Setbacks and Small Victories

The past few weeks have been an exercise in resilience for our family. Last week brought a number of personal trials, including losing a friend to cancer, personal medical issues, and a new second shift schedule. Gone are the family dinners, the structure, and a lot of the sanity. I'd love to tell you that we're all sailing through these trials like Odysseus, strong and virile, thanks to our clean living and heroic characters. I'd like to tell you that, but I can't.

Nope, we're human. Life happens, and everyone deals with it, but last week just seemed to "gang up" on us, well, me, in particular. Pete made the switch to working evenings, and I was completely prepared. I had a detailed schedule in place so we could make the most of the change. In fact, we were looking forward to it. I'd have more time to write, and he'd see more of the kids and me during the day. He'd really get to bed no later than usual, so all in all, it was going to be a good change. Monday went well. It was the last such day; every other day all week something, or several things, just plain went wrong. Now, as I said, life happens. Everyone has a week like this once in a while. You deal with it and move forward. Last week I lost my schedule and good intentions by Tuesday night and never quite got back on my feet. The whole week was a wreck.

I'm not making excuses or looking for sympathy. I just want to point out that it was "one of those weeks", since it happens to us all sometimes. What's more important is what I learned from it, and what I'm doing about it now. First, I learned that when I'm stressed I eat carbs. Hmm... sound familiar? I knew I did it before last week, but wow, I never realized how MUCH I eat when I'm stressed. My personal weakness is pasta with butter (yes, real, 100 calories per Tb butter), salt, and Parmesan cheese. Not just a little mound on the side of the plate, either. I'm talking: take out the bowl you use to bring potato salad to the church supper and fill it - that's my "serving" when I'm stressed. Not surprisingly, I'm dragging, since I've gained weight and water and haven't had any vitamins or nutrients all week. Worse, I've dragged my family down with me. Pete's been living on peanut butter, I think, and the kids haven't done much better. My son's first tooth fell out today, and a little voice in the back of my head thought, "scurvy?".

One week of lousy food probably didn't hurt anyone, much, but it's certainly not a path I want to follow for long. On the other hand, I still haven't figured out how to make balanced meals for everyone with the irregular schedule we have. I'm working on that. In the meantime, I'm making some small changes. Pasta isn't going anywhere, as long as I'm here, but I switched to high-protein pasta, added some veggies, got rid of the butter, and switched to Himalayan salt. None of these are huge changes, but consider them transitional, and certainly better than what I was doing. I also stocked up on the vitamins, minerals, and supplements I've been missing. Some of my medications also deplete my stores of these essentials, so now that I'm off the meds I'm restocking my vitamins and minerals. Check with your doctor is you suspect you may be living with deficiencies like mine. The supplements are temporary until I can balance my diet appropriately, since healthy food is the best way to keep your body balanced. Finally, I'm working on getting the kids, and myself, on a healthy sleep schedule. With Pete gone in the evenings it's been hard to get the little guys down at a reasonable hour, but I've got to make the effort. I realized I need to get them down early enough for me to enjoy some quiet time before I can relax and fall asleep. Instead, I've been struggling to get them to bed, then staying up another 2 or 3 hours wide awake. No wonder I can't get up as early as I'd like! Well, I'm working on that too.

This week is for transitional changes and reflecting on how to do things better. Life can't be all about acting, or reacting, but needs to be a balance between the two so we can learn from our mistakes and do things better the next time around. Hopefully I won't have another week like last week anytime soon, but I will have a better week, now, this week, thanks to the things I've learned.

Instant Gratification

You want a quick fix? A jump start on your healthy new diet? Try scheduling your eating. In fact, try to eat more often. Honestly, that was the first change we made to Pete's diet and the results were almost immediate.


Like many career people, Pete was eating only twice a day. Breakfast was usually leftovers or some other fairly filling meal (since he only ate a couple of times a day he figured he could afford "dinner" for breakfast). He had breakfast at 4 am most days, then worked out, then worked all day. He worked through lunch, too. Sound familiar, anyone? Eventually he'd come home, usually around 5 pm, and we'd have dinner as a family around 7 pm. Of course he was starving by then, so I always made huge portions for him.
Unfortunately, his diet strategy was doing more harm than good, and in his case, he'd been eating this way for decades.


Our bodies aren't designed to handle binge and starve cycles, which is what many lifestyles and even "diets" create. When we eat on that schedule, the body reacts by hoarding calories, since it "thinks" that it will be a long time before it receives any more. Meanwhile, it also has to deal with this sudden flood of food. It's like a Thanksgiving dinner food coma every evening. His body was also forced to contend with a severe blood sugar spike from all that food twice a day. Instead of living in balance, his body was pushed to extremes every day. If you've been living this way, it may sound like I'm making mountains out of molehills with this, but that's exactly what's happening to your body. To put it another way, if a balanced eating schedule is like living in suburbia, then Pete's habit was to run back and forth between the North Pole and the Equator every day.


So if you want to feel an immediate difference in your health and energy level, try eating smaller meals more often. Pete resisted that suggestion from me for years, claiming he wasn't hungry at lunch time. In reality, he was too stressed out and busy to take the few moments he needed to eat. Once he tried it, though, he felt better within a day or two. Of course, you can't eat six huge meals a day and expect to be healthy, but you can, and should, eat six small meals each day. Try bringing a few healthy snacks with you during the day, or simply make your regular meals but divide them in half and eat them a few hours apart. After years of one lifestyle, Pete needed reminders at first. I send him emails, texts, or calls (not all at once - no one likes a nag). Sometimes he'd set his watch alarm every four hours, when it was practical. Use whatever tools you have at your disposal, but try this eating schedule. You'll feel better from it from top to tail in a matter of days.