A Week Near the Equinox in Everyday Ramblings

From the community garden this morning after class. We had a break in the rain, (if not the cold) and I went down with my tub trug and secateurs. I had been down there on Tuesday and was delighted to see more of the tulip foliage coming up and realized I needed to trim the old growth off the dianthus and columbines.

I cleaned up around the rest of the plants that overwintered including last year’s new companion blueberry. I am not sure I planted it deep enough, but we shall see. What is left of the mulching oak and maple leaves around the surviving plants and tulip shoots I took up to a neighbor’s green bin that she has let me share.

My tomato starts that I have on my kitchen windowsill were doing this thing this week where the leaves were upturned, and I was all worried I was overwatering them, but I asked Claude, and it reassured me that they were actively doing photosynthesis and were fine. There was a little sun those few days.

Speaking of Claude. My weight loss plateaued a couple of weeks ago. And I was finding it hard to get through the end of the day without eating more. It wasn’t emotional eating. I was hungry. I wanted sensible things. So last week when I was trying to figure out how to make things work with what I was doing, I had a long chat with Claude about my circumstances.

It suggested some options and how I might handle them. The solution we came up with to try was to move into a few weeks of maintenance eating. I am going to need to learn how to do this anyway when I hit my goal or 1200 calories a day, whichever comes first. This is not giving up; this is a strategic pause after five months.

Yeah, tell me that when I get on the scale tomorrow and my weight is up a bit.

The net result of this interaction was I upped my calorie intake by 500 a day. The first day was kind of hard as it felt like a lot but when I woke up the third day it was like Christmas! I was full of energy and my mood was good. My outlook was better too. My outlook actually improved just thinking about choosing more calories so that it wasn’t going to be such a slog getting through the day.

I have a plan. I do this maintenance thing for at least two weeks and then I do a step down, not anywhere as gradual as before but still with enough fuel for my body to get used to what I am doing. Apparently, we have a natural point that is different for each of us where we plateau and need to adjust. These even happens for many using the new class of weight loss drugs as well.

This is a breakthrough for me in a way. I listened to my body, and it was clearly saying what you are doing is all well and good, but you need more nourishment to function well at your activity level. I heard it and I adjusted, and it has been lovely this week having more energy and more resources for the things I do. I didn’t push myself towards what in the end is a pretty arbitrary goal.

I hope this is a sign of maturity. It is certainly one of common sense.

The league stuff I am doing is crazy busy right now. I have a bunch of reading and deciding to do before the next board meeting on Monday.

We did do this wonderful community education program on Wednesday about local immigration enforcement that included an assistant police chief of our fair city saying in no uncertain terms that our police will not assist ICE in deportation actions.

The presentation and panel were full of up to the minute advice and resources to have available should we or someone we know encounter one of these actions. It was both reassuring on a practical level and on a human level. We need way more exposure to these dedicated people doing good work to counteract the flood of alarming news coming out since the election.

Although at this point it is hard not to despair, there are small wins, and as I keep reminding myself…hope is a discipline. I need to renew it every darn day.