​It happened again just the other day. I got into a conversation with someone I had known socially for some time, a physically fit person who often talks about nutrition and healthy living. She shared that she had been diagnosed with a serious illness and that her doctor had told her there was nothing she could do about it through lifestyle modification. She wasn't any more impressed with this prognosis than I was when I got mine, and she set about it proving it wrong. In her case, it was an autoimmune disorder that can result in weight gain, fatigue, and joint pain, and the only known treatment is a lifetime on medication. Strange that, years later, nobody would guess she had ever been ill.

My radar is always pinging for stories of this nature, and I run across them all the time. Mine was an endocrine disorder. The story I just told involved an autoimmune disorder. Recently, I reviewed Shawn Stevenson's book Sleep Smarter, in which he shares how he reversed his degenerative disk disease. My husband had two herniated disks in his spine, and they healed. My brother broke his back in three places, and not only did his spine heal, but he goes snowboarding like nothing ever happened. These are not conditions like the common cold; these are serious problems. They would have been, anyway, decades in the past. They might still be, for the ordinary sort of person who accepts lame, textbook advice from a conventional physician.

Now, I believe in Western medicine. I'm vaccinated for everything I can be, I get the flu shot, and I'll look forward to more vaccinations as they are developed. If I'm prescribed antibiotics, I take them as directed. I go to the doctor when I have to. That, though, tends to be when I need a rubber stamp on a referral to a specialist. My most recent doctor is no good for much else. When I had my first appointment with her, I told her about my history with overcoming fibromyalgia, and she told me that I must have been misdiagnosed, because "people don't get better from fibromyalgia." She believed this because her own sister-in-law has it. I hope the sister-in-law isn't her patient. I also wonder about a medical training system that teaches physicians to brush off anecdotal reports from patients who healed, rather than enrolling them in some kind of study. Examine me! I'm right here and I'm willing!

One of the biggest issues with the ongoing professional development of physicians is that they spend their days with ill and injured people. Healthy, fit, active people only go to a doctor when there is an immediate need. Therefore, there's no feedback loop of information from people who are succeeding in being well. It's common sense for a doctor to say, Well, this is what tends to happen and doing this for the majority of patients tends to work out okay. It would not be common sense for a doctor to say, This illness derives from the patient's comfort zone, so dramatic lifestyle change will probably be necessary to beat this thing. It doesn't even seem to be common sense for a doctor to say LET'S BEAT THIS THING!

Another issue is that people in the medical field tend to be over-scheduled, exhausted, and burned out. They don't necessarily have time to keep up on the cutting edge of new research. If there were no educational requirements for them to learn anything about nutrition, for example, why and when would they pick up extracurricular information on their own? If they themselves are not models of peak health and fitness, can they really teach their patients how to live this way? I've had precisely one doctor who was anywhere near my fitness level, and she told me I inspired her to train for a triathlon. My dental hygienist told me I inspired her to ride her bike to work. My health professionals take health advice from me, and that's either a great thing or a complete travesty.

The point of all this is that it is UNSCIENTIFIC to tell patients that their conditions are incurable. It is UNSCIENTIFIC to rule out nutrition or physical activity as even remote, fringe possibilities. The real question that should be raised is why anyone would deviate from a diet complete in all necessary micronutrients, and why anyone would remain sedentary for the majority of each day. There is a vast gulf between what research tells us about health, and what our doctors communicate to us. When my doctor condescendingly patted me on the shoulder and told me not to bother with lifestyle modifications, he instead should have encouraged me to do my own research and take detailed notes. I was only twenty-two at the time, and he could even have encouraged me to pursue a career in the health sciences. Instead, what I get from conversations with medical professionals about my remarkable recovery is skepticism and pushback. I'm not supposed to exist, so they act as if I don't.

My advice to anyone who "has a diagnosis" of any kind is to question it. If a doctor told you that what you have is unresponsive to lifestyle modifications, get a new doctor. Certainly nobody can stop you from tracking your own health data and reading as much new research as possible. I'm talking about actual peer-reviewed journal articles, not blogs, although blogs can be included if the blogger can demonstrate results with your specific issue. I accidentally cured myself of fibromyalgia and thyroid disease, but it was published research that led to reversing my problems with insomnia, night terrors, and restless leg syndrome. I also relied on published research to reach a healthy weight. I follow Alzheimer's research because I have had relatives die of that disease, and I believe I can mitigate my risks. I've made a regular habit of reading about new medical research for the last twenty years, and it's paid off abundantly.

The biggest difference between healthy people and chronically ill people, in my experience, is that healthy people refuse to accept a diagnosis as the final answer. We won't tolerate being ill any longer than we must. We never stop looking for more information. We do the utmost to take care of ourselves, eating, exercising, and sleeping as well as we know how. I've met a couple of people who claim they have "never been sick a day in their lives," but almost all of the fit, healthy people in my acquaintance have successfully overcome at least one major health condition. Whether these are supposedly genetic conditions, injuries, or lifestyle illnesses, there is always something one can do besides feel helpless and hopeless. Even if I got a diagnosis (and a second and third opinion) claiming I would die tomorrow, I'd still do everything I could to be the best possible patient and research subject. I need to feel that my pain and suffering matter in some way, that my experience can be used to further research and to help others with the same condition. Being ill doesn't have to mean being a victim. Being told I'm ill doesn't have to mean it's true, or that it stays true.

This body is temporary.  I was born into a physical human body that will only be around for a measly few decades, twelve at the most.  Nobody has lived to 130 yet, or if they have, nobody documented it.  This body I have has certain limits.  It can only endure a certain range of temperatures.  It can only spend a limited time underwater without specialized equipment.  It can only thrive on a limited range of foods, not including bark or pebbles.  This body has joints that can only withstand a certain range of motion; its knees don’t want to bend backward.  This body has bones that can only tolerate a limited force of impact or pressure.  This body can be stopped in its tracks simply by inhaling or ingesting the wrong substance.  The body I have won’t last forever, it can’t do everything, and in one way or another it’s inferior to every other animal on the face of the earth.  No flight capability, no prehensile tail, no ability to see into the infrared or ultraviolet spectrum, no echolocation, no gills.  Still, it’s mine.  The body I have is the body I have.

This body has given me some trouble over the years.  In my early twenties, I was diagnosed with thyroid disease and fibromyalgia.  I had my first migraine at 22, and that became a regular feature of my life for the next fifteen years.  There have been other problems: weird moles that had to be biopsied, impacted wisdom teeth, sprains and strains and skinned knees and second-degree sunburns.  I’ve walked into stinging nettle and had a fire ant crawl up my pants.  At these times, I often wish I were a floating consciousness with no body at all.  Why can’t I be me without having to inhabit this inconvenient meat puppet?

The truth is that without the body I have, I would really freak people out.  I need a human form to be able to hug people, hold hands, dance, and eat my favorite meals.  The body I have makes it possible to participate in conversations.  I can see and hear and taste and detect odors, which, alas, isn’t always such a bonus.  I have the physical power to intervene, for instance the several times I have chased a toddler who was about to run full-speed into danger.  As a floating ghostie I wouldn’t be able to do any of that.

The body I have is a useful vehicle.  It’s “me” in almost every important way.  It’s what my friends and loved ones recognize when they see me.  My physical health, as it turns out, is almost completely responsible for my moods and attitude.  When I eat poorly and lapse into sedentary behaviors, I become bored and sullen.  The consequences of my less-than-optimal choices rebound and affect everyone I encounter, from those closest to me to the most briefly glimpsed strangers who happen to see my scowling countenance.  It turns out that I look really angry when I’m in pain.  Treating this human vessel respectfully, feeding it within the range that is biologically appropriate for humans, moving it the required amount, makes me much more pleasant to deal with.  It also makes it easier for me to enjoy living in this world for the few decades that I will be here.

When I was ill, I blamed the body I have for all my problems.  I didn’t understand that I could impact any of these health issues through my behavior or choices.  I didn’t realize I had a choice.  I wouldn’t have believed it if someone told me I did.  I would have felt that that was a very unsympathetic, even cruel, thing to say.  Only after I experienced it did I start to believe that whatever my body is doing on any given day is a snapshot, one frame out of a mind-bendingly long movie.  It should be more intuitive than it is, but a body that begins as a single cell, is born into a tiny infant, and then grows continually for two decades is designed for constant change.  Why is it so easy to fall into the trap of thinking we are stuck with whatever physical state we are experiencing at one moment on the timeline?
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I needed to experience change in this body that I have before I could truly believe it was possible.  First the change, then the belief.  I could never have taken it on faith from someone else.  Now, I see examples of other people who have changed their bodies in adulthood on a daily basis.  It’s just like when you buy a new car and then start seeing that make and model everywhere you go.  Vehicle, vehicle, same thing.  Tens of thousands of people have reversed health conditions, gotten off medication, and/or lost hundreds of pounds.  For mysterious reasons, those of us who still have physical issues never believe that we could be a part of this group.  Other hominids may be able to change their bodies, but not us.  We’re special, special in a bad way.  We have been punished by fate and genetics to suffer and have a bad body!  We accept this dire sentence, carved into stone by unfeeling deities.  We can’t spend more than a couple of days half-heartedly dabbling at one change or another, never enough to convince us that it just might work if we kept going.  We think a body must continue as it is, the only changes possible being negative changes.  The body I have can sicken and gain weight, but it can’t heal or return to a lean, thriving form, even as I see cuts and scrapes return to quality new skin on a routine basis.  Other people who experience healing and increased health must have better bodies than the one that I have.

The body that I have can do amazing things.  It remembers to breathe and keep its heart, lungs, and blood moving even when I sleep.  It recovers from illness and injury.  Every time I have tested it to find out what else it can do, it rises to the occasion and meets the challenge.  I’m 40, probably at the halfway mark of my life (if I haven’t passed it already), yet I am still continuing to discover new capabilities.  I continue to grow extra muscle and become faster, stronger, and more agile.  It feels as though I am aging in reverse.  Despite my history of chronic illness, I have started to be satisfied, even impressed, with the body I have.

I’ll give you my version of the Four Noble Truths in a nutshell.

1. There is suffering in the world
2. Suffering has a cause
3. If it has a cause, I can figure out what it is
4. Once I know what is causing the suffering, I should eliminate it, especially if it’s mine.

Dissatisfaction meditation is my new name for the process of getting extremely specific about problems, annoyances, and irritations.  Wallow in them.  Write them out, shout them at the top of your lungs while driving in your car, make up songs about them, illustrate them, give them mean names and insult them.  Get to know your problems inside and out.  Then, when you have nothing left to say, eliminate them with extreme prejudice.  By all means, be dissatisfied, but don’t stop there.  Use your dissatisfaction meditation as a guide to a better life.
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I was lucky.  Enough parts of my life fell apart at the same time that I figured it had to be more than coincidence.  I must have been basing my world on some false principles or incorrect ideas.  I spent hours every day writing in my journal, going back over what went wrong, figuring out my contribution to my own problems, and imagining something better.

What went wrong?  I developed a very painful repetitive stress injury that left me unable to do buttons or hold a cup.  So that sucked.  (Nearly two decades later, I still drop things a lot and hold my teacup in my left hand; the positive is that I can write and use chopsticks with either hand now).  The painful RSI led to losing my job with the non-profit that I loved.  That in turn led to my first husband asking for a divorce.  That led to his opening a letter from the IRS, addressed to me, and withholding it until after the deadline had passed, just to mess with me.  In rapid succession, I wound up in constant pain, with no money, no marriage, a pending workers comp lawsuit (apart from the two separate issues of the IRS thing and the divorce), and friends who were “choosing not to take sides.”  The physical therapy burned holes in my skin.  My fibromyalgia had nothing to do with any of this, but it was still a daily issue.  Let’s just say that I had a lot to work on.

What I decided, in the hundreds of pages of intensive journaling I did during this period, was that I needed to change what I could.  I needed to be as accountable as possible, and I needed to be WIDE OPEN to feedback and constructive criticism.  Any clues I could get from anyone else, I needed to hear them, I needed to take them in, and I needed to keep them coming.  I wasn’t doing too well by letting my ego and my sense of cleverness run things.

The other thing I needed to do was to be organized and persistent.  Now, I would call that being a CLOSER.  Always Be Closing.  My journaling shifted to a running recap of issues I was trying to resolve and actions I had taken toward resolving them.  My first success was with the IRS issue.  Someone else’s income had been reported under my social security number, and I had a tax bill for over $8000 for money I hadn’t earned.  I was so scared to make that call, because the letter my ex had kept said that I hadn’t contested the claim in time.  I picked up the phone, explained why I hadn’t called sooner, and found that the agent was completely gracious.  “This happens all the time.”  (!!!)  I was able to track down the W-2 of the person who actually had earned that higher salary and mail in a copy, and my case was closed.  (What I would have done if this hadn’t been a coworker, who was willing to share her personal financial information, still is not clear to me).  The downside of inaction would have been so bad that I knew I had to move forward.

During the course of my recovery from the disaster of my divorce, I learned something important.  When you have to get up, you can.  My pain from fibromyalgia was so bad at that time that I sometimes needed help to sit up in bed in the morning.  Or I thought I did.  When there’s nobody around to help, it’s surprising what you find out you can do.  I learned that my pain was worst first thing in the morning, and that once I got up and started moving around, it was easier.  I was eating barely enough to get by, and I lost 30 pounds in a few months.  My pain went away for a few years.  This should have been my first clue that excess body weight made my pain worse, but of course I ignored it and regained the weight as soon as I could afford to.

I kept up the habit of journaling whenever my stress level hit a certain point.  I used my journals to work through the process of applying to the university.  I used my journals to figure out additional ways to earn money.  I used my journals to work out a schedule to pay off my consumer debt.  I used my journals to work through a few romantic relationships, figuring out what worked and what didn’t work.  I checked out dozens of self-help books from the public library and meticulously worked through all the exercises.  I was trying to get to the bottom of why my life had quit working and what I was doing that other people weren’t, or vice versa.

Gradually, I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t start with my default as the baseline.  I had to figure out a universal baseline and plan my behavior around that, even if it had nothing to do with the way I wanted to behave.  Perhaps especially if the universal baseline had nothing to do with what I was doing.  I figured there was a way to find a suitable career and advance in it.  I figured there was a way to plan a budget.  I figured there was a healthy way of eating and exercising.  I figured there was a way to get to know someone and build a relationship without any of the misunderstandings of my first marriage.  I decided I would learn what successful people did and copy them.  If it worked for them, it might work for me, and if not, well, what I was doing on my own wasn’t working, either.  I would keep researching and experimenting until I found an answer I could live with.

I was right about the accountability.  That’s probably the single most important piece of advice I could give anyone.  No matter what, it’s up to us to handle what comes our way, no matter whose fault it was.  The IRS bill wasn’t my fault, but it was still my problem.  Whatever caused my divorce, it was still mine to process and use for information.  For whatever reason I developed fibromyalgia (spraining my back in an accident), it was my problem to try to manage.  Nobody else could do it for me.
​
I was right about getting organized.  It’s valuable in its own right.  When my life was at its hardest, at least I had some semblance of a plan.  Sometimes I would just make up things to try.  In those days before Google, we had to figure out more for ourselves.  It was harder but it taught me to be more resourceful and inventive.  It also taught me that mental clarity is high on the list of great traits.

I was right that you can get up even when you think you can’t.  I learned a deep and mystical secret, which is that grit and fortitude are there for the asking.  Navy SEAL training teaches that most people quit when they’re at 40% of their physical capacity.  I think I’ve made it to about 80% of what I can do.  Anyone who suffers chronic pain, if you’re reading this, HEY, you’re not dead yet.  You’re not even unconscious.  You’re not even dizzy, or you wouldn’t be reading.  You have more in you than you think you do.  The SAME PAIN that we feel in a chair or on a bed, we can tolerate in other ways and other situations.  Trying to rest and endure only leads to more pain, to another day just like the first.  What I learned from training for a marathon is that DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) is pretty much exactly the same intensity as fibromyalgia pain.  The pain I have endured in physical therapy was slightly worse than any pain I’ve ever pushed through at the gym.  I bought myself my current level of strength and fitness by using the pain tolerance I developed through being chronically ill.  I stopped feeling trapped by learned helplessness.  I stopped reading the articles that talked about how difficult fibromyalgia is to treat.  I tried telling my current doctor about my success story, and she told me I must have been misdiagnosed, because “people with fibromyalgia don’t get better.”  That’s why nobody knows we can get better – because when we walk in and share our experience, the medical establishment ignores us.  They used to tell me it wasn’t a real disease, until pharmaceuticals were developed to treat it, and now they say it’s real but there’s no cure.  I say differently.

I beat poverty.  I beat chronic pain and fatigue and became a marathon runner.  I beat thyroid disease and (unintentionally, cluelessly) shrank my own thyroid nodule.  I beat obesity.  I beat pavor nocturnus.  I beat migraine.  I beat divorce and found love again; despite the odds, we’ve been together more than three times as long as my first marriage lasted.  I beat the IRS.  I beat the market and broke even in the crash of 2008.  I could easily still be broke, single, fat, and in pain every day.  Nothing was going to fall from the sky and make me better.  Dissatisfaction meditation helped me figure out tiny pieces of my problems and take baby steps forward.  I tried to make my life 1% better as often as I could.  Where I am now, it’s hard to find anything to feel dissatisfied about.  It gets better.  It gets better, but only when we imagine how it can be better.

Out of ten days, I spent eight traveling and backpacking.  Apparently this is a thing I do now.  I just got back on Sunday.  It is still really weird to me that I have gone from needing help to get out of bed in the morning, to hiking into mountain goat zone with a backpack.  Both felt natural at the time.  When did I turn into this bushwhacking, rock-clambering person?

On the first trip, I was the eldest of six in our group.  This is both strange and not-strange.  Almost every single one of the dozens of people we saw on the trail was under 30.  Usually, though, backpackers tend to skew a bit older.  On weekdays you get retirees.  Most endurance sports include more older than younger people due to the cash flow issues.  Mature people can afford the equipment, the gas, and the permit fees.  We also tend to be better organized, mostly because we have more control over our schedules.  Getting a group of half a dozen people to arrive at the same place at the same time can be pretty complicated, especially if most or all of them work unpredictable shifts.

We were fortunate enough to win the permit lottery and hike into the Enchantments, the same route that we did back in September.  This proved to be an interesting experiment.  We were able to add mileage and camp at a higher elevation, and then do a day hike yet further up the mountain.  5500 feet!  It made me want to repeat the Portland Marathon (knowing I would be virtually guaranteed to run a PR).  All told, we hiked fourteen miles round-trip, and ten of that while wearing packs.  I’m not sure exactly how much my pack weighed, because I crammed more stuff into it after the “official” weigh-in, not wanting my husband to know just how much I was planning to carry.  It was at least 40 pounds though.
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Why would a 122-pound, small-framed person such as myself want to carry a 40-pound backpack 5000 feet up a mountain?  This is the crossroads of minimalism and endurance training.  On the one hand, I want to carry as little as possible just to prove to myself that I can do it.  On the other hand, I want to carry as much as possible just to prove to myself that I can do it.  Here lies a real conundrum.  The truth is that I don’t really feel the weight, and I feel like I will wind up carrying more than that if/when I graduate to longer trips.  I’d really like to hike the Triple Crown one day, and it seems like being able to carry seven days’ worth of supplies would make that more likely.

Minimalism can often involve quite a lot of stuff.  For a backpacker, I’m on the middling-to-absurd end.  For a suburbanite, I’m on the extreme end.  What have I got in there?  I don’t tolerate cold at all well, so most of the heavy gear consists of bedding and clothing.  There’s the sleeping bag, air mattress, space blanket, and inflatable pillow.  There are the three jackets, the base layer, the hat and gloves and buff and package of hand warmers.  I put them on at night and I still sit there shivering; I go to bed at 9 PM more because I’m cold than because I’m tired.  There’s the water and the first aid kit, because really.  There’s the inflatable solar lantern and the folding chair for luxury.  Then there’s the cookpot, the stove, the fuel, and the food.  Here is where I can cut weight easily: I tend to bring boil-in-a-bag meals rather than dehydrated food.  I’m perfectly capable of dehydrating my own backpacking meals, and I have done so, but it’s so much more work that it seems worth it to just haul a heavy pack.  If I cut five pounds of food or gear, I’d almost certainly add back five pounds of gear I don’t usually carry, such as a machete or another base layer.  If only I had a 3D printer that could make things out of squashed mosquitos.

The second trip was less physically taxing, but I’ll include it for comedic purposes.  A raccoon tore my tent.  I got some mosquito bites, and I finally had my beloved Therapik with me, but as soon as I pushed the button I found that the 9V battery had died.  The batteries in my head lamp had also gone flat.  I packed for cold weather again, only to find that it was over 80 degrees every day, and I hadn’t brought any shorts, swimsuit, or sunblock.  I still have never used the sunhat I bought at Goodwill years ago for this purpose, and I have the sunburned ears to prove it.  I didn’t bring quarters for the shower.  We went to this park specifically in hope of seeing a condor, hiked five miles to the preferred viewing area, and saw nary a one.  Just as I was taking down the tent on the way home, a fire ant crawled up my pants and bit my knee.  Like it couldn’t wait ten more minutes for me to leave.

It turns out that the outdoor life has toughened me up considerably.  I can now state that stinging nettle and fire ant bites rate about the same, as the pain is worse from the fire ant but it only lasts about half as long.  I’m (almost) grateful that these things happened, because I was able to endure without setting off a migraine or a fibromyalgia flare-up.  I used to be a frail little flower indeed.  Now, I’m tougher than just about anyone.  Maybe one day I’ll feel that I’ve proved my point and I can convince myself to pack a lighter bag.

 YES!!!  THIS BOOK!!!

If you are frustrated with your body, if you have poor body image, if you hate exercise and hate the gym, and especially if you’re procrastinating going to the doctor because you don’t want another lecture, then this is the book for you.  Michelle Segar gets it.  THIS is the book everyone should be reading in phys ed and in medical school.  It talks about the difference in mindset between those of us who feel locked in struggle with our own bodies, and those of us who thrive on exercise.

I’m a marathon runner who used to have fibromyalgia, thyroid disease, and migraines.  I also used to be obese.  If anyone understands the complicated combination of negative attitudes toward physical fitness, I am that person.  Segar understands that the missing key is how we feel about the very idea of moving our bodies.  When we think it’s a chore, that we “should” do it, that we’ll be lectured if we don’t, or that it feels physically awful, then there’s no way we’ll do it.  That’s deeply sad if moving differently is the only way to release ourselves from chronic pain, stress, and/or depression.
Recovery and healing count toward ‘physical activity’ too.  Speaking from experience, physical therapy can be an exhausting workout.  For some of us, we have as far to go from minus 1000 to zero, as others do to go from wherever they are to a marathon.  I can also speak from experience when I say that zero feels like a victory when you finally get there.

No Sweat starts with what to do when exercise feels like failure and humiliation.  What do you do when you’ve already made so many commitments you weren’t able to keep?  How do you trust yourself to make more, when you’ll probably just let yourself down again?  Segar cites a study saying that those whose motivations to exercise included “weight loss” and “better health” spent the least amount of time exercising, up to 32% less time than people with other fitness goals.  We’re not able to think about the long-term future in any meaningful way, and if we want to succeed, we have to frame it in a way that feels like immediate gratification.  For instance, my main reason to exercise every day is that I feel like a broken box of dry noodles before my workout, and then afterward, I feel like Mary Lou Retton on a sugar high.  That only became my motivation several months after I started, though.  The first several weeks didn’t feel good at all!  I just believed that eventually it would, and I kept going long enough to prove it.
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“It’s time to stop choosing the wrong reasons for exercising,” says Segar.  Emphasis hers.  This is just from the first chapter of the book, and it gets better from there.  She is absolutely right.  For some strange reason, everyone seems totally obsessed with body image issues right now.  That doesn’t click with me.  Whatever I look like, deal with it; it’s none of my business what other people think of my appearance.  What works for me is to tune into how it feels to live inside my body every day.  That used to be a place of constant pain and confusion.  Once I learned to change my body composition and my postural alignment, once I fixed my nutrition and my sleep issues, I learned to tap into the natural analgesic (pain-relieving) effects of exercise.  Instead of pain, I had a glowing, energized, pain-free feeling that lasted for hours each day.  It changed my life.  My motivation won’t be the top one for everyone, but everyone can have something.  Whether that’s time for some private headspace, the resurrection of a buried passion like dance or yoga, a way to exorcise anger like kickboxing, or something else, reading No Sweat can probably help you find it.

There is only so much time.  We have only so much space.  We have only so much mental bandwidth and psychic resources.  Anything we do, say, think, feel, and keep displaces other options.  The truth of this is evident when I bring out the Bucket of Racquetballs and start tossing them to my dog.  He can only fit one in his mouth while trying and failing to pick up a second ball.  When the third, fourth, fifth, and twelfth balls start bouncing around the room, he gets so overwhelmed that he runs outside.  One ball is plenty to entertain him.  We can learn a lot from this.  I do better when I focus on one thing at a time, whether that’s listening, working on a project, or looking where I’m going.  This simple insight could have come to me many years sooner, but my life was so convoluted and hectic that I couldn’t figure it out.  A lot had to be subtracted before I could add in focus and mental clarity.

What are things we can subtract in order to add something better?

Subtract debt to add financial security
Subtract clutter to add simplicity            
Subtract options to add decisiveness
Subtract grime to add sparkle
Subtract selfishness to add compassion
Subtract resentment to add affection
Subtract excess body fat to add agility         
Subtract self-pity to add grit
Subtract a feeling of scarcity to add generosity        
Subtract anger to add tenderness
Subtract certainty to add curiosity
Subtract opinions to add freedom
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At the time that I started eliminating the chronic pain and fatigue from my life, I had no idea how many beliefs I held that were contributing to my problems.  I let them go and changed my mind only very slowly and reluctantly.  Looking back from my pain-free perspective, I feel so sad for my past self.  My mind was so rigid I couldn’t take in the pieces of information that set me free.  I believed my condition was incurable, I believed that most activities would make me feel worse in both the short and long term, I believed I was an expert on my condition, I believed I knew everything there was to know about it, I believed it was my job to educate everyone I met about [fibromyalgia in my case], I believed that I was living out a sad fate, I believed that anyone who challenged my statements or beliefs about my illness was criticizing me rather than trying to help me.  I believed I was entitled to sympathy and special consideration.  I believed I should not be obligated to carry the same load as other people whom I perceived to be stronger or luckier.

Subtract all that.  Now I believe different things.  I am getting different results.  I believe that I have the power to change every aspect of my body in many ways.  I believe that sleep, hydration, micronutrients, body composition, sedentary behaviors, and range of motion are seriously, devastatingly underestimated as factors in healing.  I believe that chronic pain and fatigue, like other illnesses, are the complex result of many factors.  I believe that the medical establishment does not have all the answers and that I am a pioneer with a lot to teach.  I believe that what worked for me is worth attempting if it might free anyone else from pain and exhaustion.  I believe that I am obligated to share my story far and wide, on the off chance that a single person might be relieved of a single minute of desperation and futility (much less pain and fatigue).  I believe that I have come a long way, and that there is yet more road ahead of me to explore.  I believe I am getting physically stronger and healthier every day.  I used to believe that I was remarkably ill and frail for someone so young.  Nearly 20 years later, I now believe that I am remarkably fit and healthy for someone my age.  I can’t wait until I have “the body of a 20-year-old” and the HAIR of a 60-year-old!  Won’t that look amazing!

It’s like this.  I used to be in so much pain every day that I needed help to get out of bed.  Now I’m a marathon runner and backpacker.  I used to get four-day migraines.  Now I haven’t had a migraine in over two years.  I used to get night terrors.  Now I’ve had a single episode in over two years, and I know why it happened.  I used to feel that I was stuck with “the body I had.”  Now I know that I have total power and that I can have as much flexibility and strength as I’m willing to earn.  (Speed, maybe not so much – still working on that one).  Maybe I’m completely deluded in my beliefs.  Maybe cruel and erratic gods have influenced my life by giving and taking with alternate hands.  OR, maybe I’m onto something and what I’m doing is working.  My attitude of experimentation and continual willingness to empty my cup (subtraction) in favor of further wisdom and knowledge (addition) seems to be paying off.  My results may not impress anyone but me, but they don’t have to.  I’m the one who has to wake up as myself every day.  I’m the one who has to live with myself.  I’m the one who reaps the harvest.  I need to attend to my results, reinforce what works, and let go of my attachment to anything that is not producing the desired effect.

I used to be very attached to my physical possessions.  I had boxes upon boxes of books and papers.  As I subtracted them, I added space for my own writing.  I subtracted the words of others and made room for the words I had to speak.  I had so many clothes that my closet rod snapped.  As I subtracted them, I made room for physical change.  I subtracted my old, familiar look and added the fit, strong body I could barely recognize as mine.  At first.  I’ve added body pride and physical comfort beyond what I ever believed was possible.  I used to have a packed pantry.  I subtracted the sense of scarcity and added space back to my kitchen and money back to my bank account.

I used to be poor and in debt.  I subtracted my fixation on the red ink in my account and entered the place of uncertainty.  I started to wonder what wealth felt like.  I added the sense that I have the power to earn more money, build my skills, become employable at increasingly higher levels, succeed at things even when I began with no experience, and that it is okay for me to have lots of money.  I believe that my bank will never run out of zeroes to tack onto the end of my bank balance.  I believe that as money comes my way, I will find places to put it!  I believe that I can always, always afford to contribute to charitable enterprises, as volunteer and cheerleader at the minimum, and that the more I give toward a better world, the more freedom and abundance I feel in my own life.  I believe that my current feeling of financial comfort can ripple backward through time, coloring my attitude toward my own past, changing my memories and perceptions of myself into something stronger, more empowered, and more endearing.

I don’t have much nostalgia for my younger self.  When I look back, I see myself as endlessly stubborn, blind, self-absorbed, clueless, clumsy, and inconsiderate.  I could have saved myself so much stress, heartache, pain, and confusion if only I had been less attached to my opinions and beliefs.  What I wish I could have subtracted was foolish pride.  Every day, I want to add more listening, more caring, more receptivity, more kindness, more humble effort, more attention, more affection and consideration.  More strength, more health and vitality, more money – those are fine too!

Turning dreams into reality can be equal parts exciting and disappointing.  The reason for this is that we don’t account for all the externalities when we’re working on the fantasy aspect.  I always throw myself into the deep end of the research pool when I become curious about something new, and this gives me a better chance of anticipating and eliminating some of the hassle.  Not all, never all, but at least some.  The truth is that traveling with a backpack is freeing in some ways, and difficult in others.  I am fortunate that I have built a fitness level that allows me to carry my pack and sometimes forget I’m wearing it.

Let’s talk a little about those pesky little laws of physics.  I am 5’4” and I weigh 122 pounds.  My pack is 65 liters in capacity.  Don’t let that little yellow flower fool you.  I had 35.5 pounds in there on our trip to Spain.  That’s 29% of my body weight.  My husband is 6’2”, a hockey-playing former lumberjack, and he was carrying 42 pounds.  That’s 18% of his body weight.  If he were carrying proportionally as much as I was, he’d be schlepping 70 pounds.

I’ll tell you what else: I can carry 42 pounds as well.  When I go backpacking without him, I still have to bring the tent, the stove, the pots, the food, and the first aid kit, even though the capacity of my pack is smaller.  I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the fortitude of a freight train.
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It wasn’t always this way, not for either of us.  We’re both fitter in our 40s than we were in our 30s.  Like every last individual athlete I have ever met, we each have our story of illness, injury, and/or low fitness level.  I had fibromyalgia and thyroid disease, I’ve dislocated a rib and a hip, I’ve broken my tailbone, and I had tendonitis in my ankle just last year.  He had two herniated discs and he has some knee problems.  What in the Sam Hill would either of us be doing in heavy backpacks??

(Seeing the world, saving money, getting stronger, not wasting our lives in front of a screen, etc).

We got better.  The other thing to know is that we both used to be fat.  We’ve lost 100 pounds between us.  Something profoundly interesting about our backpacks is that we used to carry around that much extra weight ON OUR BODY PARTS.  The first time I stepped on a scale with my pack on, I freaked out.  I realized that I used to see that same number right after I stepped out of the shower.  It finally sank in that I had been walking around everywhere with the equivalent of a yard sale strapped onto my limbs.  There were dozens of items in that pack.  How could I have walked around a grocery store or gotten on the bus every day and never realized how much it was for my joints and spine to have to carry?
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My hubby has lost significantly more weight than I have.  Forty-two pounds is a lot of extra weight for a person to carry.  It’s harder when that person is dealing with chronic back pain.  Anyone who knew about his herniated discs might try to stop him from putting on a heavy pack.  Not a soul ever so much as whispered that he might consider taking off the weight – when it was made of adipose tissue instead of camping gear.

We’ve established that we were both predisposed to carrying extra weight, one way or another.  We had amply proved over the years that our skeletal structures could handle it.  We never knew we were missing out on a different kind of experience, one that was vastly more rewarding.  Now that we’ve tried it, it’s self-explanatory.  We can go places that are inaccessible to people in cars.  We can climb to heights we wouldn’t have bothered to attempt.  We can see things we couldn’t have imagined from back home on the couch.  I regret all the years I scoffed at hiking, and all the beautiful places of the world I could have seen.  I never cared until I knew.

Once I knew I wanted to travel the world with a tent and a backpack, I set out on a deliberate training plan.  I had been running 5-6 miles a few days a week, often on a steep, muddy trail.  I suggested that we go out on a test hike, carrying all our gear, and see how we did.  We were bone-tired after three miles.  The round trip was 12.  My calves were so tight when we got home that I could barely shuffle a couple of inches per step.  It was obvious we weren’t physically ready yet, but we had four months.  We kept up our running routine.  I started doing pushups, starting with two and working up to 100 a day.  I was also shooting for a pull-up.  I would go to the pull-up bar in the park down the street, jump up, grab it, and pull myself as high as I could manage.  Then I’d drop to the ground and do it again for ten reps.  Eventually, I was able to get my chin over the bar.  On my non-running days, I’d put about 10 pounds of stuff in my trail pack and walk 6 miles.  We made the most of those four months.

I could barely pick up my pack at the beginning of our trip.  I could, though.  I could carry it.  It got easier each day.  I held myself to a higher expectation of physical exertion.  I wound up running a marathon.  I’m 40, and I plan to be stronger at 50 than I am today.  I know it’s possible because we’ve met so many retired couples on the road who are in better shape than we are.

In my chronic pain days, I could never have tolerated the conditions under which we travel.  It’s not just the pack.  It’s sleeping on an air mattress on the ground.  It’s being outdoors in the cold and damp.  It’s covering miles of cobblestones and uneven ground.  It’s climbing endless staircases.  It’s running for a train with the pack on.  It’s bending and lifting and hauling and crouching and kneeling and reaching my arms over my head.  Quite honestly, I often stop and wonder how it’s possible that my physical vessel could be doing all this.  How am I not getting a migraine right now?  The reason is that solid nutrition, sleep, and hydration can do about a thousand times more than we give them credit for.  I ask a lot of my body, but I give it everything in return.  My body is my vehicle, and it takes me everywhere I want to go.

There is a lot of “common knowledge” floating around in the collective unconscious that I think is wrong.  We take in this received wisdom and swallow it whole, without subjecting it to serious scrutiny.  Part of the discipline of inquiry involves asking, “Is this true?  How can I prove or disprove it?”  The concept of the “set point” is one of those ideas that I have examined and found oversimplified and subjective.  The idea is that each of us is somehow genetically programmed to be at a certain shape and size, and no matter what we do, our bodies will revert to it, like when the top of my pantyhose keeps rolling down.  A “set point” is a classic example of a fixed mindset, and it applies to other areas of life besides body image.

I used to believe I just had the body I had.  I “knew” I “only ate health food.”  I also “knew” I “couldn’t exercise” because I had been diagnosed with fibromyalgia. I felt that I had suffered misfortunes, such as growing a thyroid nodule, and that certain things happened to me that made me a special snowflake.  What worked for other people wasn’t going to work for me.  I “knew” things wouldn’t work without actually trying them out.  That was my ‘set point’ – a mental one.  I was mentally stuck in Park and I didn’t even know I had gears I could shift.

Over time, I stumbled along, accidentally shifting variables and getting different results.  It took longer than it could have, but I eventually learned that I could change my diet, that I could change my body composition, that I did have at least a certain amount of control over my level of chronic pain or fatigue.

The ‘set point’ of my body now is completely different than it was 5 years ago, 10 years ago, or 17 years ago.  My mental and emotional ‘set points’ are also distinctly different.

Seventeen years ago, I didn’t know how much I weighed.  I didn’t know what clothing size I wore.  I wore baggy, loose dresses with no waistband.  I didn’t own a scale.  When I planned my wedding with my first husband, I received my grandmother’s wedding dress, and it wouldn’t button.  I decided I would lose weight so the dress would fit.  (Current Me could probably put that dress on without the alterations).  I had no plan.  I think I thought that making the decision would make the weight vanish somehow.  I didn’t change what I ate, at all, and I didn’t even imagine a workout program.  Needless to say, I didn’t lose weight, and I wound up having to pay a seamstress to add 5 inches of panels in the waist.  My ‘set point’ was vague and undefined, totally lacking information or any way to track metrics.  I also lacked a real career plan.  I was just going along to get along.

Ten years ago, I started learning about how to lose weight.  I was flat broke and hating it, and there was a weight loss contest at my work that involved a potential cash payout.  I WAS GOING TO GET THAT MONEY NO MATTER WHAT.  Almost everyone in the contest was male, and men have an extremely different approach to weight loss than women do.  They tend to look at it more mechanically, as in, “I’m going to lose some weight, so I’d better cut back on the beer and hot wings for a while.”  They would mock each other and try to sabotage each other’s progress by buying donuts and leaving them on their competitors’ desks.  I saw all that as Reindeer Games and kept my eyes on the prize.  In two years and three rounds of the contest, I won over $200.  My new ‘set point’ was that of an experimenter, treating my body as a test subject and seeing that it could change with different inputs.  I realized I knew almost nothing about physical fitness, and that learning more could be valuable in my life.  This was shortly after I got my degree and my driver’s license and started taking my career planning very seriously.

Five years ago, I started distance running.  The first time I went out, I couldn’t make it around the block without stopping to walk, and I had to lie on the floor afterward.  Not even a third of a mile!  I saw that my inner persistence, determination, grit, and sheer stubbornness could take me places that my lack of athletic history could not.  Four years later, I ran a marathon.  My new set point became that of a champion – a slow one, but a champion nevertheless.  When I set a goal, I know I will eventually reach that goal, even if it takes me years, because I NEVER QUIT.  I might fail a bunch of times along the way, but I’ll never give up!  At this time, I also began looking at my vocation and career in a radically new way.

When I look back at myself at different ages, I shake my head at how resistant I was to new information.  I didn’t want to hear it.  I could have had the same conversations, read the same materials, watched the same documentaries, and not gotten anything out of it, because I was stuck at a certain level.  In my life, it’s only been when I decided maybe I didn’t know as much as I thought I did that I was able to make any progress at all.

Physically, a “set point” is the result of a certain package of eating habits and activity level.  Yes, my body will tend to level out at a certain shape and size once I have adjusted to whatever change I have made.  When I joined Curves, I lost 17 inches in the first month – but months later, I had lost only one pound, because I refused to consider any dietary changes and the 30-minute circuit training workout could only have so much effect on me.  I’ve learned from keeping a food log every day for two years that the difference between Snack A and Snack B can be a 4-lb difference on the scale after just a couple of weeks.  A body trained with 30 minutes of walking three days a week is going to look visibly different a year later than a body trained with 90 minutes of running three days a week.  Walk into a gym and watch the crowds coming out of the different classes.  It’s easy to see that the water aerobics group is at a totally different set point than the Pilates or spin class groups.  These aren’t genetic things, they are behavior package things.

It’s the same with other areas of life, such as relationships, finances, and home environments.  One person will tolerate raised voices, and another person won’t, and as a result, one person will be stuck at a relationship set point that the other person would find unacceptable.  One person will settle for an income level that another person will not, and as a result, one person will have financial problems that the other person won’t.  One person will manage to ignore mold, stacks of greasy dishes, and piles of smelly laundry that another person could barely imagine, and as a result, one will live in squalor and the other will not.  Our ‘set points’ are what we are willing to live with, to put up with from day to day.  Usually, we have no idea that another level is possible.

I sometimes visualize this as different floors or storeys in a building.  Imagine an apartment building.  In the basement lives an unemployed person who is clinically depressed, in debt, behind on rent and bills, and surrounded by trash, dishes, and laundry.  On the first floor is a broke college student, struggling with many of the same issues as the tenant in the basement apartment, but working hard for something better.  On the second floor is a single person with a full-time job, gradually paying off debt and following a fitness plan.  On the third floor is a couple with careers and a retirement plan.  In the penthouse apartment is a wealthy entrepreneur with a fantastic view, signing up for an ultramarathon.  They all have the same address, but they’re at different stages of life, and they have distinct mindsets and sets of behaviors.  There is no particular reason why the tenant in the basement apartment couldn’t bump into the penthouse dweller and have a life-altering conversation one day.
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If I woke up tomorrow in the body I had when I was 29, I would burst into tears.  If I woke up in my first apartment, I’d probably cry then too.  The difference is that now I expect different things out of life, and I know how to go about getting them.  “If I only knew then what I know now…” There is no amount of weight I could gain that I would keep, because I already know how awful it felt to live in that body, and I also know what changes to make to get the body I live in now.  There is no amount of mess or disorganization that would phase me, because I now know how to organize it all.  If I had to wash every article of clothing and linens in the house, I’d be done in two days, and if I had to wash every dish, I’d be done in two hours.  There is no way I will ever be in a relationship as bad as my first marriage, because I know to ask more questions now, and I’ll never accept certain types of mistreatment.  I’ll never be poor again, because I know how to get a job that pays enough to live comfortably.  I’m at a particular set point in life, but I know there is nothing permanent about it.  Disaster may come my way, but it wouldn’t be the first time, and I know that whenever I hit the ground, I don’t just land on my feet, I bounce.

The big question is how many higher levels there are.  I know the first step in rising up a level of set point is to recognize that the current set point is nothing more than a comfort zone.  I am where I am because I behave in certain ways, accept certain things but not others, and have a certain finite amount of information.  As I learn more and adjust my behaviors, I can rise, in the same way that a hot air balloon will rise when some sandbags are tossed over the side.  Letting go of self-limiting beliefs and behaviors will automatically create a lift.  Learning other approaches to common problems and adjusting our behaviors in positive ways can lead to upper levels we didn’t realize ever existed.