Lately, it seems that gardening is most of my exercise. On the plus side, I have harvested about a gallon and a half of snap peas and peapods, which make amazingly tasty and healthy snacks, not to mention I’ve prepared about eight million tomatoes, onions, eggplants, zucchini, beans, potatoes and cucumbers for equally tasty and healthy meals later this summer. On the less positive side, I’m not being as active as I’d like to be! I go into the garden daily, but the strenuous tasks (transplanting, heavy weeding) really only occur once per week.

These past two weeks there have been some mitigating factors, including a week-long heatwave that led into a week where Yoga class was canceled, and then this whole July Fourth weekend which has generally thrown my routines off. But also, hey, a good deal of laziness. Not bringing a gym bag to work, not making time after dinner to take a walk when I’d rather watch tv or read, you know how it goes.

The only nice thing is that despite only exercising 2-3 times per week, I’ve been losing weight consistently for the past two weeks! After gaining about five pounds on my ill-fated trip to Chicago, I exercised a bunch and then made some small changes to my diet. On PhysicsDiet.com, where I track my weight and bodyfat percentage, these two weeks of weight loss have slowly tipped my average back down towards loss after it had skewed toward a gain for so long! This feels like a tremendous triumph, much moreso than the loss itself.

I shouldn’t minimize the loss, though. From my highest post-Chicago weight, I have lost a total of eight pounds. Woohoo! It feels really good. I’ve talked about this before, but my eating habits feel really good right now. Two small breakfasts, salad/light lunch, afternoon snack, normal dinner, fewer sugary treats. Nothing groundbreaking, duh, but I do notice that my food cravings have changed dramatically. Is it because I’m eating less sugar in general? Fewer carbs? (But I’m not really avoiding them…afternoon snacks are sometimes crackers, for example.) More leafy greens and more fiber? Am I just happier, so I’m more inclined to make healthy choices for my body? Whatever is going on, it’s working!

Now I just need to add back in a little more exercise and keep this wave of positivity moving in the right direction.

Hi! Bless me, blogosphere, It has been 10 days since my last post. I didn’t go anywhere! I wasn’t sick and I didn’t fall off any wagons. I did have a little crisis of conscience, though.

The same day I wrote my last post, I had a really difficult therapy session and it seemed like all my healthy ideas and goals went whooshing out the window. Since then, I’ve been thinking and thinking about it, and going in little mental circles, and then trying to write about in my paper journal, and not quite failing but not making sense of it either. I realize I was waiting for it to really resolve itself before I wrote here about it, but now it seems like one of those large mental events, like a switch going off, where I have to rebuild a sense of momentum and security, not because I lost it but because my fundamental assumptions about life have changed. (Notice how I am writing alllll about the problem but not really mentioning the problem! This, too, is part of the problem.)

I realized that I like to keep secrets from myself. That is, I like to think I can. It’s taken me a couple weeks to figure out that maybe this is a case of Fat Thinking at work. The more mundane version goes like this: if I am ashamed of my body for being fat (a self-esteem issue I haven’t quite resolved), then perhaps if I don’t shop in a fat girl store or appear to dive for the last brownie then no one will know I am fat! Ridiculous, right? If anyone cares at all, they can just look right at my body and have their own private thoughts, end of story. I can’t control how others perceive me, only how I choose to perceive my self. This is how I try to keep secrets from myself: If I’m trying to improve my self-esteem, then I shouldn’t focus on weight numbers, because it’s getting fit that really counts! Ignore the fact that I don’t feel good in my body (back pain is a good example) because admitting I want to lose weight means I’m not focusing on self-esteem. Therefore, think about Health At Every Size and self-esteem all day long, and completely ignore that voice inside that says I want to lose weight (even though, as I’ve said before, I secretly think that pursuing my Good Girl goals of fitness and good food will lead to weight loss anyway).

But! Where am I focusing my energy? Every morning I refuse to drink water until I’ve gone to the bathroom, done my 10-min morning exercises, and taken a shower, at which point I weigh myself and record my info at Physics Diet. I try to eat healthily, but I don’t plan out meals and I totally abandon healthy eating on some weekends, and then get frustrated on Monday when I’ve gained a pound or more. My therapist asked me, what will make you feel good? I didn’t hesitate to respond, “lose weight.” In essence, I’ve set myself up for failure if I have a secret goal of weight loss that directly conflicts with my other goal, which is to accept myself for who I am.

Pondering all this, a good friend prompted me to think about whether I would accept stagnation in my career because I thought I was “supposed” to like my job, when in reality it sucked and my ambitions were higher. The answer of course, is no — I would work hard to get where I wanted to be, no matter what! When it comes to my body, though, I’m stuck in this rut where pursuing my goal of self-esteem means I’m not supposed to pay attention to weight loss. Because after all, what happens if I exercise my lungs out and couldn’t lose weight? Shouldn’t I work for self-esteem now so that I reap the benefits no matter what size I am?

There’s an obvious solution to my conundrum. And that is to accept the fact that I can love myself and still want to lose weight. (And not because I’m scared of judgment, but maybe because I’m sick of back pain. Or so I can do those Yoga poses that have eluded me.) I think I’ve been wandering in this maze of confusion for a couple weeks because I just couldn’t quite accept that premise. It explains why I struggled and struggled against the idea that I could work on loving myself and also work toward weight loss — doesn’t that mean I’ve given up on my current body? Sigh. Somehow all my work on building self-esteem hasn’t sunk in, because this week, today, I’m struggling to love myself and move forward toward my goals. It’s hard to know what it looks like. Maybe I’m doing it already, I’m not sure. All I know is that suddenly the mental work of being my best self became a lot harder than it was before.

Anyway. I’m not feeling resolved about all this. But this is as far as I’ve come so far in trying to think about, around, and through this thorny issue.

I just have to record how awesome this week has been so far! There have been quite a few emotional ups and downs, but the most beautiful part is that I have exercised every single day. I know for some people that’s sooooo not groundbreaking, but I am so proud of myself for taking action. Until this week, the idea of being active every day was kind of an abstraction — I was hitting three times a week if I was lucky (and let’s not forget that two of those three days are gimmes because I have a scheduled activity at lunchtime).

For two or three months in a row, I was doing 15 minutes of weights/abs work in the morning, but I didn’t count that as true exercise, because my heart rate wasn’t elevated for very long at all. Also, that was using the 8 Minutes in the Morning routine, which I’d grown tired of. This week, things have managed to fall into place nicely. I know it’s only Thursday, but here’s what I’ve done so far:

• Monday: 10 mins abs/cardio circuit in the morning, 25 mins intense salsa dancing in the evening
• Tuesday: Bike ride in the evening
• Wednesday: 10 mins abs and weights in the morning, hour Yoga at lunch
• Thursday: 10 mins abs/cardio circuit in the morning, 45 mins Hula at lunch

I’m proud of me for being consistent, even if Tuesday I was sleepy as hell and would have rather crawled onto the couch in front of the tv. No! I got on that bike! I went out and smiled at some trees!

These smaller increments of activity are good for me (especially because short and frequent is better than nothing at all), and lately I’ve been finding that smaller meals are working for me as well. I had a bad, old pattern on Yoga Wednesdays that wasn’t working for me: I would eat a regular breakfast around 8am (eggs + toast, almond butter toast, or yogurt + granola), panic about blood sugar and eat a 250cal Clif Bar right before 11:30 Yoga, and then eat a regular lunch around 1pm and dinner around 7pm. Essentially, I was adding extra calories for energy in the middle of my day without making space elsewhere in my diet. As much as I know that snacks are good for me, maybe my weight gain over the last couple weeks hasn’t been entirely due to travel and kitchen-laziness as much as it was those two boxes of Clif bars that have mysteriously disappeared! Hmmm. (By the way, I don’t have a low blood sugar problem, but I hate not planning for a late lunch and then getting the low blood sugar shakes!)

So the new habit that I tried this week (born partially from breakfast laziness and partially from lazily thinking it might be a Good Idea) goes like this: 170 cal snack bar when I leave the house at 8am, yogurt + granola around 11am, salad at 1pm, raisin nut mix or crackers to snack on in the afternoon, regular dinner. Voila! Awesomeness! Plus cheapness, since a robust salad is a whopping $4 in the cafe.

I know that as much as I love routine, I am easily bored, so if I want to keep this up I will have to find new and exciting snacks! Eye-catching fruit! Let us not forget sushi! This week has largely been successful because I shopped for yogurts in a fancy market, adding excitement to a boring snack; plus, my husband just happened to leave a box of 170 cal snack bars out on the counter. My initial no-time-for-breakfast instinct to grab one was a nice kickstart to this whole thing.

But I just can’t believe how good it feels to finally have a good balance of daily exercise and good food. Is it crazy that I feel I’ve been working at this for months now, and this is the first time it’s really happened? It has been far too easy to pretend that luxurious breakfasts and not-quite-clean lunches and all-out-decadent dinners would not add up to that uncomfortable, overstuffed, did-these-jeans-shrink-in-the-wash? feeling. Maybe it hasn’t been like that every day, but I have had so many excuses, so many good reasons why I needed to watch tv instead of go on a walk. And I’d like to point out that this week of steady healthy choices has been possible despite all the emotional challenges going on elsewhere in my life. In small moments, this week has been momentously challenging, but when I look back all I feel is happy and balanced. That is a really good feeling and I hope I have the good sense to come back and read this when I am in a funk sometime.

(PS — Sadly, now it is going to take an impressive effort of planning to keep eating healthily and get exercise this weekend, because we are babysitting my 15-month old nephew from Friday morning through Sunday evening! While running after a toddler is its own exercise regime, I think I will at least ask my husband to take over for an hour here and there so I can go out for a nice walk on the country roads. And I will commit now to not allowing toddler food dictate my meal choices! Wish me luck.)

We had an unusually gorgeous weekend here in Portland, Oregon — blue skies and sunshine for two glorious days in a row! For some time now I’ve been asking my husband to go on a bike ride with me, and we finally went on Saturday. We went riding on the portion of the Springwater Corridor that goes from the Sellwood Bridge to just beyond the Ross Island Bridge along the Willamette River.

We drove to the Sellwood Bridge (bottom of the map) and then went north on the path for 3.8 miles and turned around and went back, so nearly 8 miles total. It was so exciting! Riding my bike out in the real world, just like a real person! (My neighborhood bike rides include traffic and occasional pedestrians, but they don’t feel like The Real World.) The path is mostly level and goes through a beautiful wildlife preserve. It was good practice for me to be around other bikers and walkers and dogs and such, to learn how to maneuver and pass and look behind me without falling off my bike.

I did feel a bit guilty about driving there, because it is only 3.2 miles from our house, according to Google Maps (that’s $1 in gas roundtrip, at $4.19/gal and 26 mpg). But the first part of that route goes down a scary steep hill, and then through some trafficky bits of Milwaukie and Sellwood. I don’t know if I’m ready to handle that hill (not to mention return back up it) or the cars! It can’t be that bad, though, because my husband rode his bike to work today for the first time, along the same path we would have taken if we hadn’t driven on Saturday. And he did it on a fixed gear bike! Surely I can handle it on my 21-speed cruiser. I have to keep reminding myself if I use my brakes properly, hills will be just fine. It’s only if I panic that hills become a problem — sometimes I envision grabbing the front brake by accident and flipping over the handlebars (my brother earned some face gravel doing this when he was young), or slowing down so much that I wobble and fall over. I know, I know, I need to confront this fear! It’s really irrational. (Though I want to say, have you seeeeeen that hill? Ohmigawd it is so steep the sheer g-forces of descent will shatter my bike into tiny bits!)

Aside from the awesome bike ride on Saturday, I spent a lot of time this weekend in the garden. I needed to transfer all my tomato seedlings into one-gallon pots (Hey Amy! Great minds think alike!), which was nice mild exercise for a Sunday. Now my plants are all happily assembled in their sun room on new shelves, and my garden is looking beautiful. Here are my shelves of newly transplanted tomatoes:

As a very, very nice coda to my weekend, this morning after my ten-minute cardio + abs circuit, I weighed in with a three pound loss. Some of this is dehydration, from a brief bout of stomach trouble last night, but some of it is hopefully a real loss and normalization, getting me closer to my weight from before the Chicago Work Travel Food Freakout. So I was very happy this morning! I have really felt the difference of carrying around those three tiny extra pounds during the last week — if i want to be fit, I need to do a lot more exercise (I’m averaging 3-4 times per week right now), and right now my heart and muscles are just not up to the task. Aside from everything good I’ve got going on, I haven’t maintained consistent exercise, which makes it harder to work on self-acceptance. I don’t want to accept myself as a lazy person! I want to love myself so fiercely that I will go on a walk even if I’m too scared to show myself to the world. So it feels good to have this small gain as proof that change is possible, and I hope it will help me as I pursue my fitness and nutrition goals this week.

So far this week, I have been unmotivated and overtired. And therefore cranky. How come I’m not exercising and eating healthy food? Whine, whine whine. Part of this is that I just got home from a week of work travel and…less than optimal eating. I had a bad case of the traveling blues, because even if I were to exert perfect control, dine on nothing but fresh fruit and salads, and exercise two hours per day, there are still the following issues:

1. Not my bed
2. Airplanes are scary and my feet swell
3. Lots of unfamiliar people
4. New places to get used to

Basically, I am a classic introvert and new stuff is tiring for me. That’s not to say I didn’t have fun in Chicago! That I didn’t learn stuff and meet cool people! But it’s taking me some time to recover, I guess. Though I came right home from the airport and put every single thing in its proper place, it’s like I left my brain scattered between here and Chicago, and it’s only slowly coming back into one piece.

There are a lot of factors that go into having a good day and feeling good about myself (mentally, physically, emotionally), and juggling all of these factors requires a lot of energy. Inspired by a fabulous post on Elastic Waist about an unimaginably perfect day, my perfect day might look like this: Rise near dawn after a refreshing eight hours of sleep, complete a rigorous and reviving workout, take a luxurious shower and do a face mask, weigh in with a perfect 1lb loss, dress in effortlessly stylish clothes laid out the night before, eat a clean and nutritiously filling breakfast, arrive at work with a clean mind and work efficiently all morning, go to afternoon yoga with focus and clarity or afternoon hula with a smile, have an even more productive afternoon of loving my job, listen to affirmations on the commute home, weed and water the garden, cook a nutritious meal with enough for leftovers, meditate and write in my self-esteem workbook, pack a nutritious lunch for the next day, clean the kitchen and go to bed early. All this while paying attention to my spouse, keeping up with friends and email and blogs, watching a few favorite tv shows, all that other stuff.

Yikes. That’s an ambitious day. It’s full of lots of things that interlock with the previous day and set up good things for the following day. I don’t know that it’s actually achievable. But unless the whole thing is in place, then maybe I’m not doing enough, and it won’t all add up to self-esteem and self acceptance, not to mention weight loss and good nutrition. Everything must! be! perfect!

So yesterday, after being thrown out of my routines for a week and coming home to all this angsty trantrum crap, I realized that all I needed to do was focus. Maybe just on one thing. I can’t change the past, I can’t get rid of that 3 pound travel gain, and I can’t have a completely perfect day.

Tonight, sitting underneath a quilt on the couch (it is still a blessedly cool Spring here in Portland) I am happier and more peaceful than I’ve felt in several weeks. A few good things collided accidentally today: yoga, work productivity, gardening. My plans are not quite in place, but I have my peace of mind back. I’m out of that little hole of confusion and grumpiness that held me captive for a while. It feels really, really good, and it does more for my self-esteem than any external thing.

I’m writing this post from my lovely 27th floor room in the downtown Chicago Marriott, on Day Two of a work conference (though it feels more like day twelve). How does your food and exercise do when you travel out of town? Me, I like to throw all my plans out the window! Apparently.

Though perhaps, to be truthful, I didn’t so much throw my plans out the window as neglect to pack them in my suitcase. I might have brought my sneakers and sports bra, but I totally neglected to plan for the overwhelming onslaught of food!

Between the late-night post-flight room service, free continental breakfast, keynote lunches (2) and networking dinners (2), I have been feeling somewhat overfed. I never met a plate of obscure chicken with fancy veg and potato product that I didn’t like! Oh, did I mention the free Clif bars and fruit during session breaks? I am simply bulging with hotel food! I am also bulging with one fancy Wicker Park wine bar dinner and one cheesy New Orleans-themed restaurant dinner. If you’re thinking I’m describing a few too many meals for the two days I’ve been in town, then it’s true I might be exaggerating, but it’s still a little obscene and ridiculous. I have lived about five Food Days in the span of two and a half of your puny human earth days.

I’m proud to say that packing the sneakers and sports bra bore fruit, because today I forced myself (ha!) to skip out on two snoozefest conference sessions in order to go to the hotel gym. I did have ulterior motives, though, as my airplane ride + sleep deprivation + 2 days of awful hotel chairs = back pain spasms. Not only did I do 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer plus some weights (mostly for my rotator cuff), I also came back to the room and did some deep stretching, some yoga, some meditating with my feet up on a chair, and some Hula dancing, all to shimmy some good vibes down into my lower back so it would stop hurting. Well, it didn’t work so well, though I do feel good about being active, and I’m hoping that some extra sleep and ibuprofen tonight will help me get through tomorrow’s closing sessions and the flight home. But this one day of activity really cannot balance out the rest of the unhealthy choices.

Lessons learned for traveling: I am happier when I exercise (shocking!), I need to get more sleep, and I need to take better care of my stomach. Leaving food on the plate is not enough when the food is lovingly dripping with sauce, and lunch-then-dinner are being shoveled down my throat with barely any time in between. I would have been much more sane, food-wise, if I had waited until I was hungry to eat for the past two days, accounting for the larger meals and the jet lag. Being overstimulated by hundreds of people and endless power point presentations and networking means that I have really poor judgment about when I’m actually hungry. I’ve been to one conference like this before, but it was shorter and cheaper, way less crazy with the food. I understand that we’re getting a great value for our expensive conference fees, but still — the opulence! It must be stopped!

How do other people manage? Maybe next time I need to be a better gustatory detective and watch how other people eat. I tried to, yesterday, but I honestly didn’t see a lot of people eating differently. We all ate the salad with dressing (I avoided the croutons), we all ate most of a bun, my neighbor avoided her chicken breast skin and broccolini but ate all the potatoes (I skipped the potatoes, ate the broccolini, and didn’t finish my chicken). I can’t say I ever felt painfully full, but a few days of this kind of eating sure has messed with me. I really can’t wait to eat some home-cooked food (okay, maybe after a day of restful tea and toast) and get back to my real life. It’s nice to live in a fancy hotel world, but it sure isn’t conducive to healthy living.

I was very brave today and went to work out at the gym on campus. I had to fight my way through a maze (of hallways) and brave the stares of the gorgon disinterested gazes of fellow gymfolk! Okay okay, it was totally fine and if I keep my heart rate right in the “cardio” zone (it’s super easy for me to go really fast and get into overdrive burnout mode, oops), then I don’t sweat too horribly and can cool down in time to get back to my desk and not feel like a sweaty freak. Success! Now I can exercise even when it’s rainy!

In other news, this past weekend I took care of myself by getting a pedicure on Saturday and then a spa massage and facial on Sunday! Oh my, it was incredibly relaxing and I came out simply glowing. Aside from the beautifying fun, my masseuse was able to help me with some shoulder pain I’ve been having recently, too. She helped loosen up my right shoulder, and then at my regular chiropractor appointment today I received a more detailed diagnosis: it seems I have some tendonitis and inflammation in my shoulder, and one of the major rotator cuff muscles is weakened and unable to hold my shoulder in the right position. I was so glad to finally figure out what is going on — and now I have some specific exercises to help regain strength and proper alignment. Since I never had any particular shoulder injury, this pain and weakness is simply the result of a lifetime of bad posture and some recent gait changes from my ankle injuries. Bad posture kills, guys! No joke. This pain is pretty bad and I am going to have to do some serious work to undo all my slouching.

From now on, I’m supposed to avoid overhead presses, or really any overhead stuff. I’ll be focusing still on core strength (to support better posture from the inside out) and a few rotator cuff strengthening moves. I also have to ice my shoulder at lunch and in the evenings, and take ibuprofen for a little while to help with the acute pain. But I’m clear to do pushups, planks, and downward dog in Yoga class!

The funny thing is that as soon as I came home, I realized why my shoulder could be aggravated even worse — every time I open the front door of our house, I slam my shoulder into it gently to get past an unevenness in the frame. Ha! So I need to find a new way to get in the front door now, too.

This past weekend, Memorial Day weekend, I didn’t get in any exercise at all. I have many reasons why not, but I won’t bother — it’s over, I had fun, the end! Excuses are useless, action is what counts! This is partly why I was so excited to finally get over my suspicion of the campus gym. I can’t depend on my evening moods and the variable Spring weather to get me moving, I’ll just be whiny and tired forever. Now I can keep a bag at work and go whenever I need to! I know that this is not a great revelation, but at least half of fitness is convenience, and now I have even less of an excuse!

In my quest to Act Like A Fit Person, I’m now attending a weekly yoga class and a weekly hula dancing class, both at work where I have multiple colleagues reminding me to go and making me feel virtuous about hauling around my purple yoga mat and workout bag with an occasionally smug smile. (I’m trying to work on that one — doesn’t everyone hate smug yoga people?)

Just for the record, I want to state that I am proud of myself for going to these classes, because not only do they involve going to the scary gym across campus, but I am inflexible and fat, not to mention out of shape. Yoga can be a special kind of hell for fat people, or at least for me anyway. Inflexibility aside, there are poses and moves where my chubs just get in the way! The lovely yoga teacher is very lovely and loving, a big proponent of doing What Feels Good To You Today, but I still have trouble with a few things. Let’s not forget about my ankle injury, which makes my left ankle extremely inflexible and my left leg in general kind of weak. So yoga involves a couple of scary things:

1. Bending my ankle,
2. while balancing,
3. and while sweating in front of people (a fear that deserves its own entry!)
4. and being the fattest girl in the room
5. all in front of a giant wall of mirrors!

(Can you tell I love lists?) So yoga is a big test of self love, for me. I have to shut down my anxieties about looking around the room, comparing myself to others, and simply focus on being inside my own body and my own mind, trying my hardest to exist in the pose. I admit, I still have some residual shame when I see myself in the mirror, though. All my nice internal peace whooshes out of my mind to be replaced by other thoughts. Is that really how I look to other people? Are they looking at me now?

Also: Do they think I don’t belong here? I really have to push that one away. That’s one I work on almost every day. For a long time I thought that being sad and anxious all the time was the price I was forced to pay for not having a “normal” body. I thought that most people were disgusted by me, and that they were correct, and my only option was to apologize for my own existence. I know now that this is not true; that every person is entitled to a good life, no matter what their external self looks like. If I believe in putting love and peace and optimism (with occasional sarcasm) out into the world, then I also have to believe that I am part of the world, and therefore deserving some of that universal love, too.

In any case, being in yoga is a good test. I am a total novice, clumsy with my lack of balance and therefore painfully fulfilling the Clumsy Fat Person stereotype. While I’m sweating and feeling very visible and awkward, it feels like the mental work to keep myself centered is just as difficult. I love that this is the aim of yoga — to be mindful while pushing your body in new ways. I love it even when I am sweating and tipping over from my Mountain Pose.

The hula dancing class is another matter, though. Yesterday, during the first session, we learned six very basic steps, and then learned to string them together to the soothing sounds of some ukulele music. And what do you know, that random belly dancing class I took eight million years ago paid off, because damnit, I know how to move my hips! I picked up the moves fairly quickly, though I am no dancer, and I was really proud to be in the front row and moving along with people who had taken this class last year. I was also really proud of only sneaking a few glances at my fellow hula dancers, because if I have a right to learn yoga with my crappy equilibrium and my inflexibility, then that skinny lady in the back row also has a right to learn hula even though her hips don’t really move. Health at every weight, Hula at every ability, friends!

I wouldn’t say I am disheartened by yoga and then lifted up again by hula class, though the two occur in that order — I work really hard at hard things one day, and work only a little bit at things that come easily the next day. But the contrast between the two classes is certainly nice. I may be the fattest, least flexible girl in the yoga room, but I am the girl with the shimmying hips in the hula room, and that feels really, really good.

PS - One day I want to try a yoga dvd with the very awesome Megan Garcia who is a fellow Smith College alumna! As I recently learned in the Smith Alumnae Quarterly, she promotes yoga for large bodies and has special techniques of “moving the flesh” that help with some of the different needs of our bodies. How awesome!

Dear Self,

So, I guess you’ve been falling a bit short of your exercise goals? You’ve been tired ever since you stayed out late at the Opera last Tuesday, sabotaging your sleep for Wednesday Yoga. A tiny sleep deficit combined with a little run of hot weather toward the end of the week resulted in Crazy! Schedule! Crankiness! No exercise since Yoga six days ago, now that you think about it!

Isn’t it funny how a tiny change can throw you off so easily?

On the plus side, your plan of delegating some meals to your sweetie worked really well — you had some yummy meals that were fairly nutritionally balanced, and you didn’t have to use a single neuron to think them up, since someone else was in charge. Brilliantly executed plan!

What happened with exercise, though? Wow. First off, props for avoiding the sun and painful sunburns, but also, hey, the sun won’t kill you! Sunblock is effective for short periods of time! Here is your complaint summary for the last six days of no exercise:

1. Too hot!
2. No clothes!

Solutions: buy sunscreen, and invest in some new workout gear. I know you would like to believe you don’t need either one, but waiting for your old sunscreen to magically appear from the messy bathroom is not really productive. Also, pretending you like your old ratty workout clothes is not a good way to love yourself!

Here’s the thing: you need to get what you need to get the job done. If you want to exercise every day, you can’t deprive yourself of 2 necessary ingredients (sunblock, clothes) and then whine endlessly about why you’re not exercising! This is going to require a small amount of shopping. Recognize that this is also going to require not feeling comfortable the first time you step outside to walk or bike in your new clothes. It’s okay not to feel comfortable! (Most people don’t care, and the other people are stupid, so ignore them. )

Also, sometimes you’re not going to be able to breeze home from a perfectly productive day of work with a magical burst of energy and waltz out the door for your hour-long walk like a bird on the wing. Sometimes, you’re going to be a bit cranky, but you’ll learn to do it anyway. You’re in it for the feeling you get when you give yourself what you need. You’ll feel better if you take a walk! The television will not explode with interesting content while it waits for you, and dinner can wait another hour.

Get this — you are not a hostage to your routines if your routines aren’t working for you! I know, crazy. You can make your life better by deliberately deciding what you need, and then going out there to get it for yourself.

Okay — now do it!

Love,

Your self.

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.