I feel like I have turned some kind of corner, easing into this becoming an actual lifestyle rather than a tough program I am struggling to follow.  I am relaxing more about my food, feeling confident that I can do what I need to do.  I will continue to record everything I eat, because knowledge is power, but I can also decide to go over a few times and not stress about it.  Last week I asked Anne to pick up a half pound of  Molinari salami, my favorite comfort food, which was on sale.  She looked at me and asked if I was sure.  I said I wanted it and that I could handle it.  For the next 8 days I ate an ounce of the salami with a small orange for my afternoon snack.  In times past, I would have eaten all 8 ounces in one sitting.

We also went out to dinner and shared a dessert after a mostly sensible meal.  I am learning that I can sometimes just eat what I want, just not every day or for every meal.  I loved the dessert and I enjoyed the salami a lot, but it truly was enough.  (That “dayenu” refrain may become a recurring mantra for me.)

While I am easing off on my obsessive calorie counting, I am turning into an exercise nut.  I even started using a sweat band when riding my bike.  I check my Fitbit app often, watching for the various the goals to turn green when I have met them..  When I had my resting metabolic rate test, it came out at 1555.  Fitbit estimates 1677 based on my age, gender, and weight.  I will do another test at some point to see if there are changes.  But yeah, it is about figuring out what my body needs to be healthy.  I love data!

Our sweet facilitator has taken some of my (hopefully gentle) suggestions to heart.  We did a get-to-know each other exercise this week.  I do believe that members of a group have some responsibility for how the group functions.  Just like a congregation can lift up or tear down the minister (and I have experienced both kinds of congregations) so can group dynamics affect how well a facilitator does.  Connie is rocking right now, although the F-bombs my old cohort tends to drop seem to startle her a little.  I want to do whatever I can to help the group bond so we can support each other effectively, so I can get the support I need.  This isn’t something anyone can do alone.  Actually, there isn’t much of life that should be lived completely alone.  We all need some solitude and reflection time of course, but we are social animals.  We need each other.

We also talked about food behaviors that aren’t working for us and ways to change them.  Awareness, motivation, planning and rewards are all important.  With the food and exercise routines, I am on track, so I didn’t make any plans for myself other than keeping on doing what I am doing.  It was good to hear from others, though.

I changed the weight goals in my fitness and food apps yesterday.  For me, it has never been about the numbers, an ideal weight, or the size of clothes I can fit into, but about my health. So I just let the apps auto-select the goal numbers.  But it was starting to piss me off looking at a “to lose” number that is larger than what I have already done.  So I changed the number.  I know I need to lose more to take the enough pressure off my knees, so I somewhat randomly picked the number that will get me to the edge between the “obese” vs the “overweight” ranges for BMI.  When I get there, I can reevaluate, but it feels good to be more than half way there.

L’Chaim!

(My stats for the last week – down 2.1 pounds, drank over 8 gallons of water and exercised for over 610 minutes.  My cumulative weight loss so far is 79.7  pounds.)

 

I am rising like a Phoenix

From old ashes once again

Life has so many valleys

Deep dungeons of despair

Perhaps you saw me there.

Or did you glimpse me on a mountaintop

Where sunlight kissed the highest peaks

I laughed and forged a pathway

Through the storms

 

Rising like a Phoenix once again

One more transformation

Shedding weights that held me down

So blessed to be reborn

Once more to dance with wisdom

Swimming in that river of mystery

Where grace awaits us all.

 

 

 

 

 

When I have attended Passover Seders, I have enjoyed singing the song Dayenu.

The word means,”it would have been enough” and the song has 15 stanzas representing 15 gifts from God. The first five involve freeing the Jews from slavery, the next describe miracles, and the last five are about closeness to God.  Each of the stanzas is followed by the word “Dayenu” (it would have been enough), sung repeatedly.

Last week I found out that I no longer have diabetes.  It would have been enough. Dayenu.

This week I got the results of a recent sleep study and found that my sleep apnea has gone from moderate/severe to mild.  I may be able to ditch my C-pap machine before much longer. It would have been enough. Dayenu

I don’t expect 15 miracles.  But these are only the most recent  two.  Earlier ones were:

Not having lymphedema in my legs anymore Dayenu

Marked improvement in the lipodermatoschlerosis which was also in my legs and very painful. Dayenu

So I am up to at least 4.   Dayenu

OK, maybe 5.  I am able to exercise a lot more. Dayenu Maybe I am turning into a “jock” now that I have a Fitbit to vibrate and tell me to move.

Last week’s report:

I have exercise goals which I am writing down here to keep me accountable:

Exercise seven days a week.

Do at least 60 cardio minutes at least 6 out of every 7 days

Walk at least 250 steps every hour for 9 hours every day.

I am not doing a step goal as my knee is still quite wonky.

Class was great this week!  We had a couple of new folks and we spent time going around the room with everyone participating.   I learn so much every time we do this.   One woman talked about how she is no longer afraid of working up a sweat when exercising, which brought home for me the fact that I can now exercise hard enough to sweat.  Success.  Sweat is good.

A few other people talked about how others in the group were their inspiration for both beginning and sticking with the program.  It reminded me of the 12th step:

“Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.”

This program has a spiritual component I think and helping each other is a part of the practice.

We also talked about our heart rates and exercise.

And I got 2 pairs of new pants this week.  They fit – but maybe not for long as I am still shrinking!

(My stats for the last week – down 2 pounds, drank over 8 gallons of water and exercised for over 565 minutes.  My cumulative weight loss so far is 77.6  pounds.)

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109162648/https://theresauuco.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/img_2121.jpg

The pics are me in my exercise clothes.  I get real hot and sweaty on the bike and these help.

This journey has always been about improving my health, and not simply changing a number on a scale.  That said, the weight loss, the drastic change in my diet and regular exercise has yielded some real health results for me.  I was diagnosed with diabetes around 10 years ago and have been taking Metformin daily since that time.  I have kept my diabetes under relatively good control since I was diagnosed, watching my carbohydrate intake and limiting it to roughly 45 grams per meal.  I was not concerned about fats, protein, or calories though and continued to slowly gain weight.  My diabetes was stable, but I still needed the medication.

My A1c’s had been fine, always under the 7.  They were improving once I started this program, and began hovering between 5.9 and 6, very good numbers for a diabetic, in the “prediabetic range”.

Then, just yesterday, I got a call from my medical provider who told me my A1c (the test for blood sugar) was down to 5.4, which is in the normal range.    I was told I could stop taking the Metformin and that I now have a “history of diabetes” but that I am no longer a diabetic!  I did not even know this was possible, so I am both stunned and thrilled!  And yes, I have been working very hard, but some of it is clearly just luck, as others who work just as hard don’t have the same result. I am very grateful that my body is able to respond to my efforts and that my health is improving in this dramatic way.

Last week, when I wrote in anticipation about our anniversary dinner out, I said that I would have a martini but skip dessert.  Well, at the end of the meal, they brought our a piece of s’mores pie with two candles.  How could I not eat half?  It wasn’t that long ago that restaurant employees would assume we were just friends.  I clearly owed it to the GLBT community to eat that dessert with the love of my life! I did skip the crust, but the marshmallow, soft meringue topping and chocolate chunks were simply awesome and I enjoyed every bite.

I am learning that planning is important, but so is living life, adjusting as needed before and/or after.  I had exercised and saved up some calories earlier that day, and did the same the day afterward.  That one over-the-top meal did not impact my ongoing progress.

Last Sunday, I had the privilege of preaching again (sermon – here).  I love leading worship and it gives me energy.  It is interesting that I had over 6100 steps that day, more than any other day to date.  There are physical demands in preaching, part of why I had to give it up for awhile.  My knee was throbbing at the end of that day, but it was so worth it!

We had a substitute facilitator last night and it was a pleasure again to be with the woman who had guided us through the intensive phase of the program.  She was able to draw stories and examples from people in the group that she knew well.   The checkins were a bit deeper than usual as a result.  The issue came up of what to do when you are feeling bad about yourself, because guilt and shame are avenues that lead to failure and despair.  So many of us are raised to be such perfectionists, which can create a vicious cycle.  We try to be perfect and fail because perfection is impossible, then we simply stop trying and feel even worse.  I offered the following poem which a friend had posted online earlier this week and which helped me.

by Rev. Dick Gilbert.

In the midst of the whirling day,
In the hectic rush to be doing,
In the frantic pace of life,
Pause here for a moment.
Catch your breath;
Relax your body;
Loosen your grip on life.
Consider that our lives are always unfinished business;
Imagine that the picture of our being is never complete;
Allow your life to be a work in progress.
Do not hurry to mold the masterpiece;
Do not rush to finish the picture;
Do not be impatient to complete the drawing.
From beckoning birth to dawning death we are in process,
And always there is more to be done.
Do not let the incompleteness weigh on your spirit;
Do not despair that imperfection marks your every day;
Do not fear that we are still in the making.
Let us instead be grateful that the world is still to be created;
Let us give thanks that we can be more than we are;
Let us celebrate the power of the incomplete;
For life is always unfinished business.

The rest of the class was a discussion of artificial sweeteners. It was a good discussion but not very relevant for me.  I gave up my diet Coke addiction years ago, switching to water or unsweetened iced tea on hot summer days.  I have always tried to avoid overly processed foods and still cook from scratch with simple ingredients and sometimes complex spices.  I am just passing on the orange juice and leaving out most of the butter, cheese, pasta and bread that I used to eat.

The Fitbit is still keeping me moving.  I finished the “Valley loop” this week, one of the virtual adventures on the app for the device.

No longer having diabetes will take some time to sink in.  What an amazing result and so unexpected!

(My stats for the last week – down 1.4 pounds, drank over 8 gallons of water and exercised for over 510 minutes.  My cumulative weight loss so far is 75.6  pounds.)

 

This month’s worship theme is on covenant.  A covenant is essentially a promise, but it is a deeper and more faithful promise than an ordinary one.  It is not easy or thoughtless.

 

Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher that lived in 400 BCE is quoted as saying that “the unexamined life is not worth living.”

 

I am not sure that I completely agree with him on that. Life, all life, has value.  There are animals that do not have a capacity for self-reflection, but their lives are worth living.  Those of you who have shared your lives with special animal friends know this to be true.

 

But Socrates’ point is a good one.  Because we have thecapacity to examine our lives, it can be a waste to simply live them without ever thinking about their meaning.

 

The 20^thcentury Unitarian theologian James Luther Adams took Socrates’ statement in a different direction.  He said:

 

“An unexamined faith is not worth having, for it can be true only by accident. A faith worth having is faith worth discussing and testing…

No authority, including the authority of individual conviction, is rightly exempt from discussion and criticism.”

Adams was also pretty blunt when he said:

 

“The free person does not live by an unexamined faith. To do so is to worship an idol whittled out and made into a fetish. . . . the faith that cannot be discussed is a form of tyranny.” (Adams, The Prophethood of All Believers 1986, 48).

An unexamined faith is not worth having.

 

So how do we, as Unitarian Universalists, examine our faith?  How do we examine our lives and learn how to follow a principled path, one that makes us feel more alive and one that can help us make a positive difference for our world?

 

We don’t have a common creed, a set of particular beliefs.  As individuals, we have many different ideas about God, and we have a wide variety of opinions about almost everything.

 

We do have some things, however, that we have agreed upon.  Anyone want to hazard a guess as to what those things are?

 

Yes, we have our seven principles.

In case you can’t remember them, they are listed in the front of the grey hymnal.  It might be useful to turn to them.  Note the words at the beginning, “we the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association covenant to affirm and promote.”

The UU Congregation of Marin is one of those member congregations.  We have, as a religious institution, covenanted, or promised, to affirm and promote the seven principles.

 

Some people consider our seven principles a creed. Many of us when we first read them, said, “That is exactly what I believe!” I did that.

But let’s examine those principles. Note that the introductory line doesn’t say “we believe.”  It says that we covenant – that we promise to affirm and promote those seven things. As Unitarian Universalists, we make promises; promises to do things. The seven principles of Unitarian Universalism are not statements of belief, but rather constitute an action plan that we try to follow both as congregations and as individuals. Action plans! Don’t you love it?

What is your favorite principle? Call it out!

 

The majority of Unitarian Universalists are most strongly drawn to either to our first principle or to our seventh.   They are certainly the most often quoted in sermons and in conversations when you are trying to explain to someone what Unitarian Universalism is all about.

 

And while people can certainly have favorite principles, I believe it is also important to examine them together.

 

Our first principle uplifts the rights of the individual and asks us to respect everyone’s inherent worth and dignity.    The seventh principle, respect for the interconnected web, asks us to remember than we are all part of something much larger than ourselves.

 

(Holding up hands) The first principle is about the individual and the seventh is about community. Individual – community.  How do we hold those two in balance?  We can sometimes struggle with the tension between those two principles.  I know I did as a supervisor and as a new Unitarian Universalist.  I had to weigh the needs and problems of an individual employees with the needs of both the larger work team and the mission we were charged with accomplishing.

 

The tension between these two principles can also surface within our churches.

 

How does a congregation respond to an individual whose behavior is truly disruptive, maybe someone who makes racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic or sexist comments? If we can’t find a way to call them back into covenant and remind them of our first principle, what do we do?

Do we ignore it, or do we find ways to encourage them to change their behavior so that we can create the warm and welcoming religious community we all want and need?

 

Being welcoming to all does not necessarily mean being welcoming to all types of behavior.

Sometimes the balance has to shift from the individual toward the interconnected web, or community side of the equation.  It is never simple.  This isn’t an easy faith.

 

Sometimes it can feel like there is an inherent conflict between our first and seventh principles.  Maybe we should just choose one and be done with it.

 

It gets easier if you consider them in relationship with each other.

 

Isn’t part of respecting someone’s worth and dignity letting them know when they are doing something that diminishes or damages another person or group of people? Sometimes it is more respectful to speak the truth and offer the possibility of change, than simply saying, “Oh, that’s just the way they are; they always do that.”

 

Similarly, the seventh principle respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part is about a lot more than respecting the environment.

It says we are all connected.  It says every individual with all of their inherent worth and dignity is connected to every other individual.

 

Sometimes we forget that we have seven principles, not just two, and that they are all interrelated. The first and seventh principles are like bookends, and we need to take the time to read the books as well.

 

What’s in the middle of the bookshelf? What is our 4th principle?  It is OK to look it up.

 

Bingo. A free and responsible search for truth and meaning is the correct answer.

 

I would argue that the 4^thprinciple is the most important one and that the other 6 lead us there, supporting us on the path of examining our lives and our faith.

Our second principle, justice, equity and compassion in human relations points to the sixth, the goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all;

The second principle is about how we promise to treat individuals, while the sixth is what that means on a larger scale.  It is the same as the relationship between the 1^stand seventh. Individual — community.

The second and sixth also define the goals or mission that follow from the first and seventh principles: positive and respectful relationships between all people and all nations.

The third principle is acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations and the fifth is the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;

Those two contain some of the specifics of the action plan.  Accept one another, encourage spiritual growth, respect the right of conscience and use the democratic process when making decisions.

They tell us what to do as we engage in a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.

Free (one hand) Responsible (other hand)

Individual – Community

Our principles contain the essence of dramatic tension. Everyone who wants to live ethically, in right relationship to other people and to the world, to examine their life and their faith, struggles with contradictions.  How do we search for truth and meaning?  How do we discover the meaning of our lives and what we are called to do with them?

Today is Epiphany in the Christian tradition.  One definition of epiphany is a, usually sudden, perception of the essential nature or meaning of something.  As we examine our faith and our lives, sometimes we are looking for an epiphany, an understanding that will help lead us on our life’s journey.

But how can we begin that search for truth and meaning?

The Buddha sat beneath a tree waiting for enlightenment. Moses climbed a mountain. Jesus went into the wilderness.  They were seeking truth and meaning, wondering what their lives were really about, what their “action plan” should be.

Haven’t we all experienced that feeling?  We wonder why we are here, if our life has any purpose, any meaning beyond whatever societal success we might attain or not.  What is the point?

Does it really matter what we do and how we live?

To find the answers to those questions, we have to go deep, very deep, inside of ourselves.  We have to look in the mirror and see our whole selves, our failings as well as our gifts.  Who am I? Why am I here?  What am I called to do?

Who are you? Why are you here?

What will you do with your one wild and precious life, as the poet Mary Oliver asks?

Sitting with those feelings can be scary.

Fear has so many dimensions: fear of failure, fear of success, fear of ridicule, fear of power, fear of the unknown.

But while we are sitting beneath the tree, while we are wandering in the metaphorical desert, while we are drawing in whatever wisdom we can find, we also need to be turning ourselves inside out, and finding a path into the world.

The Buddha did not stay beneath his tree, he was called by the suffering he saw around him to go back into the world.  Moses came down from the mountain to lead his people to the Promised Land.  Jesus came back from the desert and began casting out demons and healing the sick.  Harriet Tubman went back down south to free more slaves.

Howard Thurman said, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

 

There is a place, deep within each of us, that knows what will make us come alive. We can follow a principled path.

I will end with these words by Leslie Becknell:

“What kind of case could be made to convict you of full-fledged whole-hearted Unitarian Universalism? What do you do when life calls on you to live out your principles? When someone’s opinion is different than yours. When someone at the committee meeting interrupts and goes off on a tangent. When your beloved doesn’t take out the trash. . . . When you request that your employer make a policy change. When you are living your life every day.

I won’t challenge you to memorize the principles. I invite you to learn them by heart and be willing to back them up with the life you lead”

 

From: “Learning the Principles by Heart” Leslie Becknell

Amen and blessed be

 

I don’t want to sound like a commercial, but the Fitbit Anne gave me for Christmas is making a real difference.  I also paid the $30 (per year) to upgrade from the free version of Lose It so it could send my meal info to Fitbit.  I have always loved technology and this one is so fun.  Like Santa , it knows when I’ve been sleeping and tells me how much REM and deep sleep time I got the night before.  The exercise programs are a motivation and much easier than timing my exercise on my phone.  It tells me to take 250 steps every hour and it is hard to ignore a vibration on my wrist.  Best are the “adventure” challenges.  This week I virtually hiked the Vernal Falls trail in Yosemite, something I have done in real life at least 30 times, starting when I was a child and taking my own children there.  I know that trail in my bones although I haven’t been able to hike it in many years.  So fun to do it virtually and see the photos of places I know so well.  I start the “Valley Loop” today.  At 35, 899 steps, that will take me almost a week.

At group this week we talked about resolutions, goals, and intentions, and what the different definitions are.  I said that I like to use the language of covenant, which is a more of a sacred promise, something you come back to again and again, even if at times you falter.  (I am preaching on this topic this Sunday.)

I am trying to learn the names of the new-to-me people in our group.  It was easier this week as there were 3 men named John.  I try to use people’s names when I speak to or about them, and will try and model this more often in the group.  Knowing someone’s name is the first step in making a real connection.  In a support group, knowing each other’s names is critical I think.  It can be hard, because people drop in and out and the facilitator has lots of classes with lots of people.  It is kind of like congregational life, I guess,  and as a minister there were always people whose names I did not know.  But I’d rather ask for a name multiple times, than skip over what is a need-to know.

One of the John’s made a comment that struck me.  He said that now that he is no longer fat, he feels like he is who he was always meant to be.  Body and spirit both was the implication.  So much of our fat shaming culture eats away at our sense of dignity about who we are and/or who we have been.  I hate that.  There is virtue is setting a goal and accomplishing it, but there is no shame in failing.  This stuff is hard. Life is hard.

A colleague posted a question today about experiences with food and shame.  The following is what I wrote in response:

“Growing up working class, and having a large garden, there was always enough food although the quality declined as the month ended and the money grew tight. We celebrated with rich food when the money came in. Free food has always been particularly hard for me to resist, storing up for some intrinsic fear of scarce times I think.  I was thin until my mid 30’s, but eating has always provided some emotional comfort for me.  It started when I was a child eating potato chips or saltines with butter late at night when the house was chaotic and going out for pizza with my mom when my father was very drunk and we needed to get out of the house. It is funny, now that I am in a serious weight loss program (because of my personal health needs, NOT because being fat is inherently unhealthy!) for the first time in my life I am only hungry right before mealtimes. I have never felt a lot of shame about eating or my size, even when I was over 300 pounds, although I was frequently upset and pissed about others reactions to my size. It is OK to use. my name.  I am who I am.”

We are going out to dinner tonight for our 44th anniversary.  I will save up some calories so I can have a martini with the meal, but I won’t get dessert this year.  I will order a reasonably sensible entree, but if I go over in calories today I now know one meal will not sabotage my progress.  I am feeling good and it is time to get on the stationary bike and start walking the valley loop trail.

(My stats for the last week – down 1.9 pounds, drank over 8 gallons of water and exercised for over 510 minutes.  My cumulative weight loss so far is 74.2  pounds.)

I have a truly amazing support system.  On Christmas Eve, “Secret Santa” from my group left the note above on my porch song with a goodie bag full of fabulous stickers, trinkets and small gifts, including a cute chicken kitchen timer and a fluid measuring glass.  Do I feel the love?  Yes, I do.

And my beloved Anne gave me a Fitbit (one that I can wear in the pool to track swimming too), a mini-colander to wash my morning blueberries, measuring spoons with size markings I can read, jogging pants that won’t fall off for a few more months at least, and Michelle Obama’s book, which I can read on the exercise bike.  I may be forgetting something, but do I feel the love? Yes, I do.

Weirdly enough, it seems to be getting easier in a lot of ways.  I am drinking more than a gallon every day now, finishing the jug by dinner and wanting more.  I did 420 minutes of exercise this week, and it was easier than the week before.  I had veal marsala and a martini on  Christmas eve, and ate a potluck dinner at a friend’s house on Christmas – and I still lost almost 2 pounds.

During class we talked about lessons learned this last year.  There has been so much!  For me personally, I think I now can relax just a little more, turn down the volume on my compulsiveness, and partake of an occasional treat.  As long as I keep my focus most of the time, it will really be OK  to plan to do something different once in awhile.  Planning is the key.  I knew I would have a martini this week so I ate a bit lighter earlier in that day.  I also knew I would be unhappy if I just got sauceless fish so the veal was a decent option that tasted fabulous.  The leftovers were good as well.  Watching people eat the bread and olive oil, and sharing a dessert was a little harder, but the veal and martini did it for me, and once it came, I did not feel deprived.

2019 will be a good year.  2020 will be even better if we can pull off a landslide election that will end this political nightmare we have been living in for forever it seems.

(My stats for the last week – down 1.9  pounds, drank over 8 gallons of water and exercised for 420 minutes.  My cumulative weight loss so far is 72.3 pounds.)

I made the exercise goal of 420 minutes.  It almost killed me but I did it!  I rode the bike in 20-40 minute segments twice a day.  It is amazing how the idea of a prize can motivate me.  We get “stamps” for attendance at meetings, logging our calories, and exercising for 420 minutes a week.  When we have enough stamps, the card is entered into a drawing for a Whole Foods gift certificate.  I don’t even like that store; it is so pretentious and overpriced, but I want to win so I am wearing out the stationary bike until spring when I can swim again.  It’s a mind game I am playing with myself.

We had a interesting discussion in class last night.  Does doing something hard, like this program, improve your life in other ways?  Does it open up other possibilities for you, other challenges that you might tackle? Does it make you more empathetic to others, because you know how hard things can be, or does it make your more judgmental because after all you have had success, so why can’t everybody else?   Of course I went to the theological in this.  It reminds me of the old salvation by grace versus salvation by character argument.  The Universalists and Unitarians, coming from either side of that issue, decided to just live in the tension of that theological debate.  I do believe that hard work helps, but a little luck helps even more.  Everything does NOT happen for a reason, much of life is simply random, and sometimes good hard-working, truly wonderful people, simply do not succeed or even manage to survive.   We do what we can, and hope for the best.  Try to love life and love each other; be generous and be kind.  If nothing else, the world will be a little bit better because we lived. As a Unitarian Universalist I believe that all will end up in whatever heaven is, and also that we can, with our efforts, create a little heaven right here.

(My stats for the last week – down 1.4  pounds, drank over 7 gallons of water and exercised for 420 minutes.  My cumulative weight loss so far is 70.4 pounds.)

The quality of light in the morning is something to behold.

The warm breath of the sun falls gently on the mountain and on the bay.

Wake up because it is a new day.

I had a “non-scale victory” this week because I was able to attend a rally, and even speak before the County Board of Supervisors that same evening.  See “Ice Out of Marin” for what I said.  I could not have physically done this a few months ago.  It was still physically difficult.  The rally was held on uneven grass, with no real seating.  The civic center halls are also very long.  Between those two things my knees were cracking, throbbing and popping that night and throughout the next day.  I made a joke on Facebook saying, “although I wanted ICE out of our county, I still need some ice for my knees.”  A sense of humor helps get me through, not just with doing this hard program, but also with coping with all the truly evil things happening in the world. .

I was also able to wear my clerical shirt with its collar and could button ALL the buttons!  Victory!  In my tradition, clerical collars are not routinely worn in our churches.  Instead, we wear stoles and some of us robe when leading services.  In more recent years, however, many Unitarian Universalist ministers have begun wearing collars during public witness events.  It is a very recognizable symbol that we are ordained clergy and it can add a tad of religious and moral authority to what we say.  The clergy shirt I ordered online a few years ago never really fit me before, but this last week it did!    Thinking back to my list of the reasons I began this program, being able to attend social justice events was on that list.  (Click here for my full list) here. )  Yay!  Just Yay!

Class was good this week.  It was particularly fun because it was a smallish group and all but two of the attendees were people from my cohort.  We are so well bonded that we can tease each other and laugh hysterically.  One man was talking about eating crab and some of us heard “crap” – not much of a stretch because “crap food” is something most of us have known all too well.  The rest of the class, he said “Cra -buh.”  Maybe you had to be there, but it was hilarious.  I also think I remember pretending to be a crab in boiling water, raising my claws and making drowning noises, but maybe I just thought about doing that.  We were pretty rowdy and I hope we did not upset our facilitator who is still getting used to us. Laughter helps though.  It really does.

One more wonderful thing happened this week.  Because of this blog I connected with an old friend who I hadn’t seen in at least 25 years.  She finished the active part of the program about a year ago, and is in a “lifestyles” group in a nearby city.  We talked non-stop for almost 3 hours when she came by to see us and we have plans to get together again.  We mainly just got caught up on our lives and our kids, but she also had some program tips for me as well.  (COLD water is better, the body burns calories heating it up – who would have known?)

I will be working on exercising more in the weeks to come.  The goal now is 420 minutes.  I might have made close to that if it were not for getting a shingles shot on Monday. The shot reaction knocked me out for a bit.  I was down 2.6 pounds anyway, making up for my very slight gain of .2 pounds last week,.  Yay again, just yay.

(My stats for the last week – down 2.6  pounds, drank over 7 gallons of water and exercised for 315 minutes.  My cumulative weight loss so far is 69 pounds.)

 

Yesterday afternoon I went to an ICE Out of Marin rally and then to a meeting with the Board of Supervisors.  These are the remarks I shared during the public comment portion of the meeting.  I spoke right after our parish minister, the Reverend Marcus Hartlief who spoke with passion and eloquence.  I think we made a good tag team of UU ministers:

“When I accepted ordination into the ministry I pledged to speak, act and live as a voice of courage and of hope; to champion justice, freedom, and compassion and to serve all those who are in need.

Whether or not it was explicit, I believe all of you on the board of supervisors and our sheriff made a similar commitment when you accepted an elected office in the County of Marin.

You are here to serve the residents of this county, and most particularly those who are most vulnerable.

I know you try.  I know that sometimes the decisions you need to make are complicated and not easy.  This one is simple.

Our immigrant neighbors are living in fear. Their families are being torn apart. Their cries of anguish and despair should be stirring all of our hearts and calling us to compassionate action. We MUST stop cooperating with ICE.  We MUST stop publishing the damn release dates of those who have been incarcerated.  We MUST provide a sanctuary where all who are vulnerable are safe.  I pray, along with Reverend Marcus, that wisdom, compassion and courage will guide your decision. Thank you.”

Sigh, I was up slightly this week, but only .2 pounds, which is pretty much staying the same. Still a bit depressing as I am monitoring daily and stayed within my calorie goals.  Bodies are complicated, however,  so although what we do matters, the results are not always predictable or measurable.  It is the overall journey that is important.  At least that is what I keep telling myself.

It is also like the work for justice.  Progress is made, and then the forces of greed and hatred raise their ugly heads.  We have to keep trying to bend the arc.

I am still adjusting to the new group.  There were lots of new-to-me folks last night, and a lot of good tips from those that have been doing this longer.  The free flowing conversation is a bit disconcerting, with some people talking a lot and others saying nothing.  I’ll get used to it, but I found myself being quiet, not my usual mode of being.

Another new revelation for me was that we are actually supposed to continue reporting our activities (tracking calories and exercise) to our facilitator each week.  There are prizes involved! I will catch up on it, but I was completely clueless about the reporting requirements.  Our new exercise goal is 420 minutes per week, more than I have been doing lately.  Winter is harder because I can’t swim.  I could cheat and count my steps around the house, but no, there is no real point in faking it.  Maybe I will try 2 spins on the bike some days.  I can’t seem to manage more that 30 minutes at a sitting on the bike because, frankly, my rear end gets numb after 20 minutes or so.

This is a marathon, not a 50 yard dash.  Staying steady, and on pace, one step and one day at a time, is how to do it I think.  This is for the long haul.  Damn, I wish it was all easier.  I am going to a rally this afternoon for immigrant rights.  It is something that would have been a huge physical challenge for me a few months ago.  Change is possible, on all fronts.  This I believe.

 

(My stats for the last week – up .2  pounds, drank over 7 gallons of water and exercised for 260 minutes.  My cumulative weight loss so far is 66.4 pounds.)

Unitarian Universalism is an embodied faith; our theology proclaims that all our bodies are sacred and beautiful, and that our physical selves matter. Our faith is demanding; we are called to stretch ourselves and to be transformed.

For much of my life, I have lived in my head and my heart, and my body was mostly a vehicle for getting things done.  It was also a source of pleasure.  Among other physical pleasures, I have enjoyed bubble baths, soft kittens, and delicious food.  I spent time caring for my mind by studying, reading, and learning. I also tended to my heart and soul, through prayer and by opening the pathways of empathy and compassion, even when it was difficult. Despite my theology about the importance of the body, however, I mostly simply used it, ignoring what it might need to stay healthy.

I gained weight slowly over the years, and in some ways relished being fat.  In my large female body, I felt like I projected a safe presence, and the hugs I gave congregants seemed to be received as nurturing rather than sexual or threatening.  I did always ask before hugging someone new, however; prior trauma can be so easily triggered by touch. I was largely happy with my “earth-mother” image of myself. I did not enjoy squeezing myself into airplane seats, or enduring the indignities and judgements that society places upon fat people, but I loved myself and my body, just as it was. My dear wife also loved me, no matter what size I was.

But I forgot that my body needed my care and attention, and that just as my heart, brain, and spirit needed exercise to stay healthy, so did my body. I forgot that this faith demands a wholeness of mind, spirit, and body.  I forgot these words of the 16th century Unitarian, Michael Servetus:

“It is necessary to care for the body if we wish the spirit to function normally.”

Last year, I got a wake-up call, a revelation if you will. My health had begun to deteriorate, so much so that I had to leave a ministry earlier than planned.  Most of my health issues were made worse by the amount of weight I was carrying.  I knew this was true this time, despite the years of doctors implying that my weight was the cause of what were completely unrelated problems. I realized that if I was going to have a decent quality of life ever again, if I was going to be able to continue to work for justice, I needed to lose some serious weight.  Exercise wasn’t going to be enough; my body and I needed both physical and spiritual rehabilitation if we were going to survive.

I had never seriously dieted before and was very suspicious of the diet industry. To me, it symbolized both capitalism and misogyny, the policing and sexualizing of women’s bodies for profit and control.  One can be healthy at any size; I still believe that, but it wasn’t true for me, at least not any more.

I signed up for a medically supervised weight loss program through my health plan.  It isn’t easy, and has required intense concentration and focus, but the weight is coming off.  It is hard, but it is what I need. I am learning to tend my body in the same sorts of careful and attentive ways that I have always cared for my heart, my mind, and my soul and spirit.   My body is so much more than a vehicle; it is my home.  I have no regrets about my past habits, but it was time for me to go home. I needed a revelation to really understand that our minds, bodies, and souls are deeply interwoven, and that only when they work together can we live to our full potential.  Sometimes we need revelations – sometimes we need two, or three, or twenty-three. I am so glad that revelation is not sealed!

 

 

Thanksgiving Day was also the 30th birthday of our twins (the 2 sitting in chairs.)  And of course we had two cakes, neither of which I even tasted.  I actually left the room while everyone ate cake – part of why I had a successful Thanksgiving.  Weirdly enough for a holiday week, I lost 4.6 pounds, one of my highest weekly losses ever, which totally made up for the 2.2 pounds I gained the week before.  Since the dinner was just us, our 3 children, their partners, and Anne’s nephew Tom (who took this picture) I did not have to be shy about compulsively staying within my calorie budget.  I ate really lightly earlier in the day, weighed the turkey I ate and simply brought measuring cups and tablespoons to the table.  I had enough left in my budget to have 4 ounces of turkey, 3 tablespoons of gravy, 2 tablespoons of cranberry sauce, 1/4 cup of stuffing, 3/4 cup of roasted brussels sprouts, 1/2 cup of green bean casserole, 1/4 cups of roasted sweet potatoes, and a 1/2 cup of salad. The servings were small, but it was a feast!  It came in at 566 calories. (A Big Mac  w/out fries is 563).  It was more than I had eaten at one sitting in a long time and I felt more than satisfied.  Losing a good amount of weight the same week was just more “icing on that cake”- the one I did not eat!

I also realized this week that I am really grieving the strong bonds we had in class with the facilitator we had.  It was 30 weeks of intensive work together.  Now we are thrown into a group with both a new facilitator and a bunch of strangers who have been in the program longer.  I like the new facilitator and am enjoying the stories and wisdom of the veterans, but it is still a loss.  Losing my “fat lady’ identity is also a loss.  Every change in life involves a loss.  Change, even “good’ change, is always hard, but it is what life always is, if you are going to keep living it anyway.  It will take time to build up trust in the new group, but I am confident that it will happen.  I am going to work on helping it happen if I can.  It reminds me some of congregational work.  Everyone wants to hang out with their friends, and visitors can be ignored.  If we care about what we are doing, in church, or in a program that depends on mutual support, we all need to do what we can the build and strengthen community, inviting the stranger, the new-comer in.  I truly believe that diversity of all types is a blessing.  We can learn so much from those who have different life experiences.  It helps to have at least something in common, however, whether it is a commitment to losing weight or to creating a more just and peaceful world.

I am grateful for so much on this week after Thanksgiving.  Most especially the rain, which extinguished the fires and cleaned the air.

(My stats for the last week – down 4.8  pounds, drank over 7 gallons of water and exercised for 210 minutes.  My total weight loss so far is 66.6 pounds.)

This week I had what was only my second weekly weight gain that I have had since starting the program, but I know why.  I love mystery in general, but not when it comes to improving my health.  Three things contributed to my gain:  take out Thai food, shrimp tacos with sweet potato fries, and not exercising at all because of the terrible air quality.  I enjoyed the food, so maybe that was almost worth it, but the bad air had no positives to it.  With so many losing homes and loved ones in the devastating fires, it feels a little bad to whine about the smoky air, but breath is live, and when we can not breathe, it feels like we are dying.

I do not want to die.  At least not too soon.  I have more to do, not the least of which is trying to improve our environment so that our planet might continue to sustain life.

I WILL get on the stationary bike this week, and will meet the Thanksgiving dinner challenge with resolve.  I had a melt down yesterday, faced with the sight of the dinner rolls my wife had purchased for the meal.  After some tears and conversation, she froze the rolls and agreed to skip the mashed potatoes.  She is so wonderfully supportive and understood that the stuffing and gravy would be enough of a challenge for me.  I can avoid dessert easily. I have never really liked pumpkin pie anyway.   We are also having roasted brussels sprouts and I am roasting the sweet potatoes rather than coating them with butter, brown sugar, and marshmallows.  The kids are bring a salad and a healthier green bean casserole.  My plan is to measure out a small serving of dressing, a tablespoon or two of cranberry sauce, and a couple of dollops of gravy.  Turkey is a really good protein, low fat and low calorie, so I will have a healthy serving of that.  After that I will stick to the veggies.  I will likely go a bit over my calorie budget today, but that is OK.  Today is a day to feel thankful and not deprived.  I am grateful for my improving health and I have a strong desire not to sabotage my progress.  Wish me luck and grace!

(My stats for the last week – up 2.2 pounds, drank over 7 gallons of water and exercised for <30 minutes.  My total weight loss so far is 61.8 pounds.)

The taste of ashes is in our mouth

The smell is in our nose

The flames have ravaged hopes

And taken lives

 

The fires have roared

Our lungs have filled with smoke

As we wait for the rain

That must surely come

 

Then washed clean and reborn

We will rise from the ashes

Above the haze

On the wings of our dreams

 

 

Last night was our first meeting with the new Lifestyles group.  The lifestyles group is composed of people who have finished the 30 week intensive.  We can attend the weekly meetings as long as we want and some people have been attending for way more than a year.  It was good to hear from those who are further along on the journey.  Us new kids composed about half of those in attendance last night.  It was both good and hard being with my peeps in a different environment.  The bonds between us are so strong that it will take awhile for us to blend and join with the others that have been there longer.  I liked the new facilitator and am hopeful she can help us accomplish a melding together so we can become one ongoing supportive group.  I did miss the intimacy and trust we have had in our smaller group and I hope that can both continue and expand.

This week has been impossible for exercise because of all the smoke from the horrible fires up north.  The air is classified as “unhealthy” for everyone, and I am in the “sensitive” group so have been coughing even when indoors with the air purifier running full blast.  My heart goes out to those who have lost homes and family in the fires.  We really do need to get a handle on climate change before the West goes up in flames and the East and South are completely devastated by monster hurricanes and floods.

I also had my RMR (resting metabolic rate) test this week and found that my body burns 1555 calories a day when I am doing absolutely nothing.  As a result, I am going to increase my calorie intake to 1350, which should still keep me on the weight loss path without going too low.  Even with virtually no exercise, I still lost 1.2 pounds last week.

Sadly, too, we closed the pool for the winter, so the stationary bike will have to do once the smoke clears.

I also got some new pants last week. They were both on sale and fit!  I am holding off on buying more as I hope to shrink out of the new ones before too long.

(My stats for the last week – 1.2 down  pounds, drank over 7 gallons of water and exercised for 30 minutes.  My total weight loss so far is 64 pounds.)

They shared the “before and after” pictures with us last night.

I am not done, but you can really see the difference. What you can’t see is how much better I feel.

Our last meeting last night was simply hilarious, as well as moving.  We’d written a song for our facilitator, whose name is Joanna, and we gave her a gift after we sang it.  To the tune of Oh Susanna:

“Oh, Joanna, oh don’t you cry for us. We’re off upstairs to lifestyles, our new group for to meet. A protein bar is in our mouth, a tear is in our eye, we’ll stay your cohort two seven, Joanna don’t you cry.”

She was totally blown away not the least by the fact that she had also written us a song TO EXACTLY THE SAME TUNE! Serendipity? Traveling along on the same wavelength for 30 weeks?  A miracle?

Her song was amazing, with a verse about each person in the class, which I must say, nailed us each quite precisely.

The chorus was “Twenty Seven, Our cohort lost the fat. Smart skills, waters, logging cals, We’ve got the skills done pat.”

My favorite was the last one, “xx kept us very in the know on making habits stick, when faced with hard decisions, for God’s sake don’t be a dick.”  It was one of his more famous lines during check it.  We were all practically on the floor laughing.

I loved my verse too:

“Our group was helmed by Theresa, Reverend mom to all, her sage advice was cherished, she throws veggies at the wall.”  The veggies at the wall line also referred to a check in story, but the less said about that one the better.

The group then overwhelmed me with some gifts.  Two Tee shirts, in two sizes, one that I will need to shirk myself a bit more to fit into.  100% compliant because I was the only one who did not “cheat” the entire time.  Except last week when I had that martini, but they didn’t know that when they ordered the shirts.  A swimming trophy for my exercise, and egg cookers because I’d complained about peeling hard boiled eggs.

Hugs and tears all around last night.  I blurred the faces in our group pic for privacy as not everyone has been as blatently public about being in the program as I have.

I am so happy that most of the group will stay together in the Lifestyles class.  As we said last night, we need each other to keep on keeping on and really change our lives for good.

Tomorrow I am scheduled for a test that will tell me what my resting metabolic rate is.  RMR is the amount of calories a body burns when it isn’t doing anything.  It will help me know how many calories I should have each day to keep on losing the rest of my weight that needs to go. No exercise today and no food or coffee tomorrow morning before the test.  I am looking forward to it.

(My stats for the last week – 1.8 down  pounds, drank over 7 gallons of water and exercised for 260 minutes.  My total weight loss so far is 62.8 pounds.)

Sunset.  It is almost sunset for our group – at least as it has been configured for the last 28 weeks. Actually 29 weeks.  I started counting weeks on this blog from the week we started meal replacements, not the week we started in the group.  So next week will be the end of the 30  week “intensive phase” of the program.  We will start in “lifestyles” which will be more weekly meetings that we can continue attending as long as we want.  Forever might be good.  It might take that long to really get committed to healthier eating in the long haul.  I still have quite a bit of weight to lose, so it will be more than just “maintaining” for me.  61 pounds is nothing to sneeze at, however, and I am proud of myself.

Endings are almost always bittersweet. It does feel good to have finished something, but we will be leaving our awesome facilitator behind.  I hope the new one has a good sense of humor too.  She will need it; we are pretty rowdy.  A few people in our group will be going to other lifestyles groups, ones closer to their homes or on nights that will be easier for them.  I will miss them fiercly as well.  Most of us will stay together though, a very good thing.  I love our group!

It was a small group last night, only 8 of us plus our facilitator.  A few people were traveling and others were spending Halloween with their kids.  Quite a few of us wore costumes, which was fun.  The topic was alcohol use, especially around the upcoming holidays.  I haven’t had a drink since April when I started the program, and my intention is to wait until I get to my maintenance weight before having even one of my beloved martinis.

Alcohol involves more risks to weight loss than the obvious ones of calories and lowered inhibitions.  I learned last night that it is important to eat some protein before drinking, because otherwise the body digests the alcohol as a priority and anything else will go directly to fat production.  Who knew?  My friend Brian must have been onto something with his blue cheese stuffed olives.  I could maybe try a pepperoni stick as a garnish.  Just kidding, but the protein idea was a good tip.

The holidays are coming, and I am cooking Thanksgiving dinner again this year.  It will be a smaller one, just the kids and their partners, but I am going to try some healthier side dishes this year.  Turkey is an awesome low fat protein if you don’t drown it in gravy.

I am still losing a pound or so each week – which shocks me in some ways.   I am also not feeling hungry, except right before meal time.  Having 3 small snacks in addition to 3 somewhat larger meals, seems to be working.

It has been another hard week in the world and I don’t have the emotional energy right now to write about all the horror this week.  I wrote this poem earlier after attending a vigil.  But please vote and please vote for Democrats.  Lives are at stake, so many lives, so many precious lives.

(My stats for the last week – 1.7 down  pounds, drank over 7 gallons of water and exercised for 390 minutes.  My total weight loss so far is 61 pounds.)

How many candles do we need to light?

Will there be enough wax

To hold the slender wicks of all our prayers?

How many tears do we need to shed

To cause the ocean to overflow

With the torrents of our grief?

 

I want to light a candle

For every single soul

For the children

For the elders

For all those at risk

For all those who are targeted

For who they are

Or what they believe

I want to light a candle

For all those who have not survived

 

Can our candles burn any brighter

With their fierce and furious love?

Can the molten wax we create

Burn through a world of hate

Of greed and blatant disregard

Of all that makes life holy?

 

Our prayers can flow like lava

Erupting through the darkening sky

Angel wings can beat within our hearts

Soaring high in the warming air.

So many candles of love we have

Lit by an eternal flame.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Halloween is coming and our kids came over to carve pumpkins last weekend.  They all live in apartments, so they left the jack-o-lanterns for us and our neighbors to enjoy.  It was the first time carving pumpkins for both of our sons’ girlfriends, as neither one was raised in the U.S.  They had fun – and it was fun seeing the fun they had.  This is what sharing different cultures should be like – fun.  Where did we learn the fear that so many display toward immigrants?  It has always been here I know, but I hate it.

Last night, before class, a few of us got into a conversation about choice and abortion.  A class member said he protested outside the Planned Parenthood offices every month, because he did not believe in abortion.  I told him that I had friends who served as escorts at other clinics where the demonstrators were aggressive and sometimes violent. I mentioned the shootings at the clinic in Colorado, and the doctor (George Tiller) who was murdered while attending church. My friend said his group wasn’t violent and I said good, and I asked him if he was also against the death penalty.  What I did not say, and would have said if I had thought quickly enough, is that is safe abortions are not available, women and girls will die, because they will take whatever desperate steps they think are necessary, with quacks, coat hangers and poison.  I am old enough to remember what it was like before Roe vs Wade.  I don’t want to return to those days.  Life is more important.  Comprehensive sexuality education and free and easy access to birth control are the solutions if you want to reduce abortions.  Abortions rates (and teen pregnancies) are proven to decline in places where those are available.  The conversation was a cultural exchange, not as fun as the Halloween pumpkin carving, but not violent or hostile either.  On a day when public figures and news organizations were the target of terrorist bombs, it was refreshing to just talk and exchange opinions respectfully.

Words matter. Our class topic included the negative self talk that is part of struggling to lose weight.  It is hard to stay positive, to lift up hope in such scary times, but I do believe it is the only way we will survive.

The scale surprised me this week because I had a small weight loss despite the fact that I was prepared for a gain.  It seems like I did fine at the retreat and at the dinner out we had with the kids.  (Thai food works, or at least Chicken Ka Prow worked).  I also signed up to have the test that will measure my resting metabolism rate. (RMR – the calories a body burns just existing.)  Knowing this number, which is different for everyone, should help me calculate more precisely how many calories I should consume in order to continue to lose weight without kicking my metabolism into starvation mode.  I’ll let you know how it goes in a couple of weeks after I get the test done.  I will need to do the test later as well, because the RMR number goes down as weight goes down.  More facts, more data.  I can’t get enough of either.  Oh and more love, more hope, more courage; I can always use those too.  Be well.

(My stats for the last week – down 1.7 pounds, drank over 7 gallons of water and exercised for  240 minutes.  My total weight loss so far is 59.3 pounds.)

I missed class this week because I was attending a gathering of UU Ministers at a local retreat center.  What a joy and a challenge it was! It is always a joy to gather with beloved friends and colleagues – those I have known for years and others that I just met this week.  The program was excellent and included a lot of prayerful singing – singing is something I don’t do well, but that doesn’t stop me from loving it.  I particularly enjoyed some of the conversations I had with the newer ministers and seminarians.  They hold the hope for the future, not only for our faith, but for the world.

No one understands a minister better than another minister.  While resting in the embrace of that mutual understanding, there were also challenges.  We are human and part of the larger culture and are not unaffected by the wider systems of power and privilege that bring such harm to those who are trying to survive on the margins.  I had to do my “Jeremiah” thing during a discussion of white supremacy where I witnessed a few “micro-aggressions.” It is so important to at least name those when they happen.

I am also realizing that I am completely out of patience with the “hurt feelings” of those who feel victimized when someone names the harm they have caused to others.  No one expects perfection.  If you blow it, when you make a mistake (and you will), apologize, and then SHUT THE F___ up and move on.  No one you have harmed wants to hear about how guilty you feel about it or how your intentions were pure.  Process those emotions with others who have similar identities to yours if you need to do so, but don’t redirect the attention of a larger group to your emotional distress.  Don’t make it about you.  This is work, very hard work indeed, that really needs to be done, again for our faith and for the world.  The blessing I felt is that everyone there at least wants to do the work, even we bumble and stumble along that journey toward justice making and beloved community where all are truly welcomed in the fullness of who they are.

The other challenge, for me at least, was the food.  (This is my weight management blog after all.)  The retreat center served very healthy, and mainly organic, food, so it was much easier than it might have been.  It was also super tasty.  I stressed some though, as I was not able to weigh or measure anything and I had to guess at the calories.  The lunches were vegetarian, so protein was harder to find and manage with no lean meat available.  It was also hard to pass by the awesome desserts and say to no to the social  hour wine.  I stayed strong on those last two, however, and next week’s weigh-in will tell me how well I did on estimating calories.  This was my Tuesday night dinner plate:

Baked chicken with pesto sauce, roasted cauliflower, and a smidgeon of salad.  The salads were all pre-dressed, so I was careful with them.  My guess was around 340 calories.

I am also thinking about taking the test in the next few weeks that will tell me about my metabolism – how many calories I burn just breathing.  Knowing that number will help me calculate with more precision just how many calories I should be eating each day. It is not good to go too low because too few calories can slow your metabolism permanently and make long term weight loss more difficult.  Too many calories, and you don’t lose any weight.  The program includes one free metabolism test, and subsequent ones cost $50.  The recommendation is to wait and do the test when your weight loss slows, but I want to do it before then.  If it turns out I need another one later, I can just pay for it.  Given the investment I am making already – in money, time, and attention, I am not going to quibble over an extra 50 bucks if it will help.

There are maybe a couple of weeks left of swim season, before we need to close the pool for the winter.  I hope to catch up on my exercise goals this week.

 

(My stats for the last week – down ? pounds, drank over 7 gallons of water and exercised for  240 minutes.  My total weight loss so far is 57.6 pounds.)

Sermon Notes:

Read any good books lately?  I have one to recommend, but like any good book, it is important to read it with a questioning mind and an open heart.  What does a particular book tell me about my own life?  Are the characters and situations believable?  Most important, from a religious standpoint, is the message of the book uplifting?  Does it contain something that has at least the potential for making me a better person for having read it?

 

Jewish and Christian scripture, the Bible, is one of the six sources from which our living tradition of Unitarian Universalism is drawn.  There are references to Biblical stories everywhere in our culture, including in our music.  If we don’t understand those stories, we can be at a cultural disadvantage.

 

The right of individuals to interpret sacred scripture for themselves, whether that scripture is the Bible or Doctor Seuss, is fundamental to our Unitarian Universalist faith tradition.

 

Have you ever cried in church?  I have. Sometimes the tears are good, and in times of grief or disappointment, just letting them flow can be very healing. We cry when our hearts are touched, and we can cry when we feel like we have found a place to belong, where all of all we are is welcomed and embraced.  Rev. Marcus spoke about that a few weeks ago.

 

But people also cry in churches because their church is hurting them, telling them that they are somehow less than worthy, less than whole. They may be told that God doesn’t love them just as they are if they are gay.  They may also be told that they are less than worthy if they happen to be female. All that is in the Bible after all.

 

This morning we are going to try and unpack some common misunderstandings about the Bible. I hope you learn something new and I hope it might help you resist anyone who may be wounding your heart with their literal interpretations of scripture.  We are going to open up that good book and take another look and see if we can find the Gospel there.

 

The word Gospel comes from the Greek and means quite literally “good news.” It does not mean absolute fact, something that can’t be questioned.

 

If you study it, you will find that while the Bible may contain some good news, especially for the poor and oppressed, and much human wisdom, it is far from fact. It is not literal and to interpret that way is, dare I say it, fake news.

 

My Old Testament professor in seminary, a Franciscan priest, was fond of saying that the Bible is not history, it is not science, and it should never be used as a club.

 

 

The Bible, he said, is simply a collection of the stories of a particular people and their struggles to be in right relationship with the divine, with God. It is full of metaphor and full of inconsistencies.  It wasn’t written down all at one time; and God didn’t dictate it.

 

Biblical scholars, using modern methods, have determined that the bible is in fact a collection of many stories, most of which were originally oral traditions, and almost all of which were edited and changed over time.

 

And there is not just one Bible, a fact that many Biblical literalists don’t know.  The Hebrew Scriptures are a collection of 24 books. The Protestant Old Testament contains all the same books, but arranges them differently. The Roman Catholic Old Testament is larger than the Protestant version; containing 15 additional books. The Greek Orthodox Church includes even more, and the Ethiopian Church yet again more.

 

So, if someone tells you that they follow what is in the Bible, it would not be at all unreasonable to ask, “Which one?”

 

Most of those individual books have also been edited.  Some are clearly combinations of different earlier versions.

Scholars have determined that there were originally as many as five separate and distinct written versions of the material in the Torah that were combined at a later time.

 

Have you ever wondered why there are two versions of the creation story in Genesis?  Genesis one describes creation as happening in seven days and God creating both man and woman in his image at the same time.  It is in Genesis 2 that God takes a rib from Adam to create Eve.

 

From the story of the flood to the tales of Abraham and Sarah, from the parting of the Red Seas to the listing of the Ten Commandments, to the genealogy of Jesus, there are both repetitions and differences in what the Bible says.  So, if someone tells you they believe what the Bible says, after they tell you which version, you might want to ask, which part of that version?

 

You also might want to ask them, if they say the Bible is the literal truth, if they think men really have one less rib than women.  Did anyone else ever try to count their own ribs and those of an opposite gender friend or sibling?  I did. It was very confusing.  It also wasn’t particularly easy and I don’t remember even getting a firm number.

Pull out an anatomy textbook later, or ask your doctor if you still aren’t sure.  We aren’t going to engage in rib counting this morning here in church. If you want, I suppose you can do that later, in the privacy of your own homes.

 

It is also important to read the Bible from a historical perspective.  Human sacrifice was common in the ancient desert world.  First born sons were often sacrificed and sometimes murdered.

It was one of the plagues suffered by the Egyptians, and King Herod was said to have killed Jewish babies trying to murder the infant Jesus. If you read the story of Abraham and Isaac with that understanding, maybe the point wasn’t a test of Abraham’s obedience to God, but instead was a message that God values life. Don’t kill the children. Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with Divine.  Leave your arrogance behind.  That is the message I like to take from Scripture.

 

There is so much in the Bible, ancient as it is, that can have relevance for our modern lives. If you grew up in a large family, or if you have more than one child of your own, maybe you know about sibling rivalry. Starting with Cain and Abel, there are so many stories about this.  Joseph and his jealous brothers when he got a new coat, Jacob when he stole Esau’s inheritance, and the older brother who is hurt when the prodigal son returns and is celebrated.  Those stories can help illustrate the challenges of parenting.  How can we treat all of our children both fairly and as individuals?  It isn’t always simple.

 

There are also stories in the Bible of alcoholism and abuse.  Noah, of the ark fame, after the flood, was drunk and naked and his son Ham saw him and told his brothers.  For telling, Ham was cursed and exiled. So many secrets we are asked to keep, and when you have the courage to tell them it is a risk and we may be punished.

Ham is the hero for me in that story.  He told the truth and in fact was set free from that dysfunctional household.

 

Then there is the story of Judith.  It is in the Catholic Bible, but not in the modern Protestant or Jewish scriptures. Holofernes was an evil and abusive conqueror who brought Judith to his tent to rape her, but he passed out drunk first. Judith then took his sword and cut off his head.  I am not for capital punishment, but in those times, it was a fitting response to a drunk who wanted to commit sexual assault.  Today, we seem to make them Supreme Court justices instead.

 

I just mentioned that the Book of Judith is only in the Roman Catholic Bible.  There was much controversy in the early Christian church over what writings should be included.  There was a lot of very diverse material floating around as well as some very different oral traditions.

 

Some writings were lost for more than a thousand years, but scholars were aware of their existence because of historical records that made reference to them.

 

You may have heard of the Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Judas, and the Gospel of Mary, from which Anne read a portion earlier.  Often referred to as the Gnostic Gospels, they were discovered in 1945 in Egypt.

 

These writings reflect the incredible diversity of Christian belief in the earliest years.

 

 

 

So, when someone tells you women should be silent in church because it says that in the Bible, maybe you might want to quote from the Gospel of Mary where Levi calls Peter hot headed because he does not want to listen to Mary.

 

You might also ask them why Paul felt the need to tell women they should be quiet.  Most likely they were speaking up and he wanted to silence them.  Many men are still trying to silence women, especially those who are saying #metoo.

 

I haven’t gone into the whole issue of translations, but it is pretty clear that Jesus didn’t speak King James English.  He didn’t even speak Greek.  Anyone who speaks more than one language knows very well that translations are, at best, approximate.

 

When in a silly argument with someone who says that the Bible clearly condemns homosexuality, I like to quote Luke 17:34 from the King James Version, the favorite translation of conservative Christians.  The verse reads, literally:

“I tell you, in that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left.”

Now, when you interpret that verse literally it is pretty clear that at least half of the gay people go to heaven, isn’t it?

I don’t suggest that you leave here today and go out and start arguments with biblical literalists. But if it interests you, do some reading about modern biblical scholarship.

But what I most want to leave you with today are some more questions.  What is yourholy text, and what good news does it contain?

 

Do you find meaning in scripture; Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or perhaps another tradition?  Do you find it in poetry, in nature, in connections with other people?

 

Each of us must find our own truth.  We find it in our own lives and in the lives of others that we come to know.  We find it in the world around us.  It is also helpful to read, to study, and to learn what others believe to be true.

 

But in the end, we must each make our own peace with the meaning of our own lives, and our own peace with whatever we mean when we say the word God.

 

There is some gospel, some really good news, however. We don’t have to do any of this alone. There are other souls engaged in similar journeys.  Maybe we can learn from one another.  Maybe people can stop using sacred texts like the Bible to justify their own bias and bigotry.

 

Maybe other people can stop being afraid of what the Bible says and understand that it is not literal and is not meant to be a club to beat you about the head, but is instead a collection of stories told by people trying to understand their lives and the world they lived in.

Isn’t that what we all are trying to do?  Amen and Blessed Be.

Now that I have fully transitioned back onto real food, I am going to recycle this gross shaker.  It is not like I didn’t rinse it after each use and wash it with soap, but the residue from the shakes simply did not come out.   When I used the dishwater, the gunk got baked on.

I

 

It makes me wonder what the inside of my stomach looks like.  Kind of creepy, but the program worked, so I am not complaining.  I have lost a significant amount of weight and am primed to continue losing until I reach a weight that works for me and keeps me healthier.  The Kaiser recommendation is to continue to use 3 products a day for the rest of my life.  I have decided to ignore that.  Once I finish my last 3 shakes I am done. The shakes are too gross to me at this point and the bars, while handy in a pinch, don’t seem necessary for every day.  Costco also sells protein bars for half the cost of the Optimist products.  Eating every 3 hours or so makes sense to keep hunger at bay, but I think I can do that eating somewhat more natural food.  (Are low-fat mozzarella cheese sticks real food?  They are a handy protein though.  Hummus, fruit, all of those type of choices can work just fine.) I certainly don’t want to discourage others who might make different choices about the products, but this is what feels right to me.

This week I have been pondering how my body feels.  It is smaller.  I have more muscle and less fat.  I am stronger.  My skin even feels smoother.  My ankles are no longer swollen and the lipodermatosclerosis in my legs is way less painful. I can open the solar pool cover all by myself, something that wasn’t possible 2 months ago. I will need to buy some new clothes soon as most of my old ones are way too big.  I actually feel thin.  I am not thin, however, and anyone else, looking at me, would still see me as fat.  But I FEEL thin.  When I last worked for the federal government, there was a lot of talk about reinventing it.  We also talked about “right-sizing” rather than “down-sizing.”  I never understood the differences as we went through round after round of hiring freezes which caused service declines, but the term of “right-sizing” makes some sense in my current situation.  I want to get to a size and a weight that feels healthy.  If I feel good, I don’t really give a damn what other people think.  I am too old and have been through too much in my life to start worrying about other people’s opinions now.  We talked about goals this week in class. We got the always important reminder that we are the most important person in our lives and that we need to continuing prioritizing our own well-being if we want to be able to help others.  My motivation remains that of improving my health.

I took a class in seminary where we were assigned the task of doing a theological reflection about a core life issue.  We got extra points for tying the reflection to a scripture from a religious tradition of our choice.  Working on that assignment, I realized that the story of the prophet Jeremiah really spoke to me.  He was one of the dudes who kept speaking truth to power, calling the wealthy to help the poor, etc.  They kept throwing him down a well, but he never shut up.  Speaking the truth is important, even if those in power don’t listen and don’t care.  Even in the bottom of a well, you can create ripples that can change things several millennia down the road.   The walls of the wells that confine us will eventually crumble.  Speak your truth.  Never give up.  Rock on Jeremiah. Rock on Anita Hill.   Rock on Christine Blasey Ford.

 

(My stats for the last week – down 4.3 pounds, drank over 7 gallons of water and exercised for  330 minutes.  My total weight loss so far is 57.6 pounds.)

This last week, I ate out for the first time in almost 6 months.  Twice!  It is the facilitator’s fault.  She passed out menus from fast food restaurants last week and asked us to try and find healthy choices.  I did better, I think, with Thai food (chicken/cabbage/red curry) and the grilled kanpachi with veggies I had at a decent fish restaurant.

I forgot to take a picture of my actual meal, but it was pretty much like the above, except the cauliflower was roasted not creamed.  I did have the chimichurri sauce which had olive oil. It is impossible to figure out the actual calories when you eat out, but I did try and be smart about it.  No rice or bread, and I avoided heavy sauces.

I think I stayed within my calorie budget, but I only lost .3 pounds last week.  That is OK.     Any loss is better than a gain, which is kind of the opposite of the rest of life.

We did nutrition this week in class, macro mainly, carbs, fat and protein.  I have been watching my carbs for years, to keep my blood sugar from spiking, so that is routine for me by now.  We need carbohydrates of course, and I am trying to get most of mine from the complex range, vegetables and a few whole grains.  Life is complex, but white bread and potatoes not so much.    I yearn sometimes for a simpler life, but it is not what my body needs when it comes to food.

I am also starting to thinking about going completely off the Optimist products.  (They recommend using 3 a day for the rest of our live!) I hate Nestle, the evil corporation that makes it, and the products are far from healthy natural food.  I think I can do better with snacks of string cheese, hard boiled eggs, fruit, veggies and other brands of protein bars in a pinch.  I am still in the thinking stage on that, but I have never been one for eating a lot of processed or packaged foods.  The Optifast products are definitely in that category.

This week has been hard emotionally. I have been very triggered by the US Supreme Court nominee and the Republican defense of sexual assault. I wrote the following poem this morning.

A Holy Rage

 

May all our rage be Holy. May we do what is good for ourselves and for each other.  May we be tender with the (so many) wounded among us.

 

(My stats for the last week – down  .3 pounds, drank over 7 gallons of water and exercised for 300 minutes.  My total weight loss so far is 53.3 pounds.)

I remember this feeling

Tightness in my chest

Fists clenching

Panicked tears.

 

The day my father was baptized

Was the day I stopped

Attending church.

It took me 30 years

To go back.

 

They knew what he was like

But it did not matter

I did not matter

They never asked me

They never cared enough.

 

Another drunken abuser

Is about to stagger into more power

Where he will no doubt

Abuse us all.

 

Where is our sacrament?

Where is our blessing?

Where is the salvation,

For the victims,

For the survivors?

 

I tell you this:

I am no longer a child

I know the truth

I will remember

And I will not forgive.

My rage is holy now.

 

 

 

I was very moved a few days ago by an article published on-line by my denomination.  You can read it (Here).  The series of short articles is called Braver/Wiser:    “Life is full of hard edges and complicated choices. Braver/Wiser gives you weekly messages of courage and compassion for life as it is. Every Wednesday we deliver an original written reflection by a contemporary religious leader, and brief prayer, grounded in Unitarian Universalism.”  How we need both courage and compassion in these times! In the relatively near future, I will be honored by having some words of my own included.

But, oh my! The Reverend Misha Sanders in her article reports an elderly woman, a stranger, saying to her in a store, “You have beautiful hair. If you slim down, Honey, you’ll have to fight off the men.”  I’ll let you read the article to find out how she responded, but it made me cry.  Read it please.

Her article also made me reflect on some of my own way of being in the world.

Some straight women say they want to be thin in order to be more attractive to men. This objectifies the female body in unhealthy ways, and if a fat women becomes thin and “finds a man” she will always wonder if he would have loved her if she had stayed fat.  God, I hate that idea.  Fat people are every bit as lovable as thin ones, and to deny that fact is part of the patriarchal rape culture.  In that culture, men see women as created for their pleasure, to use, so they can just be “boys being boys.”  So many of my sisters are filled with rage right now as rape is being defended by Rebublicans so desperate to control the Supreme Court that they don’t mind adding (another) sexual predator to that lofty bench.

That rage is almost all-consuming as I listen to as much of the hearings as I can stand.  But I am going to try to think of something else for a moment.  I have never been a serial dieter.  I can laugh that I lost the same 20 pounds twice, but others I know have done the yo-yo thing their whole lives.  I never wanted to be thinner in order to attract men, because, as a lesbian, my sense of other women is that they are attracted to the spirit of the person, the personality, not just the surface appearance.  I certainly did not want men, “fighting over me.”  Why does that phrase remind me of dogs fighting over a bone?  Bones have no agency.  Meat.  It is a frightening and disgusting concept that a woman would want that.

I obviously can’t change the subject today.  I can’t even think, because, yes, #metoo, and all survivors are triggered by what is happening.  I am stunned, but not surprised, by the callousness of the old white men sitting in judgement today, not really caring.  And I am awed by the courage of a woman brave enough to speak the truth.

(My stats for the last week – down  1.2 pounds, drank over 7 gallons of water and exercised for 330 minutes.  My total weight loss so far is 53 pounds.)

I have been seriously pissed off since the news of the attempted rape by the current nominee for the Supreme Court.  Why am I not surprised that the “groper in chief” would nominate another privileged and entitled white male who thinks the world and women were created for his use and pleasure?   Class and race issues abound here as well.  Our prisons are full of poor people and people of color who made a mistake when they were young, but this dude is unlikely to be held even marginally accountable.  Punk he was then and punk he still is.

Anger and stress are not necessarily great for staying on program, but last night we learned about “eustress” a stress that is experienced as beneficial, for example a challenge that can invigorate an person to engage in meeting and overcoming an obstacle.  For a problem to generate eustress, there needs, I think, to be some sense that we have the power within us to meet the challenge.  This is why the phrases, “you’ve got this” and “you can do it” are so helpful in support groups and frankly, in parenting.  No one makes progress when they are in despair.  I am sticking to the program, and to the Resistance, simply because I have to do so.   Keeping hope alive is an essential part of living well and fully.

There was a bump in the road this week when I read the following article:

Everything you know about obesity is wrong. 

So much was excellent about the article.

The comments about the medical profession rang true:

“Ask almost any fat person about her interactions with the health care system and you will hear a story, sometimes three,…. rolled eyes, skeptical questions, treatments denied or delayed or revoked. Doctors are supposed to be trusted authorities, a patient’s primary gateway to healing. But for fat people, they are a source of unique and persistent trauma. No matter what you go in for or how much you’re hurting, the first thing you will be told is that it would all get better if you could just put down the Cheetos.”

And that may be all you are told.  If you are fat, your actual medical condition which may need immediate treatment, is often overlooked and dismissed.  It has happened to me.

The article also did a good job of describing the harmful impacts of fat shaming.

“Paradoxically, as the number of larger Americans has risen, the biases against them have become more severe. More than 40 percent of Americans classified as obese now say they experience stigma on a daily basis, a rate far higher than any other minority group.”

The part that threw me off for awhile, however, was this:

“For 60 years, doctors and researchers have known two things that could have improved, or even saved, millions of lives. The first is that diets do not work. Not just paleo or Atkins or Weight Watchers or Goop, but all diets. Since 1959, research has shown that 95 to 98 percent of attempts to lose weight fail and that two-thirds of dieters gain back more than they lost. The reasons are biological and irreversible. As early as 1969, research showed that losing just 3 percent of your body weight resulted in a 17 percent slowdown in your metabolism—a body-wide starvation response that blasts you with hunger hormones and drops your internal temperature until you rise back to your highest weight. Keeping weight off means fighting your body’s energy-regulation system and battling hunger all day, every day, for the rest of your life.”

This isn’t something I wanted to hear while I am in the middle of a weight management program that seems to be working.  I really question the statistics in the highlighted sentence, however, especially since no reference was given and I could not find that statistic on-line.  The last sentence also doesn’t ring true.  I have not felt hunger while on this program, cravings for certain foods, yes, but not actual hunger.  I really don’t expect to be battling hunger for the rest of my life.  Paying attention, yes, being careful about what and how much I eat, yes, prioritizing exercise, yes, but I am now seeing significant improvements in my health as a result of the weight I have already lost.  That is a incredible motivator as is the awesome support of the other members of my group.

And this week I made another milestone – over 50 pounds down!  I can see the changes when I look in the mirror, but even better, I can feel the changes when I need to climb some stairs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 16                                                                                      September 19

(My stats for the last week – down  3.1 pounds, drank over 7 gallons of water and exercised for 310 minutes.  My total weight loss so far is 51.8 pounds.)