Chapter 1

The last 18 months have been wonderful and challenging. I say wonderful because we are blessed to have had a wedding and 2 grand babies and our business continues to expand. 

Challenging because the opportunity to expand the business comes right after a serious heart event for me and an equally difficult health experience for my husband. 

We were familiar with “survivor mode” and simply pushed through. After all, we lived and wasn’t that the most important thing? 

Yes and no. 

Using what was left of my energy for work left me too tired to exercise. Soon I began to notice the consequences of ignoring the physical side of life which was fatigue, difficulty lifting heavy things and unsteady balance. With any health situation ignored it becomes worse and that is what happened to me. I discovered the walking I was doing for exercise was not accomplishing any of my health goals and besides I wasn’t consistent. In order to make the needle move I needed something more, something far more structured to commit to. My whole life I have been doing the same thing in embracing a new regiment. “This time! This time I will listen to my better angels! This time I will eat correctly. This time I will exercise.” And then I would let anything get in the way. From a holiday, to a cold to a sudden need to eat stale bread. I found a way to give up. To put it off yet again. Even Oprah was an excuse I used. (sorry O) but I would say to myself “if Oprah with all her money can’t do it, what makes me think I can? And besides I have a defective aorta.”That was my big excuse....”It could happen again”. Something my surgeon told me every time I went in to his office.

My doctors were keeping me alive and I appreciate that, duh, but I wasn’t really living because I was always uncomfortable. The unsteady gate as I got up from a chair was depressing, my balance that was slowly (rapidly) disappearing frightened me. And the fatigue I felt was overwhelming. Until that moment I thought this was the way getting older was supposed to be. And then I thought.....no. 

NO! 

I can do better than this. I am better than this!I kept thinking there has to be an answer. Then a friend told me about a place she had been going to. She was getting ready to leave the country for several years and felt a need to get stronger. I congratulated her on how great she looked and then she began to explain the science and philosophy of her new regiment. One thing she said several times is how much she had learned about herself and after she learned those things she felt she could make real change in her life and keep the change. Change is hard. Make no mistake it is hard. If it had been easy I would have done it years ago. But then I began to mentally make excuses why this wouldn’t work for me. My cycle was still intact I was determined to stay stuck. 

Then I realized this quote was me...

The constant pains in my knee, my inability to easily get up from a chair, anxiety/depression and constant fatigue is not what I want, although it is certainly ‘what I got’.

Obviously what I have been doing is not working.

I have tried to find a new lifestyle path over the years I could live with, but all my diets have ended in a trash heap with resulting extra weight. Except for a time period between my second and third child, all exercise attempts have ended in failure also. 

I’m pretty confident you are feeling my pain because so many of us follow this same pattern...am I right?

Over the next three months I am taking you along on my personal journey of health, exercise and change. I admit it will not be easy, but nothing worthwhile comes easily. I intend to chronicle my successes and my set backs in an honest and sincere way. 

Monday is my beginning “chapter”. See you then.