First, let me say I ate enough for a family of four for dinner last night. I was starving. When I get like this, watch out. Jack is a mere nibbler compared to my ravenous self. In my defense, or at least by way of explanation, I had eaten only an apple, a banana and some almonds during the day, which included an hour of high-impact aerobics (and eight hours of sitting at a desk, but still).
Anyway, in other news I feel great. Zumba is so much fun (I love that my mother discovered it before I did) and a friend has been taking me to the college fitness center twice a week, too. I have high hopes of starting riding lessons this weekend and I expect will fully kick my butt.
Again I wish someone had told me about exercise. About the mental flush. For Valentine's Day I got an espresso machine and have been indulging frequently. I learned my limit yesterday, however, when I arrived at work in a trash can and commenced to grouch for the next five hours. Until aerobics. Suddenly the world was livable again, the people in it compatriots instead of nuisances.
I am still so aware of crossing the threshold during exercise, the one I used to avoid so carefully. The one of true exertion, of fully inhabiting the body and manipulating it. The sense of power is palpable; I am consistently surprised at how much more balance this brings to my life. For 33 years my brain was in charge. I like putting it in the backseat - or even the trunk - once in a while.
Unfortunately, I have spent most of those 30 years completely understanding this and yet completely unable to do anything about it. I hate reading about the epiphanies people have about themselves and the empowering effects of getting healthy without a frank discussion about how they broke through the veil of paralysis.
For me, the paralysis was about fear. I have spent 10 years working on letting go of many generations worth of fear and becoming more empowered through energy balancing and other holistic medicine. [My teacher has a new website: http://healthyawakenings.com]
I almost wrote that it gave me my life back, but I'm not sure I ever had it in the first place. It cleared the way for me to have a life at all.
After 10 years of clearing that overgrown landscape it was finally possible to build some fences (aka boundaries) so I stop inviting everyone else's emotions over for long-term stays. Their emotions were keeping me pinned to the couch.
Again, I didn't do it on my own. My friend Annalaiya makes the most potent custom flower-essences blends I've ever known. My husband is as much a new man as a I am a new woman thanks to her and her blends.
These things set the stage for the naturopath to come in and clear some rocks from the ground and hoe some rows for successful growth. He worked on the chemistry and biology of my digestion and made it possible for me to have a whole new relationship with food.
The things I had been eating, the things I relied on for emotional sustenance (physical sustenance was never a question; I was in my thirties before I ever felt hunger) - these things were also keeping me pinned to the couch. Sugar, starches, more sugar. Sugar and fat. My best friends. They were actually gang members conspiring to do little more than make sure I stuck with them.
Removing some key things from my diet (sugar, gluten, dairy), adding a few supplements and including some alternative therapies carried me over the threshold to my new home. A place with a fireplace that burns in my lower chakra (though I have to remember to stoke it). It needs work - a lot of work - but at least there is a structure. I am so immensely grateful for all the people I've been led to along this journey and wish the same for everyone.
May we all accept the teachings offered us in a perfect manner according to the Divine plan. Amen.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Yesterday's excess
Seven pounds down this week. Living fully inside the visualized slim, strong body. Major release the other night. Burned lots of inner baggage and lit up the power core to burn the fire strong. Wish we had aerobics every day. Never thought I'd say that!
It has been 16 months since I've had any sugar. It doesn't seem weird that I don't eat it anymore; what seems so foreign is that everyone else still does!
Clogged with yesterday's excess, the body drags the mind down with it. ~Horace
It has been 16 months since I've had any sugar. It doesn't seem weird that I don't eat it anymore; what seems so foreign is that everyone else still does!
Clogged with yesterday's excess, the body drags the mind down with it. ~Horace
Thursday, January 20, 2011
195
Food, as I've mentioned before, is very important to me. For years and years I had to have a backseat full of snacks for any road trip over three hours. We quit that habit a couple of years ago when we discovered that eating so frequently sent Jack into hiatal hernia hell and he spent the ride from Nebraska home thinking he was about to die.
Apparently, some other habits have changed as well. I looked at our cupboards tonight and it hit me: I've become the house I hated. As a teenage babysitter I ranked my favorite families by the quality of their food selection. The chocolate ice cream house was the best. The grape popsicle house was OK. The organic cookie house was not very much fun at all, and the house I liked least was completely devoid of anything worth eating.
Kind of like mine is now.
In the fridge the offerings include a pile of tupperware containing the following masses of leftovers: misir watt (lentils), brown rice, black beans, baked beans with potatoes, red cabbage and pork chops;
eggs, condiments, peanut butter, meat, peppers, spinach, milk and V8.
In the cupboard, it gets worse. There is popcorn, which is promising, but not microwave popcorn. You'd have to know how to actually pop it on the stove. There are cans of beans, bulk arborio rice, a can of tuna, bulk tamari almonds, sesame oil and sardines.
My inner 16-year-old cringes. My current-age self is oh-so-satisfied.
PS: God is very good to me. I spent two weeks eating three dinners and therefore, lost no weight. The day after aerobics started, poof there went 2 pounds. A week later, another 2. Yahoo!!
Apparently, some other habits have changed as well. I looked at our cupboards tonight and it hit me: I've become the house I hated. As a teenage babysitter I ranked my favorite families by the quality of their food selection. The chocolate ice cream house was the best. The grape popsicle house was OK. The organic cookie house was not very much fun at all, and the house I liked least was completely devoid of anything worth eating.
Kind of like mine is now.
In the fridge the offerings include a pile of tupperware containing the following masses of leftovers: misir watt (lentils), brown rice, black beans, baked beans with potatoes, red cabbage and pork chops;
eggs, condiments, peanut butter, meat, peppers, spinach, milk and V8.
In the cupboard, it gets worse. There is popcorn, which is promising, but not microwave popcorn. You'd have to know how to actually pop it on the stove. There are cans of beans, bulk arborio rice, a can of tuna, bulk tamari almonds, sesame oil and sardines.
My inner 16-year-old cringes. My current-age self is oh-so-satisfied.
PS: God is very good to me. I spent two weeks eating three dinners and therefore, lost no weight. The day after aerobics started, poof there went 2 pounds. A week later, another 2. Yahoo!!
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Buck 99!
I took so long to write this post that it is out of date already! I typed the title last night, two days after seeing that lovely slender single 1 at the front of my weight. 199.5. W-O-W. I cannot remember the last time I weighed less than 200 pounds. 8th grade? Maybe?
My gym teacher that year tried so hard. They all did. Mrs. Gorman, starting in 3rd grade, Mr. Cormier in middle school, looking for ways to get me and the 2 or 3 others like me active, feeling strong. We were pulled out of class for situp races, attempts to do pull ups.
The worst day of the year was Presidential Fitness Day.
Normally, I could distract people (or so I believed) with my wit, intelligence and eagerness to please. But one day a year, all my failings were on display. How many pull-ups can you do? 0. If none, how long can you hang? 3 seconds. How long does it take you to run a mile? Run? I can't even walk a mile. Every year I developed excruciating leg cramps and couldn't either start or finish. Mr. Cormier gave me disbelieving looks, as I would have in his place, but the crazy thing is that I really did have debilitating leg cramps all through those years. I'd cramp the night before and barely be able to walk the next day. Tightly wound much?
Only now has physical activity reached over the cold war divide and tried to become my friend. I feel a bit like I am Reagan, however, and instead of being nice, affable Gorbachev, exercise is more like Breshnev or Putin. Luring me in.
"I wish someone had told me; I said to Jack the other morning after a half-hour on my treadmill, "Everyone always talks about how good exercise is for you, blah blah blah, great skin, toning, heart capacity, etc. But no one ever told me it was good for my mental health. That it kicks out all the anxiety and flushes the knots from my system. I wish I had known!"
Of course, no one I knew exercised. While in college I spent Thanksgiving with a new friend's family. After eating we went for a leisurely hike in the woods around their home. A revelation! Immediately I tried implementing this wonderful new habit in my family. Ha! We are of the sit and smoke ilk, not the trekking with sticks folk.
Somehow here I am, in this place where I have less than 50 pounds to lose. My BMI calculator still lists me as obese, as does the giant impression my butt makes on the edge of the bed, but living people tell me how skinny I am. In aerobics yesterday (how weird to say that), I looked in the mirror and saw chicken legs! To satisfy my BMI, I have 39.5 pounds to go. I'd like to lose 48. Being 150 pounds has been such an impossible dream my whole life. That, and wearing a size 10.
The transition from girl's clothes to women's clothes was one of those moments in life when you didn't see the Mack truck coming. I expected that although I had outgrown all the girl's things I would begin again as tiny in the women's things. That you went from 16 in girls to 2 in women's. Made sense to me. But no, the first pair of shorts I got as a 10 year old were size 12. I was devastated. There was no hiding place for me down there. I was big, even for a woman.
And here I am, closing in on those days again. But this time from a different place, a different state of mind. I am peeling layers, revealing my strength and connecting to my source, to my inner power. It is emotional and scary, but I have been inducted into the trekking with sticks clan and am hoping the specter of physical activity slowly fades from Breshnev into Mr. Rogers. Won't you be my neighbor, exercise?
CURRENT WEIGHT: 198.5
My gym teacher that year tried so hard. They all did. Mrs. Gorman, starting in 3rd grade, Mr. Cormier in middle school, looking for ways to get me and the 2 or 3 others like me active, feeling strong. We were pulled out of class for situp races, attempts to do pull ups.
The worst day of the year was Presidential Fitness Day.
Normally, I could distract people (or so I believed) with my wit, intelligence and eagerness to please. But one day a year, all my failings were on display. How many pull-ups can you do? 0. If none, how long can you hang? 3 seconds. How long does it take you to run a mile? Run? I can't even walk a mile. Every year I developed excruciating leg cramps and couldn't either start or finish. Mr. Cormier gave me disbelieving looks, as I would have in his place, but the crazy thing is that I really did have debilitating leg cramps all through those years. I'd cramp the night before and barely be able to walk the next day. Tightly wound much?
Only now has physical activity reached over the cold war divide and tried to become my friend. I feel a bit like I am Reagan, however, and instead of being nice, affable Gorbachev, exercise is more like Breshnev or Putin. Luring me in.
"I wish someone had told me; I said to Jack the other morning after a half-hour on my treadmill, "Everyone always talks about how good exercise is for you, blah blah blah, great skin, toning, heart capacity, etc. But no one ever told me it was good for my mental health. That it kicks out all the anxiety and flushes the knots from my system. I wish I had known!"
Of course, no one I knew exercised. While in college I spent Thanksgiving with a new friend's family. After eating we went for a leisurely hike in the woods around their home. A revelation! Immediately I tried implementing this wonderful new habit in my family. Ha! We are of the sit and smoke ilk, not the trekking with sticks folk.
Somehow here I am, in this place where I have less than 50 pounds to lose. My BMI calculator still lists me as obese, as does the giant impression my butt makes on the edge of the bed, but living people tell me how skinny I am. In aerobics yesterday (how weird to say that), I looked in the mirror and saw chicken legs! To satisfy my BMI, I have 39.5 pounds to go. I'd like to lose 48. Being 150 pounds has been such an impossible dream my whole life. That, and wearing a size 10.
The transition from girl's clothes to women's clothes was one of those moments in life when you didn't see the Mack truck coming. I expected that although I had outgrown all the girl's things I would begin again as tiny in the women's things. That you went from 16 in girls to 2 in women's. Made sense to me. But no, the first pair of shorts I got as a 10 year old were size 12. I was devastated. There was no hiding place for me down there. I was big, even for a woman.
And here I am, closing in on those days again. But this time from a different place, a different state of mind. I am peeling layers, revealing my strength and connecting to my source, to my inner power. It is emotional and scary, but I have been inducted into the trekking with sticks clan and am hoping the specter of physical activity slowly fades from Breshnev into Mr. Rogers. Won't you be my neighbor, exercise?
CURRENT WEIGHT: 198.5
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Perspective
I've gone from feeling ecstatic that I have bones (ribs! a collarbone! hip bones!) to focusing once again on the burbles of flesh left. There are the rolls I can pull from my stomach, the flaps under my arms, the dangly bits of thigh.
An elderly lady friend stopped me the other day to tell me she has been meaning to tell me that of all the people she has known who have undergone dramatic weight loss, my skin is the tightest. I was surprised, though after reflection, I realized that all most people see is my face and that, indeed, has done very well.
The other parts, the ones hidden from the outside world for another good six months, aren't bouncing back as quickly. When I see the wrinkles on my inner thighs I flash first to my mother, since these are how I remember her thighs, and second, to a conversation I had in sixth grade.
I had noticed that when I put my ankle on my opposite knee to cross my legs I had stripes in my skin. I was amazed and pointed out this discovery to my friend, Sarah, who was sitting next to me in band.
"Those are stretch marks," she said, apologetically, and turned back to her music. Needless to say, I flew my foot back to the floor and flushed my embarrassment into my clarinet.
Only now does it occur to me to wonder how on earth she of the giraffe nickname, she the descendant of two of the gangly-folk clan, she could have known about stretch marks. Especially before I, descendant of the can't-leave-your-room obese kind, did.
So here I am, becoming more and more familiar with the impulse that I imagine drives anorexia. Wanting to control, wanting the external image to be perfect. Wanting no one to notice any faults. Never quite being perfect enough.
I celebrate that I have the ab muscles to do the hula hoop and high kicks. I honor that I can see air between my thighs, something I have never-ever, even as a teenager, been able to do. I am overjoyed that I can use my left hand to unclasp my seat belt when I drive in my driveway. That I prefer to take the stairs. These things do still make me marvel. But yet. But yet.
There is also the conversation I recall from around the same time, the one with my aunt. The context is fuzzy and unimportant anyway. To her, it was a funny story. Perhaps I had asked about my father's grandmother. What she looked like, what she was like. What I got was a hearty laugh.
"Well, she was a big woman and when she got old, her flat breasts hung below her waist and bugged the heck out of her. So she rolled them up and tucked them under her arm."
I still shudder.
An elderly lady friend stopped me the other day to tell me she has been meaning to tell me that of all the people she has known who have undergone dramatic weight loss, my skin is the tightest. I was surprised, though after reflection, I realized that all most people see is my face and that, indeed, has done very well.
The other parts, the ones hidden from the outside world for another good six months, aren't bouncing back as quickly. When I see the wrinkles on my inner thighs I flash first to my mother, since these are how I remember her thighs, and second, to a conversation I had in sixth grade.
I had noticed that when I put my ankle on my opposite knee to cross my legs I had stripes in my skin. I was amazed and pointed out this discovery to my friend, Sarah, who was sitting next to me in band.
"Those are stretch marks," she said, apologetically, and turned back to her music. Needless to say, I flew my foot back to the floor and flushed my embarrassment into my clarinet.
Only now does it occur to me to wonder how on earth she of the giraffe nickname, she the descendant of two of the gangly-folk clan, she could have known about stretch marks. Especially before I, descendant of the can't-leave-your-room obese kind, did.
So here I am, becoming more and more familiar with the impulse that I imagine drives anorexia. Wanting to control, wanting the external image to be perfect. Wanting no one to notice any faults. Never quite being perfect enough.
I celebrate that I have the ab muscles to do the hula hoop and high kicks. I honor that I can see air between my thighs, something I have never-ever, even as a teenager, been able to do. I am overjoyed that I can use my left hand to unclasp my seat belt when I drive in my driveway. That I prefer to take the stairs. These things do still make me marvel. But yet. But yet.
There is also the conversation I recall from around the same time, the one with my aunt. The context is fuzzy and unimportant anyway. To her, it was a funny story. Perhaps I had asked about my father's grandmother. What she looked like, what she was like. What I got was a hearty laugh.
"Well, she was a big woman and when she got old, her flat breasts hung below her waist and bugged the heck out of her. So she rolled them up and tucked them under her arm."
I still shudder.
Monday, October 25, 2010
on hobbies
It occurred to me the other day that I have few or no hobbies. In declaring loudly a few months ago that if I ever attempted to sew again, all friends and family should hold an intervention, I officially denounced that excruciating pursuit. My horseback riding days are long past and hopefully coming soon, but are not in the NOW. Playing with my animals is a fun pastime, but a pretty passive activity. They romp, I observe. I used to bake, but those days are over.
Today, it seems, my hobby is my health. What to eat, what kind of exercise to engage in, weighing myself, writing about my weight-loss journey.
When I realized this, the fear was pretty quick to slice into me. If it is a hobby, then it follows that it can fall out of favor, slip from fashion, be replaced with something a bit more slick and shiny.
My hope is that what I've been engaged in this past year is not a passing fancy, but shifting into a new gear, perhaps even replacing the transmission so this vehicle never again slips out of gear into neutral. Perhaps once this shift is solid I will be free to explore new hobbies.
Maybe that time is now. And that is why I am sitting with a laptop at 5am. Maybe this will be the year that novel finds its way out.
Today, it seems, my hobby is my health. What to eat, what kind of exercise to engage in, weighing myself, writing about my weight-loss journey.
When I realized this, the fear was pretty quick to slice into me. If it is a hobby, then it follows that it can fall out of favor, slip from fashion, be replaced with something a bit more slick and shiny.
My hope is that what I've been engaged in this past year is not a passing fancy, but shifting into a new gear, perhaps even replacing the transmission so this vehicle never again slips out of gear into neutral. Perhaps once this shift is solid I will be free to explore new hobbies.
Maybe that time is now. And that is why I am sitting with a laptop at 5am. Maybe this will be the year that novel finds its way out.
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