It wasn’t my genes, it was my lifestyle that was catching up with me. When I was tired I’d grab a coffee or a sugary snack as a pick me up. When the sugar crash happened, I’d find some salty snacks to fill me up. I could eat an entire bag of Doritos (the BIG bag) in one sitting. Hey, at least I was drinking diet sodas. Urp.

So, I started counting calories. Well, that was a wakeup call. I recommend it for anyone who has never done it before. Weigh and measure your food – it is amazing what can quickly add up to 1,000 calories. I definitely was overeating. I started cutting calories. Somehow, inexplicably I wasn’t getting leaner and the needle on the scale wasn’t really budging either. The problem is that I wasn’t addressing WHAT I was eating.

Over time I became a much better eater. I stopped drinking sodas. I limited salty snacks and sweets. I ate more fruits and vegetables. I got leaner. I didn’t lose much weight, but I definitely became a much smaller person. Since I’ve been in my mid-20s, my max weight swing has been about 25 lbs. In the grand scheme of things, this really isn’t a lot compared to the average American. However, whenever I slid back into my old habits, my weight would start to creep up. I started to become a slave to calorie counting. That wasn’t working either – it really isn’t a fun way to live.

The key here is that staying lean is a lifestyle. It isn’t a part time or some-time thing. It has taken me a long time to figure out what really works long term. Counting calories isn’t it. Starving myself (not that I ever was good at that) isn’t it. Some people may be able to survive on a cup of broth, an apple, some celery and cigarettes to keep a fat percentage around 15%. I can’t. I also don’t like that scrawny, sickly, runway model look. It just isn’t healthy.

It took a lot of trial and error for me to wind up where I am today. Over my next few posts I’ll continue to describe my journey.

I remember the time it took to learn how to ride a bike as a kid. Self locomotion and balance took a bit of effort to get right. Once I knew what I was doing there came the satisfaction of whizzing down a big hill – after working my butt off pedaling up to the top. Today a kid with a motorized scooter can just zip up a hill as fast as they can ride down it. Seriously – where is the fun in that? Immediate gratification without the work required to make it fulfilling. Let’s just hand our kids an entitlement mentality on a silver platter.

If that wasn’t enough, these days all you read about is the obesity epidemic. The CDC states that:

Childhood obesity has more than tripled in the past 30 years. The prevalence of obesity among children aged 6 to 11 years increased from 6.5% in 1980 to 19.6% in 2008. The prevalence of obesity among adolescents aged 12 to 19 years increased from 5.0% to 18.1%

For more info see their Health Topic Childhood Obesity. The number one recommendation is more physical activity, not less. We wonder why our kids are getting fat. Too much TV, too many video games – and when we do get them to go outside and play we provide them with motorized toys so they don’t have to exert themselves to go flying down the road.

In other weird news about childhood obesity – this month an Illinois state senator came up with a plan to end tax credits for parents of obese children as one “solution” to the problem. Illinois lawmaker getting international reaction to ‘fat tax’ suggestion on stltoday.com. That didn’t go over well. Something is fundamentally broken if the only way we can come up with motivating parents to keep their kids fit is through legislation and taxes. You also might want to read about proposals to tax soda similar to alcohol: Taxing Sodas for a Healthier Economy? in Time Magazine.

How did we get here as a country? Soon the skinny people are not just going to be the minority, but a true oddity in our society.

I had no idea what a difference it would make. Here are some examples – my cholesterol was a health 186 when I started. I recently had it checked again. Wow, down to 142. My husband’s blood pressure and cholesterol have taken similar nose dives as well. Both of us have lost weight. I dropped 13lbs and he’s down 25lbs. All of these changes happened before I retired, so that clearly wasn’t the cause.

The beautiful thing about all those wonderful changes is that they didn’t come at the cost of typical dieting. I am never hungry. I no longer track every morsel I eat in order to count calories (that plus exercise was my secret to staying slim). I don’t need to do these things anymore – ok I do exercise, but I don’t think that will ever stop – I love to feel strong and healthy. I eat as much as I want of the healthy things in our house and I’m now at the weight I was at in my early 20s. The last time I got down to this weight I was really trying hard to get there. This time, not so much. I even have dessert most nights. I’ve learned how to bake tasty cupcakes and breads without any eggs or milk.

The switch wasn’t easy, but I think that anyone can do it with a little bit of attitude adjustment toward the food industry.

One of the first things I do every morning is check my e-mail. One of the last things I do at night…. is sign off of my instant messenger accounts and… check my e-mail. Personal e-mail, work e-mail, e-mail that I use for subscriptions so it doesn’t clutter my personal e-mail account. Don’t forget Facebook, need to see what’s going on there too. Oh, and Twitter. Oh, and LinkedIn. I don’t read newspapers anymore – I read them online. Mail? What’s that? I rarely write checks, everything is automatically paid. I don’t run to the store to buy something, I do all the research and if I can’t find it locally I buy it online. Heck, I even use an online local foods service that delivers to my door. For those in Raleigh – Papa Spuds – tell them I sent you.

When all of this tech is humming along and working smoothly it is bliss. I am more productive than I’ve ever been, and I have access to things that were not available to me just 5 short years ago. Wow, things are great!

Not so fast.

Since technology is so ubiquitous we always expect it to be there and to work like it is supposed to. Occasionally it doesn’t and it really throws a wrench in things. Here’s a simple example. Someone contacted me to do a guest post on my blog. I responded with a nice e-mail saying “sure I’d love to collaborate” and oh by the way here are some links you might be interested in. I get another e-mail from the person asking: did you get my e-mail? I respond again. Nothing, nada, zilch. E-mail is just supposed to work. But often it doesn’t. Spam filters catch things they shouldn’t. Mail servers silently bounce messages for a variety of reasons, sometimes just the domain name is enough to cause this. Among friends and coworkers it’s easy to deal with this. “Did you get my e-mail?” No? Resend. When you’re dealing with clients or people you don’t have that relationship with it can just make you look unresponsive and really bad.

I wonder what the non-tech savvy people using tech every day think of this? Do they have any idea about the equipment that has been cobbled together over the last few decades that support all this functionality? Sometimes it’s a wonder it works at all and we are so dependent upon it. I’m allowed to say that, I’ve been in the guts of machines capable of running our country’s core networks.

This team reflects my life. I pick my friends based on what kind of a person they are. Do they share my hobbies? Are they kind? Mean-spirited people who take advantage of others need not apply. The older I get, the less I care about differences, I always look for similarities. What’s important??

• Age? No. I have friends much younger than I am, and also quite a bit older. Zest for life is what is important.
• Religion? No. Just don’t try to convert me. I’ll accept whatever you believe as being the best thing for you.
• Gender? No. I’ve met wonderful men and women and count both among my closest friends. Both sexes can also be miserable and unkind.
• Sexual Orientation? No. Gay, Lesbian, Straight. It’s not a choice for someone – why should I use it as a choice when finding friends? What matters is self-respect and honesty.
• Politics? No. Though, sometimes it is easiest just to agree to disagree on this one. It’s always interesting to hear other opinions and reasons for them.
• Nationality? No. Latina, European (too many to count!), Asian, Middle Eastern – I count them all among my friends.

Maybe I am a little naive, but I think under it all we are more similar than different. We are all human. Yes, our experiences and our culture let us have different perspectives, but this is what good relationships are about. Who wants to sit around with people that are exactly the same as you? What can you possibly learn?

“That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong.” William J. H. Boetcker

I’ve addressed respect in my blog before, and in reflection I thought it would be interesting to focus on self-respect vs. the respect for others. There is a lot of interesting debate in psychology circles regarding the differences between self-esteem and self-respect. See Psychology Today Self Esteem vs Self Respect for a quick overview. Having high self-esteem is ego driven. Technically a person with high self-esteem feels superior to others and expects preferential treatment. These people are very dependent upon how other people react to them and the feedback that these people provide. Studies have shown that some of the most heinous violent crimes are committed by people who have an unusually high warped self-esteem when they encounter someone who clearly does not hold them in as high regard. They have been “dissed” and it makes them angry. This is not self-respect, it is the pathology of a narcissist.

A person with healthy self-respect is :

• able to look at themselves, both their successes and their failures and feel content – accepting who they are
• not defined by either the positive or negative feedback of others (compliments are nice, but not required)
• consistent in how they treat others with kindness and understanding
• not phony, passive-aggressive, or manipulative
• not willing to do the wrong thing just to appease someone else
• concerned about maintaining their health and physical wellness (but is not obsessed by appearance)

Working with these kinds of people is a wonderful experience. There is no jockeying for position or ego driven posturing. Instead, there is cooperation, receptivity to suggestions, and a straight forward understanding that everyone on the team wants to do the right things.

For more reading see this article on Self Respect.

As a woman, I find that creating the wrong appearance is fraught with peril. A lot of times there aren’t role models to learn from. I’ve been in companies where there weren’t any senior women leaders. What do you do then? For men it is so easy. Business casual is a pair of khaki pants, a polo shirt, a nice belt and a pair of loafers. Done. A guy can get away with that, even if it is a little rumpled. Formal business dress is standard – a dark suit, starched shirt, tie, and dress shoes.

For women there are so many questionable areas.

Hair and makeup:

• Don’t wear too much makeup or constantly touch it up.
• Hair needs to look well-groomed and well cut, but you don’t want to look “high maintenance”.
• Nail polish – I tend to vote no on this – too distracting unless it is very neutral. It also looks horrendous when chipped or dull.

Clothing:

• Don’t show too much leg or cleavage.
• Too tight is bad – don’t want to look like a stuffed sausage casing now do we?
• Too loose is also bad – that comes across as sloppy.
• Sandals may or may not be appropriate. Some industries still expect pantyhose – and that is a rat hole a mile deep in itself!
• Boots? Are they ok with a skirt? Depends on your industry. If they are fine leather dress boots with a heel they are probably ok. No Uggs please!
• Heels or flats? Too high is too suggestive. Too flat is not a “power” look.
• What about sleeveless blouses? I think Michelle Obama finally put that one to rest – thank goodness! If you have the arms to pull it off – go for it. I happen to love a sleeveless blouse in hot weather.
• Pants or skirts? Pantsuits finally are mainstream – thanks in part to Hillary Clinton’s standard garb. I really don’t like skirts in the winter – too cold. For casual business: dress pants and a nice fitted sweater or blouse always look put together.
• Beware – business casual khakis and polo shirts sometimes come off looking like soccer mom gear. No you can’t just dress “like a man”. You are always better off with a pair of dress pants.
• Jewelry is necessary for a polished look, but too much or too big or too loud is distracting.
• If you are going to wear a suit, make sure it has some personality in cut or appearance. If not – add a colorful blouse or an interesting pin or scarf. Women are expected to look a bit more pulled together even in a suit.

The bottom line is that you don’t want to come off looking “too young” or “too sexy” nor “too old” or “too frumpy”. There is a fine line here and it is so easy to teeter off of it one way or another. Image is everything. There are a lot of people who can’t look past someone’s outward appearance when doing business. It is a reality that the care you take in making a good impression is noticed.

Sadly, this also extends to your physical attributes. Overweight people are treated differently in business. This is especially true of women – there is a double standard here as well. Your clothing choices are extremely important. If you can, get your clothes tailored to fit your body as best as possible. If you are heavier on the top or the bottom, buy for the larger size and get the other piece adjusted! This is back to: too tight is bad, and so is too loose.

Older people, if they are not extremely well put together in appearance also are treated differently in business. You don’t want to look like a has been. Get a good stylish haircut that fits the times. There are too many older women who still style their hair like they did back in high school or college. That will date you faster than your wrinkles do! Don’t wear that 10 year old suit – especially to an interview. Styles really have changed. We all remember those behemoth shoulder pads from the late 80s – ok, well at least I do. You wouldn’t catch me dead in one of those old suits.

My inspiration for this post came from the article: Appearances Matter from the Wall Street Journal.


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