commit
I, liz with chaos, do solemnly swear to not go running for a week. That means until next Tuesday.
My foot, or should I say feet, hurt. Bad. The usual PF with the left. And some bizarro spontaneous bruise/internal bleeding in my right. I think because I was seriously overcompensating for the weak left foot. So, that's it. No running for (at least!) a week. I will spin (seated, of course), stretch, and massage injured areas. I will rest. I can think of a million reasons why I should run. And one big one why I shouldn't: life-long running health. This won't be an easy trip. I'm downright scared of what this week will bring. But I commit. To not running. For a week.
I was pain free this morning. Felt good. Real good. To walk. Instead of hobble.
ten
A thousand tiny things. Equals one held life. Pulled together this week. Living as if life has always been this, right here, this moment of eating and moving with dignity. I eat with pleasure. Healthy, for the most part. But with CG and dates and introductions to friends there is lots of beer, wine, and eating out. No binging. Exercise comes. But doesn't demand. Two complete rest days last week. My foot hurts, despite the repose. Food and exercise just aren't on my mind these days. Hence, a lack of posting.
But, but. Been weighing myself daily for about a week (not with intent. With curiosity). Coming in between 150-155. Who knew that beer, eating out, and rest would help me release a few pounds?
All of life is not so together. CG is rocky. School is hard. My friends are challenging.
I'm not sure how I got here. But I accept it.
hello
Really, I should just feed every email that CG and I exchange. She asks such good questions. Yesterday, she asked me why I liked to cook.
My answer:
1. Cooking, for me, is one of the most tangible, practical ways that the whole is more than a sum of its parts. On the one hand, cooking is science. It's precision and measurements and chemistry. That is, cooking has a concreteness and a particularity that I am drawn to and that feels lacking in other parts of my life (hard to believe, I know). On the other hand, cooking is so not about the particular and calls for creativity and zest and spirit. Food takes on energy. And things that I cook taste differently according to my mood and thoughts.
2. I like taking care of people. Cooking is a tangible way to do that.
3. I like doing something else than thinking. Cooking, as aforementioned, calls for feeling and intuition. Specially when one fore goes recipes. Creativity and impulse rule.
4. I like the connection to historical femininity/woman. I love tweaking my grandma's recipes to be vegan and socially and environmentally conscious. This is decidedly postmodern. And a rejection of consumer culture that suggests I should only eat, I don't know, Slimfast, or some other pre-packaged substance that is not really "food." So it's about getting back to basics. But these basics are radically altered, of course.
5. The materiality of it. I like getting my hands in there, scooping out squash seeds and squishing dough through my fingers. It's sensual.
6. It feels subversive. Popular modern discourse suggests that women should distance ourselves from food and eating. I like challenging that.
**************
I've felt out of touch with myself for the past couple of days. I'm sitting next to myself, but I can't quite make the connection. I meditated this morning, which helped, but I'm still feeling a little down and removed. I've been mindlessly eating and am feeling puffy as a result. Why am I doing this at the start of something with this amazing woman? My foot really is getting worse, it definitely hurts this morning. I haven't practiced yoga since Sunday because I don't want to aggravate it anymore than necessary. But the lack of yoga takes its revenge on my mood and sense of self.
***************
Monday: spinning and lifting
Tuesday: running, 6 miles
Wednesday: spinning and lifting
Thursday: running, 7 miles
Friday: spinning, lifting, meditation, and hopefully some yoga
count
CG (otherwise known as the Clicked Girl) asked me a really good question in the midst of our flirty emails back and forth all day yesterday. Background: I messed my knee up in college by a nasty fall. She saw the scar a couple days ago. She said:
How often/how long do you run anymore? Is your knee totally better? What do you like about it?I said:
--Um, every other day, or so. Usually around 6 miles. Totally. Though now my foot is giving me grief.
1. Everything
2. It's my job to sit on my butt and use my head. I like not doing that sometimes
3. Clears my head, helps me focus and see clearly
4. Fresh air
5. Listening to music
6. Endorphins
7. Drinking beer and eating dessert without worrying whether my jeans will fit me
tomorrow
8. Focus on breath and sweat and pace
9. The cool clothes"Oh running, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways"?* It was fun making this list. But ultimately makes me more frustrated by my foot. Which I am currently icing, thank you very much.
*butchered from Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I made the best quick dinner for myself last night. I put some broccoli, mushrooms, kale, and tofu into some water to steam/boil. Once it was cooked through, I added some brown rice miso and almond butter. Instant delicious meal.
date
Silence. Brain, stopped. Moving through my days in a ridiculous haze of routine, stress, and a new girl. All of which challenge me in different ways. My thoughts have been far, far away from diet and exercise. But things have been good, in an auto-pilot kind of way.
I'm running. My foot still hurts. But I love my Ipod. To answer
Mich's question, I prefer to run outdoors. By "prefer" I mean I would rather not eat chocolate for the rest of my life than run on a treadmill. But sometimes I do hit the 'mill: namely, when I try to do "speed" workouts. Which used to be once a week. But "speed" hurts my foot. So I replaced that workout with a spinning workout instead. I need new outdoor loops. I currently have variations on two themes: 1) running in and through Center City. 2) running in and through the Park. New loops might involve driving to another park or neighborhood. Why drive when I can roll out of bed and workout? Change of pace. And Hills. I am so sea-level. My butt gets zero work. But my thighs are like skyscrapers of strength.
I'm lifting. I am slowly, very slowly, building my strength back to where it was before my Thanksgiving back injury. I'm still not at the same weights I was. But I'm not sure that I will go back there. It could just be too much for me to handle.
I'm practicing yoga. These days, even yoga hurts my foot. So I try not to practice on the same days that I run. I love to practice, I can't give it up. I had such a great cry during yesterday's session. How can I lose that?
Tuesday: ran 1 hr. Ashtanga yoga.
Wednesday: spinning, lifting, vinyasa yoga.
Thursday: ran 6 miles
Friday: spinning, lifting, walking round town with my date.
Saturday: total, complete, beautiful indulgence. NO running, no lifting, no spinning, no yoga, no veggies. Man, what a great day.
Sunday: ran 8ish miles, Ashtanga yoga.
Monday: spinning and lifting
***************
All is not perfect with the new girl. She's amazing. We are great together. But there are problems. For the purposes of this space, there is one problem. She called me "bulky." Yep, she did. I think she meant that I am bigger than her, size wise. It's true, I am. She's 5'2" and petite. And she's butch, so I think her masculinity is threatened by my physical prowess. So I don't think that she intended to be hurtful or mean, but comments like that don't help with my self-esteem. And I start thinking that I should try to lose more weight. But even if I was a size 10, I would still be "bulky." That's just how I'm built. So....yeah. But at the same time, she also tells me that I'm gorgeous. I don't know how to read it. But I'm on the look-out for future problems.
signs
What a trip to read those old posts. I don't feel like that woman anymore. I barely recognize that voice as mine. I've changed this year. And for that, I am proud. But I still don't know where to go next, what I should tackle this year. Last year's challenges emerged in process. Maybe this year's challenges will do the same.
Speaking of emerging (weak, I know. But, come on, I needed a transition!), all is well with clicked woman. She clicked, too. We clicked. It's been really fun and crazy and scary and exciting. We have an intense energy together that I can't account for intellectually. And that scares the shit out of me. I see warning signs for future problems and am not sure of anything now except that I want to see her again. But for now I am trying to relax and enjoy the tidal wave of us.
Man, I've been on a good path in terms of my eating and exercise as well.
Friday: spinning, lifting, candle-light yoga at home
Saturday: ran 8ish miles. Ipod, I love you. Danced away the night to an electronic beat. My girls, I love you all.
Sunday: patted myself on the back for escaping a hangover. Ran/walked for an hour. Walked around town with date.
Monday: since I didn't go to bed till 3am (see aforementioned un-intellectual energy) I didn't make it to spinning. I did make an hour long run through the city. And the weight room.
embrace
A year down.
It's been over a year since I lost any weight. Progress? Appears to be zero. I was feeling depressed about my seeming lack-of-progress. That familiar internal dialogue, noticing a break in my positive armor, started rubbing and rubbing against it, till the whole damn thing ripped. Leaving sparks and dust and smoke in its' wake.
OK, so it wasn't really that dramatic. Scene: Liz's head. Size 10 pants in one corner. But the corner is dark and scary and filled with binge cycles and self-loathing. Size 12 pants in opposing corner. Size 12 corner is light, some cobwebs in corners, but no huge binges sitting around.
But then I went back to last January's archives and found a post that speaks to changes I have made. Changes that exist without the recognizable drop in pounds.
I wrote:
Like how all I want to do is eat and eat and eat till I can't eat no more.
Or maybe how empty I feel, right now, and all the time. Empty imagining yet another struggle to get through a binge. Empty as yet another paper sucks all my attention and creativity dry. Empty like how powerless I feel, confronting all these negative patterns and thoughts and behaviors in my life. That I can't seem to ever change.This was me, a year ago. And I can say with certainty that this is no longer me. I still overeat. But I rarely flat out binge. And when I do flat out binge, I'm not afraid or ashamed of myself anymore. I have perspective and am able to see binging as a behavior choice and pattern.
I don't feel empty or powerless anymore. To the contrary, I feel incredibly power*ful*. How did I confront my self-loathing? How did I take an honest look in the mirror and accept the woman reflected back? Joining a gym had a lot to do with it, methinks. It's good for me to be around other folks that like exercise and aren't super-models. Yoga, Yoga, Yoga. Taught me to embrace myself. And a special shout out to Mich, who never fails to call me on my shit.
And ended up making out with A BOY for a better part of the evening.
Not terribly shocking. Except that I'm a dyke. But that's for another blog.I find this funny. Pattern not broken. Except that I get the connection between wanting to write about my attraction to boys in this space.
A major stress that is actually related to weight loss: I'm supposed to get together with someone I haven't seen in a very long time this weekend. Fear confronted and released. I no longer worry about seeing people I haven't seen in a while. It is what it is.
What bugs me more than the 20 extra I'm carrying around is that I CARE that I'm carrying it. Jeez! I'm an academic. I'm in my head. I'm a feminist. I condemn and deconstruct fascist beauty standards. And I do. I have a shaved head. Piercings. Tattoos. I wear old clothes. But, I still want to be hot. Hot to my kind, at least. Hot in a hairy armpits kind of way. And sizism is alive and thriving in feminist and lesbian communities. We don't talk about it. But maybe we should.Honestly, I'm not sure I will ever feel completely hot. But what I see now is that my perceived lack-of-hotness is not a reflection of the way I look but the way that I feel about myself. I would question my hotness no matter what my weight.
But I do feel attractive. I date and ask women out and flirt with the idea of flirting with men.
Why do I have so much self-doubt and self-sabotage around every corner?
Is "why" even the right questions?
How do I get over caring about the weight? I doubt and sabotage when I am out of touch with myself. When I turn against myself. Yoga, blogging, gym friends, and running give me a generous spirit.
No, "why" is NOT the right question. How. Ask, "how."
I decided to get over it. Simple and elusive as that.
Happy New Year. Here's to great strides in the past year. And to looking ahead. I am so proud of how far I came this year. Next, I will focus on next year's questions and goals.
