Why This Blog? A Personal Wellness Journey to Health and Creative Transformation

With Family a Few Weeks After Cancer Diagnosis

Like many other women, I managed a demanding career, including 60+ hour work weeks, while raising children. During the day, I built and managed a health and human services department for the first county in the US to experience the opiate epidemic. At night, I held down a second full-time job that I called "Mom's Restaurant and Taxi Service."

Over the decades, this demanding schedule spent primarily caring for others left little room to care for myself.

With Governor Lujan Grisham

I developed what I consider to be physical and spiritual repetitive injuries caused by overwork. Most of my time at work was spent either typing at a computer, or sitting in chairs at meetings organizing others. At night, I would rush home to cook, or zoom about in a vehicle transporting my children between school, Hebrew school, and other activities.

I had little to no time to dedicate to movement or creative hobbies.

By my mid-thirties, I had developed chronic morbid obesity, a metabolic disease. When I was young, I pursued many creative hobbies: dancing, painting, writing, sculpting and acting. I experienced a vibrant dream life. By the time I reached my early forties, I had given up all creative endeavors except for cooking, and I know longer remembered my dreams.

When my children grew up and flew the nest, I became depressed. I didn't remember how to pursue activities for the pure joy of self-discovery. And then I was diagnosed with cancer.

It was time to fight back.

After Chemo

I began with returning my body to a state of health. I used medical tools such as a bilateral mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiation, bariatric surgery and weight loss medication. But these alone were not enough. Bariatric surgery and weight loss meds helped me to reduce weight, but not metabolic balance.

I developed a strategy to decrease my body fat percentage and build muscle, revving up my metabolism. At first, I could only walk in a swimming pool. Today I enjoy a wide variety of physical activities including dance, skiiing, hiking, snowshoeing, kettlebell, and gardening. I employed specific goal-setting strategies that had nothing to do with weight, and everything to do with allowing myself to feel joy and fulfillment.

Climbing Steps at Red Rocks Just Because I Can

Striving for physical goals that were meaningful and deeply motivating to me helped me to reduce my body fat percentage from about 55% in 2017 to 38% today, and to increase my muscle mass, and thus my basal metabolism from 1300 kcal to 1400 kcal.

60th Birthday "Not Dead Yet" Party: first time on the slopes in three and a half decades

At the same time, I worked on reviving my creative self. I began by experimenting with color, painting walls and doors between the lines. Then I embarked on a project I call "House as Art," painting dragonflies on my walls. I have no formal art training. I bought some acrylic paints, reasoning that if I don't like what is on my walls, I can paint over it. I found that as my projects moved from simply experimenting with color and mood to free painting whatever I wanted, my dreams returned.

House as Art

I began writing again by posting my dreams on Facebook. Then I decided to start this blog and link it to bluesky.

Dragonflies

I started Medicare today which doesn't cover my weight loss medication. I can't afford to pay $1,400 per month so I am trying an experiment. I have five months of my medication left. I am going to see if I can decrease my body fat percentage to 28% and my basal metabolism to 1500, which are both normal for my age, in that five months. Then I will try to wean myself off of Zepbound.

Most drug manufacturers would have us believe that the most important statistic regarding metabolism is the ubiquitous BMI. I plan to ignore BMI as an irrelevant number. BMI is based on weight, and does not reflect a healthy ratio of muscle to fat, both of which are needed in balanced quantities.

But my ultimate goal is not about ratios or numbers. I have always wanted to go trekking in Nepal. I bought the tickets today. I will continue kettlebell, skiing, hiking at altitude and dance to build up my endurance for the 12 day trek. I have graduated from dragonflies to painting a sunflower. And I plan to write about it all here on this blog.

Getting Ready for Nepal

I hope someday to paint scenes from my dreams and the Lotus Sutra on my walls.

#Health #Wellness #BeingHuman