*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.