Physical activity is also not something I learned growing up, nor was I encouraged in any physical activity as a child or teenager, not at home anyway. There was the … um … really can’t call it encouragement, but the expectation of a certain amount of physical activity during school years, in that class that was my least favorite … PE. Ugh! Oh how I hated PE, especially when it was time for the President’s Physical Fitness Test. Talk about pressure … and the embarrassment that came along with not being able to do as many sit ups, or push ups or (any) pull ups as the other kids. But I had a way of coping with pressure and embarrassment and the ridicule I received back then … eating. I have memories of hiding food in my room as a young child, just 6 or 7. And it only continued as I got older. Food was a friend who never judged me and was always there for me.
Is it any wonder that by age nine I was already overweight? I remember with vivid clarity the experience that brought this knowledge to me, and the shame I felt that day … that continued for years. I was at my friend’s house next door with her and another friend from across the street. For some reason we were weighing ourselves. I don’t recall ever having weighed myself before then. I was in the fourth grade … maybe that’s what fourth grade girls did back then, I don’t know. I’m pretty sure fourth grade boys weren’t doing that … anyway … I weighed 90 pounds. I don’t remember how much the other two girls weighed, only the reaction of my best friend’s mother, and, subsequently, my two friends as they took their cue from mom, that told me that number was too high … way higher than it should have been … shame on me. Whoa … I didn’t really mean to delve into my childhood. This really was going to be about goal setting, so let’s get back there and leave the childhood stuff for my therapist.
Currently I am participating in a 20 week Kaiser program called HALT. That stands for: Health Achievement Through Lifestyle Transformation. In addition to following a plant-based diet for the reversal of disease, some of the subjects of our bi-weekly online meetings have included tools to help us such as: mindfulness, exercise and goal setting, among other things. Last night we were encouraged to set a goal and mine was to walk 40 miles in the next two weeks. A few weeks ago that would not have been something I would have ever considered. A few weeks ago I could barely walk one mile … but I did … barely … I remember my hips screaming after only half a mile. But then after a week or so I was able to walk two miles. And then … after some more days … three miles. And now I can do four miles. In fact a couple days ago I did four miles in the morning and another two in the afternoon.
And now I have a goal … 40 miles in 14 days. And when I meet that goal, I will set another … and meet it … at least that's the goal. Look at me … I got this goal setting thing!
