The Duck's Nest: online home of mizducky

My return to healthy weight management

I really was going great guns for a couple of years there. Took off over a hundred pounds, got a lot more mobile, a lot less bothered by pain, rediscovered the joy of dancing--and the ability to dance for nearly an hour without stopping ... So what the hell happened? And what am I doing differently?

Well, what I realized happened in hindsight was that I didn't have the right kind of support. Sure I was blogging about my weight loss program like crazy--but it was lone-ranger blogging, and almost despite my best intentions I got overly invested in being the Healthy Weight Loss Hero. It became challenging to my pride to talk, in this very public medium, about the troubles I was starting to have--not only with food, but with other areas of my life, some of which I will still refrain from going into in detail here because of matters of privacy.

What I needed--and what I was seriously lacking--was a confidential, even anonymous support venue where it was okay for me to just let down, be a mess, and vent about all sorts of things that were deeply upsetting me, both on the weight loss front and in other areas of my life. I had started off my previous weight loss adventure with something of the sort--a weight management program through my HMO. But it was a finite-duration program, and then finances forced me to drop the HMO, and that was the end of that. (Yes, as I think I mentioned earlier, financial/employment insecurity was another of the issues that began to drag me down.)

So now I was on my own with the weight thing, and everything was looking good, but two landmines started to mess with things. One was that, as I got closer to my goal weight, I began to hit the Dreaded Plateau. This is where a person doing weight loss reaches an equilibrium between their calories in via food and calories out via activity level. There was actually nothing wrong, at least on paper, with the quantity and quality of food in--in fact, cutting it much would not have been healthy. But I was running headlong at last into the ever-neglected exercise part of the picture. Yes, I could dance all night--but I only did it one night a week. Not enough.

The other landmine that got me was more insidious. It was my lizard-brain, which I had once boasted so egotistically of having tamed, sneaking up on me and almost literally biting me in the ass. See this article by James Thornton for the most succinct explanation I have yet found of the triune brain model of human consciousness and the lizard brain's role in it. The superfast capsule: while we humans have our vaunted neocortex in which we reason, plan, and set goals, it exists side by side with less rational brain structures that are the seat of emotions (the limbic system, the so-called dog brain), and of basic "primitive" survival instincts (the lizard brain). I like to say that the lizard brain is in charge of the Four Fs: fighting, feeding, flight, and ... let's call it fornication.

I love the following paragraph from Thornton's article so much I'm going to quote it here:

Have you ever wondered why you reach for that pile of hot greasy fries while you tell yourself you are on a diet? The answer is that you have three brains, and the older brains were wired to put on weight long ago when food was scarce. Your old brains are not easily controlled by your fancy new brain hardware that reads diet books."

I had believed I had mastered my lizard brain in the area of weight management through the strength of my commitment to a new way of life. Unfortunately, I was in denial about the holes in my commitment--such as my never having gotten the exercise part of the project on a firm footing, and having lost a strong, unconditionally accepting support system, as opposed to one in which I had ego-investment in looking like I had my act together. And then I started having life troubles... disruptions to job, finances, living situation ... and without the right kind of support, my resolve began to crumble, and the lizard slithered out of its cage going "danger danger eat like crazy" ... and it only took a year for me to completely undo all the progress I had made.

The resulting Slough of Despond was seriously Not Pretty. In fact, I can only blog about it objectively now, having put the worst of it some three to six months behind me. But I did climb out of it, and part of how I did it was by finding a community that offered the right kind of help--the confidentiality/anonymity, the specialization around weight management issues, the practical tools, the unconditional acceptance, the optimum mix of tough love and unabashed cheering section. It happens to be SparkPeople.com -- and no, I'm not going to tell you my username on there. But I do want to let you all know that it exists, and that it is no-cost--which means it does have a bunch of ads that can admittedly get a bit annoying; but the resources it offers, and the huge and active community in its forums, are worth braving a few obnoxious ads.

So--I have returned, a humbler and hopefully wiser person, to this project of taking care of my health through good nutrition and sensible weight management. I still have a long way to go--again the exercise part of the program is lagging, but I am taking baby steps in that direction, so to speak. Mainly I'm making sure I am asking for help, taking advantage of the fact that I now have a safe online space where I can let down when I'm feeling like a screaming mess, without fear that it is somehow going to be held against me. Because those are the moments that are going to torpedo my precious weight management plans and any other plans I have going for getting my life back together.

 

 

I've been feeling this song a whole lot lately. Mostly I've been hearing it in my head in the a capella nigun form we sang together during Shabbat services at the havurah I belonged to in the Boston area in the 1980s. There seems to be a lot of return going on in my life right now, both profound and prosaic:

• After majorly falling off the wagon of my healthy weight loss adventure, regaining all the weight I had taken off and then some, and re-inflicting on myself all the accompanying chronic pain and restricted mobility, I have as of this past June once again returned to a healthy weight loss regimen. Hopefully, this time I will do it with a lot more support, and a lot more humility.
• After going on two years of under/unemployment and scary financial times, the kind so many people have been facing these days, I am slowly pulling myself out of the hole via a job I landed in March, and returning to some modest sense of financial security.
• After the emotional slough of despond caused by those first two items, I am slowly returning to my more normal cheerful self.
• Perhaps because of these changes, perhaps for other reasons yet to become clear to me, I am returning mentally to memories of my childhood and youth, trying yet again to sort out the family-of-origin psychodramas and maybe make some peace with them.
• And there are other returnings going on, but these are already plenty to start with, yes?

In any case, when I saw that NaBloPoMo's theme for this month was "Return," I knew I needed to sign up, return to this long-dorman blog of mine, and make the commitment to blog every day and see what came up. Of course not every post I'll make in September is going to be about return--but as they say in so many writing programs, when you simply make the commitment to show up at the page every day, you make it possible for interesting things to wind up on that page.

Oh, and it hasn't escaped my notice that the Jewish High Holy Days, with their major theme of teshuvah (literally, return), fall at the end of September this year. Whether I will literally return to a synogogue or havurah this year, or perhaps make a more personal journey of slichot (reconciliation) on my own, remains to be seen. But there it is, waiting to be explored.

The song, by the way, was written by the famous Singing Rabbi and pioneer of the baal teshuva movement, Reb Shlomo Carlebach, and is performed in this video by his daughter and protege Neschama Carlebach, with the Green Pastures Baptist Choir under the direction of Reverend Roger Hembrick. The lyrics:

Return to what you are,
Return to who you are,
Return to where you are born and reborn again

Return again, return again,
Return to the land of your soul
Return again, return again,
Return to the land of your soul.

Greening up my world yet again

I've been trying to re-kickstart my life for the past several months--only this time my life-motor seems to be having a bit more difficult time than usual turning over. I think at least some of this is due to the crappy economy--it's a little harder to revamp the work and the living situations when the regional financial weather makes the choices a lot harder. I confess I'm also finding it just a tiny bit harder turning the physical health habits and mental attitude around--one gets a little older, a little tireder, a little more "oh hell, not again?!?" ... especially in light of the economic weirdnesses.

But I've also had the Fate Goddess hand me a couple of lucky windfalls recently, for which I am incredibly grateful -- one of which includes a new living situation which I will be moving into over the next couple of weeks -- so I want to take advantage of that momentum, and see if I can turn a bunch of other stuff around.

Blogging's been a tool for that kind of self-motivation thing for me in the past, so I went and checked out National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) to see what this month's theme was. And interestingly, it turned out to be "Green." Now, NaBloPoMo allows one to be very liberal in interpreting their themes, and I could already see several interpretations that could fit my current situation.

Green is the color of growth and renewal, and one could definitely say that I am currently in the situation of re-greening my life once again. Green, to be much more literal, is the color of vegetables, and one thing I desperately need to re-green is my whole healthy-eating regimen, which has frankly been in the trash-hopper for so long that I've basically put back on almost all the weight I took off a few years ago.

And a third, pragmatic interpretation of green is ... the color of money. I continue to work at fixing The Job Situation--especially since I am in the process of letting go one job position that is just not working out. So I need at the very least to replace that job, and ideally to acquire a more long-term career solution.

So--green things green things! Every day on this blog for the month of August. Cheerleading the need for more green in my life, on all these levels and probably a bunch more that will occur to me as I go along. Let's hear it for the power of green!

Some self-affirmations, my way

I often feel a little uncomfortable with the affirmation thing--and I don't think it's because there's some deep-down-inside part of me that believes I don't deserve success or happiness or abundance or whatever. I think it has more to do with the types of happiness and success I've seen mentioned in a number of affirmation lists I've run into. I actually saw an affirmation on the net the other day that read "I climb the corporate ladder with ease." Ugh. No. My personal vision of success does not include any corporate ladders. Nor does it include six-figure incomes or a large beautiful house (cue that Talking Heads song here) or any other such overly materialistic tchatchkes.

Further, I think it's unrealistic to expect that one will never have upsets and crises in one's life. Shit happens, and often enough on a totally random basis, so there's no point in asking "Why me?" when the answer is "Well, why not you?" This kind of stuff is capable of happening to anybody.

But I do want and need some affirmations in my life, because there are indeed some things that I feel lacking, and I do believe in inviting the universe to provide the opportunities to get those things.

I deserve a serene, secure, and fulfilling life.

I do not have to be perfect, by anyone's yardstick (including my own) in order to merit a serene, secure, and fulfilling life. For all human beings are imperfect by their very nature, and I am fully human. But I also have more than enough positive qualities to merit the life I desire. I may not be perfect, as the old joke goes, but parts of me really are excellent.

I have a lot to offer the world.

When trouble comes my way, as it will inevitably do, I have the strength, resources, and allies to meet those crises and surmount them. The universe never hands me anything I'm not capable of handling.

The existence of crises in my life is not a reflection on my qualities as a human being. Crises come to everyone sooner or later.

I am in the right place. I am doing what I need to do. I am putting in the footwork, one foot in front of the other.

I am open to what the universe is trying to show me. I am teachable. As someone once said, luck is what happens when opportunity meets preparation. I am doing what I need to do to be prepared when opportunity knocks. And opportunity will knock. It is always knocking. Maybe not in the guise I might be expecting, but I'm open to recognizing opportunity in whatever form she chooses to take.

Someone else once said that most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. I am making up my mind to be happy today.

Oh yeah--and one last one: "She who laughs, lasts."

"Why a duck" part trois? -- whyaduckwebdesign.com registered!

So once I discovered that my first choice in domain names for my little fledgling web design venture (fledgling! get it? get it? oh, I quack myself up!) was already taken, and doing a lot of studying up on the pros and cons of various domain name strategies, plus some SEO-type searches on likely keywords to include in domain names, I put the whole thing on the back burner for a couple of weeks, so I could come back and look at it with fresh eyes.

And what I finally decided: it may be a blessing in disguise that whyaduck.com is not available, because while that name would get lots of hits, not so many would be searches for web design. SEO Rule #1: if you want people to find you, use words that say what you do. So I finally decided that rule trumped the "beware of excessively long website names" rule, because right now people wouldn't know my little startup from a hole in the wall, and would be searching on "web design" ... but I also want to differentiate myself from all the other web design outfits out there, so including "whyaduck" is still cool. And once people do start to know who I am, remembering "whyaduck" plus "webdesign" is not all that difficult.

And I found a really cool, and totally public domain, graphic to incorporate into my website's design, and even as a logo. Little webbed ducky footprints! (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, who got them from the US government of all places--I believe they were from some federal wildlife site back in the day.) The minute I saw these little duck feet, I realized they had a great balance of cuteness and clean design--they will look really classy on a business card. I can even make a little Flash animation of them walking across a page. And every time I look at them they make me smile--which is a great way to feel about a project.

So--next step: building some stuff in Dreamweaver and Flash. More updates as I have 'em.

"Why a duck" part deux: domain taken!

I suppose it was naive of me to suppose that somebody had not already taken whyaduck.com. Apparently it was once a very popular Marx Brothers website. Now the site is dormant, but somebody's camping on the domain name and apparently wants $10,000 for it. Oh well ...

But all is not lost. It appears that the names "whyaduckweb," "whyaduckwebworks," and "thatswhyaduck" are not taken. Comments regarding preferences for these alternatives will be happily taken. Right now I'm personally leaning towards "thatswhyaduck."

School's out, so now: "Why a duck?"

I have made it through the final throes of my first semester at Mesa, and so far things are looking good. I don't have my official grade from my intro-level Japanese course yet, but my sensei assured me I would pass--which is a relief, because that course was definitely kicking my butt.

But perhaps more importantly for immediate economic prospects, I completely and totally aced my multimedia web design course, and am now re-equipped with the latest state-of-the-art tools and techniques for modern web design.(I had been down this road before, several years ago when hand-coding in HTML was the state of the art; of course the art, as happens in high tech, has moved on several light-years since then.)

In any case, I'm going to start buffing up the resume to see about landing some better part-time work, and building the ol' portfolio to see if I can land some freelance assignments. And part of doing the latter would be to design a website to advertise myself (and also show off my design sensibility).

But here's the thing--my design sensibility, and also my whole philosophy of life, includes a decided streak of rebelliousness against the kind of mainstream corporate vibe I see embodied by so many designed websites out there. I can certainly do that look, no problem; but the question is, do I wanna?

Or maybe a more pragmatic question is, am I willing to live with the possible consequences of NOT doing that look? Because I suspect a certain demographic of customer needs that look in order to feel comfortable in entrusting their business to a vendor. So if I go with the no less professionally-designed but more whimsical look I'm contemplating, I might be turning off that business.

On the other hand, I might just be turning on the kind of customer who shares my allergy to over-corporateness, and who might appreciate a more hang-loose attitude in design as well as in business relations. I do have a gut feeling that there's a huge amount of competition for the corporate-vibe demographic. I also have a gut feeling there's rather less competition for the alternative demographic.

So--especially since all this is going to cost at first is a domain registration and several hours of sweat-equity, I think I'll go with my whimsical approach and see how it flies.

What is that approach, you may be wondering? Well, it's ... just ducky.

For some years now, I've had a running mental joke about my up-to-now fictitious enterprise named "Whyaduck." The inspiration, of course, is from that classic Marx Bros. routine from the movie The Cocoanuts, in which Groucho and Chico are checking out a map, and Groucho points out a viaduct, and Chico "mishears" him and responds: "Why a duck?" This leads to existential silliness about why not a chicken or a horse or what have you that would have your average philosophy major rolling on the floor. Well, it had me doing so, at any rate.

So ever since then, due to my longstanding "Ducky" nickname, I have laughingly called my "business" things like "Whyaduck Unlimited" or "Whyaduck Productions" or other random things. I even had a little logo--this cartoon fluffy duck with glasses I used to use as my signature logo when I drew cartoons in college. Oh, and I had a slogan: "That's Why A Duck!"

Now, though, I'm thinking of going for reals with it--registering the domain name whyaduck.com and creating a business site for Whyaduck Webworks. "We know web design like the back of our foot! That's Why A Duck!"

Is it really too silly a duck to fly in this crappy business climate? Or would it actually attract attention for being so different from the flock of look-alike cookie-cutter uninspired web business concepts? I dunno--and maybe someone might comment on this post and give me a really good reason for not doing it this way, a reason I hadn't thought of. But right now, the idea is really making me smile, and maybe that's the best recommendation it could possibly have. Stay tuned for further developments.

Will blog for food? Will write for money?

As those who have been following my blog know, I have been furiously working on strategies to deal with the job situation and associated financial insecurities. Especially as the standard procedure of simply sending out resumes and networking like crazy has not turned up anything long-term, my strategies have needed to get more creative -- like going back to school to update my computer skills yet again, and buff up the ol' resume.

Or starting to write for Examiner.com to build my portfolio of online writing samples and gain experience with SEO and viral marketing; the actual pay on this gambit is symbolic at best, but it does allow me to claim that I had a paid online writing gig. Plus, God/ess help me, I do love writing about food...

Y'know, a couple of decades ago there was this totally-hot New Age-y type affirmation book called Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow. I always had my share of doubts concerning that philosophy, knowing that several of the things I loved to do more than anything else in the world (writing, acting, scholarship) had long-established track records of not making money for more than a very lucky few. I wish I could track down the wag who re-coined that slogan as "Do what you love, even if the money doesn't follow" ... I want to say it was someone associated with the Artist's Way movement, but my copy of the book is in a box somewhere and I can't verify it through a Google search.

But in any case, over the past several years I have been trying to come up with various ways to do what I love, either combined or not combined with something I do for money. Let's just say it's not succeeding as planned, which finds me in this situation. So ... back to the drawing board once again.

But in the meantime, I figure there's no harm in putting out to the world at large that, hey, if you like what you see in this blog, and are interested in having me come write or edit for you, or run your blogs and other online viral marketing stuff, I'm available.

Tomorrow never knows

Those who may have been following my blog over on my NaBloPoMo page may have noticed that, aside from a humorous post on the first of the month, I have been studiously avoiding the month's announced theme, which is "Tomorrow."

This has not been by accident. Because of the uncertainty introduced into my life by the job situation, the subject of "tomorrow" is a bit fraught for me right now. To be sure, as the blog post I just linked to details, I have been planning for the immediate tomorrows like a mofo--and some of those plans are getting underway quite nicely. But there are still the larger, more high-falutin' existential dimensions to this current situation and its bearing on long-term tomorrows that are really giving me pause.

I had long suspected that there were major flaws in the rules handed to me by my parents and by society for achieving success and security. The rules being: get a good education, get a good job, develop a career, save and be frugal, invest in a house, and you'll have a secure life and an easy retirement. I've now lived through several economic downturns (the 1970s oil crisis that had people waiting in line to buy rationed gas; the fading of the "Massachusetts High Tech Miracle" in the late 1980s; the infamous dot-com bust in the late 1990s) and each of these has made me question those rules all the more. And now along comes this massive downturn, as the bursting of the housing bubble takes down the whole economic house of cards built upon it. And a lot of people who did their damnedest to follow those rules my parents tried to instill in me are now having the injury of financial hardship compounded by the insult that they did everything "right"--and still got stung.

Me, I was only middling at following those rules--did get the good education; kept changing the career so much that the nest egg is kinda puny at best; owned a condo for all of two years before I ran out of reasons for doing so, and sold it. And, well, I guess I've gotten stung too.

Let's leave aside for the moment the economic inevitability of cyclical booms and busts in a capitalist economy in which investors are always driven to game the system for profit regardless of any unintended consequences ... because for one thing, while this statement marks me as obviously cynical about the capitalist system and its ability to provide the greatest good for the greatest number, I confess that I'm even less enthused about any other extant real-world economic systems I've seen in action. So ... given that I'm stuck with living in this system, for better or worse, and given that I've seen that neither planning or failing to plan, neither following nor ignoring the rules, guarantee any kind of long-term practical security, what in blue blazes does one do?

I guess the only never-fail always-works strategy is to keep oneself ever ready to adapt oneself to new situations ... because whether you're ready or not, they're going to come at you. Hell, there could be an earthquake or a wildfire or a flood, or a catastrophic illness--god/ess forbid them all, but crap does happen--and whoosh there goes your nestegg. Hell, there's a growing environmental crisis bearing down on us that our species is still only just barely beginning to grapple with, that could make all this tsuris look like a garden party in comparison.

In the end, while it certainly helps to make certain pragmatic preparations for tomorrow, in the end the best preparations one can make are preparations on the inside: readying one's body, heart, mind, and soul to respond to changing situations, and to reach out to other people to cooperate and share. Without that essential preparation, all the rest is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

P.S. The subject line is, of course, the title of one of the more remarkable songs ever recorded by the Beatles. This incongruously silly video version is courtesy of the equally silly--and delightful--Beatles cartoon series that ran on US TV when I was a kid.

Okay--who planned this crazy week?

It all started off so reasonably. First off, months in advance, I agreed to help cater a fundraising cocktail party this Saturday. Then, several weeks back, the sketch comedy/improv group I belong to scheduled a performance for this weekend--but it was for the Friday and Sunday, so I said hey, that works, I can handle that. Then a couple weeks ago, I get a call from a recent cat/housesitting client, asking if I could do that again for her this weekend. I took a deep breath, remembered I needed the money, and said yes--hey, I have to sleep somewhere anyway, I'd just be sleeping someplace other than home, plus playing with some kitties. And then, just last week I get a call from a fellow church member saying an elderly congregation member had a need for a long-term part-time caregiver--to start ASAP. Like, this Wednesday and Friday. I swallowed hard on that one--but see previous remembrance of needing money; plus I realized this was exactly the kind of additional long-term gig I'd been looking for to provide cashflow during school. So--again I said yes.

And so here I am, having run from piller to post all day today, about to run out the door again in 15 minutes, looking at more of the same through Monday at leasst, finding on my lips the paraphrase of Spock's quote that always comes to me when I find I've agreed to some crazy situation: "It seemed the logical thing to do at the time.