Beatriz

Beatriz was born and raised in a large Texas city and still lives there. She is 40, married thirteen years, with a stepson, a son and a young daughter, a cat and a fish. She is the fifth of six children raised by a single mother. She works part time, helps her husband with a side business, crafts when time allows, and works out with a group. Her five words: Opinionated, people watcher, friendly, kind, motivator. And in her own shorthand: I love life and my family are my #1.

No one in the study mapped her life more carefully. She gave it chapters, five years apart, each with a title. Struggles, when her parents divorced and she went from being the baby to now just a middle child. new life, a move across town to a school where she met a mix of all cultures and learned to form my own opinions about other races. womanhood. independence: college, work and Live life with no regrets was my thing!! the settlement: love, a house, marriage, travel. Magic Love, a baby: I never knew my heart was huge enough to love another person more then myself or my husband. the expansion. And then 2020: sorrow. Lots of deaths lots of heartaches lots of sadness. One reading is that she organizes her life the way she organizes her meals, by plan, and that the plan is what lets her carry what it cannot prevent.

The deepest of those losses is her sister's death. no matter how much you need a person in your life death don’t care it will take your love one away anyways. She did not know until then I had really bad anxiety. On Day 4 she tells of the practical side: being the one who prepared the burial, because Someone had to hold it together and take action. Her moral: you have to put your feelings aside to get things done.

Her food story begins with scarcity. Her mother bought the groceries, you ate what she bought it you just don’t eat, and with six children she had to buy cheap and made shire it stretched, filling plates with carbohydrates. Beatriz has been overweight most of her life and dieted for as long as I could remember, until she found the way of eating she has kept for two years, low carb, which she calls her WOE. She shops once a week from a plan, cooks for everyone, and lets her family keep the bread and rice she gives up. Her heritage, she says with a laugh, is carb culture. She is not drawn to vegan eating, but she loves farmers markets and to learn of new veggies and fruits. The healthy event she imagines has one rule: Basically it has to be free.

Her superpower and her weakness are the same skill. Superpower: I’m able to disguise my feeling and adapt to my surroundings. Weakness: Hiding my feelings. Under stress she grows Calm and quiet and very observant of others, and she does not eat. Her 2 a.m. person is her husband: He knows how to calm me.

On Day 5 her goal is small and specific: Stop eating late. What would she stop? Stop feeding my feelings. What stands in the way: Family life. Her letter cheers her on, You girl are rocking it you are down 40+pounds, and ends with permission she rarely gives herself: Always remember take time to focus on yourself and allow your family to be put to the side at times!