Good morning, and happy Sunday! I want to tell you about a conversation I had with a patient this week. She was someone I’d never met before, and, like many before her, she was absolutely flummoxed about what to try next. She had already done everything she could think of to lose weight. I think you know this story. I’ve told it many times before, and you may even have experienced it yourself. Maybe you’ve been on practically every diet, eaten cabbage soup, denied yourself your favorite foods, carved out time you didn’t really have to get more exercise than was comfortable at the time. Of course none of this was sustainable. You can’t eat cabbage soup for breakfast forever. So what’s next? Next comes balance. Continue reading
Category Archives: Wellness
How to Make a Life
Connie and her husband Duane were my parents’ closest of friends for upwards of 40 years. They drove to Cleveland from their home in the hills of northwest New Jersey to crawl into bed with my father in his last days, to whisper their love for him, to share some memories, and to be, as always, the best friends they could be. My parents shared thousands and thousands and thousands of memories with Connie and Duane throughout the years. Their shared love for their Afghan hounds and Belgian sheepdogs, their joyful July 4th celebrations, hundreds and hundreds of weekly Sunday dinners, restaurant meals, New Years Eve parties, Thanksgiving graces, glasses of light red Beaujolais, local and national dog shows, chaffeuring one other, Zooming together, housesitting, and endless games of Trivial Pursuit. How do you make a life? How do friends and neighbors become transformed into family? This is how. Continue reading
Baby Steps
This week i had a conversation with a patient, a math tutor, about the difficulty she was having measuring up to her impossibly difficult personal standard. Why “impossibly” difficult? Because I’m sure that she was doing the best she could. And to ask more of herself, at least right now, was impossible. Continue reading
Being Kind to Yourself: A Basic Approach
A while ago, I was having a conversation with my friend Henry. He’s a doc, too, and we enjoy spending time together and talking about practicing medicine, taking care of patients, what it’s like, what we learn from it, and how we can do better. I am very grateful for Henry, and for the fact that we have been having this conversation for almost 25 years. It just so happens that Henry is in quarantine right now, so he’s on my mind. He’s fine in case you’re wondering, just being cautious. Continue reading
Sage Advice for a Healthy New Year
Some of the most valuable gifts we receive are the words of wisdom that are passed along from one generation to the next, and the holidays are a meaningful time to think about them. A few years, ago, around these holidays, a few of my friends at work got talking about our grandmothers’ old-fashioned expressions, beliefs, and bits of sage advice. You may think these expressions as quaint and old-fashioned, but they are so much more than that. These sayings are the collective wisdom of our ancestors, the ones who survived to pass along their words of wisdom to the younger generation. Here are a few for which I am most grateful. Continue reading
Insulin: Like Money in the Bank
Have you ever considered that the amount of insulin you are capable of making over your lifetime is limited? Maybe your pancreas can make, let’s just call it 1000 pounds worth of insulin, and after that it starts to have trouble keeping up with the demand? What would happen if you used up most of your supply by the time you were 40 or 50? Then what? Then your blood sugars would probably start to rise dramatically, and you would need to start taking medicine, whether to make your remaining insulin work more efficiently, to get your pancreas to make more, or to augment your existing supplies. Continue reading
Mindfulness
Today’s post is about encouraging yourself to be mindful, to be kind to you, and to help yourself remain centered, especially in the vortex of activity that constitutes our days and weeks.
Mindfulness, my personal word-of-the-decade, is the polar opposite of multi-tasking, which is not at all what it sounds like. Continue reading
Keepin’ It Movin’, All Year ‘Round
I think of wellness like a pyramid with three major pillars: eating patterns, activity pattern, rest & relaxation patterns. This week I’m talking about activity patterns. Your muscles are going to need a little warming up if you want them to help move you in the direction of good health. Cardio, balance, resistance, flexibility. It’s pretty easy to tell who’s been protecting their balance and flexibility for the past few years. It’s not just about marathons, or weight lifting. And you definitely don’t need to train for the Olympics. You just want to increase your opportunities to move. And for that, you could probably use a plan. Continue reading