Recovering from a Funk

I was kind of in a funk yesterday.

Sunday night I watched Olympic gymnastics and it made me want to give up -- I was just so in awe of what those bodies could do, it seemed worthless to try doing anything with my body. Then when I weighed myself yesterday morning, after being down two pounds for several days, I was back where I'd been a week earlier.

I carefully loaded up a cart of books when I arrived at work and as soon as I was done, the wheels fell off and they all landed in my lap. I was hungry and cranky all afternoon until I was weighed in at Weight Watchers.

And in the evening, I received a text from, I thought, someone who has been annoying me, so I responded kind of rudely -- we went back and forth a few times before I realized I hadn't recognized the number and it was actually someone completely cool. I texted an apology and didn't get a response.

Then this morning I woke up and read this and it helped so much there were tears involved. Sometimes the universe provides exactly what you need.

I went running outside, rather than on a treadmill, even though it was raining, and it felt amazing.

The completely cool person thought my misguided texting was hilarious.

I got to read one of my favorite subversive stories to a group of third graders.

And tomorrow morning I'm going to a yoga class.

It's good to remember that most everything, especially small annoying things, can be repaired.

Why I'm Not Watching

I don't have cable. My choices of passive entertainment are limited, and sometimes, I really need passive entertainment. So I bring home a lot of TV on DVD, and am always looking for a new show. This week I tried How I Met Your Mother, which I'd been hearing and reading about, and thought might be funny. It was kind of funny. It was brainless enough that I could relax into it, and brainy enough that it actually made me laugh occasionally.

And then a few episodes in, there was a fat joke. One character finds out that her boyfriend left a bar with another woman and she doesn't care. When asked why she doesn't care she replies, "I'm not freaking out because in my mind, she's fat." Fat=Unattractive-to-All=Not a Threat.

And in the next episode, there was another one. After two heterosexual men act like a couple for most of an episode, they "break up" and later run into each other. One of them says to his friend, "Even if you don't believe it, tell me he looks fat." Because, again, Fat=Unattractive=The Worst Thing That Could Happen After a Breakup.

And in the next episode, one more. This one was so offensive, it hurts me to relate it here. One of the characters sees his assistant, an overweight woman, take out her lunch, which is a huge tupperware, containing far more food than one person could eat, including a whole chicken. He says, "Oh, awesome, you brought lunch for everyone?" and she runs away crying, and subsequently quits her job. I turned it off before that episode was over and returned the DVDs to the library.

Because three fat jokes in three episodes is a pattern. This is a show that hates fat people. Who has time for that shit?

Nurture, Not Torture

Occasionally I complain that I don't get enough sleep because I get up so early. And I complain when my muscles are so sore I can't perform basic tasks like walking down stairs or washing my hair. But for the most part, I love working out. I look forward to it. Really.

So I've started to get slightly annoyed by the universal assumption that I'm torturing myself as means to some all important end.

1. When I mentioned that I go to my gym every morning to someone I'd just met, he said something like, "Well, you'll be happy when you get results." He said it pretty innocuously, but I bristled. Is his implication that I'm fat and out of shape and am spending a major portion of my free time working out so that I can fix that? He clearly assumes, (though I smiled when I told him,) that I don't want to go to the gym. Does he assume that because I'm fat? Is that just the universal assumption about exercise in our society? I decided he was too new an acquaintance to have that political argument, so I kept smiling and said, "I'm happy about it now," and let him interpret that as he chose.

2. A co-worker, with whom I've spoken about my training and early morning schedule a lot said, "You're torturing yourself so much these days."

3. Almost every article I read online or in magazines about fitness is about motivating yourself to work out or forcing yourself to work out. They are always from the point of view that you don't want to do this, but you should.

Don't get me wrong. I know I'm one of those people. I've spent most of my life in that place where I had to motivate myself to exercise because I thought I should. It was hard. Arguing with myself about whether or not to exercise was damn hard work. But even then, exercising wasn't. I always enjoyed it while I was doing it, and always felt good when it was done. It was only the thinking about it part that was hard. I like to think that if, when I was still in that place, someone had talked about working out as a joy, an indulgence, a way of pampering myself (the way people talk about going to spas or eating chocolate ice cream) I would have had an easier time with the decision.

My Sundress

I always wear the same thing to my Weight Watchers meeting -- it takes away a small variable and I like to keep things as stable as possible so only my actual body weight changes. Since it got warm enough it's been a JJill linen sun-dress that I bought on eBay this spring. At my meeting last night my leader mentioned that it's getting too big for me. It's true, and pleases me to no end. But I love it and am going to wear it as often as I can while it's still summer. I'll buy smaller clothes in the fall. It's gratifying to find that my clothes are too big, and much more gratifying to find clothes that have been too small for me for over a year are now fitting perfectly. But it's also hard to give up things I love and expensive to replace them. Especially since I plan to keep needing smaller sizes.

What My Body Knows

I used to do a lot of yoga. I went to a class once a week at my gym for awhile. I've been to Kripalu three times for retreats, which usually resulted in new spurts of classes when I got home, and for a while, doing yoga at home with dvds several times a week. I fell out of the habit, and then got into my new workout regime and hadn't been to a class in several months.

On Friday, I both pulled a muscle in my leg and told my trainer I wanted to be able to do push-ups, which led to a solid hour of upper body strength training. Afterward, I had to wait to take a shower because I couldn't raise my arms high enough to wash my hair. Saturday, I ached. And then I remembered yoga. I went to a class at my gym this morning and was shocked at how much more I can do now. Not only am I stronger -- Downward Dog doesn't hurt my arms, and my ankles don't scream during balancing poses (even my balance has improved a bit) -- which makes sense after two months of strength training, but I am also much more flexible. I can reach my toes in all the poses that I used to stop mid-calf. It was terribly gratifying to see the improvement, plus my muscles are all happier.

Must remember that my body likes to stretch.

Being a work in progress

I'm finding it very roller coaster-y to be in the middle of losing weight. I've lost almost 35 pounds now, which is enough to feel really different. This is especially true given that I've been working out a lot and doing strength training for the first time ever. My body is different. I feel different. I spend a lot of time lying in bed at night feeling around at my muscles in places where I wasn't able to feel muscles before. It's fascinating and thrilling.

And then sometimes I look in the mirror and remember that I'm still really fat. I'm not self-depricating here. I weigh 219 pounds, which makes me obese according to BMI charts and abnormally huge according to the fashion industry. I still have 80 or so pounds to lose. Mostly I'm not in a rush. This is a good pace -- I'm losing an average of two pounds a week, which is plenty. But it's hard to place myself. It's hard to feel where I am now while I am still and constantly changing (and of course, not changing -- I continue to be Me, which is a comfort and a delight as well as a frustration).

Kicking Ass

Back in the late 90's/early 00's, when I was watching too much Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I decided I really wanted to be able to kick ass. So I signed up for a Tae Kwon Do class and went three times before I gave up. My main problem was that my sense of balance is so poor, I couldn't stand on one foot long enough to kick. I was also generally out of shape, it was winter, and dragging myself to a fitness class after work in the snow was just not convenient enough for me at the time.

Now I get up way too early in the morning and work out at my neighborhood gym, sometimes with a personal trainer. He tortures me with balance work, which I was not expecting. I stand on one foot on a squishy foam mat and do odd things with hand-weights. And slowly, my balance is improving. And then last week, not even knowing about my Buffy/Kicking Ass/Balance fiasco, he asked if I wanted to learn to box.

Um, yes.

So today I got to put on big vinyl gloves and punch in his direction until my arms stopped working. It was damn hard work and really fun. I think I'm really going to enjoy it. Someday, I may even be able to kick someone's ass. You know, someone much smaller than me and evil enough to deserve it.