High and dry

I had never really thought about the difference between plateaus and mesas until recently.  After all, we really don’t have either here in the heartland, or so I thought.  Life here is all rolling hills and steep cliffs surrounded by flat plains or jagged rocks. 

I actually thought plateaus and mesas were pretty much the same thing, but the dictionary says a mesa is less extensive than a plateau.  Honestly, I didn’t think much about either one at all until I discovered a plateau right here in my own bedroom!

After weeks of dieting and building my walking up from, let’s be honest, nothing to thirty minutes I suddenly stopped losing much weight at all!  I’m not eating more.  I’m not really exercising more; certainly not enough to be getting those supposedly pound heavy muscles.  If I were to write an allegory I would express this lack of progress as evil; a leering horned creature whispering that this is a waste of time and I should give up and go back to enjoying life.  In the calorie-crazed world of dieting this is called a plateau!

Except that on the whole, I am enjoying life more.  My love of simplifying derives great pleasure from giving away my larger clothes and opening the refrigerator to see only a few tangelos and leafy green vegetables.  In fact, I am having difficulty sleeping because I find myself constantly amazed at the pressure on my hips now that they are not padded with quite so much fat and I can’t wait to get up and see how low my blood pressure is, or if I have lost another bit of weight!

The down side is that now my mornings are often lessons in disappointment and that is raising my blood pressure!  Not way up there where it was, but not as low as it could be.  I find myself obsessing over things like plateaus and mesas!  Waking up several times a night wondering if I will be disappointed in the morning, or not!  Hoping my excitement and motivation won’t be left high and dry because of this obnoxious way my body has found to torture me one more time!

I am stubborn!  Let’s be honest, I am bull headed!  By golly I can quit eating if I have to.  I WILL win this battle!  No body is going to try and sabotage my attempts to lose weight!

Oops!  Wait a minute!  Where is the peace loving spiritual person that used to live in this mountain of flesh?  I need to stop and smell the roses, literally.  It is time to sit back and breathe!  If I just plod on, like my favorite animal, the turtle, all will be well.  Guess it’s time for a little attitude readjustment too.