1.10.18

Sometimes you hear something so novel and new that you can only gape at the speaker. Usually my witty retort is “SHUT up – you’re kidding?!”

This is, of course, self-defeating. How can someone both shut up and confirm what they’re saying? Chip, the nutritionist at Body Dynamics, is not dissuaded. He does NOT shut up (and a good thing, too!).

I had several epiphanies while meeting with him today, but here’s the one that got the SHUT up command.

(If I actually want someone to shut up, the emphasis is on the “up,” know what I mean? Emphasis on the “shut” means “that’s awesome!” Inflection. Very important.)

Chip told me of a research study. Two groups of subjects were asked to wait in a room. In one room, they were given a bowl of fresh cookies and a bowl of radishes and were told to snack as they preferred.

In the other room, they were given the same foods, but asked to leave the cookies alone. If you want a snack, please have a radish, not a cookie.

Then the participants were asked to trace a complex shape on a piece of paper without lifting their pencil or retracing the lines. In fact, there was no way to do that; the study set the subjects an impossible task.

The group that was allowed to snack as they pleased averaged 19 minutes on this project.

The radish eaters averaged EIGHT minutes.

Here’s why:

We have a FINITE amount of will power. (The study referred to self-control, but I like the concept of will power better; screw those scientists!) If you use up all your will power on resisting a bowl of fresh cookies, then you run out later. You can’t keep going on a tough task. You get exhausted.

This is unsurprising if you think about it in daily life; I am more likely to blow good eating habits if I’ve had a tough day. Everyone is. Some people turn to wine. Some to drugs. Some to latex and undersized Thai sex workers. (Judge not, ye prude, lest you be judged!) For me, it’s ice cream. We’ve all got something.

But I didn’t realize that you can think of will power as a finite resource – as dollar bills in your pocket. You can only spend them once, so you have to choose what you buy. And THAT made me give Chip the mighty SHUT up!

Chip’s point was to calm me down; I’ve been pathetically pouty lately for feeling like I’m backtracking on my fitness journey. (It’s not even the dreaded plateau; I feel like I’m receding. Now that I have all these new muscles, the carefully-won neutral pelvis position is no longer neutral and I have to relearn how to stand, sit, walk – I’m exhausted and annoyed and demoralized. Barbara and Grace and Chip have ALL used the term “process” – as in, “this is a process and what you’re going through is expected and normal and you should calm down and stop being such a baby” except they didn’t QUITE say that.)

Chip said – “do what you can. Recognize that your will power is finite and don’t be so hard on yourself.” That’s a good lesson.

But I was wondering. First I asked him if will power was like a muscle; can you increase its capacity? He didn’t know.

Then I said – “If you KNEW you were going into a stressful situation, you could maybe eat hummus and carrots before the meeting because you were going to have less will power at the end of the meeting, from restraining the urge to leap across the table and throttle the idiot who wouldn’t shut their yap.”

To his credit, Chip did NOT look across the table at the idiot who wouldn’t shut her yap; instead he agreed that it would be a smart strategy. He said he had pumpkin seeds to snack on, so that probably accounts for his restraint…

So I offer this to you for what it’s worth. You only have so much will power, and you can only do so much with it. Pick your battles.

Here’s a link to some guy talking about the research; he never claims who DID the research, and his message at the end about “visit this website for more on this fascinating study” turns up a 404 error (page not found), so the whole thing could be hokum… but it SOUNDS right, doesn’t it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpiDWeRN4UA

 

1.8.18

I love an Oxford cloth button-down shirt. That’s what my father wore throughout my childhood (and well into my adulthood), and I don’t think you can find a female who doesn’t unwittingly decide her definition of masculinity by what Daddy did long before she even realized she was liking this and disliking that.

Then I went to snotty prep school, where all those Oxford cloth shirts had bony, adolescent boy wrists peeking from the cuffs, and growing shoulders straining the seams, and the cloth at the back that billowed out from the khakis was deliciously warmed by the boy-heat underneath and then broadcloth shirts took on a whole new degree of appreciation for me.

(See, not so lesbian today. Ooh, I liked those boys in their button-downs!)

You can starch Oxford cloth. It takes starch very nicely, and then everything looks very crisp. The trouble is – it doesn’t MOVE nicely if it’s starched. An old Oxford cloth shirt takes on a chamois-like suppleness and softness. It’s compliant. Obedient. Forgiving. Friendly. Starched Oxford cloth is unmoving and unnatural. Not wanted on the voyage.

This occurred to me (in the isolated word-pictures that stagger across my brain while enjoying a massage) when I was discussing fascia with Gwynn, the massage therapist wizard at Body Dynamics (where? Falls Church, Virginia, of course).

Do you remember about fascia? It’s the membrane that holds all muscles in place. (It might be other places, too, but think of it as that thin, while film that covers a raw chicken breast.) When it’s in good shape, fascia is pliant and liquid. It makes no attempt to restrict the muscle.

But sometimes fascia gets woody. Stiff. Tight. So when you think you’ve got sore muscles or you just generally feel locked up, it’s entirely possible the issue is the fascia, not the muscles.

Gwynn was working on my low back. I’d been having stiffness there because (now I know) I hadn’t been using my low abs to hold my pelvis in neutral, especially when doing my HEP. Now that Barbara has identified my slackerly ways, I’ve been exercising with my tongue between my teeth in concentration, attempting to keep the pelvis tipped upward like a fool. That’s really helped my low back, but things were still tight, and I was grateful for Gwynn’s ministrations.

“There’s a whole sheet of fascia back here,” she said, using her hands to outline a sweeping triangle from the midback down to the butt. “Yours is very tight today.”

“Huh,” I grunted in pain/pleasure. I thought about that, and finally offered up a complete thought (it takes longer to think during a massage). “So some people just have stiff fascia throughout, huh?”

Gwynn swatted away my hopeful suggestion effortlessly. “No, that’s not right. Fascia responds to a lot of things. Diet. Chemo. Some medicines.”

“Diet?!”

The ghost of Chip the Body Dynamics nutritionist appeared and crossed his legs in the nearby chair as he waited pointedly for me to make the connection.

(The body of Chip was probably down the hall tormenting some hapless client with exercises on a reformer; Chip is also a trainer and very inclined to grin happily while someone is groaning through an oddly specific movement. They ALL grin; they feed off it like psychic discomfort vampires.)

“Sure,” said Gwynn. “You know what’s most influential on fascia, don’t you?”

I sighed. “Sugar?”

“That’s right. Sugar is definitely bad for your fascia.”

“So sugar absorbs all the zinc I eat. It throws off the bacterial house party in my gut. AND it stiffens my fascia like starch in an Oxford cloth shirt.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, damn it.” I thought about it as Chip’s ghost gave me the hairy eyeball. “So you’d better REALLY want that piece of cheesecake, huh?”

Chip and Gwynn both nodded.

I wasn’t as indulgent through the holidays as I COULD have been, but I certainly wasn’t terribly careful, either. The bathroom scale is only one of the ways to measure the effects of Christmas cookies on the body, and it’s not even a very accurate method.

I’d turned the supple, pliant, friendly button-down shirt just under the skin of my back into something starched and crispy. The cookies weren’t even that good.

Dayum. It all comes back to sugar. Grr!

Boys singing in soft, worn button-downs. Could anything be cuter?

1.6.18

I’m sure it will come as a tremendous surprise to learn that the East Coast is in the grips of an arctic blast (because no one anywhere is talking about it, right? I mean – SHUT UP. It’s cold. Get over it!).

I think I’m the only person moving through this polar landscape with a huge grin peeking out from the layers of coat and hat and scarf – because if you don’t walk FAST through this weather, you’ll freeze solid to the ground like the Greek gods have rooted you next to the stream and now you have to be a laurel tree for the rest of time. Or something.

My point: I need to move quickly from car to door. Sometimes that’s the three feet across the garage (in which case I can mosey) – but sometimes it’s a few blocks because I found a parking space and the office where I’m dropping off some papers is down the road a step. Or from the movie theater to the parking garage.

Half the time I’m thinking, like everyone else, DAMN it’s cold out here.

And half the time I’m thinking “I am really moving fast – and well. This feels AWESOME.”

You know how you don’t know how blissful it is for your toe to NOT hurt until you stub it bad and realize just how much that toe was doing for you, silently and unprotestingly, until now? Well, that’s me with my back, but in reverse. First the hurt, and then the lack of hurt.

When I first asked Barbara (at Body Dynamics in Falls Church, Virginia – and you’d best hope you live nearby, for they are amazing and sooner or later you’re going to need them) to help me get into better shape, she used Sherlockian skills to finally narrow down WHY I don’t like exercising. The answer is because I tilt my pelvis down. Not out of laziness – it’s just the way I am. But that puts a significant strain on the lower and mid back. It means my lower abdomen wasn’t doing its job, and that my thighs were compensating for butt muscles that had been coasting for decades.

So when I walked more than thirty or forty paces, my back muscles would get tight and tired and angry. I always wanted to stop and sit, to stretch the back muscles.

If you’re very bored and housebound in snow and ice, you can read back through this blog to witness the beginning of my learning process (for it surely continues through this day) – but the shortcut is: I can walk now (and walk fast) without putting any strain on my back. And it feels DAMNED GOOD.

People have smiled at me indulgently and said “You know, you can’t change your gait. That’s how you’re put together.” And I’m here to say they are WRONG. I have changed my gait; I’ve built up the muscles that pull my pelvis into the proper alignment. I no longer walk like a duck, with my feet splayed so far out to the side that you could follow me on a crowded beach just based on my footprints in the sand.

This is just the beginning of my process; I know that. I went over my HEP (Home Exercise Program) with Barbara recently and was shocked to discover that it was getting easier because I was ignoring the need to crunch up those lower abs. DAMN IT. So THAT’S why my back was bitching so hard every morning; how disappointing that the “neutral pelvis” position still isn’t instinctive yet. There’s more work to be done… but I can walk through icy climes with confidence and no pain – allowing me to focus on how efficiently metal eyeglasses can trap cold against the orbital sockets holy mother. I can even give in and trot to the car. Without any discomfort at all.

Yeah. I’m grinning.

1.5.18

Let’s say you go to dinner with Friend A (who for the purposes of this post is now named Annamaria, a sultry brunette with masses of soft hair and curves to die for).  (Oh, I seem to be a bit lesbian today.) Dinner is charming and when the plates are cleared and the waitress leans in confidingly to ask, “Did you save room for our Chocolate Salted Caramel Slab of Really Bad For You Deliciousness?,” you will look to Annamaria to gauge her reaction.

(Oh – I see. I’m not trending lesbian; I’m trending hungry.)

If Annamaria says “Hell yes, I saved room,” then you will feel a great sense of relief and demand to see the entire dessert menu because perhaps what you really wanted instead is Warm Fruit Stewed With Heaping Cups of Sugar Over a Slab of Buttery Golden Pastrylike Something, with a side of ice cream to cut the sweet, and you need to know you’ve been presented with all your dessert options. After all, if Annamaria is getting dessert, it would be RUDE and stick-in-the-muddish not to do the same. You’re friends, after all.

Now let’s say you go to dinner with Friend B (which stands for Birgid, a natural warrior goddess with a light, face-only ski tan and close-cropped golden hair). Birgid is fueling her body for her upcoming trek through Mongolia (she’s studying Przewalski’s horse) (I have oddly specific images of Friends A and B), and the waitress’s offer of dessert meets with a disinterested smile that says – perfectly kindly – “Of course not; don’t you see I’m on a mission here? I can’t carry gooey caramel with me into the grasslands; I’d be eaten by a snow leopard.”

In that case, you too offer your “no thank you” smile and head shake. You’re not going to sit there spooning in whipped cream while confronted by a swanlike neck and cheekbones of Cumberbatchian sharpness. It would be rude… and stupid. She’s glowing with good health; you should probably follow her everywhere and eat only what she eats.

The trouble with humans is that most people’s bodies crave a taste of sweetness at the end of a meal. (Chip, the nutritionist at Body Dynamics in Falls Church, VA, explained the science behind it, but I can no longer remember the why – only the fact that it’s real.) That craving fades after about 20 minutes, but for those 20 minutes, we are sugar’s bitch.

Plus, culturally, we like to act in tandem. As a species, most of us crave consensus. How many times have you heard “Well, is anyone else getting salad? Okay, then I won’t either.”

And of course you KNOW that person really wants a salad – they just don’t want to be the odd man out, eating at a table of people who aren’t, and being watched by those people; assuming they’re thinking “Look at her eat around the frisé lettuce. She’s making such a fussy little pile of the parts of that salad she won’t eat. What a prima donna. Eat your damned lettuce if you were so hungry for a salad!”

(Paranoia tends to increase in intensity as the event wears on…)

(I also won’t eat the dates in my salad. My college roommate Lynnae always said, with a glint in her eye, “I ALWAYS eat my dates!” as she popped the oversweet fruit into her mouth, and I thought that was so naughty and funny… Alas, I don’t like dates. You know, the fruit kind. As to the other, I make no statement either way. Remember, I’m a lesbian.) (No, wait – that’s not right. I’m hungry.)

WHERE WAS I? I know I had a point.

Right – got it. This is it:

You don’t have to refuse to go to dinner with Friend A because you’re more likely to indulge in the food that you know isn’t terribly good for you. Instead, you have to be Friend B, and be the one to smile “No, thank you” to the waitress. And then your other friend(s) are more likely to say “Yeah, I guess I won’t have dessert either.”

And if they do order a treat, then you can eat off their plate. There are NO calories if it’s someone else’s dessert. Everyone knows that.

 

1.3.18

Imagine if you had a house party of all your absolutely favorite people. Your best friend from college. Your seventh grade English teacher. Stu (a guy so decent and kind and sweet that when you and your friends recovered from broken hearts and announced “All men are dogs!” and then someone would say “Well, there’s Stu…” everyone would have to allow that maybe not ALL men were dogs). This is the house party of your dreams.

Better yet, Benny – the annoying not-really-a-friend who insists you’ve been besties for decades – just HATES Stu, so Benny won’t arrive unannounced for as long as Stu is in residence. Bonus!

If all those beloved people were happiest when provided with a high-fiber diet that included lots of fresh veggies and fruits, you’d buy them that, wouldn’t you? You’d want to keep this outstanding house party going for absolutely as long as you possibly could. Who wouldn’t? You could sneak out and buy some chocolate chip cookies every now and then and nosh them while no one was looking, but you’d sure come back home laden with grocery bags from Whole Foods.

I mean – it’s STU. He’s AWESOME.

This is an analogy, of course. (Except for how fab Stu is; I’ll give him a shout-out on Facebook and maybe he’ll leave a comment so you know there are men in this world who can restore the female faith in masculinity.)

The analogy comes to me courtesy of this DA BOMB article forwarded to me by Chip, the nutritionist at Body Dynamics in Falls Church, VA. If you’re the kind of person who likes your facts straight, check out the link, here:  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/01/science/food-fiber-microbiome-inflammation.html?_r=0

But if you’re okay with my “Idiot’s Guide” version, here’s what I learned:

There’s this whole house party in your gut. There’s a huge gathering of benevolent bacteria – like, many, MANY different kinds – performing critical tasks for your health that you didn’t even know were necessary. If you give them high fiber foods like veggies and fruit, if you stay low on the fat and sugar stuff, then the house party is the kind of place that others will envy and wish they could go to, too.

And while that house party is in full swing, Benny – also known as diabetes, heart disease, and SHUT UP arthritis (really?!) – will pretty much stay away. (The connection was pretty clear for me between eating healthfully and both diabetes and heart disease – but to learn that you could keep arthritis away simply by including a lot of fiber in your diet?? Yeah, that surprised me.)

Mumsy always said primly, “Eat your broccoli. It’s nature’s broom.” I never really understood that, except for thinking that broccoli, held upside down, might look a bit broom-like, but when pressed, she would only add “It will sweep away all the bad things.”

Mumsy had it wicked wrong; broccoli won’t sweep away bad things. It will nourish and delight some very, very GOOD things in the intestines. I think that what she meant was that it would help avoid constipation (although who would say that to a small child? I certainly don’t blame her for omitting that part!). And in that she was right – because if the bacteria in your innards are lifted off the walls of the intestines by a nice, healthy mucous coat, then everything slides along more smoothly.

(Don’t believe those cough medicine commercials that imply that mucous is nasty, green, redneck blob things. In the gut, a good coating of mucous is like a butler and maid for your house party, so good at their jobs that you don’t have to lift a finger other than to simply enjoy yourself and relish the absence of Benny.)

Chip gave me the breakfast recipe I eat every day. At first I thought it was yogurt with good things mixed in (nuts, pumpkin seeds, wheat germ, fresh fruit, a drizzle of honey or maple syrup if the fruit is winter-dull), but now I know that the yogurt (which has better press on gut health than any of the other things) is only the beginning of the glory. I’m actually eating many, many high-fiber foods that are fueling the house party and protecting me from conditions I never suspected could harm me.

Chip told me not to get set in my ways; to mix yogurt days with oatmeal days – and to mix up my nuts, my seeds, my fruit. I DO get set in my ways; I have walnuts and cashews and almonds in the cupboard, but I only reach for the walnuts, and I have a real lust for pumpkin seeds… but now that I realize the house party needs many, many different sources of fiber, I’m going to make more of an effort to mix things up. And even eat oatmeal more than twice in the last six months. (Oatmeal and I are not particularly happy with each other, but for the houseguests that I love? I can choke it down!)

Wotta party!

Adorable Stu, when we were in college. Isn’t he dreamy? He has the nicest wife and smartest daughter now. Sigh. What a prince!

12.31.17

Feet thudded up the stairs endlessly. Was it Prince Charming rising to his Rapunzel? Was it Roland DesChaines of Gilead, ascending the Dark Tower at last, the bodies of all those he loved littered in his wake? Was it an ascetic yogi, making his way to the very top of the tower of wisdom?

Nope. Just me.

Barbara is working on my cardio endurance, so my at-home HEP (Home Exercise Program) includes going up and down the stairs at least once a week, and more if I can stand it. When I began, it was three circuits – from basement to second floor and back down again – and I walked.

Now I’ve increased my stairs to four times, and I do a sort of very ugly half-shuffle that might be considered “running” up the stairs if I was a hundred years old. This involves a lot of elbow-pumping, to heave my rib cage up in the hopes that my hips – which are definitely attached – will also go up, dragging those brutally-heavy feet with them. And I lurch from side to side like a sumo wrestler getting up his mojo…

…but by damn, I make it up those stairs! I hold up the number of “ups” that I still have to go when I pass by the two Chinese ladies on the basement staircase landing; they don’t speak English, so I have to use sign language.

And then I hold up fingers for the victory at the top of the stairs; I do this to show the door to Rusty’s room how far I’ve gone. The door, like the Chinese ladies, expresses neither encouragement nor contempt, but I like to keep them informed just the same. Keeping it straight (four fingers on the way down, one at the top, three on the way down, two at the top, two on the way down, three at the top, one on the way down, four at the top – usually followed by a victorious fist in the air) keeps me from thinking about just how loudly I’m puffing and panting.

It’s eight flights in all; 112 steps. A pathetic number to leave me winded and gasping… but in truth, I suspect I could throw in a fifth circuit if I had to. Maybe even a sixth. And I’m not as winded as I once was.

So I guess I’m climbing to somewhere pretty great after all!

PS: Prince Charming never climbed to his Rapunzel, bub. She took matters into her own hands and climbed down herself, because she was a badass who kept herself in shape in her locked tower. Stick with the HEP, children. You never know when you’re going to have to take action to get to your less-than-capable Prince Charming!

These are the cherry blossoms who watch serenely over my endless up-and-downing. I keep them posted on my progress.

12.13.17

‘Tis the season of gross indulgence – and oh, how I love it!

No – I mean O LORDY I feel guilty for eating that cookie… that pasta… that delicious, yeasty, yielding, substantial, magnificent, crusty, drool-inducing dinner roll.

All right. I mean I am TRYING to feel guilty about the dinner roll. Not having much success (in fact, plotting how I can score the last one in the basket before someone else does), but still trying. Still whispering “Zinc, zinc, zinc, don’t eat sugar, sugar will use up all my zinc” like a magical incantation. (It is as effective as whispering “wingardium leviosa,” if you must know, but I keep trying anyway.)

But the one good-health weapon I seem to be able to hold onto (at least so far) is my HEP – the Home Exercise Program. Last night, filled to the brim with pho (Vietnamese noodle soup – “noodle” being the carbohydrate no-no) and cup after cup of tea (in which I put no sugar, but caffeine drags hydration out of you and so is also a no-no for me) (Chip says – if you drink 8 ounces of something with caffeine, not only does that not count to your 100-ounce water goal per day; you also have to REPLACE it before you can continue to strive for the goal)

(Hang on – I need a new paragraph. Yes, in mid-thought. Deal. Here’s the water rule – do you remember? Take your weight – divide by two – that’s the number of ounces of water you need to drink every day. High limit is 100 ounces, so because I weigh 230, I need to drink 100 ounces. If I drink 8 ounces of tea (and when I drink tea, I drink a lot more than 8 ounces at a sitting), then I have to drink 108 ounces of water plus the tea… and since the max is 100, if I drink tea, then there’s no way I can reach my goal. Not for another 30 pounds or so.)

(Maybe I don’t weigh 230 any more. Barbara persuaded me to stop weighing myself obsessively, so I am free to imagine I weigh a breath-taking 229 – or fear I weigh a back-sliding 231. See why weighing myself is a bad idea??)

(Yes, this is a second parenthetical thought in the middle of the same sentence. Really messy, writing-wise. I shall begin the interrupted sentence again so you don’t get lost.)

Last night, filled to the brim with pho and tea, I still managed to roll out my yoga mat and slosh my way through my HEP. I figured – I’ll do it badly, but at least I’ll do it. And then, of course, I found I had the oomph left to do it more or less correctly after all.

Here’s my HEP. It takes me about half an hour, and I usually do it while Rachel Maddow is telling me about the Russia investigation; we suffer together:

On the foam roller, roller along the spine from head to tail:

1. With eight-pound weights held overhead – left arm out and down to the side, balanced by right knee going out. Bring them back up and do the same on the opposite diagonal. Count of twenty (or ten on each side). Revel in the feeling of the obliques along the ribs gripping like anacondas.
2. Overhead flies, again with the eight-pound weights. Arms overhead, wrists facing each other. Lower the weights down overhead as if trying to put them down, stiff-armed, on the floor behind my head. Back up again. When I began doing this, it was all about the lat muscles; now – months later – it’s all about trying to keep my ribs down and my shoulders away from my ears and my knees straight and tall, and I worry that I’m not using my lats even slightly. Count of ten.
3. Set the weights aside and feel around for the latex band. (It might not be latex; the trainers at Body Dynamics call it a thera-band, I think, but it feels like latex.) Wrap it around my hands at about shoulder width. Arms overhead, then stretch the arms straight out and down to full wingspan. Theraband comes to the chest just over the boobage. Don’t let my wrists break – hold it straight. Then resist on the way back up. This exercise is oddly easy; it’s unlikely Barbara is taking it easy on me, so I’m probably doing it wrong.
4. Set the theraband aside. Hands on the ribs, so nothing is on the ground but both feet – everything else is on the roller. March. Flex the foot and lift the left knee up. (Helpful to grip with the right butt; otherwise there’s a lot of wriggling that accompanies this movement.) Knee down; repeat on the right. Count of twenty (or ten per leg). Sometimes this is a breeze; sometimes this is like walking on a boat deck in high seas. It seems to have to do with how successful I am at pulling my ribs down toward the floor.
5. Arm and knee flies again.
6. Overhead flies again. Now put the weights away; stored neatly under the Rachel Maddow cabinet.
7. Theraband flying again.
8. Marches again. Set the foam roller aside.
9. Lying on the mat, do ten bridges. These are so damned complicated – especially when you try to weave together the Barbara bridge with the Grace bridge. United, the exercise is this: Lie on your back, knees bent and feet flat on the floor. Hands on your ribs. Inhale while spreading the collar bones out wide. Exhale while pulling the lower shelf of the ribs down to the floor and then imagine an imaginary zipper pulling the muscles taut from the back of the neck down the spine and up through the crotch to the low abdomen, tilting the hips upward. Use the butt to raise the hips up high. Inhale. Just hang out there and inhale. Exhale and slowly lower your hips. If you have any control, you can do a vertebra-by-vertebra lowering – or if, like me, you aren’t flexy that way, you can lower while imagining your entire pelvic girdle is being pulled out as much as down toward your feet. On the way down, fold in one of the fingers you’ve left resting on your ribs. Repeat until all ten fingers are folded in.
10. Lie on your side; pillow your head on your outstretched arm. You have to keep your hips perpendicular to the floor, which is extremely hard for me (I just can’t feel any difference when I tip forward or back a bit), so you have to watch that your knees, bent like you’re sitting in a chair, are in line with each other. If the upper knee is a bit ahead of the lower knee, you’re tipped forward. I’m never tipped forward; I’m usually tipped backwards. Now that you’re aligned, keep your feet together and raise the top knee, like a clam opening. When you lower your knee, check the alignment again; you tipped backwards, didn’t you? Fight it. If you do, then you’ll begin working a muscle deep under your butt that will almost immediately begin to protest. That’s how you know it’s working. Do 15, because at least five of your clams were out of alignment. Flip over; do the other side.
11. Modified dead bug. Lie on your back with your legs bent so your shins are parallel to the ceiling. The trainers call this ninety-ninety because there’s 90 degrees between your back and your thighs, and 90 degrees between your thighs and your shins. A very uncomfortable position. Flex your feet. Lower one foot to the ground and come back up. Don’t let your back come up; keep your ribs down. Ten times per side. (If I was strong enough for a regular dead bug, I’d be alternating my arms overhead at the same time – right heel touches down as left wrist hits the floor behind me – but I’m not; I do this just feet for now.)
12. Sit straight-legged against the edge of the bed; a little room between your butt and the bed – so, not rigidly upright. Raise your right leg upward and lower it. Do the same with the left leg; for me, I do the left leg as pigeon-toed as possible because I have a muscle (the adductor magnus) in my left thigh that shrieks when I do this, and pigeon-toed makes it barely possible.
13. Time to stand up! Or rather, sit down. Or stand up. Or sit down. Do ten “sit to stands,” making sure the shins don’t rock forward and the knees stay together. (My instinct is to sit down by flaring my knees out like – well, like a clam! – and rocking my knees over my shoes, so sitting down in the Barbara way is hard. Nothing as hard as standing back up, of course!) Do ten, making sure to stand ALL the way back up between each. (I’m prone to not quite getting my thighs under me at the end of each stand-up; it’s easier to do it my way, but not better!)
14. Get that theraband. I’m supposed to put a book or a towel under each arm but I don’t, which means I’m cheating. Hold the theraband, palms up, in front of you at waist height; wrap your hands in it so you can get a good grip. Now, swinging your arms outward from the shoulder, move your hands out to the sides in a sort of “Please – join me at the feast” gesture. Don’t let your wrists break; hands have to stay straight. Arms back to the front. Do this ten times. If I had something under my elbows, it would fall if I didn’t keep my arms close to my sides, which is how I’d know I wasn’t do it right – which I don’t because I don’t. The goal is to use the shoulder sockets for this move, not any flexibility in the elbows. This is a Grace exercise; I love it because it isn’t hard the way I do it!
15. Ten more sit-down-stand-ups.
16. Set up the timer on the phone. Stand straight, feet together. Lift up one foot and start the timer. Stand on one foot for 60 seconds. Switch to the other foot for another 60 seconds. The more you can grip with your abdomen and butt, the steadier you will be.
17. Back to the yoga mat. Lie down, this time with the foam roller going from side to side under your shoulder blades. Hands behind your head; lie there for five deep, slow breaths and envision those frozen thorax vertebrae giving up and letting go. Then rock one elbow down and turn your torso to one side; the knees can come, too, so you’re lying on your side on the foam roller. Slow. Enjoy the agony. Go back to the other side. Do five full rolls across the roller, and then five more breaths lying flat. Five more rolls to the side. Put the foam roller away; roll up the yoga mat and stash it.
18. Gwynn the therapeutic masseuse’s addition: Stand with your butt against the wall and your feet about six inches away. Slowly roll down until your head is somewhere around your knees. Lean against the wall. Hang there for 60 seconds. That’s enough time for your thigh muscles to begin to stretch; once they do, you can feel your back stretching slowly and creakily. Roll back up. Take a deep breath. Do it once more; roll down and hang out for 60 seconds.

There. Done! Now when I wake up and stretch in the morning, I feel like an anaconda, rippling with muscles. Let a goat wander past and just watch how I can constrict it into dinner! (Ew. That got gross, didn’t it?!)

This post is too damned long. So is my HEP. And I will keep going with it – which you seem to have done with the post. Good on us! Hep-hep-hep-hep.

That’s a purple yoga mat, a black foam roller, and a small, sleeping cat. There is no dust on any of these items.

12.18.17

In every direction, as far as I could see – nothing but water and sky and the sound of the wind whispering in the cup of my ear. Halyards clanked against the mast and the ocean curled past, creamy streaks of foam serving only to highlight the deep blue-green of the rushing water.

And then – what is that ahead? An island!

An island of tropical delights and temptations.

No – wait! A chain of islands! A miracle of islands! An archipelago! (One of my favorite words.)

The ocean is my determination – it is my good choices, my glasses of water and “oil and vinegar, please” requests and pumpkin seeds every morning; the sea is my pathway to better health.

The islands are where you can score some good shit – cane sugar and French fries and fresh, hot rolls. Islands are dangerous; it’s best if you avoid them. But if you’re sailing from here to there and your path takes you through the Federated States of Micronesia (which is nothing but islands), then you just have to do the best you can.

Christmas is my archipelago. I’ve got to pick up the kid over the next two days, and that means breakfast, lunch, and dinner at fast-food drive-up windows. I have the aforementioned box of goodies from my favorite client. I have lunch and dinner invitations. I’m going to the movies tonight with friends and the path to cinematic escapism lies, as you know, just past the concession stand.

And a lovely woman who just recently found out about the death of my husband expressed her love by sending me two containers of cookies – and so I IMMEDIATELY put on a pot of tea.

Go with the mint tea and honey? Or the Earl Grey with cream and lethal table sugar? Oh, what the hell. The islands are calling to me.

I’ll try to stay in deep water as much as possible, but I think the next week might just as well be considered shore leave. I’ll pay the sugar hangover price in the new year, so I’d best enjoy this indulgence while I can!

12.17.17

I have a one-question survey that I hope you’ll answer, if you’ve a mind. Just curious.

Let’s say you have a beloved client who kindly sends you an entire box of baked goods in celebration of the season.

Let’s further posit that you have a wicked sweet tooth which has contributed to the size of your posterior, not to mention led you down a path that leads eventually to Diabetes Station, Cholesterol Heights, and Joint Replacement Junction (although you’re not there yet).

You can, being a rational person, think to yourself, “Oh, excellent – now I’ll have something tasty to serve my friends the next time we gather for Scrabble,” but let’s be real: That only lasts until you open the box and check out the wealth of deliciousness inside (including brownies, blondies, vanilla cookies, chocolate cookies, and shortbread appealingly in the shape of Christmas trees; I mean, this is the finest baked goods box in recorded history).

We know, because we listen to expert nutritionist Chip at Body Dynamics in Falls Church, VA, that the reason I’ve been low on zinc in the past is because I have consumed so much sugar that the zinc is spending all its tiny zinky energy on processing the sugar instead of doing what it was supposed to do, which is power every single cell in the body like Thor charging up his hammer with lightning. So when I eat zinc-rich pumpkin seeds with my breakfast every morning, I then spend the rest of the day looking at sugar and thinking “Hell, no – I need that zinc for other things.”

Well, that’s what I TRY to think.

But when ripping open bags of baked goods becomes inevitable, I face a dilemma.

Do I (A) parse out the treats over the next couple of weeks? Do I eat a single treat and savor it, washing it down with many quarts of water to help my body move it along as quickly as possible?

Or do I (B) pig out and eat the whole box in one revolting bliss-fit of excess, overwhelming my body but getting past all the temptation in a day or so instead of stretching out the draining of all my zinc over two long, deprived weeks?

Yes, this is a leading question. You can see which way I decided to go, despite knowing what Chip would tell me to do (which is Option C: eat one thing, enjoy it to the fullest, throw the rest out immediately).

In fact, I find that I can’t quite pig out; I’m out of training on the pig-out and ate two brownies for breakfast (instead of pumpkin seeds because – at this point, why bother??), and then I felt sort of gross and sick. But that feeling will pass, and there’s much more to snack on waiting in the cupboard where the dog can’t get at them.

I had a friend once who told me she could keep a container of ice cream in the freezer and just go for a spoonful every few days; that was enough for her. I say she would NEVER write or read a blog called “Fat Lady in Fitness Land” – that the people of my tribe (and I feel your love, my sisteren and brethren) can keep a container of ice cream in the freezer long enough to get a spoon and a comfortable chair and then the ice cream is gone.

So be honest: Do you eat the box of treats all at once? Do you parse it out with iron discipline? Do you trash it? Do you invite friends over immediately and make them consume your temptation? Do you somehow hold off until the college student gets home and then watch him inhale it all while you attempt to live vicariously through a teenager’s caloric intake? How do you handle this very typical holiday dilemma??

Postscript to Victoria: THANK YOU for this box of treats – this is the kind of dilemma I LOVE to have. Demon!

 

 

12.14.17

“What do you DO in balance class?” my mother asked.

(She likes me more now that my butt doesn’t take up quite as much acreage. She can’t help it; she’s old, and was steeped in an era when women were judged by their physical beauty. The reappearance of my waist is a moral victory, in her opinion.)

It’s a surprisingly challenging question to answer, as Barbara (the ultimate personal trainer) wants to – literally and metaphorically – keep us all off-balance. We can’t anticipate what we’re going to be doing because she never does the same thing twice…

… which is awesome.

The premise is that you won’t lose your balance when you’re standing solidly on two feet. Instead, you’re going to keel over one day because you missed the curb, or slid on the stairs, or found yourself holding a bag of groceries at arm’s length while twisting to get tonight’s dinner into the trunk. So you need the muscles to yank yourself back to center while you’re in a twist, or shifted to the side, or are otherwise unprepared for whatever life throws at you.

Balance class, then, is about core strength – and core-strengthening exercises are the ultimate example of isometrics. There’s no use comparing what you’re doing to what everyone else is doing; the challenge comes only from below your skin, and what you do to strengthen your core is only measurable by how your muscles work together.

So switching up the class is par for the course. Today, for example, Barbara gave everyone balloons, which we had to inflate. (“Breath control,” muttered my friend Steve.) Then we attempted to control the balloons.

“First, pop the balloon up with your right hand – then hit it with your left.” (No problem. That’s easy and fun.) “Then tap the balloon up with your right foot, and then your left foot. One touch per bounce. See if you can turn in a circle as you do it.”

Oh, RIGHT. I was all over the room, traveling like the King of the Road. Trailer for sale or rent. Turns out to be much easier if you can work your balloon up against a wall or, even better, into a corner – but Barbara is no fool. “Out of that corner, you cheater!” (That’s not what she said; she’s far too kind for that – but it’s what she meant and I knew it!)

Then, after we’d chased balloons bobbing just out of arm’s reach at ankle height for a while, she had us cross the room in lunges, twisting each time to pop the balloon from one side to the other. More hilarity. More inadvertently using classmates as backboards. More startling balloon attacks to the back of the head.

Then she pulled out simple gym towels. Simple stretches became horrible planks with feet on the towel, either going in-out, in-out to the side or up-and-back, up-and-back in a ladder climb. And just as I was about to scream MUTINY! (once I got enough breath back to do anything other than my accustomed bitching), it was back to the balloons. This time, we all stood in a circle and attempted to keep ALL the balloons aloft while passing to the person on the right – and then the left – and then standing on one foot – and then the other foot.

Spoiler alert: We couldn’t keep them all aloft. We could keep about three of them up, and we started with EIGHT.

By the time she said “Okay – let’s stretch” (which means YOU SURVIVED ANOTHER CLASS YOU ARE A WARRIOR), we were fully wrecked by giggles – and utterly sweaty.

Balloons and towels. Who would have thought??

Sarah (I think it was) stopped into class to video us all kicking balloons across the room, so maybe I’ll be able to link to what will no doubt be an entertaining and dimly humiliating clip in a bit. THAT should brighten your day considerably. (If you’re having an unusually gloomy day!)

C’mon to balance class with me. Thursdays at 10. You’ll love it.

Balloons. They look so innocent, don’t they? Huh – right.