A lifetime of upheaval and a year of positive change!

For many years I have had to re-invent myself, as markets changed, life changed, and the world changed and continues to change all around us. A year ago today I probably made a very consciencious decision to change something else, but because I had to adapt to the change all around us but because I wanted to get back my life.

Putting things in perspective

During my high school years I swam competitively at a provincial and national level. Demands were high and training extremely rigorous though I was never quite good enough to get a full ride scholarship south of the border like some of my friends had. When I returned from National Short Course Swimming Championships in Victoria, British Columbia in February of 1981, I had one of the most difficult decisions any young athlete would have to make - to stick with what I had dedicated so many long hours and years to or stop in order to get an education?

I gave the sport up because I knew that without great marks I wouldn't get into university, though the guiding force of my life, which was an extremely active lifestyle just wasn't there any more, and that is when the battle of the bulge started. Though, there were a few interruptions before it conquered my life.

After an abysmal first year at univeristy, and basically being thrown out, I took what I told many what was my first academic sabbatical, to return what had given discipline and focus to my life. In the summer of 1982 I decided I would go back and and swim with my old Club, the Pointe Claire Swim Club. It was challenging, I had to get back to my ideal body weight and had I known then what I know know, it would have probably been a lot easier to do. I never got down to that weight but I did have to drop a significant amount of weight, and managed to get within about 6% of my ideal competitive weight, but it was a struggle.


During that, what I call my sabbatical year from academia of any type, helped me refocus somewhat on my life, and then returning to study at the Univesity of Waterloo. I intended to graduate from where I had started, for a very personal reason. During that first year of hell I had run into an academic adviser who had told me that I should probably not be in university, and that I wasn't good enough. I wanted to prove him wrong, and prove to myself that giving a sport that was my life and that I lived for was not in vain.

So in the autumn of 1982 I returned to what some have dubbed the MIT of the north, to noot study in a very technical area, but to pursue languages, literature and political science. While for my first year back I swam and played water-polo it was not at the same level as I had previously, and eventually campus life's unhealthy lifestyle got the better of me and it started again. However I had a reprieve for a few years, because some time during my undergrad years I had planned a crazy trip with a long-time friend which forced me to get back into shape. I didn't have a choice! You don't get on a bicycle and intend to ride from Vancouver to Montreal unless you are some semblance of shape. It became a trip of a life-time after I had completed my B.A. There was one little sweet moment after I had graduated and was at a reception and actually was able to look that adviser in the eye and say to him, "I guess you didn't expect to see me here! Well here, I am!" While pointing to the diploma which represented the degree which had been confered upon me in the graduation ceremony an hour or so earlier.

I was still keen on academia for a bit, but after a while, I just wanted to get on with my life so took a more practical approach after my first Master's degree. It wasn't long before after my second Master's degree that I became gainfully employed thanks to some of the newly acquired knowledge of my third academic acheivement, and a whole lot of perseverance of trying to wrap my noodle around computers, database design as well as business, science and technical information.

Gainfully employed, but also gaining

Throughout the 1990s I was trying a number of things to keep the weight off, from changing my eating habits, reducing my beer intake and even getting regular exercise, but nothing seemed to be in the right combination.

Over the seven years of sitting at a desk and thinking about ways to work smarter and provide better service to our clients, which ranged from Desktop delivery of news services to a whole new way of library operations, and moving from mainframe to a Unix based client/server model, knowledge management and competitive intelligence initiatives the day came where, I like most other human bipeds, are just to to much weight for the shareholders of the company and decisions are made and they can be extremely drastic. Though, I have long forgotten to think about shareholders, and the stock market that is a primarily manipulated insititution.

It was a decision to appease shareholders regardless of the human cost as far as I am concerned. However, now I am extremely thankful it happened.

While I had been gainfully employed and even getting above average salary increases, a change in grade and benefits, and even informed by my suprvisor "that she would be retiring in the next six to eight months and was putting my name in for the coroporate management training program". After all of the positive growth and contribution, one can never be truly prepared for the day when you get called to the Human Resouces office and are shown your conditions of termination. That happened to me at the end of January of 1999, and that same day there were close to 800 others who were terminated by my employer. It was not a fun feeling, they even had security around to make sure that I and many others "didn't go postal"!

Changing continents

In March of 1999 I had made a decision that I would be leaving for Ukraine, my paternal homeland, for up to three months to spend time with family and friends and see what other opportunities I could find with my variety of skills in addition to my language skills.

The food and drink there were extremely different to Canada, though I had travelled for visits to the newly independent nation two times before its independence and four times afterward! I was in for a completely new way of life and not necessary a heathy one in many aspects, though it was life, and the foods I was introduced to, the ways of preparation, and the age old traditions will always stay with me.

I saw food culture in Ukraine changed quickly during the close to a decade that I called Kyiv, the nation's capital, my home. During the first year or two I would go to, thanks to recommendations of friends I was working with, to the Stolova or Soviet style cafeteria, where one could get a relatively healthy meal, with real food, and cooked in a traditional manner for an extremely reasonable price. If I can recall properly, I could have soup, salad, and main course for all of about USD $1.85.

It was regular for the NGO community I was providing consulting services for to go to the Stolova of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. I got to know the "golden toothed" ladies by name, they knew what I liked and I know they were the mothers of someone, who cared about what they were feeding those who visited them. Some of those women in the serving line even got to know some of us by name! While they were industrially prepared meals, the ingredients were natural. Ukraine was a totally different world in 1999 to about 2001 or 2002.

Then came the more affordable Ukrainian style fast food joints, to which to this day are still a great deal healthier, than most North American establishment called fast food.

At some point my time for food, drinks and discourse with friends became more important than really thinking about what I was eating. The bulge continued... and at times I was really actually not in a frame of mind to deal with a change that I understood that was necessary, but couldn't tackle it alone. There were many factors.

At some point I did make inroads to abstaining from toxins that would effect the way my body processed its intake, and managed to loose not a great deal of weight, but I was appreciative of it Because in Kyiv, Ukraine's capital you walk a lot if you live in the city's core; and, if my elevator went out, I found it much easier to climb the stairs to the fifth floor, where my flat was located. This is what I would call the first epiphany, regarding my food lifestyle change.

Return to Canada

My return to Canada was for a mulititude of reasons, though primarily due to a condition of my mother's health, and the rapidly deterioating businesses and political climate of the nation.

While I as growing up I faced some challenges. We were what could be considered a lower-middle class family. Though there was a twist, my father died of an aneurysm, when I was sixteen years old. We had our own home, and while my father was alive, he in fact did most of the cooking. He taught me to make my first pancakces and crepes when I was about ten years old. He and I would go mushroom picking together and fishing. We would make use of everything we ever gathered... However, then when he was no longer with us our life changed. We had to cope. My mother, as I anylyse in retrospect had become used to her very simple Irish heritage diet, but using additional canned ingredients - which had made her life simpler. Or had it?

I personally feel, due to my personal experience, that the loss of my father, and someone who would rather cook stuff from scratch, to my mother's post war brainwashing by marketers - had an effect on my personal health. It wasn't just my personal health but that of an entire generation.

My mother is now eighty-four years old. She gets all kinds of publications about good health, senior living, and best eating, but she will still buy her cans and prepackaged food-like stuffs. She likes her bread that has little or no nutritive value, whatsoever, and asks why I pay $3.00 for a one pound loaf of dark non-processed bread? And then adds, "I'm still alive and I'm not as fat as you are?" Though there are many factors that my mother won't and will not understand, because of a number of factors: from not truly listening, to simply not really caring and being thankful that she has lived as long as she has!

My mother's understanding of health is incredibly different than mine. Genetically it is not irregular that she will live a long life. She had ancestors who lived into their late ninties, and her father lived to eighty six. She seems to not figure that into her calculation. She clearly has her own model of life and her age, I am not going to change it, though, for most of her life and even adult life she ate "whole foods" it was only in the 1970s, when my father was not around to cook because of his shift work that we ate a combination of what could be had. In 1979 when I lost my father, that all changed. It became a lot of things that were purchased based on price, not on value of what was being offered. Please, understand, I am not judging my mother but judging the society we had become. It is only after many years of evaluating what I personally went through that I could even consider starting this blog.

I know of many different former atheletes who have gone through similar transformations. We are not alone, and nor are others that want to somehow change their lifestyle.

I will not just chat about food here and what it does for us, but I will also try to engage, in the future some other authors I know for their expertise to collaborate with me.

This will be done through personal contact, knowledge of nutrition health and fitness as well as the creative aspect of matters.

In short, this is an introduction to the side of life that has changed in the last year, not only because of food but because of regular exercise!

Welcome to : Scrumptious and Health Food Alchemy!

William (Vasyl) Pawlowsky