Two hundred and twenty four days ago, a close friend of mine e-mailed me, my fiancee, and our mutual friend a link to Run For Your Lives, the zombie obstacle course 5k. Having been slowly increasing my exercise regimen and vaguely focusing on fitness for about three months prior to that, I was intrigued and energized. I find it hard to describe the humming, churning, bubbling feeling I had inside of me when I first read about it. This, I thought to myself, is the funnest thing that could possibly exist on the planet. Yes, I was so excited that I used the word "funnest" in my inner monologue. I looked at the obstacles, figured out how long this mysterious "5k" length was, and got to work that same night. It all started simply - a half hour on the elliptical, a few squats and lunges, an afternoon date with Turbo Jam. At the time, I weighed 186 pounds, about 11 pounds less than my largest. I didn't have much of a training plan, but I knew that getting my weight down was going to be priority #1 when it came to being able to finish an obstacle course race.
My initial efforts looked nothing like my current habits and routines. In the couple of months following my decision to do RFYL, I alternated between my elliptical (aka the clothes rack) and Turbo Jam DVDs, often extending dog walks on non-exercise days. I felt like I was being so incredibly active, but looking back at my exercise logs on My Fitness Pal, I was really only exercising about 2-3 days a week. Still, for someone who rarely made the effort even weekly, it was a big shift. The real difference for me and the thing that helped me lose a bunch of weight relatively quickly was calorie counting. I kept to about 1500 calories on rest days and ate back exercise calories on my active days, losing between 1 and 2 pounds each week (most seemed like 2-pound weeks, with several no-loss or plateau periods in there). Even though I'm on a stricter budget now, eating 1300-1400 calories most days and rarely eating back exercise calories, it felt harder in the beginning because it's such a chore to have to care at all. Now, I weigh everything I eat and it doesn't bother me. I don't obsess if I'm not sure of the calories in something, and I don't worry about going over budget for a day or two. Now that I have spent more than six months taking good care of my body, I feel that I understand it better and am better able to care for it properly.
A lot has changed in my fitness regimen over the last seven months. I use the elliptical mainly as a warm-up tool, and then it's usually at the gym before I lift weights. Strength training has become just as important to me as running, particularly because I enjoy it significantly more than almost all other fitness activities. Running does give me satisfaction and a lovely adrenaline/endorphin rush if I have a good run, but the act itself doesn't make me smile. Lifting heavy things does. I'm still firmly a n00b - my form is not great, I am not lifting impressive amounts, and I have no intention of becoming a powerlifter. Yes, there is a huge tub of protein powder in my cabinet, but frankly it doesn't taste very good and I'm not lifting enough volume to justify a shake every lifting day. That being said, I feel entirely confident entering the weight room at my gym, a far cry from my insecure and unsure self just three months ago when I started. The more I am able to do and the happier I become with my body (both in appearance and ability), the fewer shits I give about what others in the gym might or might not think of me. Yeah, I might be dead lifting in a smith machine (no oly bars? rly?), but at least I'm dead lifting instead of doing 15 different tricep exercises trying to "spot tone". See, I'm learning.
My path to Run For Your Lives has educated me beyond what I had imagined. I know more about fitness, weight lifting, cardio, running, my body, and nutrition than I had even planned to know. Even though I still have so much to learn, I at least feel like, if I were left to my own devices, I could take care of myself reasonably well in the future. Who would have thought that a silly 5k would have prompted so much change, growth, and awesomeness?
Well now it's time to face the music. I have built up this race so much in my head that my anxiety about it is getting a little out of control. It's not that I'm worried about my running performance - I already know that my goal is just to finish, and if I can run the whole thing that's great, but I'm not expecting to "survive" with all my flags or even make decent time. It's not that I'm worried I will have trouble with the obstacles - although I'm not what I would call "strong", I'm no longer embarrassingly-weak and the obstacles aren't designed to be that difficult. I don't really know what is making me so nervous. Part of it is that I really hate being chased, as I mentioned in my original RFYL blog post. Although I think the race will be fun, there is an element of terror involved with people coming for you. It's not something that I suspect I will enjoy, at least on a primal level. But even assuming that I find the zombies fun to evade and do not pee my pants when I encounter the first several, there's something else, something I can't put my finger on. I guess there has just been so much anticipation around this mythical, infinitely-in-the-future event that its immediacy and reality are overwhelming to me.
At the same time, I look at how far I have come, ostensibly because of the inspiration gained from training for this race, and I can't help but be happy and excited. I have lost 45 pounds total, 34 of which came off after the zombie 5k was brought to my attention. I have completed Couch-to-5k, or more accurately, I used the first six weeks of the C25K program to get to the point where I could run a 5k. I have made very real, very satisfying strength gains in my bench press, shoulder press, and dead lift. I am significantly closer to being able to do a chin-up. I comfortably fit into size 8 shorts, and had to go to Old Navy yesterday to buy pants that fit considering I have now given away all but two pairs of work pants. And today, even though I am tired from a typical Monday of teaching, and even though I have a significant amount of work to do when I get home, I will put on my leave-nothing-to-the-imagination compression pants and I will run hills outside my house, because I need to work on my speed and acceleration. That's not the kind of thing I really ever expected to say about myself. But I'm happy to say it. It feels important and genuine. And anything that strokes my ego is welcome here.
Although I do have two runs scheduled for this summer (Pug Rescue of New England 5k on June 1st and the Color Run 5k on July 28th), neither of them inspire the same kind of zeal and fury that I felt when I first heard about the zombie 5k. I'm not ready, physically or mentally, to start gunning for things like Tough Mudder, which would be the next logical step if I end up enjoying RFYL. I'm still floundering a bit with my "what next?" crisis, of which I have spoken. I'm not exactly worried that I'll fall off the wagon if I don't have a singular focus, but I do know that I work harder and better if I've got something in mind. One of the best motivations for me on the hardest C25K days was imagining zombies chasing me at a speed juuuuuuust a little faster than my current one. I never had to repeat any runs or take extra breaks. What will be my next inspiration? What amazing and innovative physical challenge is a mere 224 days away?
It feels strange to see the weather for the zombie 5k on the forecast. That's always how I've measured the proximity of events - if the milk expires beyond the date, it's close. If the weather forecast includes the date, it's very close. With both of those true, I am giddy and terrified. Four days, 22 hours, 24 minutes. And counting.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Diary of a Fat Girl - Episode 17: An Open Letter to My Former Gym Teachers
Dear Beverly gym teachers from Briscoe and the high school (years 1995-2002),
You probably don't remember me. While I think it's safe to say that many of my teachers, especially those in the English department, at least have a fair shot at remembering me because of my strong work ethic and endless brown-nosing, I doubt that either of those traits came through in the work I did for you. In fact, I was probably firmly seated among the least memorable students, because I never caused much of a ruckus nor was I one of the elite who seemed to excel so easily at the various activities we did. I enjoyed some of the games, stayed in the background for others, and walked the mile we were supposed to run for the Presidential Fitness Test. Well, in middle school I at least tried to run it, but it became apparent by high school that I was not capable. In fact, I spent most of my teenage years thinking I probably had asthma because of how difficult it was for me to breathe while running. Turns out I was just fat and out of shape.
Gym class was one of the only places in school where I consistently felt like a failure. I guess that's a good thing, from a certain perspective - most of the time, I did well in school and had a decent amount of success, Accelerated Algebra II notwithstanding (Mrs. McCarthy, go fuck yourself. I still like math despite your horrible teaching). But in gym class, at least the majority of the time, I was constantly reminded of how bad I was at everything. It is only now, over a decade since my last phys ed class, that I am starting to understand that it was not my fault.
The curriculum was not exactly great. If you look at what schools are supposed to be teaching in a gym class (or at least, covering between gym and health, which are separated for some reason), it sounds all well and fine, but that was not what you taught me. We did a different sport every few weeks, rotating through them on some mysterious schedule that none of us were privy to except for you. A few weeks of volleyball, then floor hockey, then flag football, then basketball, then tennis, then pickleball (aka "hey, go get that"), and so on. We were rarely given any direct instruction as to the rules of these sports, but instead were expected to know them already, I guess from previous gym classes. We had no advice as to strategy, and for team sports like flag football, indoor kids like myself were all but encouraged to keep to the side and stay out of the jocks' way. There were no objectives, no goals, and no purpose. Once we got changed and did our obligatory warmup, we were to wander over to the equipment bin or the field or whatever made sense for the "unit" we were on. Your job was apparently to yell at kids who didn't want to play and make sure that no one hurt themselves or others too badly.
In fact, I don't recall you doing any instruction at all. It seems a little strange that a teacher would be a full-time babysitter who just watches kids play for 45 minutes at a time. What exactly did you go to school for, anyway? I know that some of you were pretty old school and were gym teachers back when Kennedy was elected, but Jesus, even a gym teacher is a teacher. It's right there in your title. If nothing else, couldn't you do a little game theory? Or strategies for the games we played? Maybe I would have enjoyed flag football a little more if someone bothered to explain to me that there were four downs and that the goal was to get the ball ten yards closer to the other team's end zone. Why did I have to wait until my brother explained football to me when I was 16, when I supposedly had been playing it since sixth grade? With even the lowest possible expectations, wasn't that your job?
Of course, playing a series of sports (badly) doesn't have to be, nor should it be, the foundation of a gym class. Where was the instruction on nutrition? The guidance on how to be fit outside of class? The information about anatomy and physiology that would help us understand our bodies and get/keep them in shape? Even assuming that a health class would cover many of the topics pertinent to teenagers, like reproductive health and substance abuse/addiction, I suspect that there's more to fitness than shooting baskets by myself on the far end of the gym because I can't run enough to play an actual game. I don't know if the blame for this immense lack of content should be placed on those who write the curriculum or those who teach the gym teachers or just the gym teachers themselves. I don't think I can blame you entirely, because the dramatizations I've seen of fictional gym classes seem pretty similar to my experience, so at the very least, this goes beyond Beverly.
[Quick note: I'm not saying that playing sports has nothing to do with fitness or that sports are not a good use of time. But first of all, what we were doing was NOT really playing sports, it was some people playing sports and some people pretending to play sports. Secondly, look at an athlete's training schedule. 100% of his/her time is not spent playing scrimmages. There's other stuff in there. Like, a lot of other stuff.]
What I find most frustrating is that there were brief glimpses of actual fitness work at least a few times per year. In high school, you unlocked a little room underneath some of the bleachers that we called the "Nautilus room" - which I now understand to be the brand of equipment contained therein. And you let us go to town. The boys mostly went across the gym to the other little room that had free weights and barbells in it, but we ladies stuck to the less-intimidating machines. Preacher curls, tricep extensions, chest presses, shoulder presses, leg extensions, and even hip adductors/abductors (which we so cleverly called "the sex machine"). You didn't really tell us what to do or give us any advice - in fact, you usually spent the whole time across with the boys, presumably making sure they didn't drop a 400 lb barbell on their necks - but I loved it. There's something primal and satisfying about moving weight around, and this was my favorite "unit" of the year, with the possible exception of floor hockey, which is one of the few things I am terrible at but still enjoy.
Perhaps if you had let me work in the Nautilus room instead of making me stand around like an asshole waiting to miss a tennis ball, I might have developed a real appreciation for strength training. Like, in 1999 instead of in 2012. I'm not saying it would have necessarily happened, and it's possible I would have just screwed around in there and learned nothing. But it's also possible I would have actually gotten something out of gym class beyond confusion and shame.
Remember around the end of the school year when we were forced to participate in the Presidential Fitness Testing? Of course you remember - it was the only time that any outside standards or expectations tried to hold you accountable for doing anything with us. It's like the MCAS of gym. The five activities we performed for these tests were: V-sit (flexibility), mile run, shuttle sprints, pull-ups, and sit-ups. You know what would have helped me do better on those tests? IF WE HAD EVER TRIED DOING ANY OF THOSE THINGS BEFORE BEING TESTED ON THEM. The most you ever made us run was doing a lap around the gym for a warm-up, which was less than a quarter mile. And forget pull-ups and sit-ups, that shit was totally foreign to me until test day. That's like leaving me in a library to pick my nose and then giving me a reading comprehension test. Yeah, I was surrounded by the tools that could improve my skills, but if you don't show me how to use them and work with me, what the fuck am I supposed to learn?
More than anything else, I feel disappointed about the wasted opportunity. You had my undivided attention for 45 minutes every single day. If I had spent even half of that time being truly active, I might not have gone from a size 10 to a size 16 over the course of high school and college. Sure, my eating habits can take the brunt of the blame for that, but now that I know it's possible to ignite a passion for fitness inside myself, I'm angry that it took this long to happen. YOU were the ones who could have helped me. YOU were the ones responsible for my physical education. YOU had the knowledge, the equipment, and the time to spare to help me get fit. And you didn't. You wasted my time, you made me dislike the very activities that I should have been engaging in regularly, and you judged me for it. Maybe you think we don't notice the disdain with which you interact with the "non-sports" kids. Maybe you think we can't see the eye rolls or the heavy sighs of impatience when we don't jump at the chance to go run around for a half hour. Well, it was obvious to me, and I'm sure to the other kids too, exactly who you felt was worthy of your time. And it sure as shit wasn't the chubby girl who couldn't run a mile.
I know there are a lot of barriers to having high-quality physical education in American schools. No Child Left Behind and its test-based accountability has forced districts to emphasize the core subject areas to the detriment of electives, extra-curricular activities, sports, clubs, and even recess in elementary schools. In Massachusetts, the MCAS tests students in English, Math, and Science. All other subject areas and interests must be considered only after those three subjects have been covered thoroughly, which takes up a substantial portion of the day. From a district-level perspective, I can understand that it's easy to cut phys ed requirements to make room for more academic considerations. But gym getting the shaft makes it even more important that you make the best possible use of the time you have with kids. You need to find ways to improve your curriculum and your teaching, and emphasize core skills and knowledge with what little time you do have. I'm a teacher, so trust me; I know what the fuck I'm talking about here. You don't have time to screw around with pickleball. If you don't have control over the requirements and the administrative decisions, at least don't be a fucking asshole when it comes to decisions you do control. Help kids. Teach them. Encourage them to develop skills for life in a safe, nonjudgmental environment. Try differentiated instruction for once, you twats.
It's been a decade since I graduated high school, and I now teach in an alternative high school program for students who are struggling to graduate. When students are admitted to my program, their schedules are created and their path to graduation is mapped out. You know what we do to make the numbers work? We get gym and health requirements waved. Do you know why we do this? Because it's easy. Schools don't give a shit about those requirements, and since we have neither the staff nor the facilities to teach those subject areas, we get them waved. And it fucking sucks. Because every day I teach a bunch of overweight, unhealthy inner city kids who eat McDonald's at least twice a day. They don't know any better, and I'm just the English teacher - the best I can manage is to tell them how many calories they should be eating a day and how many of those are covered by the extra large coffee coolata they got from Dunkin Donuts. Then it's time to get down to academics, and leave the health stuff behind.
One of my students has clinical depression and also happens to be probably a hundred pounds overweight. When I started losing weight, we had a few conversations about his own goals and how he was struggling to achieve anything with his inconsistent efforts. At his request, I printed him the treadmill version of Couch-to-5k for him to try at home, which he has done a few times, but with limited success. I gave him a Jillian Michaels DVD (that I hated because she's too mean, but he loved) as a reward for coming to school on time on a Monday (a near-impossible feat for many of my students). But every day I see him, I know he's still struggling. I wish I could communicate to him how much his life could change if he focused more on fitness. I want to show him research studies that support regular exercise as a valid treatment for depression. I want to spend time with him talking about his habits and goals, discussing food diaries and exercise plans, but that's not my place. In fact, it would be YOUR place. But you did fuck-all for me, so maybe I shouldn't lament that my school waves phys ed. After all, what good did it do me?
Sincerely,
Amber H.
BHS Class of 2002
45 pounds lost in 9 months
12:00 mile
Fuck You
You probably don't remember me. While I think it's safe to say that many of my teachers, especially those in the English department, at least have a fair shot at remembering me because of my strong work ethic and endless brown-nosing, I doubt that either of those traits came through in the work I did for you. In fact, I was probably firmly seated among the least memorable students, because I never caused much of a ruckus nor was I one of the elite who seemed to excel so easily at the various activities we did. I enjoyed some of the games, stayed in the background for others, and walked the mile we were supposed to run for the Presidential Fitness Test. Well, in middle school I at least tried to run it, but it became apparent by high school that I was not capable. In fact, I spent most of my teenage years thinking I probably had asthma because of how difficult it was for me to breathe while running. Turns out I was just fat and out of shape.
Gym class was one of the only places in school where I consistently felt like a failure. I guess that's a good thing, from a certain perspective - most of the time, I did well in school and had a decent amount of success, Accelerated Algebra II notwithstanding (Mrs. McCarthy, go fuck yourself. I still like math despite your horrible teaching). But in gym class, at least the majority of the time, I was constantly reminded of how bad I was at everything. It is only now, over a decade since my last phys ed class, that I am starting to understand that it was not my fault.
The curriculum was not exactly great. If you look at what schools are supposed to be teaching in a gym class (or at least, covering between gym and health, which are separated for some reason), it sounds all well and fine, but that was not what you taught me. We did a different sport every few weeks, rotating through them on some mysterious schedule that none of us were privy to except for you. A few weeks of volleyball, then floor hockey, then flag football, then basketball, then tennis, then pickleball (aka "hey, go get that"), and so on. We were rarely given any direct instruction as to the rules of these sports, but instead were expected to know them already, I guess from previous gym classes. We had no advice as to strategy, and for team sports like flag football, indoor kids like myself were all but encouraged to keep to the side and stay out of the jocks' way. There were no objectives, no goals, and no purpose. Once we got changed and did our obligatory warmup, we were to wander over to the equipment bin or the field or whatever made sense for the "unit" we were on. Your job was apparently to yell at kids who didn't want to play and make sure that no one hurt themselves or others too badly.
In fact, I don't recall you doing any instruction at all. It seems a little strange that a teacher would be a full-time babysitter who just watches kids play for 45 minutes at a time. What exactly did you go to school for, anyway? I know that some of you were pretty old school and were gym teachers back when Kennedy was elected, but Jesus, even a gym teacher is a teacher. It's right there in your title. If nothing else, couldn't you do a little game theory? Or strategies for the games we played? Maybe I would have enjoyed flag football a little more if someone bothered to explain to me that there were four downs and that the goal was to get the ball ten yards closer to the other team's end zone. Why did I have to wait until my brother explained football to me when I was 16, when I supposedly had been playing it since sixth grade? With even the lowest possible expectations, wasn't that your job?
Of course, playing a series of sports (badly) doesn't have to be, nor should it be, the foundation of a gym class. Where was the instruction on nutrition? The guidance on how to be fit outside of class? The information about anatomy and physiology that would help us understand our bodies and get/keep them in shape? Even assuming that a health class would cover many of the topics pertinent to teenagers, like reproductive health and substance abuse/addiction, I suspect that there's more to fitness than shooting baskets by myself on the far end of the gym because I can't run enough to play an actual game. I don't know if the blame for this immense lack of content should be placed on those who write the curriculum or those who teach the gym teachers or just the gym teachers themselves. I don't think I can blame you entirely, because the dramatizations I've seen of fictional gym classes seem pretty similar to my experience, so at the very least, this goes beyond Beverly.
[Quick note: I'm not saying that playing sports has nothing to do with fitness or that sports are not a good use of time. But first of all, what we were doing was NOT really playing sports, it was some people playing sports and some people pretending to play sports. Secondly, look at an athlete's training schedule. 100% of his/her time is not spent playing scrimmages. There's other stuff in there. Like, a lot of other stuff.]
What I find most frustrating is that there were brief glimpses of actual fitness work at least a few times per year. In high school, you unlocked a little room underneath some of the bleachers that we called the "Nautilus room" - which I now understand to be the brand of equipment contained therein. And you let us go to town. The boys mostly went across the gym to the other little room that had free weights and barbells in it, but we ladies stuck to the less-intimidating machines. Preacher curls, tricep extensions, chest presses, shoulder presses, leg extensions, and even hip adductors/abductors (which we so cleverly called "the sex machine"). You didn't really tell us what to do or give us any advice - in fact, you usually spent the whole time across with the boys, presumably making sure they didn't drop a 400 lb barbell on their necks - but I loved it. There's something primal and satisfying about moving weight around, and this was my favorite "unit" of the year, with the possible exception of floor hockey, which is one of the few things I am terrible at but still enjoy.
Perhaps if you had let me work in the Nautilus room instead of making me stand around like an asshole waiting to miss a tennis ball, I might have developed a real appreciation for strength training. Like, in 1999 instead of in 2012. I'm not saying it would have necessarily happened, and it's possible I would have just screwed around in there and learned nothing. But it's also possible I would have actually gotten something out of gym class beyond confusion and shame.
Remember around the end of the school year when we were forced to participate in the Presidential Fitness Testing? Of course you remember - it was the only time that any outside standards or expectations tried to hold you accountable for doing anything with us. It's like the MCAS of gym. The five activities we performed for these tests were: V-sit (flexibility), mile run, shuttle sprints, pull-ups, and sit-ups. You know what would have helped me do better on those tests? IF WE HAD EVER TRIED DOING ANY OF THOSE THINGS BEFORE BEING TESTED ON THEM. The most you ever made us run was doing a lap around the gym for a warm-up, which was less than a quarter mile. And forget pull-ups and sit-ups, that shit was totally foreign to me until test day. That's like leaving me in a library to pick my nose and then giving me a reading comprehension test. Yeah, I was surrounded by the tools that could improve my skills, but if you don't show me how to use them and work with me, what the fuck am I supposed to learn?
More than anything else, I feel disappointed about the wasted opportunity. You had my undivided attention for 45 minutes every single day. If I had spent even half of that time being truly active, I might not have gone from a size 10 to a size 16 over the course of high school and college. Sure, my eating habits can take the brunt of the blame for that, but now that I know it's possible to ignite a passion for fitness inside myself, I'm angry that it took this long to happen. YOU were the ones who could have helped me. YOU were the ones responsible for my physical education. YOU had the knowledge, the equipment, and the time to spare to help me get fit. And you didn't. You wasted my time, you made me dislike the very activities that I should have been engaging in regularly, and you judged me for it. Maybe you think we don't notice the disdain with which you interact with the "non-sports" kids. Maybe you think we can't see the eye rolls or the heavy sighs of impatience when we don't jump at the chance to go run around for a half hour. Well, it was obvious to me, and I'm sure to the other kids too, exactly who you felt was worthy of your time. And it sure as shit wasn't the chubby girl who couldn't run a mile.
I know there are a lot of barriers to having high-quality physical education in American schools. No Child Left Behind and its test-based accountability has forced districts to emphasize the core subject areas to the detriment of electives, extra-curricular activities, sports, clubs, and even recess in elementary schools. In Massachusetts, the MCAS tests students in English, Math, and Science. All other subject areas and interests must be considered only after those three subjects have been covered thoroughly, which takes up a substantial portion of the day. From a district-level perspective, I can understand that it's easy to cut phys ed requirements to make room for more academic considerations. But gym getting the shaft makes it even more important that you make the best possible use of the time you have with kids. You need to find ways to improve your curriculum and your teaching, and emphasize core skills and knowledge with what little time you do have. I'm a teacher, so trust me; I know what the fuck I'm talking about here. You don't have time to screw around with pickleball. If you don't have control over the requirements and the administrative decisions, at least don't be a fucking asshole when it comes to decisions you do control. Help kids. Teach them. Encourage them to develop skills for life in a safe, nonjudgmental environment. Try differentiated instruction for once, you twats.
It's been a decade since I graduated high school, and I now teach in an alternative high school program for students who are struggling to graduate. When students are admitted to my program, their schedules are created and their path to graduation is mapped out. You know what we do to make the numbers work? We get gym and health requirements waved. Do you know why we do this? Because it's easy. Schools don't give a shit about those requirements, and since we have neither the staff nor the facilities to teach those subject areas, we get them waved. And it fucking sucks. Because every day I teach a bunch of overweight, unhealthy inner city kids who eat McDonald's at least twice a day. They don't know any better, and I'm just the English teacher - the best I can manage is to tell them how many calories they should be eating a day and how many of those are covered by the extra large coffee coolata they got from Dunkin Donuts. Then it's time to get down to academics, and leave the health stuff behind.
One of my students has clinical depression and also happens to be probably a hundred pounds overweight. When I started losing weight, we had a few conversations about his own goals and how he was struggling to achieve anything with his inconsistent efforts. At his request, I printed him the treadmill version of Couch-to-5k for him to try at home, which he has done a few times, but with limited success. I gave him a Jillian Michaels DVD (that I hated because she's too mean, but he loved) as a reward for coming to school on time on a Monday (a near-impossible feat for many of my students). But every day I see him, I know he's still struggling. I wish I could communicate to him how much his life could change if he focused more on fitness. I want to show him research studies that support regular exercise as a valid treatment for depression. I want to spend time with him talking about his habits and goals, discussing food diaries and exercise plans, but that's not my place. In fact, it would be YOUR place. But you did fuck-all for me, so maybe I shouldn't lament that my school waves phys ed. After all, what good did it do me?
Sincerely,
Amber H.
BHS Class of 2002
45 pounds lost in 9 months
12:00 mile
Fuck You
Thursday, April 05, 2012
Diary of a Fat Girl - Episode 16: "Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet..."
I have been noticing lately that my engagement ring feels loose. Not quite falling-off loose, but not as secure as I would like. I've had it for over 3 months now, so I know it's just not that it's new and I'm hyper-conscious of it, and it's not run-of-the-mill paranoia about it falling off. I've lost exactly 17 pounds between the day I first donned the ring to now (and was about 10 lbs heavier before that, back when he asked me oh so subtly for my "jewelry sizes"). So of those 27 pounds, if even a few ounces of those came from my fingers, then yeah, it makes sense that I would be a different ring size. My high school ring (which I lost many years ago and still miss, because it was awesome) was a size 5½ I think, and that fit my right ring finger. In college, a size 6 was correct. At my biggest, 6½ was my ring size. When Dan asked me my sizes, and I was about 10 lbs down from my biggest, I told him that 6 or 6½ was my ring size. He went with 6½, which was correct at the time, so I can't fault him for it. It fit fine when I got it, which is why I didn't take advantage of the jeweler's free re-size period of 60 days.
However, as I descend firmly into the 150s of weight, a territory unknown to me for at least the last decade, I find that I don't know what my ring size is. And I certainly don't know what it will be when I lose another 10 or 15 or 20 pounds. I don't even know what weight I'm shooting for, much less whether my sausage fingers will still be little sausages at such a weight. But I do know that I keep my ring on its designated holder on the bathroom sink more and more often these days, so paranoid am I that I'm going to calorie deficit this ring right off my finger. And an engagement ring that you can't wear is kind of lame.
So, knowing that a re-size was in the near future, I casually dropped this information into a conversation with Dan the other day. Here is a reenactment:
Knowing that Dan didn't know what the fuck he was talking about, but also knowing that I wasn't sure of the price hike for platinum, I went online and searched around. Information was pretty all over the place, but every forum and website I saw suggested that it would either be under $100 or free, depending on the jeweler. I went on the website of the company that made my ring and did their little customer service chat thing. Cost of resizing this ring? $50.
There are several things that really bother me about this whole thing, and it's certainly not about paying no goddamned fifty bucks to re-size a ring. First, Dan's reaction was so overwhelmingly negative that I was pretty taken aback. I did expect him to frown upon an additional cost associated with our engagement/impending marriage, but I didn't expect him to shit bricks. And at least a brick or two did, indeed, get shat. I know that he doesn't understand what I'm about to say, but...seriously, you're mad about something that is a result of me losing weight? SERIOUSLY?
[Tangent: He certainly wasn't upset when I gave away trash bag after trash bag of clothes, totaling now three separate trips to Good Will. Does he give a shit that I just lost probably $2000 worth of my accumulated wardrobe? Nah, honey badger don't give a fuck. When I express any disdain for having to get rid of so many clothes, some of which were not cheap, Dan is Captain Silver Lining, saying that it's for a good reason and now I won't have such a crowded closet, yadda yadda. He's allllll about positivity then. And I will tell you why. Dan believes that the amount of stuff I own is significantly greater than the amount the I need and/or the amount that any person should own. He owns like 5 pairs of pants, so therefore everyone should own 5 pairs of pants. He has 25 t-shirts, so therefore everyone should have 25 t-shirts. If I have 30 t-shirts (and I assure you, the number is far greater, even with the repeated wardrobe cullings), then that is too many, regardless of the sources of the shirts, my use or need of them, or my storage of them. Moreover, it seems to irk him, slightly but constantly, that I have "too much stuff". I will be the first to admit that I have lots of things. I follow George Carlin's philosophy/critique of using a house to keep all your stuff while you're out getting more stuff. My personal policy is that as long as everyone can be "put away" whether it be a closet or a drawer or what have you, then you're fine. If stuff is just out and that's where it lives (hoarders-style), then that's too much stuff. Dan and I do not have the same benchmarks/standards for this, and while I don't really care if Dan is a bit spartan in his possessions, he certainly gives a shit when I'm sybaritic in mine. /Tangent]
So the fact that Dan was so up in arms about my ring getting to be too big for me bothered me. I'm not saying he has to celebrate every inconvenience that comes with dropping 3 stone, but maybe don't treat my weight loss as a burden, you know? He already laments how he doesn't get to order takeout as much anymore because I won't order with him (what, are his fingers/legs broken that he can't get his own dinner?), which he's not saying to make me feel bad but is just saying what's on his mind, but holy shit, Supportive Jones he is not. Another, weight-unrelated issue I had with our conversation about ring resizing is that he assumed that the financial burden was his. He never thought about the possibility of me paying for this process, despite the fact that I'm the one who took action that directly resulted in the ring no longer fitting. Maybe he assumed responsibility because he bought me the ring, or maybe it was because I bothered to say something to him about it so he figured that meant I expected him to pay for it. I don't know. But dude, I got this. All fifty dollars of it.
A few weeks ago, Dan and I were talking with some mutual friend of ours whom I can't presently recall, and that person mentioned my blog. Dan regretfully said he still hadn't read it, which I find funny because I told him about it once five years ago and have nary mentioned it again. He later asked me if he should be afraid to read it and if I spend the whole time bad-mouthing him, and we had a good chuckle over that. I told him that I would never be offended if he didn't read it, but that he was welcome to do so. As I look back at past entries, I find a surprising number of them either are directly inspired by conflict with Dan or at least offer passing critiques of him. I guess it makes sense that the person I love, live with, and plan to marry would end up being a frequent subject in my blog, but it bothers me to look at my own entries and see this sea of negativity, much of it directed at him. It certainly was never my intent with this blog (nor could it have been, since it's been around longer than he has), but it seems that it has become a slightly different animal over time. Even as I go back and obsessively reread this very entry for typos and spelling errors (which still seem to sneak through no matter how much I proof it), I'm a little surprised at how angry I sound/am.
I think I use this blog primarily the way I would use a therapist. And rereading this shit, I think I might have a need for a real one of those. This blog does a great job at accepting me for who I am and not judging me for the numerous mistakes I've made, but it doesn't offer much in the way of probing questions and insightful advice. Yesterday I spent a half an hour looking up information on Selective Eating Disorder (what they're now calling us grown-ass picky eaters), and found that there's an eating disorders specialist at Tufts Medical Center downtown who works with selective eaters. Should I get a referral from my PCP and just go? Am I ready to start treatment for a disorder? It sounds so grave when I say it like that. Would this specialist be able to then refer me to a boring ol' psychiatrist? Do I really want to have two shrinks when before I had none? Oye. It's all getting very complicated. When I wanted to lose weight but couldn't seem to do it, life seemed a lot simpler. There was a single enemy, and it required a single battle plan. The reasons for my life-long weight problems were legion; I had to wade through a lot just to even get started, and many of those causes persist today. But it was still a single issue, about which I could safely become single-minded. Now that I have the power to change my body, something I never thought I could really do, what else can I do? And now that I have committed to my health, am I now inextricably bound to the responsibility of fixing everything about myself? Where do I draw the line between self-improvement and hypercritical self-destruction? Knowing that change requires destroying the old habits and traits, how much of myself should I attempt to replace with what I believe to be the upgraded version?
This is all getting very deep and dramatic and serious. But it's Thursday afternoon and I have tomorrow off and PAX East is this weekend and tomorrow I'ma do a final weigh-in at my gym for a weight loss contest that I'm probably going to win. So a lot of good things are happening and I need to just be. To facilitate being, here is a puppy:
However, as I descend firmly into the 150s of weight, a territory unknown to me for at least the last decade, I find that I don't know what my ring size is. And I certainly don't know what it will be when I lose another 10 or 15 or 20 pounds. I don't even know what weight I'm shooting for, much less whether my sausage fingers will still be little sausages at such a weight. But I do know that I keep my ring on its designated holder on the bathroom sink more and more often these days, so paranoid am I that I'm going to calorie deficit this ring right off my finger. And an engagement ring that you can't wear is kind of lame.
So, knowing that a re-size was in the near future, I casually dropped this information into a conversation with Dan the other day. Here is a reenactment:
Amber: I think I've finally lost enough weight that my ring is kind of loose. I might have to get it sized down.
Dan: Oh, shit, really? Ugh.
Amber: Yeah, well, that's what happens when you lose a bunch of weight.
Dan: Is it like, a little loose, or falling off?
Amber: Right now it's a little loose, but it's only going to get looser. Do know how much it'll cost to get it re-sized? I know the company you got it from had a free re-size period, but I know it's expired by now. I figure it'll be more expensive because it's platinum, but it shouldn't be that bad.
Dan: I mean, I don't know the exact numbers, but it's going to be crazy expensive. With it being platinum, it's going to cost a shitload of money.
Amber: Well, if it's more than three figures, then I'm not going to worry about it, that's too much. I'll wear it on a different finger if I have to.
Dan: Oh, it's going to be at least three figures. I'll be lucky if I get away with paying less than $500.
Knowing that Dan didn't know what the fuck he was talking about, but also knowing that I wasn't sure of the price hike for platinum, I went online and searched around. Information was pretty all over the place, but every forum and website I saw suggested that it would either be under $100 or free, depending on the jeweler. I went on the website of the company that made my ring and did their little customer service chat thing. Cost of resizing this ring? $50.
There are several things that really bother me about this whole thing, and it's certainly not about paying no goddamned fifty bucks to re-size a ring. First, Dan's reaction was so overwhelmingly negative that I was pretty taken aback. I did expect him to frown upon an additional cost associated with our engagement/impending marriage, but I didn't expect him to shit bricks. And at least a brick or two did, indeed, get shat. I know that he doesn't understand what I'm about to say, but...seriously, you're mad about something that is a result of me losing weight? SERIOUSLY?
[Tangent: He certainly wasn't upset when I gave away trash bag after trash bag of clothes, totaling now three separate trips to Good Will. Does he give a shit that I just lost probably $2000 worth of my accumulated wardrobe? Nah, honey badger don't give a fuck. When I express any disdain for having to get rid of so many clothes, some of which were not cheap, Dan is Captain Silver Lining, saying that it's for a good reason and now I won't have such a crowded closet, yadda yadda. He's allllll about positivity then. And I will tell you why. Dan believes that the amount of stuff I own is significantly greater than the amount the I need and/or the amount that any person should own. He owns like 5 pairs of pants, so therefore everyone should own 5 pairs of pants. He has 25 t-shirts, so therefore everyone should have 25 t-shirts. If I have 30 t-shirts (and I assure you, the number is far greater, even with the repeated wardrobe cullings), then that is too many, regardless of the sources of the shirts, my use or need of them, or my storage of them. Moreover, it seems to irk him, slightly but constantly, that I have "too much stuff". I will be the first to admit that I have lots of things. I follow George Carlin's philosophy/critique of using a house to keep all your stuff while you're out getting more stuff. My personal policy is that as long as everyone can be "put away" whether it be a closet or a drawer or what have you, then you're fine. If stuff is just out and that's where it lives (hoarders-style), then that's too much stuff. Dan and I do not have the same benchmarks/standards for this, and while I don't really care if Dan is a bit spartan in his possessions, he certainly gives a shit when I'm sybaritic in mine. /Tangent]
So the fact that Dan was so up in arms about my ring getting to be too big for me bothered me. I'm not saying he has to celebrate every inconvenience that comes with dropping 3 stone, but maybe don't treat my weight loss as a burden, you know? He already laments how he doesn't get to order takeout as much anymore because I won't order with him (what, are his fingers/legs broken that he can't get his own dinner?), which he's not saying to make me feel bad but is just saying what's on his mind, but holy shit, Supportive Jones he is not. Another, weight-unrelated issue I had with our conversation about ring resizing is that he assumed that the financial burden was his. He never thought about the possibility of me paying for this process, despite the fact that I'm the one who took action that directly resulted in the ring no longer fitting. Maybe he assumed responsibility because he bought me the ring, or maybe it was because I bothered to say something to him about it so he figured that meant I expected him to pay for it. I don't know. But dude, I got this. All fifty dollars of it.
A few weeks ago, Dan and I were talking with some mutual friend of ours whom I can't presently recall, and that person mentioned my blog. Dan regretfully said he still hadn't read it, which I find funny because I told him about it once five years ago and have nary mentioned it again. He later asked me if he should be afraid to read it and if I spend the whole time bad-mouthing him, and we had a good chuckle over that. I told him that I would never be offended if he didn't read it, but that he was welcome to do so. As I look back at past entries, I find a surprising number of them either are directly inspired by conflict with Dan or at least offer passing critiques of him. I guess it makes sense that the person I love, live with, and plan to marry would end up being a frequent subject in my blog, but it bothers me to look at my own entries and see this sea of negativity, much of it directed at him. It certainly was never my intent with this blog (nor could it have been, since it's been around longer than he has), but it seems that it has become a slightly different animal over time. Even as I go back and obsessively reread this very entry for typos and spelling errors (which still seem to sneak through no matter how much I proof it), I'm a little surprised at how angry I sound/am.
I think I use this blog primarily the way I would use a therapist. And rereading this shit, I think I might have a need for a real one of those. This blog does a great job at accepting me for who I am and not judging me for the numerous mistakes I've made, but it doesn't offer much in the way of probing questions and insightful advice. Yesterday I spent a half an hour looking up information on Selective Eating Disorder (what they're now calling us grown-ass picky eaters), and found that there's an eating disorders specialist at Tufts Medical Center downtown who works with selective eaters. Should I get a referral from my PCP and just go? Am I ready to start treatment for a disorder? It sounds so grave when I say it like that. Would this specialist be able to then refer me to a boring ol' psychiatrist? Do I really want to have two shrinks when before I had none? Oye. It's all getting very complicated. When I wanted to lose weight but couldn't seem to do it, life seemed a lot simpler. There was a single enemy, and it required a single battle plan. The reasons for my life-long weight problems were legion; I had to wade through a lot just to even get started, and many of those causes persist today. But it was still a single issue, about which I could safely become single-minded. Now that I have the power to change my body, something I never thought I could really do, what else can I do? And now that I have committed to my health, am I now inextricably bound to the responsibility of fixing everything about myself? Where do I draw the line between self-improvement and hypercritical self-destruction? Knowing that change requires destroying the old habits and traits, how much of myself should I attempt to replace with what I believe to be the upgraded version?
This is all getting very deep and dramatic and serious. But it's Thursday afternoon and I have tomorrow off and PAX East is this weekend and tomorrow I'ma do a final weigh-in at my gym for a weight loss contest that I'm probably going to win. So a lot of good things are happening and I need to just be. To facilitate being, here is a puppy:
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