Renovating Kaeti

[Photo courtesy of emma.c.]

Tomorrow I’m running a local 5K as a birthday present to myself.

Why would I want to wake up at 5:30 in the #!@$& morning and subject my body to a rigorous pounding on my birthday of all days?

Good question. I have no idea why.

OK, that’s not entirely true.  While I may not have thought this through before I registered, in retrospect I’m glad that I’m marking the start of my 23rd year with a race. A lot has changed in one year.

Last year at this time:

• I had never run more than a mile, and the mile I ran/walk for a fitness class my senior of college took me close to 14 minutes. I was the last one off the track; the entire class sat and waited for me to finish. (Oh, how I wish I could go back to that day and run the seven-minute mile I know I’m capable of now!)
• I was more than 50 pounds heavier.  But it wasn’t the weight itself that really bothered me — it was that I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror. I didn’t feel at home in my body.
• I had a fair share of the crippling anxiety that goes along with feeling ashamed of your body, your lifestyle and your choices. I was convinced that my friends and family were constantly judging me or disappointed in me. Whether they actually were doesn’t even matter — my perception of judgment was the projection of my beliefs about myself.
• I was just beginning to make small changes in my life: eating whole foods, walking every day, reading everything I could get my hands on about healthy weight loss.

I made a goal for myself last year that I wouldn’t go another year stuck in that miserable and exhausting mire. And I didn’t. With the help and support of friends (my roomie/BFF is a constant inspiration, and her fitness commitment blows mine out of the water), family (my parents continue to make small changes every day that lead them in a healthier direction), readers and bloggers (your stories have kept me going on more than one occasion), and perhaps most importantly my coworkers (I drank the Kool-Aid, and it was good), I made the necessary changes and they kept snowballing.

Here are some of the things that happened this year:

• I became a runner (how did that happen??).
• I rebalanced my body weight, and once again feel present and accounted for in my skin.
• I cut out soda, high-fructose corn syrup and other processed junk, and am eating a diet based around organic, whole foods.
• I joined a yoga studio for the first time, tried out hip-hop dancing (I am so not coordinated) and all sorts of other fitness experiments.
• Every day I’m learning how to accept where I am right now, and to make choices that support who I want to be in the future.

The most terrifying exciting part about this all is that it is only the beginning. This was only one year. There is so much more to learn, and so many ways that I will continue to grow and change.

And what better way to renew and reaffirm my commitment to making my life as healthy and happy as possible than running as hard as I can, sweating like a pig and tossing my cookies at the finish line?  None that I can think of! (And I mean that. Which probably just confirms people’s suspicions that I am, indeed, loopy pickins.)

Have a great weekend everyone!

I’d like to say that I entered into this whole world of health and fitness for entirely altruistic reasons — because it’s a better way to live, in and of itself. But honestly, weight loss was a big motivator for me.

Somehow during college I managed to accidentally gain upward of 60 pounds. Seriously, I don’t know what happened! (Er, I guess there were a few pizzas, trips to fast-food joints and sleepless nights thrown in there.) I was a classic case of denial, telling myself it wasn’t that bad and that I would get healthy after college, you know, when I had “more time.” Ha.

Well, long story short, I did make some important changes after college, and in the past nine months have been steadily losing weight and reclaiming balance in my body and life. But in the last month or so, I’ve kind of hit a wall. Blame the holidays or inertia or erratic eating, all I know is that my body has stopped shedding fat. And in talking to my friends and reading many of your blogs, I know that a lot of you have experienced the same thing.

So I did a little digging, and here’s a list of five reasons that weight loss can stall. This is by no means a comprehensive list, so be sure to comment and weigh in with your thoughts. (I didn’t even try to make that pun. I swear it was an accident.)

1. You’re not weight training. Weight training increases mitochondria, our cells’ calorie-burning powerhouses. So basically, more muscle means that your body is naturally burning more fat just by existing. Gina DeMillo Wagner explains it here. This is an area where I am oh-so guilty. Taking a cue from those of you with balanced fitness programs, I’m trying to work in some more resistance training.
2. You body has adapted to your fitness routine. Routine isn’t always bad — in fact, it can be eseential — but ruts can definitely derail your path to weight loss. Check out “Spring-Clean Your Routine” and investigate some of the resources listed. If your body has adapted to your same-old, same-old regimen, you need to mix it up to start seeing results again.
3. Inflammation. In “How Exercise Heals,” Susan Gaines writes: “Inflammation can be measured by the presence of C-reactive protein (CRP), and it flares when your immune system is in a state of chronic reaction. Messenger molecules of the immune system, called cytokines, are fired up by poor diet and a sedentary lifestyle. A regular, moderate exercise program can sharply reduce CRP, according to a 2002 study published in Epidemiology.” What does all of that mean? Inflammation causes our bodies to hold onto extra weight. Experts like doctors Mark Hyman and Elson Haas attribute our chronic inflammation to a diet loaded with processed food and our increasingly stressful lifestyles. Food intolerances and allergies also play a huge role in inflammation, so if you suspect that you have food sensitivities, it may be worth it to try out a detox/elimination diet like the one described in The UltraSimple Diet.
4. You’re not eating enough. So many people are consumed by cutting calories and monitoring their food intake that they end up sabotaging their weight loss. If you’re eating less than your basal metabolic rate (i.e., the amount of calories you would burn if you spent all day in bed) your metabolism will slow down. I know y’all have heard this before, but it bears repeating. Our bodies function best when we fuel them with fresh, natural, whole foods, and worry more about the nutrient value and less about the caloric impact. Our bodies have an amazing capacity to regulate and adjust to the amount we eat if we’re eating quality food and staying active.
5. You’re working against your body, not with it. If you’re pushing yourself too hard in the gym, trying to trick your body with less-than-satisfying “diet” foods, or aiming for an ideal weight that is downright unhealthy, your weight loss will be inconsistent. And losing weight too quickly will just slow you down in the long run. The healthy, sustainable way to weight loss is not The Biggest Loser, it’s retraining your body to function as efficiently as possible. If you give your body whole foods and regular activity, it’s amazing how willing it is to work with you to get to a healthy weight.

Just writing these out has reminded me of some things I need to work on (a balanced fitness program, avoiding processed flours and sugar, accepting the speed at which my body is able to change, etc).

Here are some other great resources to check out:

Weight-Loss Rules to Rethink

The Simple Way to Slim

Maximize Your Metabolism

Spring-Clean Your Routine

Weight Loss 101

I recently started taking yoga at a studio in my neighborhood. During a class the other day, my teacher warned us about staking happiness on specific accomplishments. During one particularly difficult pose, he looked around at all of our constipated faces, and said, “You know, you can try your whole life to try to touch your foreheads to your toes … or, you could relax, smile and be happy where you are right now.”

There was a sort of communal sigh of relief (and you could hear it, what with our Ujjayi breath and all). It was such a liberating concept, especially as my heels have yet to touch the ground in downward dog, and my forward bends look more like bows compared with the limber types around me.

My teacher went on, saying that many times when we base our happiness and worth on reaching a certain goal (or pose or weight, for that matter), we achieve the goal only to realize that it doesn’t make us happy and we’re exactly where we started — dissatisfied, feeling “never good enough” and usually pretty crabby.

This isn’t to say that having goals or celebrating achievements isn’t important. It is. But I find that to truly revel in reaching my goals, I need to be coming from a place of acceptance and completeness — before I reach them. If I can’t love who I am at this weight, weighing 20 pounds less isn’t going to change that. In fact, when I start basing my progress on the numbers, it’s a struggle not to get addicted to them. Instead of focusing on feeling right in my body and being healthy, I just want that number on the scale to creep down (OK, if I’m being honest, plummet down). And when it does, I’m like a junkie: never satisfied, always looking for my next fix.

Getting trapped in this cycle exhausts me, and leaves me feeling terrible about myself. That’s exactly why, when I began to lose weight as a natural byproduct of the changes I was making (you can read about them here), I decided not to weigh myself regularly. I chose not to count calories. For some people, these measures may be important or useful, but for me they were a trap. When I started playing the numbers game — measuring every crumb I ate and viciously observing every tenth of a pound I lost — I didn’t have the energy or time to eat consciously or actually enjoy my workouts.

It’s hard not to get caught up in the “skinny is best” fervor that dominates so much of the health and fitness world. Thankfully, mainstream culture is finally starting to wrap its mind around the idea that fit does not equal thin. In fact, recent research suggests that overweight, physically active people age slower and reap more health benefits than their slimmer, couch-potato friends. So maybe by revising goals and expectations to focus on health measures rather than arbitrary numbers like weight and calories, we can find a much more sustainable and satisfying way to move forward.

This could mean anything from lowering your resting heart rate, to eating fresh, whole foods — rather than aiming for an idealistic pre-college weight or eating flavorless, low-calorie foods (Kristin Ohlson wrote a great article on why this doesn’t work, anyway). Measures like body-fat to lean-tissue ratios, VO2 max, heart rate and strength are all beneficial ways to gauge progress, but even these can become a distraction and end up sabotaging your momentum if you get too wrapped up in the numbers.

For me, a big part of this ongoing venture into health and fitness has required that I let go of my unrealistic expectations (seriously, who are these girls that run the treadmill at a six-minute mile pace??). Maybe, instead, I can take a deep breath and smile, look at how far I’ve come, and embrace who I am right now. And when I feel at ease in my life, I can find the energy I need to keep moving forward.

What do you think? Do the numbers help or hinder you? Have you ever been tempted to aim for unrealistic ideals?