September 2, 2017

Oh, I for sure know what’s keeping me fat.

I have regarded potato chips with open hostility. I’ve held malice in my heart for delicious, mooshy, over-processed white bread. As for ice cream, we have a twisted, perverse love-hate relationship that doesn’t seem to be doing either of us any good.

So don’t think I’m unaware of why I’m carrying saddle bags on my rump. The trouble is…

Look – this is the thing that athletic people (say, a retired ballet dancer with a degree in nutrition, CHIP) just don’t seem to understand: The body of a fat person DOES NOT respond to external cues the way the body of a lean person does. If Chip at Body Dynamics (who I love, despite his naturally lean state and uncanny grace like a reed in a gentle breeze, grrr) stops eating carbs, he will lose weight. His body is used to a cause and effect relationship.

My body, on the other hand, is apparently primed to survive famines that would carry off the naturally lean. (And in so doing, decreasing the population so that my fat-storing people – the naturally superior genetic variation – would have more food. See? This broad bum is a brilliant survival item.) (This gives me little comfort, but plenty of cushioning, in the land of plenty.)

Where was I?

Right – my body does NOT respond to external cues. If I eat less, my body assumes the plagues have begun and it shuts down, holding on to every calorie. In fact, my body will IMMEDIATELY convert food to fat as soon as I start denying it. I would be really, REALLY good at surviving a famine; that’s all I’m saying.

So I have NEVER trusted that my body will respond to (good eating) (bad eating) (healthy eating) (crap eating) the way science insists it’s going to. I’ve maintained my weight after feasting in revolting fashion; I’ve gained weight after eating like a monk (are monks famous for not eating? Let’s say a hermit who dines on nothing but bitter vetch) (I don’t know what bitter vetch is, but would YOU go back for seconds?) (I’m trapped in a parenthesis flood – where am I??)

Yep. My body doesn’t respond to food input the way Chip’s does. Or many, many people’s.

So Chip’s plan of INCREMENTAL changes to my diet is inspired… Maybe I can sneak up on my body and infect it with health while it’s not looking. It’s worth trying; God knows I’ve tried everything else.

But I’m curious. I always want to know WHY Chip says to add wheat germ to my morning yogurt. (To my astonishment, the wheat germ is no burden in my breakfast. And I feel like Euell Gibbons when I spoon it on; crunchy-healthy, dig me!)

So Chip explains it all to me – and I manage to retain about 15, 20% of what he says. And that’s where the trouble comes in…

…because as Alexander Pope tells us in “The Rape of the Lock” (or something)…

A little learning is a dangerous thing

;Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring.

There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,

And drinking largely sobers us again.

Yes, I DID just whip that out, thank you – I am expensively educated. (Oh, but Wikipedia tells me it was actually a poem called “An Essay on Criticism” which is apparently a poem and not an essay, and dayum – I have NO interest in reading anything called “An Essay on Criticism.” See? “The Rape of the Lock” is a better attention-getter.) (It’s about a guy who secretly cuts off a lock of his true love’s hair, so it’s not THAT kind of rape; we need not revile it.) (I have gotten WAY off track again. Damned parenthetical thoughts.)

The Pierian spring, BTW, was supposed to be sacred to the Muses; if you sipped, you’d get drunk off your tail. But if you drank deep, it would bring you around again. And that’s like knowledge – because if you learn just a little…

…say a nutritionist tells you you should have 40% of your calories from carbohydrates, 30% from protein, and 30% from fat…

… then you’re inclined to assume the FRICKING FROZEN PIZZA IN THE FRIDGE has a better ratio than the full day of “making better choices.” DAMN IT.

I’m surrounded at my kitchen table by a snowstorm of printer paper on which are scrawled the nutritional data for a day of really VERY good food choices. No potato chips. No gentle, dangerous white bread. No zinc-stealing ice cream, my secret and diseased lover to whom I am so blissfully addicted.

I’ll spare you the math (painstakingly calculated by someone far happier with the twenty-six letters than the ten digits), but the answer is – I would have done better to eat the pizza.

WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT??!

I sent up a flare to Chip to ask him to talk me off the ledge, and so far I’m resisting a ménage a trois with Ben and Jerry – but this being healthy stuff is NOT for the faint of heart.

Here’s an Aubrey Beardsley drawing that I stole off Google Images because it’s so often associated with Pope’s “Rape of the Lock,” and is way more pleasant to look at than a shot of the pizza box in my fridge.

August 31, 2017

While no balance class is ever EASY, I am most proud of myself when I endure one of the hard ones.

Today there weren’t very many people in class (my friend Steve bailed for some remarkably erudite lecture at the Smithsonian; what a great, beret-wearing, coffee-shop-discussing excuse), and Barbara took advantage of having only four students to put those of us foolish enough to attend through her own personal wringer.

To be clear, the class I sweated through today would not be thought of as anything terribly difficult by an actual athlete – but it was a whopper for me!

Do you know what a Bosu is? If you take a big old exercise ball (the kind you can sit on and bounce up and down happily like a Jolly Jump-Up from your childhood) (well, MY childhood) and cut it in half and attach it to a flat base, that’s a Bosu. It is FIENDISH, and Barbara wields a Bosu like Torquemada converting the heathens.

After our warm-ups, we began with a simple little up-up-down-down. (I’m sure this exercise has a more official name, but that’s what I call it since that’s what I’m chanting through gritted teeth the entire time.) Step up onto the squishy Bosu with your left foot. Bring your right foot up to join it. (Avoid falling over; the Bosu would really like to throw you off ignominiously.) Then step back with your left foot and then finish by bringing the right foot down, too. Up, up, down, down.

Barbara lets class attendees DJ if they like, and I love to do it; I’d put together a mixed playlist full of songs (of course) that I like. Up-up-down-down may have been to the 1980s Squeeze song “Pulling Mussels From A Shell” – maybe not; my memory gets a little hazy about here. Whatever was on when we began, it had a good beat and I was flying with my up-up-down-downs, keeping the rhythm and stepping lightly. Why, this is kind of fun!

I just have to wonder – how long will it take me to learn that you can’t trust those opening exercises and you should conserve a little energy?? I went too fast, too long, too hard – and then Torquemada let ‘er rip.

“Turn your Bosu over. Squat down – put your hands on the rim. Step back – left foot first, then right, into a plank. Do NOT let your hips fall – keep those abs tight. Then step back – left first, then right. Weight on your heels. Stand up.”

By the end, she had us lifting the Bosu overhead at the end of the plank (“Don’t arch your back. Where are your headlights?”). Then we were planking and stepping out to the side. And then the same step-to-the-side-and-back plank but this time on our elbows on the squishy side of the Bosu – a move so impossible I was reduced to a very poor-form three-inch slide of my toes combined with dripping sweat and curses onto the damned Bosu.

I thought I was going to DIE. Right there. And I’d just foolishly told Barbara that I thought I might be ready for a cardio class. What an idiot I was…

…and then she said “Okay – let’s stretch. You’re done!”

I looked up in surprise. Done? There’s an end to this? And I made it? I can stop?! OHMYGAWD!

“How do you feel?” Barbara asked the class – and every bitchy, whiny complaint I’d been storing up evaporated, replaced by unrestrained joy. How did I feel? Frickin’ AWESOME! I was a powerhouse – a monster! I could do ANYTHING!!

It’s the tough classes that make me the most proud.