Owning up

It's a beautiful day outside, there's snow on the San Gabriel mountains from the rain and cold weather the other day.  Today is day 4 of no TV, I dvr'd Vampire Diaries to watch by next week, and it is day 7 of of my 21 day new habit making walkathon with Ben.  Last time I was at my lovely doctor's office, she wanted me to lose 6 pounds by today's appointment, a pound a week.  Did I do it?  Hell, no!  I spent most of the last 6 weeks in a funk but it wasn't until I owned up to the very fact that I was depressed that I started to shake it off.  That was about 2 weeks ago, more or less, probably less.  I once heard it said that anger turned inwards is depression.  For me it's the opposite, depression turned inwards is rage and that's where I was, just seething for weeks after  I returned from Paris.  I kept thinking it was, as a friend put it, that Paris "grabbed my soul and gave it a shake" and that was certainly part of it.  But the other part, the part I wasn't acknowledging, was the health issues that came up just before I left on my vacation.  Intellectually, I knew what was going; emotionally, I hadn't dealt with it.  I finally, FINALLY, owned up to how badly all this information rattled me.  When I admitted to myself that it scared me, really scared me and just sat there and owned the fact that it scared me, that's when I felt the shift.  That dreadful cold empty place receded a little bit.  The walking has helped immensely as well.  Ben and I were walking often but not every day.  I was still in that depressed place when I proposed the 21 day walkabout to Ben and I know the regular exercise has helped me emotionally.  The biggest change to my mood has been turning off the TV.  It wasn't just the horrible stuff I was watching but I truly believe that just the constant exposure to that electronic hiss has a deleterious effect on the human body.  

So today, I will tell my doctor that I didn't lose the weight, I will tell her what's been going on with me and how things have started to turn around.  That I have hopped back on the healthy diet routine, which admittedly needs some fine-tuning, that I am walking every day and plan to continue to do so.   That I will incorporate some other exercise, yoga or zumba or one of my exercise dvds or a combination of all of those things, into my life and keep walking every day.  I try always to tell the truth, that way I don't have to remember what I said, but even if I were in the habit of fudging the truth, the one person I never lie to, or would lie to, is my doctor.  What would be the point?