# 4 - Sport and Support

Wednesday was some day!! I was pretty sure that one of my daughters-in-law was going to have a baby within a few hours. I even took my two grandbabies to my house so that their parents could concentrate on the mother-to-be without worrying about the kids.

We picked up two more grandchildren and sat together at the pizza store, spilling soda, pulling the cheese off the pizza, finger painting with the tomato sauce and having fun. Okay, not the healthiest of food choices, but desperation made me do it, and the slush they drank along with the pizza might just have had some fruit juice in it, so it's not totally bad. Suddenly I remember that I had my Efrat Women's Health Center meeting in only a few minutes.

I frantically wondered what I would do with a two-year-old, two three-year-olds and an eight-year-old. One look into my husband's eyes told me that he was not going to skip his class to watch them. I got two junior babysitters in the last minute, and B"H, I was able to run to my meeting.

I skidded into the room to find Tanya Richardson, one of Efrat/Gush Etzion's favorite Zumba instructors teaching a you-can-do-it-too form of Zumba. And you know what? We did it. Tanya said, "Every time you do something you couldn't do before, give yourselves a hand!! Yay, you're great."

That's what we needed - a pep rally - just before we sat down for Part 2, a meeting with clinical social worker Alizah Shapiro and nutritionist Judy Kizer.

Alizah's the one who is supposed to train me to change my bad life habits. Good luck, Alizah!

We all sat around chatting a little, and I was happy to find that there were other people who found it difficult to be healthy, because they didn't have time to prepare healthy foods. Now, why this made me happy, I can't say. Perhaps it just made me realize that I am not so strange. There are others who have the same problems that I have.

As we broke the ice in our new group, one of the women quipped, "First we had sport and now support." That was pretty good, and it was right on the money.

Think Big, Act Small

Alizah asked us what our goals for the group were, and more or less everyone said that she'd like to live a healthier lifestyle, live an active life, live a long life, etc. These are all big beautiful goals, but Alizah said that while we can think "big", we should break down the big goals into smaller achievable steps that we could actually achieve. So while, "Get healthy," might be a lofty far-reaching goal, a smaller step to get there would be to "Eat healthy," and a smaller step to get there might be to include more vegetables in our diets.

Judy Kizer noted that the key to weight loss was "Eat less, move more." Of course, if we did that, we probably wouldn't be sitting together in that room. Judy said that the first thing we had to do was raise our consciousness about what we're eating, and she gave us homework, "Food journaling." We have to write down everything we eat. It's like writing a food diary. Let's see how that works out. "Dear diary, today I ate chulent. Yum." Unfortunately, we're going to have to hand in those journals, and get comments back. So, I'll probably see a lot of "Thanks for journaling. Here are some ideas for healthier choices. :) "

Judy added that we should focus on drinking eight glasses of water a day. B"H for seltzer, because water is not my thing. I think I can polish off a bottle of seltzer every day. I'll keep you posted.

Stress and De-stressing

Time flew as we were discussing our health goals and impediments. And the clock was ticking on my babysitter. But before we all ran, Alizah commented that several of us noted that we've got a lot of stress in our lives. "In some people, stress is connected to eating," she said.

Alizah didn't want to let us leave without teaching us a breathing exercise to de-stress. You know all those movies where a guy is so upset, he's about to explode? His wife comes up to him and says, "Now, honey, take a few deep breaths." Well, it seems that the wife wasn't kidding. Getting more oxygen into your system interacts with the stress hormone to help your body relax a bit.

I'll probably be doing that ten times a day.