“When it’s time to change,

You’ve got to rearrange,

Who you are into what you’re going to be.”

I don’t know if you remember or not, but back in the late ’60s and into the ’70s there was a popular television show called The Brady Bunch.  The premise of the show was that a widow with three girls and a widower with three boys meet and marry and TV’s first melded family was born.  The show was a situation comedy and ran for five seasons and 117 episodes.  One of those episodes was about change.

In the episodes the middle son Peter was going through the process every young man does when his voice changed.  This would have been no big deal but Peter’s brothers and sisters were entered in a contest to sing and Peter’s voice cracked every time he went for a high note.  The oldest brother, Greg, came up with a solution.  He wrote a song about the changes every teenager goes through and featured Peter’s changing voice.  The day was saved and the kids won the contest.

That song, the chorus of which is at the top of this article, is one that had followed me throughout my life.  Life is many things but one thing remains true there are always changes.  Some are small changes.  You have to change a doctor’s appointment time or for one reason or another, you cannot cook dinner so you have to eat out.  Others are large changes, your spouse has died and you must adjust to living on your own or you have been laid off work and you must scramble to find another job before unemployment runs out.

There are more light-hearted changes.  Moving into a new house can be stressful, but if you are moving from a small house into a bigger house it can also be fun.  Watching the seasons change from one to the next can be beautiful.  I personally love watching summer fade into Fall but I equally enjoy watching winter, as Oscar Hammerstein put it, “melt into Spring.”

I have written quite a bit about change in my weekly blogs.  My changes are not severe as losing a spouse might be nor are they beautiful as watching the seasons change.  My changes are personal and for the betterment of myself and my health.  They are good changes but don’t let anyone for one moment think they are easy.

A little later today I go to the doctor and will get weighed.  In that appointment, I will find out whether I have lost anything over the last few weeks.  It hasn’t been quite a month yet.  I have been following the same food regimen I had been following so I have hope but I’m also nervous.  I don’t expect that I shed 22 pounds as I did on my last visit.  I had almost six weeks from the point I started and the point I got weighed.  This time it’s just about four weeks so it cannot be the same amount of weight that has come off.  But I am hoping for some.

I think the interesting thing is that I don’t miss those foods that in the past I constantly craved.  I couldn’t go a week without McDonald’s and all the other fast food places.  I couldn’t go a day without large amounts of sugary treats, mostly pie.  I still eat sugar but far from the binges, I would go less than two months ago. I also don’t miss carbonated and non-carbonated soft drinks.  I lived on Kool-Aid and lemonade mixes.  I fooled myself into thinking that these provided the vitamin C my body needed when I probably got the best vitamin C out of the daily multiple vitamins I was taking.  The things we tell ourselves to get our own way are probably the worst lies in the world.  In fact, it’s the lies we tell ourselves that most likely lead to the lies we may tell others.  I just thought of that but I will bet it’s true.

I lied to myself a lot.  Mostly about food.  I never went quite so far as to think that fast food was good for me but I did believe that it wouldn’t hurt me or make me fat.  I believed the same for sugary soft drinks.  I knew the indulgence of pies and cakes and chocolate was a problem but you can talk yourself into believing anything with the phrase, “one more won’t hurt.”  The problem is that one more does hurt.

As the song says, two months ago I realized it was time to change and I have been working on those changes ever since.  The first month of my new eating plan reaped a rich reward.  I lost 22 pounds this past, not quite a month, I lost three pounds.  It is not the number I would have wished for but it is a better number than 0.

I saw my doctor today and he does want me to incorporate exercise into my routine, which I have not done yet.  I have few options for exercise actually only one.  I have a set of free-standing pedals that I can place on a tabletop.  I can’t use my feet, but I can use my arms so I will begin there.  I’ll start with 15  minutes a day and move upward.  This will get me moving.  When I feel ready I will go to the YMCA and use the pool.  I can’t do that yet as some physical complications eliminate that as an option.  When I can get down about 80 pounds those complications should be gone.

So it’s time to keep changing and that is exactly what I intend to do.  It’s not going to be easy and there is a long road ahead, but I believe I can do this.  If you are thinking about any life-altering change now is the time.  Change is never easy but in the long run it is truly worth it.