Get a leg up, For Life!

Yay! Next speaking engagement!

2011-05-28T09:30:00.000-07:00

You can't always make everything good as new but you can always make everything good

Indulge. Sometimes. Don't Go Nuts

2011-01-18T11:57:00.001-08:00

"Last week you told me to just eat the thing..." She blinked. Last time we had talked Melinda had been obsessing over the little bag of M+M's in her pantry for a week.
"Just eat the thing and get it over with." I had advised. This week as we sat at our once weekly post run yogurt fitness workshop I cautioned that "studies show giving in to cravings actually makes them stronger and more frequent." ( Among others).
So which one Was it? More confusing eat-carbs-don't-eat-carbs-only-eat-foods-that-begin-with-the-letter-R type of advice. The kind certain TV doctors indulge in all the time. Eat this don't eat that but we'll switch that around a week from now and in the end you won't know what you can safely eat and feel a little better off for just throwing up your hands and ordering a complete meal from the drive through menu. If the nutrition's bad and it makes you fat at LEAST it was a good deal.
Sigh.
So which was it? The story goes that feelings of deprivation lead to binge eating. But studies show that indulging cravings just makes the cravings more frequent. So here the theory:

Every time you do something habitual, you lay down neural pathways that you then have to alter if you want to break the pattern. This is especially hard if the habit involves something as important as food, because of the happy hormones food produces - seratonin and all its happy pals. SO if you're in the habit, say of eating dessert, or adding lots of sugar to your coffee or having yogurt with your favorite fitness guru every Tuesday night you'll start to feel deprived if you don't. Your brain will miss it. It's not just you - it's certainly not your weak will or lack of self control. It's not your inability to hold yourself accountable or your lack of self discipline. It has, I guarantee nothing to do with whether you are hard working enough or serious enough or whatever.

It is merely your brain functioning quite the way brains are supposed to function: we are as alive now as we always have been. Therefore whatever we've always done seems to be working just fine. Food related neural pathways are your brain's way of saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

But
If you are overweight, clearly something IS broke and you Should fix it. It's your prefrontal cortex - your conscious humanny self (the bit of your brain that has advanced not-for-monkey thoughts) that looks in the mirror or reads the scale and realizes that culture, socialization, upbringing, TV advertising, that devil known as convenience food WHATever has got your neural pathways headed in the wrong direction.

So the question is, if abstinence causes binges and obsessive food thoughts and indulgence reinforces bad neural pathways WHAT do you do about cravings?

Indulge. But don't go nuts.

In other words: all things in moderation. So here's the magic formula:

1) Sometimes cravings are just impulses. I go into a 7-11 and literally everything is begging to be devoured. EAT everything. I feel a little like Alice in wonderland. These are things you can wait out. Give them 10 minutes. You'll probably forget what they were.
2) Resist cravings whenever you can. Maybe you can get your mind off them by doing something that really engages your brain word puzzles, a mystery novel, even scrubbing out the kitchen sink. Sometimes. That doesn't work. So rather than obsess over the thing until you end up eating 15 of them, just eat the thing. Don't beat yourself up. Just go for a walk and burn off some of the calories. Trade out tonight's steak dinner for chicken. Say no to that second glass of wine.
3) Resist cravings whenever you can, but still eat the foods you crave sometimes. Just don't eat them as a response to the craving. My worst cravings are usually for sweets and I eat sweets on a fairly regular basis, but I try not to reward every "EAT SWEETS NOW" impulse with the corresponding food. Sometimes I even try to satisfy a craving with something different - a pickle, some popcorn, a cup of coffee. It usually works, and I can successfully avoid building hard to undo goat trails through my gray matter.

FitnessGuruisms

2011-01-05T03:03:00.001-08:00

1) Of course running is uncomfortable. All exercise is uncomfortable. Anything you do after you get off the couch is uncomfortable. If you're going to get up for a beer you might as well go for a run while you're at it.

2) Don't beat yourself up when you make a mistake. Enjoy your meal. Put down the fork. Pat your tummy and decide what you're going to do about it now.

3) Don't go nuts.
Yeah, gramma says, "all things in moderation." And she's totally right. Eat whatever you want. Just not everything you want, all the time. Have dessert sometimes. Just don't go nuts. The same even applies to salad. If you ate enough of that, it'd make you sick. Annnd-deh all those B vitamins would make you weirdly.... Happy... Like some kind of... Fitness guru or something.

4) Secret to earthly health and happiness: Eat lots of leaves and run around.
Studies show that the B vitamins in folates- leafy greens - are essential in treating and preventing chronic depression. Studies also show that regular exercise is MORE effective in treating depression than paxil. Soooo: secret to earthly happiness: you got it! Eat lots of leaves and run around.

5) You get what you expect.
Turns out this isn't just a fitness/ lifecoach guruey theory. It's the real deal. Your brain patterns/ neural pathways actually form based on what you're telling yourself. So all those times when you were in 4th grade and you told yourself over and over that 4X4 was 16? You betcha, you learned that it IS in fact 16. All those times you tell yourself you can't lose weight? You'll never be a size 8? You can't... You don't... You betcha, your brain learns THAT'S true too. And THEN there's NO stopping it from creating what it knows to be a predetermined fact.

6) This is supposed to be NON-conversational
Yes. You've probably heard that doing something is better than doing nothing. My whole journey of 130 pounds started with just doing something. So definitely do SOMEthing. And as long as it works, keep doing it. BUT when it stops working and you wonder what you have to do? Well, non-conversational is kind of the next step. In running we talk about a singing pace - a pace that is so slow you are not exerted and could even sing - and conversational - a pace that is hard enough you can only talk. Speed runs and races though, are usually done at non-conversational pace - a pace so high you can barely say a word. And yeah. If you really want to keep making progress, you'll be conversational most of the time - exerting yourself hard enough that you could hold a conversation but not sing, and non-conversational once or twice a week.

7) I know, right?
I KNOW. The best advice I ever got when I went into business for myself was from my house mate. "Know what you know.". She said. "I just had to tell you that." And thank God she did. To me it means, stand by what you know, own what you believe, and be aware of what you DON'T know, too. So no, when someone says, "Boy, you sure are smart." I never pretend I'm surprised to hear it. When clients and friends and strange men at bus stops tell me I have great legs I never exclaim, "Golly gee, really?" I just say, "I know, right? I work ma' dang butt off for these gams. But the good news is, anyone can have these legs, all you've got to do is catch 'em."

8) HA! All for fun and fun for all
OK. I laugh like crazy. And take other people with me. It's good for the soul. Oh. Yeah. And studies show that if you enjoy what you do, love your sport, or game or whatever, you'll be more motivated to keep with it. AND more motivated to get back to it after that inevitable lapse.

9) RICE - Rest Ice Compression Elevation.
Yes. You have to take care of yourself if you are going to do exercise. If something hurts, you can't just ignore it. You have to take care of it. Otherwise you'll be out for weeks. Months. Ever. One of my clients told me he'd quit coming to the gym for 6 months because of an injury. I almost shot my muscle milk through my nose when he said it was because of an adductor injury. "Did you ice it?" I asked. His answer was the same as mine had been the first time someone had asked me that. "Who wants to sit on a block of ice?" "Anyone who wants to get better without taking 6 months off.". OK I'm to *#@! Helpful to say that last bit, but it's true. RICE - rest ice compression elevation is not only an essential step in your long term success as a weight manager, metaphore for self care in general. Whether physical or emotional pain needs to be treated. Sometimes it's rest ice (or in the case of emotional pain perhaps self soothing in the form of a nice run or a cup of tea) compression (emotional translation: help from your friends and family), elevation (ditto) and sometimes you even need a professional. Whatever the case, a little RICE can prevent a lot of LAPSE or even RELAPSE. Or worse.

10) I'm SO Freakin proud of YOU!
Yeah. I say it a lot. I get excited about people's progress. I know first hand the kind of effort they put in, and the determination it takes to accomplish their goals, so I get ... Excited. And people need to KNOW that. Great tip: if you are the friend or relative of anyone who struggles with anything do these 2 things if nothing else: take whatever you're feeling - whether it be excitement, worry, jealousy or pride in your role in their achievement - and turn it into sheer unadulterated admiration for that person and what they, on their very own, have been able to achieve. Maybe you don't know what a big deal this is for them, but there are some people for whom "I got off the couch today." Is a big deal. And if you see it that way too, you can help them be motivated to do more. And more. And more. And then "got off the couch." Becomes "went for a walk." Becomes "ran a marathon." Which nobody can help but have a little admiration for.

You can't always make everything good as new but you can always make everything good

No Years Resolution

2010-12-14T09:19:00.001-08:00

"Uh, spend more time with my family?" The lady with the big round glasses said. She was perhaps 150 pounds overweight. She smelled so strongly of Marlboros that if you closed your eyes tight you might believe you were having one of those "next day at the bar" moments from 20 years ago.

The rest of the audience inspected their nails. Tapped their pens on the paper. "Ahem..." Said one of them finally halfway raising her hand and waving the fingers at me. "Uh... We don't ... Really make New Years Resolutions anymore."

"Whyever not?" I blinked. I cocked my head in feigned amazement. If I could have made my eyes blue I would have.

There was a series of half hearted "What's the points?" and "Why bothers?" And "they never works." Followed by a brief chorus of "it's just discouraging/ demoralizing."

Yes, before me sat a room full of new recruits. People who couldn't bear the thought of committing to the potential failure of yet another New Years resolution. They had tried that. And failed. A dozen times. A dozen years dedicated to fitness that had left them overweight, exhausted and devastated by March. Determined to remain "Fat and happy rather than skinny and hungry" by December.

But NO one is fat and happy. The strange, sad, impossible to bear fact is: there are no happy fat people. Fat and happy is a myth defied by the physical pain the extra weight adds, compounded with the emotional strain, the self accusation, shame, guilt, embarrassment, and here is something only a formerly obese person may admit to: constant desire to be perceived as desirable, fit in with cultural norms and be wanted and welcomed among groups we believe exclude weirdos with weight problems.

It is with tremendous mental fortitude that we are able to cordon that off. Able to convince ourselves that we are vain if we wish to be desired. To convince ourselves that we are superficial if we believe that achieving a healthy weight will make us happier.

And so, year after year, we weigh the effort, discipline, commitment, hard work, determination and dedication to self care that it takes to follow through on a New Years resolution against the discounted benefits and WRITE OURSELVES OFF as not worth the effort. The health benefits (after we've boiled them down to some far off effect on our heart in some distant old age) do not outweigh the investment (after we've made a mental list of previous attempts and remembered only the titanic effort we've wasted and weird sacrifices we've made. All the times someone told us we had to hurt like crazy, be miserable and Not Eat Anything that tastes good in order to be healthy).

And so we tell ourselves New Years resolutions are stupid. Ineffective. Heartbreaking. Nothing but trouble. A waste of time and effort. We are not worth the commitment nor the risk of heart break. We are too emotionally weak to bear the disappointment. And we say this to ourselves year after year.
Until we have decided not to bother taking the gamble anymore.

"Spend more time with my family." The lady in the round glasses who was morbidly obese. She even had dimples. And blond hair. And a pretty dress. Just like me.

"For years," I addressed my whole audience but couldn't help fixating just a little on the lady who could have passed for my before picture. "I didn't make New Years resolutions. For the very same reasons you all have just said. Then one year I'd had enough. I decided to try again. I lost 90 pounds that year. The next year I made a different resolution. I quit smoking AND lost another 40 pounds."

The audience blinked. They knew this story but today it sounded different.

"The next year I ran my first marathon. After that I resolved to qualify for Boston. Start my own business. Get my writing published. All done."

And it all started with one, small, simple resolution that first year:

Eat smaller portions of healthier food. Get my heart rate above 100 for 20 minutes every day.

That was all the commitment, all the potential heart break I could bear.

And it was all I needed.

Tried Everything

2010-11-11T10:24:00.001-08:00

I've tried everything.
And nothing works. No really. I tried every pill on the market. I tried the healthy diet thing. And the exercise thing. Weights. Spinning. Weight Watchers Jenny Craig Atkins South Beach...
Nothing works.

I hear it 14 times a day. 28 on Sundays. Now that I'm a bit of a local mascot I even get stopped on the street and told all the many ways in which the stopp-er has utterly failed to lose weight.

In the end, the stopp-er will say, it all came down to self control. I just couldn't do it. It's just not possible. I'm a slob. I'm not good. I'm going to die of fat.

They say this to me, the stopp-ee. The one who, using healthy diet and exercise, lost and has maintained 130 pounds. Run two marathons, started a successful weight management/ fitness guru business blah blah blah. Me. The stopp-ee, someone who's successfully proved wrong the theory that you can't lose weight successfully. Let alone maintain it.
Why they are giving me this litany of failure I don't know. my best theory is that it's preemptive: she won't try to convince me to get healthy if I tell her what a flop I am right from the beginning.
Tried everything, have you? So you know how many calories there are in a banana? You know what BMI stands for and why it's a measure of healthy weight? You know what's at the bottom of the food pyramid and how many ounces there are in a serving of roast beef? You know what your BMR is, how much calorie deficit you need to create to lose a pound, how many calories you burn in an hour walk versus an hour on the elliptical.
Well I DID Atkins.

So you know how many grams of protein there are in a....

You don't have to know that stuff on.... (Fill in the gap crazy diet program).

No. You don't. You DO NOT have to know. The diet, or program, or regime or trainer or what/whoever... Purports to do all that FOR you.

So all you have to do is sit back, relax, and lose all the weight you want. Just relax. We'll take care of it.

Or at least lose all the weight you can while eating nothing but bacon. Or dangling upside down in something called "the Abinator." Or having a trainer/ drill sergeant/ dojo instructor/ jerk make you do things that will hurt bad enough to a) give you the illusion you're doing something productive and b) make you wonder why YOU are such a flop you can't lose weight no matter HOW much bacon you eat and Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness you suffer through.

The fact is, as I always point out to my stopp-ers, no human can survive on lettuce and beans nor do so much exercise you'll die from the pain alone. Your brain will react to its perceived deprivation by unloosing a veritable SYMPHONY of hormones designed to increase your appetite, depress you enough to barely want to get out of bed, make you that cheeto loving couch potato you believe yourself to be.

No, there is nothing wrong with YOU. If you've ever been on a diet or forced yourself out of bed to go exercise on a frosty winter morning. If you've ever stricken carbs or fats or cheese or tomatoes from your diet. If you've ever woken up and wondered where the aches came from that weren't there the previous night.

You have put forth more than sufficient effort to lose and maintain your weight.

The problem is not with the AMOUNT of effort your putting in, it is the TYPE of effort and where your putting it.

If you put $100 in a savings account, you'll have $101 dollars at the end of the year. If you put $100 dollars in Gramma Mellie's investment fund you will have $150 plus dividends. Or so I hear.

At any rate, the answer is: if you invest 2 years doing the Atkins South Beach Weight Watchers Snickers and Coffee All Juice Salad and Peanut Butter Crazy Exercise until you Fall Over diet...

You are almost GUARANTEED (statistics show about 90%-98% chance depending on source) to, at the end of the 2 years, have either made NO net losses OR actually gained weight.

Or you can invest 2 years learning how many calories are healthy for you. How many you burn doing an hour's exercise. What kind of exercise works for you and what will you enjoy doing in the long term. You can find out what percentage of your daily calorie intake a venti mocha is, and learn to choose the mocha OR the sandwich instead of opting for both and more than half your daily food intake.

Whatever you've heard.
Whatever you've tried. Or failed at. Or that's failed you.

Whatever.
There is only ONE way to successfully lose and maintain weight:

You have to take YOUR health, YOUR diet, YOUR exercise into YOUR hands.

Trainers can help you. A nice website like caloriecount.about.com or getalegupforlife.blogspot.com or active.com or whatever can be GREAT tools.

But there is no way, none at all, to lose weight without just Doing the work.

Ah, but the work is good. And there is nothing more wonderful, nothing more rewarding, more delightful, more healthy than being taken care of.

And best of all? Knowing that you're the one providing the care.

Dreams are just Plans for which no goals have yet been set. Reality is just the dream of someone who's goals have been achieved.

When Not to Be Determined

2010-10-28T15:06:00.000-07:00

"Ha Ha Ha. Beautiful. That's a good one". She wheezed a little asmatically at the word "one."
As much as she'd been with me for almost six months it still hadn't gone away. I was a little disappointed. As always I want bad, wrong, unproductive thinking to just vanish into the air overnight. Because I TOLD you. We went OVER this. At least twice.
Ugh. And there it is rearing its ugly head. It was 30 odd years in the making, this habit of telling herself that her beautiful smile, her gorgeous, long wavy hair, her sparkling eyes, that infectious laugh that wins her as friend almost anyone who comes near - telling herself that those things did not matter. At all. Because she was horribly unattractive. Everything else was null and void. Worth nothing to her. Because she is fat. Fat fat fat fatty fat fat. And there is just NOTHING in this world to balance that out.

This ONE thing completely ruined her as someone who might be considered pretty. Or attractive. Or truly lovable.

And. She, and now a growing throng of people I'm working with to pave their individual roads to weight management, revealed something to me that I long since knew but stopped believing in ages ago:

"If I stop believing my weight makes me ugly, if I start to think I'm pretty the way I am, I KNOW I won't be motivated to change. Never. I'll be stuck this way and all happy to be who I am."

"Uh." I could feel my eyes rolling back into my head as if trying to look for the words inside the gray matter back there. "And just a side note, if you WERE all happy with yourself would it matter that you are overweight?". You never know when something is going to be the wrong - or maybe just the right - thing to say.

She started to cry.

"Well that's just the point. I don't WANT to be happy with the way I am because I don't want to BE the way I am!"

Turns out no one, really no one wants to be overweight.

"So this... Not liking the way you look, this believing your weight completely RUINS everything else, this has helped motivate you to lose weight in the past has it?"

"Well yeah it's..."

"You are here. Dieting. And running. For the umpteenth time. And you say that your dissatisfaction with your body is a successful weight management strategy?"

It's not. I can quote studies and articles and all the things I read while losing/ managing my weight. But nothing says it better than what was the secret to my own success:

I gave up.

That's right. At 277 pounds I just gave up. I gave up thinking of myself as ugly or attractive. I stopped telling myself I was a stupid fat loser with no self control. As a motivator shame and guilt and self loathing - sorry, that's what that IS - had UTTERLY failed me.

So I just gave up. I got complacent. I believed I would never find a mate or look good or be healthy or whatever.

And then I lost a few pounds.

And I liked that.
And then I thought, if I actually tried maybe I could lose some more. And although I would never be pretty or fit or ... An athlete or anything... I'd at least be sort of, average. Like all the other fat Americans.

And I did. Lose more weight. And then. I began to believe I could do more.

And since I had completely got out of the habit of hating myself I figured I could really get used to this being less uncomfortable, being less conspicuous.

I could be satisfied with just being less unhealthy than I used to be.

And when I'd lost enough weight for it to comfortably be called "an achievement" something really bizarre happened:

I began to LIKE me. I liked me. And what I saw in the mirror, imperfect as I was. I still greeted myself in the mirror every morning with the words "Still too fat." But now I realized I had hope. And the person who'd given me that hope had been me. And that was something. Maybe I really wasn't so bad. Maybe I COULD be attractive after all.

It took me until I was a size 6 to stop telling myself I was still too fat. That was when I began to see my very first muscle mass, but it was also when I came to what may be the greatest realization of my life:

I will never be perfect. I will never look like the girls on the cover of Cosmo.

Because in addition to the fact that they get paid several hundreds of thousands of dollars more than me to forego all those meals and get all that liposuction they have something I will never, ever possess. A Photoshop editor. Duh.

So now every morning when I wake up and see the loose skin around my upper leg and the little layer of body fat that Does NOT want to leave my tummy (I always wonder why I can't store the stuff on the soles of my feet. Like a camel only different) I do not greet myself by saying "Too Fat." Or too thin. Or too anything.

I just say good morning.
Dreams are just Plans for which no goals have yet been set. Reality is just the dream of someone who's goals have been achieved.

Mini Me

2010-10-25T11:49:00.001-07:00

I know. As much as we talk around it. As much as we "address" it. Or throw money at it. Research it. Write articles about it. Nobody, really is Doing anything about it.
And that is because the whole thing is so painful. And no one can, or maybe wants to articulate how/ why it is so painful. So here goes.

In the picture above, spot the kid with the unhealthy BMI. There are 5 kids. In fact, the highest BMI in the bunch is mine, that's me on the far left with the ice cream. And my body mass index did not exceed healthy limits until middle school. The reason there are no overweight kids in this picture? The rate of overweight/ obesity in children back then was so small it would be unlikely to find one among a group two or three times this size. Currently? One in three. One in Three children ages 10-17 is overweight or obese.

And there is a ton of talk about who is to blame.

And a hundred fitnessy-medically types piping up with ingenious solutions costing (conveniently) gazillions of dollars.

We've started government task forces.

We've got the first lady involved.

We are on the case.

And the progress we've made? Zippo. Zilch. Nada. In fact, just in the last year the statistics have gotten considerably worse. Again.

Which is why, with all the failed agencies and defunct task forces you will be surprised to find that one, small bespectacled woman in a small town in a small county, tucked away under the shadows of the Sierra Nevada mountains has long since discovered the answer.

Her name is Wendy Cranford. When I first met Wendy she had a few pounds to lose. One of those people I used to laugh at - you with your piddling few pounds. But Wendy was serious. She wanted to be in shape. In fact, she didn't just want to manage her weight, she wanted to be - I paraphrase, so smokin' hot my husbands friends will wonder how HE got such a hot woman to marry him.... Or something along those lines.
As usual, I gave Wendy the spiel about self care - and basing your motivation on a worthier cause, like just taking care of you for the single solitary reason that you are a human being, with a basic value, and deserving of at least the same care - healthy food, exercise, leisure activities - that we grant to, like, the worst sociopaths in the maximum security prisons.

She let that sink in a while.

"Yeah." She said finally. "And, I mean, think of my daughter, too."

"Right," I said "you're her care taker. You need to be healthy to take proper care of her and..."

"Well yeah." Wendy nodded. "That too. I just meant, how is she going to learn to manage HER health, to take care of HERself if I don't?" Wendy cocked her head to the side. I could see wheels turning and clicking into place. Not just in her head but in mine. "I'm her EXAMPLE."

Only a few months later Wendy is at a more than healthy weight. She is working of phase 2 of her master plan, the smokin' hot six pack phase. As a participant in my run groups she occasionally brings her daughter Macie to group. Macie has a stroller, but unlike most of the little ones that come to group, Macie isn't satisfied with being pushed merrily along in her stroller.

Macie wants to run.

Just like mommy.

So here it is America: Wendy Cranford's super secret patented guaranteed to work solution to child obesity:

Get off your duff.

That's right. Go out. Exercise. Have fun. Participate in real entertainment - not passive stuff like TV and computer games. Go run. Jump. Play freezetag. Dance. Fool around on the monkey bars.

And feed yourself good food.

Because if you do, they will too.

BTW for the latest from Wendy Cranford's super duper child obesity prevention system:

http://allb4iam30.blogspot.com/2010/10/insanity-day-2-tears.html
Dreams are just Plans for which no goals have yet been set. Reality is just the dream of someone who's goals have been achieved.

Cake, Pizza and the Problem Pest

2010-10-21T10:50:00.001-07:00

The person before me was my sweet, lovable, charming, delightful, positive, funny, adorable, wonderful Niki. The same Niki who refers to work as "Worky Work" and shin splints as "pain in the shinny shins." On a good day Niki is a lark that sings show tunes. On a bad day Niki is a little ray of moonshine in a darkling dusk.

I wax poetic.

Niki is really sweet. And positive. And just... Nice. It's like, built IN to her nature nice.

And as she sat before me at Clark's Corner, being nice, and staying positive, and NOT falling apart AT ALL I realized, Niki was completely devastated.

Like nearly 25% of our little county of 35,000 residents Niki faces the prospect of unemployment. We don't know when. We don't know 100% how or even whether, but whatever the case, Niki's work situation is about to change dramatically. Her whole office could suffer.

And someone brought donuts.

And she was worried about her job. And worried about her future family and her training plan and her racing fees and the cost of healthy food. And she was worried about all the things she had planned to do as she developed in her career and how all that was up in arms and nothing was going to go as she had hoped and then there were donuts which she DID NOT EAT. But she might. Any day now. And that would meddle with all her progress. And her training. And how was she going to do it all?

And I remembered how I had been the last time my life had fallen apart. In fact, Niki had herself been one of the witnesses to my lamentations. It came to mind all I wanted at the time was to cry and cry and lament and you people with your stupid solutions can just go fly a kite. Because I don't need solutions what I need right now is to cry and to wallow and to Just Lament for a while. Why not? There's a whole BOOK of the Bible dedicated to lamentations. If Jeremiah could do it why couldn't I?
Because, as I found out, Lamentation doesn't actually help. That thing we call venting? That thing we tell ourselves we need time for and just need to DO for a while? Actual double blind bona fide scientific research shows that Lamentation only makes things worse.
For years my means of coping with problems in life was to sit at the kitchen table and a) gripe and b) knock back a pizza with beer and some chocolate cake after.
And what was worse, I still had the problem after the beer, pizza and chocolate cake were safely and firmly clinging to my hips.

It wasn't until I moved in with my house mate, Laura that I realized the beer and pizza only made the problem worse. Not only did I feel awful about the problem, I now felt awful about myself. Was stressed out about how much weight the beer and pizza was going to result in (actually did the math - 1600 cal of pizza, 500 cal cake, 720 cal beer - almost a pound in one sitting). Laura had this annoying habit of listening for a while until I'd laid out the whole horror of the situation, comfortingly nodding a head and adding the appropriate "that jerk!" And "those idiots." Where expected. And then getting out a pen and paper. And making lists. People I should call. Things I could try. Potential solutions to the problem.
Laura didn't just LISTEN to me lament. She helped SOLVE the underlying problem.

Which is of course a big part of her strategy of maintaining a healthy size 6-8 almost effortlessly. When Laura is upset about something, the first thing she does is call someone who will a) listen AND b) help her work on a solution to the problem.

Then, she gets to work. AFTER that she has a cup of tea. Takes a walk. Reads a dime store novel. There is no pizza. Or beer.

She almost never resorts to chocolate cake.

I call her - and a handful of others I've picked up since I learned this skill - my problem friends. It took some getting used to. At first the need to lament almost overcame me as much as the need for pizza and chocolate cake. The problem solving thing annoyed me. I didn't, after all, lament about something in order to SOLVE the problem. I did it to... I needed it for... I wanted... Well, come to think of it, I didn't need it. Or want it. It was just a bad habit I'd picked up. An unproductive way of making my problems worse. Not a coping strategy after all but a Non-coping strategy. A way to ignore rather than fix my problems.

So as I sat across from Niki taking notes and drawing up a game plan on my Blackberrry I realized: I was a problem friend. I had become someone who would listen and nod and say "that jerk" and "what a lousy way to behave..." In all the right places. And then. Get Out My Cellular Notepad and Start QWERTY writing a potential solution to the problem.

For a moment I wondered whether Niki was thinking what I used to think about Laura: just stop being so blasted HELPFUL and let me get down to the real work of accomplishing NOTHING and making my problem WORSE.

I thought about shutting up and letting her vent so she didn't get annoyed with me. And then I realized: I didn't care if I was a pest. I just cared about Niki. Like crazy. Enough to be a worse pest than tse tse flies or killer bees if it meant I could help her make things better.

BTW, you can hear this whole thing from Niki's perspective.

http://nikimariesjourney.blogspot.com/2010/10/insanity-day-3-time-to-take-even-better.html

Finding your Fairy Dust

2010-10-14T11:08:00.001-07:00

"I got no magic fairy dust." I shrugged. "There's nothing special about me."
I say it a hundred times a day. It's like a mantra. I want to tell people they can do what I did. They can lose as much weight as is healthy, they can quit smoking and never, ever think about cigarettes again. They can maintain a healthy weight. Run marathons, start a successful business doing something they love in the middle of a pretty lousy economic situation.
Anybody can do it. There's nothing special or different or amazing about me.
I got no magic fairy dust.

I say it 100 times a day and now I realize a hundred times a day I'm going to have to say a big prayer of forgiveness because it's just not true.

Not that I'm nothing special. That's true.
Not that anyone can do it. That's true too.
But I do. I do have some magic fairy dust. I don't know how I got it or why all of a sudden. I could say it came from the fact that I was pretty much at death's door when I started this journey and dint have much alternative, but I've learned to sprinkle my magic fairy dust on everything these days, and it's been ages since I was last in mortal danger because of my weight. My weight, my health, my body, these were only the beginning. I've since discovered uses for my magic fairy dust in all aspects of my life.

I use it when my business isn't growing as quickly as I'd like.
I share it with my clients when their struggling.
I pass it on to my friends.
Every day I don't go back to bed because of some disappointment, that's when I whip out the magic fairy dust.
Every day - and it happens at least once a day - I talk to a client who is at the end of her rope, or visit a friend who is miserable in her job or meet someone on the street who can't get the door open because he's pushing where it says pull.

That's when I need my magic fairy dust.

As time goes by I realize: magic fairy dust is in endless supply. It's laying around like diamonds in the streets in the old stories of El Dorado or Solomon's mines.

I found it a few years ago the first time because it was either that or die. Then when death was no longer a motivator I found that health, wellness, energy, friendship, family... All those things were enough.

And now I have an endless stream of fairy dust. Enough to share with an infinite number of friends and family members and clients and ... Whoever needs it.

And every time I lose my way, every time I feel like I want to give up - which happens more often than people believe - all I have to do is find my fairy dust. Search back through all the things I do and people I meet and places I go and find that endless well, the hidden treasure of magic fairy dust.

So what exactly is magic fairy dust made of?
It's pretty simple:

Determination

Determination to take care of myself as well as I take care of my friends and family.
Determination not to put myself last among a laundry list of things that only need doing in my imagination.

Mostly
I am determined

Not to give up

On myself.

Carrying Curtis

2010-10-07T14:43:00.001-07:00

"Brunhilda." Melodie panted as we jogged past the 6 mile mark of our 16 mile run. It was her third attempt at the 16 miler.
Ever since qualifying for Boston in July even I can't deny I'm a pretty good runner, even a well informed, knowledgeable run coach. So I had no qualms about helping Melodie train for her first marathon. We found her a good plan. We moved sensibly through it. We got completely stuck at mile 16.

"Mile 16." I smiled remembering my first 16 miler. "It makes you a runner. And not just someone who runs, but that special breed of runner. A Distance Runner."

Melodie nodded.

"Capital D."

Nod.

"Pretty scary, huh?". I've been a runner now for a couple of years, doing what I've come to understand is a pretty common tightrope walk between seeing yourself as a runner, a die hard, a super hero blazing past all those couch dwellers, padded pants wearers (my cycling friends and I have an ongoing discussion over something I call, "pansy pants"), and other various and sundry painless-but-expensive-and-or-ineffective exercisers, and seeing yourself as a complete failure, a flop, a lunatic just for contemplating something this hard that you will clearly never, ever be successful at. Ever.

What Melodie and I were currently dealing with was something I've come to call my Runner's demon. The thing that sits on your shoulder for the first mile or so of any run.

It weighs 14 tons.

It has an annoying whiney voice that starts with, "I'm tired. My foot hurts. I have a head ache." And spends at least the first mile of any run, race, whatever giving me a whole litany of reasons I SHOULD not run. I should NEVER run. I should pack it in. Get my butt back on my couch with my sack of Cheetos and my beer and pizza and roll up my sleeves to lift nothing heavier than the remote control.

It's pretty ugly, too. It has a poorly groomed beard and it's a bit paunchy and balding and just has the LOOK of a guy who gets cheesed off at the waiter when his food doesn't have just the right balance of sage and dill.

Its name is Curtis.

In races Curtis shows up at whatever mile my adrenaline rush induced start begins to wear off and a bunch of emaciated, muscle mass free "runnery types" with their under armour and their $200 shoes and their "Boston Marathon 1995" T-shirts and their fancy compression socks start to pass me right and left.
They're REAL runners. Curtis tells me. YOU'RE just a fat girl on a fit-kick.

I *huff* just *puff* qualified for Boston. I tell Curtis.

You failed your PE fitness test every year from third grade onward.

It's *huff* different *puff* now. I'm an athlete. *huff* I'm a trainer. *Puff* I'm certified.

HA. Certifiable, anyway. You're no good. You're washed up. That was a short lived running career. Pack it in. Go home. Get some Cheetos on the way.

Last Sunday's race was the worst yet.

Just lay down here in the road. Curtis kept saying. All the real runners will jump over. No worries.

It was mile 9 of a half marathon. I'd already dropped back 3 pace groups and wasn't even sure I was going to finish ahead of my PR from a year ago. Curtis had lost the battle at Santa Rosa half marathon, Redding marathon, San Francisco Marathon and half a dozen other local races I'd won or at least placed in over the last year or so. And it turned out he was pretty angry. He was working at me with a vengeance.

As I passed under the overpass I looked up. That was when I knew Curtis was beat. Melodie, my sweet, beloved Melodie was there, clearly carrying her newly named runner demon, Brunhilda just as I always carried Curtis. And keeping up RIGHT there with her pace group. Right on target. Brunhilda and all. I sped up. I met her at the finish line. I way behind goal and Melodie right on target.

After the race Melodie and I talked a blue streak about all the ways in which Brunhilda and Curtis had tried to foil our respective races. I could see Curtis's trickery stretching out behind me like a great big ca 1987 stack of scruncis trying their best to pull me back. For decades Curtis had told me I was a fatso. When I was little even Curtis was there, telling me I couldn't dance. I had two left feet. I would never be good at running. Or volley ball. Or tennis. Or anything.

I could spend days, weeks, years probably figuring out where and how I'd managed to find Curtis. Maybe I was born with him. Or maybe the mean kids at school or my grandpa Pop who called me Alley Cat when he liked me and "Fat Cat" when he didn't. Which was most of the time. But it's not about where he came from, it's about how to tell him where to go.

Curtis is the same voice that tells me one little donut won't make a difference. The same voice that says I should stay home when it rains and that the other dancers at my favorite dance club think I have two left feet. Curtis tells me what I can't do and why and always wants to make sure that whatever I TRY to do I know it's against his better judgment.

Curtis is the voice of self doubt.

And what I have to do is remember that Curtis, in his annoying way, is looking out for me. Without Curtis I'd have tried to fly off the roof that time when I was 3 instead of off the top bunk. Without Curtis I'd have married a Bavarian Farm boy, had 7 kids and spent every day of my life waking at five to milk cows and make a fresh batch of Bavarian Blue.

Curtis has saved my life a hundred times. Even though he is a pest. And what's more, he doesn't seem to have a counterpart. I don't have, as I have a voice of self doubt, a voice of self faith.

That voice, the voice that argues with Curtis and tells me I CAN run 16 miles or finish a half marathon at 90 minutes or dance a mean Merengue even though I'm about as Latin as Cleopatra, that voice of self faith?

That voice has to be my own.

Jerks

2010-04-21T16:26:00.001-07:00

It's the middle of June. A 200 pound woman in slightly too tight men's basketball shorts and a very, very sweaty tank top is running at what could almost be called speed, down what is definitely a very steep hill. There is only one source of a breeze for miles around and that is the air that is laboriously being shot from her lungs as she huffs and puffs like a big, fat wolf down the hill.

You and your teenage friends come roaring around a hill in an SUV and see the sight of this whale on legs and begin to laugh. One of you yells something obscene out the window. The group laughs its collective self silly for just a moment and then moves on to the topic of Jenny Sonnenfeld's out of season purse or Steve Morris's college age girlfriend.

The woman on the other hand stops running. Turns around. Goes home to her boring treadmill. Does not dig out her outdoor running shoes again for nearly a year.

Yes, the 200 pound woman is me, and yes, the kids in the SUV really did yell something obscene out the window at me. I like to think that in the years past, each of them has gone on to at the very least gain that infamous freshman 15. Hopefully one or two of them is really, really fat.

During the time it takes to do any diet/ exercise plan, it is absolutely inevitable that you yourself will encounter what I, at 200 pounds, huffing and puffing down Corkscrew Hill learned to call by a specific scientific term: Jerks. The husband (who is otherwise no doubt a prince of a fellow) who "encourages" you by pointing out what and how much you are eating. The neighbor who talks to you as if you had no idea that all you had to do all along was eat less and exercise more. The stupid kids hanging around the park like mold on cheap cheddar.

The solution to the problem of jerks is complicated. You can't make jerks go away. Even your prince of a husband sometimes acts like one. You can't hide from them. Eventually you are going to commit to some dang fool thing like running a marathon and you will have to get out and road run no matter how good you are doing on the tread mill. You can't reason with jerks because most of the time they are long gone by the time you have a chance to confront them (people are so much braver whizzing by in SUV's or approaching you at the neighborhood bar-b-cue than in places where you could actually turn around and tell them what jerks they are).

So here my recipe for dealing with Jerks:

1) accept that they are jerks. Either just right now (who knows if my SUV kids were just experiencing a lapse in judgement. Perhaps they're all church-going saints who volunteer to groom old people's poodles on weekends - to say the least of your otherwise princely husband) or always. It's not you. Sometimes people just act like jerks.

2) Remember that for every one (1) jerk there are a dozen (12) people who don't even notice you (after all 2/3 of the population is overweight or obese. You'd think we'd be used to seeing a few persons of larger persuasions around) and a lot of people are really rooting you on. Your friends and family, certainly, but a lot of strangers, too. Like me. And the nice people in the VW New Beatle who drove by every night as I ran down Corkscrew Hill and gave me a thumbs up. When it comes to losing weight, actually even the Jerks would like to see you succeed, even if their being jerks can be discouraging.

3) Confront them when you can. Accept it when you can't. Husbands, fathers, kids, friends who act like jerks don't mean to. They love you and are committed to you. Jerks or no they are rooting you on. And it's good practice to show people who treat you with disrespect that now that you are regrowing your self esteem they won't be allowed to treat you that way any more. It's called drawing reasonable boundaries. Making sure those around you don't cross the line into being disrespectful is a way for you to protect yourself. Otherwise your body will help you out by doing it for you - putting realy, tangible space between you and the jerks.
If you can't confront them, just accept that they are jerks. I like to think they are probably just momentary jerks who thoughtlessly lose their heads and don't realize the impact they're having. Like the SUV kids.

And when all else fails, picture them years from now, after a few years' neglect, too many college beer parties, no more varsity sports teams or cheer squads, running at 200 pounds down Corkscrew Hill. As you pass them at mile 24 running up it.

Maybe you'll be a professional trainer then too. And you can give them your card.

Buyers Remorse

2010-04-13T17:58:00.001-07:00

"Isn't there a law in this state where you can exchange a car? Like if you buy it and change your mind?" I had my friend Andrew on the line minutes after having been fast talked into buying the brand new, souped up, custom Dodge Charger for which I had traded my famously clanky Volkswagen.

"No, not in this State. You can't take it back. Not after you've signed the papers."

I never found out why I had called Andrew specifically. Andrew is just a kid - OK young man - I know, fresh out of college. Maybe he just represents someone I think of as trustworthy, or maybe my dream self just thinks Andrew is just the kind of know it all I would require to know the answer to something like that.
I never found out because moments after my heart broken self hung up the phone with my all knowing friend I woke up, heart palpatating, drenched in sweat. I walked downstairs and opened the garage door. There was still a Volkswagen in it; as if on cue something shifted and Berthilda the 2001 Cabriolet went clank. My heart rate slowed to normal speed.
There would be no exorbitant payments I would have a monthly battle meeting. There would be no infamously high maintenance costs or endless detailing charges or whatever other costs upkeep on a brand new, souped up, custom Dodge Charger entails. I was off the hook.
The dream continued to disturb me though. What had the car symbolized? What was the dream trying to tell me about what I had just made a commitment to the higher cost greater maintenance effort of?
I sat forlorn in the kitchen in my new size S night shirt stewing. I googled "dream symbolism car." And they all came up with one thing: your body.
Yeah.
It turns out that in dreams the vehicle that carries you from place to place containing your mind and spirit represents your body.
Duh.
Of course. And a body that's fit, in good shape, pretty, healthy etc. etc. requires A Lot of maintenance. It takes time and effort to take care of and yeah, it's sometimes a struggle.
And believe me there's nothing more heart breaking than having it repossessed. Nothing.
So here I sat, 2 AM at my kitchen table having signed the papers on a fancy new, souped up, custom vehicle-i.e.-body and realized all I wanted in the world was the comforting clank of something I wouldn't have to be so committed to. Something I could Not Think About. Something Low Maintenance and cheap.

Something I Could Neglect without anyone noticing.

The new size 8 thing, the souped up Dodge charger of bodies, this thing would make noise every time I gave it the wrong fuel. It would look disheveled if I forgot to oil it properly or let junk food wrappers build up in the passenger seat. My old body had never complained whatever I gave it and however I took care or failed to take care of it.
It had been fat but it had required NO Effort. At All.
And this having to do exercise and be picky about what I ate and take care of myself This Was Going To Be Too Hard.

I thought about calling my favorite know-it-all for advice. It had worked in the dream. But I realized he AND his lovely new wife would probably think all the exercise had finally deteriorated my brain.

And then I had the epiphany which I only recently put into words:

Everything worth doing is too hard. Everything worth doing requires me to bridge the gap between what I am capable of now and - get this - what I need to be capable of to accomplish my goal. That's what makes it worth doing. It stretches me. It improves me If it didn't it would be futile, boring, not worthwhile.

So I've been maintaining my souped up Charger so long I can say by now roughly 92% of the population has had theirs repossessed already.

The payment on it has been 5-6 days a week exercise.
The maintenance has been weekly weigh ins and time and energy spent making game plans when the scale went up a few ounces. It's involved passing on foods I thought I couldn't live without and only eating them on occasions when that's really true. It involved learning to like things I never thought I would, like seafood. Green beans. Cauliflower.
And spending time cooking for myself.
And going out for a run even when I didn't want to or when someone else made demands on my time or it was raining.
Sacrifice. Which I made. For myself. And no one else.
And that had always been the problem before.

I had not been worth the sacrifice. And now I was. I wanted my Charger. Fancy interior and high maintenance, souped up engine and all.

And for the first time in my life, wanting the shiny new vehicle outweighed my fear and dread about having to take care of it. After all, things had changed.

Taking care of my body was no longer drudgery.

Miraculously, wonderfully, it was a labor of love.

Whole Health Renovation Specialist
209-740-7898

"I am forever striving to manifest things the way I would like them to be. In the mean time the greater challenge is to cope with the way things are." -Me

Beating Bob in One Easy- or Rather Agonizingly Difficult- Step

2010-04-02T19:25:00.001-07:00

At the far end of the winding, hill ridden, cattle field lined country lane called Tonzi Road in Amador county, there is a collection of comingled brush, a good portion of which is poison oak. Its name is Bob. Nearly every day Bob taunted me. Ha Ha Bob would say as I ran up the hill toward him huffing and puffing like an elephant in labor.
You're walking. Again. Bob would laugh.
You'll never run further than a block, let alone all the way to the top of the hill.
Bob was located just past the top of something I tried very hard not to call "the hill of impending doom." Every day since I had decided to run a half marathon I had run the mile down the hill, and the mile almost back up. I would stop short of the crest of the hill. My formerly tar filled lungs burning, my legs feeling almost as solid as a pair of pipe cleaners. A bit recovered I would walk the walk of shame past the top of the hill of impending doom and hear the almost-sound of Bob the comingled poison oak bush laughing his non-butt off at me.
Five days a week. For a month. If I wasn't too deadly allergic to poison oak to get within 5 feet of it without turning into the stay-puffed marshmallow man I'd have set Bob on fire.
But every day I would get to the burning-lung-pipe-cleaner-leg phase and I would decide I could no longer take so much as one step and then I would do something that completely defied all possibility. What I did required superhuman strength. It was beyond comprehension. It was less likely than a duck billed platypus and more impossible than an anti-gravity suit.

I couldn't do it.
There was no way.
I was convinced.
And then I pushed all that out of my mind. Lifted my foot off the ground.
And
Took
Another
Step.
Just like that. I went one step further than I ever dreamed I could.
One step closer to the top of the hill of impending doom. And doom did not arrive.
And the next day I took yet another step closer. And the day after, too.
And within a mere 3 weeks I was doing the full 2 mile distance. At the bottom of the hill I added an extra mile. And at the top. And within another month I was running, not walking, back to the end of the road, and up to the top of then hill. Past the top of the hill to the scrubby, knob cone pine. Past that to the gnarled, rabbit ear shaped fence post. Past that to the "Trespassers Will Be Shot," sign (and they say we country folk are so sweet and hospitable). Past that to.... To Bob. And Bob was not laughing now.
Ha Ha. I would chortle every time I ran past Bob. Even and especially the day I ran all the way up the hill of impending doom, past Bob, up Mount-Not-Enough-Explatives and collapsed in a heap in front of my car. Between heaving, huffing and puffing I spared just enough breath for a MWAAAhahahahahahaaaaa! Take... Gasp.... That.... Huff.... Bob!
And that was the day I ran out of road. I had achieved my first goal of running 6 miles within a mere two months. Up and down hills. Past obstacles. Over dried creek beds and beyond the great, debilitating mental block known as Bob the comingled poison oak bush.
I ran that 6 mile stretch until I could do it in an hour. And then I decided I needed a real challenge and mapped out a rout with real hills and which would allow my runs to expand from six, to eight, to twelve, to... Eventually all the way to 26.
"I've hit an impasse. I can't get any further."
She was stuck at three miles. She would never get past three miles. The 13.1 she had committed to at the beginning of our sessions together was not getting any closer. It was getting further away. She would put her training plan and her anti-pronation running shoes and her three sizes too small run skirt all in a giant pile and set fire to it!
"Burn it all?" I suggested.
"Burn it all!" She tried and failed to resist laughing.
We had gone round and round on the subject of burn-it-all mentality.
I can't do exactly what I set out to do, exactly the way I want to, without any hitches in my perfectly lain plans so I'm am going to scrap it ALL and forget it and get a sack full of marshmallows and a six pack of beer and gain back whatever I've lost and never, never get up off my couch again until someone comes and lifts me off with a forklift. An industrial sized forklift.
"One step." I reminded her. "One step more than you did today. One bite of food less than you ate yesterday. Already you're way ahead of where you yesterday, miles ahead of where you started."
Her face did that thing people's faces do when, if they were cartoon characters a little balloon would appear over their foreheads like an x-ray showing all the little cog-wheels clinking and clanking into motion.
If you take one more step today than you did yesterday, and one more step tomorrow than you do today, then how long will it be before the steps add up to 13 miles?"

Clink. Clank.
"I can tell you because I know for a fact. From where you are now? About three months." I knew because I had already walked down that road. Or rather run up it huffing and puffing like a gimpy big bad wolf.

Clink. Clank.

"Meet me out on Tonzi Road." I looked at my watch. There was just enough time before sunset. "I want to introduce you to my friend Bob."
Whole Health Renovation Specialist
209-740-7898

"I am forever striving to manifest things the way I would like them to be. In the mean time the greater challenge is to cope with the way things are." -Me

Warning: this entry contains a bad word. On purpose.

2010-03-24T21:50:00.001-07:00

"You know what you should say, don't you?"
Yes I knew.
"There must be another way.". I tried to weasel out of it anyway.

Kay laughed. Kay laughed the kind of hearty laugh of someone who has always had a heart of gold, the courage to call things as they were and the mouth of a truck driver.
She and I had argued for years about whether there was a real use for cursing. I had always said that there wasn't anything you could say with the F bomb that you couldn't say more articulately, say, using something fancy with several more syllables than consonants. Something that ended in -ination - or better, -ification. And any way curse words just made you feel worse. No one could still be angry after uttering the word "dookie.". It worked for me every time. Except now.

I ought to have known when I met Marian that she was that rare breed of female pompous douchebag. The biggest tip off was that she made her money as a "consultant," which used to mean something very specific and now just means, "person who does stuff and presumably gets paid."
But Marian is filthy rich.
Everybody knows her.
Everybody wants to be invited to her parties and sit around in a circle at her feet hoping to get for free the words of infinite wisdom she passes on to her high paying customers for beaucoup bucks.
I on the other hand, pride myself on having No Susceptibility to Wealth And Influence and Being Capable of Making Judgments Based Solely on a person's Merit.
Which was why I would have nothing whatsoever to do with Marian. Ever.
Until she decided she liked Me. Why she liked me was a mystery. I had no influence to speak of and on the social-climbing ladder I was on one of the bottom rungs at best.
Before I knew it I was meeting Marian at her favorite caffee. I was going to Marian's Fourth of July Party and attending weddings of family members I thought were spoiled leeches who'd burned out their best brain cells on designer drugs bought with Marian's money.
I was also feeding Marian's dog while she was away on her retreats and seminars and weekend getaways. I was looking after the house, too. And checking in with the pool boy and the maid and whatever else was so invaluable you couldn't trust the paid help to do.
I told myself this was a sort of Mr. Miagi moment. If I did all the work of carting off the cat's latest kill or cleaning out the dog's infected ear there would be some great lesson, some word and/ or phrase of infinite wisdom which would unlock the doors to health, wealth and happiness forever.
And of course the more of these favors I did the more of them I was "trusted" with. And I learned a lot of really interesting things. Like. Well, like. How Marian always said. How. Like. Well. I can't think of any right now but back then I thought I was learning all sorts of magic things and that was why I was more than happy to help move the Mahogany chest of drawers upstairs and oversee the painter's progress in the bathroom and ...
I had known Marian for years by the time I'd finally managed to get my weight off. She'd been encouraging. She'd had great tips. And the helping out with the dogs and carting off dead rodents and shifting furniture around had been great exercise. Now came the hard work of fixing what had been going on in my head that had got me to a point where I was morbidly obese, dying from my weight condition.
The first stop on the road to recovery had been self esteem and self respect. I would have to build them. I would have to do things which took care of me, just for me. I had to change my opinion of myself. Decide that I was worth the time and effort it would take to keep myself healthy. Do exercise. Think about, carefully choose and prepare my food. It would be hard to do all that if I had the attitude as I had had virtually my whole life: it wasn't worth spending the time and effort on me. My friends, family, whoever was much more deserving of my time and energy. So now I would have to Do Things For Myself Like Take More Care With Food and Exercise.

And...
I would have to Stop doing things that were Not in my interest. Things that did not have self worth and self care at their core.
I would have to Not over eat.
I would have to Not forgo exercise for TV and popcorn.
I would have to stop spending my free hours cleaning out the ears of other people's dogs.
I would have to begin setting boundaries, saying no to all the pompous douchebags in my life and stop letting people have whatever they wanted of me in a vain effort to ensure they didn't leave me or stop liking me or tell me I couldn't play with them anymore.
I had to say no and was able to say no because whether the Marians of my life liked it or not I did not need their approval any more I had something much, much better and much, much more real and solid: my own.
So I told Marian I couldn't stop by and let the electrician in at 6 AM Monday morning. I wasn't available to stay all night and help her transcribe an inspirational song. I couldn't clean out the shed with her; I can't stand spiders.
If Marian really Was my friend and really Did care about me as much as she claimed and indeed as much as I now did, Marian's friendship wouldn't be so flimsy as to float away in the wind the moment I said I had plans for Friday night and couldn't stick around and wait for that special FedEx delivery while Marian went to the charity Gala.
I discovered in my experiments with saying no that nearly all my friends and family were completely OK with it. Some people even seemed to like me more, have the kind of respect for me I was finally showing for myself.
The men in my life especially loved it. And that was a surprise.
And so, though it shouldn't have been, was Marian. I didn't get invited to garden parties any more even though I did still occasionally get invited to help with their organization or clean up.
I had said no to Marian and unlike almost everyone I knew Marian Had abandoned me.
A few months later Marian called me. She was embroiled in a dispute with the pool boy. Would I testify to what he had done? Maybe I would even indicate I thought he was lazy and dim witted and a bit of a drunk and she was so sorry to have been so out of touch lately and we really should get together sometime.
I was going to call back today and tell her I would testify, but only the few facts I knew from one incident I'd been present for. No personal opinion. Nothing exaggerated.

And that was what I told Kay.
Kay didn't approve. She wouldn't take "no" for an answer, maybe-well-OK-but even less so.
"No. There's nothing else to say to that. What she asked you to do was wrong. And I'm amazed you'd even consider taking an hour out of your busy schedule to do it anyway."
I took a breath to say something. "No," she continued, "isn't enough."
She was right. "No" wasn't enough. "No" usually works and frankly given my circumstances I am delighted to announce that I have learned to use it appropriately. But this was one situation where "No" was not enough. "No" just said I wouldn't do it. "No" did not add, "and I am absolutely affronted by the fact that you would even dream of asking me to do anything for you let alone something immoral and potentially illegal."
"No" did not even indicate my deep dissatisfaction with her treatment of me over the years of our relationship. "No" did not give her even a vague impression of the fact that I now had a well developed sense of self esteem and self care that I would not allow pompous douchebags like her to violate no matter how rich and powerful they were.

"What should you have said?" If Kay had had half moon glasses she would have been peering over them at me. I thought about getting her some for Christmas.

I thought for a moment.
I looked around to make sure no one else could overhear.
"Frhg hm."
"Huh?" It wasn't good enough.
"Fuck you.". And your little dog's ear issues, too.
"Now you'll remember for next time, too." Kay slapped her hand on the table.
And she was right. The simplistic magic of "Fuck You," is pure genius. It goes further than "no" in expressing indignation. When used properly it could skip insult and not create, but rather prevent injury.
If appropriate use of "no" is a way of enforcing reasonable boundaries, appropriate use of "Fuck You" is a way of making good and sure it doesn't happen again with someone who has no business being anywhere near them in the first place.
The Boston Tea Party was a "No." The Declaration of Independence? That was a Fuck You.
Unlike "No," "Fuck You" has to be used with extreme care. "No" in the right place will be respected. "No" in the wrong place can be forgiven. "Fuck You," is pretty final. Good friends will apologize.
Weak bonds will be tested.
Pompous Douchebags will threaten to find some reason to see you in court, too. They will hardly believe you wouldn't do this for them after all the words of wisdom they passed on to you free of charge.
To which, again, there is only one answer.
One that says go-ahead-and-try.
One that says I-believe-in-me-but-I'm-clever-enough-not-to-believe-you.

"Fuck You."
It was all I could say.

Whole Health Renovation Specialist
209-740-7898

"Small steps can be agonizingly slow but how much better a small step in the right direction than a giant leap in the wrong one." -Me

Chickening Out

2010-03-13T15:39:00.001-08:00

"I won't make it. I have an ingrown toenail."
Trainers are just another form of teacher. We've heard them all. My dog ate it. I had a sniffle. I was kidnapped by aliens. I was kidnapped by sniffling aliens with hungry dogs and ingrown toenails.
My client who had suddenly contracted an ingrown toenail within the 3 hour span since I'd set up the appointment, was chickening out. I wasn't taking it personally. It happens all the time. I did it a hundred times myself, but the only time I remember was the time I almost chickened out and didn't, and it changed my whole entire life forever and ever.
I had been searching for an activity that would get me out more. I had (long, long story very short - see entry "Dancing Queen" from November 2009) settled on Latin dance. I had gone once. Hardly got asked to dance. Went again. Almost turned the car around and went home to a comfy piece of chocolate cake and six pack of beer at nearly every intersection. Decided to keep going instead. Met Arturo. Learned to dance and to love dancing. Got pretty good at it. Now, only a short time later, I have to be restrained from dancing by my friends and family because I have an important race the next day.
I've fallen in love on the dance floor. Several times. I've made literally dozens of friends and acquaintances. I've learned the art, or some might argue science, of Latin dance. I've branched out to Tango. Fox trot. Waltz. Two step.
The residual shyness, self esteem deficit, fear of intimacy, paranoia, all the things I got as a twofer with my lifelong weight battle, they're all gone. Replaced with the outgoing, friendly, smiling, genuine, authentic albeit slightly sanity challenged social butterfly you all know.
And I owe it all to the fact that one night, dressed in my favorite pink top and my very first ridiculously short skirt and my brand new strappy pink heels I told myself everyone would think I was weird for sitting alone by the dance floor, that I was a lousy dancer, that I would never make friends and influence people, that the women I had met last week hated me and the men I'd danced with thought I was a clod and anyway I'd done it once and once was enough to prove I could and...
And I told myself that as I drove into the sunset in my car and listed in the blink of an eye a thousand reasons why I Should Not Keep Going and Did Anyway.
So virtually every good and permanent change I've made to my life, my body and my mind I owe to one, single solitary fact: that despite all logic, in defiance of all my best attempts at reason, all my ingrown toenails, dogs and rogue aliens with dogs, I Did Not Chicken Out.
I kept driving.
I met someone who helped me.
I not only succeeded at what I'd set out to do, I kept going beyond anyone's expectations.

All because I Did Not Chicken Out. I repeat: I Did Not Chicken Out.

And now as I hung up the phone with what must be the umpteenth client to chicken out on what must be the umpteen-thousandth dance-date-5K-race-swim-meet-gung-ho-fitness-guru-event-X I wracked my brain to remember how that moment when I Didn't Chicken Out had been so remarkably different from the umpteen-thousand times I HAD chickened out. What had scared me off all the times I'd invented aliens or made excuses about sniffles or dogs or work or whatever that had not been present that last, decisive, non-chickening-out moment? The answer? Nothing. Nothing had scared me off. Nothing had crept around the corner preventing me from doing what was clearly in my own best interest. No monsters crawled out of the closet and there were no wild animals hiding behind fence posts. For lack of monsters and bears and aliens and in grown toe nails my brain had made some up.

They were called
Reasons.
Perfectly logical.
Totally understandable.
Completely sane.
Reasons.

Every time I got it into my head to do something beneficial to myself, I would come up with one very good reason why I should.
For instance:
Isolation is one of the main contributing factors to weight gain and regain and overall diet failure. Therefore I need to get out more. So I should learn to dance.
That was a very Good Reason.
But as the day of the actual event crept up, more Reasons kept invading in on me.
Reasons I shouldn't. Didn't need to. Could do something else instead. Something less difficult. Something less scary. Something that had a LOT less potential for disappointment.
And that was THE very heart of the matter. Everything I Did, as opposed to things I chickened out of, had the potential for disappointment. I would be all dressed up in my cutest laughably high heels and ridiculously short skirt and no one would dance with me. Or the other women might cluck their tongues and gossip about me, the new girl. Or I might never learn to be good at it. Or...
It, they, I (and "I" was the worst potentiality of all) might disappoint me.
Disappointment, the very whisp of the possibility of the potential of disappointment had scared me off a thousand times from a thousand things that could have been as beneficial, or maybe even a thousand times more beneficial, than Latin dancing.
So why had the great monster-bear-alien-dog-ingrown-toenail of impending disappointment not tackled me this time? Because this time, just a few days beforehand someone very clever had asked me this question:

Are you going to be disappointed?

To which I had answered, maybe.

And what will happen if you are?

To which I had answered, I don't know.

Are you going to die from the disappointment?

No.

Will you eventually get over the disappointment?

Probably. OK yes.

Right. Because in over thirty years you've never died of disappointment before. And many, many worse disappointments have occurred in your life up to now. How did you cope with them?

Answer: chocolate cake.

And did the chocolate cake make it go away?

Did it help?

No.

What did help?

Nothing. It went away on its own.

That's right. The feeling of disappointment had gone away all by itself. In a comparably short amount of time.

As compared to the grief I'd felt losing my beloved uncle Joe, disappointment had been a cake walk.
Compared to the loneliness I'd experienced when I'd first come back home after years of world travel and had no friends and barely knew my own family? A little of the D-meister had been like falling off a log.

Next to being abandoned by my boyfriend for an important soccer game on Valentine's day? Not being asked to dance was practically a pleasure.

Of all the awful, bad, distasteful lousy things that had happened to me, disappointment over not being good at dancing or not being asked to dance or... Whatever, was Nothing. It was not a monster. Or an alien. Or a bear. It was not even a potentially rabid field mouse.

It was nothing I couldn't handle.
There, that day as I drove into the sunset to Sacramento, that was the day I realized that

I Could Cope. Even If I Was Disappointed.
And I didn't need the help (or rather hindrance) of chocolate cake.

Since then I've seen them a thousand times: The Reasons.

They surface anytime the potential of disappointment comes up. They float over the phone lines from friends and clients and relatives who see

Potential Disappointment

As something so overwhelming that they are utterly debilitated by it.
And what do I do when The Reasons strike?
I think about that night of dancing.
How it led to a dozen friendships. Love.
Happiness.
A new and utterly satisfying career.
And yeah. A little disappointment.

Today I had my first ever race win. I got an interview on TV. I met some die hard runners who will be a whole new set of friends, and half a dozen potential clients.

Last night I almost decided not to run.

Because I really was tired.
I still had a sniffle from last week's flu.
I wasn't sure I was totally over those shin splints.
The course was too hilly.
I was in a ratty mood.
I had paperwork.

Reasons.

Actually, the possibility that, although I, the fitness guru, Should win the race, there was always the possibility I MIGHT not.

Impending disappointment.
Reasons.

Would I die of the disappointment? No.
What would happen if I wasn't disappointed?
The possibilities are endless.
Limitless.
Boundless.

Don't let the mere whisp of a potential for impending disappointment make your life one long chain of them.

The only time you can guarantee you'll be disappointed, is when you chicken out.

Win the race when you can. And be disappointed when you can't. It's OK. Really. You'll see.

Whole Health Renovation Specialist
209-740-7898

"Small steps can be agonizingly slow but how much better a small step in the right direction than a giant leap in the wrong one." -Me

Saying No to Noah

2010-03-03T18:36:00.001-08:00

"No." I said, a little more firmly than I ever believed I could. "No, thanks but no."
The No-ee, let us call him "Noah," shook his perfectly chiseled head and blinked perfectly shaped dark, mysterious long lashed eyes in real disbelief.
"No? Really? No?" Noah even knew my story, and being himself a fitness professional was aware that formerly overweight people often have self esteem issues and ensuing trouble saying no. Besides which, he was, well he was Noah.
Noah. The hottest thing on the slightly overripe singles scene in that raging metropolis known as Sacramento. Noah has a fast, though as he will tell you at some length, very environmentally friendly shiny, metallic vehicle. Noah has shiny shoes and fashionably tailored collars he wears with ties with shiny metallic stripes on them and shiny cuff links which are both stylish and expressive of his personal style. Noah is six foot something and built like a meat refrigerator. Noah has a gaggle of semi speechless, often babbling, rambling, giggling divorced GenExers dangling from either arm like belly dancer bangles.
Noah is smokin hot.
Noah is popular.
Noah can dance.
Noah is - and this is unanimously agreed upon by every man, sane woman and small child who has known him longer than 15 minutes - a pompous douchebag.

Of course I did not know that when I stood at the bar guzzling my Friday night diet coke, listening to him educate me on the best process for training "serious runners," (I and my 3 hour 58 minute marathon being of course mere fooling around), the proper nutrition for best strength resistance training results, why my brand of dance shoe was actually unacceptably constructed for safety and comfort.
I shot a glance at my favorite barman. I asked for a refill, the hard stuff: maybe the shot of sugar from regular coke would chase away whatever blood sugar issue was barring me from having the pants charmed off me like every other girl that Noah had deigned to turn his attention toward.
He was, after all, THE hottest non-married, non-gay non-Rick-the-barman in a 50 mile radius.
And he is, I repeat, a pompous douchebag.
Which you must understand would not have made a difference to me just a few short years ago. In fact the last time I found myself exploring the dating scene I was hung up on (in chronological order) a Serbo-Croatian tax accountant who admitted after the first date that he really just liked me because I looked like his ex-girlfriend. Then showed me a picture he carried in his wallet. There was the sicialian who called his stock broker in the middle of a lunch date to make sure he'd sold whatever he was supposed to sell and went around telling everyone how he did something with cell phones that was "very lucrative.". He did not specify "and did not require anything to fall off any trucks," but that went without saying. And an engineer who swore he wasn't married, no, he just had to visit his sick mother up north every weekend. And no, I couldn't come. It wasn't advisable. Mother was contagious. What was it? It was rare. He forgot what they called it. But deadly. Except for family members. They were immune. And wives, of course.

Yes, with a few exceptions my dating life had been Filled with pompous douchebags. And looking at Noah, I realized now why that was.
In all those years, in all that time I had never said "no." I had never had a line on one side of which was, "acceptably confident and admirably self assured," and on the other, things like "slightly pathetic schmuck," "arrogant weasel," and "pompous douchebag."
The reason I had never drawn that line was that I had so wanted to be wanted, wanted to be in a fulfilling relationship with somebody everyone thought was really great that I would do, say and put up with anything, alright almost anything, to get it.
I listened while a cute but very sad man explained that I just wasn't his type but I looked so much like her I could certainly hang around him as long as I liked. I put up with the announcements about the lucrative truck accidents and the sick mother with cheap-mistress-itis.
But I drew the line at Noah. I hadn't been a pro very long but I'd been, for all intents and purposes a student of diet and fitness all my life. I knew more about nutrition than most, practically had a degree in how to run hill repeats for speed training. And my dance shoes had served me quite well thank you very much. Almost as long as I'd been dancing. And they were kind of hot, too.
Finally, I had found a place to draw a line. Something you couldn't do, somewhere you couldn't go no matter how how many other women's pitter-pattering hearts you'd just smashed to smithereens in my favor.
You could not be a pompous douchebag to me and still have the privilege of buying me dinner. Or even a diet coke. Ever.

Since saying no to Noah I find myself saying "No" all the time. Not just throwing "no" around like confetti. Using judgment. Examining when no is really necessary. Thinking that "no" is actually a great screen.
It turns out people who love me - even people who just like me a lot - do not jump up and run away whenever I tell them no. When I'm too overworked to cook dinner my house mates do not dream up excuses to banish me. When I forget to stop by gramma's house she does not change the locks and shutter the windows for my next visit. If I tell the guy I'm dating I cannot see him anymore because he is a pompous douchebag he does not run around town spreading rumors that I stuff my bra. Though I am down one dance partner. Which of course, is worth the risk.
And that's the rub, isn't it? A lost dance partner is nothing compared to the lost self respect, the sacrificed identity that goes into accommodating a pompous douchebag. So much of yourself has to be swallowed, and quite literally swallowed - often in the form of cake and ice cream - that you can hardly breathe for discomfort. It's no wonder that when you can't consciously draw your boundaries, when you can't stand on one side of the degrading, patronizing, demeaning jerk line and wield your extra powerful battle axe of "no," your body does it for you. It draws the line in the form of physical distance. Maybe, it hopes, when you have a few inches around your middle everybody will Go Away and Leave You Alone with all the demands you can't meet and behavior you should never, ever have to tolerate. In other words, if you don't draw the line, your body will help you out.
It will certainly get rid of all the pompous douchebags. Pompous douchebags have no regard for overweight people.
So learn to say "no" when "no" is needed.
Even when you're worried it will make the no-ee abandon you. Or hate you. Or never want to see you again.
Because if the no-ee is a decent person who really likes you he/ she won't abandon you. Or hate you.
And if he/she isn't? He may abandon you. He may take off in a huff almost spilling your diet coke all over your barely visible skirt.
And good riddance.

Whole Health Renovation Specialist
209-740-7898

"Small steps can be agonizingly slow but how much better a small step in the right direction than a giant leap in the wrong one." -Me

Boxing By Myself

2010-02-11T15:30:00.000-08:00

Pastor Jay had been standing at the pulpit for the better part of an hour now. He was talking, I could tell, because his lips were moving. And the mic wasn't broken, because sound was definitely coming from the speakers. And anyway Pastor Jay (he's a preacher so he has to) has a voice that could call hogs in three counties. He could address the masses on the mount with a burlap sack over his head. And a mouth full of cotton. Standing on his head. He is not a man people don't hear.
But I could not hear a word he was saying. All I could hear was the sound of my brain nagging me for like the millionth time about the Very Large Piece of Chocolate Cake I wasn't going to buy at Safeway after church. I wasn't going to buy it because I was determined not to eat any cake. Possibly never again. I was going to conquer my cake addiction and exercise my iron will and newly learned self control come Hill Or High Water and I Did Not Care What It Would Take.
And now I was sitting in church not listening to what may or may not have been an interesting and relevant sermon because I was possessed. I was not sure if I was possessed by the actual devil or just by the piece of chocolate cake, but I WAS possessed and I Would be Exorcised. Come hill or high water.
An hour later I was sitting in the car outside the Safeway. The cake container devoid of its contents, wiped clean of so much as a dribble of chocolate butter frosting.
I was guilty. I was ashamed. My will of iron had proved so weak I could not even resist a piece of chocolate cake. I had been to church and totally missed the boat on the sermon because I was so chocolate-cake obsessed that I Couldn't Even Make Out what pastor was talking about. As if the sermon had been in the original Aramaic.
I was a flop.
I was a failure.
I was
I was
What was I? I decided to do something I had never, ever dreamed of doing before: I asked my body.
What was I?
The answer resounded as if off the very same purple mountain's majesty freedom is supposed to ring back and forth on.
What was I?
Satisfied.
Satisfied.
Not, as I had told myself, bloated and fat like a whale, heavy like a rock. Sick, slow and sloppy like a banana slug.
Satisfied. So saith my body. And, it added as if that had not been enough, I do not need anything else just right now. Thanks. I'm full. And happy. And now I am going to relax with or without you.

And so my body sat back in the convertible and soaked up some warm sunlight while the rest of me babbled unhappily to itself.

I shouldn't have done that.
I have no self control.
I am just going to gain back the whole 130 pounds.
I'll be a fat ugly whale and all that hope I had built up in myself I've just totally blown. Because I cannot and do not have any faith in myself because I am a hopeless, hapless schlemiel with no self control or determination or ambition and No Hope Of Success.
I hate me. I especially hate my body. Which of course is not really me, just an appendage I wish I could cut off but am stuck with.
Maybe when I'm dead I'll have some peace from the thing.

And that was where my body drew the line. Apparently it could take being blamed and hated but death was a different story.

We've been on a diet. My body reminded me. We've been exercising. We've been wielding our self control like a medieval battle axe.
We needed a break.
We needed a piece of cake. Trust me. I know.

We're going to get fat. I told it.

That piece of cake only weighed a few ounces. It's not going to make us fat until we've had several more like it.

We'll be...
We'll have...
We're gonna....

I couldn't argue with that. My body was right. A piece of cake was not going to make me fat. A hundred pieces of cake were not going to make me fat, not unless I ate them all at once.

Stop beating us up. My body protested. We are only human.

It was then that I saw them, stretching on behind me like a giant diet and fitness rubber band:
Diet and lose weight.
Make one false move like eating a piece of chocolate cake.
Beat myself up over the piece of chocolate cake.
Create a LOT of worry, anxiety, shame, guilt, fear, disappointment, helplessness, not to mention anger around the one, lousy, stinkin' piece of chocolate cake.
Sooth myself. With more cake.
And some ice cream.
And a soda.
And beer.
And pizza.
Lament some more about the weight I've gained from the cake and ice cream and beer and soda and....
Eat some more.
Until I really have gained 130 pounds.
From very little more than what my body had so casually referred to as beating myself up.
In fact, if I thought about it I had just threatened my body with murder. Or maybe not murder, but I had just said I'd be better off without it. Same thing.
So I was beating myself up and my body too. I was punishing it. I was punishing myself with all the indulging, starving, splurging, over-exercising crap I was putting us through.
And all because it wanted an innocent piece of cake. Heck. I wanted a piece of cake. My poor body wasn't to blame.
And then it dawned on me: neither was I.

I had wanted cake.
I had eaten cake.
I did not do this all the time.
It was not the end of the universe.
I was not going to wake up tomorrow a size 24.
In fact I was going to wake up tomorrow and run 6 miles. Because that was on my plan. And that was what I'd been doing for weeks. Consistently. Without fail.
So I was not a flop.
Or a failure.
I was merely satisfied.
I went home.
I did not have any beer or pizza or ice cream. I just waited until I got hungry and had a reasonably sized, essentially healthy dinner.

And I did not wallow in shame or tremble with anxiety or dwell on my disappointment or feel helpless to change my behavior.

For once, instead of getting out my battle axe to beat myself up, I had dug something out of the far reaches of the dusty attic that is the "stuff I never use" section of my brain:
common sense.

Common sense told me I was clearly not lacking in self control. I had just spent 18 months on a diet. That did not exactly scream reckless abandon.
I was not a glutton.
I was not weak. I had spent the better part of my life carrying 50 + pounds of extra weight around on my back. Nothing weak about that.
I was not going to gain back all the weight I'd lost because of a piece of chocolate cake.
I did not need an exorcist.
Or a lobotomy.
I had just needed a piece of chocolate cake.
And to go easy on myself.
And not have a piece of chocolate cake every day.
And everything was going to be OK.

And it was.
I am the same weight today as I was that day. Dozens of pieces of chocolate cake have crossed these lips since then.
And I have stopped getting into boxing matches with myself over them.
And my body is delighted to report I have decided to keep it.
Whole Health Renovation Specialist
209-740-7898

"You will be quite amazed to see what you can do when you dont know you can't. You will be downright speechless at what you can do when you know you can." -Me

Burn It All!

2010-02-05T13:47:00.001-08:00

"Burn it all?" It was the offer I made to my sister as the two of us sat, for the thousandth hour in a row on Gramma's beautiful, antique, pristine, Spanish-Inquisitionesue torture device of a couch. We were editing and reworking the manuscript for her book. 9 hours a day. For the tenth day in a row.
We were tired.
We had had enough.
We had been locked in the war room together for what seemed like a year editing what seemed like an extended version of the encyclopedia Britanica, drinking what seemed like a thousand skim lattes a day, nibbling gramma's candied walnuts until our collective blood sugar surpassed that of a baboon on a banana plantation and then crashed over and over like a tidal wave.

In short, we were crabby.

We were overworked.
We had reached a creative block with the section we were working on and hit a block and all our efforts were for naught and nothing would ever work and why weren't we just working on our CPA certifications or getting our teaching credentials for teaching sign language to gorillas or something that Did Not Require Creativity. Or Inspiration. Or Talent.
Because it was now clear that we, between us had not one stitch of any of those things. And never would.
We were failures.
We were flops.
We might as well BURN IT ALL! The Manuscript! The Thumb Drive it was backed up to and Yes, the snazzy Apple computer on which it had been written.
Burn it all!
And the Spanish Inquisition Torture Device Couch, Too!!
With extra exclamation points for emphasis!!!! So there!!!!

Of course we did not burn it all. We took a break, had a beverage. We went for a walk. We replaced the coffee with water. Had a healthy dinner. With vegetables. And moved Gramma's candied walnuts well out of sight.

So today, when my client called and changed my carefully thought out plan, and one of my business partners flaked out on a major deal we'd had in the works and one of my newly committed clients had to put off her program start because of a mere heart issue, and this guy I was all keen on called and said he was going back to his ex and the dance video I'd ordered from netflix turned out to be lousy and...
Oh just Burn It All! I will never be a success. I will be a poor, starving artist/ writer/ trainer coach/ whatever... FOREVER.

Burn it All!

And then I will comfort myself with a cup cake.
And beer.
And by next week I will be back to 277 wondering why I did all that work in the first place.

So I might as well just burn it all!
Everything was moving forward nicely and then one thing went wrong and of course everything is going to go to hell in a hand basket.

Burn it all!

And this is of course the number one reason for weight loss failure: all or nothing thinking.
Perfectionism.
If I can't do one thing, I can't do anything.
If one thing goes wrong everything else will, too.
If I gain a pound after slouching around for a week and eating too many candied walnuts ala gramma I Will Be Fat Again and Forever.
And I will never be able to...
And I don't have the talent, or the courage, or the ability to... Fill in the blank.

Burn it all.

I was doing so great, following my diet plan and torturing myself on the treadmill daily, and Not Thinking of a Pink Alligator and then I had a ham and cheese sandwich and somebody offered me a cookie and that of course only went down comfortably with a caramel machiato and pretty soon I had gained half a pound and now I am a complete and utter failure! And I might as well blow off all my diet and exercise efforts and sit on the couch watching biggest loser with a beer and pizza and giant piece of chocolate cake.

Burn it all!!

Give it up and be overweight and accept failure and teach sign language to gorillas because you will Never Be Successful at Reaching a Healthy Weight.

Burn it all!!

I remember the first time this thought occurred to me seriously.
I had lost 120 pounds.
I had just quit smoking.
I was training for a half marathon.
I was in the middle of my crazy month, when I thought I would forever be fixated on food and was doomed to regain every pound I'd lost plus a few just for punishment.
I was driving to Sacramento to go dancing with my beloved Arturo. I was on highway 16 on the corner at Bradshaw Road. Where there is an AM PM. Wherein one can find both cigarettes AND diet soda AND ice cream sandwiches galore AND even though they are disgusting, slimy, grease balls with the insult-to-cheese-products-everywhere-food-item-known-as-American-Cheese, cheese burgers.
I decided to stop the car and satisfy my incessant desire for cigarettes, grease and sugar. I couldn't take it any more. I was about to be a failure, and I might as well turn around because I would never learn to dance and anyway dancing wouldn't be fun anymore when I was back to 277 pounds from all the grease burgers and cheese-like-food-products and I wouldn't be able to do anything anyway because I wouldn't be able to breathe from the 4 packs of cigarettes a day I was going to be inhaling.

Burn it All!!!

If only this stupid Subaru in front of me would turn off so I could get into the parking lot. Stupid Subaru drivers. Those guys were probably in there, nibbling their granola and adjusting the straps on their Birkenstocks and just generally being the kind of goody-goody non-smoking cheesy-food-product-free wholesome types that would have a license plate frame which read....
Which read....

"You only fail when you give up."

I am not making this up.
I kid you not.
As the lord God Almighty is my witness. And you know I take that stuff seriously.

"You only fail when you give up."

It was on the license plate of the wholesome, Birkenstock, granola Subaru people who Would Not Turn Off and Let Me Into the Parking Lot of The Junk Food and Cigarette Wonderland that was the AM PM at Bradshaw and highway 16.

You only fail when you give up.

The heavens did not open up. The face of God almighty did not appear in the clouds and the image of the holy mother did not form on a piece of toast.

But the Subaru did finally turn off. And the parking lot of the junk food wonderland opened up before me in all its glory.

And I drove past the entrance. And I arrived safely on the dance floor where I danced all night.
And no, I was not an instant success. And I did not become a lifelong healthy, thin, perfect, together, totally rockin' filthy rich business person over night.

But I did not fail, either.
Because I did not give up.

I did not burn it all.

And I discovered that when what I was doing stopped working for me, I could try something else. Until something did work.
And I have been a non-smoker longer than more than 90% of all quitters. And I have been at a healthy weight longer than more than 90% of all dieters.
And I ran a marathon.
And learned to dance.
And I can do the splits on roller skates.
And I am building a client list faster than a speeding bullet.

And I am so glad I did not stop at the grease ball and cigarette wonderland.
I did not burn it all.

I did not fail. Because I did not stop trying.

And that was all it took to ensure my success.

Whole Health Renovation Specialist
209-740-7898

"You will be quite amazed to see what you can do when you dont know you can't. You will be downright speechless at what you can do when you know you can." -Me

Don't think of a Pink Alligator

2010-02-04T13:25:00.000-08:00

Especially not one with purple eyes who is wearing a bow tie. Now don't think of the pink and purple bow tied alligator at all. The whole day.
If I had asked you before you read the title of this entry whether you had ever so much as dreamed of a pink alligator, you would have wondered what I'd slipped into my skinny latte along with the fake sugar, or whether the crazy that runs in my family had finally been triggered by the stress of being a fitness professional in January. A pink alligator. And don't forget, you are not supposed to be thinking about pink alligators, so you'd better get them ruddy well out of your head. Pronto. No pink alligators.
Now the question is, now that the suggestion has been made that a) there is such a thing as a pink and purple bow tied alligator and b) you are under no circumstances supposed to be thinking about one, how, pray tell, do you banish the thought of it? Remember, I have commanded you not to think of it.
Just as daily, at the very least when you are trying to watch your calorie intake, you try to force yourself not to think of food. You berate yourself for thinking of food. You give yourself an emotional slap on the mental hand every time you eye that 950,000 calorie brownie behind the counter of the Starbucks and force yourself to get a mere skinny latte. OK with just a dash of caramel. And real sugar. What the heck. I didn't have the brownie, I saved myself 950,000 calories, right?

Brownie. Nope, not thinking about brownies.

Maybe I should make that a mocha instead of a latte. It's a good substitute for chocolate.

Brownie. And the little tea cookies. They're small.

Brownie. Still not thinking about brownies.

Yes. That was nice. That satisfied the urge for the 950,000 calorie brownie nicely.

Brownie. #*@!!@?! Brownies. It's a whole lot harder not thinking about them than just fixating on them. But I am determined not to think about them.

You know the thing about brownies is that they have that texture from the eggs with the flower and the butter.

Brownie. You know Safeway has those little brownie bites....
And before you know it, instead of eating a brownie with a cup of coffee (approx. 450 cal) you have had 14 brownie bites (1200 calories) and a mocha (400 calories) and some chocolate cookies (250 calories).
And all because you were very busily and diligently NOT thinking about brownies.
And now, having just read about brownies, you are no doubt at this moment standing in the firm belief that you could be satisfied with just a taste, just a smidgen. Then you could throw the rest away. Really.
And because of the brownie you have forgotten all about the mission you were given at the beginning if this blog - not to think of a pink alligator. With purple eyes and a green bow tie. And red and yellow candy striped teeth. And nails painted sky blue.

So now that you have failed in your mission of not thinking of a pink alligator, I want you to work back through the process that has just occurred in your head:

You were specifically told not to think of a pink alligator.

You immediately, probably for the first time in your life, imagined a pink alligator. Let us call her Gertrude. With purple eyes. And a green bow tie. And orange tap shoes.

Then you thought about brownies. Until it made you so crazy you really did think, just for a moment, about the Safeway brownie bites and wondered how far away the nearest Safeway was and whether there'd be much traffic this time of day.

And then you gave yourself that mental slap on the psychological wrist. What IS wrong with me? You wonder.

And then Gertrude waltzed in with her pink scales and purple eyes and fuchsia, heart shaped hair bauble. And suddenly you were thinking about Gertrude again. Exactly what you were not supposed to do. Darn you.

Why can't you control your thoughts? What precisely is your brain doing, thinking thoughts that are clearly not in your best interest.

But you know that whole years have gone by when you never thought of pink alligators. And whole weeks, months, who knows how long can go by when you don't give brownies so much as a passing thought.

It is not the pink alligator, in other words, nor the brownie itself, which is actually the subject of your fixation. It is, in fact, 2 things:
1) The command "don't"
And
2) The ensuing shame, guilt, surprise, anger, frustration helplessness, disappointment, and anxiety that arises in your feelings toward yourself as you fail to not do what you expect to be able to not do: think about something, whatever it is.

Freud identified this phenomenon in his usual Freudian way in relation to sexual thoughts: Victorians weren't supposed to think about sex, so they repressed those thoughts, had bizarre dreams involving balloons (or anything else Freud could justify as a symbol for sexual repression. And Freud could do that with almost anything. Probably says more about Freud than his patients), and in essence, made themselves sick. Women especially during the Victorian era were known for ailments like hysterics (stress, anxiety etc). You can imagine given how upsetting your recent thoughts about brownies were, that hysterics could easily be brought on by trying to constantly repress thoughts.

In our current, fitness obsessed, junk food centered, food and consumer loving society it's pretty clear that food has replaced Freud's favorite obsession.
Look: a McDonald's commercial. Look: a weight watchers commercial.

Think about food.
Don't think about food.
Whatever you do don't think about food. Something's wrong with you if you're always thinking about food.

I learned the pink alligator effect during what I call "the crazy month" - the month after I had achieved my weight loss goal, attempted to go back to eating normally and ended up nibbling, snacking and utterly failing in my efforts not to think of pink alligators (or rather food). I remember watching the pastor preach and thinking of nothing but food and wondering if perhaps I was possessed. I wasn't supposed to think about food. I was supposed to be thinking about God. Not food.
Or pink alligators. With turquoise grass skirts. Eating grapes.

So now that we realize that the reason why we Just Can't Leave Half the Chicken Fillet On The Plate (because we are not supposed to think about it and are therefore obsessed with it) or Not Eat 14 brownie bites (because it actually is calling our name in a very nearly literal sense) is because we are Not Supposed to Be Thinking About it combined with the fact that we are Very Ashamed of and Anxious about our Failure to Not Think about it, what is one to do about it?

Answer: think of a pink alligator.
Then forgive yourself when you fail anyway.

In other words, as you were reading this, eventually what made you stop thinking of Gertrude the pink alligator was that your thoughts were directed toward the brownie.
Then you were so obsessed with the brownie you really very nearly did run out and get one.
Then your thoughts were directed back to Gertrude.
And Victorians.
And the author's temporary sanity issues.
Freud.
Balloons.
Whatever.
And pretty soon brownies flew right out of your head.
And now they're back.
Alligator. Pink. Gertrude. Cartruese socks.
The point is, your brain is always doing something. It wants to be occupied. You can't turn it off.
If the last suggestion was that you think of, or don't think of a pink alligator, that is what your brain will rest on until it finds something better to do. It will go down whatever path the pink alligator leads it on until it arrives at brownie.

Pink alligator. Silver, spangly anklet with elephant charms.

So when you find yourself at the dinner table, beating yourself up about the second helping you're not supposed to think about or the dessert you're not supposed to even consider, instead of building shame, anxiety, fear helplessness, guilt, disappointment and a hundred other things that will make you want them even MORE...
Just don't think of a pink alligator instead.
In other words, turn your attention to something ELSE. Think about a complicated problem you've been working to solve. Call your sister and be her person to vent at for a while. Have a piece of gum.

Think about Gertrude. The Pink alligator. With the indigo bangles.

And when Gertrude isn't enough to help, when Gertrude doesn't do the trick and you end up having to Eat The Darn Thing After All, don't make things worse by beating yourself up. After all, you've been thinking of that particular pink alligator a very, very long time to break the habit all in one go.
Whole Health Renovation Specialist
209-740-7898

"You will be quite amazed to see what you can do when you dont know you can't. You will be downright speechless at what you can do when you know you can." -Me

I Eat Because I'm Feeling Guilty about Being Ashamed of my Anxiety Induced Emotional Eating.

2010-01-25T12:48:00.001-08:00

On a really bad day I might even be feeling a little lonely and unloved into the bargain. I might feel disappointment at my failure to solve the underlying problem. If I really did some digging I could probably drudge up helplessness and frustration at the immovable nature of my situation and then sink into a deep, dark depression.
Knowing me the funk, which I have learned to call general crabbiness, would last about a day. Then things would pick up. I would start to get cheerful. I might even treat myself to a little something, a celebratory doughnut. A cookie. A cheer-me-up mocha frappuccino.
That at least was how I knew to deal with what was going on in my head in the past.
Eat first, ask questions after the second or third course. Possibly over dessert. Or never.
Just eating made me feel better, and since I was convinced there was no way I could handle my emotions themselves let alone, God forbid, the problems that were causing them, I had learned to cope using chocolate syrup. Pizza. Beer. Cake. Lots of cake. Sometimes with ice cream.
Since I had been spackling in my problems with food all my life I had become an expert at ignoring them, and the ensuing melancholy that accompanied them.
I had become so good at it I didn't even recognize, couldn't name, didn't really have a word for (at least not one that I would or even could say aloud) what I was dealing with. This is how it worked:

A problem occurred.
This caused an emotionally painful sensation.
I, Believing with my whole heart and soul that I was completely destructible, utterly incapable, and lacking in any brand of emotional fortitude, would begin to feel helpless. Frustrated. Disappointed with myself and the whole situation.
I would then begin the long process of trying to talk myself out of feeling anything at all. It was irrational to feel anxious about whatever the problem was.
It was furthermore silly of me to get so frustrated over such a small thing.
On this I would come to the conclusion that I was acting ridiculous. The problem would resolve itself or not. Feeling rotten over it would not help. I should buck up. I should pick myself up by the seat of my pants. I should stand tall. Pull myself together. Stop acting like such a pansy. Stop Feeling Whatever I Was Feeling Because it Wasn't Helping. It Was Not Reasonable. It Defied Logic to Feel That Way.

Because feelings of course, ought to be reasonable, rational and logical. Just being feelings is never enough.

And then I would cheer right up. For five minutes. And then I would feel lousy again. And ashamed of feeling lousy. And guilty for giving in to the melancholy. And disappointed...
And very soon happier for the bit of chocolate I'd sampled at the store. In fact what would really make me feel better would be a much larger piece of chocolate. Cake. With ice cream. Maybe I would call a friend to go with me and the resulting guilt would be lessened for the fact that I had not just eaten enough for a small South American farm village by Myself.
And now another problem had arisen, but at least the initial one was further away and less prominent and all those scary emotions that I just KNEW I wasn't capable of dealing with were a lot quieter.

So the simple version:
Problem
Feel lousy about the problem.
Pass judgment on myself for feeling the unpreventable, inevitable, natural (however rational or not) emotions that had arisen out of the problem.
Feel lousier about the problem AND about myself.
Slip into an incurable funk.
Call someone to share in the misery and the cure: something with more calories than Michael Phelps eats in a week.

30 plus years of dealing with my problems (yes, I even learned how to call them challenges or opportunities, but the new name did not change the prescribed cure) this way had made me not only unable to cope with my emotions in any other way, but utterly unable to even Identify them. Some of the uglier ones, the ones I felt were my irrational self behaving irrationally, the ones I was time and time again telling myself were wrong, those I wouldn't even admit, not even to myself, that I would ever feel: you're not supposed to be ashamed of yourself, that's an old fashioned notion; it's wrong to feel guilty, guilt is for Catholics; anxiety is irrational and reserved for neurotic characters in Woody Allen movies; fear is for pansies; loneliness is for people who aren't self sufficient and independent.
When I finally started reading about some of the main instigators in emotional eating - fear, anxiety, depression, loneliness, shame, guilt, helplessness, disappointment - I realized I had got so good at ignoring them, talking myself out of them and finally frosting them over with cake and ice cream that I Couldn't Even Put a Name To Them.
I felt bad. I ate. That was all I knew.
One of the books I read asked me to remember a time I felt ashamed. I had to go all the way back to when I was seven or eight. Then I remembered what it felt like. Then I could identify times all throughout my life when I'd felt that way. I finally realized that shame, despite all the rationalization, all the judgments I'd passed on myself for feeling something unreasonable, had Nonetheless taken up considerable time, space and energy throughout my life.
The book went on to pose the question whether, in all those times I'd felt that way, had I worried that, if I admitted to feeling that way, I might somehow see myself as less strong, less courageous. More fragile.
Yes. I had to admit, I sometimes thought my emotions would leap out of their locked up, chocolate covered high security cabinet and strangle me. Choke me right to death. Yes, I thought I was not strong enough to deal with something as big and powerful as shame. Or guilt. Or anxiety. Fear, disappointment. Helplessness, loneliness.
The book posed another question:
Had all my efforts at judgment, rationalization and self soothing in the form of food ever made the problem Or the emotion go away?
No.
So I Had actually eventually coped. Had it killed me as I'd thought it might? Had those things leapt out and strangled me?

No. I had to admit. They hadn't.
In the end, all the reasoning, rationalizing and finally eating had just gotten in the way of what I had ended up doing anyway: coping.
They had given me a reprieve, but not let me off the hook.

So now, when I find myself saying, "I shouldn't feel disappointed just because...." I realize that regardless of whether I should, I am.
Whenever I find myself manically reaching for morsels of things around the house, trawling the cupboards for something less bloody healthy, opening the freezer just one more time to see if any ice cream has magically appeared there, I take a break. I try to identify what crack I am trying to spackle shut. Sometimes I have to visualize another time when I've felt this way and try to put a name on the thing.
I identify the sensation.

Then I wonder what might be causing me to feel that way.

I identify the problem causing the sensation.

Then I make phone calls. I get on google. I go to the library. Or maybe I just need soothing and cheering up. And then I go see Gramma.

Mostly I remember to have faith. I am not going to die of disappointment. There's been plenty of that in my life and in 36 years it hasn't killed me.
I'm not going to die from feeling helpless, and shame and guilt, no matter how old fashioned or how non-evangelical do not bite.
In fact, these are normal, natural things I am perfectly able to cope with. Have, in the end, always coped with, no matter how I've staved it off with ham and smoked gouda.
My emotions have a job to do. They let me know when there's a problem. They say something about the nature of the problem. They help motivate me to solve the problem.
They are not irrational. They merely are.
They do not require spackling.
They do require a little faith that I will be able to do no more than what, in the end, I've always come around to doing: cope.
Whole Health Renovation Specialist
209-740-7898

"You will be quite amazed to see what you can do when you dont know you can't. You will be downright speechless at what you can do when you know you can." -Me

ReBirthday

2010-01-19T13:56:00.000-08:00

Two days ago I finished my first marathon at 3:58 - that's a 9 minute mile. That's a full Hour and 1 minute above average for women.
I can't help remembering how In the beginning of my journey all I could think about was how much I hated the exercise, how deprived I felt without the foods and portions I was used to. I couldn't help focusing on the long, long and seemingly tedious, no doubt strenuous and probably tortuous distance between then and now, not to mention the terrifying potentiality of a journey back.
Now, the potentiality of a journey back out of the question, and the time behind me feeling as if it passed in the blink of an eye, I have to strain my mind to remember how it felt to think my weight would take eons to get off. And hop back on in a trice. I would expend titanic efforts, I thought. And never eat anything good again.

Today as a wear my marathon medal around the grocery store I look back at my efforts even of day before yesterday and think, no, it wasn't anything even unpleasant, let alone tortuous. In fact, I had a blast.
And now, looking back across the vast, far reaching expanse of time since my first weigh in, that same vast expanse of time which seems to have gone by in a trice almost without notice, I think, all the fear, all the dread, shame, guilt, anxiety I put into not taking care of myself was infinitely more strenuous, infinitely more tortuous, infinitely more terrifying than all the treadmills, dumb bells, hill repeats and 24 mile runs uphill both ways in the snow ever provided.
In fact, being healthy, taking care of myself, running, dancing, hiking, swimming, eating fabulous home cooked meals and treating myself with love and respect, all those things are not only a breeze, they're a pleasure.
A far greater pleasure than any of the tasteless, dull, pre-prepared foods and boring, unoriginal sitcoms I'm missing out on these days.
Thank God for marathons.
Whole Health Renovation Specialist
209-740-7898

"You will be quite amazed to see what you can do when you dont know you can't. You will be downright speechless at what you can do when you know you can." -Me

Not unless I was Running from something...

2010-01-15T15:08:00.001-08:00

Preferably something big and scary. With teeth. And claws. And even then I'd have probably run out of steam quickly enough to be lunch. I always swore that no one would ever see me running anywhere unless there was a cheetah chasing me or at least a beer and some ice cream at the not-so-very-distant end of the run.
And the reason for that, I told myself was because running was unhealthy. Running was bad for your knees. All the runners I know had back problems. They're crazy as loons those runners. And if they don't get hit by cars they'll be eaten by mountain lions, surely.
Fools.
Imbeciles.
I wouldn't even try anything like it. I'm not crazy. That's why.
But the real reason, one I not only did not know of but would never have acknowledged if I had, was that everything hurt. All the time.
My knees ached. My feet hurt. My back was creaky. If I moved to far too long I would be embarrassingly winded.
It was because I worked at a job that had me on my feet all day. And when I quit that job and got a desk job it was because I was so frustratingly sedentary.
I never would have admitted that my knees hurt because I was walking around with an extra 100+ pounds on them.
I couldn't say aloud, not even to myself, that my back ached because not even the world's best mattress could hold the weight around my middle well enough for me to sleep comfortably in any position.
My feet hurt because there was no such thing as an orthopedic shoe or insert or magic whats-its that could cushion 277 pounds of weight on a mere 70 sq in of feet.

All that pain. I thought. Runners have to endure it all the time. The poor buggers.
And this Sunday I am running a Marathon. And my knees are perfectly healthy. My back feels better than it has in 15 years. I have been walking around town in heels all day and my feet feel fine.
Thanks to running.
Thanks to marathons.
I am pain free.
And I have great back muscles that will support my spine for years to come.
And my knees? My feet? Well, see for yourself.

Alyshia Davies
Whole Health Renovation Specialist

"Nothing is safe Someday or other it will all end in tears. You can't avoid disappointment but you can enjoy success." -Me

Martin S. Somewhere in the South, Alabama maybe?

2010-01-11T20:00:00.001-08:00

Eat 3 meals and two snacks. On a schedule.
Only eat 3 meals.
Eat 6 small meals
Eat mostly protein
Don't eat too much protein. Eat mostly carbs.
Don't eat saturated fat
Eat some saturated fat just eat lots of unsaturated fats preferably omega 3 fatty acids for your brain and polyunsaturated fats for your HDLs.
Don't eat red meat.
Too much turkey with triptophan will make you sluggish.
Coffee is bad for you.
Drink coffee, the caffeine is good for you.
Eat lots of whole grains.
Don't eat carbs, especially grains.
Eat lots of superfoods.
Do lots of ab exercises for a flat stomach
Ab exercises just give you big abs.
Running is the best exercise.
Running lowers your blood sugar and makes you hungry.
Eat this. Don't eat that. Substitute raw onions for pasta or white beans for rice or yogurt for ice cream or cardboard for bread ...
You get the picture.
My first ever diet had started on Thanksgiving day when my dad grabbed my hand as I was reaching for a chip. "I'm putting you on a diet," he said. The whole family was in that living room. All of them were staring at their feet. No one was there to stand up for me.
I ran screaming and crying out of the room.
My step mother came. Finally, I thought, someone to offer comfort.
She told me about her own diet experiences. She gave me her hints and tips from last year's weight watchers adventures.
She shared with me how God had spoken to her and told her she should weigh 126 pounds.
This did not make me a believer.
Dieting was simple really. I just wouldn't eat. For a week. And then I'd be OK.
And I didn't eat. Until dessert.
When we got home I got out the dried mustard. My teacher had said if you ate poison and needed to throw up you could heat dried mustard with water.
It made me sick. But my prize winning stomach of steel was just as full. Just tied up in knots.
And I was still fat enough to merit being humiliated in front of the whole family at Thanksgiving.
That was the beginning.
After that there was the cream cheese only diet. There was the 1 cookie for each meal diet. I was only going to eat a special kind of salad I'd invented with vinegar and no oil.
As a teenager I discovered Programs.
Jenny Craig.
Nutrisystem.
Weight watchers.
Atkins
South beach
By the time I was 19 I knew everything there was to know about dieting. What all I was not supposed to eat was astonishing. The list of things I WAS supposed to eat was terrifying.
No ice cream.
Lots of broccoli.
No cake.
Brussel sprouts.
Ixnay on bread.
No red meat, beans and dry chicken instead.
No ice cream.
I was supposed to find a piece of fruit to be a good dessert. Fruit as dessert.
That was like wearing toilet paper as a dress. Or building a house out of toothpicks.
It was.... Highly unsatisfactory.

By the time I was 29, 10 years later, I was 75 pounds overweight. I still knew everything there was to know about dieting, but by now I had given up. I was going to eat whatever the hell I'd wanted because the no-fat diet and the no-carb diet and the no-food diet and the highly confusing magic glop in the cereal bowl diet had all been... Highly unsatisfactory.
Not to mention painful. And humiliating. And in the end rather pointless.
It wasn't long before I found myself 130 pounds above my ideal weight. Morbidly obese.
I was going to die. This time I was going to have to do something, and I was going to have to do it right rather than keep doing it over and over again.
Google and amazon became my best friends. I read articles and magazines. Text books with 1000 pages.
They told me what I already knew. I needed to eat less and move more. Duh.
Until ...
I stumbled across Geneeen Roth's Breaking Free of Emotional Eating.
She wasn't a professor or a doctor or a fitness trainer. She was just a lady who had been fat.
Like me.
Her prescription, her secret to success, her magic bullet for staying thin? Eat what you want.
When you're hungry.
It sucked.
That is what had got me to my gigantic weight problem to begin with. What the hell was she thinking?
Reading on I realized there might be some merit to it:
Eat what you really want, not just what's around, or what you think you want, or what was just advertised on TV. Those are not things you want. They're just things someone has made you believe will make you feel good.
But really, what makes you feel good is gramma's grilled chicken.
A piece of cheese.
Very rarely, almost never but sometimes, a whole bowl of chocolate chip cookie dough.
And, if you really think about it, your not as hungry as you claim to be. You're tired. Your blood sugar is low. You're crabby.
Crabby is not hungry. Crabby is just an emotion you're trying to feed and magically change into happy.
But what's wrong with crabby? It's normal to be crabby. Or guilty. Ashamed. Angry. Depressed. Lonely. Disappointed. Helpless. Anxious.
The answer to these things is not a piece of chocolate cake. In fact, you are probably going to eat the piece of chocolate cake and still be crabby or guilty. Ashamed. Angry. Depressed. Lonely. Disappointed. Helpless. Anxious.
My story is that I had got so in the habit of reaching for food whenever I felt bad that I could no longer even identify What I was feeling. A book I was working with asked me to remember the last time I'd felt disappointed. I couldn't remember. I had to think all the way back to the seventh grade when my friend Jason had been the only one to ask me to dance.
After that I wracked my brain.
I was disappointed that time my boyfriend had chosen an "important" soccer game over me, ice cream and my best lace under things ON Valentine's day. That was a no-brainer. I ate the ice cream by myself.
I was disappointed in fact, a thousand times over in my adult life. Always culminating in me putting on my bravest brave face, telling myself it was silly to feel that way (the man I loved was not a complete douche bag. Of course not. It had really been an important game. It must be a cultural difference), polishing off that last bit of ice cream because there really wasn't that much left.
And still disappointed. No less in fact.
But now ashamed of myself for having eaten the ice cream.
Angry with myself for being unreasonably, stubbornly disappointed.
But I have forgotten how to cry and that has made me awfully hungry.
And when I was doing all this work remembering the stupid man (whose name by the way was Martin and no I don't mind using his real name and really I'd give you his address and phone number, too if only I had it) who had treated me poorly and how I had aimed my grief at myself, I realized that so much of my problem had come from the mistaken notion that whenever something bad happened it must be that something was wrong with ME. Martin (watch this spot, if I ever find it I'll at least paste his e-mail here) was innocent. If he treated me like trash it must be because I'd behaved like trash. Or something.
And all at once, remembering how I stood there, 19 with my ice cream and my black lace and was told like a naughty child that Valentine's day would have to wait, I suddenly realized, I hadn't been hungry in years. I had just been disappointed, angry, tired, bored, guilty. Ashamed. Depressed. Disappointed. Helpless. Anxious. I didn't know how those things felt anymore. And I didn't know what it meant to be hungry and now I was going to have to find out.
I spent the ensuing months inspecting every morsel before it went in my mouth. Was I hungry? Was it going to satisfy my hunger? If not, what was causing me to put it in my mouth? I spent days figuring out what I was feeling that had driven me to go through a whole packet of dried figs in 2 days. Three, six mile runs were dedicated to whether I had been really and truly hungry when I'd had that block of brie or if I was just feeling ashamed of how I had fibbed to my boss about an important e-mail.
I did that for months.
I still do that.
It took me a week to figure out my sudden pumpkin latte wave had been brought on by a guy I was dating who felt the need to tear me down to make himself feel less threatened (his name was Roberto. I do have his address but this is a fairly small town so you won't need it). The endless stream of candied walnuts? Well, sis was up for a visit and making sure she and I both survived the week with no more sibling induced permanent scars that we'd gone in with had been no easy task.
I'd come to all these brilliant conclusions while jogging. And I am happy to say that at least 95% of the time I'm able to figure out whether I'm really hungry for that morsel, and if not why I would ever dream of putting it in my mouth in plenty of time to put it down and back away.
The other 5 per cent? Well, a little emotional eating is just... Normal.
After all, an occasional rain does not cause a flood.

Alyshia
Whole Health Renovation Specialist

"Nothing is safe Someday or other it will all end in tears. You can't avoid disappointment but you can enjoy success." -Me

Things I Can't Do

2010-01-05T15:34:00.001-08:00

My current list: Nothing. I learned this for absolute certain when I crossed the finish line at my half marathon last August. I had officially lost 130 pounds. I had quit smoking and, as of that very day, joined the ranks of the 8% who make it past 6 months quit and subsequently go on to successfully kick the habit in numbers of about 92%. I had learned, however inexpertly, the complicated art of Latin Dance. I had gotten up before 7 every day since I'd quit smoking.
And now I had run half a marathon. In under two hours. I looked back over the finish line and I saw all those people crossing the line whom I had passed just a few minutes before. The first time I'd seen them I was at the start line in my $19.99 Walmart shoes and my lucky favorite purple shirt that only chafed a little. They were chatting, stretching, standing around looking runnerly in their shoes that did something magical to something called a gait, and their shirts they'd bought at a store that didn't sell cosmetics or dog food or frozen pizza. They looked like they knew what they were doing. They looked like athletes.
As I had run I would find myself pulling in front of one of these titans of athletic prowess, and hold back. No, I would say to myself, I don't want to overdo it. She's clearly a better runner than me, no way I could finish ahead of her.
Then something happened. To my left the mile marker caught my eye: 10 miles. 3 miles to go. I feel pretty good. No really. I could have sworn it was more like mile 6. And then it dawned on me.
I live in Timbucktoo. At least if Timbucktoo were a tiny, remote village in the northern California foothills. I run in places which have names (that I have of course given them) like "Old Bastard Hill" and "Not Enough Expletives Rise." On my runs at home the last 3 miles include "The Wicked Witch," (it's technically Pine Gulch - as in Mrs. Gulch, at a 6-8% grade and goes on for 0.9 miles), "Snake Bite Hill" (so named because the first time I ever ran it I had to check to make sure a snake hadn't bitten me in the butt) and "The Corkscrew" (it was too steep to build the road straight up so they wound it around the hill like a corkscrew).
There is in fact no full mile on the run that doesn't have at least one hill that, if you thought about it too long wouldn't make you wish you lived in Kansas.
"3 miles." I said to myself. "And none of them is uphill." Suddenly my feet told my brain they'd take it from here. I waved as I passed the lady with the tatoo on her left hip that said "26.2" and I started to smile as I passed the guy who had passed me at mile 1. One by one the fancy gait correcting no-produce-department equipment people fell behind.
My final time was 1 hour 51 minutes. Above average even for all those non-Walmart athletic people. Me and WTF Ridge had made me faster than all the fancy shoes a girl could wish for.
As I crossed the finish line I knew, I knew I could do anything. Ever since then I've caught my self saying, "I can't..." And "I'll never..." And I laugh. I correct myself. "I can. All I have to do is learn, and in time I will." I tell myself that all the time, and the image of the red painted grass finish line under my Walmart shoes passes through my mind every time.

So if you're facing your impossible lose weight New Year's Resolution, thinking you can't, or you'll never, think of me. And tell yourself "I can. All I have to do is learn, and in time I will."

Addendum: Two days ago I crested "Holy Crap Summit," and turned onto "The Corkscrew." It was the last mile of my last 24 mile training run. Two weeks from today is my 36th birthday. I am running my first marathon 2 days before that.
Whole Health Renovation Specialist
209-740-7898
I can do anything and I intend to take as many people with me as I can

Dancin' Queen

2009-11-23T18:26:00.001-08:00

I have written a lot about the side of my struggle that involved isolation: the fact that isolation was in many ways both the goal and the cause of my skyrocketing weight. My body saw that I was feeling invaded, that I needed to push people away, that I needed my space, and when I had trouble setting my boundaries it did the job for me. It got fat to protect me, but when I was safely behind my first thirty pounds I longed for companionship and gained weight from loneliness.
The problem stems from the same thing it does for many: my personal experience. For reasons I will reveal when I have a full, Russian Literature sized tome to fill, I kind of thought humans, well, humans sucked. They are generally untrustworthy, inconsistent, disengaged often unreasonable, and - in my experience totally out to lunch.
That does not change the fact that I really, really want to be among them. You could say it's as if there were something in the DNA, and in fact there is. A lot in the DNA. Humans are designed to take care of one another. When you are out of commission with an injury, I take care of you, that way when the same happens to me.... But that hadn't been the way it had worked for me. I had been raised to believe that independence and self sufficiency were what humans should strive for, and this whole mutual care thing was just burdening others unnecessarily. If something was wrong with you, you were supposed to shut up and figure something out because everyone else was quite busy sorting out their own lives.
And in the name of self sufficiency I had accepted a sort of distance between myself and anyone I loved. Indeed I had coveted that distance. It wasn't anymore just about the fact that I longed for boundaries I could enforce, but that the ideal distance had a buffer zone of several hundred acres, or in a more tangible sense about 14 extra inches around my hips.
So I longed for distance because I feared disappointment, but I longed for intimacy because that was built into my nature. For years I had done the drawing near, pushing away dance that had reflected my weight fluctuations like a mirror. I was getting too close to someone, my weight would go up. Then again I was alone and it would drop magically. This culminated in my ultimately giving up on the idea of intimacy. I would be isolated forever. I would live life with more than a foot of extra space between me and everyone I met. I would never have to share what was troubling me. I would never have to answer the question "how are you," honestly again. I would never again have to suffer the kind of disappointment I had when I went to the trouble of loving someone only to be demeaned, neglected or abandoned. Or just plain terrified.
I would read a lot.
I would get another cat. Or maybe a hamster.
Gramma was the first person I allowed past my 14 inch barrier. Then Laura, my house mate. A few others began to trickle through. And then I did the unthinkable.
I had begun to study the non-physical causes of weight gain, isolation weighing heavily among them. In an effort to become more social, to learn to trust others, perhaps meet new friends, at the very least get the heck off my treadmill and out among those humans I was famously attempting to make contact with, I decided to go dancing. Not just any dancing. Salsa dancing.
Back in college a Peruvian friend of mine had taught me the basic steps, set me loose on a gritty, dark dance floor and I'd danced and spun and laughed the whole night through. I hadn't needed a partner. You could just dance. And for the partner stuff the club in town offered a lesson before the dancing started. So off I went. I got my refresher. And soon after I got my first dance invitation. Keith, an instructor, steered me around the floor like he steering a mule through an agility track.
"Don't step that way." Keith frowned.
"Stand up straight."
"Count the steps - 123-567- 123- 567. See?"
He might as well have added, "you big oaffish nincompoop." That's how much fun I was having.
Fortunately some of the Latino patrons had thought it such a novelty to see a blond lady by herself in a salsa club that they asked me to dance just to find out what my motives were.
I had a blast. I had met human beings. Many of whom were friendly. None of whom seemed to be waiting around the corner trying to sneak up on me with disappointment and heart break in tow. Keith had been a bit of a shmo. I wished I had been asked to dance more. I was afraid people were talking about the strange lady who sat by herself drinking a diet coke at a dance club. I considered not going back. I decided to go just one more time. On the way there I considered turning the car around twice.
When I got there it was virtually empty. There were only three people there for the lesson. I thought I should just leave and grab a soda on my way home. Or maybe some ice cream.
After the lesson a computer programmer, Bryan asked me to dance. He'd been taking lessons for two years now. I should take lessons, he suggested. They teach you how to count. They teach you the moves.
And clearly Bryan knew how to count as he had been doing it under his breath the whole time.
I was exhausted from my dance, or rather from my talk with Bryan. Trying to think of something to say. Trying to keep up with his counting. Trying to absorb all the fascinating dance tips Bryan had given me. I sat down. Bryan went to get a drink and threatened to come right back.
An older man approached, stretching out his hand to me.
"You like to dance?" He was dark skinned and had a thick accent. He was scary. He was.... Hispanic.
And we were in a crowded, well lit night club. And anyway, he had the kindest look in his eye. If I were looking for a friend he would be the type. Hispanic or no.
He introduced himself as Arturo. I gave him my name. He lead me out onto the dance floor.
"You take the lesson?"
"Yes." I replied.
"Forget everything you learned." He waved a hand over his left shoulder. "Listen to the music. I'll show you the rest."
And he did. Unlike Keith he did not drag me around the dance floor like a wet rag doll whilst rolling his eyes and wondering how much longer the song would go on. Unlike Bryan he did not bore me with trivial conversation whilst pointing out the clear flaws in the footwork I'd learned that afternoon.
He just danced. We danced. And by the end of the night I was spinning and turning and taking up half the dance floor. Unlike all the other dancing I'd done, dancing with Arturo had not been an exercise to be borne, it had been a pleasure.
Instead of telling me what a schlemiel I was for not counting or taking too big steps or ... Whatever...
Arturo had just smiled at me when I kept count. Waved his hand and shrugged when I didn't. He had smiled every time I completed a turn and blamed the other dancers when I stepped on their feet.
"Sweet!" He would say every time I completed a turn. "Sweet sweet." He said when he dipped me and I held a long, high heeled leg, a foot or so over the floor.
And that was it. He hadn't needed to cringe or roll his eyes or remind me how to count. Just there on the dance floor he had made me into a good dancer. In my head I was a veritable Ginger Rogers. I kept coming back. I danced with Arturo most, if not all the time. Just a few weeks later I was chatting with the bar tender.
"Your a great dancer." He was a great liar.
"No, really. You look great out there." He nodded at the crowd of men standing around the bar. "They talk, you know. They think so, too."
"Sweet," I said. "Sweet sweet."

Over the next few weeks Arturo and I became great friends. I made other friends, too. I got to know the bar man. And the club owners. Dance teachers. Dance students. Another IT professional who not only took lessons and counts well but routinely writes new moves he learns in a notebook. Some of them are even people I have begun to call friends.
I have been learning to answer the question "how are you?" Honestly, and sometimes I don't even cringe. A few of them have become good enough friends to be scary. When I think of them I can see my old vision of myself as a little girl on a street corner screaming so loudly I had attracted a crowd of strangers while my own family had disappeared into one of the shops without me. I can see myself beginning to depend on their support and friendship and company and wonder if I can put my faith in them and if it is too late to run back to the safe and consistent arms of a chocolate sundae.
Unwittingly though, my friend Arturo has taught me not only some of the hottest dance moves I've ever seen, but something about friendship I would otherwise never have known: the more faith and confidence you are willing to place in a person, the more likely they will be worthy of it.
It works like this:
I have no evidence that you are waiting to do something disappointing.
I have a little faith in you.
You recognize my commitment to you.
You have a little faith in me.
My commitment to you grows. Pretty soon I have a friend I can actually talk to. And a few moves that even the bar tender with the bulgy biceps thinks make me look good.
I have friends. I do not spend my life torn between wanting distance out of sheer terror, and wanting closeness because of a clear design flaw.
And I do not bust out the potato chips every time I have a lousy day. I do not run to the candy store when I worry someone is getting too close.
I just decide whether I want this person that close. And then I have a little faith. In them. In my ability to survive disappointment and thrive in closeness.
And life is sweet.
Sweet Sweet.

Alyshia
Whole Health Renovation Specialist

I can do anything and I intend to take as many people with me as I can

Ghost Food Realization

2009-11-16T18:49:00.001-08:00

So now we are well on our way on our journey from welter weight to wellness. We began at a whopping 277, hovered around there for a while until we finally decided there was no use trying to start out anywhere else but here because that was the only place we could start, and ventured down the flying monkey ridden tarnished yellow brick road of diet and exercise.
In my general frustration with diet programs and fitness gurus (not to mention constant state of perpetual brokedom) I had decided to do this right. I was not going to subscribe to some program only to watch my hard lost weight com slinking back the moment I turned thought I was done. I was going to do my own homework this time and find The Cure. I was going to do everything everyone prescribed to get my metabolism going, and follow all the prescriptions for eating minimal calories, and I was going to be thin and nothing would stop me from getting there and staying there.
And by gum, four months into the plan, I'd already lost 35 pounds. 35 pounds! That was more than most people ever have to lose in one go, and I had done it in a measly third of a year! As I entered into month 5 I knew in my heart I was going to exit it at least ten pounds lighter. Ha ha! Perhaps 15! Or 20! I was unstoppable! I was invincible! I was stuck. That's right. One whole week nothing had budged. I had done just as much exercise as usual, by this time a long evening walk with some trampolining mixed in during the week.
I had not over eaten. No really. I was eating the exact same things I always ate.
Another week passed.
I was still the same size. I would have to eat celery for the rest of the month if I wanted to make my 10 pound goal now. There must be something wrong with my metabolism.
I went to the health food store. I got a bunch of "supplements" which looked a lot like "pills" but couldn't be because they came from the health store and smelled like catnip. They came with a little diet book full of things I wasn't supposed to eat in order to "detox" and get my metabolic ship back on an even keel. Not to mention starve for a week.
And then the third week nothing happened.
I went back to the store.
I got something called "the Master Cleanse." Which involved lemon juice, cayenne pepper and maple syrup for a full two weeks.
I lost one pound the first week and gained it back the next.
I knew I had a tumor. Maybe I was gaining water weight. Maybe I was doing too much exercise and gaining muscle.
I went back on Google. I found an article by one of the Biggest Loser trainers. It did not suggest I'd added a lot of muscle, or was retaining the Mediterranean Sea, or even that I had a tumor the size of a small island nation.
It suggested something I have since decided to call, ghost food. All those foods we eat which Do Not Contain Calories by virtue of the fact that they do not really exist. They do not exist, of course, because we eat them while standing in front of the fridge in the form of a nibble or a bite. Perhaps they do not exist because they are in liquid form, like the famously calorie free pumpkin spice latte. Or because they are good for us. Everyone knows salads have no calories, and that little bit of blue cheese? Only balanced out by the fact that we just ate a salad, so are now at zero balance.
The article suggested I write down everything I ate.
I put it all in my blackberry calendar.
So every time I found myself in front of the fridge with just a slice of apple or a sip of low calorie soy milk or a spoon full of yogurt poised and ready to enter my mouth I had to whip out the calendar and write it down. Which meant putting the stuff down. And thinking about how many calories the tiny morsel contained.
And doing some quick math in my head.
And generally putting the spoonful back down before I hurt myself.
I lost 3 pounds that week.
I also felt like some sort of hapless glutton. This, I realized was where I had gone wrong all along. All those years, and I could suddenly see them stretching out behind me, year after year, trips to the fridge, stops at the 7/11 or the ice cream store or the Starbucks or whatever. All those times the food I'd been eating wasn't food at all because I'd eaten it where no one could see, on the road somewhere, in the middle of the night standing at the fridge, out of the carton. It hadn't, in my mind been really food at all.
And now, as if they were old soldiers standing at attention, I saw them: the candy bars, the ice cream sandwiches, the beer, wine, martinis, the whipped cream from the can, the last slice of yesterday's pizza I had because it wouldn't be enough for a whole meal and neither were the 2 doughnuts I'd picked up at the AMPM but the two together would just about be enough as long as I finished off the meal with a salad and some garlic bread after.
Suddenly I realized that I did not have a slow metabolism. I had never had a thyroid problem. I didn't retain 130 pounds of water and there was no amount of muscle mass that would get me into as size 24W. It was a sudden, painful burst of reality.
Society, our American fast food culture, hormones, genetics, all these things surely played a role in my weight gain; had I been 20 or 30 pounds overweight I may have even been able to hold those things totally accountable.
But no. 130 pounds were 130 pounds. And those were pounds that Evan down at the 7/11 with his display of Drumsticks and cheesy burritos did not actually Cause me to gain. The cause had been the fact that I, myself had put the drum sticks and the burritos into my very, very delighted mouth.
I was responsible. I was guilty. I was completely ashamed of myself.
And now that I was unable to solve the problem by going to the fridge and poking my finger into some non existent, calorie free peanut butter, and filling a napkin (not a plate, plates contain caloric foods) with grapes (which, have the advantage of being healthy are thereby non-calorie bearing), I had to instead sit down and examine the problem. Or rather walk around with two rambunctious, barely leash trained dogs thinking about the problem.
And I did. I reasoned that I was going to have to face reality and hold myself accountable for all those years I'd abused my body. All the things I'd put in it to soothe my mind which then had wrought havoc on my body and brought unrest to my soul. I would have to see that I had done this to myself.
The shame and self loathing made me want to eat. I had been so out of control, so lacking in discipline that I had almost killed myself - for that is what is meant by "morbid obesity," endangered of death by weight related health problems- with food I didn't even realize I was eating.
And now I really needed a piece of cake.
And maybe a martini.
Probably ice cream, too.

Fortunately I live in a town where the nearest supermarket is a 3 mile drive away. I had to really want that cake and ice cream. And I was in the middle of a walk that would take half an hour just to get home from. So all I could do was carry on walking and thinking and stewing in my own guilt and shame.
I started to cry. Because I had so mistreated myself, and because I had been so mistreated by the very person who should have taken care of me: me.
I had had so little love for myself, so little respect for myself that I had not been able to take time to make a meal, had not seen myself as worth the effort of cooking nor the time of shopping or the care it took to get out and find something active I would enjoy doing.
I had been sorely hurt. And at my own hands.
It would be a matter of months before I came to the life altering conclusion about how I really needed to feel about my hand in my own demise. There were months when I felt ashamed and had to focus on how I was going to "shape up my act" now I was fitter.
It wasn't until I was nearly finished with my weight loss that I finally decided what I really felt and needed to feel about what I had done to myself:
I needed to feel sorry, just as I would if I had done wrong to anyone else.
I needed to look myself in the eye and apologize. Not for over eating. Not for being lazy, or gluttonous or any of those things I'd spent the better part of a lifetime accusing myself of being.
I needed to be sorry for not loving myself enough to do for me what I would do, indeed frequently had done for countless others in my life:
Take care.
I had taken care of friends and family who had been sick.
I had comforted strangers who looked sad when I'd stumbled upon them on the street.
I had let myself go through all manner of pain and heart ache and given myself nothing more than the fleeting comfort of chocolate and beer.
I was soooo sorry. I was no longer ashamed. I was no longer steeped in guilt and self loathing. I was only sorry.
Sorry and overjoyed.
All my life I had spent my time striving to be loved by friends, by family, by various and sundry men. And I had had some level of success with all of them.
But I had never even thought to pursue the love of the one person most responsible, most able to provide care the care I needed: me.

Whole Health Renovation Specialist

I can do anything and I intend to take as many people with me as I can

Q+A interval

2009-11-12T15:40:00.000-08:00

Ok, so today is actually not a post day, but I had this great question from a very important person
And I thought a lot of people might benefit from hearing the answers, so I have pasted them below.

I suck at weight maintenance:
You do not suck at weight maintenance, you just don't have the right tools. Like me, you have a non-hunger eating aspect to your weight problem - truthfully I think most people do. But ours is something that makes it difficult
to keep weight off because dieting is only a temporary fix. It's a lot to explain, but I'm going to be working with it in my blog a lot and will make sure you're the first to see any new writings on the subject.

What exactly did you do when you were first starting out?
When I started the trampoline I was doing about an hour - just bouncing around and dancing. I found workouts on youtube that were fun, but mostly I just put on music I liked and danced - it worked and I had a blast.

Is it best to workout before or after you eat?
It doesn't really matter. You shouldn't exercise when hungry or stuffed. That's about it. It only becomes important when you start training - like my marathon stuff. Then it's actually best to do both. Lots of protein and sugar before and after - for longer runs even during.

Any good eating suggestions?
Eat with self love. Don't eat anything that's not worthy of you. You deserve something that was prepared with care, that is properly seasoned and just what you enjoy eating. I have been really successful meddling about and experimenting with whatever's in season: asparagus and broccoli in spring, summer squash all through summer, pumpkin and autumn squashes in fall... I had no idea the world was so full of flavors - I had completely narrowed everything down to whatever was easiest to make. Now I cook for myself and never say things like, "it's too much work just for me." I'm worth the effort. I can make the time. I'm not going to die while I'm waiting for my food to be chopped, cooked and served.
When I'm done with that I'm going to love what I'm eating and so is my whole mind and body. Studies show the more flavorful your food is the more likely you'll be satisfied, the less you'll need of it. I have found that 100% true, and what is more, I don't snack as much when I know I've just had/ soon will be having something fabulous to eat.
Eat lots of veggies - prepared well you'll never want anything else - but don't make yourself a salad, salads won't satisfy you even if they do make the hunger go away.
You are more than just the bodily function that is hunger, and it's much more important that you get fed than that your tummy gets filled with random stuff.

The Isolation-Ice Cream effect

2009-11-11T19:58:00.000-08:00

When I first moved to Amador county it appeared that everything was divinely ordained. I had a job I had found, interviewed and been hired for after 1 solitary application. A staff member I had met at the interview had a house she was leaving to go to New York and I could rent it well within my price range. The house was beautiful. It even had a yard. And a perfect sized doggy door for zippy the wonder beagle. It was as if God had descended from heaven for the soul purpose of setting me up with a decent paying job with regular hours and a landlady that didn't mind noisy beagles and didn't worry about the smoking so long as I didn't bring it inside.
It was divinely orchestrated. It was guided by arch angels.
The job fell through in six weeks.
My landlady hated the place in New York and decided to return. With her dog that looked as if he regularly had beagle as an afternoon snack. We had made provisions in case Laura wanted to come back, we would go from land lady & tenant to roommates. But she was a) a stranger and b) a roommate.
Great.
No job. House full of people I hardly knew and something that for all I knew might have been a cross between a pygmy elephant and a rabid dingo muscling my 15 inch high, flop eared friend out of the way of the tailor made doggy door.
Great. I could see God's descent from heaven had been a mere jaunt rather than an actual habitation.
I had another job in no time though, one that even paid rent and bills and wasn't unpleasant. I had good hours and was locked away in a slow paced office most of the day. It was the perfect venue for a 277 pound woman; I wouldn't have to be on my feet all day and would never be seen wading through cubicles, pushing people's chairs in so I could get through the aisles.
The key to my workplace bliss though was that I would be left alone. I had loved being around people in thinner days, gave parties, had been a professional trainer and had even done some public speaking. When I had come back to the states after college and work abroad I had discovered I had almost no friends left. I was so disconnected from my family some of them had to be reminded who I was. I soon got used to being isolated. I told myself I was tired of human companionship. Maybe it was that my countrymen were as shallow as my foreign friends had accused them of being. Maybe I just didn't like the ones I was meeting. I suspected people were just becoming jerks. Meanwhile the thirty or so pounds I was putting on a year had not exactly motivated me to get out and socialize in places where people might wonder how I'd gotten to be that size, or how I lived with myself, or what I must eat to get that big.
So when, a year later, Laura finally did follow through on her threat to return from the hated New York State, I was terrified. By this time I was about half a year and 50 pounds into my weight loss regimen. From my memory, roommates were people with the pesky habit of getting in the way of things like eating or drinking too much, forgetting to exercise, or just being a slob sometimes. They watched you like hawks. They knew when you weren't sleeping enough or were working too hard or forgetting to clean your bathroom for too long, and the really annoying ones went around mentioning it out of something they disguised as concern.
Roommates were a pestilence at best. A plague at worst.
And who knew what Laura and her boyfriend Don and her Rabid Dingo-Elephant Chance would even be like.
It had been years since I'd shared a home with anyone. Since the time I'd lived with my mother just after arriving back in the states. Back then I had gained the weight in order to become isolated from people I felt were letting me down. Then the weight had served to further isolate me. By the time Laura got back from New York almost a year after I'd moved in I was so deep into my weight loss program I was once again utterly isolated by that, too.
I would come home from working out at 7:30 or 8 at night, eat my pre-cooked, simple meal and head upstairs to watch TV for what remained of the night. I dealt with having a roommate mainly by pretending I didn't.
Laura meanwhile made an effort to relate to me in a way I had given up doing with others. She stopped by my door to chat every night, even when America's next top model was on and I was transfixed. She sat at the table while I was eating even though she was long finished with her meal. She chatted with me about exercise, the only thing I seemed to be interested in. She extended dinner invitations to Gramma which I of course never passed on.
She was kind to me. And before I knew it I began to become attached to her. At Christmas time she and Don went to visit his family in the San Francisco bay area.
I planned to blast the heater, run around in an overripe bathrobe, eat ice cream and drink beer.

Instead I just missed them. Every time I heard a noise I turned around to say something and there was no one there. I didn't eat all the ice cream. The beer didn't taste very good.
I had to wash the bathrobe.
As much as I wanted to be isolated, I wasn't any more. I had people around and I liked them. I no longer felt they were an invasion of my privacy just for breathing.
They were suddenly very... dear.
What was more there were things I felt the undeniable need to tell them. What had happened to me at work. Funny gramma anecdotes. My dog tried to eat the mail man. Their dog ate another sponge.
I was happy. I was sad. I was angry.
And I felt inclined to listen, too. I heard the sound of Laura's voice when she was anxious and when she was relaxed and when she was stressed out or hurt or excited.
And I was really glad to be part of that. It had been a while since I'd been a good enough friend to anyone to know what mood they were in, let alone trust them to know mine.
Over the year and a half of my weight loss adventure Laura sat at our kitchen table helping me sort through all the problems I would have eaten in the past. She proposed solutions to things I only wanted to rant about before digging in to a giant pizza and piece of chocolate cake. She even tried to help me learn to knit when I quit smoking and needed to put something in my hands so they couldn't put anything in my mouth. I swore afterwards that I hadn't actually been Trying to poke her eye out, and miraculously Laura seemed to believe me.
With Laura's help I had learned to be around people again. I had begun to reestablish my faith in friendship, to trust that someone other than myself could actually be genuinely concerned about me. I began to want to be a part of things where other humans were present.
I took up salsa dancing. I joined clubs and associations. I stopped running away the moment church let out and actually stayed to talk to people.
I had a friend at home and I began to make more all over the place. Friends I could tell things to when I felt like just forgetting everything and knocking back a days worth of calories in one chocolate shake. People who could help me solve problems instead of just paving them over with chocolate flavored mortar.
Slowly but surely I was being cured. I was becoming more able to reveal who I really was because I could be more and more sure the people around me weren't going to let me down. And that, if they did, I would always have help picking myself up again.

Everyone needs a Gramma: sorry mine is taken

2009-11-10T16:06:00.000-08:00

In a small ranch style home on a small, out of the way street in the almost imperceptibly small town of Jackson, there lives a small Croatian woman with a very, very big range of talents. She is a mistress of the garden, home and hearth, she cooks, she sews, she reads, she writes, she is an active financial advisor with portfolios that would make Wall Street financial gurus come looking for advice if only they knew. But her greatest talent lies in what we in her inner circle have decided to call, wielding the persuasio-ray gun (she is also a dab hand with the briliant-suggestobot-5000, the embarrassing-anecdotator and of course, the guiltron-beam-generator).
Her name is Amelia. Many call her Mellie. I am fortunate, OK blessed to call her Gramma. I actually moved to my current home to be nearer to my family, and by family of course I meant Gramma. Manteca, where I had been living was to say the least, the pits. There was a train that ran through town east to west and one north to south and there might have even been one north by north west for all the stupid things barreled through any and every neighborhood at all hours of the day and night.
It was boring. There was a bar called The Rusty Hook which was as appealing as its name suggests. There was a defunct water slide park, a set of broken monkey bars (fun for the whole family) and of course, a fast food restaurant not merely on every corner but occasionally crowding multiple burger/ taco joints on any one corner.
That was the recreational offering for the area, the next major city being about an hour's drive, the next nature park/ open space/ unpaved surface about 2 hours to the east. So the moment the window opened I squeezed through and moved myself and beagle up to beautiful Amador county, jewel of the California Motherlode.
The air here smells like hot oak and fresh grass. Traffic jams happen only when old Mrs. Onetto drops a jar of home made persimmon jam in the cross walk. There isn't any fast food where I live in Sutter Creek, unless you count the ice cream shop where the food is ready fast but you'll build up an appetite waiting for the line around the block to subside. There are no trains. The whole place is a nature park.
From my doorstep I can hear the cheers from the high school football games on Fridays, and the music from the ragtime festival, or the blues festival or the cutesy-little-old-west-themed-festival that's taking place on any given Saturday.
The place is, in total contrast to Manteca, utterly wholesome.
And in this wholesome environment with its high school football games and its cutesy festivals and its persimmon flavored traffic jams, right in the middle of that lives Gramma.
Gramma, an immigrant from 1920's Craotia, grew up mainly in the town of Jackson. There she learned her mother's favorite Austrian dishes like strudel, traditional Croatian fair, policinkas, and cevapcici, and a hodgepodge of local cuisine brought from all over the world by the miner's families who peopled the place.
Having grown up surrounded by people from every country and continent, Gramma can knock out a gulash to please Atilla the Hun himself; she can whip up a chicken curry in no time flat. She can do a Cornish pasty, Italian gnocci and ravioli, borscht, pot roast, barbecue, you name it.
And so, as I sat at her kitchen table chin in hands, bemoaning the fact that I had nooooo time to cook, that I was Forced to resort to Fast food and prepackaged frozen food (which of course I did not like, not at all, no really, I'd so rather eat healthy) Gramma buzzed around the kitchen stirring pots and turning meats and adding spices and flavors and chopping and crushing and....
"Why don't you pick out a few things you'd like to eat and we'll learn how to make them," she suggested as I launched into another diatribe on my lousy cooking skills.
Ah, the brilliant-suggestobot 5000. I might have expected it. And it was air tight and perfectly aimed as usual. I was going to spend at least a couple of hours a week at Gramma's place, I might as well spend them learning to cook. And no, it was no trouble. She'd be cooking anyway and would be glad for the company. No, we wouldn't do anything complicated until I got better at it. No there didn't have to be any brussels sprouts and you could use cauliflower almost anywhere it called for broccoli.
As usual with the suggestobot (and it was even worse when the guiltron beams were released and I was reminded how much she missed me and thought I should have more incentive to visit) was bullet proof. All my excuses about time and energy went right out the window, and half the ingredients would come from her garden, so no, there'd be no real expense.
I was trapped, like being trapped against your will in a dentist's office: it would be good for me I knew. It would even probably be fun, all that hanging around with Gramma. But as that fresh from the dentist feeling eliminates any excuse you may have for not smiling, so cooking with Gramma would mean one less thing in my I-can't-lose-weight-because litany of lies I told myself.

As usual, despite my misgivings the persuedo ray gun won out in the end. Gramma and I spent a day or two a week cooking stuffed cabbage with dill, Cajun Jambolaya, something French that required several extra arms to prepare (that had been my suggestion from my one and only cooking book), turkey soup, spicy chili, and anything else we could make 7 servings of for me to eat during the week. And because we had no more than 7 servings I knew exactly how much I could eat per day and not have to cook again the rest of the week.
And before I knew it I no longer worried about depleting my I-can't-lose-weight-because litany; I no longer needed it. Cooking with Gramma, combined with a quick if uninteresting walk every morning, ensured that in just 2 weeks I lost six pounds. And I hadn't even meant to.
And then instead of doing the thing one in my condition would reasonably expect of pounds that come off, they stayed away. In fact within a month even more of them had gone. And they kept going.
And all because someone who cared for me had taken the time to show me what she knew: not merely how to cook, but how to join her in caring for me.

I have a friend who always texts me at our mutual lunch hour. "What's for lunch?" I ask.
"Tuna on wheat, lettuce, pickle. You?"
"Calamari fajitas with black beans, red and green bell peppers, onion, zuchini and yellow squash sprinkled with gorgonzola cheese on white corn tortillas."
"Show off."
I'd invite him to my extraordinary feasts but he seems to have his mind made up to eat healthy.

Lifestyle Schmifestyle. How about a complete brain change?

2009-11-07T14:25:00.000-08:00

Having once discovered that the best place, indeed the only place to start from was here, right where I was, 100+ pounds overweight, cholesterol count just beginning to outnumber red blood cells and blood sugar surging and pulsing like a swimming pool full of frisky sperm whales, I had to begin the most difficult step of all: the Things I would do to lose weight. Whenever I say overweight people know more about weight loss than most medical specialists, people nod their heads. At least the overweight ones do. Everyone else crosses their arms and raises their brow as if to wonder why, if they Know so much, wouldn't they do it?
But what you know isn't always what you DO. You know that you should never drive while holding the cell phone in your hand, and yet invariably the stupid blue tooth gives out or the headphones echo or you have the top down and the speaker phone is just picking up a sound like in a hurricane, and bingo, you're driving with your elbow holding the phone and talking with one hand and trying to reprogram the GPS with the other.
And that is how, knowing all they (we) know, we nonetheless remain overweight.
We know we are supposed to do as the TV doctors instruct and get at least a half hour's dull, unchallening exercise a day. We know we are supposed to eat what seem to us to be tree frog sized portions of things with more green than white and brown combined. We are supposed to starve and torture ourselves and otherwise suffer for our sins. We've earned it, we tell ourselves, that's what we get for all that indulgence. All that lack of self control. That's our comeuppance.
And so that is what I did. Every night in the dark after work, middle of January, rain or shine, I would saddle up the dogs and traipse through our unadorned, hilly, suburban neighborhood, up something I called "Heartbreak hill," (because it was so steep I had to have my cigarette After climbing it to avoid giving myself a heart attack).
Then I would come home and do crunches and leg lifts all through the final round of Jeopardy. The first leg of the fitness venture was dull enough to put me to sleep if it hadn't been sub arctic autumn out. The second leg would have put me to sleep but I can always survive Final Jeopardy, even if those obnoxious chopper, hacker, slicer, dicer commercials come on.
Then one day, half way through leg lift 317, I spotted it. It was dusty. It was dismantled and stuffed behind an unfashionable, puffy, down coat (the one that made me look like the Michelin Man ate the the Pilsbury Dough Boy for lunch). But there it was. And now that I was a svelte 260 I just barely exceeded the weight limit.
I dragged the mini trampoline out from behind the stay-puffed-marshmallow coat and screwed the legs into the body.
It was pretty sturdy. I stepped on and nothing went sproing. I did a few lunges and nothing went ping or ricocheted off the converted park bench I used for a couch.
I turned off Jeopardy and turned on "Take It" by Janis Joplin. Pretty soon I was Dancin' With Myself and Shaking' My Booty and actually collecting songs from iTunes into a play list I called "Trampoline Non-Torture music."
And that was when I took the first giant leap from punishment to reward. I don't know if, having lost a few pounds I now felt that I had human dignity again (a thing I clearly did not believe I possessed in the old Heart Break Hill days) and had earned the right to not spend half an hour to an hour a night paying my penance, or whether I was just sick and tired of huffing my way around a neighborhood full of Mount Everests at sub-human temperatures I'll never know. Whatever the case, that night I pulled out the trampoline from behind the Incredible Bulk's coat I committed an act of such pure, if unintended self love it would change a whole, ingrained, lifelong, deeply held and very nearly worshiped view: that exercise was a means of paying the piper, a release for all the shame I felt at having indulged, let go, lost myself.
I began to believe, as I ducked to avoid hitting the ceiling while belting out "take it! Take another little piece of my heart now darlin' yeah!" that, if exercise had to be torture, moving my body didn't have to be exercise. I could burn calories singing and dancing, and since no one was home at that hour, no one had to know I wasn't doing any drudgery.
I didn't even have to feel guilty; I could still do some crunches later if I felt the need for something more punitive.
It also helped me do something that would start me on the one road I believe everyone must find a way to if they are to ultimately succeed at managing their weight: the abandonment of self loathing, and the first, tiny glimmers of self love.
I had, instead of my usual switching from hurting myself with food to hurting myself with foul tasting fitness food and tortuous exercise routines, stopped hurting myself altogether.
I had begun the process of helping myself, and that out of real, natural, healthy love. The same kind and amount of it I would show toward anybody else.

No you really are better off starting somewhere else

2009-11-05T17:39:00.000-08:00

Just after college I was dating an Irishman named Liam. Liam was such a friendly, open person that everywhere he went he would get asked for restaurant recommendations, advice, directions; he was like a walking information booth. Either because he was tired of being asked or because the Irish just like to have a good laugh at the expense of lost tourists, Liam had a pre-programmed response he would use whenever people asked him for directions.
"Excuse me," a hapless visitor would ask in an American accent, "Can you tell me how to get to the Octoberfest?"
And Liam would answer in an exaggerated cross between west country Leprechaunese and genuine Dublin brogue: "Aye," (wink, nod), "but your best not startin' out from here."
There would be a nod and that special computing look people get when they are deciding whether what you've just said is the wisest, or indeed the stupidest thing they've ever heard.
And the answer would invariably be, (I am not making this up, and really no one ever, ever had a better reply than this, no matter how much computing had clearly gone on in between)
"Well, could you tell me where I should start from, and how to get there?"

There is, of course, no sensible answer to the question "where shall I best start from and how do I get there from here." When you are staring down years upon years of built up food issues, muscles that don't want to carry your weight further than the distance from the couch to the freezer full of ice cream, and a 100+ pound journey ahead, you can't help wondering where on earth you might ever start.

Whether you are losing 10 pounds or a hundred, the task ahead always seems, and in increasingly more cases is next to impossibly big. The difference between someone who has 10 pounds and someone who has 100 pounds to lose often lies in the willingness to make a start despite all odds.

I remember the moment I decided that I was going to start down the long, long road to health from where I was. The vision I had was not of a shiny, yellow brick road peopled with little people singing the days away and colorful inanimate effegies coming to life to protect me. The road I saw ahead - and perhaps just because I have that sort of imagination it was photographically clear - was of a dark, dingy road, veiled in half light of something not hopeful enough to be dawn and not lovely enough for dusk. My road was peopled with scolding health professionals, smug fitness gurus with waists the size of pencils and taunting fit people giving me their unsolicited, often ill informed opinions on the secrets to successful weight loss (doctors and gurus and skinny people, oh my!). The road I saw was long and winding, dirty and painful, just like all the other times only worse, and longer. And now I was a lot older, too.
And I was convinced I would walk that road on my own. There would be no scarecrows, mindless or otherwise to accompany me, but there would be no end of flying monkeys (in the form of big pieces of chocolate cake) and witches (doubting friends, and family. The heavy ones would say I was looking too thin and the thin ones would say I'd gain it all back. My family, I was convinced, would eye me suspiciously every time I put food in my mouth; everyone who knew me would roll their eyes and marvel at my futile attempt at yet another fitness kick).
So I'm standing at the edge of this dark road with all the monkeys and witches and treadmills and eliptical machines and free weights and God only knew what manner of torture devices, and it occurs to me, as if all that weren't bad enough, that I was going to be on this road given my condition, for a very, very long time. At a stretch I could lose 70 pounds in a year (without the snickers and coffee diet or the eat only raw papaya diet) and I had almost twice that to go. Two years on a diet was going to be an eternity. I was of course going to die.
Which was fine.
Because I was dying anyway.
And I might as well die trying to live instead of trying to die.
So in my vision I saw myself, dressed in my favorite dress (pictured in the before shot above), taking a first step onto the road as if testing out the water after someone slipped a small iceberg into the swimming pool.
And sure enough there really were monkeys and witches. Some of my old friends really did get angry with me, even stopped talking to me. They would spread gossip about how I was fitness obsessed, how I was anorexic, maybe bulimic, sick, unhealthy.
And then there were Patty and Kitty. Patty and Kitty were roughly my size but nonetheless each for her own reason, one of the most beautiful people I've ever known. Patty and Kitty did not get swept away with the fitness fever as I had, but they watched and cheered me on as I did. They told me I looked great. They told me they were proud of me. They told me to keep going and joked that soon they wouldn't be able to let me turn sideways because I'd disappear.
But they never once doubted I could do it. Or made snide comments about eating disorders. Or passed judgment every time I ate a meal that involved more than one grape.
These were the people who really loved me. They were on my side.
As it turned out, my dark, long and winding road was not peopled only with monkeys and witches and agonizing remnants of the Spanish inquisition.
My road had Patty and Kitty. And, I would later find dozens and dozens of people, better than any scarecrows or tin men or even the bravest lions.
And just like in the story, they had been there all along.
And they loved me just as much thin as they had fat. And it turned out they even loved me a little, OK maybe even a lot more than I ever thought they had.

Liam was right. You're best not starting out from where you are. It would be a lot easier to start out from 5 pounds or 10 pounds or how about just a few ounces away from your goal. But that's not where you are right now.
But Dorothy was right, too. There really is no place like home. And wherever the road home leads, you are bound to discover, and as a bonus even learn to better love and appreciate, all the people who will come out of the woodwork in droves (and they really will) to lend you a hand you never asked for.

Instructions for how to begin not being doomed

2009-11-03T15:30:00.000-08:00

1) Purchase several hypnosis tapes by certain cockney hypnotists and go around repeating the phrase, "eat smaller portions of healthier food." All day. 2) Buy masses of exercise equipment and gear, but only purchase it if a) it's either really cheap or really expensive and b) it says "...in just minutes a day..." AND "...No Back Breaking _____" somewhere on the box. 3) Buy a whole library of books that tell you not to eat carbs. Or not to eat fats. Or not to eat anything but cookies. Buy a book that will help you learn portion control by keeping a food scale in your coat pocket. Sign up for 15 different web sites where you can track your calorie intake, record your calorie output, read articles about the best ways to burn, limit, eradicate or banish calories from your life.
4) Give up and get yourself a bucket sized portion of triple chocolate ice cream with chocolate chips and chocolate sauce.

That is how it all began for me, anyway. That and Facebook. I had joined a group and made a comment, to which someone responded despite the fact that I looked remarkably like a certain over sized, pack bred, scent hound in my profile picture. It turned out Fred (or so I will call him) was a really nice fellow. We chatted amicably. He friended me, I accepted. I liked him. I started wondering what it would be like to be with him, and that thought was immediately followed by another question as to what Fred would think if my 277 pound self actually posted a picture - and not the one I'd taken during the New Year's Eve party that year I turned 25 and was on the grape fruit tomato juice diet for 6 months.
What would happen if he ever actually Saw a picture. He would surely stop flirting with me, maybe even unfriend me. So I took matters into my own hands and stopped flirting with him before he had the chance.
Then I went on a trek. It was the first trek I'd made since my failed attempt to lose weight with foot long Subs and a palates video. I was going to change my body if it killed me. Heck, I was already on the road to perdition - or at least an early grave - things couldn't be much worse.
So it started with the hypnosis CD. And, although I found it helpful, it did not, in fact cause me to lose weight immediately and irreversibly. What it did do was plant a picture in my head of something I remember seeing (not as if in a dream but in fact clear as day) - a visualization of me, about a size 6 or 8, standing in front of the mirror in a red dress. I can't say what, if anything that CD did for me, but it did put that image in my mind: me, size 6, red dress. I could see it so clearly it was as if it were reality.
And then I discovered it actually Was reality. That was the way I really was inside. I was beautiful inside. I was radiant and happy and friendly and all those things I'd seen right there in that mirror. And I'll be darned if my inner self wasn't wearing that red dress, too.
When I reached the mid point of my healthy BMI range I went on a quest to find that dress. The after picture on this blog shows me wearing it. It is a size 8. I wear it all the time, even though I've had to have it taken in.
I will probably wear it until it falls to pieces. After that I will have it taken apart and replicated.
What I learned from the red dress in the mirror, though, was that if I could make the long, long stretch of the imagination from what seemed impossible (i.e. that I would ever lose so much as a pound again) to the fact that it might not be impossible (i.e. The belief that it would be difficult, require a lot of hard work and sacrifice not to mention time but was, nonetheless, however distantly, possible), it was a short hop from not-impossible to possible.
And as the pounds began to come off, and I on my trampoline pictured me in my red dress, and on my walks and while I was standing in front of the fridge and at the grocery store and wherever else, conjured up the image of me in my dress, I began to think more and more in terms of not merely possible but probable. And from there to certainty.
And then I bought the dress. Right off the rack. From a designer boutique.
And it was real because at some point I began to expect it to be real. At some point I knew it would. And it has stayed real because I do not expect it to disappear like a wisp of smoke.
So it all began, as I have learned as if I had learned no more than one thing on this whole journey: that what you get is what you expect. And if you expect a size 6 red dress you will, one day, find yourself wearing one.

I am going to be buried in that red dress. No matter how out of style it is 80 years from now.

Not Doomed

2009-11-01T17:45:00.000-08:00

My name is Alyshia Davies and I used to be doomed. If I were starting a twelve step program for recovering doomed people, that is how it would start.
It wasn't long ago that I was living in Manteca, a place which is so hot in summer you have to keep the refrigerator door open to keep the air conditioner from having a nervous breakdown. In winter, Manteca is bathed in a steady fog so thick any hapless rays of sunshine that penetrate into visibility (about 3 inches from the end of your nose) are so exhausted all the vitamin D has been drained right out. Manteca (which is a Spanish word meaning pork lard) is a reasonably sized city, but surrounded on all sides by fertile, central California farm land, which is, in some place or other in any given wind direction, constantly being fertilized. You probably put two and two together just now, but in case you haven't, the math goes: round-the-compass-farmland+hotter-than-a-dessert-gorilla's-underarms = a smell that would keep the four horsemen of the Apocalypse at bay. Well, at least someone will survive the end times.

What was worse, I had come to Manteca to escape living with my mother after having been unemployed for over a year. I had a job that barely paid the bills and sometimes didn't, and which, when I told people what I did for a living I had to smile extra brightly to distract them from the little wincing motion I involuntarily did with my shoulders (I saw it in a mirror once. It looked like someone had stuffed a small, wet sea turtle down the back of my shirt).

I didn't know anyone.
My family were hours and hours away.
I was, to say the least, utterly devastated.
So I did what every red blooded American does when cornered. I ate. I ate whatever was available, which in Manteca usually amounted to various and sundry fast foods (there is an Applebee's in town but at least at first it was out of my price range).
And if you had asked me back then, I would have told you that I hardly ate at all. I never ate. And I had witnesses to that fact. No one ever saw me eat. I didn't have a single meal all day (I was too busy to sit down and eat); why, it was all I could do to get to the drive through on my break just to stop my tummy rumbling. Sometimes I even had to resort to a candy bar from the gas station across the street. Which wasn't so bad because the people there were friendly and even knew my name. The only thing I could imagine might be a problem was the occasional beer I had with my occasional ice cream which I only had when I worked the late shift which in turn was no more than 4 times a week.
In short, I gained 35 pounds a year the first three years in Manteca. 35 pounds. I was now 105 pounds heavier than I had been when I started, and I hadn't started small either.
I'd never been a string bean. My extra pounds showed up when I was about 10 and hung around all my life. There were one or two at first. Then in my teens I'd been so miserable I'd gone out and found a few more. Pretty soon there were 30 or 40 and they were getting a good party going just as I went off to college.
I immediately went on the have-to-live-off-$72-a-month crash diet and lost all 40. And that stayed good and gone, too, until my boyfriend went off to Germany and I had to wait 3 months to join him. Then a few of them realized how much they'd missed me and started to creep back. I put a stop to that, though. I went on the eat-only-snickers-bars-and-coffee diet. And that showed them.
Then there was the time my boyfriend (a different one this time) decided I needed to be domesticated and decided that a) I needed a whole set of pots for Christmas as motivation to learn how to cook for him and b) I needed to start sitting around the house more whilst he went out with his friends. This resulted in a) another 30 (40? maybe even 50) pound weight gain b) the whole grain cereal and non-fat-milk diet and c) a new boyfriend.
Over the years my weight did this 30 or 40 pound trapeze act with such regularity you didn't need a calendar. In fact no one back home ever needed letters, I would just send them a picture and they could guess with 99% accuracy how things were going. If I was thin, I had a new guy and it was 1998. If I was fat, I was living alone or in a relationship that had seen brighter days and, jeez, where did the time go, it must be 2001 already.
In Manteca though, the 30 pounds turned into an annual 30 pounds, or rather 35. There were no new boyfriends to keep my weight in check. I was just lonely, and depressed (clinically even for a while) and fat.
I was 277 pounds when the "before" picture on this blog was taken.
277 pounds of which about 130 were now giving a bash to beat the band around my hips, thighs and waist. I tottered around that weight for a while, taking off 10, 20, even 30 pounds. But I must have been a heck of a hostess because they just kept coming back. And sometimes bringing friends.

And I, who ate out of misery, put my brave face on, and said all was well. I wasn't unhealthy, really. The achy feet were from my job. The knees, too. The leg pain. The fact that the moment the temperature got above 69 degrees Fahrenheit I started sweating so hard people asked me if it was raining out. It was all because of something else.
And I wasn't unhappy, either. By gum. I'd rather be fat and happy than thin and hungry any day.
I had seen a Dr. Phil episode once where an obese man had said he had no health problems, no high cholesterol, no blood pressure problems. And Dr. Phil had said, "Just because you don't now doesn't mean you won't soon. You will." And I didn't believe him any more than the man in the chair across from him did. And then my blood pressure really did start to creep up. And my cholesterol. And everything. As quickly as if it had been damned up somewhere and was just now starting to flood out.

But it didn't matter. Because I was doomed. In my mind I was doomed. I had had to lose as much as 50 pounds before, and that had been difficult. 130 was going to be impossible. I was doomed. And if doomed, I might as well just wait for the blood pressure and the cholesterol and the joint pain and the sleep apnea and whatever else... I might as well just let that do its work. If I was doomed, I was probably better off dead anyway.

And I was no dummy. That's pretty solid reasoning. The math worked.
And then I moved out of Manteca to live in Amador county, near Gramma.
Gramma, herself a veteran survivor of unbeatable odds, was telling me one day about her upbringing: Poor immigrant family, her father an alcoholic, her mother a cruel tyrant, an untreated paranoid schizophrenic. At 85 Gramma is a stock broker. She went to business school and was a secretary back when that was what girls did. And then she took an interest in finance and got her brokers license back when that was what girls didn't. She's been practicing her trade with remarkable success ever since. Has two kids, a bunch of no-good layabout grand kids, and a husband she's been married to since practically the dawn of time.

I wondered aloud one day how Gramma had beat the odds the way she had, why she hadn't turned out to be a tyrant's victim, perhaps herself a tyrant, or worse.
"I chose what I wanted to be and what I wanted to do."
You never ask Gramma an idle question because you will get a real live answer and that will start you on a life long journey.

At least that is what happened to me. Gramma's reminder that you choose what you want to be, made me realize that 130 pounds, despite being almost impossibly difficult to lose, was not actually impossible. That pack a day of cigarettes I was going through? My choice, too.
And all those things I thought about myself? That I was helpless? I had help. I had Gramma, who was a cheer leading squad, a cooking instructor and overall motivator. I wasn't strong enough? Not strong enough? I carried 130 pounds around on my back all day - If that's not strength what is? I wasn't tough enough, I'd go crazy dealing with all that anguish every time I had a setback. Not tough enough? I listened to people snicker behind my back every time I went out in public. I dealt with the humiliation of not being able to fit in a booth at a restaurant, and having to ask people to push their chairs in so I could get to the bathroom. I dealt with that every day and I wasn't tough enough to face a bathroom scale?
And finally, I had no self control. I was so fond of saying this I had even begun to believe it. But I knew that wasn't true. Every hot day I resisted the urge to go outside in a pair of short shorts. Every weekend I sat home wishing I could go dancing or to a concert or .... out some place where I wouldn't be embarrassed to be seen. I had no self control? It suddenly dawned on me, I had self control in spades.

18 months, countless gallons of blood, sweat and tears later I was a 110 pounds lighter, no longer overweight but in now in a healthy BMI range. I was also infinitely wiser. From the beginning I had decided to to this right this time. There would be no $72 budget to help me avoid eating, and at 33 I could no longer metabolize snickers bars and coffee without being awake for several weeks afterwards. I had to do my homework. I went on line, I read books, I talked to people. I researched how to lose weight. And when I was done, I researched how to keep it off.
And I did. Both.
And then I quit smoking as if daring myself to gain the 20 pounds or so smokers usually put on. I lost 20.
And now I wasn't just normal weight. I was kind of hot.

And things went south with my boyfriend. And I didn't gain or lose anything.
And things went south and then north and south and north in other areas of my life as things often do, and none of those things killed me even though I no longer had food or even cigarettes to help me cope. I had learned to cope without them.

And then I decided to train for a marathon.
And next spring I am taking up mountain climbing.
And right now, I am learning to dance.
And I can do anything.
And I intend to take as many people with me as I possibly can.
My name is Alyshia Davies and I am not doomed. And neither are you.