Self- Discipline

I have a lot of motivation to make some major changes in my life, you see, my mother lives with me and suffers from dementia. While it is nice to have the sweet spirit she brings to our home with her gentle personality and calming piano playing, not to mention, the on-going dish-washing that she does every single day and doesn't remember, it is a bit frightening as well. It was about 8 years ago, that I started to have major memory and thinking problems. The 11 pregnancies that I had, were starting to take a huge toll on my body. The cognitive problems became so severe that many times, I couldn't form the words with my mouth that my mind was thinking; when I wrote, there were letters missing from the almost all the words on the page. My energy was sapped and even climbing stairs took tremendous effort. The really scary part was that I could totally identify with my mother who is 33 years older than me. And this was not just, oh yea, I forgot something, I am starting to have those kind of moments; this was a total understanding of what it meant to not know where you were driving, or what you were supposed to be doing, frequently throughout each day, or to know what you were trying to say or write, but be unable to do so.

I started looking for answers, and saw many professionals. What was the big answer? I don't know. What I do know is that it was a lot of little answers: spending daily time each day in the scriptures and in prayer to find answers, removing my amalgam fillings, doing a colon cleanse, doing several intravenous Vitamin C detoxes, exercising, taking EMPower and other supplements, using my mind by reading and writing more, and then eventually, the idea to go back to school.

Each day as I write an essay, or study for a midterm, I know that I have helping my brain to function better and to stave off the early dementia that I was headed for. But, there comes a time to get serious about those things we like to put off- diet and exercise. By diet, I am not talking going on a diet, but rather a look at what is my diet doing for my mental/physical health. And so, in January, I set myself some pretty high goals. Each month, I am going to implement another strategy to help me to get into better health. I have done this before but this time it was going to be deeper than drinking eight glasses of water a day, and consistently taking my pills even though I can't stand the thought of taking something every single day, etc.

It was time for a new level so in January, I stopped eating sugar, chocolate, white flour and white rice. Although I occasionally have a few slips, on the whole, I am doing tremendously better. I have felt more energy and more clarity of mind. I started exercising in February. A lot more slips than with food, but still, I am progressing and I remind myself that perfection is NOT my goal!

Now on to March: preplanned meals and snacks. I have not consistently written out meal plans and I knew that to be successful, I would need to do this more religiously. So I started with a one week plan. I set out exactly what we were going to eat, shopped the deals at our local stores to get what we needed, and then informed the family of our new menu plan. Everyone seems on board. Well, in theory that is:

I have been married 30 years and know that Big Daddy does not think that eating good food is essential, in fact, he LOVES to find ways to avoid eating anything green. In his defense, he does eat ice-berg lettuce with cucumbers in it- those are both kind of green! His shopping has not always been a big bonus to our healthy eating. In fact, I remember sending him to the store one day back in those days of no energy, and he returned, informing me that he had good news and bad news: the good news was that he spent all the $60 I gave him for groceries, the bad news was that he forgot he had a shopping list and had not bought even ONE ITEM from the list!! What DID he buy? Chips, cookies, eggos, etc. Okay, with that in mind, I just took a look in the freezer: TEN cartons of ice-cream and 1/2 of an ice-cream cake!! Matt will understand why: there was a sale on ice-cream $2.99 a carton and that is a Brittanee and Taylor Arizona price, eh?!




Then on to my closet: FOUR boxes of caramel cookies, FOUR bags of potato chips, FOUR boxes of high-fat granola bars, TWO bags of candy, and ONE box of my favorite candies- Hot Tamales. But, we made a deal years ago when I realized that he was a junk food addict that if he wanted to eat junk food, it had to be kept away from the reach of the kids. I know they still knew he was eating all that C---! (sorry Marva!), but they also knew that it wasn't good for anyone. And it taught them to ask Dad for treats and not Mom! So every night when I am trying to keep away from junk food, I go upstairs to get ready for bed and look at this:



The upside of all this, is that if I am going to be a success, it is going to mean that I will have to develop some SERIOUS self-control!!