11.17.17

My sister Lexie is horse-mad. In my youth, all she wanted to do was become an outstanding dressage rider. All summer long, she spent her days in the sweaty Virginia sun atop a very large beast, riding “on point” and swallowing dust so thick that the ice cold Dr. Pepper at lunchtime would make you wince with both pain and joy.

I know this because my mother, no fool, figured that if she was hauling one kid out to the boonies for horseback riding lessons, she might as well haul two – so I was generally in the next ring over, swallowing dust and marveling when the Concorde would fly overhead (we were very near Dulles Airport).

I didn’t mind; unlike my sister, I see horses as really big dogs you can ride on, and I was just as happy to commune with a horse as almost anything else. (Exception: I would have rather been in an air-conditioned room nose-deep in a novel, but riding had the advantages of seeming moderately romantic – plus it smells of warm leather, which is a glorious perfume.)

Sometimes the instructors would get antsy and lead us out of the ring and onto a trail ride. Occasionally we’d ride bareback, which was terribly brave of us.

The good students (tiny little Lexie at the front of the pack) would be in the front, and the slackers who thought of horses as dogs followed along. Sometimes we would trot.

That is to say, the dog (I mean horse) would trot, and I would attempt to stay on board.

Trotting is bouncy and uncomfortable; if you have stirrups, you can kind of crouch over the horse and absorb the bounce in your knees. If you’re bareback – ah, that’s when thinking a horse is a big dog really breaks down.

From the very first jolt, I’d get thrown slightly off center.

Every succeeding bounce would send me farther and farther to one side, until my knee was where my butt should have been and my boot was brushing the Queen Anne’s lace – all the while rendered helpless by laughter, because a slow-motion involuntary descent from a really, really big dog is riotous.

Eventually I’d give up trying to haul it back on board and I’d just slide off. If there wasn’t a nearby log or rock, I’d walk back to the barn, my big dog’s nose occasionally urging me on with a bump to the shoulder – because there was no way in hell I was going to manage to clamber back up without a stirrup.

I remember that sensation today – a very slow, very undeniable descent – because I seem to be attempting to achieve fitness bareback, and my horse has begun to trot.

I missed the chance to go to Artie’s for an ice cream sundae on Tuesday, so I had a far-inferior sundae at Spartans. And then I got to go to Artie’s on Wednesday after all, and I was still jonesing for the real thing, so I had dessert for the second day in a row. (Ew – the coffee ice cream was laced with espresso beans – crunchy and bitter where everything should be smooth and sweet. Fail.) (I ate it, of course.)

On Thursday, my mother and I went to lunch, and she wanted dessert – so she looked at me. She likes it when I order something sweet to eat, so she can pretend she doesn’t eat desserts. And I weakly fell back into old habits and ordered the chocolate cheesecake. Then I tried my best to resist it – but I’d gotten off center on Tuesday evening and was sliding inexorably towards an ignominious dismount.

All day today, I’ve been craving something doughy. I wanted all those bad carbs I’ve been successfully avoiding. I had a big omelet for lunch in the hopes that this would satisfy my craving, but no dice. Just didn’t taste very good… so tonight I had pizza. A lot of pizza. Five-eighths of a pizza.

I’m about at the point where my knee is where my butt should be. I’m not laughing this time, but the crash is coming. Thank God I’ve got Barbara and Gwynn and Grace and Chad and Chip at Body Dynamics to get me back on the horse once I come off, because I’m not sure I could do it alone.

(Worst truth? That pizza tasted SO DAMNED GOOD!)

Lexie and Spirit of Flame in the Long Long Ago. Neither of them ever had the slightest problem with bareback riding; the kid is doing so in this photo. How annoying of her!

11.15.17

If you see a woman walking down the street with that vacant look in her eye (like the way people look when they’re on the phone – the eyes are still there taking in input, but they’re not the primary sense on deck), it could be that she’s focused on her gait.

Me, for instance. Thanks to Barbara, Grace, and Gwynn at Body Dynamics in Falls Church, VA  (personal trainers and therapeutic masseuse; and they TALK to each other, which is sort of disconcerting when I think I can get away with something with one that the other doesn’t know about…) (they always know), this is the evolution of my gait:

Pre-Body Dynamics: I’m walking. I’m walking. I wish I wasn’t walking. My lower back feels like it’s going to start spasming or cramping. Christ I hate to walk.

Barbara plus two months: I’m walking. Grip the low abs. GRRRRIP. Tilt the hips, tilt the hips, tilt the hips, damn, this feels weird… but my back feels a little better.

Barbara plus four months: I’m walking. Pelvis up, ribs down. Up. Down. My back doesn’t hurt but I feel constipated from my collar bones to my knees. How long can I keep this up?

Barbara plus Grace (ten months in): Neutral pelvis. Neutral. Where the hell is neutral? Rock the hips all the way up – now all the way back – now in between, that’s neutral. Oh, excuse me – I didn’t see you there. Yes, I was doing a rather odd dance. My apologies; I’ll pay more attention.

Barbara plus Grace (one year in): Neutral pelvis. Ribs down. Glutes. GLUTES. Where are the glutes? I can’t feel anything in my butt.

Barbara plus Grace plus Gwynn (one year, two weeks in): Extennnnnnd through the hip. Extennnnnd through the hip. Hey – butt muscles! Oops – neutral pelvis. Ribs down. Extennnnnd through the hips. I’m walking! Lookit me walking!

Barbara plus Grace plus Gwynn (fifteen months in): Obliques. Shoulders opposite hips. Twist from the waist. Tight abs. Neutral pelvis. Ribs DOWN – down, I say! Extennnnnd through the hips. Damn it – where did the obliques go?

Barbara plus Grace plus Gwynn (eighteen months in; today): Imagine a magnet between my thighs, drawing my aductors magnus together. Turn off the big glutes max that pull me splay-footed; let the feet fall straighter by focusing on the inner thighs. Stand up TALL. Neutral pelvis. Ribs down. Obliques do the twisting. Extennnnnd through the hips. Now move the LEFT foot.

The struggle to correct my gait now takes in so many muscle groups that I must either be getting smarter or some of this is becoming automatic; I suspect the later! Grace added the adductor magnets today. I walk like a robot.

No, that’s not true; I lost that constipated, rigid feeling pretty early (and not just because of Chip’s beneficial effect on my diet!), and when I move, I feel like I’m swinging pretty easily.

And now my back NEVER hurts… but you can see it in my eyes that I’m not really watching what’s in front of me when I walk; instead I’m chanting a litany of commands to my willful, wayward body and focusing on improving my gait.

So take pity on me if you see me on the street and give me a wide berth; there’s a whole lot of concentration going on!

Joshua Nava Arts. Used without permission, but lots of admiration.

11.13.17

I don’t love shopping. In my family, Jonathan, my recently-deceased husband, was the one who loved to venture forth to see what treasures he could glean from the world. The man could tell you where the frilled cocktail toothpicks were in every grocery store in a twenty-mile radius.

Not me. The bigger the store, the more fatigued I feel. (Home Depot just makes me dizzy.) I plot my course through these places with precision, like a diver with low oxygen. I need THESE THREE THINGS and let’s hope no one gets in my way…

So I hadn’t been to Target since I began working with Chip, the nutritionist at Body Dynamics in Falls Church, VA, maybe four or five months ago. And I had to go yesterday (because I’ll Amazon Prime a lot of things, but two modest soap dispensers for the kitchen seemed beyond the pale somehow).

And I was astonished.

There was Bad Choices food EVERYWHERE.

Simply masses of it, and in places where you might expect you’d be safe. Capping aisles. Spilling into the travel lanes. Heaped on shelves.

Sugar. Chocolate. Pretzels glistening on their little carousel. Their tiny hands reached out imploringly, wistful smiles hiding those baboon fang grins. “You remember us! Don’t you love us any more? Just slip a few of us into your basket – you know you want to!”

I walked through that place like Van Helsing with a cross.

(Not handsome Hugh Jackman Van Helsing in an improbable Stetson/Fedora hybrid – no, more like nervous Anthony Hopkins Van Helsing.)

I made it out without being lured into the hypnotic gaze of vampiric sugar, but it was a near thing. How can all that stuff be just OUT there?? How can we – the Chip followers of the world – allow our fellow citizens to be thrown to the sugar wolves like that?!

Here’s a photo of Hugh as Van Helsing. I have a photo of the last round of groceries I bought at Whole Foods, but Lordy, it’s boring. Wouldn’t you rather look at Hugh? Sure. Who wouldn’t? You can bet HE doesn’t eat a lot of Bad Choice foods.

Bonus for nerds: Do you recognize Hugh’s funny, goofy sidekick Carl? That’s David Wenham, the guy who played noble, upright Faramir in the Lord of the Rings movies. Couldja DIE? Good character actor!

11.12.17

She trudged wearily onward across the frozen lake. With numb fingers, she tried to close her collar a little tighter, but the cruel wind slipped inside anyway, stealing her warmth and leaving a bone-deep chill. The arctic sun hung on the horizon, touching the world with the weakest noontime sunlight; that was all the illumination the day was going to bring.

Even with little hope, she kept going. The message MUST get through.

The Finns have this gorgeous word – sisu. It means courage, determination, a refusal to give up even when the entire Russian army is just over that hill and about to invade.

In a John Wayne movie, it would be called true grit.

In a Jewish deli, it would be called chutzpah.

I’ve kind of talked myself into a bind here, because my need for sisu is not in resistance to an invading army or the quest to uncover a murderer or the wholesale slaughter of a people…

…my need for sisu is based on the size of my butt.

Feels sort of weak and self-aggrandizing, huh??

A few days ago (see the post “Unflinching”) I posted a photo of my butt in the hopes that I’d be able to own my truth and be proud of who I am. Many kind people said supportive things and you’d think that would be enough – and yet I’m so vain and self-centered that I discovered I was demoralized by the reality of me squeezed into unattractive Spandex… especially in a part of the body I’ve been very good at ignoring in the past. Oh – a three-way mirror? No thank you!

But the reality of any quest – including the quest for health and fitness – is that there are slogging, plodding, demoralizing times as well as exciting, I-just-shrunk-two-pants-sizes times. I can either give up and sit down on that frozen lake and pull out a pint of Ben and Jerry’s (oh, dear – that’s a BAD choice for the frozen lake scene)…

…or I can keep going, relying on sisu to pull me ahead when everything in me says “Damn – let’s go back to pretending that posterior isn’t so alarming.”

And actually, I have to add to my imagery of the lonely frozen lake trudge, because in my case, there are at least five sturdy ropes tied to my waist, leading forward into the arctic gloom – and at the end of each rope are champions who are straining with all their might to pull me on, for I do NOT make this journey alone.

There’s Barbara on the lead rope – my trainer at Body Dynamics in Falls Church, VA, who just smiles at me when I want to quit and makes me do “three more!”

Flanking her are Grace, also a Body Dynamics trainer, and Gwynn, my therapeutic masseuse. Grace and Gwynn are between them unlocking the muscles of my thorax. I didn’t even know they were locked up.

On the wings are Chad – stretch class teacher grimly muttering “Good stuff!” as he pulls even harder – and Chip, nutritional guru, who trots back to me periodically as I trudge across the lake to give me pumpkin seeds for life-restoring zinc.

There are SO MANY people attempting to tease and flatter and threaten and coerce me across the frozen lake; SURELY the message will get through: A nicer ass is waiting right over there. Don’t stop now. Keep going!

I’m so grateful to have a team to help me. How DARE I be demoralized?! Team Sisu to the rescue!

A photo by Johan Kleventoft that comes up if you put “Laatokka winter” into Google images. Lake Laatokka is where the vastly-outnumbered Finns held off invading Russia in the Winter War of 1940; that’s where the rest of the world came to recognize the Finnish concept of sisu.

11.11.17

“Let me give you some counsel, bastard,” [Tyrion] Lannister said. “Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.”

Jon was in no mood for anyone’s counsel. “What do you know about being a bastard?”

“All dwarfs are bastards in their father’s eyes.”

That’s the quote I was thinking of yesterday (from “A Song of Ice and Fire” – aka Game of Thrones – by George R.R. Martin, and used without permission, of course) when I posted a photo of my posterior.

Like Tyrion, I seek to own what I am – to make it my strength. I am a fat lady – healthy, strong, tough, kind, decidedly wide in the posterior.

But unexpectedly, I find that the sight of my own tail (so easy to ignore when not presented with photographic evidence) has quite severely demoralized me. And I did it to myself; posting that photo yesterday was my choice.

Oh, believe me – I can hear you. You’re saying utterly lovely and kind things like “don’t be so hard on yourself” and “you look great” and “you’ve made such progress” and “be in the now, man” (no, that’s me – I say that), and I’m grateful, but I’m not actually terribly needy in my demoralization…

…rather I think it’s part of the process. I’m up and enthusiastic, something happens I can’t control (or worse, something I do wrong – like thinking posting a picture of my own ass is a good idea), and then I’m down. It happens; it’s normal; I don’t fight it. I just feel bad about how my butt looks, and then I keep going.

(Butts are so deceptive. Since I rarely see mine, I can envision it as one of those beautiful, heart-shaped posteriors that makes me stare rudely at pretty women on the street. Dang. That’s a nice butt. Oh – sorry, madam.)

So owning my own weakness, as Tyrion suggested, hasn’t helped me turn it into a strength YET… but give Barbara (and Grace and Chad and Chip) at Body Dynamics another 18 months and THEN we’ll see.

Tyrion Lannister. Played by Peter Dinklage. Seriously – yum. And that voice. Hubba.

11.9.17

I am beset by paranoia.

It’s not CRUSHING paranoia… but like anyone in relatively unfamiliar surroundings, I do tend to wonder if I’m making an ass of myself and the people around me are simply too kind to laugh out loud.

This was terribly evident yesterday. I bought new work-out wear because all my pants are capri-length, and going outside in this newly-chilly weather with bare calves feels… like I’m making an ass of myself.

So I went back to the same place where my sister Twig found great work-out clothes for me (which is Full Beauty, online) and bought some long pants, and some shirts with sleeves.

They arrived and yesterday was the first day I’d broken ‘em out. But the capri pants – a nice, not-too-heavy cotton mixed with just enough Lycra to hold them up – are very different from the long pants, which must be nothing but pure spandex from muffin-top waist to pudgy ankle. I look like Michael Phelps after decades of inactivity, squeezed into one of those body suits for swimming.

I look like I’m wearing long underwear.

So I begged Grace (one of my two trainers at Body Dynamics) to tell me if I looked ridiculous, but who can believe her? She’s by nature supportive and kind; that’s what she’s doing there. “No! I love your outfit – you look cute!” Paranoia.

(I’m wearing some fat lady long-johns to balance class in a few minutes; I’ll post a photo in my next blog so you can venture an opinion, if only to your computer.)

Wait – I had an entirely different reason for posting. Title “Three Times…” Oh, yeah. Paranoia.

Barbara, my own personal Gandalf, may work very differently with other people; I’m paranoid that to others, she says “Do this impossible exercise twenty times.”

But to me she says “Do this impossible exercise,” and then watches me because she knows that when I’m just about at the limit of my endurance, I’ll cry out for her to tell me to stop.

“Barbara!” I’ll implore, at which point she says the SAME THING EVERY TIME:

“Three more!”

I have no idea if I’m supposed to do twenty and are only making it to eight, or if I’m supposed to do twenty and she’s watching me grind through forty or fifty repetitions (that’s SURELY what it feels like!), but I do know that when I’m about to fall to the ground shivering as my only defense, Barbara will say “Three more!”

And by damn, I’ll do three more. How does she know?!

I’m off to balance class. More later!

See? They’re GREAT-looking pants… but there is a definite sausage-casing effect. Wait until you see the look where my body tends to, um, blossom.

11.8.17

I skipped the fries at lunch. I ignored the rolls at dinner. I complimented myself that I was getting on top of the ‘I need something sweet to end the meal’ habit.

Two things happen.

First, every time I say “I’ll have the steamed veggies instead of the chips,” I carve a fractionally deeper groove in a new habit, which makes it just a little easier to do it again next time…

…and second, an unsuspected bean-counter in my brain takes a tiny little bead from a pile and puts it on a scale. That’s one. That’s another one.

Two nights ago, apparently the beads on the scale had reached a critical mass and the balance tipped. I was in the grocery store, tired after a long day. Demoralized by my empty house. Overwhelmed by the thought of more raw chicken breast sitting in my kitchen, all needy and pathetic and requiring of many pans, much ingenuity, and assorted spices in ill-defined quantities.

So I bought ice cream instead. And ate it for dinner.

I had simply denied myself too many things that I just flat-out wanted, and I was unable to deny myself any more.

I hadn’t eaten a good lunch; you know that’s a trigger. If I get too hungry during the day, by dinnertime I’m guaranteed to make a bad, fast, immediate choice.

As I stalked from the fresh produce side of the store to the ice cream side of the store, my inner justification panel heard the case. Among the defenses tried were “You can’t go through life without ice cream; there have to be occasional slips;” “this is a test of determination; you eat ice cream tonight and get right back to eating well tomorrow;” and “how bad is it, really?”

But the one that won out, as noted, was the denial defense. For months, I’ve turned away from tempting option after tempting option; I’ve lived a life of purity and virtue – my forays into decadence were planned and thoughtful. I’ve stood on the scale and felt proud. I’ve bought new pants that fit. There are constant, continual reminders of the benefits of doing better…

…but the new grooves I’m wearing into shiny bright habits are still dwarfed by the trenches through deep mud caused by 57 years of eating the entire container of Ben and Jerry’s. And that’s the groove that won out.

But yesterday I paid attention, and went back to scraping tiny curls of new habit into the obdurate hardpan of my brain, and I’ll do it again today. To do anything else would be denial of the worst kind.

That’s the one that got me. Ben and Jerry’s Oat of this Swirled. I ate the whole thing in one sitting. No bowl. Just a spoon, a book, and ample gluttony. And I liked it – I liked it! Father, please hear my confession…

11.6.17

I love the thought of Cibola and Atlantis and Brigadoon, and I’d be happy to watch Indiana Jones go after each one. Among the best stories: The fountain of youth.

It tickles the armchair adventurer in me to think of Ponce de Leon slogging through Florida swamps, fighting off alligators and venomous snakes and mosquito hoards big enough to carry off small children in order to find a mythical fountain that would restore youth.

(As any traveler knows, poor Ponce was a good bit younger before the trip began than he was when it was over, and I’m not counting time. As Indy says, it’s not the years, honey – it’s the mileage. If anyone needs a fountain of youth, it’s voyagers through Florida!)

For me, the water of life is… well, it’s water.

When I drink enough water, I’m less tired. My digestion is regular and kindly. I’m more likely to see progress on the scale.

Of course, if my day is busy and I don’t want to make time for every-other-hour trips to the can – or I’m too sleepy and don’t want to wake up once or twice a night – then I might deliberately cut back on the fluid intake.

That’s at least a conscious choice. It’s more annoying (and less useful) when I simply forget to drink my water, and find myself gasping for liquid at the end of the day (which guarantees I’ll gulp too much before bedtime and be peeing all night long.)

The water of life is just water. In my opinion. Here’s to your health!

11.4.17

“If I eat something sugary, I can pretty much feel the effects cycling through my body for about 24 hours.”

That’s what Chip told me. Chip is a former professional ballet dancer and a seriously-trained nutritionist; when he eats something delicious, you know he’s overcoming LONG YEARS of conditioning to simply enjoy good food… and yet Chip is so cool that he DOES enjoy good food, and never ever judges others who do as well.

However, his system is so fine-tuned, and he’s so aware of it, that when he eats an ice cream sundae (which he loves), he feels sort of ill afterwards, and he can feel his body cycling between an insulin dump and a resulting (I don’t remember; some other hormone designed to balance the excessive insulin).

I crave that knowledge. I want to have the negative feedback of feeling bad when I make bad food choices. I want the indulgent eater’s equivalent of Antabuse.

Last night, by careful planning, I went with my friends to Artie’s in Fairfax Circle, where one can (if one chooses) get the most decadent and delicious ice cream sundae. Three overly-generous scoops of ice cream, a luscious, silky, tongue-orgasm dark chocolate sauce, whipped cream, and candied pecans. I am reduced to excited coos as I savor every sybaritic little spoonful…

…but last night, I ordered ONE scoop. (No candied pecans with a one-scoop sundae; instead, a crisp, moist almond cookie that is even better.) I ate it with the reverence of a true believer. I spooned up the last succulent drops.

And then I waited to feel a little sick.

And waited.

And waited.

Not yet. I felt FINE. I felt happy. I felt quite disgustingly well.

So I’m not hypersensitive to sugar yet, alas. But I know that I can make better choices (like – one scoop, not three [cookie reward for good behavior!]. Like – planning for the indulgence instead of surrendering to it on the spur of the moment.) and maintain at least a partial grip on my sugar jones. I’m still a Chip wanna-be, but the waiting feeling’s fine!

PS: Sorry if I waxed a little too rhapsodic on the subject of bad-for-you food, but if you’re going to indulge, may I personally recommend an Artie’s sundae?!