Sunday, March 04, 2018

Retaking the Low Ground

Along with more aspirational goals of more broadly circulating my book proposal (which I finally finished at the end of last year!) and embracing my role as a disability and diversity rights advocate, my reasonably traditional New Year's resolutions mostly center around fitness, nutrition, and weight loss. I did pretty well last year becoming more active (mostly the tricycle) and eating better (or, at least I started seeing a nutritionist), but I'm still portly (I also like to throw around the word corpulent).

I've started this year continuing those healthier habits (on a stationary bike for the winter, along with some snow shoeing), but the weight loss does not want to come. I know I was spoiled growing up with the kind of metabolism that allowed me to eat whatever I wanted and not gain a pound (to the point that I was almost constantly chided by Jewish mothers and grand mothers about how I needed to put on some weight. "Wasting away," I was. And I'm not a tall man. Then there was a moment when I was visiting a patient at the rehab a few years ago when a woman in a wheelchair looked up at me and said, "Well now, you're a big guy." I did stop myself from retorting, "Everyone looks big from down there, ya old biddy." But I'm certainly not as diminutive as I used to be. My BMI is, "Be More Immense".

As much as my gravitational pull increases, I'm also striving to defy gravity and take back the floor from the fear of falling. That means I've finally added to my exercise routine getting down on the ground, stretching, and getting back up again It's nice seeing the world from that different perspective in a reverse Dead Poets Society kind of way. I've also just taken my third bath in eight years. I do love a good bath and have missed it. I'm still working out the safest techniques for insertion and extraction but wouldn't say no to a  walk-in tub.