Everything Was Beautiful And Nothing Hurt

The title of today's blog is a quote from Slaughterhouse Five. I'm not even going to pretend like I've read anything from Kurt Vonnegut except for maybe a couple of short stories. The only reason I know this quote at all is because my brother Beriah has it tattooed on his arm. I think (and Beriah may or may not cringe at this) it's an ironic statement about war. For whatever reason, as I was running the fields and wooded area of the Turkey Trot Run this morning, I kept hearing this quote whenever I asked myself, "How do I feel right now?" Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. And there was absolutely nothing ironic about this statement at all.

I had pretty much no desire to do the run today. I'll be perfectly honest and say that I haven't yet actually looked forward to any of the 5Ks that I've done. I'm glad I participate in them, happy to contribute to such worthy causes, and I'm always ecstatic to cross the finish line; however, getting there is always this mental battle between willpower and personal desire. The fact is, running and I just aren't besties yet. We hang out with the same crowd of friends but we've never really hit it off. To make matters worse, the weather this morning was particularly windy and cold. I walked out of the house, got smacked in the face by a gust of ice, and thought to myself, "Dear God in Heaven, I really don't want to do this at all". Had Jensen been there, I would have handed over a dollar for speaking such a negative thought out loud. But for whatever reason, I got in the Buick and made my way over to Warner Rd.

When I arrived at the DiGregorio farm I was comforted by the sight of the familiar faces of my friends from the gym and some from church.When I spotted my cousin Kelly I joked with her that it wasn't too late for us to skip out and grab breakfast instead. And by 'joke' I mean that I would have seriously sprinted to my Buick and booked it to the Woodstown Diner had she said yes. Unfortunately (or fortunately) Kelly's willpower happens to be in a much better, stronger place than mine was and I felt mildly ashamed for having made the suggestion. Needless to say, I stayed put and tried not to dwell on the sound of the wind howling around us.

Me and my cousin Kelly

I will give two pieces of pre-run advice to any potential 5Kers. First, don't arrive too early to your race. I arrived an hour early to my very first 5K and it was too much time for my brain and emotions to dwell on every potential problem that could arise during the run. Today, I arrived at the Turkey Trot Run about 20 minutes before it began and found that to be the perfect amount of time to get registered, pin my number on, and warm up a bit.  Secondly, I don't recommend looking at the Google map of your 5K trail before your race. The map of today's 5K was printed out on four different pages (as opposed to the one page printout of the stroller trail) with, like, forested areas and bodies of water. For a brief moment I thought I had signed onto the Oregon Trail.

Me and Kristen (slightly bitter that she has a Jersey Fitness shirt)

I was very fortunate that my friend Renee decided to jog this 5K with me. When the race got started and everyone took off, Renee and I kept this perfect little clip from start to finish. We didn't really converse much, but we somehow managed to maintain the same pace. The trail, by the way, was unlike anything I've ever experienced before. I've run on treadmills, I've run around Marlton Park and it's adjoining neighborhood, and I've run the big loop around around Riverview Beach Park. I have never run up and down hills, across fields, and down steep bends through the woods. The Google map trail didn't exactly convey all of this pertinent information. I didn't know how my body was going to cope with all of this newness, either. It's been about 3 or 4 weeks since my last 5K at the Riverview. Since that run I've been focusing all of my energy on attending gym classes and have all but neglected running. But here's the crazy thing: my body just kind of went with it. I wouldn't say I experienced the mythical runner's high during this 5K, but I definitely had a moment there where I actually enjoyed myself. The wind was still blowing, the hills were still steep, and there was no Chrissy running ahead in the distance and waving back at me. But in my mind, where the true race lies, all I could think was, "How do I feel right now?....Hmm. Everything is beautiful and nothing hurts".

Me and Renee, my awesome running partner

I think that what sets running apart from all other exercise for me is the fact that I can actually track how much I have progressed. It's harder to tell with the classes because...well...my instructor is Chrissy. Her classes are challenging regardless of whether you're 100 lbs overweight or training for a marathon. I mean, I'm sure I'm in a better place than where I was 10 months ago but because everything happens so gradually, it's hard to pinpoint the exact changes unless I consult Chrissy (practically nothing escapes her attention). Running, however, is a completely different situation. I can re-read my post from August, when I just started the Couch to 5K program and was running three and five minute intervals. Two months ago, almost to the day, I took this picture (see below) of the moment when I ran for 20 minutes in a row for the first time in my life. And now, even after slacking off for nearly a month, I am still capable of running up and down hills and through fields and forests.

As bizarre as this is for me to admit on here, I've had the same recurring skinny girl fantasy since high school. For some Big Girls it's walking out onto the beach in a bikini or showing up to their high school reunion in a smokin' hot dress. Mine is this: A leaner, healthy version of myself running along the rural back roads of Salem County. Whenever I drive past all the long stretches of grassy farmland, I can see that figure running along, sometimes in the fields, and sometimes to "Sweetness" by Jimmy Eat World.  And for the longest time, I never understood why that kept popping up in my head. I mean, it made no sense to me in high school when I had nothing but disdain for running and it makes no sense to me now when I'd much rather use my good health for booty popping. But, for better or worse, today I was that image (the heavier, slower, frazzled version that clopped along to "Gasolina"). And I can't help but wonder if she wasn't waiting for me to catch up to her the whole time.

Gym Peeps

Clothes Encounters

My relationship with clothing has been a rocky one fairly early on in my existence. When I was little, about 3 or 4, the only way for me to adequately express my rage would be to rip the clothes off of my body and throw a naked temper tantrum. There are whole segments of the "Racite Family Fourth of July-1988" VHS where I am streaking angrily across my Aunt Debbie's yard and away from my mother (and her fantastic mullet), to the amusement of all my Racite relatives. I don't actually remember these incidents (thank God) but I guess I must have known, intuitively, that clothing and I had some tough times ahead of us.

I was kind of a pistol...

Fast forward to when I was about 11 years old. My mother just forced a bowl cut onto me and I was wearing tapered corduroy pants with an elastic waist band for my first day of middle school. Up until this point I really, truly wanted to believe that I wasn't a fat kid. My peers had long since been teasing me for my weight, but in my tragically naive, adolescent heart I clung to the hope that once they got to know me as a person, they'd soon forget that I was both fat and awkward. Unfortunately, having a bowl cut, gigantic wire rimmed glasses, buck teeth, and tapered pants with an elastic band is, uh, pretty unforgettable. I was quickly assured in no uncertain terms that I was, indeed, fat. Being fat then became the lens through which I began to view myself. And with this new bit of knowledge I quickly learned to hide my offending larger body beneath even larger clothing.

I also learned that clothes shopping for a fat adolescent girl is right up there with teeth pulling and eye stabbing in terms of sheer enjoyment. When we weren't arguing over our differing fashion tastes, I would be standing half naked in a fitting room while my mother roamed the store for different sizes and styles of plus-sized pants that might fit me (options were limited in the 90s). She almost always engaged a salesperson into what seemed like our entire life story and could never understand why I got upset every time she would shout out pant sizes or bra measurements across the store. But that wasn't even the worst part. The worst part was coming home and having my father inspect the waistband of said pants; he'd tug on the band to check for snugness and inspect the sturdiness of my zipper and button. When you're an insecure, overweight adolescent girl, this kind of examination from your father is a whole new tier of humiliation. As if this wasn't enough, my grandmother would then have to come over and hem the pants ('cause I'm a shawty), which meant measuring tape, pins, and other assorted torture devices. Needless to say that by the end of a shopping trip day, I wanted nothing more than to rock back and forth in a dark corner.**

**I assure you that now, at age 27, I appreciate the efforts made by my parents and grandmother. I would never ever wish the task of outfitting such an angry, ungrateful brat upon even my worst enemies.**

With time and a driver's license, my shopping trips became less traumatic, but not by much. I have stormed out of dressing rooms, cursed the full-length mirrors that surrounded me on three sides (like anyone ever wants to see that much of their backside), broken down into quiet sobs of disappointment over sizes that were dirty rotten liars, and have fallen prey to the worst shopping experience of all for a Big Girl: Having a too-small dress seal itself to your waist when you try to get it over your head and off of your body. In this particular situation, I must confess that I totally spazz out in a sheer claustrophobic panic. (This qualifies as one of those experiences that Skinny Girls really don't understand.) Clawing your way out of a dress that is permanently fused to your upper body is like being in labor, except that you are the baby in this scenario. When this happens to me, I never leave the dressing room or cry out for help (out of sheer stupidity and stubbornness). I usually end up tilted on my side, flailing about, dripping with sweat, and desperately trying to reach behind me for deliverance from my zipper. This move is almost always a bust because my arms feel like they weigh about 200 lbs and the zipper I'm hunting for is about an entire centimeter of metal. After 30 seconds of what is essentially Stage 2 labor, I stop fighting against the spasms in my arm and the slow suffocation of the dress' birth canal, and I just flop uselessly against the wall, panting, like a deer who just put up a good fight and is now waiting to be put out of its misery. After about 2 minutes of this, around the time when the sweating stops, my breathing slows, and my body is no longer swelling in panic, I am able to yank the dress up and off of me in one swift movement. I usually leave the dressing room feeling as though I have won the battle but lost the war. Because of situations like this, I can sum up my wardrobe from ages 13-27 with one word: baggy.

Not that I haven't made efforts to be presentable, though. I have tried to wear pretty dresses and flattering jeans. However, when one of your clothing store options has the word "barn" in its title, you begin to wonder if "plus sized fashion" is an oxymoron. On one trip into said store with my dear friend JennEds, I took one look at the shapeless dresses hanging on the walls and sputtered, "That is it, Jenn! Why on earth would I wear a square sack with zebra print!? Isn't it bad enough that I'm shopping in a "barn"? Now they're going to dress us like actual animals too?! They hate us! DRESS BARN HATES FAT PEOPLE!" I may have kicked one of the dress dummies as I stormed out. Then there's Lane Bryant. Lane Bryant, the holy Mecca of plus-sized clothing, at least acknowledges that not every Big Girl is auditioning for the Lion King. Their clothing line is mostly clean and professional-looking, perfect for the working Big Girl. And work you must if you plan on being a long-term Lane Bryant customer. I've long since accepted that I must pay $29.95 for a blouse because it is my unspoken punishment for being overweight and wanting to look nice. I would like to say that since I've lost 60 lbs, my clothing situation has gotten significantly easier. It hasn't, at least not yet. I'm currently in that weird in-between world of sizes, a clothing limbo if you will. The "regular size" stores are still trying to figure out if they want to let me in, but clearly we have differing opinions over the definition of "extra large" (I have sports bras that don't hold me in as tightly as most Gap XL shirts). One thing is for certain: I am currently in jeans hell. When you're short, fat, and apple shaped, finding a flattering pair of jeans is harder than finding a good man. I currently lack the time, patience, and finances for a jeans upgrade and I know that in a few weeks this pair will most likely meet their end in one of three ways: 1. I'll size out of them, 2. I'll fall out of them (as I did with the last pair), or 3. My thick thighs will chafe the crap out of them. I have no idea what my options will be once this happens, but I do know that I will not resort to wearing tights as an alternative to pants. You have my word.

My most recent weight loss clothing conundrum came last Thursday night, just as I was getting ready to go to the Twilight movie premier with my girlfriends. I was freshly showered, dressed, and riding my endorphin high from a successful Step class when I came upstairs and greeted Rachael. She took one look at my chest and said "What...is going on there...?" I looked down to find that the sides of my chest were caved in. "Crap! I think my boobs lost weight.." She unsuccessfully attempted to adjust my straps for me, but that just made the craters even bigger. Because I didn't have any smaller bras (and I just threw out all of my old ones), I had only one alternative left: Kleenex. That's right, last Thursday I was a 27 year-old woman stuffing my bra before my big night out to go see Twilight. Just in case you were wondering, it takes approximately half a box of Kleenex to fill two D-cups. It will take me approximately half a lifetime to live this story down at the Bill house. Because I can't very well stuff my bra on a daily basis, I had to get re-sized. When the salesperson handed me my new size, I kind of stared at it for a few minutes. It was smaller, obviously. But this was a new kind of small for me. I couldn't reconcile my body parts with the piece of fabric in my hand. And yet, this was me. It was kind of a surreal moment.

 When I look at these pictures of my younger self, two thoughts come to mind: First, "Wow...I've had some serious hair". But the second thing I think is that I look like a girl who didn't care about a whole lot. She didn't care about what she wore and she certainly didn't care about her health. And I admit, it was much easier to not care. But in not caring, I think I sacrificed some happiness as well. I don't look very happy...and I don't think I felt happy. I'm not saying that clothes=happiness or that being thin=happiness. What I am saying is that when I was unhealthy, I was unhappy, and I clearly expressed this in how I presented myself. I don't know what this whole process holds for me in the future, but I hope that even if I still dress like a shlub, I hope that I'm at least a happy shlub, and more importantly, I hope that I'm a nice, happy shlub. I hope that I am the kind of happy shlub that makes it a point of being encouraging and decent towards others on a daily basis. Because despite it all, I'm still that 11 year old kid that believes that when you take the time and effort to get to know someone, you will forget to care about what they look like.

A Work in Progress

I should probably write this post in another two weeks, closer to the holiday dedicated to giving actual thanks but...I'm not. Besides, I really don't get why we ever decided to allot single days for celebrating thankfulness or love or even groundhogs. These things should be in the forefront of our minds year-round (perhaps Groundhog's Day is pushing it, but it also happens to be my birthday)! I'm not saying this to sound boastful or smug, but I can honestly say that when I leave the gym after a workout, for better or worse, I experience an endorphin wave of gratitude for getting it done. In my last post I wrote about struggling through a plateau and having to make an executive decision to bust through it by eating low carb. After the first week, I entered "One-derland" and left the 200s behind. At week three, not only am I 60 lbs down, but I'm almost out of the 90s as well. Happy Thanksgiving! I'm toying with the idea of posting epic decade-appropriate rock ballads on Facebook for every 10 lb loss. I'm hoping the Foo Fighters will make a debut before Thanksgiving for "Leaving the 90s" week.

I lost 61 lbs, or an Isaac's worth of weight

With all recorded weight loss (and I've been quite vocal about mine) comes the commentary. Almost every day someone comments on my weight loss; my family members, my gym buddies, my instructors, church folk, the security guy in my office building, friends, etc. In the beginning, as my fellow big girls/boys can attest, you wonder if people tell you that you've lost weight only because you've recently said, "I'm going on a diet" or "I've just started working out". You wonder if they actually see a difference or if they're just throwing you a small bone of encouragement to carry on. But then, perhaps after 30 lbs into it, you go through the phase where you desperately hope that some random acquaintance will see you and ask, "Have you been losing some weight? I can really tell!" Now, at 60 lbs, people are actually starting to use the word "skinny" and I honestly have no idea what to do with that. My automatic response has been "Ah well...you know...I'm still a work in progress...". To be fair, I am a pretty lousy compliment receptacle when it comes to my physical appearance. I feel like when someone gives me a compliment on my looks, it's like I'm being given a big plate of homemade brownies. It's completely unexpected and I immediately want to give them a compliment of equal worth and kindheartedness in return, but that's not exactly something that springs out of spontaneity. Despite all the blogs, pictures, and Facebook posts, in real, actual, third dimensional world I try not to draw any attention to my physical appearance. For this reason, I will stubbornly cling to my hoodies and my current pair of saggy jeans until I accidentally trip over the cuffs and fall out of them like I did with the last pair. My lovely, perfectly accessorized, friend JennEds once summed my appearance up perfectly, "Angie baby, you do not dress like a shlub (my words). You dress like a person who does not wish to draw any attention to herself". So to all of you lovely, encouraging friends and family, I am truly sorry if I look like I've just been poked in the face instead of being paid of compliment on my weight loss. I'm much less confident in the three dimensional world outside of Facebook and Blogger...

I especially don't know what to do with being called 'skinny'. For one thing, I'm just not skinny. I'm a good 70 lbs from the goal weight and even that's not technically skinny (I swear the BMI was devised by evil twigs. Or the French). For another, I'm still indulging in the ever-delightful Big Girl activities that Skinny Girls could never fathom...like having to fold your underwear twice before putting it away (granted, I'm down from folding it three times). Or the epic Battle of the Rolling Spanx; that's always fun, too. Spanx are a gift from God for all women, but they can be saucy minxes for sizes 18+. When you first put them on, after you've readjusted your gigantic underwear a thousand times and tucked in all of your fat rolls, you have this euphoric moment of sheer happiness at the possibility of a gen-u-ine waistline. And in the next second, when you bend over to put on your pants, you hear this resounding THWAAAAP, and you look up to find a small inner tube protruding from under your blouse. These are not things that the Skinny Girl can understand! She has never been winded from wiping her own backside, she doesn't wear over-sized t-shirts when she goes to the beach, she never settles for just one plate at a buffet, and she has never secretly named her larger stomach roll 'Jude' because every time she looks down it is staring up at her saying "Heeeeeey"!!! No, I'm a loooong ways away from being a Skinny Girl, but I am starting to leave my Big...behind (no pun intended). I still see a Big Girl whenever I look in the mirror (Refer to the former post about the mirror situation) but I also see some of the little changes, too. My legs are starting to look like the kind of legs that are no strangers to squats and the godforsaken lunges. I've also had to move my ring to my middle finger because it keeps sliding off. These are the little things that remind me of what is yet to come.

But the truth is that being Skinny or being Big is really just a state of mind. There are some Skinny Girls who still think like Big Girls and some Big Girls that think like Skinny Girls (especially when it comes to clothing selection). In all the realms of my life I'm a Big Girl that thinks like a Big Girl; except when it comes to my gym classes. When I go to a class, I don't want to be the Big Girl...especially when I am literally the only Big Girl. I don't want to "do what I can" because my size implies a slower pace and a harder time. I want to be on par with all of my friends, but I'm still just not there yet. I can't just disconnect my my mind and my body from my insecurities during classes, either. I take each class very personally. Twice now I've allowed my insecurities and frustrations get the better of me, and I've walked out of a class. I hate that I've done it, especially since I feel like it's an incredibly rude gesture to my instructor. Unfortunately, when I get angry like that, I have two options: leave or throw something. Considering the number of kettlebells and free weights within an arm's distance, I think it's probably best that I left when I did. After the second (and most recent) time, I started bawling on my way home. Halfway through my meltdown I was like, "W-w-what is wrong w-w-with me?! I'm crying over exercise!" But as you may have already gleaned by now, my classes stopped being just "exercise" a long time ago. They're part of my life, part of what makes me happy. When I'm in that gym classroom I want to be what I'm not: a Skinny Girl. I want to be like my classmates right now. I don't want to be this pouty, whiny, insecure girl who over-thinks all of her gym classes.

I got a little perspective handed to me in church this morning. My friend and pastor Mike was giving a sermon about "the least shall become first" and he made this comment that hit home pretty hard for me (and I paraphrase) "When I have finished last, I was much more teachable than when I've finished first. When I was first, or the best, it was easier for me to believe that I was beyond improvement, that I didn't need to change. But when I was last, when I lost, or when I was the weakest on a team, I was most open to change, I was willing to see where I could make improvements, and I was ready to listen." This blog has a lot of "first" and "last" moments for me. In fact, I began this post with a "first" moment and I'm ending it with a "last". So what has my most recent "last" moment taught me? Quit whining and suck it up, cupcake. If I want to be on par with my gym buddies then I need to get over myself and work hard like they do. That's it. Just take it one Step (class) at a time.

And smile.