I wasn't born with whatever wisdom I now have. It happened as a part of experiencing life, and during that process I made many, many choices that in hindsight seem to have been mistaken ... or simply wrong.  But everything I've ever done, or ever been, or ever experienced has led me to be the person I now am. I have strengths and I have weaknesses.  I find it important to Accept all of my personal traits as simpy parts of myself as I currently exist.  This is who I am, for now. 

As we live, we change, but the traces of what we were still exist. 
Inside me still lives the toddler, the small child, the adolescent, the young adult, the young mother, and the me of every stage I've experienced throughout my life. Inside is the young me, the old me, the fat me, the thin me.  

In my present life, I have the task of loving, comforting, and accepting all these parts of myself, while continuing to make daily behavior choices which are leading me toward my future self.  It seems to me that All of us are doing this Alone but Together.

                             
 I passed out tons of buttons at VidCon 2012, and I enjoyed the experience.
Now I’m home. I’m glad to be here with my husband and my cat, Boodie.
I feel tired, bloated, a bit heavier,  AND motivated to step up my diet and exercise activities. Recently I’ve been overeating, and underexercising mainly because I’ve been directing my attention and energy elsewhere. So, here in my maintenance lifestyle, I need to refocus and shift some of my priorities, moving my food and exercise up on that list, and some of my other activities further down on the list.

Even after all these years, it takes a great deal of effort for me to keep the focus that is necessary for me, personally, to maintain my weight-loss. When my focus shifts, I overeat, and my weight goes up. My lifetime of overeating tendencies and habits have not disappeared, but are always lurking, ready to return during periods of inattention.
There is an inner part of me that says… “just take a bit of time to rest up before diving back into your quest for a better diet and more exercise”… but I’ve learned that a day, turns into several days, into a week, into a month… with resulting upward weights. So it is important for me to face myself immediately. To hold myself accountable for my past overeating, and to focus on immediately following through with making the effort it takes me to eat and exercise in a healthy manner.

So, today, it’s back to work.

I'm been thinking a lot about what my next steps will be online, after this immediate DietHobby Hacking crisis has passed. 

There are some of you who share my dieting interests and who have been very close to me during this past year while I established this website, and I feel confident of your continued support no matter what I choose to do here. 

I spent many thousands of my hard-earned savings along with more than a year of long days of very hard work to establish this DietHobby website, and to buy the equipment to make the videos that I've posted here and on youtube.

The day before this Hacking happened, I  paid $600 for an order of 2500 custom-made buttons to pass out to my YouTube grandbabies at VidCon 2012, and along with the registration fees, travel expenses, hotel bills that are connected with VidCon, attending this event at the end of next month will be very expensive. 

I don't make any money on this website, or on my youtube channel, and these buttons, along with all of my other expenses and my work have been intended to be a gift of kindness.  

I've spent my entire life working very, very hard to earn a living, and to do what I could to help people with their personal problems and their legal problems. There are many things I could choose to do to enjoy my final years of life, now that I'm retired, and old. 

What I've chosen to do this past year is to share some of my knowledge and support with others.

This was received quite well by many thousands of people of different ages at YouTube, but there were also a few who didn't like me or what I had to say, and those people have been very unkind.  The most disturbing so far, is of course, this recent hacking and destructive vandalizing of what I have worked so hard to build -- simply for the hacker's personal amusement. 

The hacker's mindset does not seem unusual to me, because for a time I practiced criminal law, and I saw a great deal of that type of unkindness and disregard for the rights of others in the people who the court assigned me to defend.

When acting as a court-appointed attorney I've even experienced having to defend the legal rights of paternity of a father who had abused, molested, and then killed his 3 year old daughter. That child was dead. He was in prison for life, but he refused to give up the legal rights to his other 2 small children so they could be adopted. He had no chance of winning, but the law required him to have a lawyer, and the court assigned his case to me.  

I also remember when I first begun my legal practice the court appointed me to defend an adolescent boy after he beat up his grandmother for absolutely no reason except his bad mood, and another time, the court appointed me to defend a 13 year old boy who broke an old lady's arm when he stole her purse, and pushed her over, while riding past her on a bicycle. 

I've visited many clients in prison. You understand… at that time I was a young DEFENSE attorney, and my job was to try to help the one who had committed the criminal act. Dealing with such people is never fun, and this situation reminds me of those past times in my life.

I've been able to turn Dieting into an enjoyable hobby which is a good thing because Dieting is not really a choice for me if I want to maintain my body at a reasonable size. 

I have a great many other hobbies, and they are for my enjoyment  and bring pleasure to myself and others.  One of my hobbies is sewing, Another is gardening. Another is building stained glass windows.  Another is writing.  I've enjoyed learning about computers, and when my nephew was young, I enjoyed playing playstation RPG games with him. The Final Fantasy series was a special favorite. My nephew grew up and became a Marine in Iraq and Afganistan where he received 2 purple hearts.  My most recent hobby has been making videos.

Except for dieting, if a hobby stops being fun, then I choose to engage myself in a different hobby, and right now, I'm not finding Google/YouTube itself to be much fun, and dealing with the haters, trolls and bullies on YouTube is also no fun. 

I believe that haters, trolls and bullies should be avoided and ignored, and if I have to leave youtube and even close down this website to avoid and ignore them, then I am prepared to do that.  There are many other wonderful things in my life that I can focus on.  My 25 years of legal practice contained some very difficult experiences, but now that's over. I'm retired, and I don't have to do that anymore.

So I am thinking about what I want to do to avoid this type of situation in the future, and while I am in the process of writing this, it's keeping me from sitting here on the sofa stuffing myself with cookies for comfort.

I love that picture of the fortune from the cookie that I put at the top of this website.. "I cannot help you, for I am just a cookie"   Life events are often difficult, and I get to choose whether to focus on the negative or the positive.  I remain aware, of course, of both negative and positive, but I can choose to direct my FOCUS toward the positive.

 
DietHobby is a place of encouragement and support.
I need encouragement and support as I make my way through Life's path.
This is why DietHobby exists. 

I share many of my thoughts and feelings here, in writing and in videos. 
My daily eating choices, and my behavior with food … is an ongoing part of my life. 
It is a thread that weaves its way throughout my life, 
and I look at dieting as one of my ongoing hobbies
.. which is simply a part of my total Lifestyle. 

My way of thinking is connected to my way of eating. 
I am the one who chooses what I think about. 
I am the one who decides where to put my focus. 
I am the one who has the power to direct my mind toward the positive. 

DietHobby is a way to help me do that. Part of helping myself is to share my thoughts with you. 
Perhaps you will find some of these writings and videos encouraging and supportive to you
as you travel, in your own individual way, down the path that Life has put before you. 
The way that I choose to eat, doesn't have to be the way you choose to eat.  
What works for me may be different than what works for you.  

But, perhaps you will find it helpful to take in my information,  
and shift it through your mind, accepting some things, rejecting other things. 
Blending some of the things you read and hear at DietHobby together with your own valuable truths 
might be exactly what you need to move you toward your own individual Life goals.  

DietHobby already has a great deal of content.  
You can find many things here in this website. … and as I live through the days and weeks,
I continue to think,  so More will be coming.   
Look around, get it know DietHobby, see if it is something that will fit into your support structure.
Take what you like, and leave the rest. 
                   

I've made changes to my Weight Range Maintenance Plan. 

Previously the top black "Unacceptable" area was 120 lbs and over, (now that "Unacceptable" area is 126 lbs and over); and the red "LoseWeight" area was 119-116, (now that "LoseWeight" area is 125-120 lbs)

When I grew near to my goal weight, I made a visual graphic of my plan to maintain my weight-loss, by creating a Weight Maintenance Chart much like the one shown above. This turned out to be a very effective way to set specific goal-weight-range numbers into my mind and heart.

I talk more how I did this, and why, in a previous article, "Setting A Goal Range". Read that article to see the original chart and the maintenance weights that I originally set for myself.

This graphic has been very helpful to me for the past six years, and I have worked very hard to stay within the maintenance weight ranges that I set for myself. However, this past two years, ... despite my very best efforts... I've spent most of the time hanging out inside the top red area and the top black area,and I've been unable to sustain much time at all inside my blue maintenance area.

So, I've finally accepted that my age and my activity level might never let me get and keepmy weight down as low as it was during my first few years of maintenance, so I've raised the top of my Maintenance Weight Range Plan by five lbs. I haven't changed the bottom ranges. These will remain the same because they are merely there as a reminder of the general weight guidelines for someone my height.

I fought against raising my weight range for a very long time,but have finally chosen to face my present reality, I haven't given up the struggle to get my weight back down to 115 or lower. I still hope that I can accomplish that. However, I'm tired of hanging out in my upper red and black areas. I am hoping that changing this graphic will give me an added mental push toward making the blue maintenance area my status quo again.

I've been very reluctant to make this change.  Not so much because of the actual 5 lbs,
but because of my fear that ... despite all my continued best efforts ... that my weight will continue to creep upward.

I've decided to face the truth, that my body isn't the same as it was 7 years ago. My maintenance weight has been about 5 lbs higher for the last few years,  so it's time to adjust my maintenance weight range to accurately reflect reality.  Although in a way doing this feels like admitting defeat,  it is actually a step toward success in my ongoing maintenance.