The fact is, it’s more than weight loss…

I’ve successfully lost weight in the past. Like a lot of overweight people, I’ve gone up, I’ve gone down. I lose 30 pounds, and gain back 20. Lose five, gain ten. I have a spectrum of “normal” where I’ve been for almost 20 years, and breaking through that is going to take the serious work, but I know I can do it because I’ve done it before.

With that said, the number one lesson I’ve learned during those other times I’ve successfully lost weight – it’s not about the weight. It’s about you being happy and taking care of you.

Like a lot of emotional eaters, I eat for stress. I eat for boredom. I eat because parenting is a long hard slog sometimes (#truth) and it’s boring, and it’s stressful, and sometimes you just want to sneak into the kitchen and calm yourself with a Hershey bar.

And anyway, how do you put yourself first when you have a small child running around reminding you that they are, in fact, first?

One thing I’m doing that’s not strictly weight-related, but rather Putting Heather First-related, is going back to the things I love, and loved a decade ago, before my first pregnancy loss, and before I became obsessed with having a child, and then being a mother. When I was just Heather. Not the Heather who had pregnancy losses and infertility, and knew more about her luteal phase than anyone should know. Not the Heather who is constantly wondering if she’s a good enough mom, and whether her kid eats too much sugar and gets too much screen time.

But just Heather, who loves Target, Skyrim, music, books, nature, history, long walks, travel, gel pens, and bubblebaths.*
*not necessarily in that order

And so one project I’m doing this year is rekindling my love of classical music. Classical music can be so daunting, even for me, and I know a lot more about it than the average person (in another life – aka 2004 – I worked on the digital library at Naxos, the world’s largest classical music label).

I always get overwhelmed because I think to myself, “I’d like to listen to more Beethoven,” and then it’s like what? The quartets? The symphonies? Piano music? It’s too much, and I go back to the popular familiar stuff on ClassicFM.

So I decided that each year, I will delve into a composer I’d like to learn more about. This means that I will listen to all their music I can, hopefully daily, read a book or two about them, watch whatever movies there are about them, and basically just really get to know them on a deeper level.

It’s hard because I find myself really struggling to choose. If I choose Bach, that means I won’t be getting to know Schumann as much as I’d like! And I wind up never really getting anywhere with any of them, which is, of course, the wonderful result of procrastination. In an attempt to get it right, or do it all, you wind up doing nothing.

So I’m making a commitment, finally, and in 2020 I will be rediscovering the music of… Schubert.

I chose Schubert randomly because a) a friend of mine loves his string quartets, and b) I know he had a really interesting life, and also that he supposedly died of syphilis. Plus, the music I know of his is divine. So I want to get to know Schubert better this year – it will be my Intellectual Project for 2020 – getting to know Schubert.

I’m starting out with the basics – the This is Schubert playlist on Spotify. And searching through Scribd, Netflix, and Wikipedia to see what books and movies there are available. It’s been over 20 years since Music appreciation in college when I would have listened to him in a meaningful way. I had a minor love affair with his Trout Quintet around 2001 when it was almost a leading character in the Vikram Seth book An Equal Music. But that’s been it for me and Schubert.

I’ve added Listen to Schubert to my daily habit tracker, and as soon as I finish the book I’m on now I’ll be reading my first biography of him.

It feels so freeing to go back through the things I love, and create my own little course of study on something like this. And I know that it’s a true way to get back to that healthy Heather that I’m letting back out. (Plus, on a very basic level, it gives me something besides chocolate to think about! Bonus!).