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By Patricia O’Neill
contributor
I’ve been overweight, actually, by definition, obese for a number of years.
A friend of mine recently said, “some people get used to being overweight, you never did. You’ve always hated it.”
I was fit as a young adult, walking for hours along the river in Fernie for the sheer pleasure of being outside. I spent the weekends out with my friends dancing the nights away and at home I developed my own workout routine to music I compiled. I was fit.
So why did I get this way? Who knows, set backs, disappointments, bad choices, life.
The reasons no longer matter, what matters is quality of life or lack of it.
I’ve made a number of attempts in the past to get fit, but failed each time.
However, I have made a renewed commitment to lose weight and help a local charity at the same time. I started a new program in September and I vow to lose 70 pounds by Easter.
As added incentive, I am asking friends, colleagues and anyone in the Okotoks community to help me reach my goal by sponsoring me in my quest.
Any money I raise will be donated to the Okotoks Food Bank — ironic isn’t it to lose weight to raise money so others can eat.
My sponsors will be my own cheering section.
So what’s different this time? I think I’ve reached my personal rock bottom. At 5’3” and 224 pounds everything was an effort, from getting dressed in the morning to fitting into an airline seat.
I visited my doctor in September and she said my blood pressure was way up and I should consider medication.
What I thought was how amazing that it’s taken this long for my body to react to how poorly I’ve cared for it over the last decade.
Going back east to visit family and being heavier than the previous visit was always so humiliating.
How bad was it? When my sister got married, she asked me to do a reading during the ceremony. I agreed, but the night before I just knew I couldn’t stand up there with all those eyes on me. I just couldn’t — so deep was my shame at how I looked. Fortunately, my brother-in-law stepped in for me.
My sister said she understood, but I knew she was disappointed and I was certainly disappointed and disgusted with myself.
That’s just one example of hundreds of times I passed up opportunities due to my weight.
This time I made a commitment to myself to forget the past, forget the fact I was 51 years old, that I was grossly overweight and out of shape. I decided I would proceed like everything was possible and trust my body to do what it could.
Six months earlier I had purchased a treadmill and the most success I had with it was using it as a clothes hanger. It was six feet from my bed and now it was time to dust it off and get going.
Even at the beginning, I was amazed at what I could do and each day I’d add more incline or speed. It was as though my body remembered.
I rejoined Weight Watchers for the fourth or fifth time. If I was going to take people’s hard earned money, I wanted to make sure I had an official record.
I also decided there were things I no longer wanted, like white bread (or as I call it, my cocaine). Fast foods are gone as well as my morning ritual of coffee and a bagel from you know where.
Now, for the most part, if I don’t make it, I don’t eat it.
I barbecue or grill my food. No frying. Root veggies are my main stay.
For breakfast it’s usually oatmeal with skim milk, banana, raisins, cinnamon and nutmeg.
Supper is usually light and if I have to eat in a hurry, a toasted sardine sandwich does the trick. Yum!
When I go out, I try to make good choices but if I don’t, it’s more time on the treadmill but no guilt.
Setbacks: There was the time I ate eight of those mini chocolate bars around Halloween. At 80 calories each, it took 20 minutes on the treadmill to work off just one. That was a good lesson learned early.
Motivation: Aristotle said the greatest victory is the victory over self. Well I’m winning that, one day at a time. Sure sometimes I slide back but it’s always temporary. I don’t beat myself up about it or use it as an excuse to sabotage all that I’ve done so far.
Knowing what I’m doing will benefit someone else is great motivation as well.
When I’m on the treadmill and that little voice wants me to stop or slow down, I just picture the look on the faces of my family next July and I push on and sometimes I go a little longer.
Inspiration: My father is a great inspiration. As a man in his 40s, he struggled with his weight and with perseverance and determination, he dropped his excess poundage and at age 81 still has people asking him how he does it.
I’ve decided no more New Year’s resolutions for me. Now it’s my “New Life Resolution”.
Planning and implementing strategies to keep myself motivated is ongoing like a new pair snowshoes I gave myself for Christmas.
What I know for sure is if you feed your body junk, it has a negative effect not only on your body but your mind and emotions as well. The reverse is true as well.
If I want a different future, I must have a different today.
When I started back in September it was with the faint hope that finally I could find the motivation to accomplish something that has eluded me all these years, getting my body back into shape.
Just before Christmas, thanks to my sponsors, I presented the Mustard Seed in Calgary with a cheque for $1,660.
I’m only just getting started. I still have 55 pounds to lose so I’m ready for the next phase of my New Life Resolution.
Oh, on Dec. 7, I went back to my doctor and asked if she would check my blood pressure. She noticed the difference and asked what I was doing. I told her about my weight loss and the fundraiser.
As she took my blood pressure she smiled and said it’s 120/70. I asked, “Is that good?” and she responded, “Oh, go away you 18-year-old”.
Why am I sharing this story? Many people have told me this is an inspiring idea. So I thought if this idea could do for others what it’s done for me, I should share it.
It’s a lose/win situation. Someone eats less so others can eat more. Imagine!
I’m still nervous about going public because what if I fail, what if I fall off the bandwagon and head first into the chuckwagon? How humiliating! Yet, there’s a voice inside of me that says ‘this time you’ll do it’ and I believe I will.
Potential sponsors can sponsor $1 or more per pound or contribute a flat amount. Donations will be collected just before Easter — I have to earn it first. To get involved or for more information contact Patricia O’Neill at 995-3844 and cheques or money orders should be made out to the Okotoks Food Bank.
Family tradition alive and rockin’
By Tamara Neely
Staff Reporter
Nathan Rogers, the son of Canadian folk legend Stan Rogers, will be performing in Bragg Creek on Saturday.
photo by Justin Lee |
With a passion for life, music and Canada, Nathan Rogers gives everything he’s got to his songs. In turn, he is energized by performing live for an audience. Blissed-out, he calls it.
Rogers will be performing live at the Bragg Creek Performing Arts Centre on Saturday. Offering his observations on life, Rogers will be solo, playing six-string and 12-string acoustic guitars, keeping time on a stomp-box, laying down stories with his baritone voice and peppering the sound with Thubban throat singing – hitting two tones at once – which sounds like Tibetan chanting.
Now 28 years old, music has been a part of Rogers’ life since he was a child. As a teen he realized it was the path for him and he feels music as a full-time career, without support from side jobs, is just around the corner.
“I had an inkling I enjoyed playing music since I was quite little, but when I was 14 years old it cemented,” said Rogers. “I really loved to be on stage, performing playing my guitar; I’ve always been a singer, since I was a little kid.”
Rogers has released one album so far called True Stories and it was released in 2005. While he is dedicated to music and it surges through his blood, it’ll take the release of more of his songwriting and more touring before he is known on his own, without reference to his father, Stan Rogers.
Stan Rogers was a well-loved Canadian folk singer-songwriter who died tragically at age 33 due to a fire on an airplane. He is loved for the stories he told with his baritone voice.
On the CBC’s list of the top 100 great Canadians, Stan Rogers is number 60, and beside his name it says, “Some people say he was the best Canadian folksinger ever.” An international folk festival was started in 1997 his honour, the Stan Rogers Folk Festival (affectionately nicknamed Stanfest), held in Canso, Nova Scotia. There is even a stage named after him in Canmore where the annual Canmore Folk Music Festival is held.
Those are some big boots to fill.
But Nathan comes to his songwriting with a love of playing with language and communicating creatively with rhyme. He’s brimming over with observations about life and he loves music, so songwriting is natural for him.
“I always knew that music is what I wanted to do, I had some strong role models to look up to: my uncle Garnet (who played with Stan and was instrumental in Stan’s music), with Stan, and brother David – and other Canadian musicians as well, like Gordon Lightfoot.”
Performing for an audience is also natural for him.
“I play in front of between 10 and 10,000 people, so I get to be in a nearly ecstatic state, and I have to make sure, every once in awhile, that I’m not too blissed out - that I can still play the guitar.
“And I’m sober – I don’t drink… and it’s not a drug-related thing.
“I’m basically forgetting my hands are on a guitar, forgetting where I am, the lights are on me so I can’t see, I close my eyes, it’s a very tranquil place on stage. And every once in awhile I get the feeling in being there that that’s what I’m supposed to be doing.”
Having been brought up around music, and though he was just a small boy when his father passed away, he said following the path of singer-songwriter is a logical career choice.
While his love of music and performing drives him, Rogers takes his role as a communicator with the masses quite seriously.
“I feel a certain amount of responsibility to inform as well as entertain,” he said. “I don’t want to preach, but I do want people to understand a little more about the world, themselves, or their next door neighbour.”
His song called Mary’s Child, for example, has a gentle melody and a strong message.
“I’m using (Mary’s Child) to get people’s heads into a certain space about the clash of cultures that went on during the development of Canadian society,” said Rogers. “I’m drawing (listeners) into the idea of culture clash in the 1600s in Ontario, but through a number of comments about cultural bigotry, or a level of perceived superiority, that these things haven’t gone away from the human condition.”
Video clips from live shows and samples of Rogers’ songs can be accessed through his website, www.nathanrogers.ca. The songs and the videos show the passion with which he approaches his songwriting and his performance.
“I love performance. I genuinely feel that that is what I should be doing,” he said. “The rest is up to the audience.”
Nathan Rogers’ show is part of the Spotlight Series featuring a three-course dinner before the show. Dinner will be served at 6:30 p.m. and guests may sit down for the full course meal or order just one course, or come before 8 p.m. when Rogers’ performance will begin.
The appetizer will be a trio of quesadillas with such flavour combinations as black bean, pear with Brie and bruschetta. The main entrée will be chile con carne and dessert will be orange angel gâteaux.
The dinner is priced per course and the full meal is $20 per person. Tickets to see Nathan Rogers are $30 per person, and can be reserved ahead of time by calling (403) 949-4114.
The Bragg Creek Performing Arts Centre is located at 23 White Avenue, Bragg Creek.
Main Stage tackles The Music Man
By Laura Myers
contributor
Every year, the directors of the Main Stage program at Foothills Composite High School/Alberta High School of Fine Arts are challenged with the difficulty of choosing the right show.
So many things need to be considered: from the difficulty of the music and whether or not they have the right musicians to play it; the number of set changes and whether or not they can create the right atmosphere on the stage; and the reality of whether the actors can sing and dance the parts in the show. It’s an ongoing challenge, but they have succeeded once again with this spring’s production of The Music Man.
Meredith Willson’s 1957 Broadway masterpiece is a Valentine to the pioneer spirit of people like those in Iowa in 1912. The story centers around Professor Harold Hill, a traveling salesman of questionable ethics, who makes his money by selling band instruments and uniforms to the citizens of River City on the guise that their town is in terrible trouble because of the addition of a pool table at the local billiard parlour. The catch is that he must promise to create a band even though he knows absolutely nothing about music. His plan is to cut and run before everyone realizes they have been had. Marian the Librarian, an upright music teacher who is unpopular with the local ladies because of her intellectual and judgmental ways, sees through Harold’s scheme and makes attempts to stop him.
But our unlikely hero charms Marian in ways she never imagined and… well, you’ll just have to come to a performance to discover the rest.
This year’s production features 31 performers, 13 orchestra members and 22 technicians who have already been hard at work to create theatre magic. In many ways, the plans for this year’s show are quite ambitious with 15 scene/set changes, a barbershop quartet and that wonderful orchestra music, played by students, that even professionals find challenging.
The cast of quirky characters is led by Jocelyn Hoover (Marian) with her lyric soprano voice and her sophisticated acting style and Kyle Guenard (Harold) whose charm and sly wit is perfectly suited to the part. The wonderfully talented character actor Kris Neufeld plays the witty sidekick Marcellus and will bring the Shipoopi back into your life.
This year’s production focuses mostly on the singing which features classic melodies like Ya Got Trouble!, Seventy Six Trombones, The Wells Fargo Wagon and Gary, Indiana. You will not be able to resist marching your way home in step with music that will stick with you long after the curtain comes down.
Performances run from April 4 to 19 (Wednesday to Saturday) with our Gala on Saturday, April 5. Ticket and sponsorship information is available by leaving a message at 540-6574.
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