These are the stairs that I have mastered, twice a day. There is a matching set at the other end of the parking lot that we circle three times to make up one mile. It has not been easy and I huff and puff, but I have achieved some success. Around 20 pounds since Thanksgiving, 40 pounds in the last year. That’s three dress sizes! The last one is a little slower to come off.
It’s easy to do something for someone else, not so easy to be your own best friend. Fitness is one of my goals for this year. My weight was starting to signal early signs of medical problems ahead. When your feet scream at you in pain by the end of the day, check your weight first. My loving daughter let me know that one pound of fat can exert 7 pounds of pressure on just your knees. No wonder my poor feet protested!
Seriously, diabetes and other medical problems run in my family and I am doing my best to beat the odds and avoid it all by eating right and exercising. That means getting my weight down another 40 pounds.
While I’m at it, I’m working on my financial fitness as well. Selling some stock, why was I keeping it anyway, some of it was a negative rate of return and some down in the 2% range. I’ve kept the good performers and dumped the bad. I have a new financial guy and he wants to manage all of it, but I’m a little on the cautious side. I decided to compromise and keep my star performers, liquidate the bad actors and send the cash to him to invest. He has one year to convince me he can handle my retirement money. I can do about 5-7% on my own. He was a little surprised when I told him that. The money in my 401k was doing 3-4%, time to make some changes. So I rolled the account out for him to handle it.
We all know that God has just two rules for us to live by, Love God, Love others. That little rule that goes like this: Love others as yourself. Somehow we are able to lie to ourselves that we are doing good by giving away all our time. Giving all your time to a cause, even to your family, is not a good thing. Balance is a good thing. If you do not spend the appropriate time taking care of yourself first, the quality of the remaining time degrades. It is not giving your best to others. Spending an hour on fitness at least 3 times a week keeps you healthy. You are able to give to others a rested healthy persons time as opposed to a tired, run down and possibly sick persons time.
I’m sleeping through the night for the first time in my life. No more sleepwalking, RLS and insomnia. They finally figured it out; after a lifetime of extremely low REM sleep waking up felt like I was swimming through mud. I am so grateful that they did since I have much more energy and as a result, I can exercise more and get in shape!
Tessa Bertoldi 