How Much Is Too Much?

Tis the season for parties, time with family and friends, baking, shopping, cooking, etc.  Life can get a little hectic.  Although the memories and precious time with loved ones are good for the soul, the activity, stress and all around business are not good for the heart failure.  In the past two weeks, I have had half a dozen of my closest family and friends tell me that I am doing "too much."

This started an interesting chain of thought in my mind.  How much is too much?  My husband and I have been honored to meet several others in heart failure, along with a great group of friends that have LVADs or transplants.  I watch as these people live their lives and make the best of their illness.  Here are a few things I have learned:

1.  Idleness is not always your friend.  If you do not exercise your mind, you will lose it.  (Insert your own funny remark here.)  Also, if you sit around too much, your body will become stiff and you will notice all the aches and pains.  The more you sit around, the worse your body will feel.  So get out, take a walk, go to the gym, or play fatty-bat with your nieces and nephews and feel proud that you are taking care of your body.

2.  Depression can hit fast and hard.  I truly believe the reason heart patients experience depression so quickly is because they lose their sense of purpose.  This is especially hard for those of us that have given up our careers.  And the more we take it easy and quit doing things, the more we lose our sense of helping the world.  I know God has a plan for my life, but I feel unused when I am sitting around doing nothing.  I find myself reading, rereading, and then reciting the book "The Purpose Driven Life" to constantly remind myself of my purpose.  But I really enjoy volunteering and helping others.  So how do I find that line between fulfilling my purpose and not doing "too much?"

3.  You are what you eat.  If you knew the special characters in my support group, you would know that we end every session discussing food. :-p  When I first got sick, I knew nothing about low-sodium cooking.  In fact, I really didn't know much about cooking altogether.  But slowly I am learning how to flavor foods with various spices and herbs and we have thrown away the salt shaker.  I could post on and on about cooking; perhaps another day.  But what happens at the holidays is that everyone keeps giving my sweets.  Then we have parties where there are more sugary goodies.  Everywhere I go, people have baked these delicious things and it would be rude of me not to partake.  The problem is, how much is too much?  How many of these tasty treats can I have before my legs and abdomen start to swell from the salt (yes, there is quite a bit of salt in baked goods)?  How many calories can I eat before I pack on the pounds? :-)

4.  Rest comes in different forms.  Some people enjoy relaxing in different ways.  In the past few years I have learned that I don't hate books, I really do enjoy all types of music, there is such a thing as too much news, you don't have to feel bad about ripping out pages of a magazine that you like and throwing away the rest, and Sudoku is just so much more fun to play on paper with a pencil and not electronically.

So as you can see, there is a fine line between resting and rusting.  How do you draw the line??