous. I want to break down my comfortable ways of thinking and existing and whenever you do that, the emotional and spiritual danger is in the loss of what's comfortable and familiar. However, I know the payoff is entirely worth it.

What prompted my desire to make these changes? Three things:

1) A series of simple blood tests that, based on my own knowledge and understanding, tell me I'm prediabetic. I descend from a brief but fully occupied line of diabetics. On both sides. Strike one. I'm Native Hawaiian, an ethnic group whose risk for diabetes and heart disease is outdone by only one other ethnic group in the world (the Pima Indians of Arizona). Strike two. By medical standards, I'm obese. I'm short (5'3") and I'm heavy (196.4 lbs today, by no means the heaviest I've ever been but also nowhere near what I need to be to be healthy). That gives me a BMI of 34.7. Strike three. I was starting to notice some changes in my body and a fellow nurse at the clinic where I volunteer suggested we check my A1c. Since my blood sugar that evening was 86, I was surprised and saddened to learn my A1c was 5.9. Anything between 5.7 and 6.4 is considered prediabetic. I've also started monitoring my blood sugars and they have ranged from a low of 68 to a high of 120, all fasting. This tells me that while I'm still not swinging into the high range, I don't have good control over my sugars and given that a prediabetic person typically only has a window of 3-5 years to get good control before body damage has reached a level where blood sugar requires me to be on medication (glucophage or insulin), I realize that now is the time to pay close attention to all of these numbers and do what I have to do to get them into a healthy range. 

Having fun at the  Nature Museum

2) My daughters. Gosh, they're so young. If I don't start taking better care of myself now, what kind of mother will they grow up with? One who can't run and play and climb and jump and keep up? One who has to keep bottles of medicine and needles in the house? One who has constant doctor's appointments that get in the way of our finances, our fun, and our ability to not worry about the future? I don't want to be that kind of mom. I want to be an example of health and vitality (without the fanaticism, of course). I want to be excited and happy to take pictures with my girls, not worried about how big my arms are or how wide my face is, or if my tummy is in the picture. Don't get me wrong - I think everyone, regardless of their size or shape, should be proud of the body they have and never be ashamed to have their picture taken. But for me, if the way my body looks is equated in my mind with being on the verge of having a horrible, life-altering disease, then I'm not proud to look at it. It doesn't represent what I want it to, to me or to my girls. Even if I don't get back into my skinny jeans or my size small t-shirts, if I'm able to be healthy enough to enjoy this life with my girls long into the future, to be able to grow old with them, see their children and grandchildren, and be active in their lives well into adulthood, if I'm not worried about who is going to care for me or push me in my wheelchair because my feet have been amputated (I saw it happen with my Grandma), then making these changes will be worth it.

3) Because I can. I don't have a lot of money to my name, so there will be no gym memberships, no fancy exercise equipment, no new shoes or fabulous work out clothes. But I still have two feet that can walk and jump and dance and move. I can breathe. I live in a safe place where I can go outside and I won't be shot or kidnapped or attacked. I have the knowledge of good nutrition. I was fortunate enough to attain two higher degrees and learn the ins and outs of nutrition and diabetes nutrition. I was also educated in the consequences of not improving and maintaining my health. I have a jogging stroller, some exercise videos and an old treadmill a friend gave me several years ago that sits in our sunroom. I have all these tools at my disposal, and granted they are few. But I have them. And damnit, I'm going to use them.

Posing in my fabulous leggings 

So here goes, right? I can either get depressed about what lies ahead or decide to stop going in that direction and head down a different, more challenging, but more rewarding path. Time to lace up my shoes and get to work.

Weight: 196.4  Fasting Blood Sugar: 120  Goal for the day: Walk/jog two miles on the treadmill or outside pushing the stroller AND spread the dirt in our vegetable garden. 

UPDATE: I walked/jogged the 2.0 miles on the treadmill in 30:40. Eventual goal for the next two weeks: reduce that time to get it under 30 minutes. Ultimate goal: get it to 20.