ChildWild

Weight Update

Sierra — Wed, 23 Apr 2014 01:48:09 +0000

So I did all the things we discussed in my last post. I stopped eating grains and soy and started eating meat. I more or less switched to “paleo” style dieting, dropping 90% of the dairy I ate and nearly all starchy foods. I load up instead on happy meats and fresh veggies. But I continue to eat indulgently when out at social events. I still have a little alcohol & sugar in my diet, probably 20%-30% of what I had before. I swapped out my granola and yogurt breakfast for a healthy smoothie that I formulated using some fairly complicated pseudo-science I won’t get into here. Basically, I took a sharp left toward healthier eating without actually going to any extremes.

I felt better right away. I started having more and steadier energy throughout the day. I became far less drowsy and irritable. My mood stabilized and lifted. And I immediately lost ten pounds.

My doctor did a happy dance and said I could stop tracking my diet on my iPhone. My psychiatrist was pleasantly surprised and said we could discuss backing off some of the meds I take since the diet was going so well.

All in all, I’d say this has been a smashing success.

I still have ALL THE FEELS about it. What does it mean to be a success? I achieved everything I set out to do, so that looks like an all around win. I have this nagging feeling that losing weight is a problem, or feeling good about losing weight is a problem…but my doctor is really happy about it, and she was the one with the health concern.

And the numbers on the scale aside, I FEEL great. I absolutely do not miss my old style of eating at all. I’m eager to take up running again now that the weather is warmer, and feel like I have the energy for climbing and biking and running in a way I haven’t for a few years. I’m really looking forward to ramping up the exercise in my life as a next step.

To be continued!

Hard at work on homework

Sierra — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 14:02:41 +0000

So this is my little girl, at quarter past her bedtime, hunched over a packet of worksheets.

She’s adorable, still wearing her ballet outfit from the afternoon. And she’s feeling pretty good: she’s getting to stay up late & have some special, focused time with Mommy. She breezes through the worksheets; the material is no trouble for her.

This is pretty much the best case scenario for elementary school homework, and it’s terrible. Why does my six-year-old have paperwork to do after dinner? Is it to acclimate her to doing paperwork? Hot tip, school: worksheets aren’t an important life skill.

Even if homework wasn’t actively harmful to learning (and there’s evidence that it is) she’d get more benefit from playing, reading & taking a bath and getting a full nights sleep. All things she had to give up yesterday to do her homework.

Grrrrrr.

Weighing My Weight

Sierra — Sat, 08 Mar 2014 00:07:27 +0000

A few years ago, I abruptly started gaining weight. Several things seemed to collude around it: I stopped breastfeeding, I hit my mid-30s, and my work became more sedentary all at once. I didn’t worry about it.

Over the past three years though, I’ve put on over 40 pounds. That’s a substantial portion of my body weight. I haven’t really known how to be in relationship with the changes in my body. Do I celebrate my new curves or try to drop them? Is there a way I can be in love with the body I have and also work towards more fitness? What would that look like? Is there a Right Size for me to be? Etc. It’s all been pretty complicated up in my head when I look in the mirror.

Overall, I’d made my peace with these body changes. I exercise, though not as much as I’d like. I eat pretty well and could do better. I like the way I look. In the fall, I had a wonderful brief period where I was exercising all the time and eating pretty well and I felt AMAZING.

Then I started a new job and took up studying Spanish and it got cold. The time and motivation for exercise dried up and my diet slipped into more comfort and less care. I don’t feel as great in my body now as I did six months ago.

Which is all OK. I’m not suffering over my weight, and I don’t think my 25-year-old figure was the Holy Grail. I threw out all my skinny jeans a long time ago.

But my doctor is concerned about how much weight I’ve put on. I trust her, a lot. She’s a really grounded sensitive person. I know she’s not recreationally telling me to drop these pounds because she thinks I’d look cuter in a bikini if I went back to being a size 4.

She first brought this up with me at my annual physical, and I saw her again today for a follow-up visit. She wants me to make some pretty substantial changes to my diet and lifestyle, with the aim of losing the weight I’ve gained. She also wants me to revamp my whole family’s eating habits. Apparently, we are doing it wrong. Where by wrong I mean eating too much starch and cheese. Which, OK, I pretty much knew that.

I have ALL THE FEELINGS about this. I do not want to get on the weight loss roller coaster. I think I look plenty cute as is. I would like to be more fit, and have more energy, and stop eating foods that aggravate my allergies. I hate our cultural fixation on being thin. I would love to be stronger. I trust my doctor and her concerns about my health are real. More vegetables and fewer starches is just a good idea. I’m not giving up chocolate. Etc.

The changes she wants me to make mostly sound good to me. She wants me to adopt a gluten-free, low-carb, high-protein diet, to replace one meal a day with a smoothie (she recommended these) and to get more exercise. That sounds challenging but overall like an improvement to my health.

I think I like this idea more if I don’t see weight loss as a goal of these changes but just a likely side effect of making some healthy adjustments in pursuit of other goals, like supporting my mood stability and increasing my energy and not having a sniffly nose all the time.

I’d love to recapture that sense I had last fall (when I was still slowly gaining weight, fwiw) of taking really good care of myself and feeling really good in my body. I would love to continue not caring what pants size I wear.

So I have questions, and they’re for all of you, the fitness nuts and the voluptuous beauties and the people who love being fat & happy and the people who love weighing out portions and measuring muscle mass and those who are all of the above and those who don’t care at all about this topic but maybe have interesting life hacks around forming new habits or tracking data. Help me find my way through this so I can stay healthy both in my body and in my relationship to food and weight?

What helps you feel good about how you look? What helps you feel good about your body and being a physical embodied creature? How do you make healthy food choices? What supports you in sticking with changes to your food habits? How do you fit exercise into a busy day? How do you invest emotionally in being fit and healthy without caring about the number on the scale?

Etc. etc. etc. Help me figure this out, please? For bonus points, do it in a really body positive, person positive way without any fat-shaming bullshit.

No related posts.

Belatedly, the new year

Sierra — Wed, 29 Jan 2014 02:17:54 +0000

Each year at the winter solstice, my loved ones and I set intentions with a word or phrase that we hope will sum up our coming year.

Am I allowed to change my word of the year, even if that word was stability? I say yes!

A month in, I’m coming to realize that what this year has to offer me isn’t stability but rather practice. It’s my year to chop wood and carry water, something I’ve never been skilled at.

I’m doing a lot of simple hard things now that will take most of my attention and energy for the year. I’m attending to my physical fitness. I’m sorting out my finances. I’m learning Spanish. I’m settling into a new job, and getting ready to work full-time for the first time in almost a decade.

My days are kind of matchy-matchy lately, and I expect that to continue. Get up, go to work, go to class, dinner, kids, knitting. Sprinkle heavily with visiting friends and volunteering for BARCC and you’ve got the sum of what I’m up to.

There’s little that’s flashy going on. No moments of glory or applause for the work I’m doing, or even any tangible results yet. I can’t speak Spanish, I’m still in debt, I’m in possibly the worst physical shape of my life. The things I spend my time on are largely things I’m bad at and don’t especially enjoy. I don’t like studying Spanish, I just want to know the language. I don’t like working out, I just want to be stronger and happier.

I’m not used to putting in labor on things I’m not innately good at. I’m very big on playing to my strengths, which is a great strategy but not a whole one. Sometimes I also need to be willing to dive into something I’m not good at and use what tools I have to get better.

So I’m practicing practice. I’m working on study skills and personal accounting and sleep hygiene. It’s not very interesting to talk about. A lot of it isn’t even very interesting to do. But it’s important and deeply satisfying and hard hard hard.

Would you like to wrestle…

Sierra — Mon, 18 Nov 2013 23:18:58 +0000

Serena has been playing this game with the toddler we take care of, where she asks him if he’d like to wrestle under a variety of circumstances and he says “Yeah!” enthusiastically. She always does this when they’re riding in the car together, and at no other time. Not really sure what’s up with that.

The latest installment goes like this:

“Would you like to wrestle?”

“Yeah!”

“Would you like to wrestle with fans?” (the toddler loves fans)

“Yeah!”

“Would you like to wrestle with fans with kittens balancing on them?”

“Yeah!”

“Would you like to wrestle with fans with kittens balancing on them with little bunnies on top of the kittens?”

“Yeah!”

“Would you like to wrestle with fans with kittens balancing on them with little bunnies on top of the kittens and tiny rabbits on top of the bunnies?”

At this point, a third child who has been watching this exchange chimes in.

“Rabbits is just another way of saying bunnies. Really.”

If You Give A 9-Year-Old A Cell Phone…

Sierra — Thu, 14 Nov 2013 20:31:39 +0000

People. This is what happens if you give a 9-year-old a cell phone.

She calls you in the middle of the day from the park (what park? who can say?), to tell you that there are no trash cans there and there’s a lot of litter, so she wants to call city hall and let them know they need to provide some kind of trash receptacle. She just wanted you to know in case they demand to speak to her parents. By the way, is she allowed to call City Hall with her cell phone?

Yes. That is an approved use of the phone.

The phone will ring again ten minutes later and she will tell you that city hall was very friendly but informed her she’s in a state park (A STATE PARK? Where is your child? Didn’t you see a PSA about this once? You’re supposed to know where your child is, you think). So she called the state. But no one answered and she had to leave a message. Still no trash cans. Can you bring her jacket? She left without it and she’s chilly.

This Moment

Sierra — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 19:02:50 +0000

There’s a toddler asleep on my lap. I’m sitting here, reaching over him gently to type and realizing that I’ve been doing this move – reaching across a sleeping baby to write – for almost ten years. And probably not for much longer.

My own kids are big. The biggest one is growing fast towards her 10th birthday, only six months away. Even the little one is in first grade and reading fluently. If one of them falls asleep in my lap, it’s because she’s sick or injured. The last time was when Serena sat on a wasp’s nest this summer and came home all stung up. I held her while she cried herself to sleep in my arms and thought it might be the last time either of my kids sleeps on my lap like that. I kind of hope so, since they seem to do it when they’re distressed and I want only happiness for them. On the other hand, sometimes life hands you a hidden wasp’s nest, and I hope my lap is always there for them to rest in when that happens.

I digress. The point is that while I’ll always be *their* mama, I won’t always be a caretaker for the little ones in my community. That time is coming to a close, sometime in the next year I expect. I’ve got two potential job offers sitting in my lap, neither of which involves kid care. Or writing. I’m moving away from the two careers that have twined together and anchored me for my whole grown up life.

Feels like falling and like flying both at the same time. As my loved ones say, We’re air people now.

So I’m savoring this moment at the precipice of the Fool’s Leap, where everything is possibility and growth and change. Where my kids are growing and we’re all slowly leaving the nest together. Where there’s still a toddler asleep on my lap but what I’m typing is a response to a job offer in a new field, not another personal essay about parenting. Or it was before I finished that email and decided to write another personal essay about parenting.

I digress again. I am made of digressions.

I’m a little bit in love with this moment, is what I’m trying to say. The weight of this small person’s head in the crook of my elbow and the tense excitement of working out details for my new career path. It’s like a shoreline in my life, a place where the old is being slowly eroded by the lapping waves of newness, where they coexist beautifully.

Good thing I’m on vacation this week and can take a moment to appreciate it. But only a moment, because I have to study for my Spanish exam this afternoon.

“Vacation” at Home

Sierra — Tue, 12 Nov 2013 01:43:05 +0000

I’m on “vacation”. I haven’t gone anywhere, and I don’t plan to. I’m not taking the week off from work, and my kids are going to their various school and extra-curricular events. Nothing’s really changed.

Here’s what I’m *not* doing this week, though: everything else. No doctor’s appointments. No theater tickets. No dinner dates with old friends. No extra commitments at all.

I am so excited about this. I’ve been planning it for weeks, as the antidote to that thing where my life tends to always feel a little too crowded. This is an endless see-saw for me: I take on too much and then I back off. I’m comfortable with wanting more out of my life than I can actually have, but sometimes I need to rein in the impulse to always say yes to experience. Sometimes what I need more of is stillness.

When I was a kid, we were sometimes allowed to take “mental health days” where we could stay home from school and activities even though we weren’t sick, just because we needed an unplanned day off. I love that concept, and am thinking of this as sort of an extension of it: a mental health week.

Martin has taken tomorrow off work to be at home with me, and we’re going to spend the day cleaning out our closet and folding laundry. I’m thinking I’ll try out some new recipes this week, and maybe walk down to the second-hand shop to search for a new winter coat.

I’ve said yes to a few plans for the week – I’m picking up an extra shift at my volunteer gig and babysitting for a friend. I liked feeling like I had enough space in my schedule that I could say yes to those things without too much worry about giving up my last scraps of free time.

We’ll see on the other side of this what I glean from it; if there are things I want to permanently drop or if I’m bored silly by the end of it or what. Right now I’m just luxuriating in the sense of not having to go anywhere or juggle any schedule balls for a whole week.

The Bridge from Summer to Fall

Sierra — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 16:29:25 +0000

So we’re all home from Maine now, and catching our breath. It’s the last gasp of summer, with a foot already into fall.

School starts next week for the little one, Parts & Crafts starts a week later for the older. I’m going back to my temp gig at Harvard next week, too. We’ll all be on a new, tighter schedule with more structure to our days.

So, today it’s all paperwork and homeschool curriculum planning. Hunting down and registering for after-school programs and filling out health forms and, you know, All The Things that go with the start of a school year. It’s exhausting and expensive and a little exhilarating.

The kids are both excited about their upcoming year. Serena will have a new teacher, who is just starting teaching. She’s very excited about the idea that her first day of school will also be her teacher’s first day. Serena’s best friend is changing schools this year, to a different school in our district. We offered Serena the chance to switch with her but she declined, and after some discussion we agreed to keep her where she is.

Rio, meanwhile, has renewed enthusiasm for Parts & Crafts and is ready to dive into learning after taking the summer off from any formal lessons. She’s talking a lot about wanting to get a good education and be ready to transition back to school next year. We’ll see how all that goes.

For my part, I’m continuing to look for meaningful full-time work, taking care of an amazing toddler a few days a week and temping at Harvard. Plus some substantial volunteer gigs. It’s a lot of work, honestly. I probably have 55 hours a week committed to work, between my paid and volunteer gigs. That doesn’t count the blogging I’m trying to pick back up or commute and prep time for my various jobs. There’s also the small matter of homeschooling Rio.

I expect to spend the fall feeling pretty tired. But happy. I love everything I’m doing and I’m really happy with where my kids are at. It’s shaping up to be a good season, but one with wildly different gifts and demands from the one we’ve just happily sailed through.

Of Wasps and Words and Other Things

Sierra — Fri, 23 Aug 2013 01:40:40 +0000

Today Serena clamored out of the lake and said, “A warm towel! A warm towel!” as she wrapped herself in fluffy goodness. Then she paused and said, “Mama, was there ever a time when there weren’t towels? When towels hadn’t been invented yet?”

“Yes,” I said.

“What did people do to dry off then?” she asked me. “Did they just lie in the sun?”

“Probably,” I said. “I don’t really know.”

“Mama,” said she, “Was there ever a time before the sun, when there was no sunlight, when everything was gray?”

“No.”

“What about the 1950s?” she asked sternly, hands on hips.

We had a little talk then about the technology behind photography, and how people didn’t always have the power to take color photos even though the world was full of color. I’m not sure she believed a word of it.

In other news, yes, we are at the lake house in Maine, enjoying our long lazy summer to the best of our ability. This summer has flown by in a blur of weekend trips and houseguests and parties, oh my. It’s hard to keep hold of any of it. And so good to finally have more-or-less landed here, in our quiet summer paradise, for at least a little bit of a long time (we’re here for about 10 days).

So far this summer, while I have been studiously failing to update this blog, we have gone to Baitcon and Firefly and camped on a friend’s land and Rio has visited New York City with her dad and also my bestest friend in the whole world moved back to my neighborhood after two years in the Bay Area and it’s been all welcoming her and her family home and hosting them as houseguests while there were renovations going on in their new apartment and then my inlaws came to visit for two weeks from Argentina and we took them on a long weekend up to Maine and Did All The Things and also in there were about a dozen birthday parties and …*whew*

It’s been a lot.

A lot of joy and play and sunshine. My travel meant I managed to miss nearly all the very hot days in Boston this summer while I was coincidentally hanging out in cooler climes. I’ve gotten to do all the swimming and board gaming and grilling and beach lounging and kissing and listening to music and dancing and making s’mores I could possibly desire.

And the results have been wonderful, for me and my whole family. We’re in our bliss. Everyone is relaxed and happy and getting along well. The kids have possibly eaten more ice cream than is strictly speaking good for them. I’ve been indulging in more than my fair share of YA novels. But really, we are a happy crew.

Thank you, summer, for your brilliant and gentle presence this year.