Life is Healthy

Before I got out of bed this morning, I turned on my Blackberry to check the weather forecast. Downstairs, my dining room table was full – again – of flowers that needed to be repotted, but it’s been so dang cold out I haven’t been able to get the job done. They’re blooming and outgrowing their plastic starter pots, but if I wait until ideal conditions to repot them, their roots will have nowhere to go and they will start to die.

The temperature was 40 and the forecasted high was 46. Looking ahead at the 10-day, there were no more 30-degree nights predicted, so I knew today was the day, even if it was cold, dreary and miserable outside. I would take them to the garage to repot them and let them live there, protected, for another day or two.

I thought about the gardens I planted the year I started losing weight. I started the beds in April 2005 after I’d lost about 35-40 pounds. I built three beds and added soil, manure and mulch to two existing beds. While I was still obese, weighing about 265, I had a lot of energy. Energy born not just from weight lost, but from that euphoric state of no longer living in denial. Just as overeating drained me physically, denial drained me emotionally. Once I lived in truth, I had a clear path for walking (not sprinting) down the scale, and I felt like I could do anything.

If I’d waited for the ideal conditions to lose weight, I’d have never started. There would always be an excuse: a holiday, a birthday, a vacation, my period, my schedule, cheesy potatoes, chocolate. I’d lost weight in the past, but never with a plan; just an overwhelming urgency to get the weight off NOW. The results were like this poor basil plant:
I knew I shouldn’t have put it in the ground last week. I knew there was a still potential for below-freezing temps. But no, I wanted basil in my garden NOW. Well, guess what? It was 27 degrees the other night.

While I’ve not fully learned this lesson in terms of gardening, I finally did this last time down the scale: anything worth doing and doing well takes patience. There will always be some resistance and there will always be something you must rise above or allow to just be. If you know this from the get go, the path will be easier to tread.

There will be frost in May and there will be food at parties. Just as seasoned gardeners know to respect the weather, people with a plan, a goal and dogged determination have the tools to navigate a dessert table.

I can navigate a dessert table. I need a little work in tempering my spring fever.
Speaking of tools…I’ll be drawing the names of two winners tomorrow for the two books I’m giving away: “Stress Eater Diet” and “Wake Up To Your Weight Loss.” Leave a comment here or send an email to lynnbering@verizon.net before Wednesday at 6 p.m. eastern time and I’ll put your name in the hat!