Newb

 A person must have a certain amount of intelligent ignorance to get anywhere.

~ Charles Kettering

 

 

 

I know it's been agony waiting for me to update you on my progress. And you're going to have to be in agony a little bit longer. This is crazy busy work season for me and I haven't been able to really stop and put any cohesive thoughts together. Mainly because I don't have any cohesive thoughts to put together. I will say this, though. Things are going well. CrossFit is fantastic. The people are fantastic. I'm currently on Day 21 of Whole30, which I will explain more in depth when I have the time. And I'm 1/3 of the way to my weight loss goal. Although with every passing day, the weight doesn't seem nearly as important as my overall fitness level. I can honestly say I'm much more focused on working on my endurance than my weight. The weight will come off. It's a given. But I'm tired of scooping a lung off the floor after every workout.

 

The only reason why I'm even writing something tonight is I was reading back through my early posts and chuckling at my CrossFit newb-ness. Don't get me wrong, I'm still a total newb, but not as much as I was in a previous post where I was all stoked over the following workout I did in one of my fundamental classes:

 

 

500 meters on the rowing machine

40 squats

30 sit-ups

20 push-ups (modified, of course)

20 alternating box steps

 

 

Hahahahaha! Oh, Heather. You poor, sad woman. 40 squats? Child's play. 30 sit-ups? What is this? Jazzercise? (No offense to anyone who does Jazzercise, I'm sure it's lovely in a Flashdance/leg warmer sort of a way). Maybe if I'd known in the beginning the workouts that I'd be doing, I would've never walked through the door. Nah. I'd still be here and I'd still be loving it. Every workout, every single time, I accomplish more than I ever thought I could. And then I barf. Not really. But kind of. 

 

One of the reasons for starting this blog was so I could go back and read where I was and see my journey, emotionally and physically.  I'm sad when I read my first post. I was desperate. I was feeling pretty hopeless, but hopeful, too. And for good reason. Guys, I've come so far already.

K, so I lied. This was actually a for reals post. I didn't mean it to be. Apparently I have a hard time shutting up. What?????

I'm mad crazy in love with all of you for your support, encouragement, and kindness. You know that, right? Yeah, you do.

The Good Pain

“We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.” - Kenji Miyazawa

One of the things you learn when you start CrossFit is you will never reach a place where your fitness can't improve. You learn to become attached to, and even embrace, the soreness and the pain, because that is the affirmation that your body is evolving. Last week, sitting at home on my butt, I wasn't sore and it depressed me because I knew my body wasn't being challenged. It requires a deeper level of being in tune with your own body to differentiate between what is good pain and bad pain. Embrace the good pain and respect the bad pain so you can find a healthy balance. Today, I'm in the good pain and I feel alive and aware of my body.

Not to mention, my head is in a far better space. Not working out, it's depressing, man.

Down But Not Out

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. 

~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

It's been almost two weeks since I've worked out. I feel depressed. I feel defeated. I feel frustrated. But those are merely feelings. A feeling doesn't determine my path or the true state of my reality. 

I'm still learning the limits of my body, and I learned one big time. My knees cannot withstand my weight in high impact movements. There's a definite learning curve in CrossFit with discovering the capabilities of your body. It's frustrating to be the one who is constantly modifying their movements. I'm not used to being that woman. I'm the woman who has her babies naturally. I'm the woman who never goes to the doctor, or who waits to go to the doctor until a staph infection has consumed the greater portion of her thigh. I'm the woman who chops off the end of her finger in a paper cutter and then calmly scoops it up and goes to find someone to drive her to the doctor. I am not the woman that complains about pain. I am not the woman who ever lets pain defeat her. It's not who I am, it's never been who I am. So I've been pushing myself and pushing myself, despite the ever increasing pain in my knees because I can't be that woman who stops because of a little pain.

Well, my knees made the decision for me. I hurt them bad enough that I was nearly immobile for a week. I ignored the signs and I reaped the consequences. And I've been miserable and unmotivated ever since. I've been eating bread. And donuts. And pasta. And not eating my veggies. And not drinking enough water, but drinking lots of other things. It's amazing how easy it is to fall back into your old habits and patterns. The last post I wrote was about how I saw the changes in my head and my evolution into how I approach stress and life. It's like I jinxed myself because almost immediately after I was sidelined and back into some self-defeating habits.

I didn't want to write this post because I'm embarrassed, but I NEED to write this post because I have to keep myself accountable. I miss CrossFit and I miss being there. Here's the thing, guys, I could have gone this week. I could have modified. But I didn't. Why? Because I let my doubt laziness get the best of me. I made plenty of excuses about why I wasn't going, most of them revolving around my work. Granted, I'm working 10-12 hour days now, but you know what, when you really want to do something, you make time for it, you do it. I wasn't making time for CrossFit, the only thing I was making was excuses. So, I'll be back to it next week. No more excuses. No physical obstacles will ever be as difficult to overcome as the mental ones. I'm still trying to figure out the balance between pushing myself and not defeating myself. I will get stronger, but it's not going to happen overnight and it's certainly not going to happen sitting on my butt. I confess there are times I just don't want to do this, but then what? I go back to where I started? I can't do that. Ugh. Blah. Evolving sucks, man. 

Now where's my water bottle?

Shift

The times they are a-changin'.

~ Bob Dylan

This is the time of year when my work load can take on epic proportions. My hours can be long and odd. Sometimes I'm up at 5:00 am trying to fit things in before the phone starts ringing and the emails start pouring in. Or I'm up until midnight, catching up on the day's work because the phone didn't stop ringing and the emails didn't stop pouring in. It's not unheard of for my work weeks to be somewhere between 60-70 hours a week from now until late June. Somewhere in there I'm still trying to squeeze in motherhood and marriage and laundry and grocery shopping and cleaning and rehearsing and gigging and a social life. Last year at this time, daily, my light at the end of the long workday tunnel was collapsing on the couch to watch t.v., with a beverage in one hand and food in the other. That was my reward. I'm not even remotely joking when I say my day revolved around that moment. My whole life revolved around those moments. After all of that hard work didn't I deserve to put that high fat, high sodium, high carbohydrate, high calorie snack into my body? Didn't I deserve those four glasses of wine? And the second those flavors hit my tongue, the pleasure centers in my brain went into overdrive and I sat there, like a zombie, eating, drinking, and expanding my waistline.

So guys, guess what? Last week was a particularly difficult work week. It peaked on Wednesday. I didn't know whether to cry or scream. I was close to doing both. My homicidal thoughts were at Defcon 1. And do you know, my darling reader, what thought went through my head???? "I WISH I COULD GO TO CROSSFIT TONIGHT AND WORK OUT."

My next thought was something akin to, "Wait. WHAT???"

The way I see it, there are three likely explanations for this.

1. Pod people have taken over my body.
2. All of the illegal substances I ingested/smoked when I was a teenager have finally caught up with me and I'm hallucinating.
3. I'm getting healthy.

As plausible as scenarios 1 and 2 are, I'm leaning toward 3. And if it is 3, do you know what that means?

This is huge, guys. Not only am I NOT looking toward food as my reward, but my mind is looking toward working out as a way to cope with stress. There are rumblings afoot in my psyche. Will you all join me in a happy dance?

I'm introducing a new feature to FGS called In The Mush Pot, or ITMP. For those of you who know me well, you know I'm a huge pile of mush. The only thing squishier than my belly is my heart (Pretty soon only my heart will be squishy). I have multiple ITMP moments every week, but lately most of them have been because of Crossfit. Here's my favorite ITMP moment of the week:

This Saturday we hosted a large event at our location, Canyon Crossfit. It was quite a scene. I could write another blog post about how much fun I had at that event. It was an awesome opportunity to hang out with people who I don't always get to see at WODs. So, I'm standing there, enthralled with what's happening around me and I hear someone say, "Heather." Well, I didn't look because there is another Heather who is part of our Canyon Crossfit community, and usually when I hear my name, it's because someone is calling out to her. I heard my name called a couple more times and finally looked over to a group of Canyon Crossfit girls who were all getting ready to take a picture and were gesturing to me to come over and be a part of it. It was definitely a mush pot moment. I cannot recall anytime in life where I felt accepted and supported as quickly as I have amongst these people. I feel like I'm making friends for life.

That's it for now. I could write so much more, but I'll spare you the Tolstoy-esque post. Thanks for reading. xoxo

Ahhhh, Push It

The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.

~ Epictetus

Guys! Remember that one time I told you that I spent the first half of my life being an athlete???? So, yeah, ignore that. 

I cannot recall a time in my life, regardless of my fitness level, where I've had to push myself so hard mentally and physically. The learning curve is completely new, unnerving, and exciting. I'm realizing how long it's been since I've really pushed my boundaries in this particular way.  I am in completely new territory here, an unexplored landscape of my mind and body. 

My last couple of workouts have involved the same process, in this basic order:

1. Walk into Crossfit. See the WOD (workout of the day). Choose not to run away in terror.

2. Try to look cool and collected, like I'm not mentally peeing my pants.

3. Question my sanity. (The question my sanity thing continues to take place throughout the entire workout.)

4. Warm up and stretch, mentally preparing myself for hell. (Let's be honest here. Mentally preparing yourself for hell is like mentally preparing yourself for an enema. There's no way to do it. You just accept the reality of the situation and bend over.)

5. Start the workout. 

6. Hey, this isn't so bad. I can do this.

7. Ow. That doesn't feel good.

8. Oxygen!!!

9.  I might have overestimated my ability to do this. 

10. Ok, that really doesn't feel good.

11. Wait, what?? She's on her third round already???

12. Oxygen!!!

13. I can't do this. I'm not going to finish.

So, I'll stop here because this is the moment, the crucial moment where I have to venture out into new mental territory. This is that moment where I decide who I want to be, because I have that power. We all have it, you know that, right?  We all have the power to decide who we want to be. And it's in that moment, where I say to myself, "I can't do this," that someplace inside of me that I never knew existed, digs deep and pushes on. 

This is the part that's exciting to me, because I'm such a student of my brain and how it works and why it works the way it does and why I make the decisions that I do. I know myself so well. I know myself too well, I think sometimes. I'm learning where my walls are and what I need to do to climb over them. I'm learning where my limits are physically, which I underestimate constantly. Crossfit has shown me that I never really was an athlete in the sense that I'm becoming one now, because never did I hit those walls. Your lungs are on fire, your head is getting a little light, your body feels like it's giving out. You take a 5 second break to breathe and pace. You pep talk yourself. Another Crossfitter pep talks you. "C'mon, Heather. You got this, girl." And you get back in. And your lungs don't explode. And you don't faint. And you don't die. And somewhere in that next moment a new thought pops into your head.

I'M GOING TO FINISH!!!!!

I know the all caps seems a little dramatic, but this is me we're talking about after all. And it's a pretty accurate portrayal of the elation that goes through my head. I may not get through as many rounds, I may finish last, but I'm going to finish.

My body gave out on me hard today. The workout was all geared towards endurance, which is my weakest area. But guys, I finished. Every time that I hit that wall and push through it, is another day I learn more about myself and what I can do and what I will continue to do.

In other news, I've gotten a couple of FB friend requests from other Crossfitters. Which has given me the courage to send out a couple of my own. It's dorky, I know, but they have no idea how much it means to me. They don't even know how much hope I'm pinning on my success. They don't even know how much their support is part of my success. Actually, they probably do. They've all been there and they know how hard it is, and that's why they support me and everyone else who walks through those doors. And someday, I'll be the woman with the defined arms, doing air squats as if I was just filing my nails and a terrified, out of shape, overweight woman will walk into class and I will stick out my hand and say, "Hi, I'm Heather." And I will shout out her name when she feels like quitting, because if I did it, so can she.

 

Girl, please

"And you know it don't come easy"

- Ringo Starr

So, I was watching a Weight Watchers commercial last night and this woman was all excited because she'd lost over 100 pounds. And I'm sitting there watching the commercial, drinking my stupid water, and so far I'm with her. I get it. Losing 100 pounds is a crazy big deal. But then she starts talking about how easy it was. "The first 20 pounds just fell off and then I went to sleep for a week and woke up skinny!" I might have taken some artistic liberty with that last part, but honestly, that's the sense you get from the commercial, and at that point I was thinking...

I'm not knocking Weight Watchers. It's a good program. What I'm knocking is the way they portray the journey, as if changing the way you live your ENTIRE life is a piece of cake. (Mmmmmm, cake.)
What they need to show is the real story. Show us that same woman at 1:00 in the morning, cupboard open, in a death stare with a bag of Cheetos like she's Wyatt Earp at the O.K. Corral. Show us that same woman in a Zumba class at the gym, flailing like a blind baby bunny with no motor skills or muscle control, sweat pouring from places in her body she didn't even know existed. Show us that same woman, standing on her scale after a week of meticulously counting points, uttering profanities under her breath so foul it would make a truck driver blush because she only lost half a pound. That, my friends, is the reality of this journey. In short, it's hard and it sucks.

If I've learned anything in the last couple of weeks, especially in my Crossfit workouts, it's how far I truly have to go and how much work it's going to take to get me there. My body is unreliable, it's cumbersome and it's weak. And don't even get me started on my boobs. Ugh. Someone please invent a way for us to detach/attach them with Velcro or something. I see all you ladies nodding. You know what I'm talking about. I challenge all of the men out there, who think bouncing boobs are sexy, to lash a couple of huge water balloons to your chest and work out with them. Not so sexy now, are they?????

I don't want to give the impression that it's all bad. It's not. It's a relief to be doing this, to feel like I'm heading in the right direction. I'm digging my Crossfit experience. But every day, every single day, I fight to make the right choices. I fight my willpower. I fight my self-confidence. I fight my fear. I fight my frustration. I fight the urge to just quit, because that would be so much easier. I'm angry. I'm angry at myself for letting it get this bad. I'm angry at myself for not respecting my body enough, for not loving it enough and allowing it to get this weak. I'm angry at myself for waiting so long to do something about it. But it's a good anger, it's a productive anger, it motivates me to keep going.

I have months and months and months of work ahead of me. It's the hardest work I've ever done because it involves willpower on every level; physical, mental and psychological. I still doubt myself everyday. I'm scared of failing everyday. I'm physically in pain everyday. I've resigned myself to the fact that I will constantly be sore for the next year or more. And I soooooo want that bag of Cheetos, but I soooooo want to run a mile without doing my flailing blind baby bunny impersonation even more.

*Cough* *Sneeze* *Hack*

"There is one consolation in being sick; and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better state than you were ever in before." - Henry David Thoreau

Not much to report this week. I loudly (and somewhat proudly) proclaimed last weekend that I never get sick and then promptly, two days later, on my birthday, woke up sick. No Crossfit for me this week. My Crossfit coach emailed me twice to check up on me. I love that. They don't let you fall through the cracks.

On the bright side, I'm down six pounds. I'm sure some of that is water weight, but still, it's nice to be going down instead of up. I'm not all that concerned about my weight right now, I'm more focused on getting into the routine of working out and eating well. I don't want the scale to dictate my moods or be the deciding factor on what I deem as success or failure. The weight loss will happen just by virtue of my changing my lifestyle. For me the successes will exist in the small things, the choices I make every day. And failure? Not even in my vocabulary. 

With my being so sick this week, I didn't make an appointment with the doctor to talk about meds either. It's all been kind of a wash, but I'm looking forward to getting back to my routine next week. 

And I just want to say thank you to everyone who has messaged me here, on Facebook, via text, email, etc. Some of the messages have come from the most unexpected of places, but all have been sincere, encouraging, and so, so, appreciated. The wealth of my life is truly measured by the quality of the people who are in it. I am a blessed woman. Thank you for your love. You have mine. In bucketfuls. 

xo

Medication Schmedication

"Manic depression is touching my soul
I know what I want but I just don't know
How to, go about gettin' it
Feeling sweet feeling,
Drops from my fingers, fingers
Manic depression is catchin' my soul."

- Jimi Hendrix

When I was 18 (maybe 19?) a psychiatrist diagnosed me with manic depression. These days they call it bipolar disorder. She wanted to prescribe something for me at the time, but I was reluctant. My upbringing in the church taught you that if you were depressed, it was a spiritual problem, so I felt like taking medication for it was my way of saying I didn't trust God to heal me.

That word, "depression," has evolved into a regular part of our vernacular. It's become so common for people to say they are depressed, it might as well be a hang nail or a headache. I've ignored mine for over two decades. And when I say ignore, I don't mean that I don't notice it. There's this scene in the movie, "The Mission," where as penance for his sins, Robert De Niro is chained to his trunk of worldly riches and forced to drag it through the jungles of South America. When I think about my depression, I always think about that scene. I just drag it behind me wherever I go. But I'm reluctant to talk about it because I'm afraid I'll sound like one of those people using the word, "depression," like an accessory to go with my shoes. For me, it's not an accessory. It's the shoes, the pants, the entire outfit.

When I started this blog, my intention was to be as honest and candid as possible. I've already written a little bit about my deep sadness and its connection to my weight. Someone said to me recently after having read my blog, "You were the last person I would ever think would be sad." I am a caregiver and nurturer by nature. If there's a wound, I want to bind it. If there's a hurt, I want to comfort it. If there's a problem, I want to fix it. When that is your mindset, you keep your pain to yourself. I am loathe to ever let it show and so, much like the person's reaction above, I think some people will be surprised by this revelation.

Even my closest friends don't really know the depth that it goes to. Jim has lived with me long enough to see how manic I can truly be, but as much as he wants to comfort me and love me through it, I think he feels helpless and at a loss for how to help. I've done well at hiding it from my kids. Or at least I think I have, but I've noticed lately, I'm having a harder and harder time containing it. I feel like I've sprung a leak and just as I find the hole and plug it up, another one opens up. I know that psychiatric research and medicine have come a long way in twenty years and I think it might be time for me to address this. I was manic long before I was fat, so I don't attribute my weight to being the source of my sadness, but I also wonder how much my physical health aggravates an already existent problem. 

I don't know how to describe what it feels like when the darkness comes. You can sense it. It's like watching the surf build. You can feel each wave getting bigger and gaining momentum and you know it's coming. And then it hits and your mind is fuzzy, you can't think or make decisions. Your instinct is to find a place to hide. You don't want to be engaged in conversation. You want the world to disappear because interacting with the world is exhausting. Trying to act like you're fine is exhausting. Trying to not fall to pieces every five minutes is exhausting. And there's an anvil on your chest. It's heavy and it suffocates and there's no way to get away from it. All you want is to unzip your skin and walk away from it. It's madness because there is nowhere to turn, nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. It's in your bones and it's unshakeable.

This is by far the hardest thing for me to be honest about. People who know me best know that I despise emotional vulnerability. I'm not a trusting person. And although I will hold you and comfort you and do everything I can to ease your pain, the thought of putting myself in that position, to be the receiver of those things, makes me want to vomit. I've spent the last 25+ years being my own emotional caregiver, and you know what? I'm fired. Being my own emotional caregiver has led me to make some regretful and damaging choices in my life. I cannot explain how the mania and the sadness drives you, compels you. I wish I could find the words. But I know anyone who lives as a manic is nodding their head as they're reading this right now.

I've mentioned it before, but part of this journey is my desire to find mental wellness along with physical wellness. I know the two are tied closely together. The thing is, my darkness used to cycle every few months. I would get a fairly decent breather in between. But in the last year, the cycles are shortening. In the last six months, it's been almost static. There hasn't been much of a breather at all. I've taken a bath nearly every day over the last few months. They generally last about 2 hours. My family just assumes that I need some alone time. Essentially, that's true. But it's more about survival. It's about my fighting off the darkness and somehow willing myself to get through the rest of the day. It's how I hide and cope and squirrel away precious energy, energy that is drained to near empty by just being conscious and breathing. 

Guys, I need to get better. I'm going to make an appointment this week and get myself to the doctor. If I'm going to get healthy and make constructive adjustments to my relationship with food, then I need to address the main source of my sadness. And go from this:

 

To this:

 

Oh, the drama! The intrigue! The sheer cheesiness of it all. Well, what did you expect? This is my blog, after all, and I am the Queen of fromage.

Doubt

"We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face... we must do that which we think we cannot." - Eleanor Roosevelt

So, in my first fundamentals class last night, Coach Ray showed me an exercise where you grab hold of two heavy metal rings that are tethered to a support bar by long, thick, rubber resistance bands. You then lean back and walk your feet forward until you are at angle and in essence do a backwards push-up. It's all upper body and core strength and utilizing the weight of your own body to create the resistance. As I watched him demonstrate, I got nervous. I don't have a lot of faith in my upper body strength and I had visions of my arms deciding to tap out and me falling ungracefully on my butt (is there a way to fall gracefully on your butt?). But as I did my first one and realized my falling wasn't going to happen, Coach Ray smiled at me and said, "You're stronger than you think."

I have a lot of doubt. It's easy to envision yourself joining a workout program and succeeding, but once you're in the program it's game on. I officially signed my contract with Crossfit last night and am now on an 18 month, 3 class a week, program. That, in and of itself, gives me a little more confidence in the possibility of my succeeding. The greater issue, though, is my my lack of confidence in my own strength, physically and psychologically. I have this abstract notion that I'm probably stronger than I think I am, but it's not a rooted fact in my head. And as I stood in the gym last night and watched all the Crossfitters cheering each other on, I realized that part of this journey is my learning to not put limits on my strength. Everyday that I show up to work out, I will push those boundaries more and more. I don't know strong I am or how strong I can be, but I'm committed to readjusting my thinking and accepting the idea that I am much stronger than I think I am. I already see it happening in small ways. As I was completing my workout last night, I felt my body start to give, my lungs were burning, my heart was pounding and my mind hit a wall. For a nano second I thought to myself, I can't do it, but then I heard someone cheer across the room for another Crossfitter and I heard Coach Ray urging me on. I fought the doubt and I won. Small victories, yes?

There are these things called Wall Balls. Basically it's a combination squat, popping back up and throwing a medicine ball high up on the wall, catching it, and dropping back down into the squat. I can tell you right now, they are not my friend. This is me after Wall Balls:

 

And trying to sit on the toilet seat after a couple of Crossfit workouts? I sound like Maria Sharapova hitting a forehand. I won't even tell you what I sound like trying to get back up again. It's not pleasant. But I must be a masochist because I'm totally digging it. 

Ouch

"Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever." -  Lance Armstrong

Stuff hurts. And I like it. 



P.S. Yes, I know it's a Lance Armstrong quote, but regardless of what he's done, it's still a good quote. 

Oh hey there, quads. Welcome back.

"I be up in the gym just workin' on my fitness." - Stacy Ferguson

The scene: An overcast December morning. A woman is sitting in her car staring at the sign in her rear view mirror. It says, "Canyon Crossfit. Class in progress. Come on in." She has 20 minutes until she needs to be inside for her demo session. She considers driving back home. She considers going to McDonald's for an Egg McMuffin. She considers barfing. Instead, she gets out and walks in. 

I spent the first half of my life being an athlete on varying levels. Genetics gifted me with good coordination and I excelled at most sports. Until I was 20, I can't think of a time when I wasn't physically active in one way or another. First, it was tennis, and then as I got older, volleyball became my focus. I was good. I was told I had a future in the sport and the possibility of a college scholarship was not out of the question. When my parents divorced and my mom and I moved back to California, that all changed. I had a hard time finding a place in the volleyball program at my new high school and dissatisfied with my coaching, I stopped playing. Then in the summer before my senior year of high school, I learned to surf. It became such a passion that I eventually had to drop out of high school because I skipped classes so much to be at the beach. I would surf, play some beach volleyball, and then surf some more. I was a vegetarian. I was in top physical shape. It never crossed my mind that I would ever have a weight problem.

Even though I was a vegetarian, I wasn't a disciplined eater. I ate whatever I wanted, just not meat. I always stayed within a 5-10 lb. range, averaging out at around 115 lbs. I was nineteen when I got pregnant with my oldest. I was so ill in the first six months of my pregnancy that I couldn't keep any food down except for a tablespoon of white rice every hour or so. I threw up multiple times a day. I lost eleven pounds in a week. When I could finally eat again, all my body craved was protein, so I went to In-N-Out and got a Double Double. That was the end of my being a vegetarian. That was also the end of my being thin. I ate and ate and ate. I'd gone without food for so long, I wanted to eat everything I saw. My last two months of pregnancy were in late summer and we were in a heatwave. I drank juice by the glassful. Do you know how many calories are in a glass of juice? I sure didn't. I'd never payed attention to calories before. In my last three months of pregnancy, I gained 50 lbs. And I didn't stop. Four years later, when I got pregnant with my second son, I weighed at the beginning of that pregnancy what I'd weighed at the end of my first pregnancy. Since 2002, I haven't been under 200 lbs.

I've tried a lot of things to get healthy. Going to the gym and taking exercise classes. Swimming laps. Walking. Weight Watchers. Veganism. All of those things worked, to an extent, but I always quit. A few years back, a friend of mine joined Crossfit. She doesn't even know (until now) how much her activities in Crossfit caught my attention. What impressed me the most was the Crossfit community. As she put up pictures on Facebook, I noticed that more and more of them included Crossfit people. Pretty soon the bulk of her social life seemed to be with her Crossfit community. I liked that. I checked out Crossfit for myself and balked at the cost. I couldn't rationalize spending that kind of money, on a monthly basis, on me alone. For my entire family, yes, for me, no. Until now. 

It's a miracle that I don't have Type 2 Diabetes. But I will. It's a miracle I don't have high cholesterol and high blood pressure. But I will. It's a miracle I don't have back or joint problems. But I will. And who knows what else? When I think about the amount of money I've spent over the last twenty years on excess food and drink and when I think about the amount of money I could wind up spending on future health problems, Crossfit's cost didn't seem so daunting anymore.

And here's the thing. I was alone or basically invisible when I went to the gym. No one noticed me, no one was by my side encouraging me. And even though Weight Watchers is set up to have some level of accountability, it still wasn't enough for me. I need a person or people who know my name, who are calling me on the phone if I don't show up for class, who are standing next to me encouraging me to finish those last five push-ups. 

I was TERRIFIED on my way to Crossfit today. I'd scheduled my demo session and it was time to put up or shut up. I'd woken up at 2:00 am and my mind was racing and full of anxious thoughts about that first session. I couldn't fall back asleep. At 5:00 am I colored my hair and then shaved my legs clean in the shower. I even shaved my knees. If I was going to be all jiggly and sweaty at Crossfit, at least I'd be jiggly and sweaty with smooth legs and no gray hairs. I am not exaggerating when I say that within the first five minutes, I was no longer terrified. I was relieved to see fat people and skinny people, old people and young people, out of shape and in shape people, all in the same class. AND THEN I found out my demo session was one on one, which I didn't know. Holy cow, what a relief. Coach Ray, the co-owner of Canyon Crossfit, talked to me, just talked, for over an hour. Then he showed me around and I did a basic workout. I repeat, this is a BASIC workout, but today I pulled off:

500 meters on the rowing machine

40 squats

30 sit-ups

20 push-ups (modified, of course)

20 alternating box steps

I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but trust me when I say, for this broken down body, it was a lot. And it's going to get A LOT harder before it gets easier. Prior to starting the actual group classes, I will go through six fundamental classes where I will learn all of the Crossfit techniques and exercises. I start my first one on Tuesday night. You guys, guess what? I'm stoked. When I walked up the stairs to sit at my computer, my legs felt like they were made of Jello. I love that feeling. I feel like I've accomplished something. And I loved everything that I was exposed to today at Crossfit. Coach Ray made me feel welcome and at home. This is exactly what I was looking for. I know it's merely the beginning of a very long journey, but I feel relieved and proud and hopeful. 

I don't think I ever stopped being an athlete, I just took a little time off. 

Oh, and by the way, a little shout out to Lauren, my favorite ninja, who (without even knowing it) led me to Crossfit. I'll let you know when I complete my first Murph.

You're so vain. I bet you think this post is about you.

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”  - Fyodor Dostoevsky 

The internet allows us to filter how people perceive us. We can remove or untag ourselves from pictures that aren't flattering. We can appear far more noble or witty or compassionate than we truly are via Facebook updates and Tweets. In essence, the internet has made it easy for us to lie. I am guilty of being a part of that lie. Obviously, to the people you see in real life, that masquerade can't be pulled off, but my vanity has definitely influenced what I want people to see of me.

Or, perhaps it's not so much vanity as it is shame. I'm ashamed of what's become of me. I'm ashamed by my lack of self-control. I'm ashamed to be fat. Should I be? I don't know. I think for some fat people there is this fear deep down that people won't accept you, won't love you as much. I know that's not healthy and it's not reality, but shame does weird things to your brain.

All I know is I don't want to hide who I am anymore. I don't want to be that person who tries to manipulate their online image for the sake of their vanity. I know some people will read this and think, "Who cares what people on the internet think?" and they'd be right. What people on the internet think does not matter, but when you struggle so much with your own self image, it's easy to look for validation from sources that shouldn't and don't matter.

Part of what I want to do with this blog and my journey to physical/mental wellness, is to find a healthy balance between body acceptance and body obsession. Ultimately, my shame IS vanity and I don't want that to be the thing that inspires me to wellness because that's not healthy either. I don't want to do this because I'm vain or ashamed, I want to do this because it's what's best for me. Perhaps my acknowledgement of that is a sign I'm headed in the right direction.

I heard someone say once that we should be content IN our circumstances but not necessarily WITH our circumstances. In other words, I need to accept who I am today and be okay with that, but that doesn't mean I don't strive to be better tomorrow.

Here's to a better me tomorrow, and the tomorrow after that, and the tomorrow after that...........

Honesty

"I guess I don't so much mind being old, as I mind being fat and old" - Benjamin Franklin

Disclaimer: This is my journey, from my perspective. Nothing written in this blog is meant as a judgment upon anyone else's lifestyle or eating/exercise habits. I believe there are people who can be happy and content at any size. I applaud those people who have found contentment in their own bodies, no matter what kind of shape they are in. This blog is about me finding the same contentment and what that entails. I may not always make sense, I'm merely going to write what I feel. I'm going to attempt to be as honest as possible about what's going on in my head. My successes and my failures will be documented with painstaking honesty. One of the things I will endeavor to do in this blog is discuss the thought processes and patterns of a fat person. That doesn't mean all fat people think like me or behave like me, but I do think there is quite a bit of commonality in those of us who have chosen food over health. And I do hope that there will be someone out there who reads my words and finds companionship in them. This is my therapy, and I hope on some level, it can be yours, too.

I weigh 248 lbs. I am five feet, four inches, tall. According to most weight charts, I should weigh between 120 and 140 lbs. I am over 100 lbs. overweight, which puts me in the morbidly obese category.

Morbidly obese. Morbidly obese. Those are real words and they apply to me. Morbid is defined as, "Of the nature of or indicative of disease." I would be the first person to admit that I have a disease. Denial has never been an issue. I know I have a problem. Food is my problem. I am addicted to food. I've been in some unhealthy relationships, but none more unhealthy than my relationship with food. But, why? Why has food become so important to me that I have allowed it to take over my life?

My husband doesn't like it when I call myself fat. It's sweet. I think it's his way of letting me know that he doesn't care, and I believe him. We've been together since high school and his attraction to me has never waned. He thought I was beautiful when I was skinny and he thinks I'm beautiful now. I love him for that. Sometimes, I wish it bothered him a little, just to motivate me. I'm sure I wouldn't feel that way if I was one of those women who was married to a man that had issues with their weight gain. If Jim was the type of guy who commented about my weight, I'd probably just want to crawl into a hole and die.

The thing is, though, I already want to crawl into a hole and die. I'm not saying that to be dramatic. I'm not saying that to elicit some sort of sympathy. It's just a fact. I am sad all the time. All. The. Time. I don't talk about it with my friends. Or my family. Who wants to be around that kind of negativity? But the truth is, every year that goes by, I am sadder than I was the year before. My sadness has reached debilitating proportions. I told Jim the other night that I could actually see myself becoming a shut-in. Sitting up at my computer, eating, drinking, watching Netflix in the dark. I don't want to go out. I don't want to be seen. It takes too much energy to figure out what to wear. What can I put on that will hide my fat back rolls? What can I put on that will hide my double belly? Yeah, the double belly. That's a real joy. That happens when you've accumulated so much fat in your stomach that it actually creases in the middle and breaks itself up into two parts. You totally want me now. Admit it.

So, what is stopping me from becoming a shut-in? What's stopping me from giving up? I honestly can't tell you. I feel hopeless. I feel, in a lot of ways, like the battle has already been fought and I've lost. I've tried so many times to fix me, with minor success. I can't put my finger on it, I'm not sure why, but there is something inside telling me that if I don't do it now, I won't ever. I keep gaining weight. I've showed no signs of slowing down. When I got pregnant with my oldest child in December of 1989, I weighed 115 lbs. That's 133 lbs. in twenty-two years. Broken out, that's 6 lbs. a year, which means in ten more years, I could weigh over 300 lbs.

I can't watch videos of myself from gigs I do with the band. What's odd is when I'm up there, performing, I forget that I'm fat. I feel good. But later, when I watch the videos, I'm horrified and humiliated. It doesn't help that videos are shot from below. Trust me, from below is not my best angle. I've got this chin thing, I call it my goiter, and there's nothing like a little from-below video to make my goiter really stand out.

Being on stage is the ONLY time I forget that I'm fat. I think I can speak for most fat people when I say that you never, ever, forget that you're fat. When you're watching t.v., you're reminded that you're fat. When you read a magazine, you're reminded that you're fat. When you go shopping for clothes, you're reminded that you're fat (we'll discuss the hideous clothes made for fat people another time), when you're on a plane or on an amusement park ride or in a movie theater or in a booth at a restaurant, you're reminded that you're fat. When you're sitting in the bathtub trying to shave your legs, you're REALLY reminded that you're fat. I haven't looked at myself naked in the mirror for months. I try to avoid looking at myself in the mirror unless absolutely necessary. When I make plans with friends to go out, the anxiety is overwhelming. Odds are I will be the fattest one in the group. I hate it. And here's the weird thing about being fat, even though you feel completely conspicuous (because you just tried to squeeze between two chairs in a bar and wound up pulling the hair of the woman sitting in one of the chairs because it got caught between your belly and the back of her chair), you also feel invisible. Being fat can make you feel marginalized. You feel as if your status as a human being has been reduced.

I know so far all I've really talked about are things that would fall under the category of vanity, how I look and judging myself based on how I look. Well, to an extent, that's true. We all have eyeballs. We see each other, and whether we want to admit it or not, we are affected by what we see and how we are seen. Does that mean I support us as a society being obsessed with our appearance and basing our value on that? Of course not. Do I want my daughter to value herself based on her brain and her heart? Of course I do and every human being SHOULD be valued in the same way. I base someone's value on who they are, not how they look, and I'm grateful to have people in my life who value me in the same way. In this instance, however, that's not the point. This is about how I feel about myself. This is about me relinquishing control of my body, and ultimately, my mind, to a damaging lifestyle. This is about me attempting to get my body AND my mind healthy. I am so sick of being sad. I am so sick of feeling like a failure. I am so sick of feeling worthless. I've spent the last 22 years taking care of everyone else but me. I don't regret the choice to do that, I love my people, but now, now it's my time. It's time to reclaim myself. If I don't do it now, I fear it will ultimately be the end of that part of me that's somewhere inside still fighting. The me that wants to body surf again. The me that wants to be able to run at a full sprint again. The me that doesn't get out of breath just carrying the laundry up the stairs. The me that wants to go to the skating rink with my kids and not need to stop and take a break every couple of laps. The me that wants to hike trails and climb mountains and ride my bike for miles without having every muscle in my body hand me a Dear John letter afterwards.

I've spent years blaming my sadness on other things: my marriage, my family, money, work, anything and everything. And then I stopped to think, really think, about the times over the last couple of decades where I've felt good about myself, where my head was in a good place. Every single one of those times has involved me taking care of myself. You'd think recognizing that would be enough of a catalyst to get me to change my habits, but that's the other thing about sadness, it holds you down. It's an impossible cycle. You eat because you're sad, you're sad because you eat, you get fatter because you eat, being fatter makes you even sadder, so you eat more. It's an addiction like any other drug or alcohol, but the problem with food is you can't not eat. An alcoholic eliminates alcohol from their life. A drug addict eliminates the drug out of their life. A food addict cannot eliminate food out of their life. The thing that you're addicted to, you can't get away from, you have to keep putting it in your body just to live. I know that's why I fail. No matter how good I feel about myself when I'm eating right and exercising, the addiction pulls me back in. I have to figure out how to break myself of the habit and be addiction free once and for all.

So, what's different this time? When I'm sad, I hide. I pull back from the people that love me the most. I see myself regressing more and more. I know that's not me. I don't want that to be me. In the past, I've done this by myself and failed. It's too hard to do alone. I need to make this journey public in order to pull in a community of people around me. Instead of hiding, I want to put it all out there, in the hope that there will be a level of accountability. I adore my family, but they don't hold me accountable. In fact, if you polled each one of them, not one would say they believe I'll actually do this. They've seen me try and fail too many times. I get it. I don't believe in me either, but I want to. I really want to.

I go to my Crossfit demo session Sunday morning and then will be signing up on an 18 month contract. From what I've seen and heard, Crossfit is the type of workout program I need in my life. I'm going to get my butt handed to me. I'm excited and terrified all at the same time. I'm going to go find a good sports bra tomorrow. It will be humiliating enough without my boobs making a scene.

I'll let you know how it goes.