Reflecting on a year of maintaining weight

Natalie asked me to join her in the 50n50 endeavor just over a year ago. I was eager to get into shape myself and this is a great motivational method. What better way to lose weight than to stay in touch with a supporting friend? Needless to say, a year later, I was fairly disheartened by my results, but after talking with Natalie found hope in what I did achieve.

First, let's look at who I am and what I've done. I'm a 5'7" female and weighed in at 154 lbs. over a year ago, and my last standing weight is 152 lbs. That's a whopping two pounds less than a year ago, depending on the day. The good in this is that I maintained my weight rather than gained weight. Additionally, I maintained my weight despite serious stressful events throughout the year. Stress changes our body's chemistry and can be very inhibiting to losing weight never mind a contributor to weight gain. So, let's look at why I have been stressed, both good and well, no so good.

The day job
Fortunately, I have a stable full-time job as a graphic designer. This section is brief, because it is stable, though not without it's time commitments, namely two photography sessions that take additional weekend time and overtime hours. We have a conference each year at work that requires us to leave hour homes and work nonstop for nearly a week each year with no weekend. I include this section to show that all the other paragraphs are in addition to this time commitment.

President of AIGA Austin
Lets look at what I've done, starting with my leadership role. I'm president of a board of directors for the Austin chapter of AIGA, the professional association for design. This equals 40+ weekly hours of unpaid volunteer time. To start the year, I created and held a statewide design competition. Managing over 500 entries and coordinating with two other chapters is no small feat. I had some help along the way, but was the guiding light for the project.

When that wasn't enough for one person to do, I also held our second Fellow Award, a lifetime achievement award that results in a black-tie affair accompanied by the leading professionals of our time. Then, there are all the other events in addition to these. We hold an average of three events a month, all of which I oversee in some capacity, and some in more than others. We also launched a new website, for which I wrote and organized most of the material and coordinated the site development with a board member.

After agreeing to the September start date with Natalie came the holidays, which for me also brought organizing our first Annual Membership Party in three years and our first ever annual report, for which I wrote all the copy and again oversaw the design. In the early summer, I attended a national leadership conference, and organized and lead our local leadership conference. I worked with our secretary to develop a wiki I started the previous summer and continued to develop. Throughout the year, I managed board members, which sometimes meant new recruiting or transitioning the roles of board members to volunteer or other capacities. One in particular was particularly grievous, with a board member bullying me, resulting in stress that caused me to turn my new car into a cement beam on a tight turn. I also attended the National Design Conference in Memphis last year.

Family ties
I am the primary caretaker and power of attorney for my grandma. When I joined this blog September 24, I was in the midst of assisting my grandma in an emergency stroke that lead to my enrolling her into a nursing home and setting her up with medicaid to afford nursing home care. I hired a lawyer to help get the best financial situation for her and assistance in the complex application process. Grandma was released from the hospital after a week to the first nursing home under medicare. She felt that home was horrible and called me, on the cell phone I provide for her, at all hours of the night screaming. I transferred her to a better home, where she now resides. I kept my family in the loop on all of this and persuaded my uncle, her son, to come out for her birthday. He was really coming to check out what I had done, but I left it to grandma under the pretense of celebrating her birthday. He seemed ok with it.

My family lives in Dallas and I live in Austin, 3.5 hours apart. I drove home for Christmas. My mom is a minister and cannot leave Christmas time and had been going through difficult job needs herself, at one point selling Christian education materials to make ends meet. We called Grandma on Christmas day and wished her a merry Christmas. Before I left for Dallas, I had the nursing staff help me to get her into my car for a tour of the Christmas lights, which she thoroughly enjoyed along with the McDonald's dinner I got her. The day after Christmas, I drove straight in from Dallas to see her. When I arrived, she was on the phone with my uncle telling him that mom, my brother, and I all had Christmas down the street from her and left her all alone. It was a completely ridiculous statement. I stood by when she said this, and did not take the phone away from her and talked to my uncle when she finished. He then screamed at me for how badly I was taking care of his mom and completely believed her ridiculous representation of what she felt happened. Grandma is not mentally well, though her son doesn't quite understand this. Alas, I haven't spoken with him since. Gee, I wonder why?

So, that's Grandma briefly. Mom also had her challenges this past year. I helped mom to sell her house and move her to Temple. For any normal situation, this would not be as monumental as it happened to be. Mom's house was thirty years old and a complete dilapidated dump. It required me to loan her money to paint the house, which she repaid upon sale of the house to get people to even look at the previously orange property. Then, there was the moving. Mom was emotionally tied to our childhood home and never quite understood that when you sell your house and move to a new town, that you also must move everything you intend to take with you. Four truckloads later, we finally moved all that was to be moved, and held an epic garage sale. Now, mind you, this was all in Dallas and I live in Austin, that 3.5 hour distance. So, weekends were shuffled to accommodate this amidst my other commitments, grandma, and more. Mom finally made it to Temple and is settled there, for the next year.

The romantic side of things
Believe it or not, I manage to maintain relationships in all of this. Unfortunately, when I started this last year, I was in a very bad relationship with a man that had dumped me more times than either he or I could count because he felt I was fat. He wanted a lean girl and let me know I was 99% else of what he wanted in a woman, but I just couldn't change having a fat butt and thick thighs. Incidentally, that ended in 2010 for it's grand finale outside of a psychologist's office who informed me that he had no ability to love another person anytime in the foreseeable future. That relationship had been secret for some time because of the many break ups, so none of my friends even knew I was dating him. They were then let in on the long-held secret.

Then, along comes my new and current boyfriend, who I had the good fortune to meet. He comes along after all these other things have been going on and sees an extremely busy woman tied to her calendar and also flat broke. I did spend all my money on photography equipment and did journey to Roatan, Honduras in January with free lodging from a photo competition I won last September, and then to the expensive Tobago trip in July, where I learned much, but did not exactly have a great time vacationing. This had to do with a then boyfriend on the trip, who I dated between boyfriends. So, here I am, managing all these life stresses, and still doing a million and a half other things not noted here to spare you reading time. Incidentally, the current boyfriend is a police officer with a tight schedule himself. That our schedules don't meet is in itself both a stress and the only way either of us could maintain a relationship anyway. He's busy enough to not be around while I'm busy too.

Let's talk scuba
If all the above were not enough for one woman in one year, let's talk scuba. I am now a scuba instructor. I was not at the beginning of the year, which means I finished the two month instructor development course and completed the weekend-long instructor examination in Dallas. I am also a divemaster for Lake Travis Scuba and Scubaland, and I also completed my technical dive training in the last year. I learned decompression diving and bought expensive scuba gear and dedicated hours of time to learn a very complicated and risky form of scuba diving. I was also nominated secretary for our local dive club and expected to create email communications and work dive club events. I mostly did this, but the dive club materials did suffer a little. Let's face it, something has to give! I completed about 80 dives all across Texas and another 32 overseas. I also attended Dive Around Texas. If you do the math, that's over 100 dives in a year despite everything else I have going on. However, this was my only consistent physical activity and is a passion of mine. It is so much a passion of mine, that I started a book this year and will launch my new company with my partner in January, The Underwater Designer. I will design and sell posters, cards, and more to support this five-year long project, using my underwater photography as a tool in this project.

Diet and exercise
I run whenever I am able to do so (not often), scuba dive whenever possible, and try not to eat as terribly as I can. At one point, I gave my scale to the office and bought a new one, because the last scale must have been lying. I think the new scale is nicer to me. I have never been huge on sweets, which is a saving grace to me, but savory chips do me in every time. I drink soda very sparingly, start my day with a mug of black coffee, and obviously have a creative schedule for doing all these things. Cheese is evil and unfortunately one of my top consumed items. Fruit is delicious and vegetables were great as a kid, but I will have to work them back into my regularly scheduled diet. My schedule is turning around, and while pushing myself, I do think I could lose weight if I could only find time to run.

I should note that I did get sick at least twice this year. When I'm sick, my world spins wildly out of control and what ground I gain in my schedule is quickly lost, so I can never afford to fall behind. If you are sick, please stay home and do not come to work sick! It is mean to the rest of us to get sick because people are encouraged to work while sick.

So, what do you think about the year's reflections? I work hard to do better all the time and those close to me will often remark about how I need to do various things better. One very good friend helped with a situation this year and told a troubled board member to walk in my shoes for just a single day before passing judgment on how I need to serve her better. She straightened up. Looking back, I wonder about all my commitments and how I could possibly have done better, more, less, or differently. I did all that I had to and I think I did it well. Instead of reflecting on how I could give up a very dear commitment in my dangerously balanced life, I choose to forge ahead to new hope with more reasonable schedules, fiscal success, dietary choices, and exercise. I do have my continuing commitments, and life will continue to add more to my schedule, but that's life, isn't it?

* Additional events did occur and were not listed here to keep the article as concise as possible. Categories not listed include: church, bills, budget, cleaning house, caring for the dog, random client work, sleep, laundry, washing the car, friends, and more.
* I could not have gone through the year without wonderful friends and want to acknowledge even the smallest help along the way
* I think God made most of this year happen through my hands to give me the strength to live so rigorously