Last week we hosted our annual ‘Summer Retreat’. Two of our children, their spouses, and the three grandchildren came for the whole week. We had never gotten our act together to rent a summer house: when the coronavirus hit, procrastination proved to be an excellent strategy. Instead we invested in making our home a ‘grandchild magnet’. The most popular item was the foosball table. Seven-year-old Andrew became an avid player.
About two months ago, five-year-old Victoria asked for a cotton candy machine. Jim scoffed at the idea, but one of my fondest memories of childhood was the magic of a cloud of sweet fluff. I loved how it melted in my mouth. We experimented with coloring our own sugar, but didn’t like the result. Besides, white granulated sugar is much more inexpensive than the commercially-colored sugar: being the classic under-spender that I am, I went with plain white, pristine as clouds in the sky. Jim continues to improve his technique and can spin them as big and fluffy as my childhood memory.
I lived in Northumberland, a sleepy little hamlet nestled on the Susquehanna, until I was nine years old. A regular summer outing was to Rolling Green, a small amusement park with a large swimming pool, Ferris Wheel, roller coaster, other rides, games, and food. I loved watching the cotton candy machine, with its huge steel drum, as the wispy threads magically appeared and the operator deftly twirled them around the white paper cone.
Andrew and Victoria had enjoyed cotton candy in New York, but it was a new experience for two-year-old Eliza. She watched Jim make one for Andrew and then he asked her if she’d like one. She shook her head firmly. I held out a piece for her to try, but she said, “I don’t like hair.” I laughed and said it didn’t taste like hair: it was candy. She didn’t budge. Watching Andrew and Victoria enjoy their treats, she finally relented.
Before Peter’s family left, we did some yard clean up. Xiomara started emptying buckets of wading pool water onto the garden. Completely inefficient and time consuming, but I felt connected to my garden as we carried water, two gallons at a time, to drench our rhubarb, tomatoes, and raspberries. It’s been a very dry summer and the soil is a dusty brown. When Xiomara was a young girl, she and her sisters carried water home from the river in Honduras. I felt the simplicity of that life as we used the leftover pool water to nourish our plants.
Wednesday, August 26, 2020
Tuesday, August 11, 2020
Cake with pink frosting
I’ve always pictured addiction to be like water pressure from a fast-moving river on a dam. I thought that the cravings increased in intensity without a break.
But, my recent mindful experience with food cravings is that they ebb and flow. I’ve known that part for years. When I fast for 24 hours, the hunger pangs don’t grow at a steady and inexorable rate. I feel acute hunger, then it subsides. If I get involved in an interesting activity, either intellectual or physical, the hunger goes away. Not just because I’m not focused on it: when I do think of my fasting again, I’m often not hungry.
This week I realized that visual cues are hugely important. I’ve always pooh-poohed the idea of putting your temptations in a cupboard. How ineffective, leaving only a cupboard door between myself and the temptation: I still know the sweets are there. What I didn’t realize is that simply seeing the sweets activates the craving.
Case in point. Our granddaughter, Eliza, visited us for a week while Savam drove across country, from L.A. to D.C. (To the East Coast! Huzzah!). We had a delightful but exhausting time. Two important details:
1. Two-and-a-half year-olds don’t stop except for naps and bedtime, and sometimes not then even.
2. Although capable of independent play, Eliza’s grandparent’s attention radar is always on full alert. Within five minutes (I’m not exaggerating) of my focus being on anything besides her (weeding the garden while she played with water toys, cooking or reading my phone while she played), she was on top of me, demanding my full attention. The day she decided not to nap and screamed to be let out nearly outdid me. Her bedtime became my bedtime.
We successfully executed some activities (reading my carefully collected and curated storybooks was a hit), including baking a Betty Crocker cake with homemade buttercream frosting. She particularly enjoyed watching the pink paste food coloring swirl into the white frosting base. (I’ve loved pink frosting since I was a girl.) Cracking eggs was above her paygrade.
Jim was in Chicago, so we didn’t make much of a dent in the cake. Every time I walked by the cake, I felt an urge to cut a piece and eat it. I resisted, sometimes, but it was hard. I finally put it on top of the microwave and under a cupboard in the corner of the kitchen. The cupboard shielded it from my view. When I went to use the microwave and was confronted with the enticing pink frosting inches from my nose, a wave of craving crashed over me. I overcame the urge, but it was powerful. Keeping the cake out of sight, even though I knew where it was, really helped my avoid it.
How do you fight your cravings?
But, my recent mindful experience with food cravings is that they ebb and flow. I’ve known that part for years. When I fast for 24 hours, the hunger pangs don’t grow at a steady and inexorable rate. I feel acute hunger, then it subsides. If I get involved in an interesting activity, either intellectual or physical, the hunger goes away. Not just because I’m not focused on it: when I do think of my fasting again, I’m often not hungry.
This week I realized that visual cues are hugely important. I’ve always pooh-poohed the idea of putting your temptations in a cupboard. How ineffective, leaving only a cupboard door between myself and the temptation: I still know the sweets are there. What I didn’t realize is that simply seeing the sweets activates the craving.
Case in point. Our granddaughter, Eliza, visited us for a week while Savam drove across country, from L.A. to D.C. (To the East Coast! Huzzah!). We had a delightful but exhausting time. Two important details:
1. Two-and-a-half year-olds don’t stop except for naps and bedtime, and sometimes not then even.
2. Although capable of independent play, Eliza’s grandparent’s attention radar is always on full alert. Within five minutes (I’m not exaggerating) of my focus being on anything besides her (weeding the garden while she played with water toys, cooking or reading my phone while she played), she was on top of me, demanding my full attention. The day she decided not to nap and screamed to be let out nearly outdid me. Her bedtime became my bedtime.
We successfully executed some activities (reading my carefully collected and curated storybooks was a hit), including baking a Betty Crocker cake with homemade buttercream frosting. She particularly enjoyed watching the pink paste food coloring swirl into the white frosting base. (I’ve loved pink frosting since I was a girl.) Cracking eggs was above her paygrade.
Jim was in Chicago, so we didn’t make much of a dent in the cake. Every time I walked by the cake, I felt an urge to cut a piece and eat it. I resisted, sometimes, but it was hard. I finally put it on top of the microwave and under a cupboard in the corner of the kitchen. The cupboard shielded it from my view. When I went to use the microwave and was confronted with the enticing pink frosting inches from my nose, a wave of craving crashed over me. I overcame the urge, but it was powerful. Keeping the cake out of sight, even though I knew where it was, really helped my avoid it.
How do you fight your cravings?
Wednesday, July 29, 2020
Eliza visiting
Our son Sam and his wife, Savannah, are moving to D.C. this week. Being our youngest has its perks: a backyard trampoline, big screen TV, and Blue-ray player in the past, free child-tending in the present.
Sam and Eliza flew from L.A. to Boston Saturday night. He returned home Sunday and Eliza began her extended stay.
It took me a day to get my ‘sea legs’. For weeks I had fantasized how she would play happily in the yard while I gardened. But when my attention leaves her, she's there to reclaim it in no more than ten minutes. I went to bed disillusioned.
Tuesday morning I was more at peace. It helped that her nap time yesterday had been long and quiet and that after breakfast Jim offered to play with her for an hour or so while I wrote, I jumped at the chance and was much refreshed to start my shift. While she played with our old Fisher Price airport, house, and barn, I was able to clean out the fireplace ash (four months after the last fire of the season). She wanted to play in the filthy bucket water. I was nearly done wiping down the hearth, so I happily rinsed the red plastic bucket, filled it with fresh water, put on her flip-flops and my sandals, and headed out for the shade of the backyard.
After watching her for a while, contentedly filling and emptying plastic nesting cups, I went to the garage, put on knee pads, and started weeding in the garden bed nearest her. In about five minutes she came over, asked what the knee pads were, what I was doing, and then stated that she wanted milk (which was inside the house). That was the end of that project.
Knowing that milk could segue into lunch and a two-hour nap, I readily acquiesced. I’m finding the balance between catering to her whims and holding the line. Milk and juice are only allowed in the kitchen and dining room. She turns into an angry little dog and growls at me, but I just growl back. She doesn’t know how good her life is. I hope she isn’t disabused any time soon.
Sam and Eliza flew from L.A. to Boston Saturday night. He returned home Sunday and Eliza began her extended stay.
It took me a day to get my ‘sea legs’. For weeks I had fantasized how she would play happily in the yard while I gardened. But when my attention leaves her, she's there to reclaim it in no more than ten minutes. I went to bed disillusioned.
Tuesday morning I was more at peace. It helped that her nap time yesterday had been long and quiet and that after breakfast Jim offered to play with her for an hour or so while I wrote, I jumped at the chance and was much refreshed to start my shift. While she played with our old Fisher Price airport, house, and barn, I was able to clean out the fireplace ash (four months after the last fire of the season). She wanted to play in the filthy bucket water. I was nearly done wiping down the hearth, so I happily rinsed the red plastic bucket, filled it with fresh water, put on her flip-flops and my sandals, and headed out for the shade of the backyard.
After watching her for a while, contentedly filling and emptying plastic nesting cups, I went to the garage, put on knee pads, and started weeding in the garden bed nearest her. In about five minutes she came over, asked what the knee pads were, what I was doing, and then stated that she wanted milk (which was inside the house). That was the end of that project.
Knowing that milk could segue into lunch and a two-hour nap, I readily acquiesced. I’m finding the balance between catering to her whims and holding the line. Milk and juice are only allowed in the kitchen and dining room. She turns into an angry little dog and growls at me, but I just growl back. She doesn’t know how good her life is. I hope she isn’t disabused any time soon.
Thursday, July 23, 2020
Clarity?
For my monthly therapy session on July 10th, I planned to talk about my relationship to my
meds.
Working on my memoir, I had remembered an insightful
question Thomas, my therapist since 2003, had asked eight years ago. At the time, I
was overwrought when a neurologist had suggested my long-term hand
tremor might be Parkinson’s Disease.
“What does that mean for you?” Thomas had asked.
I immediately saw the two interpretations the question invited:
what would having Parkinson’s mean to my daily life and what did the diagnosis symbolize for me.
I have been terrified of Parkinson’s for fifty years, and his
question helped me to see that my mind was spinning uncontrollably towards an imaginary future instead of sitting in the present moment, where the possible diagnosis impacted nothing tangible. I was living in the terror of a constructed, dismal
future.
Arriving at the neurologist's office, I had believed the tremor was medication-induced and expected it
to continue, stable and unchanging. I hoped for a cure, but I had made an uncomfortable peace with it. Suddenly an awful future loomed before me. Can we just go back an hour, my mind pleaded, to when I thought I had a medication-induced hand tremor, not a life-altering, lethal disease?
I’ve struggled with this medication for over a decade,
trying multiple times to get completely off , mostly without medical supervision. I’d been trying again (under the
supervision of my current psychiatric nurse practitioner (NP) this time) and it hadn’t gone well. No catastrophe, but symptoms that worried me, Jim, and my therapist.
As I talked to Thomas two weeks ago, my question mirrored his
earlier one: what meaning does this drug have to me? Why have I struggled so
long to remove it from my life? I had promised my NP not to do anything until
our next appointment in August and I assured my therapist I wouldn't. But after that, I really wanted to try, again, to taper off it.
Thomas looked thoughtful and said, “I’ve heard from my
friends in recovery (a.k.a. Alcoholics Anonymous) that doing the same thing and
expecting different results is…”
“Yeah, I know: the definition of insanity.”
That shook me: is my quest insanity? Could it literally lead to that state I've experienced three times in my adult life? I brought the conversation up in a DBSA-Boston support meeting. I rarely say
anything so revealing. Why do I chafe against it, I wondered aloud? Couldn't I just try again, tweak the experiment, get a different answer?
Lucy, a longtime friend, talked about the challenge of getting clarity.
After the conversation had moved on to other topics, she circled back to
say, with urgency in her voice, that a phrase kept coming into her mind: black-and-white thinking. That’s a
cognitive distortion, a warped thinking pattern where one can’t see nuance,
options, and different viewpoints and interpretations. Everything in life is simply black or white, on or off, virtuous or evil, Nothing in moderation.
This took me aback: was my thinking irrational? I respect her clarity and added her words to Thomas'. Was my quest to get off the drug dangerous?
Couldn’t I just try it one more time? Tweak my procedure a bit and get a different result? Or had I made the definitive trial and found an undeniable need for the drug?
Do I need to SWIM! (Stop Whining Instantly, Mary!)? I’ve
been relatively stable for over ten years. The meds and therapy have kept me out
of the hospital. I’ve been able to function, live a
full life, even find joy and happiness. What is this impulse to cut back, to
take none of this particular medication?
Is it insanity
to try to taper down again? Can I find peace and clarity after
25 years of struggle against any and all psych meds?
I haven’t admitted this specific struggle to many. I wouldn’t
have brought it up in the group except that I was confident that no one in the group
would look to my example and stop taking their meds. I’m 63 years old. I present
as a mature adult who has made peace with her circumstances. I’m not a reckless
teenager, or am I?
Tuesday, June 23, 2020
The Longest Day of the Year
"Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it."
Matt’s email three days ago quoting The Great Gatsby, informed me that I again missed the longest day, because I was too busy living it. For several Junes since we read Gatsby for our family book group in 2013 Matt has emailed Daisy’s question.
Saturday, the longest day of my year, was spent with two adorable grandchildren, Andrew and Victoria. It was sunny and hot and we played in our wading pool. I had bought two spray nozzles and attached them to garden hoses so they could have water fights while I watered my rhubarb with a third hose.
As Xiomara and I sat in the sun-warmed pool late in the afternoon, she reminisced about her childhood in Honduras. They received just one pair of shoes a year, so they went barefoot most of the time, including to school and on their daily mile-long walk to the river to fetch water. Being the youngest, Xiomara only carried two one-gallon containers home: the older children carried five gallons on their heads. Her resourceful father bought an acre of land outside of town and planted mangoes, bananas, pineapples, and coconuts as well as beans and vegetables. As poor as they were, tropical fruit was cheap and plentiful. It's a stark contrast to the prices in New York.
My dad grew up in a ‘ranch house’ among the wheat fields of Montana with no running water. I remember using the outhouse the summer of 1965 when we flew to Montana for a reunion.
A few days ago, I planted several zinnia seeds in small pots and by Saturday they had sprouted cotyledons. (The embryonic ‘leaves’ that nourish the plant until true leaves can grow and start photosynthesis.) I gave one to Victoria to take home and today, by video, she proudly showed me her thriving plant.
Another botanical project is my Christmas cacti. My mom grew beautiful Christmas cacti (which aren’t technically cacti at all) and enjoyed collecting varieties. She had pink and white and even an orange one. They bloomed at Christmas or Thanksgiving or Easter.
My oldest cactus sat for years on our old piano; the brilliant pink blossoms cascaded down one side of the pot. This year I decided to take the old, lopsided plant in hand. I perched it on top of an overturned wastebasket in the kitchen and studied it for several days. I came to see that I could restore balance by pruning it severely. Two younger but also unruly plants needed a deep trimming as well. I filled several small pots and a large, shallow pot with soil and planted about 20 slips. I’d never thought to prune a Christmas cactus. A week after the pruning, all three plants are sending out fresh new leaves. I hope they enjoy their new state.
I got a haircut too, the first in twenty weeks. My hairdresser, Pauline, has rearranged her salon to allow for safe distancing. She's always been meticulous about cleanliness: the main change is the box of disposable face masks on her counter. I left about four inches of grey and white hair on the floor, just in time for the hot weather.
Matt’s email three days ago quoting The Great Gatsby, informed me that I again missed the longest day, because I was too busy living it. For several Junes since we read Gatsby for our family book group in 2013 Matt has emailed Daisy’s question.
Saturday, the longest day of my year, was spent with two adorable grandchildren, Andrew and Victoria. It was sunny and hot and we played in our wading pool. I had bought two spray nozzles and attached them to garden hoses so they could have water fights while I watered my rhubarb with a third hose.
As Xiomara and I sat in the sun-warmed pool late in the afternoon, she reminisced about her childhood in Honduras. They received just one pair of shoes a year, so they went barefoot most of the time, including to school and on their daily mile-long walk to the river to fetch water. Being the youngest, Xiomara only carried two one-gallon containers home: the older children carried five gallons on their heads. Her resourceful father bought an acre of land outside of town and planted mangoes, bananas, pineapples, and coconuts as well as beans and vegetables. As poor as they were, tropical fruit was cheap and plentiful. It's a stark contrast to the prices in New York.
My dad grew up in a ‘ranch house’ among the wheat fields of Montana with no running water. I remember using the outhouse the summer of 1965 when we flew to Montana for a reunion.
A few days ago, I planted several zinnia seeds in small pots and by Saturday they had sprouted cotyledons. (The embryonic ‘leaves’ that nourish the plant until true leaves can grow and start photosynthesis.) I gave one to Victoria to take home and today, by video, she proudly showed me her thriving plant.
Another botanical project is my Christmas cacti. My mom grew beautiful Christmas cacti (which aren’t technically cacti at all) and enjoyed collecting varieties. She had pink and white and even an orange one. They bloomed at Christmas or Thanksgiving or Easter.
My oldest cactus sat for years on our old piano; the brilliant pink blossoms cascaded down one side of the pot. This year I decided to take the old, lopsided plant in hand. I perched it on top of an overturned wastebasket in the kitchen and studied it for several days. I came to see that I could restore balance by pruning it severely. Two younger but also unruly plants needed a deep trimming as well. I filled several small pots and a large, shallow pot with soil and planted about 20 slips. I’d never thought to prune a Christmas cactus. A week after the pruning, all three plants are sending out fresh new leaves. I hope they enjoy their new state.
I got a haircut too, the first in twenty weeks. My hairdresser, Pauline, has rearranged her salon to allow for safe distancing. She's always been meticulous about cleanliness: the main change is the box of disposable face masks on her counter. I left about four inches of grey and white hair on the floor, just in time for the hot weather.
Tuesday, June 16, 2020
As For Years
The other day my youngest son, Sam, shared memories of working in the garden over his growing-up years. I really appreciated it. A lot of it has faded for me. (Note to the world: keep a journal. You will one day appreciate even a few sentences you write about your life today.)
Then I asked the other kids for memories. Matt sent a detailed email, including many things that I had forgotten. He said the rhubarb in the small triangular bed near the garage was the original plant. I’m not sure if it was the only one, but certainly we started with no more than three. Now we have 21. That’s not as impressive as it sounds. The western edge of our one-acre property is lined with trees and our large garden does not get a full day of sunshine: the western third of the garden is in shade by about 1 p.m. You can measure the length of sunshine by the size of the rhubarb plants. In the center of the garden the plants spread out five feet wide. As the beds progress west, the plants shrink to 18 inches.
Last Friday I bought 10 bags of composted cow manure (low-odor) at Home Depot. Saturday I spent four hours, dunged each rhubarb plant, and then watered each thoroughly.
I have five friends who help me in the garden this year: Leroy (15), Ruby (13), Lucy (12), Twyla (10), and their mom, Sherie. This morning Ruby, Twyla, and Sherie came. The beets and carrot beds were overwhelmed with broadleaf weeds. I thought the seedlings had all died, but with very careful, gentle weeding we discovered four of each hidden under the weeds, each about an inch tall and incredibly delicate.
Jim had suggested, when I started this project, to have the girls plant flowers. Along with the manure, I bought a tray of marigolds and petunias. We dug trenches, mixed manure, peat moss, and topsoil to a uniform color and texture (I called it the cake mix), and planted each flower in the bed where we sowed sunflower seeds (only one seed sprouted).
Last week, Twyla had harvested the rhubarb, as I directed, quite heavily. Today new, crinkly leaves are sprouting up from the heart of the plants. We covered the bare soil between plants with black landscape fabric or salt marsh hay, hoping to starve weeds out.
For years I’ve had a glorious fantasy of returning the garden to its 1993 elegance, with clean brick walkways and raised beds. I fretted that if I put the energy into it, it might not last and my efforts would be for naught. But last year I decided to “act upon this land as for years.”
When we moved to a little rented house in Columbus, Indiana, a week after R’el was born, I decided to create a little vegetable plot, mostly for tomatoes, which is what I knew how to grow. We didn’t know how long we would live there, but I went forward with my project, inspired by the counsel given in the LDS book of scriptures called the Doctrine and Covenants (section 51, verse 16):
...let them act upon this land as for years, and this shall turn unto them for their good.
We lived there for three growing seasons and I’ve never regretted the effort I took.
Now that I’ve started actually working on the garden intensively, I accept its potential loss with equanimity. Instead of resisting the project I am embracing it in all its complexity, creativity, experimentation, hard work, and the possibility of failure. I am acting upon it as for years, and it is turning unto me for my good.
Then I asked the other kids for memories. Matt sent a detailed email, including many things that I had forgotten. He said the rhubarb in the small triangular bed near the garage was the original plant. I’m not sure if it was the only one, but certainly we started with no more than three. Now we have 21. That’s not as impressive as it sounds. The western edge of our one-acre property is lined with trees and our large garden does not get a full day of sunshine: the western third of the garden is in shade by about 1 p.m. You can measure the length of sunshine by the size of the rhubarb plants. In the center of the garden the plants spread out five feet wide. As the beds progress west, the plants shrink to 18 inches.
Last Friday I bought 10 bags of composted cow manure (low-odor) at Home Depot. Saturday I spent four hours, dunged each rhubarb plant, and then watered each thoroughly.
I have five friends who help me in the garden this year: Leroy (15), Ruby (13), Lucy (12), Twyla (10), and their mom, Sherie. This morning Ruby, Twyla, and Sherie came. The beets and carrot beds were overwhelmed with broadleaf weeds. I thought the seedlings had all died, but with very careful, gentle weeding we discovered four of each hidden under the weeds, each about an inch tall and incredibly delicate.
Jim had suggested, when I started this project, to have the girls plant flowers. Along with the manure, I bought a tray of marigolds and petunias. We dug trenches, mixed manure, peat moss, and topsoil to a uniform color and texture (I called it the cake mix), and planted each flower in the bed where we sowed sunflower seeds (only one seed sprouted).
Last week, Twyla had harvested the rhubarb, as I directed, quite heavily. Today new, crinkly leaves are sprouting up from the heart of the plants. We covered the bare soil between plants with black landscape fabric or salt marsh hay, hoping to starve weeds out.
For years I’ve had a glorious fantasy of returning the garden to its 1993 elegance, with clean brick walkways and raised beds. I fretted that if I put the energy into it, it might not last and my efforts would be for naught. But last year I decided to “act upon this land as for years.”
When we moved to a little rented house in Columbus, Indiana, a week after R’el was born, I decided to create a little vegetable plot, mostly for tomatoes, which is what I knew how to grow. We didn’t know how long we would live there, but I went forward with my project, inspired by the counsel given in the LDS book of scriptures called the Doctrine and Covenants (section 51, verse 16):
...let them act upon this land as for years, and this shall turn unto them for their good.
We lived there for three growing seasons and I’ve never regretted the effort I took.
Now that I’ve started actually working on the garden intensively, I accept its potential loss with equanimity. Instead of resisting the project I am embracing it in all its complexity, creativity, experimentation, hard work, and the possibility of failure. I am acting upon it as for years, and it is turning unto me for my good.
Tuesday, June 9, 2020
Nerd Fitness
Last week, I woke up at 6:49 a.m. and realized that I had time to do my Nerd Fitness workout before Khare’s daily meditation circle. I didn’t feel well-rested, but I did it.
My workout has changed character recently. I’ve begun to focus on challenging myself. My friend, Kimberly, told me that it’s the last rep, the one I can barely do, that is strengthening the muscle. Instead of marking time, doing the prescribed reps unthinkingly, my mind is actively engaged, tuned into my muscles and joints for every rep.
I imagine I’m one of the older members of Nerd Fitness. Steve Kamb targets young ‘nerds’. I’m not a nerd in that sense. But I did have a body that was under-worked and atrophying.When I started Nerd Fitness Academy last August, they sent a series of twelve weekly emails with systematic challenges. I ignored many of them. But last week I decided to ‘respawn’ (I had to look that up. Nerd is set up like a massive video game.) and receive the emails again, which will take 3 months to get through. The workouts are just one aspect of change, along with healthy eating and a positive mindset. I had stopped consistently logging my food and my scale confirms that I need that discipline. I’m taking the Nerd challenge to log my food every day for a week. It's surprisingly difficult to sustain the effort. I'm 'walking to Mordor' as well: walking at least five minutes a day for a month. Gotta go!
My workout has changed character recently. I’ve begun to focus on challenging myself. My friend, Kimberly, told me that it’s the last rep, the one I can barely do, that is strengthening the muscle. Instead of marking time, doing the prescribed reps unthinkingly, my mind is actively engaged, tuned into my muscles and joints for every rep.
I imagine I’m one of the older members of Nerd Fitness. Steve Kamb targets young ‘nerds’. I’m not a nerd in that sense. But I did have a body that was under-worked and atrophying.When I started Nerd Fitness Academy last August, they sent a series of twelve weekly emails with systematic challenges. I ignored many of them. But last week I decided to ‘respawn’ (I had to look that up. Nerd is set up like a massive video game.) and receive the emails again, which will take 3 months to get through. The workouts are just one aspect of change, along with healthy eating and a positive mindset. I had stopped consistently logging my food and my scale confirms that I need that discipline. I’m taking the Nerd challenge to log my food every day for a week. It's surprisingly difficult to sustain the effort. I'm 'walking to Mordor' as well: walking at least five minutes a day for a month. Gotta go!
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