Happy Birthday to Me – A Year in Review

Happy birthday to me!  I am old.  

I decided to do a quick life year in review to see what has happened since my last birthday.

I saw a bunch of shows.

Pat Benatar

Donny Osmond because he was in my town and there were still tickets on the night of the show. I love him in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Turns out that he has some rabid fans.

Air Supply. Am I not firmly establishing my old lady bona fides right now? They added a whole lot of electric guitar in their live show.

I went to Florida for a convention and a side trip to Universal.  

I went to Virginia for a week for just a vacation.

I went to Washington D.C. for the National Book Festival and some sightseeing.

In September I started Body Slims. It is an Irish weight loss program that was pretty much a last resort/Hail Mary for me. I had been stuck at a plateau weight for years. It is a 10 week program that combines diet and exercise with a lot of mental work. I found it through their social media ambassador HalfofCarla on YouTube. She was recommended to me because she’s vegan and that fit my algorithm. Body Slims isn’t a vegan program. You can eat whatever you want. They are big on saying that you are a grown up and if you have found your way to Body Slims you know what you should be doing as far as nutrition. They give you a calorie limit but otherwise you can do it on any diet type. That works best for me. I’m not one who can follow a set diet plan that someone else does for me.

The second part is walking.  The only exercise they want you to do for the 10 weeks is walking 1 hour a day.  The calorie limit is figured based on that amount of exercise. Walking is aimed at maximum fat burning.

The biggest part of the program is the mental aspect.  On Wednesdays there are lectures to watch that are usually around 2 hours.  Every day there are morning and evening videos that are about 2-3 minutes each. There are meditations to listen to. I love those. I’m going to miss those when the program is over.

I started losing weight immediately.  What was the difference with what I was doing?  Honestly, I don’t know.  Consistency?  The magic meditations?  I’m not sure.  As of today I’m down 26 lbs in 9 weeks.  That’s over 10% of my starting body weight by now but this is the last badge I have.

I’m not hungry.  I feel great.  The course ends at the beginning of December and I’ve signed up for the next one at the end of January because I have more to lose.  I’ve also had to quit my walking in the last week because of the next adventure. 

I had surgery last week.  This is about to get very TMI if you don’t like medical stuff. In July 2023 I started having a weird pain off and on in my abdomen.  No one could figure out what it was. It was in a super specific place but there didn’t seem to be anything there. After a lot of testing that showed nothing, I brought up some metal devices I had implanted for sterilization years ago. They were taken off the market a few years later because they had a tendency to go wandering out of the Fallopian tubes. The pain was exactly where the left one should be. Could that be the issue? The medical establishment collectively shrugged and said, “I don’t know, maybe? Let’s do a hysterectomy.” That immediately made me the envy of every woman of childbearing age I know with endometriosis who has begged for a hysterectomy and can’t get one. It is very messed up but…

I was concerned about the fact that I was having surgery based on my clinical idea. I’m a veterinarian – not a human doctor. Turns out, the devices seemed to be behaving but my left ovary and fallopian tube were adhered to my colon. Why? Unknown. They unadhered them though so that was probably the issue. But, I’m not allowed to do my hour of walking a day for a while and this is sad. What is not sad is that I’m off work for a couple weeks. I really needed the mental break. People were getting on my last nerve. I kept asking my staff if it was a bad sign that I was looking forward to surgery because it meant that I could have some peace and quiet.

And that brings me up to today.  For the next year I’m looking forward to a few trips – a Central American cruise and a convention in D.C.  I’ll be working more on my weight loss journey.  Let’s see what the next year brings!