 Melting Mama - Up Close and Personal: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (134)
 She’s wise. She’s irreverent. She is one of the most visible members of the WLS support community, and we’ve got her on the record!
In this special podcast exclusively for RenewedReflections.com, Melting Mama (a.k.a., Beth Sheldon-Badore) shares the story of her weight loss surgery journey, the impact of weight loss surgery on her family, and the inspiration for her limitless blog and YouTube video posts.
Get to know Melting Mama up close and personal in this special podcast interview!
 Anyone who lives in hurricane or tornado country knows that the time to get their emergency kit of food, water, flashlights and first-aid supplies together is long before the storm season starts. That way, they are prepared should an emergency strike, and they don’t have to waste valuable time looking for the essentials in the midst of a crisis. Continue reading Preparing Your Life Emergency Kit
 I’ll admit that I’m spoiled. You probably are, too. That’s because in this fast-food, self-serve, 24-hour, 800-number, microwave-safe, Shopping Network world we all live in, we’ve become accustomed to instant gratification. Along the way, we’ve lost the thrill of the journey and all we can see is the destination.
The problem arises when we try to apply that line of thinking it to more “weighty” matters. The “see it, want it, get it” mentality can quickly become a “see it, want it, EAT IT” compulsion if we’re not careful. Continue reading The Journey Is the Destination
 Healthy Boundaries - The Softer, Gentler Way
I had read that Jack Russells need plenty of time outdoors. Keeping a Jack indoors all of the time would be bad for him in the long run. He needed to be outside in nature, with lots of sun and excitement. Behind my house, I hammered into the ground a stake with a ten foot rope attached, giving Frankie almost the entire backyard to play in safely. I really felt that I was being generous with the diameter of play space I had given him.
Knowing that our first few minutes apart would cause him a bit of separation anxiety, I brought out some of Frankie’s favorite toys and chew things. He loved his toys, and nothing could distract him from them. Oh, how wrong I was.
I spent the next several hours watching a painful demonstration of will. Frankie didn’t give a darn about the toys and just wanted to come inside. He tried every possible technique of hopping, skipping and jumping to break the boundary within which he had been placed. No matter what kind of running start he would take, he would let out a shocking whelp as his back feet with flung out in front of him while his neck found the end of the rope at the exact same place every time.
Frankie could not see me as I sat behind the blinds watching him repeat this painful cycle. As much as I wanted to just run out and get him, all I could remember was one warning I heard about this breed: “The number one killer of Jack Russells is cars.” Jacks, having no sense of boundaries, will run out into traffic thinking that everyone on the road wants to play as bad as they do. As painful as it was going to be, I had to let Frankie get used to his boundaries.
Continue reading Teachin’ This Old Dog A New Trick
Raise your hand if you are also a control freak.
Geeeez. A lot of you out there, huh?
Recently, I have been catching myself consumed with a familiar desire to run the “entire freakin’ show.” Whether it be my choice of what to eat, the number of Advil I should take, or even how much mortgage to apply for, I’m often firmly convinced that expert recommendations don’t apply to me. Continue reading My Way (Or It Must Be The Wrong Way)
This morning I woke up in a funk. Cranky. Blue. Down in the dumps. I would have called it PMS, but biologically that probably won’t happen to many of us guys.
Now, I know I’m not the only person who feels occasionally out of sorts. Many folks periodically look up from a normal life experience to find that the fog just rolled in. Maybe there were warnings signs, but I never hear the fog horn myself.
In the past, when I found myself in this very uncomfortable place, I used to have a small panic attack and try to fix the situation. (Even though I had no idea what was broken.) But, life has taught me that things aren’t always rosy 24/7 and I will periodically experience a bout of depression. Sometimes it comes from nowhere and other times I have unfortunately put myself in a self-destructive situation that causes a momentary collapse in my sunny world view. Sound familiar?
Continue reading Dealing with Dain Bramage: What to do When You’re Feelin’ Down
Most of us at some point have heard the words, “Here, eat this. It will make you feel better.” Because we knew no better, we swallowed whatever it was and were comforted to some degree, at least temporarily. The foods I was trained with in this manner usually had a high sugar content, whether cakes, pies or cookies. The other comfort food category generally consisted of something fried and always included gravy. Growing up in the south, these types of food were so common that I had no idea what I was being conditioned to eat. How could something that tasted this good and was readily offered as an emotional remedy for whatever ails ya end up being the very stuff that would eventually become a demon in my life?
Truth was, at that time I just didn’t care. It worked. Continue reading Ignorance Was Bliss
As far as I am concerned, God really outdid himself when he created my favorite flower, the gardenia. When they are in bloom, I can smell their sweet, buttery aroma for what seems like a mile.
There is truly not a more beautiful flower in both design and fragrance on the planet. I have been in love with them since childhood. My mother even wore a gardenia-scented perfume periodically that reminded me of my fondness for this flower, although never matching the exquisite bouquet it possessed in nature. Inevitably, anytime I catch a whiff of a gardenia in full bloom, a delightful satisfaction and pleasure wash over my olfactory senses.
Gardenias, like many other flowers, hold back most of their perfume until their petals are fully open. It didn’t take a botany class for me to learn this simple truth. All I had to do was to pick a bud and a bloom. Both were from the exact same plant and therefore had virtually the exact same beautiful potential. However, the open bloom I kept and the scentless bud I threw to the ground. Continue reading Keep Your Hands Off My Bloomers
A couple of months after my big mental and emotional crash in the summer of 1999, I decided I needed to get a new Best Friend. I had just seen a movie in which Gene Hackman had a Jack Russell Terrier on board his submarine, and he claimed that the Jack was the smartest dog on the planet. Since I didn’t want to play second fiddle to anyone, the Jack Russell was the best friend for me. (I also knew that if I found one smart enough and cute enough, I might get some of the credit for the smart and cute part.) Continue reading Walkin’ The Dog - A Trick For Yo-yos (Like You & Me)
Many of us post-ops share a common experience of fluctuations in our spiritual and emotion perspective. Due to all of the physical changes your body is put through, you will probably find yourself fluctuating between riding the proverbial pink cloud of exhilaration to the confusing mental fog of periodic depression.
Continue reading Attitude Determines Your Altitude
Cleaning Up the Birds Nest - Living on a limb [6:19m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (44)
As we start awakening to life and become more aware of our surroundings, we may find that what we had created as a soft hiding place was in reality a tangled up bird’s nest. After weight loss surgery ‘the pounds having melted away’ we are free to focus on more than just our bodies and begin to look at our lives as a whole. Now able to see the reality of our world more clearly, we find that the life we had settled into was made up of mere scraps and pieces of relationships we had collected over the years. Continue reading Cleaning Up The Bird’s Nest
The countdown has begun. The most dreaded event of the year is only days away. Everywhere people are talking about it, gleefully making plans with family and friends. But you feel anxious and vulnerable, wondering just how to manage an occasion that seems so normal to everyone else. Then one morning you wake up, and the day has come: Thanksgiving.
Continue reading Don’t Be A Freakin’ Turkey
Taking Out The Trash - Stop Wallowing in the Muck [6:11m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (253)
When my family lived in San Angelo and I was six or seven years old, one of my chores was to take out the trash. Every few days, I would drag the bags out to the fenced in area in the alleyway behind our house, and drop them in the cans for the weekly garbage pick up. One time, I tried to try my aim by throwing a bag into one of the cans from a few steps back. Not surprisingly, I missed, and trash went just about everywhere except in the can. I remember looking at the big mess on the ground and facing that moment of choice, where I could clean it up or just say, “Forget it”. I chose the latter. I figured, nobody else ever went back there anyway. Nobody would know.
Continue reading Taking Out The Trash
Isn’t it amazing how gracefully we accept the self-appointed role as our own worst enemy? Some little thing goes wrong in our lives and we head straight for the refrigerator to drown our sorrows in a pint of Ben and Jerry’s. Heck, we don’t even need something to go wrong, we’re willing to give ourselves a little treat just because something went right for a change.
Hey, we deserve it, right? It’s a treat. It’s like Mommy kissing our boo-boo, or Dad patting us on the back when we hit one out of the park. While rewarding ourselves by cheating just a little bit is easy to justify, the truth is: We’re lying to ourselves and we’re all too willing to accept it. Continue reading Lies, Ice Cream, and the Department of Energy
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