I wasn’t planning on it. Certainly could stand to. Didn’t have a sponsorship with Jenny Craig or Subway, though that might be a good way to finance future trips. I wasn’t on any kind of fast, though I definitely was moving fast!

 

And maybe that’s the answer. I was simply more active while on our medical missions trip to Guatemala. Having our meals and team meetings on a covered, lighted basketball court sure made it convenient to shoot hoops day and night, too. And we had a pick up game in town with some of the locals one hot afternoon, which I’ll tell you about in another post.

 

 

Then there was the warm weather. Nice. Oh you did not hear me complaining about the heat. After leaving minus-whatever back in Tennessee, I was celebrating the sweat. Sweet sweat. Sometimes it was so humid, I felt like I was a fairy prince floating through the air in some enchanted kingdom. Nice.

 

 

Simple life. Fast pace. Lifting boxes and bags. Moving around a lot. Playing b-ball. Warm weather. Lots of sweating. Lots of drinking water (though never the local water – that was inviting bacterial chaos into one’s body). All these factors seemed to produce an instantly healthier lifestyle. Duhhh. Especially in contrast to the naturally sedentary poses of a writer like me.

 

 

So it was good. It was healthy. Within two days, my cargo pants, formerly known as “snug”, were sliding down. Several times, team members thought I was mooning them when climbing into the van – but, no, those cargo pants were doin’ it all on their own. Nice.

 

 

But there was another reason I lost 8 pounds during my week in Guatemala. I didn’t eat much. No offense whatsoever to the kitchen staff, I just found I didn’t have much of an appetite. Think I was just too excited to care much about eating. A massive ongoing flow of adrenaline will do that to a person I’ve heard. And what an adventure it was. New people, new country, new culture, new experiences, new language (ok, Mrs Osborne, you were right when you told me in high school that some day I would wish I’d paid attention in Spanish class!).

 

 

There was something else happening though. Not completely new, but magic nonetheless. I was spending most of every day focused on the needs of others. Radical! It was such a joy. Deep down somehow my spirit was swept to a new place. Godly I believe it was. Supernatural. Or at least it was a new reality. I just wasn’t as aware of myself.

 

 

Every day we took a lunch break at the clinics. I never said anything about this, but the very first clinic day, I overheard that the two Guatemalan dentists who’d come to assist us, didn’t have lunches. Somehow that didn’t strike me as quite right. I’d watched them working for hours – bent over, sweating, diligent, professional, caring – extracting tooth after rotten tooth with never a word or a gesture of fatigue, complaint or loathing. So I gave them my whole lunch. Salmon with orange glaze sauce (vacuum packed), an energy bar, dehydrated fruit, trailmix. It seemed such a small thing, but I felt such a big happiness.

 

 

Every day after that, except one, I found someone who needed my lunch worse than I did. Sometimes I found people who needed my water worse than I did, too.

 

 

And it wasn’t just the daily joy of giving that prompted me not eating lunch. I realized early on that I simply could not eat when there were dozens of people still standing in line out in the heat of the day – usually without either food or water. I am so not casting any judgment on my team members who did eat – most of them worked a lot harder than I had to. But for me, I just couldn’t do it.

 

The one day I did eat lunch, I wish I wouldn’t have, because about two bites into it I felt satisfied, and when I sat there and stuffed down the rest of it anyway, I felt, well honestly, I felt – so American.

 

 

Anyway, I lost 8 pounds that week. Could have stood to lose another 8, or another. A fringe benefit of the trip.

 

 

Nice.