I keep a record of my weight and exercise in a nice pocket calendar that the Disabled American Veterans sent me. One of the business gurus I used to follow when I was in business wrote, “That which is recorded gets done.” I can’t remember his name. Jim Something.

I stopped doing. I stopped recording. My diary is chock full of empty spaces. My weight crept up. I developed Adult Onset Diabetes. Now, all of a sudden, I am as serious as, well, Adult Onset Diabetes, about my diet, exercise, and health, in general. It doesn’t take much to tip the balance toward the negative. The good news is that one can reset the balance by little incremental, regular efforts to return to H-E-A-L-T-H-Y and stay there.

It’s back to Weight Watchers for me. Tomorrow is my one week weigh-in. When I check my weight at the Y, I’ve lost weight since last Tuesday. My swimming is back to swimming. My shoulder feels better. Truth be told, I think the pain was from inactivity.

I didn’t plan on being a Healthy Person or an Unhealthy Person, for that matter. Stuff just sort of happened. No purpose or intention yields an unsatisfactory result. I’ve had a dysfunctional attitude around food since I was a child. That is a long story. But the synopsis of the dysfunction is that I returned to eating whenever and whatever I wanted because it changed the way I felt about my self. Food was, and is, my gateway drug.

Back in my thirties, I participated in the transformational programs developed by Werner Erhard, The est Training, (later transformed into The Forum), and The Six Day Course, to name two. I found Werner’s work valuable, useful, and memorable. One of the things Werner emphasized is that people are OK, exactly the way they are. Translated for my life, at age 67, being OK exactly the way I am means I don’t have to eat my way into feeling different. Or drink my way. Doing healthy things and living a healthy life means doing things we humans naturally gravitate towards doing. Notice how we have to tell small children to sit still. Movement is their default state.

Getting healthy again is an un-learning. We learn that it’s OK to let go of the stuff around our health that doesn’t work.

So here I go again. Thanks Werner.