Success!

*Ahem* I have cut three minutes off my walking mile time this year!

I find this exciting news. I have been using MapMyFitness.com, which I find enables me to log activities while completely skipping calorie-counting, weight-loss emphasis (it's there if you want it, but easily avoided). I use the free option, so some graphs and such aren't available to me, but it has what I need.

What it does not have are activity codes for hooping or table tennis. So sad! I will just keep choosing 'Other' for now, and know in my heart that 'Other' means 'Ecstatically Fun Activities.' Also, I completely fail at getting their apps on my Android phone to log my walks real-time. Some tech support I am, huh?

Walking Before Breakfast

I don't know what happens on Saturdays but I hardly ever get in a walk. So for the past two weeks, I have walked on Sunday mornings--first thing, just like all the advice columns recommend. (Get it out of the way first thing in the morning! It'll make your day so much nicer!)

Walking before breakfast is not for me. My walks are inevitably slower and more painful, and due to that also shorter, than my mid-day or evening walks. Oh, sure, once the pain passes, I get the tail end of that warm, soft post-walk feeling, and I am sure as I sit in church I will be a bit less uncomfortable than usual, but clearly my body demands more fuel than is left over after a full night's sleep.

Poor Nate! This doesn't bode well for his goal of getting out of our near-daily walks together.

Ice Skating

In my quest to behave more like the children in my life, I went ice skating with Nate and Li'l Sis's youth group yesterday.

Quest to behave more like the kids? Well, kind of. I am trying to have more fun without letting my weight dictate the kind of fun I am 'allowed' to have. I ran around and played as a child and have yet to figure out why I gave it up.

Ice skating is on my list of Fun Things to Do, and I would love to take a few lessons. Earlier this winter I had read Fat Girl's Guide to Living's post on ice skating and found it helpful, but I didn't have much in the way of advanced notice, so most of the tips I wasn't able to follow.

I expected ankle problems but once one of the youth group moms tightened my skates for me, that wasn't an issue. (poor Nancy--she actually developed laces-tightening blisters!) My main issue seemed to be pain in the ball of my foot, which was unexpected, along with the fact that the rink was out of my size of skates by the time I got to the front of the line, so I ended up in men's hockey skates, which just aren't as comfortable. If I do decide to take lessons at some point, my own pair of skates is definitely in order!

All in all, I went out three or four times for a few laps each, and then passed my skates off to a skateless teenager. Never fell, and even skated backwards some :-) I am hoping the pain I experience can be alleviated by a combination of good skates and more experience as the skating itself is quite fun.

White Rice: Not the Breakfast of Champions

So, the question on your minds, I am sure, is why Jennifer would eat a bowl of white rice for breakfast? I will tell you.

My mom and my sister were diagnosed with pre-diabetes and diabetes, respectively, within a few months of one another. I figured it behooved me to find out of I had it as well. So, I bought a glucose meter and ran the equivalent of a glucose tolerance test on myself, using rice rather than that nasty syrup they give you at the labs, or jelly bellies, which make my stomach unhappy. (if you don't know--you can actually use jelly belly jelly beans--so all you pregnant ladies, go armed with this info to your prenatal appointments! LOL)

The results? Nothing too terrible but not great, either.
Fasting level: 90
1 hour after eating rice: 164
2 hours: 112
3 hours: 86

The interesting thing is that I was trying to get used to my meter yesterday (rather than using it for the first time at 5:30 a.m.) and tested myself an hour after eating a turkey salad sandwich. I tested at 84, which is really good.

The only explanation I can come up with is that I don't handle straight carbs well. This, of course, would explain why I rarely drink soda, and then only with a meal, always have to have protein with my breakfast, can no longer happily eat the amounts of rice and other carbs that I used to eat, and that apples make me hungry. I have decided that by eating intuitively, I have allowed my body to tell me what it can and can not deal with, and have basically been managing my sensitive blood sugar without knowing the numbers and dealing with sore fingertips.

I will, of course, be calling my doctor's office and requesting an A1C test to confirm this theory.

Now, if the question in your minds has become, 'Will this scare Jennifer back onto the diet bandwagon where she belongs?' then you clearly have not been reading what I have written, and you suffer from some misconceptions.

First, being fat does not cause diabetes. Being diabetic frequently does cause weight-gain, and that is where you get the correlation, but you don't cause diabetes by what you eat or what you weigh, and losing weight doesn't magically make it go away.

Secondly, even if losing weight made diabetes go away, the fact is that 99% of diets fail. And weight cycling IS bad for diabetes (weight cycling is another risk factor), and is also bad for my mental health, and so I will never, ever be going there again.

Thirdly, Intuitive Eating has brought me to a place where I feel better than I have in years and I can't imagine abandoning it now would make me healthier.

And, finally, I choose not to live in fear.

Self-perception, Again.

I started Karate class tonight. After three years of watching from the sidelines, I thought it was about time.

The lady leading the warm-ups looked at me after a few minutes and said, "So you're one of the flexible types!"

I actually argued with her. I have never, ever thought of myself as flexible, but apparently I have been mistaken. Somehow I had a misconception about body size and composition as it equates (or doesn't equate) to being flexible. I am now in the process of re-adjusting my understanding.

Class was fun. I survived. Might regret it in the morning, though!

A Mental Exercise

Lately I have had fun with an exercise, I believe from Intuitive Eating, which goes something like this:

Imagine that a spell were cast on the world that locked everyone into their current weight. Nothing anyone would do from this time forward would change their weight one iota. Nothing you do will change your weight one single ounce! How would you live life differently?

Scary thought? It was for me, at first, as well. I could not imagine being happy at my current weight, so in my imagination, decades of misery stretched out before me. So sad!

Three years later, the story is different. And, that story in my imagination is much, much closer to my reality.

I eat freely, and in a way that feels good. I don't deny a hungry tummy the food it needs, and I rarely overfill it (and when I do, it's only by a smidge, no more pants-unbuttoning, uncomfortable belly!). I eat a variety of foods as my body requests them, from the 'healthy' foods to the 'fun' foods.

I move for the sake of moving and because I like how my body feels. My goals are different--to have strong legs, to go cross-country skiing, to have fun.

I buy and make clothes that fit me, right now. No more buying things that are too tight with the goal of fitting into them! No more denying myself clothes because I am too fat to deserve them! No more trying to hide or disguise the real me! And no more do I feel, after trying on something that doesn't work, that my body is the problem. Now I know it's the clothes.

I stop seeing myself through others' eyes, or my imaginary picture of others' eyes.

I love my physical self. I see all the positive things about my body now. It's strong and sturdy, with nice, dense bones, and curvy and sexy and it takes me where I want to go and it does what I want it to do.

What does your picture look like? What would letting go of the number on the scale set you free from? What richness could be added to your life?

Everyone I Know Is On A Diet

Ok, so not literally everyone. Nate, for instance, has never dieted and never will. But, you know, he's 14. Of course, he serves as a pretty darn good example of intuitive eating (rather than 'controlled' eating). It certainly seems, though, that everyone is dieting right now.

One would think that after years of work in this area, I would be ok with other people's food talk. But when it comes to talk about diets, controlled eating, etc, it still seems to be a bit of a trigger, and if nothing else, drives me nuts. Plus, I usually care about these people and it hurts me to see them hurting themselves...and being so gleeful about it much of the time. History does repeat itself, however, and I know that the glee is temporary and the misery is sure to follow.

Part of my problem is pride. With everyone talking about how 'good' they are being, my only counter would be...I have learned that I don't need that kind of good. No one that hasn't also taken this journey is going to understand. I am sure that most people think I have simply given up, and see that as a moral failing. It isn't a moral failing, though, it's a physical and mental healing. And it isn't nearly as quantifiable. I can't give you a dress size, scale number, whatever, to prove that I have made progress. And most people wouldn't be able to see the progress that I have made through the fuzzy lenses of diet thinking that they have on. Not to mention, it would be totally rude to answer, "I'm down two sizes!" with, "Well, we all know that won't last."

Part of it is hurt feelings. Probably childish ones, but they are there nonetheless. Nice for you that you lost weight...so what you are telling me is that you are more beautiful than I am? That beauty is quantifiable in numbers? I don't believe that, but occasionally the overwhelming strength of others' beliefs throws me off balance.

All in all, I have been on the path they are on, it's rough and it leads to nowhere. While it's frequently hard to remember that (and boy am I dreading the new year's diet push!), I don't want to go back. I don't need outside validation that intuitive eating is the way to go, at least for me. I don't need everyone else to see their own beauty in order to keep seeing mine. I don't need other people to enjoy physical activity in order for me to enjoy it and not see it as punishment of some sort. I do, apparently, need to keep telling myself all of this over and over, though!

Eating My Words

Tonight was promotion night at Jukido. I was sure it was too soon for Nate to get promoted--after all, he just made orange in the Spring. But I was wrong, and am now the mother of a Blue belt!

Hard Walk Tonight

At first I thought it was just because Nate wasn't walking with me, but by the end of the mere 11 minutes that I walked tonight, I was limping and wondering if I would make it home. Not sure what the difficulty was-three days off doesn't seem like it would be the reason, since I have had longer breaks. I did eat shortly before I left, and wonder if that could do it. And I wasn't feeling great today, but a nap cured most of that. Hmph. We'll see what tomorrow is like.

Not Enough Magic

Where I work, we talk about having magic. I think this actually began because customers frequently say we have magic (since they can't grasp how we fix things). I even had one customer say he was taking me to Las Vegas to be his lucky charm. But sometimes, customers want things that we just can't do-like yesterday's cruise ship customer. Yeah, we have great magic, but we can't defy the natural laws of the universe.

That is why articles like this one make me laugh. Entitled 'Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin' and with the subtitle blurb 'Whether because exercise makes us hungry or because we want to reward ourselves, many people eat more — and eat more junk food, like doughnuts — after going to the gym' it is both absurd and stating the obvious. It seems researchers found that physical activity makes you hungry! No DUH! Any parent could tell you that (any mother who doesn't have a snack ready when the kids are done swimming clearly hasn't been paying attention).

Our bodies were indeed wonderfully made (no matter how you think they got made) and, lo and behold, when you ask them to use energy, they ask you for more energy. It's normal, natural and good.

As for eating junk food (if you believe there is such a thing-we don't use that term in our home) as a workout reward--well, that thinking is a natural outcome of faulty thinking about 'workouts'. Our culture in general sees exercise as a punishment for imperfect eating or imperfect bodies. If that is how you view physical activity, then you get caught in a loop. I ate a piece of cake, so I have to punish myself on the treadmill. I was so good at the gym that I can eat a piece of cake... and on and on. It's just so wrong, so self-defeating and so psychologically messed up!

Physical activity isn't a punishment or dues to be paid. It should be done for the joy of doing it. That is why I will never have a gym membership. I don't like treadmills or other machines that simulate real-world activities. I'd rather take a walk by the river where the scenery is nice, knowing that I will feel all warm and gushy afterwards, and enjoying the fresh air and sunshine. That is a joyful experience, where walking on a treadmill is...well, more like filing taxes.

It is also much easier to continue an active lifestyle if you are doing things that you find enjoyable AND when you are doing those things for reasons other than trying to obtain an unreachable goal. Because dieting and exercise rarely make someone thin (for long), and the exercise is associated with the dieting, people who do it for the sake of trying to be thin soon give up on both.

I have found that, after spending a couple years disconnecting dieting/trying to lose weight from physical activity, that physical activity is much more enjoyable, more varied, and now contains its own motivation. I will never be thin, but I get more active as time goes by. Maybe someone should do a study on that.