App-etite for distraction, part 2

So I posted a while back about my new smartphone app friend called Lose It!, which I employed in my pursuit of being in better shape. I thought that for grins, I'd see if I could get from 122, my usual weight, down to 119. Being 119 most of the time would make my clothes fit well and give me a little room to have a big meal now and again and not have to loosen my belt. (And before anybody gets smart-assy about being 122 in the first place, remember that I'm only 5'-0", so every pound on me looks like 2 or 3 on someone who's 5'-4" or taller.) So, I set the Lose It! app for a goal weight of 119 and a goal of losing 1/2 lb every week. It said I could reasonably reach my goal in six weeks.

I did it in three.

Three weeks after I started, I hit 118.4 lbs. Hooray! I celebrated momentarily and went on my way, enjoying food and life and making sure that I was staying within my calorie budget each day. The next week, I weighed 117.4 lbs. Hunh? It was another week before Queen Dumbass realized that she forgot to reset the Lose It! app to maintain weight, not to keep losing 1/2 lbs/week. Derp! I reset it to maintain, oh what the hell, 117 lbs. It added 250 calories to my day, which thrilled me. I recall shouting to Guy, "Yeah, muthafucka, I'mma have some cookies!" I stayed within my new budget and kept on enjoying food and life.

The next week, I weighed 116 lbs.

The next week, I weighed 115.4 lbs.

What?


So I took a rest week where I did yoga instead of cardio and weights for two days, and I went to 117.2.  Good news, right? Then I went back to my usual workouts, and I recently weighed 114.6.


Whaaat? I haven't weighed that since...high school?  Junior high, even?

So now I'm left to contend with two possibilities: one, I've turned my mostly-harmless efforts to get healthy into a fun little eating disorder; or two, I had been doing the same workout and eating the same way for so long that this was the jump start I needed for my metabolism. On the one hand, when I see at the end of the day that I have calories left to burn, sometimes I'm not hungry. Other times, I'm not sure I want to eat food that's high in sugar and fat just so I can use up my budget for the day. But there's also a part of me that just wants the gold star every day--not to go over my calorie budget.


As usual, I met up with longtime friend Vinnie, erstwhile antiques dealer and psychologist, and explained my predicament.  (No one understands the psychophysiological seesaw that is fitness and body obsession like a gay man with 30+ years of experience as a therapist.)  When I was finished, Vinnie just shrugged.  "Look," he replied. "The good news is that if you're not really craving sugar or fat or salt at the end of the day, then you've likely trained your body not to want it. There's been research that shows that you can train your body not to want and crave sugar and fat all the time, the way that we do in modern life.  If you're feeding yourself well and healthy, and your stomach isn't growling by the end of the day, then it sounds like you've just gotten yourself used to eating healthy, Pix."


"And your workouts seem decent enough," he continued."You're not doing more than an hour a day, right? So most of your day is being spent living, not being an exercise bulimic.  When it gets unhealthy, you'll know.  I've known you for ten years, and you know when to stop a bad behavior."


Fair enough. I know that tracking what I eat makes me conscious of how healthy or unhealthy my recipes are, but I also have to stay a good judge of what actually works.  I recently slimmed down my turkey enchiladas to the point that they just weren't filling anymore.  They tasted okay, but there just wasn't enough food to fill me up. So I'm still tinkering with that recipe (among others), and I'm experimenting with lunch.  The week I went to 114.6, I ate lunch at a restaurant three times, and only once was a salad (the other two were a burger and a chicken sammitch with avocado--NOM).  And a few nights ago when Guy got back into town, we had Ghirardelli brownies and frozen yogurt for dessert. Also interesting to me is that I don't crave alcohol the way I used to.  There was a time in January and February when I was working a lot, and every night I'd have a little glass of wine.  But no more, not even after having a day from hell--no real interest in having a sip. It makes having a glass at the occasional nice dinner feel great, like a real reward, instead of just a coping mechanism or a quasi-reward, the way people with spending problems will buy stuff constantly and say "I work hard so I deserve this".  It feels good.  I feel good.  And when it stops working, I'll stop.

App-etite for distraction

OCD runs in my family, but we all manifest it differently. I indulge my obsessive habits through record-keeping in such a way that starts out as admirable and then ends up making me look like John Forbes Nash meets Adrian Monk. Example: I once read that a great way to find out where all your money goes is to write down every single penny that goes in and out and to track it based on what you spend it on: e.g., food isn't just food, but there's dining out-food and grocery store-food and snack-food. When you start to track money so specifically, you'll a) become more aware of where your money goes and how and where you can curb spending, and b) think twice about spending money, knowing that you'll have to write it down on the list. Most people will do this for a few months at a time until they get things under control right?

I did it for eight years straight.

It started out as a way to track my spending and became one more thing that I "had" to do. I finally stopped when I realized that it no longer made me conscious of my spending, which was the original purpose in tracking it in the first place. I had finally attained the spending and saving habits that I wanted--I was conscious of what I spent, and Guy and I had gotten our expenses down as cheaply as possible while still enjoying life. So, I finally put that little Moleskine notebook on a shelf to let it moulder in peace.

Ah, but now I have a smartphone, with which I can do dumb things. But this time, The Precious isn't about tracking money, but rather calories and activity. When I visited the exercise physiologist at the Canyon Ranch Spa at the Venetian, as I do every year in Vegas (and for which I am good-naturedly abused by Scarlett and Guy), I realized in talking with her that my usual habits of weekly nutritional choices and exercises weren't cutting it anymore for my now 36-year-old physique. It was time to refocus and rethink how I work out and how and what I eat. (As we age, it turns out, diet becomes more and more important. Sonofabitch, there goes my nightly cookie habit.) The exercise physiologist turned me onto an app called Lose It!, which has a bunch of preprogrammed foods (regular, name brand from the supermarket, and even restaurant) and exercises (run-of-the-mill and odd, including curling) that you can choose from to see if you're eating well and working out enough to achieve whatever goal you set up (gain, lose, or maintain weight). You can even program in foods, so if the app doesn't have your kind of soda (Izze) or canned beans (Kuner's Black Beans, no salt added), you can plug them in.

I've been using this for a week, and it's been eye-opening. First of all, I didn't realize how many calories that even healthy-ass me has been drinking. Five tablespoons of flavored Coffee Mate creamer have 175 calories and barely lightens up my coffee the way a half-cup of 2% milk will at only 61 calories. I learned that my favorite Chipotle concoction (chicken tacos, hot salsa, cheese/lettuce/sour cream) is a little over 600 calories (which are negative calories if you get food poisoning/stomach flu and barf them up, see Monday's post). I also learned that Kitty's and my favorite chicken tortilla soup recipe is only 264 calories per bowl (based on eight bowls per Crock Pot, which is what Guy and I usually get out of it), but it's got about 1,000mg sodium per serving (use low-sodium taco seasoning, Kitty!). This app has made it easier for me to actually maintain a food diary, the way nutritionists have been begging Americans to do for years--it already has a lot of the nutritional info for many foods programmed in, so you can just input something and know that you'll have some accuracy in your calorie intake estimates, which is what I've been wanting.

This app makes me keep my phone out on my desk, which is something I always swore I wouldn't do with a phone. I like having a cell phone for my convenience, not other people's convenience. I've had acquaintances give me shit for not picking up my phone or even having it on when they call, but me having a cell phone is not so they can reach me, but rather so I can reach them when I choose to do so. It's a phone, not a leash, or even a shock collar. But having said that, I like having my phone nearby so I can input in what I've done (walking? yoga?) or eaten (Hershey's Kisses? pork chop?) and see what effect my choices have on my goals. So, yes, it feeds into my particular flavor of OCD. We'll see how long this lasts.

Monday Visual Inspiration: A quiet moment with a cup of coffee

It seems weird that much of Western society "relaxes" with a caffeinated beverage. Eric Bogosian once joked about how no one relaxes with coffee--they actually spend a frantic amount of time trying to procure coffee so they can get home (or wherever) and drink it. In that light, the to-go cup may be the most appropriate invention for the enjoyment of coffee. If you're going to drink rocket fuel first thing in the morning, you might as well have a little rocket-shaped stainless steel cylinder to put it in so you can take it with you when you hit low-earth orbit.

However, the photo above was taken at The Eggshell, a brunch place in Cherry Creek North, when I was out with Mom a couple of weeks ago. Light was filtering down into the restaurant through the atrium of a shopping complex which The Eggshell abutted and leaked into a bit for Sunday seating. It was a nice little Zen moment--white paper on the table, off-white coffee mug, perfectly dark coffee, shiny silver spoons, and a Mom. It was a good reminder to be mindful of all the little moments in life that feed us and ask nothing of us, such as birdsong in the middle of a city or a kitteh turned upside down on a rug on the floor looking cute. It was these moments while hanging out with Mom in July that made me realize that I really did need to try cultivating a habit of daily meditation again. (Sarge, stop laughing--I can totally do this.)

And so, I've been practicing for the better part of a week now, usually in the mornings but occasionally in the evenings. I'm doing about ten minutes a morning at this point, right after my workout, which is a bit of a squeeze for me. Hopefully the promise of time for meditation will spur my lazy ass out of bed a little sooner in the morning in order to get that pause. See, the morning is generally a fast time for me--get up, workout for 40 or so minutes, cool down and stretch, then in the shower get dressed eat breakfast brush teeth do makeup run out the door. A ten-minute pause for meditation in the middle of that seems to be making a difference, maybe kinda almost. With the exception of sitting through a 2 1/2 hour meeting on Friday morning, I've been mostly calm at work. That's especially surprising given the pace of the Uber MOB project right now. I even had a moment where I was surprised and then worried that I wasn't nervous or worried about the deadline and workload (yes, I know...), but I think it's because I'm taking a few minutes each day to radically slow myself down.

Friday mornings I do yoga, and I'm up earlier than usual because I have to be at work before 8 to prepare for my Friday meetings. Because of the extra-early arising, I make coffee the night before and turn it on about halfway through my yoga practice. At the end of the practice, I have a few minutes to drink a cup and either look at my plants on the (five-stories-up) porch or yet again meditate. There again, I find myself in the situation of "relaxing" with a stimulant. And yet it makes sense: if you're looking for energy, why not calm energy? It feels good to pause long enough to enjoy the flavor of whatever you're consuming, so that you actually enjoy and savor its ingestion and to some extent digestion, and then breathe, and then look around and just observe everything.... I'm certainly affected by the caffeine, but not in a strung-out workaholic yuppie kind of way. I get to thank all the people and processes involved in making this coffee and bringing it to me by really sitting down and enjoying it. And being thankfully and blissfully quiet.

[ssssskkkkkkkknnnnkkkkk] Ehn.

That's the sound of having a cold, complete with post-nasal drip, for almost two weeks. I felt like I'd shaken it last weekend, so I go for a run at 6:15am, come home, shower and dress for work, and suddenly I feel like I'm walking through mud as I walk into the office. I'm looking forward to work, I should say--I think we've almost got consensus on the 9th floor OB/GYN clinic, and even the doctor is on board--but I just felt like I physically had no energy. It finally hit me yesterday that, oh gee, I might still have a cold, and I'm going to continue having it if I don't let my body rest.

Rest doesn't come easy for me. The good part about being unable to sit still and/or procrastinate is that I get a lot done, but the downside is that when I really need to rest--with a cold or a sprained ankle--I'm terrible at it. Right now, though, my sinuses hurt and I feel achy, so I'm going to go lay down with a cheezy magazine (thank God and Anna Wintour that my sister sends me her couple-of-months-old issues of Elle and Lucky) and get some rest. Holla!

Where's the fun, man? Epilogue

(Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here for those who are catching up.)

So I now have multiple weapons in my arsenal to fight flab and poor health. Running, walking, swimming, dancing, yoga, and weightlifting can be mixed together to keep me active enough to maintain my weight, my health, my energy, and my mood. That's the funny thing about exercise--I started doing it to lose weight for my general health and not for vanity, but the benefits have gone much deeper. I learned firsthand about the antidepressant benefits of exercise when I sprained my ankle and was in a foul mood for a couple of months without those endorphins careening through my bloodstream on a regular basis. I've noticed that when I really don't get any exercise at all for more than a couple of days, I get cranky and listless. I have actually hankered for a salad and a walk in the past couple of years, hankered for them in the way that most people hanker for a glass of wine and some chocolate cake. Hanker.

What is most elusive for me is one of the essential components of the health equation, a factor that I referred to in my first post on this topic: rest. I'm really bad at resting, even when I know I really need to do so. Guy used to heckle me about this--I'd complain that my joints ached and my muscles felt tweaked, and he'd say with tongue planted in cheek, "Well, just make sure that you run four miles tomorrow morning--you just know that'll help you." "Ha ha, asshole," I'd reply, but he was right. I needed to rest, and yet I wouldn't. Hell, when I'm sitting around the house, I can't rest. When I decide to sit down and read a book or magazine, I sit down five or six times before I really sit down to read--I have to get up and toss out some papers, then I sit down and get up to shut off some lights and save energy, then I sit down and get up to give the cats a couple treats, then I sit down and get up to scoop the catbox...you get the picture. A great deal of my identity and habits is tied up in how productive I am, so just sitting down to enjoy a magazine goes against everything I've internalized in life. It's hard to go against that.

I've been extremely run down this week, which appears to have been caused by a combination of a late night out Tuesday night (I saw Wicked!!1!!) and one drink too many (which would be two, for those keeping score at home) as well as monthly hormone fluctuations. However, I have to wonder if maybe it's just time for a rest week. The time change and the change of season usually means we're supposed to take some time for reflection and slow down along with the earth, but you wouldn't know it from the whirling dervish that I am. I resist the idea of taking a break, which probably means that I need it. I once fretted to a friend of mine that I always feared taking a break, and his response was to chuckle and say, "Pixie, you're so motivated that you can never be at rest, so don't worry--if you take a break, your mind will eventually propel you back into motion again."

Where's the fun, man? Part 2 of 2

(Part 1 is here for those of you catching up.)

The search for less painful workouts has been on for at least a year now. It began a couple of years ago when I sprained my ankle really really really badly (go here for the first installment of that 31 flavors of misery), but it's become an even more urgent search with my recent general agitation and search for identity, blah blah blah. The first step in any healthy exercise regimen, which I usually forget about until Vinnie reminds me while I'm using my cold drink glass to ice a hip or ankle at the bar, is rest. The body needs rest in order to heal properly and (re)build tissues that you've worked out. Every now and then, maybe once every three or four months when I remember, I do an active rest week in place of my regular workout. I walk at a nice but not exhausting pace (about 4.0 mph, which is about how fast I walk around the office or down a sidewalk) instead of running or doing intervals, and I do yoga instead of lifting weights. I rely on movement first thing in the morning to set me up for the day, but I don't need to do tons of activity every time. Just enough that I don't fall asleep again if I lay my head back on the yoga mat while stretching or cooling down.

It's only been in the last couple of months that I realized that yoga could be a completely acceptable replacement for one of my cardio days. I generally do tough cardio M-W-F, weights with occasional yoga Tu-Th, and a long "fun" walk on Saturdays. A good yoga routine can replace one of those tough cardio days and still provide good health benefits. "You know, Pix," Vinnie said when I mentioned this back a couple of months, "we have research that shows that strength isn't built by microtears in the muscle fibers but rather by the muscle pulling away from the bone. And there are plenty of non-painful exercise that makes that happen, including yoga. It's not the worse thing you can do." So I do yoga. And when the weather's good, I can swim on the rooftop pool. But now that the weather's gone to crap, what's a girl to do for an alternative to her workouts before she loses her mind?

"When I'm in town in October," Kitty said during the summer, "I want to take a pole class. There's one not far from your condo, and it looks really fun on YouTube."

"Yeah, okay," I responded. I had zero interest in attending such an activity, but I'm glad to do what Kitty wants while she's here because my urban lifestyle affords her access to lots of things that she doesn't get living in the boonies in Georgia. So, on a cloudy and cold Saturday afternoon, we show up at the pole dancing studio in time to watch a more advanced class finish up just before our Introduction to Pole class.

And when I say pole dancing, I don't mean a bunch of Polish people dancing to a polka, which would be an honest mistake. I mean as in swinging around a pole and gyrating like you were working for tips in a g-string pole. Pole. Dancing. The room was mostly dark with loud music blaring, and there were five or six brass poles in the room braced firmly between the ceiling and the wood-look sheet vinyl floor, and there were women swirling and hanging and gyrating around and on and off these poles. Okay. Fair enough. That looked simple enough to accomplish.

Finally, it was the beginner's class' turn. We rolled out yoga mats on the floor and began stretching and doing some basic hip circles and rolls. It was at this point that I got extraordinarily uncomfortable with the whole thing. It's one thing to make these kinds of movements, it's another to make these kinds of movements in a roomful of strangers in a slightly darkened room while the class teacher keeps telling us to "go within", and it's still yet another to do all these tings with Usher and Prince playing on the iPod speakers. I don't "go within" to baby-making music, mm-kay Poopsie? Because if I do, this will turn into a very different class altogether. It's just...weird. And I'm totally comfortable with my sexuality and my identity as a woman--it's that this whole ordeal so far felt artificially intimate. I calmed myself down by telling myself that I only have to do this for two hours, and if Kitty wants to come back she can come back alone, or you can suffer another two hours, it won't be that bad.

But then, we started doing some other floor exercises, moves, and stretches that, while suggestive, were quite a workout. I mean, it really took some abdominal strength and tricep and deltoid strength to do the moves. And while they took effort, they were...new. And kinda fun.

And then we got to the pole. Turns out that picking yourself up onto a pole to swing around is really REALLY HARD. Dancers make it look easy, but it takes a lot of back and ab strength to make that move look smooth and not hurt like hell the next day. So we all tried some moves and some swirls around the poles, taking turns because there were ten people in the class and only six (I think) poles, but really getting into it. And when I say getting into it, I don't mean I was shakin' my boo-tay and thinking about getting it on or heading over to one of the strip clubs in town to see if I could pick up some extra money for the holidays, but I got into the idea of moving for the sake of moving. If, as the class instructor said, there were no rules here, then I could very well follow a butt swivel with a pointed toe leg lift like I was in ballet and then do a standing split that I learned in a yoga class in Vegas. The very notion of movement for the fun and sake of movement--and to the beat of music you liked, even!--was suddenly a really new concept to me.

Kitty and I went back a couple of days later for a private lesson with the main instructor and studio owner, and it was a blast. We learned some new strength and stretching moves, and we practiced some more with lifting up on the pole and spinning around, which was still hard to do. Our muscles ached terribly from the first class, but hell if I was going to miss the chance to throw myself into a state of centrifugal motion (as opposed to centripetal--since I was in the rotation, I was in a noninertial frame of reference, no?) and lift myself off the floor if only for a second. Also very cool were some of the conversations and philosophy that we discussed. We talked about engaging in movement for oneself and not for the pleasure of someone watching, and we also discussed taking up space, which women aren't taught to do. Think about it--if you're a girl, you're taught to take up very little space on the bus, to sit with your knees together at all times, and to move out of the way when ever someone's coming or passing. To hell with that--move the furniture out of the way and get your groove on.

Also worth noting were the women that attended the classes--our beginner's class had a size-16/18 girl with about five classes under her belt, and she could move. A superskinny librarian-looking woman pushing forty had great success in doing turns on her first try (turns is the official word for swinging around a pole), and a volleyball-player-looking Asian girl had great floor moves despite never having any dance training whatsoever. It was quite a relief for the class though when Kitty confessed that she'd daintzed before. One girl suddenly burst out "Ohthankgawd! I looked at you during the warmup and thought 'damn! I'm behind!'"

Since those lessons, I haven't been back to the dance studio, but that's because a) their classes start at 6pm, and that's about 12 hours after I start working out, but more importantly, b) I'm not much of a class taker when it comes to workouts. I prefer to lead myself most of the time, what with being the most motivated person I know. But I've been doing at least one day per week of just dancing around the living room like a goofball/exotic dancer/Paula Abdul-wannabe to playlists on my iPod...because it's fun. I get my heartrate up, and I get a good workout, but overall it's just fun. I'm so used to focusing on the "work" part of "workout" that I never realized it's not supposed to be such drudgery. I've managed to keep 20 pounds off for over four years. I think it's time to enjoy the process.

I may have to start using the raquetball court to dance in. The living room is getting too small for me to bring it old school to some Janet Jackson at 6:30am.

Where's the fun, man? Part 1 of 2

I've mentioned before on this tripe of a blog that I am nearly immune to procrastination. I am quite possibly one of the most accomplished average people I know. I'm no Maya Lin or Mahatma Gandhi or Bill Gates, to be sure, but I just have a great deal of focus and drive and git-er-doneness, for lack of a better phrase. (I guess "follow-through" would be a better phrase, so I don't actually lack the word, huh?) Whether it's homework or housework, phone calls or billpaying, I make like Nike and Just Do It. (Mom: Have I always been this annoying?) This follow-through and discipline has extended to every corner of my existence. I do the code study because it's tough and rigorous; I make the phone calls to the person that no one wants to talk to because I can eventually get them to understand what we're trying to do on the project; I clean the house while doing my laundry because the mess bothers me before it bothers anyone else around here; I eat several servings of fruits and veggies a day and exercise every morning so that I can indulge in the occasional (or even daily) brownie or cookie.

It's the workout that can be a grind. Every morning, 6am: out of bed, workout gear and shoes on, on the treadmill or lifting weights and doing something pretty rigorous for about 40 or so minutes a day, six mornings a week. Did I mention I've been working out every morning for about eight years now? Yeah. I'm in good shape to be sure, but sometimes it's painful in two ways. The first source of pain is obvious--knees that have seen hundreds of miles of outdoor runs beg for the elliptical and some ice, the shoulders and lats that complain when I pull on a jacket and ask if it was really necessary to do three sets of 80-lb pulldowns in the weight room yesterday, and the ankles that cringed this afternoon during a somewhat leisurely trip to Sam's Club to pick up some more bulk supplies. The ankls asked, "Do you remember all the standing we did at the party on Friday night? Yeah, we're still kinda in pain from that. Knock that off, sister."

But it's the second type of pain that wears on you to the point of wanting to climb up in a bell tower and shoot at Spinning instructors with a high-powered rifle and scope. It's the drive in me, the taskmaster that says if you sleep in once you'll sleep in again and again and the next thing you know your ass and gut will be the size of Montana and you know what that does to your blood pressure and cholesterol and Guy deserves a much more attractive wife than that don't you think and God forbid you be heavy and unhealthy and lazy. LAZY!!! So I drag out of bed with aching abductor muscles and wincing erector spinae and stumble into the bathroom and pull on my gear and go. Again.

As I came up on my eighth year of continuous workouts, Vinnie saluted me with a highball at our favorite watering hole. "You know," he uttered, "given your Slavic genes and your height, it's a miracle that you've kept the weight off as long as you have. You're fighting against not just human biology, but genetic biology." True enough, my Polish genes would love to keep my middle thick as pudding on my 5'-0" frame, and I refuse to allow that to happen. But as hard as I work, even at the age of 34 I can feel my body occasionally rebelling, with the aching joints and tendons and muscles, and the rebellions seem to happen more and more often. I'm trying to get more out of each workout (can I get five or six moves that work my whole body in under 30 minutes?), but it seems sometimes like my body doesn't want any of it.

Support for my sort of problem is actually spotty, despite the plethora of fitness and women's health magazines out there. I've subscribed to Shape for a while now, and I've come to realize over the past four or so years that many of the workouts--especially the cardio ones--aren't nearly as tough as what I do on a regular basis. I can incorporate some of the weight moves that they show, but I have to increase the weight they use by at least three pounds per arm. The models demonstrating the moves are slightly meatier versions of magazine models--maybe they're a size 2 or 4 instead of a 0. On the other end of the scale is Muscle & Fitness Hers. I flipped through one of their issues in the airport recently, and while the moves and workouts looked pretty good, the models demonstrating them were downright horrifying, with their super-lumpy muscles and equally-overdone-and-freakish makeup and hair. One major article in that issue profiled some fitness and bikini competition in which many of the competitors looked grotesque. (I don't have a better word for it than grotesque; I really don't.) So what these magazines are telling me, evidently, is that women who are truly interested in peak performance and being really strong and in shape cannot also be into makeup or good food or other types of health news. If I'm really into being strong, says Muscle & Fitness Hers, I have to be a man with lipstick and tits, and the only other articles allowed in my 'zines discuss the value of creatine, a two-page spread of "health news", and a four page ad-that-looks-like-an-article from a supplement maker. Count me out.

So last night as we were relaxing after our trip, Guy and I somehow got on the weight discussion. "So what's my cap, cutie?" I asked Guy. "How high can I go before you get worried?"

Guy: What's the highest you've ever been?

Pixie:140. That was my peak in high school, and that's what I was in the fall of '01. [pause] And you didn't seem to be horrified. I was still gettin' laid twice a week, and I'm only gettin' it once a week now.

Guy: Tuh! I'm married, now!" Guy returned. "We gotta do this for 40 years, I'm gonna ration it!

Pixie: [chuckling] Whatever. So is 140 my cap?

Guy: I dunno...I think you could go 160 before I'd get worried.

Pixie: 160?! That's generous, honeybear! Can you imagine what I'd look like?

Guy: What are you now?

Pixie: 120-122, depending on time of day and month.

Guy: Well...[thoughtful pause] If one day when you're fifty you say, 'Guy, I want a piece of pizza,' I'm gonna say, 'okay baby, you go ahead.'

Pixie: [laughing]

Guy: Well? I think you've earned it by that time. You do what you want.

So while I have Guy's blessing to girth it up at any time, I'm not ready to yet. But if I'm not giving up my workouts, how am I supposed to make them more tolerable? And maybe even less painful?

to be continued...

Showing up is (more than) half the battle

The other morning, I had just finished up swimming laps and doing paddleboard drills for 40 minutes when I saw a guy from another floor of my condo building out of the deck of our rooftop pool giving me a thumbs up. I finished tying my lavender fleece Hello Kitty robe and walked over, giving him a high five.

"Man, you're my inspiration!" this fellow, an entrepreneur in his fifties, said to me. "You're out here, gettin' it done!"

"Well, showing up is at least half of the battle," I replied.

"Man," he continued, all jazzed up, "I just signed up for the _________ Challenge; I'm gonna lose 25 pounds and kick some ass!"

"Right on!" I replied as I stepped onto the elevator.

I wish this dude all the luck in the world, but I'm not optimistic. I've seen him appear and disappear from the top-floor fitness room in our condo. He's told me about the juicing/detox workout system he was doing, this one workout thing, this other workout challenge, and so on for a few years now. My point of view is this: if any of these worked, you wouldn't be doing another one ever three to six months. I have to say that he never seems to look any different to me. He's the same size, shape, etc. everytime I see him. And he doesn't look bad, mind you, but he never seems to look any more or less in shape. (Maybe I'm not paying that much attention, either. I'm awfully self-absorbed at times.)

I've been working out every morning, six days a week, for almost eight years now. People get kinda blown away when I say that, but the truth is that showing up is often the hardest part about getting into shape. Making yourself put on the t-shirt and shorts and go to the gym, or lacing up the sneakers and going for a walk or run, or rolling out the mat and doing yoga...that first step or two, the showingupness, that's often the hardest part. Everyone has different reasons for not showing up: I got busy, I was tired, I'm not seeing any results, skipping once won't hurt anyone. Then they don't show up again, and then they don't show up yet again, and then they quit showing up.

I can't not show up for a variety of reasons. Even if I drag through my workout and take it easy, I need the activity to reset my mood. Ever since I had to go off birth control pills about five years ago (they unnaturally jacked up my blood pressure), I've had to use exercise and the ensuing endorphin release to moderate my mood. I realized ust how much I depended on that boost when I sprained my ankle two years ago and couldn't work out. I was a ball of cranky fury for about three or four months. But even though I couldn't do much, I'd strap on my walking boot or wrap my ankle in a brace and limp to my yoga mat and do a few seated poses and a few exercises that my physical therapist gave me. Soemtimes I'd limp upstairs to the gym and do some upper body and abs stuff, just something. And sometimes, especially early on, I would limp into the living room, roll out my mat, and just lay on it for half an hour. I just kept showing up.

And now, even still, I get up and do some yoga, go to the gym, go for a run, go up to the pool, whatever. Some mornings I'm hell on wheels and make great time, have tons of energy. Some mornings I drag through. Most mornings I'm in between. But I show up. I show up, and while I'm there I might as well lift something or run somewhere or do something. Showing up is the first step for any endeavor--work, hobbies, relationships, everything, anything. Just show up--you'll figure out the rest.

Trouble with a T, and that rhymes with P, and that stands for Pool

I've mentioned before how I love to run. I'm a running and walking fool. Every babysitter, nanny, and relative that ever took care of me has two recollections about me: I loved books, and I loved to run. Even when I've obviously pulled some muscle, agitated a ligament, twisted a joint, or just flat-out wounded one or both legs, I'll still at least go for a fast walk. Guy makes fun of me by putting his hands on his hips all sassy-like and saying in a high shrill voice, "My name's Mile High Pixie, and my leg hurts, so I'm gonna go for a run!" (My voice isn't as high as he makes it. He makes me sounds like the bus driver with the bird in her hair on South Park. However, my voice is as loud as hers.)

Last summer, after moths of aching joints and muscles earned while trying to run away the stress of Wheatlands, Guy suggested I start swimming in the pool in our condo building. I fought the suggestion for a long time, but once I started using the pool, I realized he'd been right all along. (He'll really enjoy reading that, I'm sure.) The pool in our condo is actually on the top floor of our 15-story building and is surrounded by a stucco wall on one side and glass walls on the other three sides. The water is heated in the winter, and there's a canvas roof the building manager pulls over it when it rains in the summer or is really cold in the winter. During the summer at 6am, though, when I work out, it was just me and the dawn breaking over east Denver and the occasional traffic chopper flying overhead. I found that I could get an amazing cardiovascular and strength workout and not be unbelievably sore all day after 45 minutes of activity. It also helped trim the last few pounds off me, and I looked and felt great. However, once the weather got cold again in the fall, I had to return to running. No biggie, right?

Well...yes and no. I wounded myself yet again in early January, and I couldn't even go back to swimming because the pool roof had been damaged, leaving the pool uncovered and chilly. To keep the heat in, the manager would put down a plastic sheet on the pool's surface. There are instructions on the glass door leading to our rooftop pool saying that only the manager is allowed to remove the pool cover to prevent damage.

Just this past Wednesday, I came up to the gym to clock a little time on the new elliptical machine (yay low impact!), and I realized that the pool roof had been repaired and was stretched over the pool. Big yay: while it's 25 outside at 6am in Denver right now, the roof and glass walls kept in enough heat rising off the heated pool to make it about 45 or 50 in the pool area with no wind...and the pool felt soooo warrrrrrrmmmmm.... I thought, "That's it; I'm swimming on Friday!"

So, yesterday, I came upstairs in my robe and bathing suit...and the roof is off. Er? Huh? Perhaps they were predicting snow for Friday and didn't want to risk damaging the roof again, but I didn't recall.... Well, I was already there, so off goes the robe, and let me say that 25 degree air at 5:30am in Denver is a tad uncomfy. But the pool was soooooo waarrrrrrrmmmm and the swim felt great. It felt so great that I decided to do it again this morning....

And the roof was off...and the plastic cover was down. And residents aren't allowed to remove it. And I was really looking forward to getting a swim in. And here I am in my robe with a Nalgene bottle of water and a towel over my shoulder and...oh, forget it. I stomped back downstairs and was surprisingly pissed about it for a long time. And obviously, I still am.

I'm pissed about it because I'm trying to take care of myself while also staying active, and swimming best does that. I think I'm even more pissed about it because of the randomness of the roof/no roof/plastic cover pattern. Why is it covered now? Is it because there's only part time help on the weekends and they don't want to be caught unawares in case it snows on Sunday, which it kinda sorta might? The building manager lives in our building, for crying out loud. Is it that big of a deal to come upstairs in the elevator and put the cover on and pull the canvas roof back? I fear that I suddenly sound like one of those hideous residents at Wide Lawns that poor Subservient Worker has to deal with, but I'm just frustrated. If I understood what the reasoning was behind the decision to cover or not to cover, I could better decide whether to lay out a bathing suit or running shoes for the next morning and not get my hopes up unreasonably.

Some days, working out is the only thing that goes well for me. A shipment of drywall is delayed out of Lincoln and Wheatlands gets behind schedule, Wanda does something crazy with the Pomme de Terre sheets, DA loses power and no one can work, we get lousy service at our favorite brunch spot when we go in to celebrate getting the bathroom painted...whatever. At least I ran 4.75 miles in 50 minutes today. My body still works. I've lost 25 pounds, even if it took me a little more than four years to do it. My blood pressure is normal again for the first time since 2001. Some days, that run, that yoga asana sequence, that set of bench presses is the only thing that goes right. And when not even that goes right, it makes me a cranky little Pixie. And then what? I ask you, O Lord of the Plastic Thingy Covering My Beloved Rooftop Pool, then what?

PS: I know I owe y'all a Detail of the Week. I'll double up next week.