I used to believe that fitness came from two sources: Good genes or exercise. I also believed that people only played team sports because they weren’t smart enough to do anything else, and that people only went to the gym if they were vain. I believed that I personally couldn’t go to the gym, even if I wanted to (which I didn’t), because I had fibromyalgia, and all the books and doctors and research agreed that FM patients are exercise-intolerant. Therefore, I was the size I was, that was how it was going to be, the medical establishment backed me up, case closed. Density = destiny. Now, I’ve lived the following combinations: Fat, ill, and sedentary Fat, somewhat okay, and active Fit, healthy, and active Lean, healthy, and sedentary [But I have never been thin and ill]. I haven’t been to the gym in five years. I ran a marathon last fall, but all I’ve done throughout 2015 is walk short distances and do some light yoga and physical therapy. The majority of days this year, I haven’t even done those things; I’ve sat on my patoot holding an ice pack. I weigh slightly less now than I did during the months I was running 30 miles a week. I’m in the same clothing size that I was before, during, and after marathon training. It’s clear to me that weight, size, and body fat are all the result of food intake, based on the data from my food log. I’ve been careful to track my diet and activity level since January 2014. I know I don’t have “superior genes” leading to a “naturally lean” physique. If that were true, it wouldn’t have taken me until age 39 to become lean and fit. Also, there would be more lean people in my family tree. (Not going there, but we have photo albums dating back to the tintype era). Then there’s the issue of the thyroid disease I suffered in my early 20’s. I had a thyroid nodule, and my hormone levels were at the extreme low end of “normal.” All the objective, measurable data indicate that my “set point” [snort] is “curvy.” I have “birthin’ hips.” Or at least I did. Now I’m a little bitty sub-zero and people tell me, “I can’t picture you ever being fat.” And, “You were obese?!” Let’s look at some data. Here is my progress chart from MyFitnessPal for the week of 8/9/2015 – 8/15/2015. I weighed the same on Saturday the 15th as I did on Sunday the 9th. My weight was the same within 2/10ths of a pound all week, with the exception of Friday the 14th. What happened? Here is a screen shot of part of the activity data from my Apple Watch. We see that I won three separate activity awards. I walked almost 6 miles. I doubled my target movement/calorie-burn goal and exceeded my exercise goal by 50%. Although the data don’t show it, I also climbed about 8 flights of stairs that day. I worked out SO MUCH – why did my weight go up a POUND AND A HALF the next day? Ugh. That’s so unfair. Last, here is a screenshot of the data from the Health app. It shows dietary calories and weight. We see that my calorie consumption spiked on the 13th, my weight spiked on the 14th, my calorie consumption dropped on the 14th, and my weight went back to normal on the 15th. On the low-calorie day, I skipped my afternoon snack and had cabbage instead of a potato with my usual lunch. What may be more interesting is the high-calorie day: I met a friend for lunch, and I got the smaller size of the “brown rice and vegetables” plate. I had a lemonade, but no refills, I had a Frappucino with soy milk and no whipped cream, and I had one cookie. Sounds reasonable? The lunch was over 800 calories and the cookie was nearly 400. Counting the Frappy, my caloric needs for the day were met even if I had skipped both breakfast and dinner. Which I didn’t. That’s just one day, granted. I have 20 months of data, though, and they support this trend. No matter how much I exercise, if I eat more, I weigh more. That includes days I ran 17 miles. My heaviest weigh-in in six months was the day after I ran my marathon (26.2 miles).
This is what happened. I spent three months on strict calorie restriction. I tracked everything I ate, and all my exercise, with meticulous attention. I figured out why I tended to gain weight, which was a combination of several behaviors. I quit those behaviors and found a daily routine that ended the problem. I eat the same breakfast, lunch, and snack almost every day. I’m careful to eat the recommended daily allowance of micronutrients, via food rather than jars of pills. I love exercise, but the lifestyle I live now seems to work regardless of whether I exercise for months on end, or sit on my caboose for months on end instead. Believe my words or don’t. My personal experience has been that no doctor or health professional has ever once mentioned my weight, my body fat level, my food intake, or my fitness-related activities. They certainly never have tested my blood for nutrient levels. It’s pretty straightforward to collect these data for yourself. There are various free web-based and smartphone apps to track food intake, or you can use a library book or $6 paperback. If your phone doesn’t already have a pedometer, you can get one at Target for $12, and/or a scale that estimates body fat for about $25. You may already have a tape measure, measuring spoons, and measuring cups. I’d say “there’s only one way to find out,” but actually there are many ways. Whatever data you collect, record them every day and then watch the trend line. Numbers are just numbers. Data are just data. There are no moral components to this. When my weight fluctuated between overweight and obese and back to overweight, my stress level fluctuated a lot, too. It was a relief to me to get some objective measurements, analyze the trends, and realize that it was within my power to influence these trends. I never realized that I had a choice, because getting fat was something that “just happened” to me. I became fat and unhealthy as an accidental result of factors I didn’t understand. I became lean and fit due to research, experimentation, focus, and applied effort. As it turns out, it’s a lot easier to stay this way than it would be to revert back to my former state. That’s what I want for everyone: an easier life. My 10th grade American History professor handed me back a paper with red ink scrawled across half the first page. “Be Specific,” it read, except the B and the S were at 48-point scale and the other letters were at 12-point. “BS.” If I recall correctly, this was the first (and last) D paper of my entire academic career. It got my attention, as a good critique should, and made me focus harder, as a good writer should. I hadn’t intentionally written BS; I was just trying to complete the assignment, and I didn’t have a solid idea of what the expectations looked like at the AP level. See how this is a metaphor for life! I liked being an A student. I’m a front-row-center person. I always wanted extra credit and I kept my pencils sharp. The trouble is, once we get out of school, there are few areas where waiting for instructions and following them carefully will get you anywhere. Following instructions will most likely keep you out of jail, but it won’t get you a promotion, start a business, make any art of any kind whatsoever, build a romance, or make your dreams come true. What are your dreams, anyway? Dreams are vague. In dreams, one person can turn into someone else, and it doesn’t even seem weird. Objects can suddenly appear and disappear. We can walk from one room into another, when in reality those two rooms are 3000 miles apart. Usually, when we wake up, we can’t remember what we dreamed, and the details melt into thin air even as we try to remember them. Most nights, we won’t remember dreaming at all. Don’t let this happen to your real-life dreams! I’m a fairly accomplished knitter. I can follow complicated patterns and I’ve made hats, scarves, socks, slippers, and complicated children’s toys. Any time I opened my knitting bag, someone would always say, “I always wanted to learn to knit.” I would always offer to teach anyone who asked. I would say, “Pick out something you want to make, and I’ll help you.” A few people went as far as learning to cast on. I think one of my students finished a scarf. In reality, people like the idea of knowing how to knit, or the picture of concentration and industry, but only in the abstract. Most people can learn from a book or a video if they really want. Once it’s time to get specific, they don’t seem to want it after all. This is a great thing, actually. Eliminating lackluster options off our bucket lists is an essential step to being specific. For instance, there are approximately 6500 languages spoken in the world, so obviously anyone who wants to “learn a foreign language” will do best to eliminate 6499 of them and focus on starting with just one. Anyone who wants to “travel the world” is going to have to start by standing in just one square foot and traveling in one direction. Want to “start a business”? So do lots of people. Doing what? Where’s your business plan? Want to “write a book”? About what? Paper isn’t all that expensive – where’s your outline? How many drafts have you done so far? I had the dream of running a marathon. It turns out it isn’t that big a deal. Millions of people do it every year, all over the world, in every season and every terrain. I trained for about six months and ran about an hour a day three days a week, plus four hours on Fridays, following a training schedule I got out of a book. It took me about half an hour to look up nearby marathons and choose one. Signing up took about 15 minutes. The marathon itself is basically putting one foot in front of another and following the course arrows until you get to the end. See, those are the specifics. Now if you want to run a marathon, and you aren’t currently making specific plans or training, you can focus on why, rather than how. Stretch, hydrate, get a proper shoe fitting, get a lot of sleep, and don’t over-train. See you at the finish line. The barriers to entry for most dreams are really pretty low. I self-published a book, and I didn’t have to talk to anyone or ask for permission. I just wrote it and designed a cover and uploaded it. I operate my own website, and I put up new material at 9 AM PST every business day. Nobody came to my house and explained what I should do or what it should look like. I got specific and made those decisions myself. I do my own illustrations. I decided my art was art, whether anyone else agrees or not, and I work at it and display it and people look at it sometimes. Again, there wasn’t a committee that came by and juried it and gave me an art license. The terrain is not marked off with barbed wire. There are no guards at the border. Nobody checks your bag for illicit fruit. Just do what you want. When you’re creating your dreams, the materials are free and there are no rules. You just get specific and choose something. I used to be obese, but I had to quit. I was diagnosed with both a thyroid nodule and fibromyalgia when I was 23. I inadvertently managed to cure myself of the thyroid disease, and I’ve been symptom-free of FM for so long that my current doctor believes I was misdiagnosed. “People don’t get better from fibromyalgia.” (All right then; study me, I’m game). I’m turning 40 soon, and when new people meet me, they see no trace of my chronic illness years. They see me as this size zero marathon runner. Other women have asked me what I weigh and what size I wear, and then they swear at me. I hear a lot of “You don’t know what it’s like,” followed by a litany of issues, most of which I have experienced. (How do you know I don’t know what it’s like?) I have always been willing to share everything I’ve learned, because I can’t stand the thought of someone else suffering from chronic pain, or fatigue, or migraine, for the many years that I did. I’ll do anything to help. Food intake is the major factor. There is huge resistance to this concept, because it’s tied to ideas of morality and willpower and shame and psychological disorders. We prefer the idea that we can just add exercise, and we totally will, just as soon as we’re less busy or we get over this cold or the weather is more cooperative. Now, I’m an active person. My motivation for being athletically fit is so that I can go on backpacking expeditions and drag a third of my body weight uphill all day. It’s been my experience that exercise has virtually nothing to do with weight loss or gain. In fact, I steadily gained weight while training for my marathon, because I run around with a belt pouch full of cookies and trail mix. It takes me 37 miles of running to burn off one pound of body fat. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m too lazy to rely on anything that strenuous when I want to meet a goal! Everyone is on a diet all the time. We’re either maintaining a range of body weight, or losing weight, or gaining weight. Over the course of a year, we’re either going to stay the same, be leaner, or have a greater quantity of adipose tissue on our bodies. Those are the options. It was something of a shock to me to realize that I was on the Steady Weight Gain diet plan. I gained 17 pounds in a year, and my health went into a nosedive. I was getting migraines on a weekly basis. I had the first FM flare-up I’d had in years. I was having night terrors. I felt awful. I started keeping a food log. What I learned was that I was eating about 150% of what a person my height needed to eat. Over a three-month period, I meticulously measured and weighed and read labels and wrote down every single thing I put in my mouth. I lost the extra weight. I’ve “kept it off” for over a year, although I don’t really think of it that way. I think of it as “living.” I created a new normal that allowed me to stay at one size. Now I live the same way as everyone else. I eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks every day. I go to the grocery store and choose food and put it in my cart and bring it home. I go to restaurants and order stuff that looks good. The difference is that I do it as a lean, strong person, and I do it with full awareness and knowledge of the cumulative effects of my individual choices. When I see something that Past Self used to eat, I have the twin thoughts of “Yum” and “Uhoh.” Nothing tastes as good as pain-free feels. I ran the Portland Marathon in October 2014. This sounds pretty straightforward. Make a goal, do the necessary training and preparation, complete the goal, check it off. The reality of a major goal like running a marathon is a bit more complicated. In my mind, I “ran” a marathon. Rather, I finished a marathon. I trained with a stress injury and wound up having to walk the last eight miles. The course shifted to the alternate route about half an hour early. I had to stop at every. single. stoplight. while limping along on a bad ankle. I couldn’t even run the last few yards where my family was waiting. There are no victorious pictures of me crossing the finish line. They were out of shirts in my size, as well as the next size up, so the shirt I got looks like I stole it from my husband. They were also out of roses and tree saplings and commemorative coins. So I have a finisher’s medal, a friendly relationship with a physical therapist, and a reality check. The reality of my goal to run a marathon is that it’s now twice as strong as before. Endurance running has an appeal for me that would be impossible to explain to my younger self. I recovered from fibromyalgia, so being able to run at all is a novelty that has not worn off, even after four years. Running is tranquility. The farther I go, the farther I want to go. One day, I’ll do ultra. What I learned while hobbling along my first marathon course was that it is still a peak experience for me, even when I’m failing at it. Only backpacking expeditions can match it for intrinsic fascination and satisfaction. I just love being out there, and I can’t wait to get back. Any outsider would probably think it was fair for me to describe myself as a marathoner. I went 26.2 miles on foot. I ran half marathons or greater on a weekly basis all summer. I think about distance running every day. I have future plans to run as many marathons as I can. I think of a marathon as the basis for an exciting vacation. So the fact that I’m still rehabbing my foot and haven’t run a quarter mile in six months doesn’t really matter. Marathon running has become part of my identity. Therein lies the purpose of goal-setting and the secret behind successful habit formation. When it changes who you are on the inside, goals are no longer required. Habits don’t even feel like habits any more. You do it because it’s become part of your nature to do it. Yesterday I heard a strange jangling sound come from my bedroom. I went in to check it out. My dog was hiding under the bed. I couldn’t find anything out of order, so I chalked it up to his collar jingling. This morning, I discovered what had happened. The hook holding my race medals had pulled off the wall, dumping everything on the floor inside the closet. One of them evidently gouged the baseboard. Remind me never to drop one of these things on my foot! I took a picture and then picked up the medals and spread them out on the bed. It seems like I can still remember every step of each of those races. There is still mud on the ribbon of the Warrior Dash medal, a surprisingly small amount of mud considering the state of my clothes that day. These gaudy chunks of metal have no real purpose other than as reminders of mornings when I woke up unusually early and ran in what have been referred to as the most boring parades ever. I’ve never earned a trophy. I was 36 before I got my first medal. I was always one of the smallest kids in my class, definitely always the last picked for every team. I was awkward, uncoordinated, and seemed to have no depth perception or hand-eye coordination or ability to remember the rules of whatever sport we were playing. I’ve been hit in the head with almost every possible ball. I was once tackled in the mud by one of my own teammates. Given the choice, I would absolutely have chosen solitary confinement over a PE class. Why on earth would I set out, of my own volition, on any course of action that might result in a medal? Especially when mud might be involved? What happened was that I got thyroid disease at age 23, the same year I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. (There is probably a connection between these). I spent years trapped in chronic pain and fatigue. Gradually, I began stumbling across combinations of behavior patterns that led to some relief. I started running at age 35 and finished the first mile of my life a few weeks later. In my adult life, I have worked to build my fitness level from what I would call a zero to maybe an 8 out of 10. I can climb a fence, carry 1/3 of my body weight through the woods for four days, run a half marathon any time I feel like it, and do a full Bikram yoga session. There are no medals given for most of these things, but if there were, I would hang them on a hook in my closet and fawn over them every now and then. My husband has a whole box full of medals, ribbons, commemorative coins, and perhaps a couple of trophies from sporting events starting when he was 4 years old. He was going to throw them out. I made him keep them. It’s a pretty heavy box. It represents many years of commitment and duty and determination and teamwork and effort. It’s a monument to an ethos of perseverance and fairness. I didn’t fully understand it until I came home with a few medals of my own. |
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
|