a keen life

Last week I received my (autographed!) copy of Jennette Fulda/Pasta Queen’s brand spanking new book, Half Assed: A Weight Loss Memoir. I have only been reading Jennette’s blog for a month or so, but I was so charmed by her sense of humor and her incredible journey that it only took me a couple days to read through her ENTIRE archives. It was a very tasty, satisfying blog binge, and it made me want more.

Her book was very satisfying on a completely different level, though, because she talks more about her philosophy of life, about the human moments, and about the inevitable childhood history stuff. If I thought she seemed like a cool chick after reading her blog (three parts humor, one part nerd), that impression was only deepened by the time I finished her book. I’m most drawn to her level-headed take on the world, and to her particular brand of fitness, which started with what was possible (a slow treadmill walk in the privacy of her home) and built up as she gained strength and confidence (marathon training outdoors in the cold rain!).That is the kind of approach I want to have: do what is possible, every day.

Since her story has been inspiring to me, I’ve been following the Blog Tour, where Jennette hopscotches around the web for interviews and other fun stuff. I was surprised to read the comments on Big Fat Deal’s interview, which started with basic Fat Acceptance and Health At Every Size stuff I had gleaned from PQ’s book & blog and other sources, and branched off into issues and anger that really made me think critically about how I approach health and bodysize.

The reason I started this blog was to write about the experience of incorporating a healthy lifestyle with my getting-stronger-every-day self esteem, which used to act like an invisible black hole, sucking the energy out of me on previous weight loss or fitness attempts. Without loving myself, I wasn’t able to find a balance between exercise, good nutrition, and good mental health.

Jennette said something in the Big Fat Deal interview that really resonated with me: “Self-acceptance isn’t the same thing as self satisfaction.” Meaning, if I love myself, that doesn’t mean that I have to be content with how my heart struggles as I lug around 90-plus pounds of extra fat. The opposite of PQ’s statement is also true: self satisfaction (lower weight, for instance) isn’t the same thing as self-acceptance. If this were true, no skinny person would ever have low self-esteem, right? It’s important not to take external indicators (weight, clothing sizes) as a proxy for truly feeling good in your own mind, even if they temporarily make you feel good. There is not a single tiny sundress in the universe that could negate that feeling of worthlessness that can steal over me in darker moments.

I think it’s these feelings that make me identify with the Health At Every Size movement, in some respects. But frankly, some of the comments to that original BFD interview were startling for their vehement rejections of Jennette’s views. For example, in discussing how she was shunned from a Fat Acceptance forum for trying to lose weight, Jennette made a comparison to hair color: “If I didn’t like being a brunette, no one would give me shit about dying my hair blonde.” For this statement, many BFD commenters took her to task for refusing to acknowledge the mechanisms of privilege that favor thinness in society and cast fatness as a moral hazard. (On the contrary, through her writing I think I would say she’s acutely aware of how privilege can work for or against a person.) However, there was also a lot of comments where I was uncomfortable with how her weight loss was seen as a silent (or not so very silent) rebuke to the Fat Acceptance community. Or at least certain commenters seemed to take it that way — that her positive message was entirely tied up with weight loss rather than fitness and self acceptance.

Maybe I want to defend Jennette (though she does an admirable job by herself!) because I’m still working out my own ideas of how to reconcile the goals of fitness and weight loss. Maybe I have been sheltered from the kind of “diets” that people rebel against, the ones based on temporary starvation or restriction — maybe I really was brainwashed by all those health classes about exercise and eating good food (even if I was maybe also getting brainwashed by the dairy and meat councils!), because aside from a brief and very sad episode of depression-induced anorexia, I have never attempted to lose weight in an unhealthy way. In an unhappy way, yes, but for the most part I gravitate towards good nutrition, balanced blood sugar, and plain old healthy exercise.

I tend to see healthy eating and exercise as goals unto themselves, though I do still get cranky when I don’t see the scale numbers going down. What if I became truly fit, a running swimming biking climbing walking skating leaping wondergirl, but I was still “fat”? That is the real challenge. That is where self acceptance really has to kick in, to override all those negative societal messages about “acceptable” body size.

I really don’t believe in weight loss for weight loss’s sake — I do believe in the endorphin high of holding a plank, or training to do full push-ups, or feeling my legs wobble deliciously after a long and vigorous walk. I believe in good food, and in learning not to use food as a way to regulate my emotions. I believe in gardening, and walking around the neighborhood, and stretching my mind to imagine a world in which I feel fabulous.

Is it wrong that I also think all these things will result in a smaller self? I’d be lying if I said I didn’t care about that part, because I do, deeply so. But I will get there with my self-esteem intact, and I’m not going to wait for some mythical number on the scale to magically grant me that feeling of happiness and satisfaction.

Okay, I have been in a food funk and it hasn’t been fun. Two weeks ago I decided to hold a Vegetarian Experiment. I bought tons of dark green veggies to anchor my meals, plus whole grains and vegetarian protein sources. I renewed my commitment to bringing yummy healthy lunches to work, and healthy snacks to avoid afternoon hunger attacks. That first week, I was doing great!

Then for some reason, last week, I arrived home and promptly threw a week-long Kitchen Tantrum. Have you ever done this? For me, it usually takes the form of coming home hungry, looking at all the tasty food in my fridge, and declaring that I refuse to eat any of it! I grump around refusing to cook and getting hungrier by the minute, until I annoy my husband and he promises to get take-out food for us, if only I’ll make an order and stop whining.

Ha! Good plan, Jesse! So how did that work out for you? Oh right, it didn’t. I ate too much, felt too full of delicious yet unhealthy food, and felt guilt gathering like a storm cloud above my head. And then, shockingly, I did not lose weight! (Ha! However, I didn’t gain, either. Though I did go back up to my original bodyfat measurement, negating the bodyfat loss I begrudgingly celebrated in my last entry.)

I’m not really clear on what was the purpose or cause of this little freak out. During my second “vegetarian” week I sure did eat a lot of meat in those take-out meals! But was I craving protein, or Chinese food? Was I too tired to cook, or was I sick of eating healthy foods? Either way, it’s too late. I could go around in circles forever trying to answer these questions.

Fact: It was all delicious but it didn’t feel good: this is a new week and I want to feel good about eating dinners again! I could make falafel again (and bake it this time instead of frying), roast some balsamic broccoli, do veggie skewers on the new grill, melt some mushrooms a la Julia Child, make another quiche.

Here are some eating solutions I am going to try:

1. Ask sweet darling husband to be in charge of making two dinners, thus absolving myself of part of the mental burden;
2. Commit to waking up 15 minutes early to eat breakfast at home instead of at work;;
3. Stock up on pre-made frozen dinners;
4. Buy 100-calorie pudding cups for guilt-free PM chocolate cravings;
5. Buy those damn chocolate Clif Bars if I love them so much, and keep them at work for REAL snacks.

On PEERtrainer, where I still sporadically track my food intake, I sometimes glance down at my Personal Notes section, where I wrote a long time ago, “To reduce weight, aim for 1500 calories per day, and get at least 45 minutes of exercise per day.” That amount of calories is right around where this Recommended Daily Calorie Intake Calculator says I should aim for a 2lb/week loss. Counting extra fuel for exercise and occasional treats, it might be better to aim for 1700-1800 instead.

Blah, blah blah. Listen to me babble on! The point is that I am NOT EXERCISING DAILY, nor am I really hitting anywhere close to that calorie range. I am not dedicating enough energy to my plans, or I am rebelling and deliberately sabotaging myself. So that 1500 cals/45 mins goal is off in some perfect world, and here I am doodling around and getting nowhere fast.

If I do nothing else this week aside from take a forced leave from take-out, I need to focus on exercise. I went to see a new physician last week (a small personal victory I’ll have to write about one day) and when I told her about my changes in diet and exercise, she said that the most important thing I can do is exercise whenever possible. Screw dieting, screw losing weight — just exercise, often, and don’t stop. I think I can live with that. It reminds me of my favorite food advice from Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food, “Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

So to match with my plan above for better eating habits this week, here are a few things I am doing to remedy the lack of daily exercise in my life:

1. Buy new sneakers so I don’t fear plantar fascitis on long walks;
2. Attend yoga at work every Wednesday (new session starts this week!);
3. Join the weekly walking group at work, too;
4. Do one-hour walking route at home twice a week;
5. Bike rides twice a week in the evenings.

If I have two days of exercise at work (yoga and walking group) that will help me fill in the rest of the days without getting overwhelmed by routines. I have other rumblings of ideas (including but not limited to the Gym At Work and Wii Fit) that will have to wait a little while. For this coming week, however, here’s hoping that I can incorporate new ideas and renewed courage and confidence with my plans.

Some days I feel I am moving mental mountains just to face reality.

Here’s a good example: for the last couple weeks I have being going up and down a pound without any real loss. Just hanging out around 211 or 212, then 211 again, then maybe 213, no big deal.

However! My bodyfat percentage has definitely gone down, from 44% to 42.5% since I started using the Physics Diet tracker last week. That is a loss of 3.28 pounds of fat!

I am having to FORCE myself to accept this as a victory. My instinct is to write it off as a glitch in the inaccurate scale. But hey, wait a damn minute. That’s a fancy scale! I spent $60 on it at Amazon! Not only that, but I have spent the last six weeks dragging my sleepy ass out of bed every morning and doing absurd little exercises for core strength. I have been building muscle, and feeling stronger! (But, but! A tiny voice protests inside my head. I’m only halfway convinced that this body is capable of change!)

Hey, self, you know what? You are doing good stuff and here is a result: measurable lost fat and gained muscle. Voila! You rock. Let’s rock it harder, and go for that walk after work you’ve got planned.

Pep talks aside, I have to point out here how useful Physics Diet really is. This is not just a chart — there is some seriously nerdtastic math hanging out in the background that creates a moving average that you can focus on. As they say, this cuts out the “noise” of otherwise small up-and-down movements over time. Instead of a simple trend, you have the Bigger Picture laid out nice and easy for you to see, in a simple black line that cuts through the noisy jags of change.

I love it and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Without the moving average of the Physics Diet chart, I might think I’m going nowhere fast. But thanks to paying attention to the trend of the numbers, and the important background numbers of bodyfat percentages, I can see change where before I might have seen just a hazy flat line.

The moral of this story is: Never underestimate the power of a visual aid! In my case, it really is moving mountains.

It’s hard to do anything in life when you think that you have only two options:

1. Fail spectacularly in a terrified stupor, or:
2. Hide under the covers.

But that is really how low self-esteem works! The rare middle ground lasts mere moments, and for me was usually like this: Holy cow I am flying so high and I feel really good oh shit this can’t be real wow the ground is approaching real fast. [Splat.]

I read a great article today in the NY Times, “Can you become a creature of new habits?” (May 4, 2008) that made me think about this stuff. Dawna Markova and M.J. Ryan posit that there are three states of existence that we move through when seeking change: a zone of comfort, stretch or stress.

Comfort is the realm of existing habit. Stress occurs when a challenge is so far beyond current experience as to be overwhelming. It’s that stretch zone in the middle — activities that feel a bit awkward and unfamiliar — where true change occurs.

Fearful thinking (fat thinking) makes me think there is only Safe and on the other side, Scary. There’s no such thing as Stretch in between! Because sticking around in that “awkward and unfamiliar” state takes guts. Elsewhere in the article, Markova says, “You cannot have innovation unless you are willing and able to move through the unknown and go from curiosity to wonder.”

And that curiosity, for me, requires a bit of self-love. Otherwise, my curiosity turns harsh and all I can see is a myriad of awful, damning faults. I have to be curious and gentle, and I have to be willing to let that curiosity morph into wonder and excitement. That’s the feeling I had when I rode a bicycle last week for the first time in over a decade. That’s the feeling I have when I go walking somewhere new and I find beautiful places and can feel my legs moving strongly beneath me. That’s the feeling I want to feel more and more. It’s nice to know, from the researchers profiled in this article, that this feeling will help me become more aware of the world and change ingrained habits.

Writing here about this part of my life might be new, but I have been doing the yo-yo dance of diets and exercise for quite some time. Previously, I had catalogued some of this stuff over at PeerTrainer, which was an awesome place to get some community support, though that part of it eventually took up too much time to be useful. But I do have archived food and exercise logs there, going back to 2006!

It would be nice to travel back to 2006. Back then, I was training intensely to be on a roller derby team. I was down to 172 pounds, but man was I working hard for it! Not only was I walking a lot during my daily commute (1 mile plus a million stairs), but I was going to the gym at least three times a week for cardio work, doing Eight Minutes in the Morning for core strength plus 90 crunches, and going for long walks after dinner with my sweetie. All that PLUS two team practices every week, which was over two hours of intense skating drills for endurance, skills and strength. No wonder the pounds were dropping off each week!

But isn’t it funny how even with all that weight loss, I still didn’t think it was real? My instinct now is to say that my analog scale must have been wildly inaccurate. But is that true? The real problem is that my mental image of myself is so fixed that I don’t think I look that different today at 212 lbs than I did back then at 172. I was just as unhappy about how my body looked back then; even though I was incredibly proud of my muscles, I felt all my wobbly bits were just as wobbly. To my mind, even at a lower weight, I’m still the same: I have always worn fat pants. I have always disliked my arms. I have always had this belly that gets in my way, and these thighs that rub together when I walk. I have never been able to cross my legs comfortably.

Here’s another key part of that sad litany: I never got that good at rollerskating.

The awesome time I spent training with the roller derby team was cut short by a really bad ankle break and surgery, forcing me to spend all summer in bed and a whole year recovering the strength to walk. Well, at least, that’s the simple version of that story. The more honest version of that story is that my self-esteem was still so fragile back then. I didn’t even think of it as a problem. But it created so many problems, after that one simple injury.

When I was carried out of roller derby practice on a stretcher that fateful afternoon, I was in such intense pain and shock from my broken ankle but I waved to my teammates like a beauty queen, smiling at them. They cheered me on. My captains visited me in the hospital and brought flowers. And I was determined to put on a brave face. It was only later, when the reality of my injury set in, that I started to break myself down in retrospect, blaming myself for the injury, blaming the team leaders for not protecting me, feeling stupid and alone and vulnerable, hating acquaintances for offering support, miserable from the pain and the immobility all summer long, and my hobbled attempts to walk all that next year. I stayed away from roller derby like the plague. I told myself they didn’t want me, they were glad to get rid of me, and they didn’t understand my injury at all. I completely erased myself from the team, the better to pretend I had never tried at all, I thought. I berated myself internally for having the audacity to be a moving, happy, experimenting human being. I let my lack of skating skill stand in for a lack of worthiness – even though I was a complete beginner! With potential! Picking up new skills quickly! I let my one mistake, my one wrong turn that led to a bad injury, become symbolic of what I felt was an essentially flawed self, who had been justly and severely punished for daring to aim high.

What I had really done was to punish myself for being happy. I didn’t get injured because I was stupid, and my injury didn’t damn me to some eternal hell of unhappy Never To Skate Or Dare Again, though I let it do that for a long time.

Before my injury, I was training to do full pushups! I wore a skirt to work one day and my thighs didn’t rub together. I learned to do crossovers and turning toe stops the week before my injury! I had not remembered this stuff at all, until I re-read it in my old logs. I was happy, positive, sweaty and alive. But having zero self-esteem, I thought I deserved my accidental injury, and I broke down all my memories to convince myself I had never made any progress.

I remember feeling very resentful of the world when I was injured, because I didn’t think anybody understood how bad it was, how much pain I went through, how it complicated even the simplest things in my life. But the real problem was that no one understood how this injury had laid bare all my hatred for myself, all my self-recriminations and anger and vulnerabilities. I wasn’t just caring for a healing ankle, I was trying to live through a crisis of spirit. I truly believed I had been stupid, that it had been my fault. That one injury allowed me to unleash my worst feelings toward myself, and that is what made everything truly difficult. Not the crutches, but the feeling that people were justified in ignoring me and not holding the door open. Not the swelling in my leg, but the feeling that I was so ugly that everybody would be disgusted if they knew. Not the physical immobility, but the fact that I was stuck inside my own head, and I didn’t like what I saw.

I want to say that two and a half years later, I have climbed out of that internal darkness, but it is still something I struggle with. The simplest explanation is that I gained weight last year because I couldn’t exercise due to injury, and I was in graduate school so I couldn’t devote a lot of time or energy to eating healthy. But the truth is that I was also struggling with a deep void within myself, and I was covering over that void with class work and good grades and planning for life after graduation.

I don’t want to be driven by fear or boredom, and I don’t want to build a “happy” body that is incapable of sustaining emotional setbacks. It’s tricky when self-love and weight loss are so closely tied together. The steps I’m taking today don’t feel radically different from before, but I suppose they are animated by more love, a greater desire to be out in the world and see things, by the knowledge that loving myself allows me to love the world. It’s a lesson to me that I am so shocked to re-read of my successes in roller skating before my injury, just as it is shocking to see old pictures of myself in which I look downright cute (when I know for a fact I hated my body back then). If I can’t love myself, it won’t matter how much energy I put into losing weight – because it won’t feel good and I won’t sustain healthy habits if they’re not rooted in something much, much bigger and deeper than simple numbers.

I’m making some changes in my life. Here is my blog where I want to blab on and on about it!

I want to start this blog by cataloging everything that I think is wrong with me — but that’s part of the problem. I want to start with numbers and metrics and Iron Clad Plans, but that’s part of the problem, too. I do want to talk about all of this, though, and that is a big change, and perhaps the best place to start.

Okay, but I do have to talk about what I want to change, right? Here goes: I don’t want to be overweight. If you want to get technical about it, the BMI scale places me squarely in the obese range. I am 5′5″ and 213 pounds, and I barely fit into size 18 pants and XL tops. I have always been The Fat Girl, in my mind. It’s true what they say, that fat is a state of mind, because it’s not about being fat, it’s about not liking yourself. In 2001, in fact, I hated myself so much that I starved myself to a normal weight. But did I ever like my body? Heck no! I had zero self-esteem, and I was convinced that my wobbly stomach, thick thighs, and lumpy hips were still enormous, exactly as bad as they had always been. In fact, I would say that I disliked my body as much back then as I dislike it today, when I’m carrying over 90 pounds of excess fat. The whole time, I told myself that I would be happy if only I was skinny! Oh the magical life of slimness! It would be full of fun and love and beauty!

So what I want to do is change my way of thinking. I don’t just need to eat more vegetables and get more exercise, I need to affirm my love for myself and a self-image that incorporates active living. My lifelong fat thinking has taught me that as a fat person, I don’t go on walks out of the blue, and I don’t go have fun in a park just to enjoy a beautiful day. But what am I waiting for? What is the point of that waiting? There is not some “You Must Be This Thin To Enjoy This Activity” sign I need to worry about.

I need to start living like I enjoy life today, because I do, and I can, and I will. I can’t hide away and exercise in private until one day I can emerge newly toned and fit and ready to enjoy life! The mentality of hiding away until I’m “ready” is the same mentality that keeps me eating bad foods, or sitting on the couch feeling too dejected to go for a walk. I might not have gained all this weight in some deep dark cave, but I’ve certainly been holding my true self hostage in the dark for a long time. I made myself feel bad for wanting life, for enjoying life, because I didn’t deserve any of that if I was so fat.

Hiding in the quiet, too fearful to face my own self in the mirror or even the thoughts in my head? That is the mentality that allowed me to gain weight while pretending it didn’t matter, or it would be fixed later, or it was unfixable entirely. Part of my journey to a healthier life will be learning it is okay to be out in the real world, being every inch my glorious human self. I have to remind myself that I deserve good things, I deserve love and health and fun because I am putting good energy out into the universe, damnit! For so long I thought I was permanently in debt for every extra ounce I carried on my body, that no matter how good I was, it could never make up for my fatness. Now I’m learning that I have to take care of myself now, and love myself now, or that Future Beautiful Self will never emerge. My Beautiful Self is who I am now.

Anyway. That’s what I’m doing here. I want to write about making a beautiful life, loving myself through movement and good food.