I finally retired my microwave. I put it in a big brown box and took it to my neighborhood Goodwill. I’ve been threatening to do it for years. I realized that I’d been relying on it almost exclusively to prepare most of my food, and that couldn’t be good for me.

You see, I’ve been thinking for a while about my body, and how the signs of aging are manifesting. I’ve been struggling with my weight since my return to the US, and my recent graduation into crone-hood seems to have exacerbated those signs. I’ve noticed a decrease in muscle tone, and sagging here and there. One day I was getting dressed and looked in the mirror. The sight of myself triggered a laugh and a memory of an interview of the late Maya Angelou on the now defunct Oprah show. Maya once said about her body,  “And the breasts are very interesting.  They are in an incredible race to see which will touch my waist first.” As I continued assessing the ‘damage’ in the mirror, I lamented that all the traces of the kid who used to get teased and jumped on for being so skinny are long gone.

Yes indeed – I’ve having serious conversations about my relationship with my aging body and how to best care for it now.

I’ve been thinking about the history of my relationship to food. As a child, I was given a solid foundation on how and what to eat, but I’d fallen off the wagon, especially since knee surgery and retiring from performing full time. You see, when I had to be on stage six nights a week I was always told, ‘The day you can’t fit into your costumes is the day you don’t have a job.’  So I monitored, dieted, denied, deflected, denounced, refused any and all foods that I thought would add inches to my waistline. For decades. I worked out six to nine times a week – sometimes pulling two-a-days three times a week. For decades. I rarely ate chips of any kind, and the only pastries that made it to my house were the cream puffs from Crow Lane Bakery (Bermuda).

But that kind of discipline is part of my distant past. Bedtime snacking has evolved into late night performance art. I’ve been thinking about how much I now dislike exercise, which is really inexplicable since one could argue that workouts should’ve been encoded in my DNA by now. Having knees with thinning cartilage doesn’t help. The hard core workouts I used to do are completely out of the question now. Don’t get it twisted – I can do everything I did onstage when I was twenty-eight. However, it takes more than a few days to recover!

I’ve been thinking about how the results of all this have manifested in a body size I could never imagined. As I said, I don’t look in mirrors much anymore. And I never liked shopping (I know…weird for a woman) but I truly loathe it now.

After a visit to my doctor three months ago to check my blood pressure (yes, I had to go back on blood pressure meds), and noting a line on my medical chart that classified me as “borderline obese”, I decided that enough was enough. I realized that I needed to start somewhere, and that maybe conscious eating was a start.

My cosmology says that there is a spiritual answer for every physical situation. So I prayed for answers…wanting to understand why I preferred takeout to cooking at home, and how all of this got out of control.

Family drama that began at age nine and the resultant trauma somehow allowed me to internalize this twisted, bass-ackwards concept that people only cook when they don’t have enough money for take-out or to go to a restaurant. Therefore, cooking reinforced my errant perception that I was poor. Later, I remember overeating when I had the chance, because money and food was occasionally scant. I wanted to make sure my brothers ate, so I would go without, passing those precious meals to them.

As an adult, when access to food was not an issue, I’ve told myself that I didn’t really have time to cook. I reasoned that I could either spend ninety minutes most evenings cooking and washing up, or I could order takeout and sit at my computer and make a dent in that gigantic stack of papers I had to grade.

I also became aware that the lack of fun activities and community involvement was feeding my ADDICTION to pastries – specifically cake (ANY EXCEPT fruit cake), donuts (never met one I didn’t like), and cookies (snickerdoodles, sugar, chocolate chip, double chocolate chip…). AND, I also realized that pastries especially, have become the antidote for years without a steady, reliable significant other in my life. Literally, the lack of ‘sweetness’ in my life has sent me hunting for a substitute, and I found it…at Royal Farms in the Krispy Kreme case!

Cooking for one also has reinforced my sadness about being single, and eating meal after meal alone has only added insult to injury. And the washing up afterwards? I became angry for having to do it.

So, now that I understood how and why, I asked myself, “What now?”

A change in mindset was required.

I know that change begins with one’s consciousness. You have to face yourself and your baggage. I began with stepping on the scale. My heart was racing! Ugh! Didn’t like the number that appeared, but I talked myself down. “It’s just a number” I said, “and a good place to start.” Then, I did something else that scared me. I took off all my clothes, and I stood in front of a full-length mirror – naked. I cried. Then I dried my tears and took a selfie…after putting some underwear on of course…just in case my phone fell into the wrong hands. I found a tape measure and took measurements, and wrote them down in my newly designated health journal. I went to Target and bought a new scale that measured not only weight, but body fat, water weight, and the BMI.

I realized that I needed to learn how to cook quick, but scrumptious, taste bud satisfying, healthy meals that would fill my stomach and feed my senses, rather than cooking meals just to save money or feed my emotions after a tough day.

I pulled out all of my old Cooking Light magazines, my old notebook with favorite recipes that’s been gathering dust for the last nine years at the bottom of the baking rack in the kitchen, and I dusted off a few favorites. Knowing that sweets are the bane of my existence, I ordered the Paleo Dessert cookbook. I started watching a few cooking shows on the Cooking Channel. I began experimenting with recipes and more and more often, instead of counting my pennies and heading to the Chinese takeout, I went home and whipped up something with the groceries I’d already bought.

(Side note: I’m still working on the meal planning. Planning meals = structure and advance planning, to which I’m allergic).

I was feeling good about my new accomplishments, but I still didn’t enjoy the process. My answer came one night while I was plating up my smothered chicken (made with low fat, low sodium cream of mushroom soup) and garlic mashed cauliflower with asparagus. Cooking is all about nurturing! It’s the ultimate act of caring for and nurturing the physical vessel. Cooking for oneself is all about self-love. When I’m cooking, I’m loving myself! Why this was such a huge revelation for me when all those adages about cooking with love, food being prepared with love, about love being a necessary ingredient for wholesome food abound, I don’t know. But this simple understanding has made all the difference.

I can proudly say that I cook seventy percent of my meals now. Occasionally I’ll make myself a wine spritzer and sip while cooking. And when I do cook, I make enough for several meals and freeze the extras. I brown bag my lunch on eighty percent of the days I work away from home all day. And yes, there is the washing up, but I’m learning to also consider that a labor of love as well. I’ll bring my tablet into the kitchen and have one of my favorite Britcoms playing in the background while sudsing up.

I’ve downloaded a step tracking program on my phone, upgraded my Planet Fitness membership, and I’ve even discovered some great heart-pumping, fat-burning workouts on YouTube that I can do while seated for those days when my knees don’t feel like cooperating. I’ve committed to three CONSISTENT workouts each week with the aim of working my way up to five.

A toaster oven now sits where the microwave once sat. But more importantly, knowing that I’ll have to wait a bit longer for my food to cook has made me more conscious of how I use time. Waiting for my vegetable lasagna to cook gives me time to meditate, lay out clothes for the next event/day, or just savor a glass of water. Waiting allows me the space to be mindful, and I think the food tastes so much better when I anticipate how awesome it will be once it collides with my taste buds.

Do I miss my microwave? Absolutely. Like the time I warmed up some hot (organic turbinado sugar-sweetened) tea on the stovetop and went to answer the phone. Forgot about it until the smell and smoke of burnt sugar swallowed up my house. Don’t know why the smoke alarm didn’t go off. Thankfully the only casualty was the pan.

All of the above-mentioned practices, along with intermittent fasting (12 hours between my last meal of one day and the first meal of the next day) have moved the scale downward. I’ve lost seven pounds in the last eight weeks, and my clothes are starting to feel a bit looser. I have more stamina on stage, I’m climbing stairs without getting tired and winded, and I’m sleeping better and longer. My new role model and hero is Baltimore’s Ernestine Shepherd, the 82-year-old-body builder who began training in her mid-fifties and still works out and teaches at gyms across Baltimore City!

I’m taking baby steps.

The biggest payoff is the recognition that there are other ways in which I have not been loving and honoring myself. I’m on the hunt to find and root those out. Because the best gift I can give myself is me, and that’s the sweetest gift of all!