5/5/2012: The Party's Over






5/6/2012  End of Week 10 Photo

 

2/26/12 Start Photo

Well, the partying is done, I've taken measure of the damage, and it's not too bad.  After three days of celebrating the most awesome birthday of my life including lunch at Jose Peppers with workmates and a Royals game with Jack on Thursday, dinner at FUD followed by frozen yogurt on Friday, and a raucous birthday bash at Waldo Pizza and Rock-n-Bowling at Ward Parkway Lanes (complete with over-imbibing on beer and then mixed drinks) on Saturday night, I have gained a total of six tenths of one pound!  This morning I weighed 205.0 pounds after weighing 204.4 pounds on Thursday.  I feel pretty good about that.  In spite of all of the opportunities to over-eat and over-drink over the last few days I only let the flood gates open once, and that was last night at my birthday party.  Until then I was being careful and counting calories in spite of my wonderful three day birthday celebration.  Last night, at 7:00, when I ordered my first Boulevard Pilsner (one of the very few beers that I like), calorie counting was officially suspended until 1:00AM this morning.  I have no clue how many calories I consumed in that six hour period.  In addition to the three beers and four Captain Morgan and diet cokes that I drank, I ate several pieces of delicious Waldo Pizza pizza and a couple, yes a couple, of pieces of a very good chocolate cake that Jack bought for me from McClain's Bakery, also in Waldo.  As I was scarfing down my second piece of cake at 1:00 this morning I declared to Jack that the rest of the cake (there is about 1/4 of a 10" round chocolate cake left in the fridge) was his.  Honestly, he doesn't mind.  And of the 8 large pizzas we ordered we only have about half a dozen pieces left, in spite of about 7 people not being able to make it last night.  Those are Jack's, too.  Not only do I not know how many calories I consumed last night, I also have no idea how many I burned.  I had a blast at Rock-n-Bowl, doing both of those things, rocking and bowling.  I danced and danced and danced and just had a wonderful time playing with friends and celebrating the beginning of the second half of my life.  So, for 6 hours I gave myself a free pass and did not worry about calories.  But today I am happy and content to say I am back on the program with no regrets and a bit relieved that the damage was contained to less than a pound.  I think it was all the dancing.  Yep, I'm pretty sure that was it.

Now that the party is over it's time to for me to start walking my talk.  I'm not talking about diet and exercise any more, I can safely say that the exercise has become a habit.  "Gasp!  Did I just say that?"  It is crazy to think that it might be true, but it has come to the point, after 10 solid weeks of exercising 6 days a week, that exercise is part of my routine.  I feel pretty confident about that.  I am still working on the food part of the equation.  Obviously I used food and drink to celebrate my 50th birthday last night, but, for the most part, I have stopped using food as a drug to make me feel better when I am down.  I'm still working on food-as-fuel, but I am getting closer to disassociating feelings from food every day.  The calorie counting has become a habit for me and it helps me make decent food choices throughout the day.  My goal of 150 pounds by February 4th, 2012, is so important to me and so ingrained in me at this point that I feel confident that I will get there.  That is a good feeling. 

So what am I talking about then, when I say I need to start walking my talk?  For several weeks now I have been talking about my 50th birthday and what it means to me to be turning 50.  It turns out that it means a lot to me, a whole lot.  Ever since I was a little girl I have wanted to live to be 100 years old.  The other day I was trying to remember when I decided I was going to live to be 100 years old and I think it was when I watched the movie, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.  The movie is told by a 110 year old former slave played by played by Cicely Tyson.  Until I saw that movie, which we watched in middle school in 1974, I don't think I realized that people could get that old.  I certainly didn't think people could get that old and still be that vital.  I was amazed by Miss Jane Pittman and by all of the things she experienced and witnessed in her life.  More importantly, I was impressed by the wisdom and perspective she had from living through so much.  I knew then that someday I wanted to be that old and, I hoped, that wise.



Since I am going to live to be 100, this birthday marks the beginning of the second half of my life.  To me, that's significant.  Early on during this past instrospective month or so, I realized that the hard half is over.  The first half of my life has been about surviving childhood more or less intact and then doing all of those things I "had to do," during the first 32 years of my adult life including going to college, raising my children, and establishing a fairly respectable career; making my fair of share of mistakes along the way.  I acknowledge and recognize that there were plenty of high moments during that first 50, but there were a lot of "picking myself up by my bootstrap" moments after some pretty spectacular falls, too.  Those are the moments that I learned from, of course.  Those are the moment that taught me the most important life lessons.  And, sometimes, when I did not learn my lesson well enough or fast enough, I'd make the same mistake over again just so I could have another chance to let the lesson sink in.  Just like math homework, practice, practice, practice.  Sooner or later, you'll catch on.  I appreciate those lessons, I really do, and I appreciate all of the people that never gave up on me along the way.  But I also appreciate the fact that those first 50 years are over.  I feel like those five decades were all about preparing me for today, preparing me for this next 50 years.  As I was walking to the Royals stadium on Thursday evening with Jack by my side, I told him that I had this feeling that I was starting over again.  I had this intensly vibrant feeling that the slate had been wiped clean and I was getting the opportunity to start the second half of my life fresh, with a clean slate.  All of a sudden, all of that was in the past and I was looking into a bright, exciting, and wide open future.  It was exhilerating to experience that moment of clarity, of truly understanding that I have learned so much and that I get to take the wisdom, perspective, and skill set that I have acquired into the second 50 years of my life without the so-called baggage of a life-time of missteps.  Somehow I realized, in that moment, that all of that is behind me and I get to choose what lays before me. 

So what kind of choices will I make?  Where do I go from here?  Recently, I have been doing a lot reading and something drew me to the book, Boundless Potential, which I recommend to anybody approaching mid-life.  The book is about transforming your brain, unleashing your talents and reinventing your work in midlife and beyond.  This quote from the book jacket by Michael Murphy sums it up well, "Brilliant, provocative, and highly practical.  Applying his award-winning journalistic skills to a topic of vital importance, Mark Walton has punctured the myths and stereotypes of life's second half to reveal our true human potential:  how we are hardwired, not for decline, but for continual reinvention, personal achievement, and contribution to others." 

Walton's premise is that one need not accept that as we age we lose capacity to achieve great things.  In fact, he believes that the opposite is true.  People that have reached mid-life and beyond have achieved a wisdom that comes from a combination of brain changes over the years, maturity, and experience.  We who have reached this stage of our lives have a mental capacity to engage both the right and left sides of our brains at the same time, in such a way that younger people cannot.  Unfortunately, here in the United States, our model is designed to have us retire at 60-65 years of age.  Many people dream of an early retirement at 55.  I've known for a long time that I will not be retiring any time soon.  I've always wondered what I would do with myself if I did retire, particulary considering the fact that I am going to live to be over 100 years old.  Walton basically denounces this system of retiring our older workers as poppycock, but recognizes that the system is not going to change anytime soon.  Therefore, it is up to us invent our own structures to work within, since it will be difficult to find other that will want to fully employ us with work that we find meaningful into our seventies and eighties and nineties.  Walton describes three steps to this process.  First, discover your fascination.  In defining fascination he says, "Fascination lives at the intersection of heart and mind and sets the direction for reinventive work."  Second, find your flow.  "Flow, the highest level of human happiness, is generated when fascination is translated into action."  Third, envision your structure.  "Self-created structres and opportunities are essential for success in midlife and beyond."  Basically, one must have an entrepreunerial spirit to create the structures they will work within beyond mid life.  Walton's book was exactly what I needed to read last week.  It verbalized many of the thoughts that I have been having about the second half of my life and backed those thoughts up with research and many, many real life examples.  I found the book to be insightful, inspiring and thought provoking.  I have work to do to find my fascination and to figure out how to channel that fascination into meaninful work for the next 30, 40 or 50 years.  I know this will take me down a path that may have many forks I need to pursue, so that there may be a bit of starting, assessing, stopping and restarting, and that is fine with me.  What I don't want to do is be lazy about this.  I'm not going to sit here and wait for inspiration to land in my lap.  I want to be intentional about figuring out what comes next.  Inspiration is likely to come from an unforeseen direction, I know that, but the more open I am and the more I expose myself to different experiences and ideas, the more likely it will be that I find my fascination. 

This blog will continue to be about my path to fitness, but it will also be about reinventing myself in the second half of my life.  I have no idea where that path will lead.  I guess we are going to find out together!