God… I Think, and I Thank

April 18, 2014April 18, 2014 / leslietoldo.com / 2 Comments

I know a lot of people have a tough time during the Thanksgiving/Christmas season because they lost loved ones. This is my holiday, I suppose. Easter week is usually tough for me. I lost my Grandfather Cam the day after Easter, after spending that entire week watching him slowly devoured by the final stages of cancer. Taurus, THE dog who sparked my passion for the entire, amazing canine species, was shot and killed by my crazy neighbor, just days before Easter. My robustly healthy, vibrant, smart, sassy Grandmother Edith lost her battle with cancer just days before Easter. This year, while the hurt is still there, the season is different for me.

My failed attempt at sticking to a self-inflicted Lent kind of had me feeling down on myself. In fact, a friend asked me today how my Lent has been. She wondered if I had any sort of epiphany. I said no, and beat up on myself a little, using some of my traditional snarky, self-defeating lingo, “I suck…” blah, blah, blah. It is so easy to just say, “I suck”, and throw this Lent experiment into the “failed attempts” junk drawer- er, closet- in my psyche. How convenient. I could even pull a, “well, this is the saddest time of the year” card out of my back pocket. I could. I will not.

I guess I have had my epiphany. I decided, on a whim, to take a crack at Lent. I had perfect fodder for a few blog posts, to get me back in the habit of posting regularly. It was to be yet another start in my revolving door of fits and starts with this thing, followed by another, “what the heck happened” post, riddled with chippy, one-liners. I am not going to do it this time. If it seems like I am doing it, I am not.

I guess I have had my epiphany. What the heck happened was, I started yet another “thing” with great intentions, but zero drive and no honest desire. More than that, I started without a real plan. This was not really about giving up my favorite snacks to show some contrived empathy for what Jesus suffered. At least, I know that can’t really be what this whole thing is about. Right? While not eating white bread and chocolate cake, etc. may feel like I am being tortured, it is hardly a crucifixion. Perhaps that is the real story here. We make these things- things that are not even really good for us- so important in our lives, when they really aren’t. The whole torture of giving them up is all in our minds. This stuff is important because we make it that way.

Life is what is really important. How did I live my life? How did I love? Did I give? Was I selfish? I think of the three significant lives that were snuffed out of my own, personal universe during this season, and I know that whether they were able to give up cupcakes or Milk Bones, for that matter, were not really what was on my mind after they were gone. Today I still remember them for how they lived.

So, my dear friend Mary, in answer to your question: I guess I have had a moment of clarity. How am I living my life? I hope my only legacy will not be that I was not able to resist the divine temptations of simple carbohydrates during Lent. What is my life about? It seems like more of a question than an epiphany. For me it is still growth. It is a more enlightened question than, “does this bag of Dove chocolates make my butt look big?”

Thank God for small stuff- and it is all really small stuff. (I stole that last line)

Lent day one

March 6, 2014March 6, 2014 / leslietoldo.com / 4 Comments

Well, I did not do the whole Ash Wednesday, cross-on-your-forehead thing. That is just because I am not Catholic, and I didn’t think it was probably right to randomly make a cross on my head with just any old ashes. I had an imaginary cross.

I also had a major hangover. I don’t drink- gave that up 11 years ago. I am talking about from the sugar, fat and gluten bender I went on Fat Tuesday. Actually, scratch that. I have sort of been on a bender since Thanksgiving. I don’t know how it happened. It just did.

Anyway, as much as I want to pretend that these people who go on and on about how sugar is bad for everything from your psyche to your joints, are just some crazed health freaks, out to spoil everyone’s fun- they are kind of right. Seriously.

I could not even make my Day One journal entry last night because I went into delirium tremens and slipped into a sweaty night coma. Okay, well, that did not happen. I did, however, crash completely out the moment my head hit the pillow.

I was tired all day yesterday. I was off my square for sure. I was tempted to hit the vending machine at work and mainline some Skittles, but then I thought about Jesus. I did say I was going to eat clean to get closer to God.

Making that kind of promise is on a par with promising something to your Gramma- you don’t break those kind of promises. You just don’t. I know some people might be offended that I am comparing my Gramma to God. I am certain God gets it- he knows about grandmothers.

In all seriousness, it did make me feel closer to God. I am pretty sure God is busy with far more important things than keeping me from ponying up 85-cents for vending machine Skittles. I am clear that this eating clean thing is not going to change the world. I do think that, by doing this, denying myself and getting closer to God, I will maybe come closer to my own purpose, so I can play the role God wants me to in this world. We all have a purpose. Every one of us.

No Does Not Mean Yes!

January 14, 2013January 14, 2013 / leslietoldo.com / Leave a comment

Do you ever wonder what would happen if some new research came out and definitively proved that broccoli is really bad for you? I wonder if I would suddenly get insatiable cravings for it. What is it about the word “no” that makes my psyche want to say, “yes, yes, YES, God, yes”?

I actually did research. Okay, so I Googled “why do we want what we can’t have”. That is the modern equivalent of research, isn’t it? To think, I spent hours learning how to use the card catalogue at libraries, and I have not stepped foot in one for a good 15 years. Thank you, Google.

My “research” led me to the expected answers. I looked at several sites, but honed in on selfgrowth.com. That is where I found the following explanation.

“When something is hard to get (or forbidden) you immediately pay more attention to it. Notice that when you are on a restricted diet, you sometimes get too focused on what you “can’t” eat. This heightened attention — which can escalate into obsession — makes the forbidden food seem very important. Your inner brat takes advantage of this, and tries to convince you that you MUST have that chocolate or pizza.”

Ummmm… pizza. See? There I go. Just the though of not having it makes me want to turn this car around and get my pepperoni-hand-tossed on. (No, mom, I am not really driving and typing.) But why? Because, just as I was reading the word “pizza”, my brain said, “oh, no, girl. Pizza has gluten, you can’t have that.”

My next internal response was, “yes you can. You are an American! You can eat what you want.” My sick mind wants to turn my desire to binge-eat pizza into a patriotic event. At the end of the day, it goes back to the point the writer was making: I want what I can’t have because my focus is on what I can’t have.

Last night, I had baked chicken with green beans and brown rice. I know… control yourself. There is no such thing as McChicken with green beans. I think it probably would be hard to fit on a drive thru menu. That may really be the only reason. As I was eating, I thought, “this is good. This is better than a cheeseburger and fries.”

In my heart, I really meant that, too. I don’t know about anyone else, but I know that I have a knack for hitting the drive through during some sort of french fry vat shift change. I always get that order of fries that has some that are black on one end and still soggy on the other. Or, they are an order of fries someone brought back, and some tree-hugging kid working the drive through doesn’t want to waste food, so I reap the benefits.

My point is, when I allow myself to focus on what I can have, while trying to be healthy, it is amazing how much I do not want the things I can’t have. (I think I broke about 36 grammar rules with that sentence.)

If I can only remind myself, in those moments when I am coming up with excuses to skip a workout, or to justify eating bad food, of how good I feel when I do the healthy thing. I never get a jolt of “hell yeah” from not working out. I never feel like a super badass when I skip a run.

Can we train our brains to focus on, “yay, look what I get to do”, instead of “dang, I can’t have this”?

There is no question in my mind that going off gluten has made a major shift in my overall health. I can not even begin to describe how much healthier I feel. I have it in me to shift my focus. I know that I do.

Becoming a runner at the age of 41 took a lot of focus shifting techniques. The greatest attitude adjusting tool I have used in my short running career has been to remind myself how blessed I am to be in good enough physical health to run in the first place. I have to remember, that I quit smoking because I wanted to be a healthy person. Ultimately, that is what this is all about for me. I mean, I am relatively sure that my shot at the Sports Illustrated Swim Suit Edition is up. I can’t just be after some weight loss and hot body goal.

So here I am, reminding myself that I get to eat my own home cooking instead of crappy, soggy fries and re-heated-in-the-microwave cheeseburgers. Oh, yeah, they do sometimes heat burgers up in the microwave. I am probably violating some sort of fast food privacy act provision, but who cares? Burger King fired me. It’s payback time, y’all.

Ultimately, this all points back to one thing: self-pity (or feeling deprived in some way) cannot coexist with gratitude. The two are mutually exclusive. In all areas of my life- not just when it comes to my goofy old health, I must focus on all of the legitimate “yes’s” around me, let all of the “no’s” be “no’s”.

Inspirational lies

November 18, 2012November 19, 2012 / leslietoldo.com / 3 Comments

The really awesome thing about having your own words in print- especially on the internet, where they will be around forever- is that you can always go back and review your past musings and get a good laugh. I could cry, but I choose to laugh.

The month was August. The title: “C’s Get Degrees”. I wrote the following:

“So, when I finished weight training and a run this morning, and thought, ‘I am just going to give this everything and see what this does for me when I do that full marathon in February’, I got this twingey, awesome feeling. I am not going to let fear stand in my way. I am just going to do this- and give it my best effort.”

Hmmm. I wonder when I was planning to give it my best effort? Seems life got away from me. I thought I had not written in a couple of weeks. turns out it is going on a couple of months. Wow. So, how are things? Are you on some inspired high, accomplishing great things? I sure hope someone is.

So, I think I gained weight back. I have been “busy”. I love that word. It is so short, tidy and “busy”. It even sounds like, “I just don’t have time for anything longer than a four letter word– so much happening.” I guess I have been working. I have had some stuff going on at home.

Nope, I think the four letter word I am grasping for is lazy.

I am being hard on myself. I have not been lazy at the grocery store, while visiting TJ Maxx specifically to buy chocolate (they have great stuff, by the way), or when going out for ridiculous lunches. Oh, sure I start the day logging in my Livestrong food journal. I go to the gym and bang out runs. I most certainly have not given my best effort to this whole marathon training/being healthy thing. I haven’t been getting on the scale either. My psyche views it as some sort of Kryptonite.

I decided to come back here for some inspiration. What went wrong the past two months? Why do I keep going on food “benders”. There has to be a reason. I keep hearing all of the great voices of trainers past saying things like, “you either want this or your don’t. You aren’t going to mess up my life if you don’t stick with this.” I read my own snarky, enlightened words and it is as if someone else wrote them. Maybe I have an evil twin- wait, maybe I am the evil twin.

Why would I write such truthful and un-motivational crap in my positive-life-changes blog? Because it is the truth. I am not going to spew unicorns and rainbows out of my arse just because it is what I should be doing. I will never understand why I have such a struggle with food. In order for me to lie in this little blog- to you- I have to lie to me first. Why do that?

So, what happens next? Well, I am taking a first step now. I have some thinking to do. I am making some changes. They involve sugar and gluten. I am really not trying to jump on a nutty bandwagon with the gluten thing. I have been diagnosed with chronic fatigue. I have arthritis. I have some stomach issues that I don’t need to go into here. Use your imagination- just don’t be really gross, because it isn’t “really” gross. I have learned that gluten can do all of the above to your system.

The good news is, if I ditch the gluten, and I am not diagnosed with a disorder, the change will not hurt me. I guess Gluten is not something we humans really need in our bodies. I do feel crappy a lot. I guess I will try this. This whole thing could get really fun. Maybe I will diagnose myself with something else in a couple of months. Who knows. I am just going at this thing a day at a time- even a month at a time.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers- but I sure do have a lot of questions. I am not giving up hope. I just hope the “twingey” feeling I had in the previously above mentioned exert from a past blog will come back. It took me a good 7 attempts to quit smoking. I guess this food crap started way before I started smoking. Maybe it will just be harder to make these changes.

Anyway, I am going to attempt to get back on track- guess I need to make sure I can find the track.

So, till we meet again, my friends.

Don’t Do What I Did

August 14, 2012 / leslietoldo.com / 4 Comments

I have often daydreamed about writing a book. I already have a title: “Don’t Do What I Did”. It is like a self help book- in reverse. Rather than giving out all of the right answers, I would simply spare people the pain of making my own mistakes. Who am I kidding? How many times have people practically begged me to take their word for why I should not do the things they did? I never listened.

I most certainly did not listen when my female elders urged me to start exercising and eating healthy as a teen or 20-something, before it was too late. Too late for what? That naive little question has cost me dearly. Despite being told that one day I would wake up and be thirty and eveything I had eaten since I was 15 would suddenly be “there”, all over my body, I kept on with my sugar and salt laden binge fests.

The problem is, these stern warnings from well-meaning mentors fell upon the ears of a well-conditioned junk food addict. I can trace my habitual bad food choices to my earliest memories of cereal. Yes, cereal. I would take equal parts of Eagle Brand Condensed Milk and Rice Krispies and fashion a batch of “Rice Krispy Treats” for one. Breakfast, the most important meal of the day. It was just the sugar jolt my young mind needed to get me through the challanges of grade school. Before you form a lynch mom against my mom, she was a working mother when most mothers weren’t. She did the best she could.

My parents slept in on weekends. They trusted my judgement enough to let me get myself up and prepare my breakfast. Usually, with a solid three hours of Warner Brother’s cartoons and a full box of Apple Jacks, I was good to go. Wow, this cereal thing is kind of scary. I am honestly not lashing out at the stuff. In no way am I blaming cereal. I am saying that, for me, there is no internal “off” switch. I am defenseless against the stuff.

I remember many Sunday dinners at my grandmother’s house. That woman could cook- anything. It worked out beautifully, because I could eat anything. My granfather was downright proud of my ability to go back for seconds and, sometimes, even thirds. Poor guy was just trying to encourage me. How could Big Louis have known that, years later, I would eat myself into a near sugar and salt stupor on a nightly basis, secure in the misguided belief that he would be proud?

I can not pinpoint exactly when, but I suppose it was around the time I realized that I had a closet full of clothes that no longer fit, that the feeling of making grandpa proud was replaced by a deep wave of self loathing. That self-torment was often followed by a great feeling of determination, I would research the “best” way to lose weight and get on the right track.

I have learned a lot about what to do. I know how to lose and keep weight off. We all do, don’t we? Exercise regularly and eat healthy food, in proper portions. Knowledge is power, but it is not as powerful as action. A point driven home by the message in a fortune cookie I opened one day. Before you get all excited about the irony, I should tell you, this was one of those facebook fortune cookies. All fortune, no cookie. Anyway, it said: the secrets of success won’t work unless you do.

Wow, having typed that out and now re-reading it, it is not really all that profound. But, it was the message I needed. I can Google search diseases that might cause my weight gain all I want. I am pretty sure it is the nightly pretzel and Nutella trance eating sessions, not a stomach tumor, that is behind my expanding belly. So, having accepted this, it is time for me to do what I need to do, and stop talking about it.

It is sort of amusing to me that I am here, in this moment, after having spent the last three years taking up running. I used all of the tools and inspiration and the secrets so readily made available to achieve some big goals. I ran a flippin marathon. I am the only person I know who managed to get fat training for a marathon, but that is just proof of what an over-achiever I am.

So, I am going to sincerely try this. I am going to give this a whirl. I am signed up on the Livestrong site. I keep a food diary and try to get a good balance of fats, carbs and protein and calories. You can re-read this if you like. It is really that boring. I have tried South Beach, Jenny Craig, taking pictures of my gut with my cellphone (yeah, really), and even some different diet pills.

Just trying to do the healthy thing is really the only method that I have consistently read and/or heard actually works. It is not dramatic. It is not 10 pounds in a week. Every short cut I have tried has only prolonged this whole thing. In the last ten years, I have lost an accumulated 70- or so- pounds. I have also gained it back, and then some.

Again, I say, if you are reading this right now, and you are thinking, “don’t waste my time with this crap”, for Pete’s sake, don’t read it. It is not that complicated. But, if you are fighting the good fight, too, then feel free to comment and chime in. It is free. If you get bored, you can just click the “x” in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

I am not an expert. I am just a person who has made a lot of health mistakes. I will share some of them, and maybe you won’t do what I did. OR, you will, and you will wake up and be 30, or some other awful age and everything you have eaten since you were 15 will suddenly appear in little puffy clumps of fat all over your body. Have a nice day.