a keen life

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.

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.

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.