Tag Archives: health

Finding Your Rhythm

The Fat Chick performing at a Taiko Drum Demonstration

This morning I was dreaming about drumming. I know, it’s weird. But I was pounding away on a little tom tom and feeling so very happy. And I woke up feeling even happier, because I finally knew what I was going to blog about this morning.

I think I was dreaming of drumming because I felt such a strong need to get back to a rhythm in my life. On my recent trip to New York, I had a red-eye on one end and an extremely late flight on the other. And with the time change, and all the stress, my body never quite figured out when it was bed time and when it was time to get up. Truthfully, since I’ve been back, I’ve struggled some as well. Finally last night, after a late dinner, I announced, I’m going to bed! I staggered off at my regular bedtime and dropped off to sleep. So, yay! I woke up this morning at my regular time feeling ready to face the world at last!

All this got me thinking about the rhythm of our lives. Our bodies yearn to make us creatures of habit. They want to go to bed at bedtime, wake up at about the same time every morning, eat at regular times and do virtually everything else at regular times. There are times that our body likes to work, and rest, and have sex, and go out dancing. There are daily rhythms, weekly rhythms and even annual seasonal rhythms. As I musician, I understand that the rhythm of any opera will shift from time to time. There will be fast patter songs, more lyrical love songs and slower and sadder laments. Not every song will have the same beat. But most of the measures within the song have the same beat. Because if you change the rhythm with every measure or every note, you don’t have a song, you have chaos.

Sure my body can function with erratic timing, but it sure does seem to make things more difficult. So I am going to try to get my “inner conductor” back to work at getting my body back on a reasonable schedule. How about you my little Chicklettes? Would you benefit from a regular breakfast time, bath time or bed time? How about trying it out for a week and see how you feel? Just have a little talk with your inner maestro, “One, two–one, two, three, four…”

Love,

The Fat Chick

How to Never Clean Your House

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With the extremely hot (well at least for LA) weather we’ve been having I can tell you that our house is dirty. Not a little bit, needs some tidying kind of straightening. Not a little Mary Poppins “spoonful of sugar” kind of cleaning. Oh no. This place is a dump. In the heat we haven’t had the energy to keep up with stuff like we normally do.

So since installing a new room air conditioner which allows us to stay sane in 2 rooms of our house we’ve started to think about cleaning up. But we quickly ran into a problem. Everywhere you look is a mess. And every time we start cleaning one thing, we run into 10 other things that need to be cleaned. And after a very short time, we throw our hands up, grab the dog, jump in the car, crank up the AC and head to Sonic again. (Who by the way, has the best ice for crunching in the EN-tire world).

I know that we’ll eventually get this mess cleaned up. We’ve done it before. And when we do get it done, it will be in one specific way–one step at a time. Outside of wrinkling my nose like Samantha on Bewitched (I am SOOOOOO old) and cuing a tinkling bell sound effect, one step at a time is the only way I know to get the job done. And the same is true for any sort of health or fitness goals I have for myself as well. As much as sometimes I want to add more exercise and overhaul my eating and change my sleeping patterns and add stress management tools all at once, I know how that will end. I’ll end up grabbing my dog and my husband, hopping in the car, cranking up the AC and going to sonic again.

So, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to wash the sheets. It ain’t much. But it’s a start.

Love,

The Fat Chick

Thursday Theater: Choosing what Kind of Exercise is Right for You

Feeling Poopy without Feeling Guilty

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Over the last few days I haven’t been feeling very well. I’m not saying this because I want you to feel bad for me and try to make me feel better. (Well, okay maybe a little.) After all I don’t have a man flu. But as I was trying to get a little rest yesterday, I found myself thinking in a familiar pattern.

I started thinking, “Well maybe I’m not eating the right stuff and that’s why I’m sick. Or maybe I’m not feeling well because I have too much repressed anger. Maybe this is because I didn’t get enough sleep.” And in my rambling way, I went on to think, “Maybe it’s nobody’s fault I’m sick. Maybe I just AM.”

I remember now that I used to often think that if I lost weight I wouldn’t be sick any more. I used to think that no matter why I was ill, it was my fault because I was fat. And then for a while (like a minute) I got thin. And you know what? I still got sick. And so did all of the rest of the thin people I know.

And you know what else? While it’s a great idea to do everything you can to be healthy there are no guarantees. You will still get sick from time to time. While it can be tempting to believe that we can control whether or not we get ill we can’t. We can give ourselves a good chance of being healthy by doing healthy things–but we are still likely to feel lousy from time to time. And unless you’re talking about a hangover, or going without sleep for four days, you aren’t going to know exactly why and there isn’t much point worrying about whether or not it’s your fault.

It’s especially important to get this straight in our own heads because there are plenty of people out there ready and waiting to tell us that it’s our own fault for being sick or even that we deserve to be sick because we’re fat. They rail about the costs we “add” to their health insurance. Doctors do the slow, sad head shake and tell us that we wouldn’t “have this problem” (whether it’s strep throat or carpal tunnel syndrome) if we weren’t so darn big. Our friends and family seize on every illness as “proof” that they are “right” about the fact we need to lose weight. And before you completely lose your Zen and want to stop talking to these folks, let me remind you of something. Remember when I said, it’s tempting to believe we can control whether or not we get ill? Well it is. It’s comforting to think that if we don’t drink too much and we don’t smoke and we don’t get fat and we eat our broccoli that we will never get sick and we will live forever. We know intellectually and rationally that this isn’t true. But who the heck is going around being intellectual and rational all the time?

The truth is that people get sick and while there are certain issues that make certain populations more likely and less likely to be sick, nobody knows for sure why we get sick when we do. After all, one of the greatest risk factors for illness is getting older but I’m not sure the alternative is a health path I want to follow.

So my little chickadees, by all means eat your broccoli. Sleep well and go out and play with your friends. Do your best to manage stress and anger even when your friends and family drive you crazy trying to “help you lose weight”. But when you get sick, and you will get sick at some point, my prescription is to stop worrying about who’s fault it is and just worry about feeling better.

Love,

The Fat Chick