So you’ve made the decision. You’re going to get fit. Congratulations! I’m impressed, but not as much as your own Future Self is. Working out is rough for the first three weeks or so, but if you push through the bad part, you’ll be on your way to an easier life. The magic really starts to happen when you loosen up the kinks in your neck and back and figure out where your muscles are. I want to share some insider secrets. For the first 30 years of my life, I would have spit on the idea of any kind of workout. I started out as a bookworm with less than zero interest in any form of physical activity. I was the proverbial “last kid picked” for every game (that describes approximately one in 30 of us, if there was one in every class) and I had the caricature of the world’s worst, meanest, most out of shape gym teacher. He singled me out and ridiculed me for five solid minutes in class one day. It’s sad, but true, that PE nightmares cause many of us to opt out of exercise for the rest of our lives. Don’t let rude, incompetent teachers or other childhood bullies determine your choices. They’re just Dementors at this point. One of the main reasons that 40% of Americans do no form of regular exercise is that we have no idea how many different kinds of workouts there are. We’re forced to try a few things in grade school, they don’t suit us, and we quit the minute we can. Personally, I am never going to play dodgeball again. Exactly NONE of the disciplines that have brought such passion to my life were ever introduced to me in school. I love ballroom dance, backpacking, adventure races (like mud runs), yoga, the elliptical, and cycling. I really enjoyed taking self-defense classes. When we ran in class, we had to run in a pack; I didn’t discover my inner marathoner until I was able to run at my own woefully slow pace. There are a bunch of things I “hate” or find too annoying to do. I can’t stand running on a treadmill; I can’t stand holding a water bottle while I run; I suck at step aerobics; the downward dog pose in yoga makes my hand go numb; working with a trainer makes me want to run right out the door. I quit my last gym because they kept playing Katy Perry. Most workouts are not going to satisfy me or hold my interest. Different gyms have different atmospheres, and some will suit one individual while others will not. Keep sampling and asking fit friends to give you a tour of their favorite workout until you find something that clicks for you. The gym is not your only option. It’s pretty common for people to feel afraid to go to a gym because we don’t want to be stared at. Look. When you walk in the door of the gym, and you see fit people, you’re only seeing them in one frame of their movie. What you won’t know unless you ask is that many of us were motivated by illness, injury, or weight issues. Every gym is full of cancer survivors, former fat kids, the elderly, people recovering from car collisions or surgery, and more. When those of us who weren’t always fit see a non-athlete walk in the door, we cheer. We’re rooting for you. Often we see ourselves in you. If you don’t want people to judge you for your appearance, don’t do it to athletes either. Be open to new friendships and ask us what we can teach you. The first thing to know is that doing at least two completely different sports or types of workout reduces your chances of injury by 50%. Cross-training means more than working to be good at more than one thing at a time. It means balancing the load on different physical systems. That reduces the chances of strain and overuse. I learned this the hard way, when I over-trained for my marathon and wound up with tendonitis in my ankle. Think long-term and be good to yourself. Start with two-thirds of what you think you can do and work upward from there. Types of exercise are like the branches of a tree. When you start from zero, you’re at the root, and you work your way up the trunk for a while before choosing a branch. The trunk is general fitness. When you are functionally fit, you are prepared to pursue any type of activity. At that point, it’s time to consider whether you simply want to maintain that functional fitness level, or if you’re curious about more specialized types of challenge. It’s like getting your general education requirements out of the way before choosing a major. The workout you would do to be in a soccer league is different than the workout you would do as a triathlete, although there’s no reason you couldn’t do both. If you’re working out to lose weight, I want to tell you something that I wish someone had told me. You’re not going to lose weight at the gym. Weight is not lost at the gym, it’s lost with your fork. Exercise alone will not reduce your body weight. Have I rephrased that enough ways? I am an extremely stubborn person, and I refused to believe that the way I ate had anything to do with my percentage of body fat. I refused to believe it until after I succeeded at losing weight by keeping a food log, and then regained a big chunk of it while training for a marathon. It is a hundred thousand times easier to lose weight by changing the way you eat than it is to try to burn it off at the gym. For me, I have to run 38 miles to burn one pound of body fat. Who knows, though? Maybe you’re right and your metabolism is better than mine. Good luck. Different exercise routines will give different results. It’s good to spend at least a little time on all of them. Here is a brief rundown: Weight training is the fastest way to get results. It will give you visible muscle definition. I did circuit training (at Curves) and I lost 17 inches the first month, 3 inches of fat off each arm alone! Weight training helps build bone density, which is extremely important for women as we age. Weight training makes you feel powerful and gives you the ability to lift heavy objects, open windows, and do basic chores more easily. There are some risks, though. If you’re not careful, you can hurt yourself. Work with a spotter and be receptive to input. If a more experienced person at your gym comes up to you and offers advice, please don’t be annoyed, offended, or defensive. That person will probably only interrupt you out of concern that you are going to injure yourself. There is also a protocol at every gym, a form of manners that you can quickly learn. I recommend working with free weights rather than machines; I have a tiny frame, and a couple of the machines tend to mess me up because they’re not built for my personal architecture. Cardio is the fastest way to improve your mood. I speak from experience when I say that nothing fights depression as well as a good cardio workout. Bicycling and swimming are really good options for people with joint pain, although remember to mix it up and rotate between other activities if that’s an issue. Some kinds of cardio endurance training have additional side benefits. Running has the advantage of being an impact sport, which helps build bone density in a way that swimming does not. Spending a day or two on each (swimming, running, and cycling) can lead you to a sprint-distance triathlon in just a few months of training. Endurance cardio is different than anaerobic cardio. Let me put it this way. Even when I was running 6 miles a day, my stepdaughter’s Wii Fit dance game kicked my butt. I could run for 90 minutes but be wiped out by 2.5 minutes of fast dancing. HIIT (high intensity interval training, like a “boot camp”) and team sports are other ways to build this particular super power. Flexibility and balance are important parts of functional fitness. Here we’re looking at yoga, Pilates, and other stretching and balancing disciplines. What I want to tell you about yoga is that yoga is not for sissies. The first time I did Bikram yoga (the original “hot yoga,” done in a steamy 90 F room), I could barely get out of bed for the next three days. It’s best to start with just a few minutes of the simplest stretches and gradually build from there. A lot of people do nothing more than a “Sun Salutation” every day, and their yoga quota is done in under three minutes. Twirling is my little secret. You know when Maria is singing “The Sound of Music” and spinning around with her arms flung out? It is so much fun. The first time I did it, my dog got really excited and started jumping around and I found myself giggling like a kid. The other advantage is that it’s good for the vestibular system. It helps us balance. This is a great idea for anyone, but it’s even more valuable for those of us over 40, because as we get older, the risk of a fall is scarier and has worse consequences. I twirl every day and I hope I’ll still be twirling when I’m 85. First I twirl as fast as I can in one direction, and then I stop for a few seconds and turn around and twirl the other way. Try it! You know you want to! I work out now because it feels more comfortable for me than sitting. If I sit too long, my neck and shoulders lock up. If I can’t work out for more than a couple of days, my restless leg syndrome comes back to haunt me. I understand why my dog barks at the door and points to his leash when he wants to go for a walk. My legs want to MOVE. I take the stairs two at a time, and if I see a high curb, I try to balance on it. I march in place while I brush my teeth to get in my hip flexor exercise. I feel a strong need to stretch when my calves get too tight. There is no reason to believe that sitting 12 or more hours a day is natural for the human body. I’m still just as much of a bookworm as I’ve always been; I just do more of my reading through audio books or during my workout. I have a tablet clamp on my elliptical, and I used shop tools to make a shelf for my treadmill. I sometimes play podcasts while doing yoga. I have a friend who plays video games while riding his recumbent bike. The only “rules” are those imposed by the biological requirements of the human body, such as the fact that our knees are not designed to bend backward. Not everything will work for everyone. There will always be a ‘home’ for everyone, a type of physical exertion that leads to a deep-seated craving. It can take a while to find it and personalize it. Like most sensitive, creative people, I responded badly to traditionally macho alpha-male styles of coaching. Introverts and shy people balk at the military style in the same way we balk at team activities, group classes, hyper-enthusiastic music and cheering, and feeling too visible. What we should be doing is choosing our own paths, and then demonstrating them to others of our kind, like I am doing now. It’s so unfair, I know. I just ate two apple turnovers, I weigh 120 pounds, and I wear a size zero. I guess I just have this “fast metabolism.” What can I say? I must have just won the genetic lottery. I have this special birthmark that indicates I am fated to always have only good things happen to me. ^^^ LIES ^^^ The only part of the above that is true is the sentence about the turnovers. I never lie about pastry. I can’t very well lie about my size, either, because that’s the picture anyone would see walking by: a skinny girl eating what is essentially half a pie. That snapshot tends to perpetuate a completely false image, in the same way that seeing me in a Halloween costume might make you think I really am a pirate. A calorie pirate! I definitely don’t have a “fast metabolism.” On the contrary, I was diagnosed with thyroid disease when I was 23. At worst, my thyroid function has been measured at the extreme low end of normal, just at the threshold where I would have to take medication for life. At best, I’m just under the median. These are hard data with objective, numerical metrics over a timeline, and I can document them. I had an actual goiter. In a lot of ways, that feels like being someone from the historical past who walked through a wormhole and wound up in the future. A goiter. Pfft. I also didn’t win the genetic lottery. In practice, I think that refers more to being born into inherited wealth, because a genetic tendency is not always expressed. We know that, right? There are very few genetic legacies that doom someone to a specific fate. Body weight is not one of them. My family is… classic American. To the best of my knowledge, there were no athletes or runway models in our family tree. Well, technically I was a plus-size runway model for a day, but that seems to bolster my argument. As far as the special birthmark, I do have some moles on my shoulder that line up like the Big Dipper, but that’s about it. So what’s the deal with the pastry? What foul manner of magic allows me to eat like that and still wear the skinny jeans? It has everything to do with quantity, frequency, and context. What you can’t see from a single snapshot, or even a few snapshots, is a pattern that really only shows up over the course of the whole film. I really like apple turnovers, but I only eat them maybe once a year. I’ve found that they make a pretty cruddy breakfast. They’re a nice occasional treat, but they don’t have the staying power of oatmeal, which was what we had actually planned to have today. After eating something this sweet, I tend to get a sour aftertaste in my mouth. Sometimes I get a bit of a headache. I also feel hungry shortly afterward. Not a great bargain. We ate the pastries, my husband and I, and then I looked at the nutrition label. (I read the ingredients, but the calorie count was hidden on a separate sticker on the bottom of the box). I laughed. “UHOH!” I showed my husband: 269 calories. EACH. 102 calories from fat. EACH. That means they were 38% fat. More importantly, we just ate a 538-calorie breakfast that will wear off in an hour. Our normal breakfast is 330-410 calories and feels like real food. Two turnovers are the caloric equivalent of nearly four cans of Coke, with roughly the same nutritional value. Another way to look at it is that they are the caloric equivalent of 5 ½ actual apples, with far less fiber and far fewer micronutrients. Again, the pastry is not a great bargain. After we ate the pastry, we went grocery shopping. We came home with a package of okra chips (OKRA CHIPS!) and devoured them while standing at our kitchen counter. I feel obligated to point out that little, 120-pound, 5’4” me ate the same quantity of food as my big, 240-pound, 6’2” husband. I used to match him bite for bite at every meal. That turned out not to work very well for me! One guideline I use is to look at whatever he’s eating and try to only eat ½ to 2/3 the amount. That’s the sort of thing you don’t see when you see me eat. If you see me at a party, you see me eating party food. I don’t buy things like corn chips; we don’t even go down that aisle at the grocery store. We don’t “snack” unless we’re at a social occasion, because we know if we see it, we’re going to eat it. Same thing at restaurants. If you go out with us, you’ll see us eating appetizers and other things we don’t eat 80-90% of the time. There are several reasons for that, but one of the main ones is that we know we pay the price afterward. Fried food, while delicious, usually tends to give me a headache or bellyache afterward. I’ll wind up waking up several times in the middle of the night. There is a pretty long list of foods that interfere with my parasomnia problems, which I am reminded of the few times every year that I indulge in them. There are a lot of things neither of us eats at all. This is mostly due to simple taste preference. We don’t like them. Coffee, alcohol, soda, dairy products, bacon, bagels, crackers, white bread, fast food, or basically anything that could be bought at a gas station. We used to buy a lot of soda and cookies, when we were first dating, but they lost their flavor appeal when we started eating healthier food. It turns out that learning to eat a nutritious diet makes junk food taste bad. (And look bad, and definitely smell bad). I used to be fat. Now I’m thin. Well, I don’t think I’m thin, precisely; I prefer lean, trim, or fit. Regardless, what I learned is that it’s 90-100% diet. When I was fat, I knew virtually nothing about nutrition or the behaviors of lean people. I truly believed that certain people were born that way, while most people were born my way. Normal. You know. Not thin. Thin isn’t normal. (Not in America, it’s not!). What I learned when I started trying to learn more about fitness was that lean people won’t go anywhere near most of the foods that the average American eats on a daily or weekly basis. “I wouldn’t touch that with a ten-foot fork.” Likewise, most average Americans don’t eat any of the foods that fit people eat every day. Make two columns. Column A contains junk food, fast food, fried food, things in packages, soda, baked goods, pasta, sweets, high fructose corn syrup, and unpronounceable chemical ingredients. Column B contains fresh vegetables, whole fruits, water, whole grains, and things that have to be washed and chopped. What it really comes down to is that average Americans actively avoid eating anything with a high fiber content, any cruciferous vegetables, and anything with a realistic quantity of micronutrients. We don’t like chewing and we don’t like bitter flavors, but we’ll drink what is basically carbonated hummingbird food from morning to night. I do eat pastry sometimes. I put it in the category of “race food.” What that means is that if I’m already registered for a foot race, already dressed, already hanging around the course, and getting ready to run at least 8 miles that morning, I might eat a donut or an apple fritter. (Or a turnover, if I had one). I wouldn’t eat a bagel even under those conditions. A bagel is the equivalent of five slices of bread. I don’t like them nearly enough for that hit to my pancreas. What I like the best during endurance races is a bag of trail mix and a couple of fig bars. If I’m running a distance under 10 miles, I usually don’t bring any snacks at all, or water, for that matter. When I talk about running, people assume that I can “eat whatever I want” because I work out. I thought so, too. Then I gained 8 pounds while training for my marathon. I haven’t started running again since my ankle injury in October 2014; it’s been nearly a year and a half. If running one marathon caused some kind of permanent metabolic change that allows me to stay small, that would seem to be a great inducement for more people to take up an endurance sport. I know the truth, which is that I have learned how to eat in such a way that I don’t gain weight whether I work out or not. I do actually “eat whatever I want.” What has changed is that I have more information about nutrition and physiology. I also have new information about how it feels to walk around as a lean, fit, strong, active person. (It feels EXCELLENT). When I was fat, all I knew was how it felt to be chronically ill, weak, and frail. I didn’t have the information I have now. I didn’t know how to cook the vegetables I eat now. I hadn’t adjusted my palate. I ate more sweets than produce. Now that proportion is reversed. When you see me eating pastries, what you don’t see is that I eat 10-12 servings of vegetables and fruits every day. If you see me updating my food log, where I check my fiber and micronutrient quotas for a couple of minutes a day, you might just think I was texting or looking at Facebook. Either way, you’d have no way of seeing how the apple turnovers fit into the context of everything I ate (and didn’t eat) over the last two years. I can eat anything. So can anyone – anyone who has the means, which is something we forget. Our problems are problems of excess and abundance. Three million little children starve to death every year while we cry about our body image. It’s frustrating. That’s why I took what used to be my soda money and started using it to sponsor a student in Zambia. (She’s almost done with high school now). We’re constantly trying to reframe a problem of social justice, mortality statistics, and poor nutritional education into a problem of aesthetics and appearance. Solving the problem of how to eat in a sane way extends to solving the problem of how to feed everyone in a sane way. Learning to solve one problem helps us feel strong enough and smart enough to solve any problem. I found Lisa Tamati’s book on the running shelf at my favorite bookstore. Although I had been running and participating in adventure races for years, I hadn’t heard of her, and that makes me mad. Most people probably have no awareness of the incredible feats of female extreme athletes like Tamati. She doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. If I had known about women like her when I was growing up, I believe I would have developed an interest in fitness and athletics much earlier in life. It’s okay, though, because we’re about the same age and she is a clear demonstration that physical condition shouldn’t hold someone back. Hospitalized for severe asthma as a child. Broke her back at age 21. Needed a nebulizer while completing a 222k race (137.9 MILES!!!) at nearly 18,000 feet in altitude. Lost her toenails and kept running. Most people with asthma or a broken back would probably excuse themselves from competition forevermore. Tamati shows us that it’s up to us what we choose to attempt and how hard we push ourselves. (Running enough distance to circumnavigate the globe 2.5 times!) She is one example among many of athletes who keep on trucking, even while dealing with fairly major health problems. I run even though I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia at age 23. It could be said that I run because I was diagnosed with a chronic pain/chronic fatigue illness at a young age. Doctors and reference books were united in the opinion that FM patients are “exercise-intolerant.” (Nearly 20 years later, the advice seems to have changed, although no other FM sufferers in my acquaintance do work out). I simply refuse to let a diagnosis determine my fate. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t physically catch on fire or explode if I lost weight and became more active, and as it turns out, I was right. Better than that, I haven’t had a migraine or night terrors in two years, and my newly found fitness level is largely responsible for this victory. Running to Extremes is a subtly stunning book. Tamati describes her experiences in various races. She details every time she fell or hurt herself or did something embarrassing. Somehow, in between the lines, we realize that she has just organized a couple of national-level events, appeared on television, and completed extreme endurance races that only a handful of other individuals have managed. Her focus is always on looking out for her mates and surmounting pain to complete her latest (world-class) goal. It’s clear that she’s out there to experience whatever she can and to find out just what she’s made of. Reading this book made me want to sign up for my second marathon right away. This was an amazing, fascinating, and fun book. The author, Bruce Grierson, follows nonagenarian Olga Kotelko around the world as she competes in track-and-field events. She also participates in various scientific studies aimed at finding out why she has been able to set so many world records at her age. Spry is not the word. What Makes Olga Run?, indeed? It appears to be based more on her character than her genes. She had a hard-scrabble childhood and a bad marriage. What makes her tick? Grit and determination. Optimism. Refusal to sit around being bored. The book spends a lot of time explaining the science of longevity research, but Olga’s personality shines through just as much. She sounds like she would have been a lot of fun. Olga Kotelko is not the only lady of advanced years in Grierson’s book. In fact, there might not be anyone younger than 40. Grierson frequently compares his own fitness level to this 90+ years young woman, to his detriment. It’s clear that hanging around these masters class events is humbling for him. It turns out that the majority of the competitors were inactive for decades on end, resuming a former athletic career as senior citizens, or in some cases, trying it out for the first time. The message that it’s never too late is underscored with every cameo by the many mature competitors. When I started running, it was because I wanted to do what I could for my future self. I was already 35 and I had never been remotely close to athletic in my life. I knew there was no more time for fooling around; if I were ever going to “do something about it” and learn about physical fitness, I couldn’t procrastinate any more. I learned that there was a centenarian marathon runner with a white beard longer than my hair. Thus began my love affair with elderly athletes. I never worry what people in their 20s are doing, what records they’re setting or how they look. I know that if I keep going, I’ll be a real contender in my 60s! I’m very glad I didn’t read What Makes Olga Run? sooner, because it probably would have relaxed my vigilance and convinced me I could keep waiting another decade or two. ‘Ambit’ is a term I picked up this year that clicked with me in a pleasing manner. It refers to the scope or boundary of something, and in a more archaic sense, it specifically meant an external boundary. I think of my ambit as the area that I consider “walking distance.” It’s where I amble. I begin to walk out a new ambit every time I move, and it expands each day, until I’ve walked up and down nearly every street within 3 miles, seen every house and garden, and finally started to orient myself to my surroundings. Another way to think of an ambit is as “stomping grounds,” although I don’t stomp as often as I might skip through a chalked hopscotch outline. My husband’s ambit is different from mine in the same way that our lexicons are different. His personal mental dictionary is full of engineering terms and mathematical formulae, while mine includes more writing systems and foreign phrases. His ambit is built around his work commute, while mine is typically built around the public library, grocery store, and perhaps a local teahouse. He likes to make a game out of optimizing his route, finding the path with the fewest traffic lights, working out alternate pathways if a signal changes unfavorably. He’s like Pac-Man. Sometimes I take my dog for walks. His preferred speed is about 30 mph, so I tend to go faster when I’m with him. What we notice together is quite different. He’s highly aware of smells that I can’t detect, and he regards every single other living creature we pass, regardless of species. He sniffs flowers. I have to watch him as we pass any trash on the ground, because one day he picked up a stale bun (only to spit it out a moment later). We used to run in the hills of a regional park together most days, and he learned the various routes. He pulls off the trail and sits when a bicycle comes our way. He’s chill around horses now. He is always ready to GO, day or night, rain or shine, high wind or calm. I take him at night because I know he would bite anyone who tried anything on me. Mostly, though, I take him because he has so much fun. He adds to my experience. One day, a kid at a bus stop watched us walk by. He grinned and said, “When I grow up, I’m going to have a dog just like that.” Spike Walks are a different ambit from my solo expeditions. He tops out around 6 miles. On Sunday, we took him on a distance day that worked out to about 9 ½, with a stop at a dog park at the midpoint. He took the lead and trucked along, ears up, without asking for a break. After we got home, he was so tired he barely got out of his bed for 24 hours. My top neighborhood distance is 17 miles, much too far for a little guy whose legs are only about a foot long. I started walking most days at the age of 6, when I walked a mile to school and a mile back every day. It felt like a million miles. I would stop to pet every cat at every house that had one. I was late a lot. One morning, I saw a rose petal fall, and it really impressed me that I looked in the right direction at just the right moment. I vividly recall the first time I saw the moon in the morning sky. Walking got into me. It’s really the only way to keep track of everything that’s going on, the important things, anyway. The weather. The phase of the moon. The rotation of the constellations. Neighbors’ gardens. Coins (I have a jar with about $40 of currency I’ve picked up since 2005, mostly pennies, a nickel last night). Interesting sidewalk graffiti. A tree with striations that look like a Dalek. How can anyone sit around night after night and miss all this? Curiosity, awe, and gratitude fuel my life. I’m lucky that way. Going for walks with me is an exercise in patience, as much as in hamstrings, because I’m constantly stopping to take pictures of random things, such as a divot in the sidewalk that looks like a human ear. I probably have more blurry, backlit, unidentifiable pictures of birds than I do of family members. I do all the illustrations on my blog, sometimes because it seems like a good idea, mostly because I need an outlet for all the fascinating things I see when I walk around my ambit. In first grade, I did two miles a day, and that continued through sixth grade. In seventh grade, the school was a mile and a half away, so my daily distance increased to three miles. It occurred to me one day to calculate the mileage I put on my shoes, and I had to do it twice because the number seemed much too high to be credible. Fifteen miles a week, 60 miles a month?! I was 12 and that little seed of mileage tracking sprouted. The day I started running, I couldn’t make it around the block. One third of a mile and I couldn’t do it. I went home and lay on the floor until the black spots in my vision went away. I thought, “Well, I guess I know what I’m doing tomorrow,” and I went back out and found a 1/3 mile route without a hill and forced myself to keep going. A few weeks later, I ran the first mile of my life. Four years later, I ran my first marathon. My husband helped me map out my running routes in those early days, adding a tenth of a mile every few days, and he and Spike ran with me the first several months. Sometimes my teen stepdaughter would go with us. It was easy for them. Spike does it all barefoot, and the tiny increments of distance helped him toughen up his footpads until he could handle a routine 4-6 miles of varied terrain. It wasn’t until my first 8-mile race that I started reaching distances I had to do alone. I had my solo ambit, my dog ambit, and my family ambit. Then we decided to go to Iceland. In the course of our travel research, I realized that lodging was very expensive, while campgrounds were easily accessible and came with showers and kitchen areas. We could extend our trip to three weeks if we camped. The cost of the new backpacking gear would be fully amortized by the savings from not staying in hotels, even if we never used it again. The trip planning suddenly got a lot more interesting. We did our first multi-day through hike. Now I’ve expanded my ambit to include backpacking adventures, and I can carry the tent and all the food and clothing I need for four days without a resupply. There are few places on Earth that couldn’t potentially find themselves under my feet now. I’ve walked in the wilderness, and I’ve walked in farm country with horses and cows leaning over the fence to check me out. I’ve walked the suburbs. I’ve walked in dense urban downtowns, from the seediest to the scene-iest. New York, Boston, Las Vegas, Victoria, Vancouver, Aukland, Reykjavik, Cancun, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle. I’ve walked in bleak industrial deserts, botanical gardens, picket-fence neighborhoods, trails so narrow they really needed a machete. I’ve carried shopping bags and I’ve worn my 45-pound pack. Whether I’ve lived in a downtown high rise apartment or down several miles of dirt road, I’ve always had an ambit. It’s the best way to see the world, one step at a time. It takes photographic proof now, because people who meet me for the first time refuse to believe that I ever used to be fat. Part of the belief system of Being a Fat Person includes resenting fit people, because they are obviously “born that way.” I hate to say that I used to buy into this attitude. I had a lot of negative beliefs about exercise, about health food, about people who go to the gym. My outlook changed, but my physical form and my activities changed first. As I shifted into this radically different energy, I began sifting through and testing out various ideas about fitness, food, and body image. Some ideas I rejected. That’s always fun to do. I have remained unmoved by beliefs relating to team sports, for instance. Some people respond intuitively to ideas about working together as a unit or always bringing everything you have for your team. I won’t rule that out, but at this point in life it hasn’t really clicked for me. I’m not particularly motivated by the idea of one of my exes seeing my newly fit form and feeling jealous; revenge doesn’t do it for me, for one thing, but I also happen to know that at least a few of my exes prefer big girls. (I just never thought I was one). I’m completely deaf to the appeals of the Paleo lifestyle. I don’t feel the call to win a race or set a world record in anything. I don’t particularly want to be physically attractive or look a certain way in the trend of the moment. On the contrary, it’s unlikely I would even recognize the trend of the moment, just as I have to think hard to remember which sports season it’s supposed to be. There are a lot of ideas about fitness that I do find convincing, though. As with every change I have made, the list of things I like about it gets longer as I get deeper into the experience. This is how change happens. We talk ourselves into it. We learn so much that we are fully convinced it’s the best way. The old way starts to look less and less attractive in comparison, until finally, we can barely believe we ever thought or acted that way. It’s true of the way I chop onions and it’s true of the way I maintain my physical health, too. Here is my list, in no particular order: Athletic people are experiencing life in a different way, a way that I know nothing about, and that seems worth exploring. Smaller body, smaller clothes, smaller laundry piles, smaller suitcase. QED. I can set an example for younger girls and women of physical strength that I never saw in women when I was young. It’s my body to do with as I will. Strength training is no less valid a form of personal expression than other body modifications, including tattoos, piercings, tooth bleaching, hair dye, manicures, make-up, fashion, or even cosmetic surgery. On two occasions, I have been attacked on the street by strange men. I was able to run to safety. I wear a size zero (or smaller, unfortunately). As much cultural hysteria as there is around this mystical size, it is perfectly within a “normal” size range for vintage clothes. I’m the exact height and weight of Betty Grable, although I’m bigger in the waist, thigh, calf, and ankle. I can do things with my body that are illegal in many parts of the world, and would not have been allowed for me in my own culture just a short time ago. Like voting, I feel a responsibility to my foremothers to make the best possible use of my freedom to run and hike and travel alone. When I walk, run, or bike outdoors, I’m adding to the safety of my neighborhood. The more people are outside, the more witnesses and phones and video cameras. When I was a kid, children could play outside and walk to school, and I think we can and should bring that back. There is Alzheimer’s Disease in my family tree. I have every reason to follow Alzheimer’s research and to modify my lifestyle to delay onset or reduce my risk. That includes exercise, eating a diet low in sugar and saturated fat, and the same factors that reduce risk of diabetes and heart disease. Being fit feels good. It feels good by itself, but it also feels good to be able to do things easily that used to be difficult. People on planes are excited when I ask to sit in the middle seat. They’ve even waved me over. My husband can pick me up and carry me down the hall. I suspect I could probably pick him up, too, but he won’t let me. I can fit in a child’s Halloween costume or tutu if I so desire. I feel totally confident wearing a swimsuit in public. A bikini, even. You can only see my stretch marks now if I show you where to look. I don’t even have cellulite on my thighs anymore. If someone yells “RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!” I know exactly how fast I can go, and for how long. I’m faster than a speeding toddler running toward traffic, although I hope I don’t have to prove it again… Exercise reliably elevates mood. The more strenuous the activity, the longer I do it, the more often I do it, the better the results. I’m 40 and I don’t need any pharmaceuticals or medical appliances. I’d rather spend that money on other things. All my “numbers” are on target, including blood pressure, fasting glucose, lipid panel, resting heart rate, waist/hip ratio, percent body fat, and BMI. I no longer have to spend time arguing over whether BMI is valid for the individual, because I don’t feel defensive about my health metrics. I can sit on the floor and get back up again without holding on to anything. Not only that, I can climb a fence, climb a rope, and do a pull-up. I can open jars. I know how to calculate how many calories to pack on backwoods expeditions. I can still eat everything I used to eat when I was fat. Now, I can do it without the guilt or recriminations, because I have more information. I’m fitter now than I was when I was 30, and MUCH fitter than when I was 20. There is every reason to expect that I can be even fitter at 50 than I am now. I don’t have to go to the chiropractor anymore. I have something in common with more people now. When I go to a wedding or other social event, and see another woman with posture like mine, I know we can be deep in conversation in under a minute. I can carry a 45-pound backpack. If you realize how big a deal that is and how much of the world that opens up, I might want to go on a trip with you. I sometimes see photos of beautiful young actresses and celebrities, and realize I have better abs. I have the cardio endurance to dance every song. I can climb a tree with my nephews and niece. The more we go out, the more my dog loves me. My doctors always say, “Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it!” or “I wish all my patients were like you.” I convinced one of my doctors to take up triathlon, so I can claim the distinction that my doctor takes health advice from me! I used to be chronically ill and fatigued. I had my cancer scare at age 23. I know everything I need to know about pain, about feeling trapped by fate, about feeling like my body was my enemy. It was a powerful learning experience in its own way. There are many other ways to experience living in a human body, and I’ve learned even more from trying out a few other options. Sometimes I cry when I run. Not for the same reasons I would have guessed! I started running as a twisted way to influence someone else, never anticipating that I would fall in love with it. I expected that it would be grueling, so tough that I gave myself a year to train up to 2.25 miles, figuring I would add one sidewalk square a day. I reached my goal in six weeks. I thought I’d hate every minute of it, and that pushing myself so hard would be this terrific character-building experience. Was I ever wrong! Distance running started bringing up emotions I never knew were part of the human package. Sometimes I feel a victorious, elated sensation that makes me thrust my arms into the air, like I’m breaking a finish line ribbon, which is hilarious at my pace. Other times I feel a physical connection to the natural world around me, a kinship with the plants and birds and animals I see on the trail. I’ve felt an almost absurd sense of well-being, a happiness that sounds so fake it’s like I’m selling something. Other times, of course, I bawl like a mother of the bride. The first time it happened, I was running my first 5k. I had only been running for a few months, and I wasn’t at all confident that I could finish three miles. But I’d paid $38 to register and that meant I was committed. A few days before my race, I tripped on the trail and took a nasty fall. I hit my face on a rock, had scrapes and bruises on every limb, and banged up my knee pretty badly. I could barely walk the next day. There was no way I was going to skip my race; it wasn’t just the $38, but the fact that I’d made a public announcement that I was doing it. I met with an old friend who had encouraged me and agreed to run with me. I couldn’t keep up with her pace, though. She dropped me around the first mile, at about the same point that I finally managed to pass this eight-year-old girl whose swinging ponytail had been taunting me. I kept going, lungs burning, swollen knee throbbing, feeling like an exhausted old wreck. In the last half mile, I was passed by a heavyset man around my age. He had been saving his strength and pacing himself. We were heading uphill. My morale dropped. This was when I reminded myself that a lot of people were following my progress. I knew I could inspire my friends with my example. Truly, if I could do it, just about anyone could! I started mentally listing off everyone I knew who had health problems. I would chant his or her name with each step, pattering along the asphalt. Every eight steps, I would switch to a new name, picturing my beloved friend or family member. I felt as though I were somehow taking their pain into myself and burning it off into harmless vapor. It wasn’t long before I was practically sobbing. When I crossed the finish line, I was absolutely stunned to see that I’d taken about 20% off my usual time for that distance. The next time, it was the December that marked my first year of running. I had made a resolution to run a half marathon, but there had been travel and a chest cold and we were reaching the end of the year with no official race. I decided it was fair to run 13.1 miles on my own. It was the distance I was after, not the race bib. I posted about my run on Facebook. At about the halfway point, there happens to be a bridge. As I crossed it, I started talking to myself, saying I had made it halfway and I’d be home in no time. “I’m doing it… for my friends!” I completely choked myself up and started weeping. Then I turned around and started heading back. Unbeknownst to me, one of my local friends had figured out my route from my live posts. About two miles from home, there he was, standing on the corner with his kids, holding up signs with my name in glitter and cheering me on. I lost it. I was crying so hard I could barely keep my feet moving. I kept going, though, and made it home without walking. The last time, I managed not to cry. It was my first marathon, and I was stupidly, very stupidly running on an ankle injury. (Tendonitis of the anterior tibialis). I’d taken a few months off of training, running only on the elliptical for a few weeks before the event, but I wasn’t completely healed. I could only run the first 17 miles. The next mile or two, I tried to run-walk, but I was done. The last eight miles, I walked, and this was made worse when the race committee decided to switch to the alternate route at least a half hour early. At that point, everyone left had to walk on ordinary city streets, waiting at every single intersection for the lights to change. This was one of the most demoralizing times of my entire life. By the time I made the home stretch, I was limping. I fully intended to “run” the last half-block, so my family could see my running across the finish line, but I turned the corner and they could already see me. I choked up, not so much feeling sorry for myself as seeing my sad self through their eyes. Sweaty, frazzled, dragging my leg alone up the sidewalk. All I had left was grit and that was mostly gone. Gone, just like all the remaining t-shirts in my size and the next size up. I became a sad blue ghost with a Portland Marathon logo. I started running because it was important to me to walk my talk, to avoid giving anyone advice I wasn’t prepared to follow myself. There were people in my life who worried me, and I had a strong desire to fuss over them. I know this does nothing more than annoy people and make them dig in their heels on whatever self-destructive behavior is their personal favorite. I knew it would change me to drop that impulse to try to change other people. I didn’t know how much running would change me through its own special magic. I also didn’t anticipate that my running would indeed influence other people in my life. (All of them run a faster pace than I do now). Running has been one of my greatest passions. It’s a sort of emotional crucible for me, just as it has taken me through so many physical changes. Among other things, it’s given me a newfound strength and confidence. When I have a goal, nothing stops me, whether blood, toil, tears, sweat, snow, rain, heat, gloom of night, hitting my face on a rock, or glitter glue. Sometimes I get mad at my body. I expect all my body parts to work together as a team, but every now and then, one of them quits on me. “Traitor!” I say to my ankle. “You need to get with the program!” After over a year of rehabbing and resting and generally depriving myself of any athletic outlet, my ankle finally felt ready to run again. Almost immediately afterward, I tripped and fell on the sidewalk and ripped the skin off my knee. (Well, both knees, both hands, and an elbow). This happened five days before a hiking trip 900 miles away, for which I had already bought my plane ticket. I went on the trip, bringing a fully-stocked first aid kit for my still-bloody knee, and came home with blisters under both my big toenails. At this rate, I’ll be lucky if I’m running by Thanksgiving. I can’t even wear pants or proper shoes right now. Body, why can’t you just give me what I want all the time? Sometimes I feel panic when I consider my body. Sunburns are one of these times. I still have a brown tiger stripe across my lower back from a second-degree sunburn I got there over a year ago. (A tough area to keep covered, since it is so hard to find pants small enough to stay up where they belong). About once a year, I am careless with the sunblock, and I get a bad burn on my chest. There is a mole there where there wasn’t one ten years ago, and every morning, I examine it fretfully, afraid it will turn on me. My gums. Oh, my gums. I may be aging in reverse in many ways, but my receding gums are the bane of my life. Thirty years of grinding my teeth, chewing through four mouth guards, wearing through amalgam fillings in 18 months… I wish I could start over. I’d go through teething like a baby if only I could have a fresh new mouth. I look at myself, with my stretch marks and spider veins and my one Rasputiny chin hair, and I sigh with disappointment. Sometimes I wish I was better looking. Other times, I feel like that would be an irritating complication in my life. The dream of invisibility is more compelling for me than the dream of physical beauty. I used to be fat – significantly fatter than I thought I was. I have stretch marks on my calves, knees, thighs, hips, and butt. In some ways, I carry them as tangible proof that I used to live on an alternate timeline, in a parallel universe. In other ways, they crush my spirit. They’ll never go away. They don’t itch anymore, the way they used to when they were still stretching, and they’re not purple anymore either. Still, I’m disappointed when I see them. When I was at my heaviest, I used to play with the fat roll on my belly. I addressed it affectionately as my “jelly roll.” I would grab a handful and hang on to it. It interested me. It was comforting. I didn’t think I “looked fat” – I was smaller than most of my friends, and I thought of myself as “average.” I had seen a statistic about the proportions of the average American woman, and I was marginally taller and weighed slightly less. (Or thought I did. I hadn’t weighed in for quite a while and I know I would have been surprised if I knew the truth). I had nothing to worry about. I felt attractive to men. I never felt the body shame that so many women seem to feel. I’ve been angry with my body. I used to ride my bike around, swearing to myself. “F.U., thyroid gland! You can’t do this to me!” When I would get migraines, I would cry into my ears, in fits of rage and humiliation that my body once again insisted on being so demanding. It wanted something, I knew not what, and I felt helpless and powerless against it. I would wake up in my dining room or living room or standing in the middle of our mattress, shaking and crying, heart hammering, with no memory of how I got there. These moments were the worst: Mortification that my body ran around with screams coming out, while I was sound asleep and unable to control it. Deep fear that I had started opening doors during my night terrors, and that I would run out into traffic one night and be killed, the way others with my condition have. Disquiet that I might attack my husband and that I would have to start tying myself to the bed, the way others have. I would like a new body, please, and a new brain, too, if one is available. Fortunately, I’m on top of it. I haven’t had a pavor nocturnus episode in about a year, and it’s been longer than that since I had a migraine. My thyroid nodule went away many years ago. I’m at a healthy weight. I may not have all the skin on my knee that I want right now, and I have no idea how long it takes a blister under a nail to go away. Generally, though, my body is fit and healthy and ready to go. I would be in better shape if I had a longer attention span and if I stayed more alert to my physical parameters. I’m always pushing at the limits, trying to go farther and faster, and pushing myself 1% too far. It’s hard to miss the epic levels of shame that people are feeling toward their bodies. Someone shares an article about it nearly every day. I don’t identify with this feeling, though. When I was heavy, it was pretty obvious to me that my life wasn’t working. Fibromyalgia, migraines, mysterious hair loss… The more I learned about nutrition (and applied it), the better I slept, the more active I got, the better I felt. My annoying health problems pulled the carpet out from under me less frequently. I started to realize that significant time had elapsed since the last time I had had X or Y problem. I felt and looked stronger. I began to trust my body more. My thighs and abs look amazing. I like my body more at 40 than I have at any time in my life. I feel like what people are interpreting as a negative emotional reaction to external forces (such as “the culture”) is ineluctably tinged with an interior dismay that various internal systems are out of balance. There is a sense of rightness inside the body when it is well rested, fully hydrated, fed the proper amount of micronutrients, and allowed to move as much as it wants. I am not sure how someone could feel that rightness in a state of chronic sleep deprivation, nutritional imbalance or deficiency, dehydration, weak muscles contributing to bad posture contributing to constant aches and pains, and/or a chronic health condition. I certainly never did. When I was sick, I didn’t care how I looked; I went to the movies once in my nightgown, with my hair unbrushed, because DEAL WITH IT. I wasn’t ashamed, I was just ill. Now that I’m healthy, I wouldn’t care if I grew a tail and everyone stared at it, because I’m grateful and I feel good for once. It is possible to wake up and feel glad to start a new day. It is possible to see yourself naked in the mirror and think, “AWW YEAH!” It is possible to wrestle chronic illness to the ground and put your boot on its neck. It is possible to feel triumph rippling through your body. I believe that in many ways, I am aging in reverse, and that I will be physically stronger, faster, and more agile in ten years than I am today. I believe I will look better at 60 than I did at 30. I’m proud of my body now. I appreciate my resilience and strength and grit. When people stare at my body, as they do sometimes, I square my shoulders and hold my head up. This is what a marathoner looks like. (Well, a slow one). This is what a survivor looks like. Body, you disappoint me sometimes, but we’re still a team, and a good one. Now, about this knee… Recently I wrote about viewing my body as a gift to my mate. That is only one of many possible metaphorical constructs; it’s meaningful to me, but perhaps not quite at the same level as something a bit more practical. My body is a vehicle. It is the way my consciousness gets from place to place. Everything about the way I experience the world happens through my body. I can choose whether to put my focus on driving a high-end luxury vehicle, a commuter car, or an old beater. I didn’t learn to drive until I was 29. My first driving lesson put me off the idea. Other teenagers seemed to see driving as this form of freedom. They couldn’t wait to learn to drive so they could go anywhere they wanted. Not me. I’ll take the bus, thanks. When I finally submitted to peer pressure and took driving lessons, I failed my driving test twice. (Once for running a red light and once for driving on the wrong side of the road). I did finally pass, but after a couple of years I sold my car and went back to my bicycle. Driving sucks! It’s partly because I feel this way that I stay fairly fit, because I’ll walk 3-5 miles without thinking twice about it. My body is a vehicle in the most literal sense. People seem to identify with their cars. If we get into a fender bender, we say, “He hit me!” rather than “His car hit my car!” A person who drives a truck or motorcycle may have very strong feelings about how that compares to driving a sedan. A lot of people have a dream car, in the same way that they might have a dream house or dream wedding. Notice how the car gets decorated after a wedding, with ‘JUST MARRIED’ on the windows, as though the car had gotten married too. We put stickers on the rear windshield, showing how many kids or pets are in the family. Some use bumper stickers to express their politics or personal philosophy. A car is often an extension of the home; we eat meals in it, do homework in it, take naps in it, fight in it, dance in it, put on makeup in it, etc. We may be more aware of the metrics of our car (mileage, age, price, gas in tank) than we are alert to the metrics of our actual bodies (blood pressure, fasting glucose, percent body fat, etc). We may feel more immediate concern about damage to our cars (door dings, cracked windshields, torn upholstery) than we do about that other kind of body damage (diabetes, heart disease, etc). This weekend, I went backpacking. It made me reminisce about my first trip, when I was bone-tired after only two miles, and convinced at three that we must have passed our camp, which waited at the six-mile mark. The next day, we drove home, and by the time we pulled up to our driveway, I could barely walk. I mean, barely. I was shuffling a couple inches at a time because my legs were all locked up. That twelve-mile hike hit me almost as hard as my marathon a couple of years later. I’m older now, and I hadn’t really worked out all year, but a longer hike with significantly more elevation gain seemed fairly easy. My base fitness level is higher. I have more upper body and core strength, my posture is better, my legs are stronger, I’m leaner, I weigh less, and I have better cardio endurance. That means I’ve grown more blood vessels and expanded my lung capacity, among other things. I traded in my old jalopy for a four-wheel-drive sport model. It likes to go off-road and get muddy. Backpacking has a lot in common with foot races. The longer the distance, the older the age range is skewed. In a 5k or on a one-mile loop, you’ll see a lot of families with strollers. As the distance and technical difficulty of the trail increase, the heads get grayer and the kids get left at home. This weekend, I did not see a single child, and perhaps no one younger than college-aged. We did see plenty of retirees, though. In my experience, I can often pass people half my age, while being passed by people twice my age! Two factors are leisure time and spare income. If you take a gander at the outrageous calves of these hiking seniors, though, it’s obvious that decades of experience give them the advantage. They are lean, mean, hiking machines. I can choose to be a little depressed that a 60-year-old is passing my 40-year-old self on a steep hill, or to be cheered that I’ll be fitter in 20 years than I am today. It’s a bit like parking next to an older person with a fancy luxury car; we assume they saved for it and they’re probably earning more at that stage of their career. Persistence pays off. My fitness journey has taught me that the state of my physical vehicle has much to do with my mindset and my emotions. I have a comfier ride at 40 than I did at 20. Life is easier as a fit person. My body can also carry me to much more interesting places. The ability to climb to a lake at 5500 feet that can’t be accessed by automobile is a nice feature. I have some mileage on me: about 3500 miles by bicycle, a few thousand running, about 100 hiking, and who knows how many miles walking. Hopefully I’ll put on many more miles over the next 30-40 years. Leaving my body to sit on the couch is exactly like parking a classic car in a garage and padlocking the doors. This vehicle demands to be taken out and driven through the countryside. A conspiracy theorist could make a solid case that there is a mass cabal of chiropractors seducing people into carrying the heaviest possible bags everywhere. The same conspiracy can be demonstrated with laptop advertisements, which are all like public service announcements about poor ergonomics. High heeled shoes are a tangent all their own. Sit in any coffee shop and an astonishing array of bulging satchels, drooping backpacks, and enormous handbags will be displayed. Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether a particular bag is supposed to be a purse or a diaper bag. Some people, mostly women, will have two or three separate bags. What on earth are we carrying in there? In college, I carried a huge tote bag that I called my filing cabinet. It had my textbooks, notebooks, and flash cards for the day. It also had my day planner, library book, wallet, keys, pens, lip balm, lunch, hat, gloves, scarf, umbrella, mini flashlight, folding scissors, a whistle, paper napkins, crumpled receipts, mail, business cards, and whatever other detritus I felt I had to have with me. My attitude was to bring everything “just in case.” Since my bag was so big and so full of so many items, stuff would tend to get lost in there. It was like a black hole. Everything got sucked into its gravitational field and nothing ever got out. Things gradually changed after I got a smartphone and became a distance runner. I would set out to run for two hours, and realize that all I needed was my house key and my phone. I would put my ID and a debit card in my phone case for emergencies, but in practice I never needed them. My comfort level built as I realized that my phone, key, ID, and debit card were all I needed at least 80% of the time. Not carrying a purse became my default; it was something I only used for special occasions when I wouldn’t have pockets. (Speaking of conspiracies, why do most women’s garments lack pockets? It’s like we’re samurai). My distance running segued into backpacking. There is a big swing between carrying 6 ounces of personal items and carrying 1/3 of your body weight, unless you happen to be a gecko, in which case, Hello! The point of backpacking is to bring everything you will need for physical survival over the length of the trip. It’s exciting, because you can reach pristine, staggeringly beautiful remote areas that otherwise can’t be seen. It doesn’t take long to figure out that clutter has a higher price in a trekking pack. Every ounce of junk is a tradeoff for an ounce of food. Lack of discipline punishes the knees. Backpacking builds confidence in how little we truly need for survival, comfort, and even luxury. We have “go bags” for ourselves and an extra one for our pets. They’re grouped on a shelf where they will be easy to reach if we ever need them. My husband experienced the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, and had to leave town for a few days until water and power were restored. Where we live, it’s sensible to be prepared for earthquakes, wildfires, flash floods, and mudslides. There’s about a 1:3 chance that we’ll be asleep when the need to evacuate occurs. We want to be able to grab the pets in their crates and get them out safely. There won’t be time to rush around grabbing anything. There won’t be any way to carry armloads of extra stuff, either; not without risking the loss of our panicked critters. It’s not the probability of an event like this that’s important, so much as the level of risk if it ever does. Our relationship to material objects can be pretty weird. The things we carry every day are often talismans rather than functional tools. We think we’re making our lives easier because we’re prepared “just in case.” That sense of preparation can be an illusion when we’re unprepared for real trouble. We burden ourselves for the sake of a sense of security that should perhaps be gotten by other means. |
AuthorI've been working with chronic disorganization, squalor, and hoarding for over 20 years. I'm also a marathon runner who was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and thyroid disease 17 years ago. This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies. Opt Out of CookiesArchives
January 2022
Categories
All
|