Around the Bend

Let's play a lovely game of high-low, and I'll go first (you can mentally chime in with me after you read this):

Low: I haven't been a very disciplined (non-Catholic) Catholic girl during this season of Lent. To be perfectly honest, if I wasn't so blatantly smitten with Yogi Jim's country charm and wholesome colloquialisms during class, I probably wouldn't even bother doing yoga on Tuesday/Thursday nights at the gym. I'd definitely lift and then go on the elliptical, but I would not opt to invest an hour of my body's energy in doing yoga (to all my yoga-loving readers, and especially those in PDX, this is simply an opinion about my personal preference, not a proclamation about the value of yoga as exercise) . My body, by the way, is in a weird, middle place right now (not to be confused with a plateau, which is another, more evil, type of weird, middle place). When you maintain an 18-month habit of exercising regularly, it becomes very difficult to choose to do nothing (I'll go on four mile walks on my day off out of sheer restlessness). When 90% of your workouts are fast-paced, cardio-intense gym classes, it is even more difficult to just do anything, even an hour of yoga with the amazing bending Jims. A year ago, back in my non-sports bra-wearing, over 220-lbs, and completely uncoordinated days, I would leave those yoga classes drenched in sweat and feeling thoroughly spent; my body needed that calmer form of intensity and it was a great work out for where I was then. But for where I am right now, my workout schedule can be summed up by Goose and Maverick: I feel the need, the need for speed.

 I really wanted to be able to tell you all that I followed through with my yoga promise, but I didn't. And I'm OK with that because during this process I learned that I really just don't have an emotional connection with yoga. If you exercise at all, chances are there is some activity/sport/class that you tend to favor above all others. In my family, my sister Kim loves running and bikram yoga, Christina loves doing anything that involves the outdoors and kickboxing, and I, not surprisingly, love Zumba (with Cardio Sculpt and kickboxing tied for second place in my heart). If you were to compare my exercise preferences to a balanced meal, Zumba would be my big portion of greens, kickboxing and Cardio Sculpt would be my smaller portions of (complex) carbohydrates and (vegetable) protein, and a class like yoga would be the occasional late-night snack, like popcorn. I just couldn't eat popcorn every night for forty days*. Sorry, dedicated Lent-ers! By the way, just in case you're wondering what I'd consider to be dessert, a rare treat of perfectly indulgent happiness: Zumbathons.

*In hindsight, I really wish I had actually set out to practice Zumba every day of Lent, but when it's Ash Wednesday and you're sitting in Catholic church, and a stern-faced nun smears the Cross on your forehead, you're not really thinking, "Lord, in honor of your impending Resurrection from the Cross, I'm going work extra hard on my pelvic thrusts during Beanie Man's 'Gimme, Gimme, Gimme'. This is my sacrifice to your glory. Amen". Yoga seemed the more Lent-appropriate exercise option.

High: I've hit the -80lb mark. That means I'm 20 lbs away from the next big milestone of a 100 lb weight-loss and 40 lbs away from The Big Goal (insert trumpet playing). At this point, I'm hoping that after reading the -80 lb news, you sort of got over your disappointment in me for being a lousy (non-Catholic) Catholic. If you're not over said disappointment in my apparent lack of religious tradition, let me remind you that Passover is in four days and we can discuss your feelings at some point during the seder when I'm not singing the blessings. In Hebrew (I'm a non-Jewish Jew, too).

*Medium-High: I texted Chrissy about my weight-loss milestone (I also told her, in the most respectful of ways, that there had better be some kind of Zumba party scheduled for when I hit -100lbs because that kind of thing doesn't just happen every day, you know...). She figured that at the rate I was going (-1lb a week), it looked like I would meet that goal around late July. I was pretty excited about that very real, very not-so-far-off date for a whole 20 seconds before I read the part of her text message that said "And you know these next 20 lbs are going to be hard". That's the thing about Chrissy: she will not, under any circumstances, bull-crap you and especially not when it comes to her field of expertise. I'll never forget the time she began HIIT class by saying, "Guys, I'm gonna tell you all right now that tonight's class...it's going be hard". Sure enough, at some point during that class I actually put my sweaty forehead on the gym carpet and thought, "This is it. This is the moment when everything is going to explode out of both ends, and then I will never come back to the gym and I'll go back to being 253 pounds" (Thankfully, I did not explode). Needless to say, when I re-read that text, I actually said out loud, "Oh God...these next 20 lbs are going to be hard..."

Of course, I didn't actually get why the next 20 lbs had to be so hard. Please understand that I am still new at this 'being healthy' stuff. I am up to my ears in women's health magazines, journal abstracts, and assorted books to learn about why the human body is a lying, water-retaining jerk face that specializes in playing mind games (nothing conclusive yet). It is my feeling that in a just world, a person who works out regularly should be able to eat without ever having to think about calories. In a just world, there would be no skinny people that could eat anything and everything, and never once gain a pound. And in a just world, when I burn 3,500 calories a week, even if it's a week when I'm a pissy, menstruating wreck, I. should. lose. a. pound. I don't buy this whole "your body thinks its going into starvation mode, so it's slowing down your weight loss progress" crap. I want to send my body a note that says, "Dear Body, do you not recall that short Italian lady that pushed you out 28 years ago, the one whose love language is cooking? Starvation mode?...Really?..."

 Nevertheless I really really want to hit that -100 lb mark by July. As cheesy as this sounds, there's a kind of symbolic awesomeness to celebrating my liberation from obesity within a few weeks of Independence Day. Finally, and this is a bit hard to explain, but it means something to me to have someone like Chrissy say (and I paraphrase) "It looks like you might be -100lbs by July and it's going to be hard". It reminds me of my very first 5K, actually. I ran alone and it was very difficult for me (I had only ever run for 20 minutes at a time up until that point). But what I remember most about that race, other than the shock of actually finishing, was that every time I'd round the bend, Chrissy, who was running way ahead of me in the distance, would turn to check where I was and wave back at me. I didn't get all choked up over it or anything, but it did make me think, "She just..assumes I'll be around the bend...running..." Like I was a runner. And then it hit me that I actually was a runner at that moment. That's the other thing about Chrissy; she never sees me as "fat" and she certainly doesn't allow me to use it as an excuse to take it easy in her classes. She expects me, and everyone else, to keep going and push myself forward. And because she expects this kind of effort from me, I, in turn, do my best to meet her expectations. But even though I'm slower and my form is lousy, I never once think of myself as fat when I'm in those classes. I only ever think "I can and I will do this."

 So regardless of whether or not I meet the July goal, here are three truths about it:

1. I will lose these next 20 pounds, regardless of the hows and whens.
2. It will be very difficult and seemingly endless.
3. At some point I will stop seeing myself as fat outside of the gym classroom.