The C-Word: Staying the Course

Many people I talk to about getting healthier say the same thing to me, "It's too much, Ameena. Maybe you could do it, but I can't change my diet. I can't change my lifestyle."

Yes. Yes you can.

If you want to. 

I'm not trying to beat you up. But I know you can.

Think about this way - it's about long-term goals. Delayed gratification is very hard for people's brains to process. Myself, especially. I tend to be impulsive. When I want something, I want it NOW. I know the feeling.

You may realize you are able to do it in one way but not in another. Some people can save money. They say to themselves, "I'll skip going out to dinner or an extra drink for a bigger dent in my debt or my retirement savings." (I am not one of those people. Despite being middle-aged, retirement seems very far away. And my debt is amorphorous.)

For me, it's "I'll skip buying those boots or that coat, so I can pay the mortgage or rent." I can do short-term.

If you can think, "I'll skip that ice cream cone and my tummy/thighs/double chin will look flatter on Saturday night - or at the beach," which is just a few days' ahead, you can eat to stop or slow cancer or heart disease. If you can do a few crunches every evening, you can be stronger in less than a week.

The strict anticancer diet, which is very close to the Whole30 meal plan, is doable for impulsive people if you can think short term. You tell yourself, "If I skip the milk and sugar in my tea or coffee today, I will have so much more energy or no headache tomorrow." I can promise that you skip the grains and sweeteners (ALL of them, including artificial ones), you will definitely have a flatter stomach by tomorrow. Yes, you will probably feel a little worse while you detox (maybe for three days) and you will be dreaming about candy, but once you get rid of the addiction, you WILL feel and look amazing. Isn't that worth it? Three days to clear eyes and skin? 10 days to a glow?

Instead of thinking about giving stuff up forever, think about giving it up for a week. Or 30 days.

On evenings when you are tired and grumpy and the donuts are calling your name, you think, "Just til tomorrow. I won't eat them now and I will be so happy tonight. Then if I still feel like it, I can always get one tomorrow." When tomorrow comes, you do the same thing. Or maybe you think, "Just for an hour. I'll see if I still want one when I pass the next donut shop." Then when you pass the next donut shop, you say to yourself, "I'm almost home. I could make some sweet potatoes..." and so on.

why it's worth to stick to your anticancer diet. a cherokee proverb.

On the other hand, if you are a long-term thinking person, you say, "I'll skip sugar, dairy and grains so that I can make it to my daughter's wedding - or my granddaughter's wedding."

Or the way I think, "If I stay away from air pollution and toxins, exercise, meditate and eat organic and green today, I will remain self-sufficient and active until I die." Obviously, this is not totally controllable - I could get hit by a car or some other horrid thing, but similarly, I could lose all my retirement savings in a bad investment or if the economy tanks again.

Personally, I am less worried about leaving this world than I am about losing my autonomy and agency.

I don't want to spend the last years of my life being pushed around in a wheelchair and/or an institution. I really don't want other people making decisions for me or choosing what time I go to bed or what meds I take. I don't want to be in constant pain or feeble or lose control of my limbs.

I want to leave this world on my yoga mat, in a sufi meditation or on a surf board.

If you're a short-term person - can you change your lifestyle long enough to make it to your next doctor's appointment and see how your vitals have changed? Can you change it long enough to put your cancer in remission?

This is how I save for retirement. Eating lightly, no sugar and more greens, exercising more, sleeping well, taking supplements that reduce inflammation and strengthen my immune system, meditating - all that is better than health insurance at keeping you from diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

It's not hard to eat organic, humane and anti-inflammatory, look after your heart and stay away from toxins if you want to protect yourself from dementia and alzheimer's.

I know you can do it too.

on being disabled

you think it would be so easy to imagine what it would be like to be disabled. but somehow, when you're at the dank bottom of a long flight of subway stairs and you're exhausted from getting yourself there, it feels insurmountable just looking at it. you can't REALLY empathize when you're late and bounding up to the top.

imagine wandering through a subway station, dragging your tired and increasingly heavy bag of bones, looking for the handicapped elevator. or trying to make it through the station by listening to the tapping of your cane.

even harder to imagine - at least for me - was being mentally disabled.

i'm used to my brain working fast, quick answers, quick leaps across logical chasms.

now someone tells me something and i stare blankly.

i went to my friend andrea's building last week. there was a small sign on the iron door: "if no doorman is available, please press bell for elevator operator." underneath was a small arrow pointing to the right.

i stared at the door.

it was locked.

i looked inside, there was no one in the lobby.

"ah!" i thought, feeling slightly relieved as i remembered the sign, "press bell!" but then i stood at the door wondering where the bell could be. i had to look back at the sign and look at the arrow.

while i did find the bell, it took me five or six minutes. something that might have taken me less than minute previously.

today, as i got to the head of the line in the crowded century 21 department store, a man stepped in front of me and threw his purchases on the counter. the woman at the register gave him a stop-right-there-look, "there is a LINE." then she looked at me, "you just stood there! why didn't you tell him, it's MY TURN!"

the reason i just stood there is that i got confused. someone walked in front of me and all of a sudden, i thought i was in the wrong place. the man seemed to materialize in front of me, i wasn't aware enough to see where he came from.

yesterday, i got off the subway and stood staring blankly. i knew where i was. rather, i had been there before. but i had no idea how where i was related to where i needed to go.

it was simple, i had emerged from a different exit in the subway station. but just taking a different route than my usual one erased my brain's RAM. i had no idea which way to go.

after 16 years living in nyc at a stretch.

and thoughts - oh, those delicious streams of ideas - they used to run through my head like moving sidewalks. i could get on and they'd lead me off through variegated landscapes, i could take trains of vaguely related trajectories without ever falling off.

now they are like clouds, blowing past so quickly i can barely make them out, disappearing like mist if i try to hold on to them.

what was i just saying?

what was i just thinking?

my favorite analogy is the main character in "flowers for algernon." charley, having gained consciousness, then slowly loses it, watching his ability to comprehend fade into the distance.

like charley, i remember that i used to know things. that i used to be able walk from the refrigerator to my laptop and remember what it was i needed to buy from freshdirect.com. now, i forgot the missing items i noted in vegetable drawer by the time i'm at the top shelf.

all of a sudden, i know what it's like to be mentally-handicapped. i know what it's like to be stupid. i've become one of those people who stands and stares. you know those people in nyc, they're the ones holding you up on the bus because they (like me) are looking at the change in their hands and they can't figure out how to turn what they have into bus fare.

i am one of those people standing on the sidewalk looking around me and tripping up everyone else as they hustle past. i am standing there, not even with an embarrassed smile, because i haven't yet realized that i am a public annoyance.

oh yes, that realization, that self-awareness comes later.

usually, too late to do anything to save myself from being a nuisance.

when the woman at the cash register rescued me and rang up my scarf and bag, i know what i should have said to her: "the reason i didn't say anything is because i am a little slow. i don't always get what's happening around me. it's like alzheimer's."

though, of course, i am too slow to have thought of this at the time. i only thought of it now.

not that i am complaining. i am lucky. my alzheimer's is passing. along with the sudden hot flashes. the night sweats. i have moments of great lucidity. and, for some reason, when everything is quiet and the amazons are finally settled into the homework, i can write.

i hope that i have learned some compassion for people who are not moving quite as quickly on the sidewalk.