Thursday night workout with Drew was just awesome. I worked hard, left full of sweat and accomplishment. Perfect end to a busy day.
I arrived early…just ….cuz. My mom used to say, “Diane, you were born 5 mins early…..and it hasn’t worn off yet!” Haha…it’s a personality trait. Well, being early today meant I had a chance to meet up with David. He said…come sit down, we haven’t talked in a while. He said, he’d been thinking about me.
Of course…I immediately fall into my own personal guilt trip. “Yea, I fell off the wagon last week, ate my stress, ….but I pulled it together David, I fixed me…I’m….bette…r…”
My words blew by him like a breeze, he paid them no mind. He and I were NOT having the same conversation, I was about to realize. He said…”I want you to learn how to just be.”
<crickets….crickets>
Um. Be What, David? What’d’ya want me to be. Cuz, I’ll get started on that right now. You assign the work and I produce. It’s how I’m wired….so….just tell me what’I’gotta’be…and…
But then it clicked. I was a little slow. I was already deep in my self-judgment zone. It took a minute to climb back up to street level, put away my guilt trip and be present with him. He wants me to stop driving.
Hi, my name is Diane. And I’m a driver. I drive. I have a drive. I drive myself, I drive others. In fact, I have a hard time “not driving”. Ask Peter. He’ll tell you. (Actually, please don’t ask him. Im not sure I’m ready to hear what he’d say….LOL)
I’m an all-or-nothing kinda girl. When I’m “All” in, I get LIT, in my brain, on an idea (a goal) and I’m like a stick of dynamite. I start driving myself like that dynamite is about to go off, and I have to GET THERE man. By now, after all these years…I should know how this story ends. I drive myself to exhaustion. Then I stop driving. I run outta gas. And then the “Nothing” part takes over and I fall back. Allllllthewaayyyybaaacktothebeginning…..
So David sits there in his chair. CrissCrossAppleSauce he called it…LOL . He was deeply reflecting and said I wish you could turn yourself off and Just Be.
Yea. Me too. Whew…. easier said than done.
He said he knew I was going to come to this point. This mental challenge point. I nodded. I knew it too. I’m about to that weight where I ran out of gas last time, seven years ago. That mental wall, where I can’t see over or around it. What’s over there? What does it feel like past there? How do I get over it, around it, how to I blow the d@mn thing up so I can keep walking my journey?
I left David…and I told him…”I was just about to tell you, I’ll have to think about how to just be….LOL, but that’s exactly what I SHOULDN’T Do” . We laughed it off together. Stop driving Diane.
But that’s my next thing. That’s the key to making the wall evaporate….
I need to learn to stop driving and just let myself be…
Deep breaths… Oxygen is Life. I’m a sentient being… and I’m not afraid. That’s a start…
I’ve lost 73 pounds through a coordinated effort of working out AND good nutrition. And these two new behaviors are sort of like an orchestrated dance. Eating whole foods gives me energy, balanced blood sugar, and a settled gut. When I walk into #39MinuteWorkout with those assets on my side….I have the ability to put it all out there. I’m not flexible enough or coordinated enough to do all the moves, yet! But when I work out…I go a.l.l. o.u.t.
I put all my heart, soul and effort into it. Every time.
So how do I know…nutrition makes kettlebells possible? Well….let me tell you about tonight’s workout. It’s a case study, for me anyway.
I’ve missed 3 workouts. Last week was just awful at work. So much stress, high pressure projects, preparing for some senior executive meetings. Last week was a string of late nights that kept me from getting to my workouts. I made it home late at night, with just enough energy to clean up, prepare for the next day….and E.A.T. my stress.
Oh, I fell down the rabbit hole this week. Sugar. Junk. Snacks. Whatever I could find in my daughters’ snack drawers. And once I started gorging….I cared very little about how far off track I went. Who am I kidding? I cared. But the vicious cycle was starting again. I was getting down on myself. I was getting sad. Then I ate more. And felt worse. On and on it went all week long.
Fast forward to today. I promised myself I would go to workout today. I saw it as an end of the cycle. A period, an exclamation point! Diane – WAKE UP!
Heading out to my workout, I felt like I was driving to a stranger’s house. So nervous. How w.e.i.r.d. that those feelings can come back in just 1 week. But then, I walked in. There was Abby and a couple of others. She said hello, she smiled. And I was fine. I was in a comfortable head space. That’s how it feels there. It’s a real community. All I had to do was S.H.O.W. U.P. Diane, just show up.
I worked out. It was harder than it needed to be. Yea, the weights were heavy, because that’s how it feels when you’ve been away. My little muscles got little-er in a week. But what really shocked me was how God Awful my gut felt.
Every burpee, each jumping jack —- I felt my stomach twisting and turning. My gut was UP-SET. When we were done….I tried to relax. Was fighting nausea and intestinal pain.
That’s SUGAR.
My gut is not used to sugar anymore….and I was creatng a toxic soup in my stomach…then expecting my body to perform. 39 minutes of kettlebells and Toxic Sugar Gut are not a good combo.
I drove home tonight and made myself a pot of hot decaf tea. I did not feel like eating. I wanted to settle myself. I think tonight I’m beginning the cleanse to get back into shape.
I want to be the person I was becoming.
I took a bath, dropped in a Lush bath bomb. Let myself soak in the warmth of the water, soak in the aroma of jasmine, soak in the sips of hot tea. Once I toweled off and slipped into my night gown..I felt better.
My muscles are that nice sore feeling, the kinda feeling that makes you know you did something good today. And my stomach feels more settled.
Being a Weight Watcher all my adult life, post babies, I’ve asked myself many times….why hasn’t all this “know how” cured me yet? Well, it’s math, baby. 3+1
Journeys are not straight lines. The shortest distance from Point A to Point B may very well be a straight line, but journeys are not really about distance. Journeys are about skills and adaptation. “I want to lose 112 pounds”. That’s my journey. Let’s Go To Point B! Come on, I’m motivated. Let’s go. Let’s go now!!
Well, Ok Diane. Then you can start WW and start tracking and follow your points system and go to the Workshops every week, and lose 40. Then maybe you’ll start running and training and run 5Ks and a Half Marathon and even go for broke and train for a marathon and lose 80! Woohoo!. But then…you may get burned out and need a break, so you’ll stop running…and….ugh…gain back 50. Then maybe you’ll hurt your left knee and get sad and quit on yourself…and gain 16 more. Grrr. Where’d that Point B go again? What happened?
It’s easy. I didn’t build skills for the long term. I didn’t adapt. That’s what happened. Come on, let’s go back home. Home to the dictionary…..
Adapt: to make (something) suitable for a new use or purpose; modify.
Did I make myself suitable for a new purpose? Did I modify myself? Heck no…I just added a running schedule with tons and tons of weekly miles and an exciting new goal to my schedule. It was a temporary (at best) mask set atop of my poor eating habits. I wasn’t making this mistake on purpose. I wasn’t trying to short cut my progress. I think, looking back at it, I fooled myself into believing I had changed. But really all I had done was concealed my bad behaviors with unsustainable new ones, effectively concealing my eating for a time. But the ratio of running to eating was unsustainable. The house of cards had to come tumbling down…and my weight loss successes evaporated right from under me…taking all the good beliefs I had built about myself with it.
The Nutrition talk with David and Abby wasn’t some complicated, “get your composition notebook out” kinda session. He had 3 simple devices that almost felt….impossibly simple. The only trick was YOU HAD TO DO THEM. No problem, I am a.c.t.i.o.n!
Go home tonight and find 500 calories you can cut from your diet every day. This was easy really. I decided to cut out pasta and potatoes and sugar. Cutting sugar was miraculous. Once I got passed two weeks….my cravings disappeared. I had flipped a switch and found balance in my life. THIS WAS LIFE CHANGING!
Follow his Yes/No List. Eat the YES foods and Don’t Eat the NO Foods. I found this fairly easy too. I had been slowly moving toward eating whole foods. I had tried Whole 30 once before, but found it very hard because of all that it took away from my diet. But I really enjoyed using the whole foods lists to select foods. I was tracking my food diary on my WW app, counting points and weighing and measuring for portion control. All of this worked well together for me. More balance.
Adopt 3+1 eating. This one…..was the final puzzle piece that clicked it all into place.
This is complicated math, so take an aspirin and lean in and read closely.
Eat 3 meals..a day. And IF you are still hungry, add 1 snack.
Then. Stop. Eating.
3 meals and 1 snack. Um. Ok. But. No. No But. That’s it. Math Lesson Over.
This was about learning to Not Eat. Now that doesn’t mean Dieting. It’s about dividing your day into “Time to Eat” and “Not Time to Eat”. Something I had never really learned to do. If I every even thought I was getting close to getting hungry…better eat an apple. Don’t let yourself get hungry…or you might go crazy and eat a cow! That’s what years and years of diet mentality does to you. It takes an already unhealthy relationship with food and twists you into even more of a pretzel, until you don’t know when to eat, what to eat, how to eat, or if you should eat. So, in conclusion, just eat. Eat 3 protein based meals a day, and add 1 snack if you need it. Then – call it a day and do it again tomorrow.
So I learned to bulk up my 3 meals. If I would normally eat my breakfast and then have a banana an hour or so later, I would eat that banana with my protein filled breakfast and then that was it until lunch. Then at lunch, I would eat a protein centered lunch (usually leftovers) and add that apple or greek yogurt to my lunch. Then that was it until dinner. Then at dinner, same protein centered meal, with vegetables and brown rice. Then, that was it until tomorrow.
I did add the snack to my day around 2-3pm. A turkey pepperoni stick, or a coffee protein shake, or a greek yogurt with home made cranberry smash. You get the picture. I learned to eat 3 solid meals plus 1 snack a day. Then I learned how Not To Eat, the rest of the time. Soon, I stopped thinking about food during the no eating hours. Soon, the after dinner fast-food tv commercials stopped bothering me.
Soon… I lost 70 pounds, from 3+1 eating and kettlebells 3Xs a week for 4 months.
And I’m not running myself into the ground, and I’m not starving myself and I’m not missing out on pizza night every Saturday with my family.
So far…so good. 42 more pounds to Point B!
Come back soon…I just thought of something else important!
The first night of kettlebells. I put on my workout uniform. (Cuz remember back to my running days? I firmly believe you gain super powers just by donning the uniform – no cape required!)
My brother was visiting from Spain with his wife Paloma and their kids Sylvia and Ian. It was the end of July and we were celebrating my brother’s birthday before he set out to visit my mom and sister in Florida. I had taken a personal day from work and spent the morning baking a birthday cake with my niece and nephew to surprise their dad after dinner. I spent the day 1/2 excited 1/2 nervous about what lie ahead of me that evening. I was meeting up with David and the newcomer kettlebell bootcamp cohort for our very first workout. 6:45p, with a nutrition talk to follow at 730p.
I put on my Underarmour workout pants, sport bra and tank top. Tied up my favorite pair of Nike running shoes (my last pair from the stash I bought on Ebay years ago when they were discontinued…..ugh, they are getting old. Shoe problem on the horizon. )
Filled up my bottle with water, said goodbye to a house full of people and hopped in the car to go to #39MinuteWorkout . Now, let’s just admit it all. Why not. This gym is a small boutique type place. Not one of those big NY Sports Club places. It’s located in a very nice strip mall, on the second level next to a hair salon, above a Dance Studio. It’s the kind of place I would normally walk by v.e.r.y. q.u.i.c.k.l.y. because the athletic-looking people inside were doing crazy shit, (very competently) and making it look easy. This was the kind of place and they were the type of people that scared people like me. They were the reason I had avoided workout classes my. entire. life. The reason I liked running alone. So there was no chance that I would be the least capable person in the room. If I’m alone, I’m as capable as I need to be. “RUN AWAY.” My brain screamed…”RUN AWAY!“
Nope. 21 days. Don’t Quit. I walked inside.
My mind was in overload. There were a bunch of people, women, a man or two, riding bikes, doing push-ups, burpees, swinging weights, flinging ropes……doing stuff I couldn’t even describe. It was CRA-ZY. I know now they were doing a workout called “stations”, where you rotate through a series of exercises for a series of minutes each station. So people ARE doing different exercises, on purpose. But back then….it just looked like chaos. I didn’t know who or what to look at first. Now mind you, I was trying to pan-and-scan the room, to get some sense of exactly what I was in for.
Nope. Not possible. No clue. IF I WAS SUPPOSED TO DO WHAT I WAS WITNESSING….GOD HELP ME.
David was there. And his wife Abby. They own the business and are two of the trainers. After the 545p class ended, and the athletic scary looking (LOL, sorry that WAS my first reaction) people cleared out….the newbies started to arrive. Ok. Heart rate going down a little. In came the people with the wide-eyed, stone cold sober look, like me. Don’t hurt us, was our plea.
We fanned out in the room in front of these bosu’s, and David asked one of the women….”what is the heaviest weight you have worked out with?” She answered 15lbs. OK said David…everybody get 2 15 lb kettlebells.
WAIT. That wasn’t exactly scientific David!! So what she can do 15’s!! What does that have to do with me? Why the heck does that mean I can do 15’s? Ohhhh, I could see how this was gonna go. We were NOT going to waste time and chat about what I wanted or have a counseling session about my feelings. Oh no. We were getting started and we were getting started NOW.
Honestly, I don’t remember much more about the details of that first night, other than 1) my pony tail was dripping with sweat by the time I was done and 2) it took the entire drive home to cool down and regulate my breathing, so I could tell Peter what happened.
That first day…I survived. It was HARD. It was the hardest I had worked out in years. Maybe the hardest thing I had done since I ran my marathon in 2013. But it was perfect.
I kept coming back to what David said that first night. “If it doesn’t kick your butt…then it’s a sucky workout.” He said, I’d never have to spend another hour on the treadmill again….unless I wanted to.
39 Minutes It Was.
Yea. Um period. End of counseling session. Pay the doctor.
A collection of other things I think David said: You are stronger than you think. You can do this. In only 3 days, it won’t hurt anymore. Within a week, you will understand the lingo and the basic moves, and within 2 weeks, you will be hooked.
The nutrition talk was just as great. I was ears open, my promise to myself extended to following whatever the man said. Abby is a Nutritionist, so the gym provides all the support someone like me really needed, and I could engage Abby later if I ever needed to shake up my eating program.
I went home feeling wiped out. I kinda limped down the steps to my car, because I don’t know if I had ever done a squat before in. my. life.
David and I had a counseling session. We developed goals for me, and a rough target for me reaching my goal weight.
There was something very familiar about meeting David. Although it was as foreign to me as meeting the Pope. David and Abby were strong, active, muscular, fitness junkies, healthy eaters (not perfect…everybody’s gotta live!)….but they were basically everything I had spent my life NOT being. Yet…what popped into my head after that very first workout, was something I remembered Denise saying in Weight Watchers so many years ago. Whenever someone doubted themselves, Denise would say in her matter-of-fact supportive way…”We will believe in you, until you are strong enough to believe in yourself”.
That’s where I was that first night. I was standing there soaked in sweat, in this foreign gym, with workout instructions that looked like chemistry formulas written on the mirror…..and there was David, believing in me…in his own confident, no-nonsense way…until I could become strong enough to believe in myself. And he was 100% right….It wasn’t going to take long.
I was a.c.t.i.o.n.
So much is about to happen…..come back if you can.
When I read David’s post on 21043 Happenings, it spoke to me. For a long time, probably well over a year, I was “needing” something. Needing a new way to get active. But what do you do when you don’t KNOW what you need? You do N.O.T.H.I.N.G., that’s what you do. But I was done doing nothing. I knew what I should do was “try”. So I did.
I was home alone when I responded. It was a good thing. Maybe if I had someone to talk to out-loud…I might have talked myself out of it. My answer was. “David I filled out the form. Hoping to be chosen.” It was a 21-day summer trial for a kettlebell boot camp. But I think what really caught my eye was “you’ll get…..a community of women just like you.”
Those last words crept into my soul. Into the deep part of my brain. To the thoughts we rarely say out loud. “I need a friend”. Frankly, I had been missing the community of women I left in WW when I moved from NJ to Maryland. Most honestly, all this time later, I think a big part of why I eat my emotions, is from feeling lonely. From loneliness comes a deeper feeling of being unwanted, unworthy. When you are alone…you can tell yourself lies. All the warts seem bigger, your self-doubting thoughts get louder, your microscope pointed at your own flaws gets stronger. And the only voice you have nearby to listen to is the critical one in your head. The only friend….is the sugary snack that licks at your wounds like a viper. The little girl that ate Twinkies as her friend, sat up a bit straighter at the idea that she could workout, lose weight, get stronger ….. and make friends? I was sold.
So for $47 dollars, I made a promise to myself. Diane — you can do anything for 21 days. You can’t quit. Even if it’s hard. Even if it’s not your “thing”….like Zumba and Spinning weren’t your “thing”. Don’t quit. Don’t quit. You Ran A Marathon. Don’t Quit.
When David called me that weekend, he was so…..encouraging. He didn;t promise me anything. He just offered me an approach he felt confident about. I think he was trying to determine if I was more talk than action. At the end of the 20 minutes or so……I KNEW I was a.c.t.i.o.n. I KNEW it. Don’t ask me how. It was something about the calm, assuredness in David’s words, his approach, the experience he had had with women in their mid years. I was going to do this thing, this kettlebell workout thing. I was locked in. Right there. Right then. 21 days.
That weekend I went back to Weight Watchers and re-joined. I got on the scale 16 pounds heavier than when I quit. THINK ABOUT THAT WHEN YOU CONSIDER QUITTING! If you think quitting weight monitoring is EVER going to be a positive outcome, I’ll give you a $100 bucks if you ever show me someone who rejoined Weight Watchers lighter than when they quit. Offer stand. I digress, ..I was back on a path. A path toward something new. Something that scared me. Something I didn’t know I could do. But I knew M.E. I was a.c.t.i.o.n.
Up in my bedroom closet I had two 5 pound dumb-bells and 1 10lb kettlebell, all three bought for me by my husband Peter as a Valentine’s present a few years earlier (at my request! Peter is no Peleton man!). At the time…I “thought” they would help me tone my arms. HAHA! A bit of foreshadowing….David and his wife Abby run a business together and they use 10lb kettlebells as door stoppers. That pretty little yellow doorstopper in my closet was as close to a kettlebell as I had ever been, but it would not play a part in my workouts to come. This 21-day journey I was about to take would be work. Good. Value driven. Hard. Fun. Result-producing. Work.
If you are reading this, you came back! Thank you. Let’s catch up. Its been 23 months after all.
As I reflect back on my last blog in February 2018, I tried to tap into what I was feeling back then. Where was I? What was going on.? But the story is more about what wasn’t going on. Not only wasn’t I running…I was having trouble walking!
I was struggling.
I had gained alot of weight. I was trying to “rinse and repeat” how I had lost the weight the first time around. R-U-N-N-I-N-G. A lot, a lot of running. But this time around, I had a problem. My knees. They hurt. And not just the normal kind of pain that comes with running. (Haha, lets just pause, and read that again….haha. Yea. Truth. Ok, we move on). I had this nagging pain behind my left knee. Also a swelling. Something was wrong. For a really long time, I wasn’t listening to my body.
Reality was, I wasn’t only having a problem running, but it hurt to walk long distances too. By the time autumn rolled around, I was seeing an orthopedic surgeon and having all the pokes, and prods, and scans and tests. They ruled out arthritis – good. They ruled out any sort of tumor – good. But what I had was a meniscus detachment – bad. My meniscus totally pulled away and detached from my knee from behind. I couldn’t really walk. I had to address it, as much as I didn’t want to. The solution was s.u.r.g.e.r.y.
In November just after Thanksgiving I went into surgery to have a meniscus reattachment. I have all the pictures, but when I look at them, it looks like a someone landing on the moon. LOL . They drilled through my knee and reattached it from behind. Looking ahead, I had 8 weeks of sitting on my butt, allowing it to reattach before I could put any weight on it. 8 weeks of non-weight bearing recovery and physical therapy after that. Wow, this wasn’t going to be easy.
It went down just about as I expected. It was a tough recovery process. I went from flat on my butt in a totally extended leg brace – to two crutches – to 1 crutch – to back on my feet, with a noticeable limp. The PT folks were terrific. The surgeons get all the glory in these situations, but it’s really the physical therapists who get you up back on your feet again. I was really grateful. It gave me a new appreciation for two things:
1) Your knees are really important. I had a new appreciation for my mobility. I saw myself so u.n.a.b.l.e. to do anything by myself. I mean, Peter had to put a plastic chair in our shower, and help me hobble in there on my crutches, remove my brace and unwrap my wound, sit down. And only THEN could I wash my hair. Oh, you will have a NEW appreciation for how g.o.o.d. it is to wash your hair, when you can’t shower for 12 days after surgery. Then he had to help me get out and reverse it all — back into the brace. Whew….It was a journey.
2) The second, and most important thing that made an impact on me was how much harder everything was because of my weight. In those 8 weeks immediately after surgery, I felt 2X heavier than I really was. Everything was hard. Getting up and down the stairs in our home. Getting into and out of the car. Hobbling to and from the driveway. Now, warranted, I was in a fully immobilizing knee brace, and not allowed to even rest weight on my left leg, but still…..dragging myself around was hard. (It was more of a hop…really.)
I decided during those 8 weeks – I was going to change. I felt 70 when I was 53. What was I going to feel like AT 70? Was I going to make it TO 70? I’m not being dramatic. How often do you see Fat Old People? Think about it.
The scarier part came next. Once the crutches were gone and I hit the 6 month mark around May 2019, I was supposed to be better. “Back to normal”. But I wasn’t. My left knee was stiff. I had scar tissue that wouldn’t let me extend it all the way. When I went up and down the stairs, I could feel my knee catching on something inside, and it hurt. It wouldn’t glide. It wouldn’t Be A Knee. Then the terrible thoughts start…..“Maybe…I wasn’t going to be normal…ever again.” G.U.L.P. That just made me eat.
My surgeon told me, “take it easy. I don’t want you using it too much. No walking. Bike ride, swim only.” So for two more months, I rode my bike on a stand setup in the basement. It helped. But it wasn’t getting me the progress I wanted. So, I was becoming desperate, impatient, defiant. My anxiety, my nervous energy lead me to eat. I wasn’t eating well, I wasn’t tracking. I stopped going to Weight Watchers. I quit. I quit myself. I went back to drowning my emotions in sugar. I was moving further and further away from the goal of being more active, and losing weight to live a longer happy life. I began looking at gastric bypass websites. I joined a gastric bypass group on Facebook. Oh I recommend doing what I did. When you read what people go through who take that route…TRUST and BELIEVE, it was a scared straight situation! No. I wasn’t going that route.
So what to do…what to do. In the end, I decided to stop listening to my doctor. NOT my advice to all of you. But it worked for me. “Defiance”, remember? I remembered what my physical therapists used to say. They were, of course, following the surgeon’s instructions, but they were very overt that recovery would come from movement; not from being sedentary. So – with all the things I didn’t know, there was one thing I DID know. I had to Move. But how to do it? What to do when the only kind of movement I was ever good at was r.u.n.n.i.n.g.….and that was the one kind of movement I could NOT do??
One weekend, while I was sitting on my @ss on the couch watching tv, reading Facebook …… (so freaking ironic).. I came across a post in the local FB community “21043 Happenings”. And it changed my life. For real. I know a lot of people say that a lot for things that are a lot less than “LIFE CHANGING” ….but listen up, this one if for reals.
I met David.
And what happened next, was it. I was about to MOVE.
Did you know that “Ciao” means both hello and goodbye in Italian? Never more important than today. Ciao for now friends!
When I logged on today…I still remembered my password. Success #1. But then, wow….I saw in black and white that I abandoned this blog in February 2018. Almost 2 years ago. Wow. I apologize. To you….(if you’re still out there)…and to myself. This blog, this place…this blank space that I used to fill up every day…was/IS so important to me. I’ve worked out a lot of emotions, questions, struggles, fears in this place. Well. No lamenting what Never Was. The present is a gift, so here we go. Forward On.
I had an epiphany just now, in my closet…and it drove me back here. Yeah..gotta take those moments as the gifts that they are. So — here’s what happened.
Peter and I are going on a cruise in April. We are in the midst of winter here in Maryland, so my mind is craving thoughts of warmth, sunshine, ocean, water, swimming…. Add to this that I’ve been cleaning out my closet little by little. Donating clothes that are too big, and trying on things from 7 YEARS AGO that never fit until now with TAGS STILL ON. Yeah, I know. I’ll tell you all about it. There’s a lot to catch you up on. Anyway, back in my closet… I reach for this swimsuit. It’s a 2-piece. SAY WHAT?? Yeah. I must have been on a runner’s high when I ordered that online 7 YEARS AGO! (had to say that again….dreams die hard, ya know. 7 years to hold onto something).
I held it in my hand…those 2 little pieces. Size 16, not sooo little LOL, but little for this former PLUS size girl….and then it happened. There I was stripping off my jeans and putting it on. What was going through my head? So much. Everything. All the old thoughts. The ones I thought I had killed. The torturous words that twist me round and round all the time….”So Diane, we have 3 more months. Only 3 months girl. Maybe we can tighten up our plan, work out more, eat less….lose f.a.s.t.e.r….and maybe, we can fit into that suit for the cruise…in April….t.h.i.s. A.p.r.i.l. …maybe... Right? “
So I’m scared. How tight is it gonna be? How much blubber is going to spill over? Is April enough time? Is .. there.. ever.. enough.. time? I’m scared.
So….I try it on. And.
Uh
IT GOES ON.
Like, it slides right on, and it fits. No, no..I mean…that 2 piece suit from 7 YEARS GO, with the TAGS STILL ON…it went on my body. MY body. MINE.
I called Peter. I called my daughters. We stood there in our bedroom looking at me. In this swimsuit. Debating if I could actually wear this in public. You know…out in the world, where other people are. Like, where YOU are. LMAO.
So. In conclusion, it fits. The swimsuit I bought all those years ago, that has been in a bin since I bought it. I packed it and moved it to to Maryland from New Jersey. I’ve thought about IT, before, during and after every vacation I’ve ever taken in the past 7 years – the time in between when I first pulled it out of its package in the mail to…well, today. It’s been a powerful , d.u.m.b. piece of lycra, or nylon or whatever the f*** it’s made of, material.
But today…..it became so, well….unimportant. It wasn’t a balloon bursting. It was more like a balloon that was full when you went to bed, and flat on the floor like a crumpled scrap in the morning. There was my Dream Swimsuit….like a deflated balloon on the floor of my bedroom. YOU’RE Not So Scary. YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!. Well….not anymore, anyway.
Because today is January 19th. Jan-u-f***-ary. And I’m going on a cruise in APRIL. Girl….YOU ARE GOING TO NEED A NEW SWIMSUIT! IN AN EVEN SMALLER SIZE. [KA-BOOM – MIND BLOWN].
Oh its so d@mn good my mind is blown. Because my mind has been my enemy most of my life….well, maybe only when it comes to my weight. And my belief in myself. But hold on Diane, did you really just use the word “only” in that last sentence? There is nothing “o-n-l-y” about ones BELIEF in oneself. Its not ONLY. It’s EVERY. as in EVERY THING.
So really….today, I realized…my goals are not my goals. What my mind has t.h.o.u.g.h.t. about where I am going…is not where I am going. All these years, in my head….I t.h.o.u.g.h.t. I was going to the place where I would wear that swimsuit, and be happy. I would be THERE. Whereever THERE was. At the END of whatever journey I have been on all-my-life! That’s where I t.h.o.u.g.h.t. I was going. But truly…I’m there. I’m already there. Right now. There is.., …here.
But H.E.R.E. is not a destination. H.E.R.E. is just a place for now. A Stop on the way. A dot on the board. A transitory moment in life. And what’s more amazing is……it wasn’t hard to get here. Back when I was “back there“…dreaming about “getting here“….”here” seemed like THE BEST and MOST UNATTAINABLE Place To Go.” It was so scary to think I might never “Get Here“, and I beat myself up so hard! So hard. So f***ing incredibly hard. And to realize now….that my goal is so much bigger than the scary place I dreamed up in my head. One day…not too far from today. “Here“, will be “back there!” Right? Right? MIND BLOWN AGAIN.
I feel so strong right now. I feel ready. Ready to go where I’m going. Ready to go, even though I have No Idea Where I’m Going. And I’m not going to run there. Nope. No more running. Not anymore. I’m not in a hurry. Who wants to rush through their life anyway? Not me. Not anymore. I’m going to go one-day-at-a time. I’m going to live. I’m going to LIVE my life “HERE”. Because HERE is a gift.
So come back tomorrow, and I will too. And I’ll tell you more about what’s been going on. I don’t know what’s going to happen. And for once, THAT is a very freeing feeling. Because if I don’t KNOW where I’m going, then I can’t DOUBT my ability to get there. How’s That for Freedom from The Mind!
Only one thing is for certain….This Girl Is Gonna Be Buying a New Swimsuit for April. #Happy #2020TheYearOfMe
An extra day off – President’s Day – seemed like the right day to start a.g.a.i.n. So, I’ve entirely accepted, that I am one of those people, for whom weight will be a lifetime pursuit. I’ve spent the greater part of my 52 years focused on that. Lamenting that. HATING THAT. This year, I’m trying to commit to saying – F* THAT — and begin the second half of my adult life on a new pursuit.
It’s been a week and I’m still walking every night – walking until my fitbit sings my praises. <Blinkity blink, buzzy buzzer, huffity-puffity…you made your goal….you’re not a loser today!!>. Yea, I know, sorry that I sound kinda pessimistic there. I don’t really feel that way….but I’m at that beginning phase of something new….where it feels like w.o.r.k. every second of every step. But hey, when you invest in one of those step counters, one of those activity trackers, one of those “monkey on your back” devices that sits on your wrist or hangs from your bra strap — the PRESSURE GOES UP ….every day….e.v.e.r.y. d.a.y. to achieve that goal. And…hey …. That’s a lot of days.
Facebook. How did we ever live without it? You can take your feelings and emotions there and find someone or something to connect to, almost instantaneously.
My Realtime friend Rich posted something about …How badly do you want it?? He’s often a catalyst for thought in what he posts to Facebook. He’s often put a smile on my face or a curiosity in my brain…and a fire in my belly.
well, yesterday my response to Rich came from the doldrums of my rock bottom. “Not enough obviously…I am my own worst enemy” was my answer.
As Rich is prone to do, he reaches down into his friendship bag of tricks and uses strengths to build up the people he knows and loves.
Rich: “Remember Di…you are the girl who ran 26.2”
Me: “I don’t even know that girl anymore…she’s a stranger”
Rich: “Well, invite her over for a cup of coffee, black”. With a smiley face.
I carried Rich with me all day yesterday. When I got home, after dinner with my husband…I put on my sneakers and went for a long walk with an old friend. A certain fierce girl that I haven’t seen in a really long time.
We walked. Sometimes embarrassingly slow. We didn’t run. I didn’t kid myself, and she didn’t shame me. We walked, and my Fitbit rewarded me.
I want to run!!! I was screaming inside as I wiped sweat from my brow and huffed and puffed my way back home. But she whispered to me…Di, you gotta walk before you can run…and I’m here for you…the whole way. 26.2 and beyond! Just like before.
