Baby Steps

I am trying to lose weight.  

I’m a stress eater and I have decided the best time for me to tackle my weight problem is right now while I’m working from home in the middle of a pandemic during societal unrest as I watch my husband evaporate before my eyes.  Clearly the recipe for success.

 

The number of calories I eat each day is determined by a Fitbit which makes that calculation based on the amount of time I spend actually moving.  While it hasn't been safe for Gary to be home alone during my weight loss adventure, earlier in the process (when he was a little more coherent) I was able to rack up steps by walking up and down our driveway during conference calls or trainings or breaks throughout the day.

 

Now, unfortunately, Gary is suffering from an all-consuming separation anxiety such that my stepping outside at all is so fraught with panic, even taking out the trash must be a carefully-timed, meticulously-choreographed surreptitious exercise.  And that means going outside for actual exercise is a near impossibility. 

 

I have attempted to overcome this limitation by walking around my bedroom.  Do you have any idea how mind-numbing it is to walk from one side of a room to the other and over and over again?  There’s a reason Peleton isn't marketing a treadmill that shows you the same wall indefinitely and turns off after 14 steps.  It’s slow and painful and I hate it but there is absolutely no other way for me to get any exercise at all.   None.

 

Well, I mean except for the fact that I work from the dining room table and Gary lives upstairs and over the course of an average day, he summons me approximately 42 billion times.  Sometimes he actually needs help (going to the bathroom or getting meds), sometimes (oftentimes) he’s just lonely but most often he needs help with hallucination management.  So, in the middle of my workday, I slam shut my laptop and head begrudgingly upstairs to kill imaginary wall-lobsters before trudging back down.  Not much time passes, before I am on my way upstairs again, this time to clean up imaginary food spills or rescue imaginary wildlife or act as the best man at his wedding or deal with diplomatic problems in Bolivia.  And on and on and on.  Each trip up those stairs feels like I’m climbing Kilimanjaro; it is emotionally exhausting.  I never know what I’m going to find and it’s often worse than I anticipated.

 

I’m trying to re-frame my negativity and focus on watching the FitBit steps increase as I schlep up the stairs for the 25^th time.  I’m trying to be grateful that each venture into whatever fresh new hell his mind has unleased means at least I’m getting a few extra steps in.   But positivity has never been my strong suit and right now, I’m finding it pretty hard to be grateful.

 

Baby steps.