I wasn't happy because I was thin. I was thin because I was happy.

I wasn't happy because I was thin. I was thin because I was happy.

I'm repeating this truth to myself a lot lately. My focus can't be on being thin as a means to the end of being happy. It just doesn't work that way. I look back a couple years. And the simple truth is that I managed to drop the dreaded 20 pounds because I was in a good, positive, I dare say happy place. Don't get me wrong. being thin pleased me greatly. I didn't think about my weight all the time. I felt healthier. I had more energy. These thing all by themselves made me happy. But it's not like I suddenly had this smaller, more efficient body and then became happy.

And I gained the weight back that I have when I allowed things in my life took me to an unhappy place. 

When you have your shit together mentally and emotionally... only then are you ready to get your physical shit together. So here I am... staring ahead... trying not to look behind me... and attempting to figure out exactly how to get my mental and emotional shit back together so I can get my body back.

Don't I already have my body? Yes. I do. And I am grateful for it. It's treated me well even if I constantly throw hate at it. Undeserved hate. What has my body ever done to me except respond to what I either put in it or make it do? And then I turn around and hate it. My body listens to me. If I choose to make it exercise and eat well then it responds. If I sit on my ass and eat shitty foods it responds then too. So why do I hate it? I know, but am unsure how to put it into words. But it is undeserved.

On top of it all I know very well that my image of myself is skewed. And I do fight to find a balance when I look in the mirror. I try to be realistic and not sugarcoat my weight as "cute" or "fluffy" or "curvy" if I am actually in an unhealthy class of overweight. But it's easy to make excuses and sugarcoat. It's also very easy to fall on the other side and blow my weight out of proportion. It is a bit of a tightrope walk really.

Anyway, I'm still teaching my BodyFlow which I love infinitely. But I feel like looking outside of my group fitness classes for inspiration. Not as a means to lose weight... but as a means to find myself again. I'm thinking about martial arts. I haven't taken karate since I was 15... but I did enjoy it. I loved the movement and the discipline of it.

So we'll see if I can find something I can afford and see where it leads me. I remind myself it is important to keep moving forward in life. Stagnation is my enemy. :)

What things have to align to make changes? When will I be ready this time? What will be my catalyst?

March 2010 (My before)

A few years ago... somewhere around September of 2010 I had a catalyst, a simple comment from a friend, that spurred me into action to get myself healthy. But it wasn't the comment alone. That was the ignition I suppose, but other things had to be in place for me to keep the inertia going after the initial movement. And I kept it going for a long time. I lost weight and I maintained it.

March 2012 (My after. Same shirt, same chair, just less of me... before I lost my job)

Of course, there is this thing called life that happens sometimes. And your finely tuned schedule and routine can get all in a kerfuffle. And looking back about a year that's what happened. I actually managed to maintain my weight loss through my Mom dying. I'm still really proud of that. It would have been a perfect excuse to eat everything I wanted. But I didn't. I kept doing well with my eating and working out. But a bit over a year ago I lost my job. In the grander scheme of things I lost my schedule. I lost my routine. And I put on a couple pounds. Then I found a job, but I hate it. And other bits of my life were changing in large ways. And the depression hit. So more pounds came along with that.

Me now (not all the way back to big... thank you to the added muscle mass)

So here I am. I look back at almost 3 years. I had 2 years of improving health and maintaining health. And one year of decline. I don't feel like me at this point. I'm too heavy... physically and emotionally. I feel like I'm slogging my way through my days. I'm trying to figure out what I need to do mentally and emotionally to be able to pick up physically. I know it's possible. Hell, it's not even all that difficult. But your head truly has to be in it. I'm not quite sure how to get my head back in it. I need another catalyst. And I need to care.

Ruminating on "Time"... the Pink Floyd version, not the Hootie version.

So it's Saturday. I'm broke until pay day so the roommate and I have just hung around the apartment all day. It's been pleasant, but I find myself getting restless and uneasy. Not physcially, but mentally and emotionally. Then I read this article about what you will regret as you get older. The one guy had a long and thoughtful essay. And the scariest part was what he called "the heavy cost of the time you've wasted." And he directed the reader, me, to the lyrics of the Pink Floyd song "Time." I was never an adolescent male so I missed out on the Pink Floyd fandom and love that most men I've ever known have for the band. But I googled the lyrics. I find them incredibly sad, true, and maybe a little inspiring. I still don't know which way to go in life, and if the doors will open in that direction if I want them to... but it's a reminder that I don't have forever. I regret a lot of my youth. So much of it feels wasted. I don't want to regret all of my adulthood. Here are the lyrics:

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun
But it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
the sun is the same in a relative way
but you're older shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way

The time is gone
The song is over
Thought I'd something more to day

Home
Home again I like to be here when I can
When I come home cold and tired
It's good tow arm my bones beside the fire
Far away across the field tolling on the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees to hear the softly spoken magic spell...

Heavy sh*t for a Thursday night.

I'm not sure what's going on with me these days. I do not feel like I'm sinking back into depression. But I feel off. I feel perplexed. I feel like I'm floating in limbo.

I feel like I'm standing in the middle of an empty space... all around me, just out of reach, are parts of my life spinning around me. And it's not exactly that I can't reach them, but I'm not sure where I want to reach. I feel alone. I recognize the large chunk of me gone since Mom died. And I'm just standing still... waiting for the other part of me to be gone too... waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting to be an orphan. Waiting to be completely alone. There is no date on this... it could be tomorrow... it could be ten years... but it's there. And I feel like I have to be on guard for it. I need to be ready. Even though I know damn well there is no way to be ready.

And I so desperately want to talk to my Mom lately. I want her advice (even though I often didn't take it). I want her reassurance. I'd like to have her just listen and tell me I'll figure it out and not to worry.

I want to not be standing in this empty space all alone. It's exhausting. I'm strong. I'll survive. I am Cathy's kid after all. But some days it's like just the act of living hurts... even when nothing is happening. I start to worry about my health. I'm 40 and have never had any serious health issues. It can't last forever. And who will be there for me when it does?

It's been a while since I had a good cry. I suppose I was overdue. And it's not good to fight feelings. Better to feel them and let them go. They do far less damage that way. And perhaps writing about them gets them out too.

Telling people's stories

A long time ago my Mom decided to help an old lady who lived down the street write down her life story. They would sit together, and she would tell Mom all sorts of things, and Mom would take down notes. I bet she wrote it in shorthand. She was one of the old school secretaries before dictation machines and the proliferation of word processors and computers who actually knew shorthand and used it for years. She would sign notes to Dad with shorthand. I am guessing it meant "I love you" but I'm not sure.

Once she had all her notes she went and typed up the story, made copies for the woman, and she distributed it to her family. I guess everyone loved it. So over the years Mom would find people who would let her "write their stories" as she called it. I remember Mom saying email made it easier because she got more detail from the people and it made the stories better. Of course, not all old ladies would use email. :) Mom seemed to really love doing it. But she never did write her own story. I don't know if she felt the need to do so. I don't know if she ever wrote in a journal either. She seemed to live so much in the present. She also had the mentality of not spending time worrying about yourself... I wish she had worried more about herself, but then that just wasn't her way.

My father, when he was out of high school but before the Air Force, went in with a couple friends and bought an old Model A Ford and drove from Iowa to California... stopping along the way to work and earn money to pay their way. Then they drove back and sold the car. At one point Dad bought several model cars like the one he had driven on that trip. He even bought an old atlas from the year of his trip that showed all the roads before the interstates. He talked about sitting down and mapping out the route he had taken. I wondered if maybe Mom would write his story too. But it wasn't to be.

I think Mom was a woman of many talents. I hope she knew she was talented. But I know if you tried to tell her she was talented she would have said "No, anybody can do this!" 

CrossFitting my booty. :)

I am starting CrossFit this week... at 6am on Wednesday. Yes... my non-morning person, Velcro sheet-loving, lazy ass will be getting up at the butt crack of dawn twice a week to go exercise. And I'm actually looking forward to it. The truth is I'm barely exercising these days. And I'm eating fairly poorly. My portions aren't bad, but my choices are high in sugar. And you know... I know this will be tough to believe... I am feeling like crap lately. It's funny how you can ignore how bad you feel for a long time. I am thankful that I'm noticing it now, though, before it gets too bad.

I miss feeling good. I miss feeling energetic. Now... going to the gym twice a week won't fix this... but I'm hoping the intense workouts will propel me (as they did when I did a boot camp a couple years ago) into eating better because it makes working out so much better. Diet really is everything. You don't have to work out seven days a week to be in good shape. But you do have to eat well... at least more often than not.

So we shall see. :) But I feel good about it. Once in a while you can just feel yourself reach a point where there is no other option but to make a change. That's kind of how I feel right now.

Health first, then vanity

I have a lot of ideas of what I'd like to do in life. Projects and such... lots of creative things. There are a number of them that will be physically challenging... which in their own way are actually huge mental challenges as well.

As is my usual mode of operating my thinking always falls back onto how thin, or chubby as the case may be, I am. And it always gets into my head and makes me feel bad about myself when I don't feel I've lived up to what is my ideal. It occurred to me tonight that I've been making my rookie mistake for months now. When I think about wanting to lose weight my entire mindset is on how I look. Now that is understandable in some ways. I teach group fitness now, and I am bothered that I am not as thin as I was when I began teaching. A room full of people staring at you as you wear spandex and tell them how to do things makes you want to feel like you look the part. But when I embarked on my quest to get in shape a few years ago I didn't go in with the "vanity" in the front of my mind. I looked honestly at myself and figured if I didn't get control of this now I where would I be in 20 years? And I now know 20 years will happen in the blink of an eye. I began with the idea of being healthy. And I truly credited that mindset for my success. How could I have forgotten? Focus on health... and the looks will follow.

The funny part is that my face looks younger when I'm chubby! I mean... WTF? I understand it, fat fills in the wrinkles, but it just seems ridiculous. The healthier I was the more age my face was showing.

The simple truth is I miss feeling good. I need to get back into the mindset of eating so I can work out... not working out so I can eat. When I eat well I actually have the energy to work out. It's not such a challenge to get to the gym.

So we'll see. I am the only one who ever gets in my way.