September 6, 2017

So, let me tell you why working out with Grace makes me think of sex, and I promise it’s not the reason you’re thinking.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve seen a dirty movie. Yes – this admission puts me on a par with other heroes like firefighters and the guy who cleans up road kill on Rock Creek Parkway. (Not a job I’D take – would you??) In fact, it’s possible I’ve seen TWO dirty movies. Who’s counting?

I realize that those movies do not inspire in me the same reaction they may have in others. I look at improbably beautiful and surgically enhanced people having sex (and not ALL of that is surgical, after all; my God – doesn’t that hurt??) and I think nervously, “I’m not sure I look like that.”

That’s a multi-paragraph trip to get to the reality, which is that when I work out with Grace and she demonstrates an exercise I’m supposed to do, I definitely find myself thinking, “Oh, I’m SURE I don’t look that good when I do this.” Grace makes this stuff look easy.

She is aptly named. Grace is a ballet dancer, and she can’t make a note in her folder without me wanting to applaud and call for an encore. And yet, she does not look on less-elfin mortals with contempt; Grace greets my lumbering self with real joy. I honestly think she doesn’t see that I’m grossly overweight; instead she sees that I’m trying really, really hard to recapture and maintain good health, and she is delighted to help guide me on this journey.

Today we did some extremely simple exercises that were somehow so impossibly hard that I spent our entire hour apologizing for laughing so hard. At the risk of making this post too long, I’m going to walk you through one of them. Listen:

Inhale. Then exhale.

See? Told you it was extremely simple. Of course, here’s how Grace adds her own remarkable flavor to the fundamental act of respiration:

Lie on your back on a flat surface; you can have a little pillow if you want. Hold a towel or a belt or something loosely over your belly, palms up. Inhale through your nose slowly – like you’re filling a balloon with helium.

Exhale through your mouth; as you do it, tug gently on the towel or belt outwards. That turns your arm bone outward in the socket and opens your chest. Feel the openness? That moves your shoulders down and in, and that’s the dynamic movement that triggers a wave of energy that runs down your back and loops around the bottom to come up the belly. The lower belly pulls in and the pelvis tilts upward.

Now inhale again. Repeat.

Keeping that sequence straight turns out to be a lot to think about… but then she adds in things like bridging or leg lifts or (lying on my side) clams. And then she stood me up and handed me the towel again and put me in front of a low push-bar.

“Put one foot on the bar and when you inhale, push down. When you exhale, keep that good energy going and let your leg come up with control. Slowly. Tug on the towel – feel the openness in your chest. Shoulders back and down. Let that energy loop down your back and around to your stomach. Feel it? Feel that warmth all along your spine?”

What actually happened was that I suddenly couldn’t remember if I was supposed to inhale through my nose or through my mouth and if I was tugging on the towel or not and also how the hell to press my leg down and I fell right over, laughing and fully out of control. “WHAT??” I said. This utterly simple task is far, far more challenging than patting your head and rubbing your stomach, by several major muscle groups. It took another few tries before I could do it – and even then, my shoulders never really drew back well. (Shades of Shoulders Down – Chad teaching stress class. It’s ALLLL connected!)

I made Grace take this picture with me because I want to make sure I’m honest in this blog about the sense of scale. When it’s just me in a photo, I look, you know, okay. Ish. It’s not until Legolas’ sister stands next to me that you say “Yeah, I see the problem.” Grace didn’t like that theory, because she definitely doesn’t see my body as a problem – but I insisted. Gyms tend to show already-fit people working out in their ads or publications, and I think it’s very important to make it clear that people who are NOT Grace-ful are also welcome and feel at home at Body Dynamics. She’s a babe, though, huh?

September 5, 2017

This is Chad (street name “Shoulders Down”). He looks like a nice guy, doesn’t he? Yeah – watch out. Chad is DANGEROUS!

He teaches the stretch class at Body Dynamics. I liked the idea of taking a stretch class because my idea of stretching is (now) being able to get my hands somewhere near my feet in a “touch your toes” posture.

(This is a great departure from my youth, when being flexy and stretchy meant sitting on my butt, holding the arch of my foot in one hand, and then straightening my leg out somewhere near my ear. That’s a distant and quite laughable dream now, but once I really could do it!)

But Chad is something extremely dangerous: he is THOROUGHLY EDUCATED. Chad could care about feet and ears; Chad has OTHER PLANS. Like – do you know what your IT band is? (Not your “it” band – we say “eye-tee” because we know what that means and like a little shortcut.) (Yeah – don’t ask me. I’ve been told twenty times and forgotten twenty times. I know it does not stand for Information Technology, Intestinal Turbidity, or Iberian Turmeric; beyond that you’re on your own.)

It’s a strap that runs under your skin from your hip bone to your knee, about where your hand would hit if you held your hands at your sides. I never knew it was there because I seem to have established an unspoken détente with my IT band; I don’t bother it and it doesn’t bother me.

BUT NO. Here comes Chad, with the light of zealotry in his eye. (This is rank miscasting; Chad is kind and calm and very, very opposed to causing any pain at all.) He puts foam rollers on the ground, arranges his students in improbable poses on the foam rollers, and has us roll ourselves over and back, across the IT band WHICH OBJECTS STRENUOUSLY.

So of course I object strenuously, too – to which Chad offers a kind smile and the comment “Good stuff!” He is nefarious.

And then when I stand up, I’m easily six inches taller. I have no idea how.

Chad says that as soon as the lower body feels any tension, the shoulders creep upward in sympathy, so his constant murmur as he prowls the room checking alignments is “Shoulders down.” And EVERY SINGLE TIME I discover that by damn, my shoulders have crept up again. How is that possible?? I was focused on keeping them down. I look away for two seconds and BOING! Like a spring. Up the shoulders come.

And why does it matter if the shoulders are up? “I’m picky,” Chad says with approval and warmth in his voice. And that makes me want to please him, so I push my shoulders down again. Doesn’t matter; they pop up like a Weebles Wobble But They Don’t Fall Down, but I’ll keep trying. He knows more than I do, and my IT band is SO limber now.

(Not really; I continue to not be able to feel my IT band unless I’m rolling over it, but I trust it’s better now than it was before!)

September 4, 2017

I can resist anything but temptation.

(Who said it first? Oscar Wilde? Woody Allen? Can’t remember.)

Patterns and habits require tremendous will power to overcome, but yesterday I had used up all my will power on other things and was feeling pathetic and deprived and, well, subject to temptation.

I don’t take drugs – I pop an Advil only very reluctantly. I don’t drink, for fear of alcoholism. (I believe I’m an alcoholic who just hasn’t started yet.) I don’t gamble the rent money, I don’t visit disturbing brothels in Thailand, I don’t associate with nefarious types (well, not VERY nefarious) (you know who you are). What I do is eat.

And that means I wear my moral failings on my butt, for all the world to see and comment on. Really, it would be much more attractive to be a heroin junkie. For a while, at least.

So yesterday I remembered that I’d bought ice cream sandwiches for my son before he went to college. He didn’t eat them (because – oh, gosh, did I do that? – I bought delicious Baskin Robbins Jamoca almond fudge ice cream sandwiches and the kid ain’t a fan), and there were two left, and they’ve been sitting there for weeks.

Before yesterday, I was able to resist them. First, I resisted them by eating OTHER more dense, more delicious ice creams. (Clever ploy, huh?) Then, after the Great Zinc Connection was made (that is, Chip at Body Dynamics explained that I was sugaring away all the zinc I’d been eating in pumpkin seeds), I resisted the treats by growling like a dog spotting the UPS man. Defense! Defense! Back, you bastards!

But not yesterday. I ate one and then the other. I muttered “zinc” and “fasting blood sugar” and “don’t do it” while I wolfed them down, but those words of power had lost their oomph.

So after that, I made myself a perfectly enormous cup of Earl Grey, with whole milk and STRAIGHT WHITE CANE SUGAR scooped amply out of the canister – pure and glistening and grainy and deadly. And then I looked around in vain for some other way to destroy all the good I’d done. If a dealer had walked by, I would have crooned “Come on, baby – just a little bump. I’ll do ALL the things you love.”

And then – remorse.

I didn’t even particularly enjoy the indulgences I was packing in; I just did it because I was sad and low and self-destructive. And then guilty, too.

BUT today is a new day. I’m going to eat no-sugar, whole-milk yogurt with fresh fruit, wheat germ, walnuts, and zinc-rich, hopeful, little-engine-that-could pumpkin seeds. I’ll drink a big glass of water. And I’ll shoulder my burdens with renewed determination. Because old patterns are hard to break… but with a lot of help, I’m going to break them.

I hope.

 

 

September 3, 2017

Want to see something simultaneously SO GROSS and also SO COOL??

This isn’t for the dainty, because the video I’m linking you to includes the use of a cadaver to see how muscles work. It’s icky… except that it’s really fascinating. (But don’t look if the idea of a dead body gives you the heebies.)

Gwynn the therapeutic masseuse guru at Body Dynamics sent me the link. She was telling me about how she could feel that muscles in my legs weren’t sliding across each other as they should.

That made my eager little ears prick up, like my dog when he thinks something tasty might be dropped on the kitchen floor.

“But my legs feel fine… don’t they?”

Gwynn (and Barbara) (and Grace) (and Chad) (and Chip) (and Jorge) (it’s a cluster of concern)  have noted my “turn-out.” This is a very gracious way of saying that I’m a duck-foot; my feet splay out to the side. If I lie on my back, it’s the sides of my feet that touch the ground, not the heels.

For the uninitiated, it’s something that makes me look like I waddle a little when I walk – but for anyone who has studied ballet (and at Body Dynamics we’ve got a jag of ‘em, son), the turn-out is a source of envy. I did a frog-pose sort of exercise with Grace once and she actually called excitedly across the room to Chip, working with another client. “Did you SEE that TURN-OUT?!”

“No – do it again!”

I’m not used to the admiration of athletic ballet dancers, I can promise you, and I basked in their surprising regard for all of ten seconds until it turned out my pelvic alignment was off again; story of my life. Back to work.

But it turns out that ballet dancers (and massage gurus and physical therapists, etc.) want that turn-out to be voluntary; I’m supposed to be able to walk with my toes pointing more or less forward. So Gwynn’s been working on loosening up muscles that haven’t had to move against each other because I am ALWAYS splay-foot. And those muscle groups were proving obstinate; they didn’t think they needed to move against each other and they dug in their stubborn little muscle feet and tried to resist Gwynn’s ministrations.

Of course, that’s like a peewee football team attempting to hold back the starting line of the New England Patriots, so eventually she got the movement she was looking for.

“But you’ll have to move them, or they’ll fuzz up again.”

“I’m sorry – they’ll what?”

“Ooh – have you seen the fuzz video?”

“No!”

“I’ll send you the link. You’ll never again stretch in the morning without thinking of fuzz. You’ll love it.”

And she was right – I LOVE this video. It’s just over five minutes long. The guy is a bit of a nutter, but only because he seems eccentric; he certainly seems to know what he’s talking about. (And the video is all the more entertaining because he seems to have come back later and edited in a lot of commentary.)

So here you go.  Gross, but very, very cool. Tell me what you think.

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.

August 22, 2017

When I first asked to work with Barbara at Body Dynamics, it was because I was so embarrassed by my cardio fitness.

I’m a fat lady, yes – but I’m basically in good health. I’m strong and my back still works, and at the age of 57, I call that a win.

But Barbara (who is a wizard and deserving of more posts just on her) looked at me critically and said, “… and I think we can take some weight off you, too.”

“No,” I said instantly. “No, really – you can’t. Believe me. I’ve tried. Every diet I’ve ever been on, I’ve gained the weight back plus twenty to forty pounds more. I wouldn’t be this fat now if it hadn’t been for diets. I can’t afford to lose any more weight. Let’s NOT try.”

She nodded, but I could see the determination in her eye. “Another one I’m going to have to show,” I thought. “Well, I’m NOT dieting – I don’t care WHAT she says.”

When I said that, in June of 2016, I weighed 260 pounds – a shame-filled number that I sick up today in confession because guess what happened this morning?

I weigh 238 pounds.

And I never dieted – not a mouthful. I ate ice cream throughout.

Granted, the fastest change came (four pounds in the last two weeks!) when Chip the nutritionist finally showed me the effects of sugar on my zinc levels (zinc! Zinc! O you are my master now!), but the first eighteen slowly melted over the course of a year without me noticing.

And what else happened? See the photo. That’s me, bravely showing my belly in a lock-all-the-doors-first selfie. Instead of a vast, white expanse of flesh, there are now these marginal contour lines in the vast, white expanse. It’s like – when it snows, you can see these soft lines in the surface that show where the dog’s Frisbee is lying on the terrace. You can’t see the Frisbee, but you know that something’s down there, buried under the snow. And that’s my belly now.

I can feel the abdominal muscle down there; it’s a ROCK. I think I have a six-pack under the blubber. Me! My shorts are baggy; I have to hold them up with a belt, which is on the tightest notch. And when I train with Barbara and I warm up on the elliptical (admittedly on its easiest setting), I’m usually annoyed that we only get ten minutes for that; I can and want to go longer. Cardio fitness coming along!

I shake my head at the thought. Barbara is a wizard, I’m telling you.

 

I’ve gone from not even knowing my body had, needed, or used zinc two months ago (before I started with Chip the nutritionist) to now being FIXATED on it. Zinc! Zinc! My kingdom for some zinc!

It turns out my zinc is low. (And no wonder; I didn’t know I was supposed to be stockpiling it!) This affects my body in some very real way that I no longer remember. (I’m telling you – zinc has become like a Kardashian in my life. I have no idea why I’m supposed to care so much, but by gum, I care!)

But here’s why I’m so fixated:

When I first saw Chip, the charming nutritionist at Body Dynamics, he had me take an online quiz that asked things like “do your nails chip, peel, or break?” and “Do you have bad breath?,” and other things that I, certainly, wouldn’t lay at nutrition’s door as a first choice—but we are walking into the body of science here, and onward we go!

So I filled out the questionnaire and when I sat down with Chip two months ago, he handed me the results; a piece of paper with what looked like the Rocky Mountains on it. “These high points are areas of concern for you,” he explained.

(To be honest, I wasn’t terribly surprised; you don’t get to be my size without assuming something – or several somethings – need to be addressed quite sternly.)

We yakked it out. I had two Mount Everest-sized peaks – SUGAR HANDLING and also “Essential Fatty Acids” (which turns out to be high because I had my gall bladder out about 15 years ago, and contrary to what the doctor told me at the time, that DOES, it seems, have dietary implications; who knew?)

And I had several Denalis (that is, high next to anything other than Everest), and then a bunch of Old Ragg mountains. The “adrenal” peak was from stress and sleep (“sleep hygiene,” Chip calls it, which makes me snort. If I scrub my sleep regularly with a nice Borax, THEN will I have good sleep hygiene?) and the “thyroid” peak was blood sugar (and the doctor DID tell me my fasting blood sugar was getting up there; yikes. Don’t want diabetes, by damn!).

Small bumps at “Liver and Gall Bladder” (not higher because – no gall bladder), something called “women only” (which I assume is because I’m menopausal), and also “Immune System” – but those three were mere foothills to the others, so we never discussed them.

Chip gave me my very first guidelines for incremental change—like, the guy never said “For the love of Pete, you’ve GOT to back slowly away from the Ben and Jerry’s, woman!” But he DID say I had to switch to sprouted bread for sandwiches, add in some nut butters that weren’t peanut (I put almond butter on apples and shut up; it’s a hell of a treat), and bla bla something else.

Mostly he’s got me drinking water. Water. Water. Water. More water. About 100 ounces a day, because I’m fat. (Their rule of thumb is take half your weight; that’s how many ounces you should drink – but cap it at 100. I weigh more than 200 lbs (by a fair bit!), so I drink 100 ounces.) I spend most of my time peeing out innocent, pale, aroma-free pee, but lordy, that water fills me up. I actually stopped eating a container of ice cream the other night BECAUSE I COULDN’T FIT ANY MORE IN. I know – right??

LONG story short (too late), I got the mountain profile yesterday from the second questionnaire, and EVEN CHIP was impressed – every single peak and bump had fallen, with the lone exception of SUGAR HANDLING.

Well, yeah. I know.

Even the gall bladder number had gotten a lot better. Chip and I frowned at that one for a while because it doesn’t make too much sense; it’s not like I obediently grew back a gall bladder… and I tried to not be too obviously pleased; we’re going to keep an eye on that number. (YEAH, we are! It’s awesome!)

And it turns out that my zinc hasn’t come up AT ALL. “What the?” I protested. “Everything else is better, better, better, but I still don’t have enough zinc? I’m eating pumpkin seeds every damned day!”

And then Chip laid the smack-down on me, out of the blue. “I’m guessing that’s because the zinc you’re taking in is being used to process the sugar.”

MOTHER PUS-BUCKET! You’re kidding! “It’s ALLLLL connected,” he said, waving his arms about and waggling his limber little eyebrows.

So DAMN IT. Now I look at anything sugary with grave suspicion. I actually growled at that candy mecca at the Staples check-out line today. “No way!” I muttered belligerently at a bag of Lindor white chocolate truffles, “I ate my pumpkin seeds this morning and I AM KEEPING THAT ZINC, damn it.”

So once again, something that I never in a million years thought could change – my adoring fixation on All Things Sweet – may actually be evolving just a little. Just for today. Just at Staples.
We’ll see.

 

 

I can see that someone may wonder why, at the age of 56 (I’m 57 now), I became so determined to improve my health – and so I offer a not-particularly-funny entry to this blog.

My husband Jonathan had a gastric bypass when he was 50 (so, seven years ago), with impressive results. His diabetes disappeared overnight, the sleep apnea vanished, his kidney functions improved, and he lost about 140 pounds. Good news!

Alas, unbeknownst to us, he was also losing his body’s store of vitamin B-12. After about three years, this pushed him into the beginnings of dementia. Five years after the operation, I was at my wit’s end; he was actually diagnosed with tempero-frontal dementia by a neurologist, who looked confused and said “But I think it’s temporary…”

It was Jonathan’s GP who decided to try B-12 injections. This was pure serendipity; Jonathan’s blood work hadn’t come back yet by the first injection, but when the lab results came in, the B-12 level was normal. If the doctor hadn’t decided to try the injections before getting the results, he never would have made the attempt.

The B-12 was miraculous. It restored Jonathan’s sanity within four hours. I probably don’t have to tell you what an astonishing relief that was… and I never thought to ask if he maybe might have suffered permanent damage from the experience.

But from then on, he was changed. And one of the aspects of his new personality was an inability to make good decisions for himself. Doctors would tell him what he needed to do to handle health issues (and the health issues began to mount pretty quickly), but he decided that if he ignored his problems and the advice of his physicians, he wouldn’t have to deal with any of it.

I watched him go through this; I tried to help him. He would not be helped. I was so horrified and stressed by this that I thought – maybe I am guilty of the same thing. Why aren’t I dealing with health issues that I know are right in front of me?

So I followed my friend Steve to his balance class at Body Dynamics.

And then I asked the Balance teacher, Barbara, to help me with my cardio endurance.

And things progressed from there. The worse Jonathan got and the less I could help him, the harder I tried to repair my own health.

When Jonathan died in March, 2017, the Body Dynamics team was like my family. They took care of me and helped me. And the body that they helped me refine was strong enough to bear Jonathan’s death.

And now I can see what ignoring the problem ends with – and I can envision what dealing with the problem will earn. So that’s why I do it.

I had a massage with Gwynn yesterday. I love her – she’s another of the wizards at Body Dynamics. They ought to call the place Hogwarts.

Gwynn’s massages are the polar opposite of the spa massages I’d been addicted to in the past. There’s something glorious about the laying on of hands – of having someone follow the muscles under your skin and work through the tensions and pull you into a new shape with just strong fingers and know-how. On a massage table, I feel like a lump of clay and someone clever is forming me into Uma Thurman.

But a therapeutic masseuse is to a spa masseuse as a surgeon is to the guy who tapes the high school football team. They’re both useful; one just knows a staggering amount more than the other.

So Gwynn will have spoken with Barbara about me by the time I get to my massage appointment. We stand in the treatment room and Barbara says “Keep your hips forward and turn your waist and shoulders as far as you can to the left. Okay, now to the right. Yep. Got it.”

Then she dims the lights and goes away and I strip down to nothing but me and slip under the sheet. (In the winter, she warms the table and it’s an immediate invitation to fall soundly asleep and be snoring by the time she comes back.) While I’m fussing around trying to hide my large underwear under a discretely spread shirt, she’s out in the hallway with her computer, plotting her plan of attack.

Low knock – in comes Gwynn – hushed voices – very spa-like. And then WOW what are you doing?? What the hell is that you’re working on?

Gwynn knows I’m a nerd about this stuff and she delights in explaining her whats and her whys; I’ve learned so much about my own body from her, and how I can give her the feedback that makes her work with even greater focus. But if I wanted it, she’d totally let me lie there silent, alternately gasping at what her strong fingers have tracked down and then purring when she gets muscles to surrender. I’m all chat all the time, though, so we pretty much gab throughout. Gwynn is awesome.

Two weeks ago, in the pre-massage discussion time, I told her that when I stepped into pants or underwear, I always splayed my leg out to the side because if I held the knee forward, it was painful deep down at the top of my thigh. Gwynn LOVES these mysteries and the light of challenge lit in her eyes, but before she left so I could strip down, she asked me, “What makes you bring this up now? Is this new?”

“I just didn’t know things like this could be fixed before.”

She beamed with approval at me and I realized that WAS a pretty big leap. I’m beginning to believe that with the right help, I can address body issues that I’d always – ALWAYS – accepted as just the way things were. So the ache at the top of my thigh wasn’t new, but the belief that we could fix it sure was.

By the way – the answer: Adductor magnus. Or something like that. Last week, Gwynn worked on the front of the thigh. She pulled tight muscles long, but it didn’t fix that specific pain. This week she went to the inside of the thigh. Again, my legs felt great at the end, but the pain was still there. The vast, clicking machinery in her brain was turning the whole time, and after I got dressed, she came back in. “Okay – lie face down on the table for a minute.” And then she ran her thumb straight up a live wire. “STOP THAT!” I shouted. “Hah!” she replied, satisfaction dripping from the word. “Adductor magnus. We’ve got it. When do I see you again?”

I have no doubt at all that next week, Gwynn will do something to a leg muscle no-one outside a medical anatomy class ever heard of before. She will release a trigger point or clean out the fuzz or in some other ways work her wizardry and I will suddenly be able to step into my underwear with my knees pointing forward. I guess that’s not a very big payoff… and yet, it’s a HUGE payoff. Now I trust that if there’s an issue, we can fix it.