"What AREN'T you doing?"

On Roni's Weigh this week, Roni asked for readers to answer these questions about ourselves: 

What AREN’T you

doing,
experiencing,
trying,
achieving,
enjoying,
wearing,
feeling,
accomplishing,

that you want to be

doing,
experiencing,
trying,
achieving,
enjoying,
wearing,
feeling,
accomplishing,

simply because you don’t like the body you are in?

Here are my answers

I am not doing anything simply because I don’t like the body I am in.

I’m not afraid anymore like I used to be about my body. I don’t mind people seeing the flab on my arms, or my big hips and butt, because they are part of me and I love them. In the last few years I have

• run 5k races (nearly the slowest in every one)
• climbed a rock wall in my shortest shorts at Universal Islands of Adventure with people watching,
• played tag with my kids like it doesn’t matter that I’m 33 years old
• climbed a mountain without being winded
• strutted around for my husband, knowing that I’m as sexy as he’s always thought I was

I am not experiencing calm fulfillment simply because I don’t like the body I am in.

Although I have maintained 60 pounds of weight loss for nearly 2 years, I have been unable to rest and know that I am currently at a good, happy weight and fitness level. There is so much more fitness-wise that I know is in me, but I haven’t had the oomph to get it done. I know that if I would eat well 90% of the time (instead of my current ~60% of the time), I would lose some extra pounds that hold me back from accomplishing fitness goals.

I am not trying Chili’s newest dinner deal simply because I don’t like the body I am in.

I have been really good about avoiding restaurants that are problem places for me as far as “not much healthy to order on the menu.” I’m actually really excited about Roni’s trip to Applebee’s, and looking forward to their new <550 calorie menu. Will definitely be checking that out.

I am not achieving 5k races lately simply because I don’t like the body I am in.

Part of my body is this stupid foot of mine, which has troubled me for years. I finally got an x-ray recently and found out that there is indeed a heel spur in there, and it’s been hurting worse than ever. I am afraid to run more than 10 or so minutes at a time because of the idea of the “little rock”-like thing inside of my heel.

…the rest of these I’m going to switch up because I don’t want to be negative any more…

I’m enjoying working out 5 days a week simply because I LOVE the body I am in!

It feels wonderful to be communing with my body for 45ish minutes per day. I have been doing Nike Training workouts from the free app, and they are just brutal! Haven’t gotten beyond the “beginner” workouts, but I’m really enjoying them. I can always count on parts of my body being sore, especially my legs after a lunge and jumping-heavy workout. I’ve also been incorporating weights for upper body training, and it’s been great.

I’m wearing little dresses sometimes simply because I LOVE the body I am in!

Bryan bought me this adorable little dress that I wore on our last date, and it was awesome. It was a stretchy, loose material, so it accentuated my lovely hips, and I just looked cute. Really enjoyed wearing it and feeling special.

I’m feeling confident simply because I LOVE the body I am in!

Of course confidence waxes and wanes, but on some days like today I feel great about myself and the way I look. I can rely on the workouts that I’m doing and the good eating choices that I make, while discarding the days where I’m feeling too crappy to exercise, or decide to indulge in way too much Valentine’s candy.

I’m accomplishing my dream of loving life to its fullest simply because I LOVE the body I am in!

‘Nuff said about that one. It says it all. 

It Takes All Kinds of Days

I feel like talking about health and fitness today. I am still here struggling with the desire to and reality of becoming a fitnessy, healthy person. Here’s what I did this morning:

1. slept in because of 2 hour delay for school/work
2. had some full-caffeine coffee with ½ n ½
3. with an icing-less beet cupcake
4. still hungry, didn’t feel like fruit, had small bowl of Kashi w/soy milk
5. went to work
6. pittered my morning away (it was short because of the 2hr delay)
7. went to Ruby Tuesday with Bryan and a friend
8. did the FULL Ruby Tuesday gauntlet
1. salad bar, complete with ham/pea pasta salad
2. 2 Ruby Mini’s (beef, cheese, mayo, etc)
3. Fries on the side
4. ALSO partook in half of a Blondie for One (so, Blondie for 0.5)
9. commenced feeling full, fat, and somewhat miserable
10. went to the gym and did 40 sweaty minutes on the elliptical trainer

I don’t feel like doing any “at least…”s today. No “at least I worked out,” or “at least I only had half the Blondie.” I’m just past all that crap. I know what I need to do and I continue to not do it.

Folks, this is life. It’s so very often not perfect at all. We can’t be perfect; if we could, our moms would’ve named us at the behest of God Almighty, and our name might rhyme with Fleezus.

So here I sit, having eaten enough calories for the entire day sofar… AND, I had a great time at lunch. I ate fun food that I love, enjoyed company, and acted as if it didn’t matter at all. And it actually doesn’t. My parents always said “It takes all kinds,” from the immortal words of Daniel Dravot, played by Sean Connery in The Man Who Would Be King.

Well, it takes all kinds of days, too. 

Dad has lymphoma.

Dad has lymphoma. I mean, there’s a very slight chance that he has some crazy other kind of tumor growing in his lymph nodes that is not lymphoma (which is a clever word for cancer), but chances are Dad has lymphoma. At this moment, my dad is in an ornithologist’s office (I didn’t even know how to spell that word ‘till Word corrected it for me just now… guess you learn something new every day). He’s in an ornithologist’s office (got it right that time) finding out the results of his tumor extraction from last week. He’s sitting in a chair on the other side of some guy’s desk, listening to “his options.”

Okay, I don’t want to make this sound all doomsday and horrible, because many lymphomas are completely treatable and curable with chemotherapy. The thing is, not long ago Dad wasn’t thinking about chemotherapy except with pity for his brother-in-law who was currently going through it. Now he’s thinking of chemotherapy as a very real and necessary part of his life for probably for at least the next year. He’s also likely thinking about how cancer goes away, but it nearly always comes back, as it has with his brother-in-law, my Uncle Phil. He’s thinking about the end of his life as a reality, even if it’s years and years down the road. I hate that he has to be thinking of this.

Dad’s also getting a bone marrow test today, and that sucks. I guess they’ll be getting it from either his hip or his back, and I hear that it hurts like a motherfucker. My dad has always been so healthy, so strong. And now he’s got to lie on a table and have this horribly painful, huge needle stuck into his hip to get inside his bone, to see what kind of lymphoma he has. To see how bad it is. To see if the place where his very blood is made is in an uproar panic, or if it’s seemingly oblivious to the monstrous growth that had been going on in his neck.

I love thinking of the body as a machine… a factory… I know! Like a beehive. Everybody has their own job, they know it perfectly, and they do it constantly. Feedback loops, neurons firing, blood being made, pumped, and cleaned… it all happens since the day our hearts start beating, with no conscious thought about it on our part. It just happens, like in Osmosis Jones, or even Innerspace. It has always fascinated me the way the body works, and I’ve gotten pretty good at treating my body the way it would like to be treated. I eat good foods, try not to eat empty calories. I hate the thought of my stomach going “What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?!” I like my stomach saying “Yeah, that’s the stuff. I can make so much good stuff out of this… I can feed your brain, repair muscle, keep the heart happy.” I love that thought.

And it also fascinates me that sometimes—often these days—in fact, almost always if we live long enough—our cells somehow turn on us. They get possessed by some madness, probably induced by the bombardment of unseen chemicals in air, water, and food that we have consumed since we were babies. They start growing in a mass somewhere in our body, and eventually we die from complications associated with this overgrowth of our own cells.

I used to think that “Cancer” was some invasion from outside; some organism or something that made our cells go crazy. It’s terrifying, however, to know now that it’s just ourselves, and that the treatment is to, as the great Jerry Seinfeld once said, “take the amount that would kill me and back it off a little.” We kill our cells with chemotherapy, without targeting a certain problem area or cell type. We kill them all equally, and no wonder it makes us sick.

If my dad is very lucky today he will find out that this was all a misunderstanding. The >walnut-sized lump which took up several lymph nodes and had been starting to grow into the muscle of his neck was just… a fluke. He won’t even have to have chemo. I’m praying for that to happen, but I know there’s only so much even God can do when it comes to this stuff.