(no subject)

[moominmolly]

So sometimes, when I drink lots of apple juice, I smell like apples. Like me, I guess, just a very appley me. Other things affect my scent, as well, it's just that apples are the strongest. I always thought that was kind of neat.

Creepier, though, is that there are some medications that change my smell. I took one today. It's not important what it is, but it changes everything, all of my smells. I'm all artificial and "off", now; it's as if I've woken up in a host body that's not quite my own. They almost got it right, but they can't fool me! I smell weird!

I feel kind of weird, too. (This is about to devolve into total navel-gazing and musing on my own body image, so if you're squeamish about such issues/crap, stop here.) I feel like my body's not my own.

Backstory: A few years ago, I took a solo bike trip, because bicycles were the most convenient and cheap way to get to the places I needed to go to do some research. Three days in to this trip, I went up a hill that kicked my ivory-tower ass. I had to stop three times on the way up, once for a full meal, and I was still exhausted on the other side. Two months later, my route took me full-circle, and I went up the same hill. Only, see, I didn't realize it was the same hill until I was going down the other side and thought, "hey, this looks just like that hill that kicked my ass! But it couldn't be, since it didn't kick my ass." But it was.

I was astounded! It had never occurred to me that I could gain strength. It sounds obvious -- I mean, a body is a body, right, and bodies can gain strength if you ask them to -- but I wasn't even doing the trip as a physical exercise. Don't you have to be a jock or something to be strong? David (whom I was dating at the time) was kind of a mystical figure to me for this. He went to the gym, voluntarily, to work out. He had strange physical skills. I was biking around with my fat laptop and heavy books and no real clue what I was doing beyond the research interviews. But yet, here I was, and I was magically capable of doing something new!

Over the next couple of years, this basic revelation gained momentum (with David's patient help) and I took up what felt like lots of physical activity. Chicago, with its wide streets, easy layout, and luxurious 17-mile lake front path was ideal for biking. The next spring, we bought skates. We strapped them on and went maybe half a mile. A day or two later, we decided to try again and set off for downtown. Six miles and almost two hours later, I was shaking hard enough that I couldn't quite speak and I begged to stop. But still: six miles. Skating around the city became "hey, let's skate to Wisconsin!". Sure, we called a cab a mile or two short of the border, but it still felt pretty fucking cool. I felt strong.

I was heavy, though, heavier than I really knew how to be. It wasn't all muscle, either. I was on Depo-Provera, not smoking, and I had a desk job; it was inevitable, right? When we got married, I was the heaviest I've ever been. I wasn't even very overweight, but buying clothes had become a frustrating experience. There's nothing like shopping for girl garb and not being able to find anything in your size, anywhere, to make you feel like a freakish troll. I started lifting weights and wearing more clothes made for men. Emphasize the positive. Strong is good!

Fast forward through moving to Boston, biking 24 miles a day every day, icebiking through the winter, the cross-country trip, all of it, to one year ago. I'd lost 25 pounds since the wedding. I felt good! I was strong and buff! I was even almost comfortable thinking of myself as athletic. (Sometimes, my own self-perception takes a little while to catch back up with reality.) Most importantly, I'd learned the ways of my body. I knew how to put it through its paces. I knew how to eat what made it happiest. I had some idea of what it could do if I put my mind to it. But then I got a bit sick, and bought a car. I stopped biking to work and started sleeping the extra time, seeing friends, having a life. The previous winter, I'd needed the meditation, the routine and escape of cycling; that winter, I needed people.

In January or so, I started getting people over to our place to lift weights, since that's social and physical and largely noncompetitive. I had dreams of training for a huge bike race at the end of the summer. I was meekly trying to take up running with lyonesse. But meek, for me, who had dived headlong into the other physical pursuits I'd tried, was apparently not meek in terms of what my body could take. It turns out that running is pretty abusive if you don't take it slow at first. But I didn't, and I ran through the pain, and I lifted through the pain, until it became clear that not being able to walk wasn't really normal. And: bing! Achilles tendon injury! Welcome to the world of not being able to walk without pain and having to wear special shoes. I tried to bike, since that's much gentler on this particular type of injury than running, but each time, it became clear that pain meant "stop".

So I tried to focus on other things. Lifting. Amsterdam. Skating! Skating became possible, since it didn't make me flex my ankle. But mostly, aerobic exercise has been right out for five months. And here I am; I look down, last week, and notice that I've gained over 10 pounds this year. Almost 15. So. So. Is that bad? Is this where I flip out?

I'm only so dumb about this. I know that I have damn good reasons for not exercising over the past half year. I know that in the long run, it's good for me, since I'll heal up more quickly. I know that I'm always hardest on myself, by a long shot. I love the enormous variance between the people I find sexy. I know I'm still attractive. But that's not really it. When I'm not exercising, I don't even know when to eat! I don't know what to eat! Failing to feed myself properly almost makes me want to cry; why can't I even know what my own body needs to sustain life? What, is that hard?

15 pounds. I can't fit in to some of my clothes. My ass is atrophying.

So? I'm still healthy. I can still be sexy.

But...

At what point have I gone too far? At what point do I look down at my body and say, "okay, this isn't me, this has got to change"? Do I do it now? Or is that being unnecessarily harsh? Should I give myself a pass and say, it's OK, girl, you can get back into things slow and easy, skate once or twice a week, cut down on eating sticks of lard or whatever, it'll turn out OK. Wear the clothes that fit. Keep lifting. Feel strong and useful. Look at yourself naked. Naked is easier; clothes contextualize you and put you in a world where your body is too large to buy freaking jeans at the freaking mall. You are powerful and strong and sexy! Naked, you can be anything.

But if I'm not hard on myself, who else is going to be? Who else is going to still be me in forty years, when I'm hopefully not sedentary, dangerously overweight, and dying of heart disease? Who else is going to keep me on track and make sure that I don't let myself bit by bit lose the habits I've spent five years carefully cultivating? I know that I can make an argument for nearly anything. How do I know I'm not just being clever and lazy?

That's what it all boils down to. So much of what I worry about ends in, "so am I just lazy?"

David tells me that this isn't quite the right question, even though it's the one that's plaguing me, since he says he knows I'm not lazy. I'm not sure what the right question is, for me, right now. I got new skates, ones that can take me to work and back without ending in jarring leg pain. I'm going to try to skate at least once a week, hopefully more, to see if I can reach that mystical threshhold of aerobic exercise that makes everything better: my mood, my health, my eating patterns, my sleep, all of it. I guess the only thing to say is: we'll see.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

ooo running, cringe. nice history of your physical life btw.

and of course, muscle chicks are always sexy!

please submit many pictures and we'll be happy to tell you just how much so.


actually, weren't you going to talk more about smelling odd? that was kinda interesting...

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

weren't you going to talk more about smelling odd?

Nah, just kind of left it dangling. I'm not very good at structure. :) But it is interesting, and it does make me feel like an alien.

Pictures, huh? Let me think on that...

[fishfoo.livejournal.com]

I have only two comments. First, when Buffy eats garlic her breath stays the same, but she oozes garlic smell from every pore, particularly her hands. Probably luckily for us, I find this endearing and charming rather than weird and offputting.

Second, I too have gained weight (and feel like a lard-ass), and I haven't half your excuses, so quit beating yourself up about it. If that really classifies as beating up. For self-abuse it ended on a remarkably upbeat note. Good for you.

Third (pirates still aren't any good at counting, yarr), homeownership means you do physical things while at home. Other than weight-lifting. Like stripping wallpaper and painting and moving things from room to room and cleaning the gutters and mowing the lawn and raking the leaves and shoveling the walk and on and on and on.

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to not beat myself up about it. I think I'm at a reasonable weight, although perhaps not as buff as I *could* be while still not denying my hearty genetic heritage.

And, you know, I sure hadn't thought about home ownership as physical labor, but you're right. I mean, I was aware that we'd have to do a bunch of stuff, and that we'd probably do a lot on our own (since it's cheaper and potentially more fun), but it hadn't occurred to me that that would be work. Cool!

[veek.livejournal.com]

Hey, I like a fishfoo, and agree wtih the comment about house work.

Perhaps it's the feed-everyone monster in me speaking again, but I still say, eat! There is nothing like the right nutrients and the savoring of food tastes (that one's important!) to lift a mood. Listen to your body, even if it doesn't seem particularly responsive at first. Ask it specific questions, give it options - "you are not biking 20 miles today. Y'want beans? meat protein? saladic goodness?" and see what it perks up at. Maybe it won't perk up at anything, then ask it, "are you hungry at all, you little bugger, or should we wait an hour?" Passersby will probably look askance at weird chyk talks to self, but really it will be endearing. Just as your appley smell is.

weird chyk talks to self

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

I think my body does tell me what it wants when I'm not exercising, it's just SO much quieter about it that I often don't listen. You're probably right; consciously choosing each food in accordance with how I feel has got to be better than eating what's around (just in terms of keeping me happy!) -- I believe I will try it.

mmmm, food. Food rules.

perspective

[ceelove.livejournal.com]

...from someone who probably has about as much on this issue as you can cram into one head. This is going to be scattered, so I'll just do it grapeshot style.

1) You're gorgeous. Let's just put that right out there. I find it amusing, how often people are predisposed to tell me this or mention this around me. Like, I haven't noticed? You're been a significant part of my life for six or seven years and somehow I've been oblivious? Last February, Vicka said, "Do you have a license for that body?" That was what, five pounds ago or ten? At what point does it become too much for you to be gorgeous anymore?

2) One of the things I find mysterious and charming about you is your ability to experience that. Before we'd met, you quipped to me, "I'm gorgeous!" The fact that you could announce that, in a society that spends billions upon billion of dollars advertising to you just how inadequate you are, trying to ravage your self-worth so they can sell you some adequacy in a shampoo bottle or epilator, was thrilling to me. I still have no idea whether you meant it, whether you were asserting it to convince yourself, laugh at yourself, or express yourself, but it was cool either way. Self-acceptance is, in my book, a political act. Crazy as it may sound, there is a point to the fact that Vicka and I have thrown 15 Body Positive parties in the last 2 1/2 years.

3) I hate clothes that have the power of life or death over my self-esteem, and I've largely stopped wearing them. See also, rave pants instead of jeans. Jeans are the bane of my life.

4) I'm not hugely knowledgeable about it, but there's a weight that the body likes being, and it may have nothing whatsoever with what you want it to be. Are you going to fight and struggle to be five pounds lighter than your body will most comfortably be at? How arbitrary is your standard? I know what my limit is, and I'll get pissy above that, not fitting my clothes any more and such, but I know it's also ludicrous to try to weigh below a certain point, it's an exercise in futility and self-hatred.

5) You're not going to have your current job forever, in which you're limited as to when you can exercise. If you don't bike or skate to work in the morning, you don't really have another opportunity during the day. And our living room isn't currently set up for DDR. Both of those things will change, the latter fairly soon, when we move. If they weren't going to change, you'd have to put more effort into getting aerobic exercise, but they will, and you can take advantage of those changes.

Re: perspective

[chaiya.livejournal.com]

I like wearing the jeans I have, but I hate going shopping for clothes. I feel fattest when looking for a pair of pants or skirt that makes me look okay. So I make my own skirts now, and I tend to wear that instead of buying new clothes. Hey, my brocade green skirt that I made Sunday night cost me $6. I'd have a hard time beating that at Goodwill. :)

perspective II

[ceelove.livejournal.com]

6) Re: ankle problems. Go to a foot-doctor. I did, and it helped a lot: I can dance, and I would be very very unhappy if I couldn't dance. Mine is in Norwell, but he knows someone up here he likes, and I can find out for you who it is. Something you haven't yet tried is cortisone shots. They helped me in kicking the inflammation in the teeth, so the area could heal itself better.

7) It strikes me that you've got this fairly limited take, in this post, on what constitutes health and body-knowledge. I just went on a nice long bike ride with Carl on Friday, it was lovely, about 25 miles, with a sprint at the end 'cause we were late for a movie. The sprint left me shaky, and as we walked up three flights to his apartment I wondered whether I could walk to the movie theater. Then I realized that no, I would be fine after I got some quick calories in me, that that message was still clear to me from my body, and I thought that was awesome. I can still know my body better, after the bike trip! I suspect that's still there for you too. Bigger than that, though, is the fact that you know your body well when it comes to weight-lifting, that you go to a lot of effort (physically and personally) to continue with that and involve other people, that you even sometimes use your knowledge of the body to help others. Please don't do yourself the disservice of ignoring that as a standard of a good relationship to your own body.

8) Kumquat.

9) If you're at all inclined to go hiking with me and Carl, you're totally welcome. If you want to propose biking, walking, DDR, yoga, I'm up for it. I bet if you ask for swimming or skating companions, you'll find them. Exercise is so much easier to sustain if you've got someone else to do it with, in my experience.

10) And regarding the "why is it hard to know what to feed myself?" question, here's a pondering. We are, as a society, enormously out of touch with what our bodies need. We live so artificially, disrupting sleep schedules, not getting exercise as just part of regular life, eating things we SO didn't evolve to digest. I wonder if it might help you to eat closer to what's natural for us? Think of this: when we were on the bike trip, we were also putting more effort into giving our bodies exactly what they asked for. If we overload our bodies with fewer chemicals and such, maybe it'll be less confusing. Maybe try for more whole foods, fruits and veggies and grains? Just a think. Talk to me if you'd like to explore it - or better yet, talk to Carl, he eats organic as often as possible.

I'm sure there's plenty more I wanted to say that I'm forgetting, but this is a start.

cee

Re: perspective II

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

yay, I got a cee comment!

At what point does it become too much for you to be gorgeous anymore?

Oh, no, I'm still gorgeous. :P I might feel bad about myself and the way that my willpower cannot TOTALLY dominate my body, sometimes, but I'm still gorgeous and so are you.

there's a weight that the body likes being, and it may have nothing whatsoever with what you want it to be.

I have heard that it is possible to change this "set point". People who lose large amounts of weight and keep it off for a long time can, over time, reset their bodies to want to be at a different weight. But it's a slow process, even slower than losing the weight in the first place, and you know what? I don't want that much agony. I'd rather be this weight forever and not fret, if fretting is going to be useless. I think that the weight I'm at right now is more or less where my body likes to be, give or take 5 pounds. I just always wonder if it's possible for mere mortals to look like, say, this (http://www.coloradocyclist.com/images/products/full/foxwqaba02.jpg) without losing their minds. Maybe it's not! But, ooo, wouldn't I be so efficient? OK, whatever. Point taken. I'm not trying to lose 30 pounds, which would still make me heavier than, like, all Hollywood actresses. Just enough to... just enough to what? Just enough to convince myself that I'm paying attention. Just enough to keep me fast and to look good crossing the PBP (http://www.cyclos-cyclotes.org/pbp/).

cortisone shots.

Wow, yeah, I'd forgotten about your cortisone shot. I perhaps should consult a foot doc, already. I need to make all kinds of doctor appointments. I'll just throw that into the mix.

Please don't do yourself the disservice of ignoring that as a standard of a good relationship to your own body.

You're right. I do have a very good handle on a lot of things about my body. It's just hard to know that I'm capable of having a better handle on it than I do now. I think that trying to eat whole-foodsily well and live deliberately might knock some things into balance. Pop tarts are not food. Spinach is food! Pop tarts, less so.

meekly, my aunt fanny

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

just to set the record straight: when you took up running with me, *i* was training five days a week, and *you* were joining in once a week for the "long run". that ain't meek, kiddo, that's diving in headfirst, and it's no damn wonder it didn't work. would you really have felt good if you tried to skate to wisconsin on the first day?

btw, despite not having stopped in june this year like i do most years, i do seem to have (maybe) stopped running in september or so. i may do a little more this year, or i may not. if i take it up seriously again after stopping, i expect i'll have to start over at week 1 or week 2 of the training program again (remember that?) -- which is to say with "walk and/or jog one mile" going to "walk and/or jog 2 miles". not "wow, i think i'll go back to doing the hilly 4-mile an ras mor route", which is what i remember kicking yer ass, and which i strongly suspect would kick mine if i did it today.

there's lots more i could say (incl. yes, yer gorgeous, and incl. it will *always* be YOUR BODY no matter what it weighs or what weird-ass tricks it finds to pull on you, and i'm guessing that over a lifetime most bodies to find weird-ass tricks to play :) but i gotta go do other things. heck, i don't even seem to have time to spare to race around the block right now :)

one last thing though: aikido, mwf, 7pm. it won't make you skinny but it's a heck of a fun thing to do with yer bod; it teaches you how to be effective with it wrt other folks' bods, as opposed to "skinny" or "strong" in isolation :)

Re: meekly, my aunt fanny

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

it's no damn wonder it didn't work.

I had this funny feeling you might say something like that. :) I have VOWED that if/when I heal up, I will be MUCH gentler when starting up the running, and stop at the slightest pain in that area. I have learned that! I do keep stopping when it hurts, now. I guess I can be taught. You make an excellent role model for me for running (among other things).

would you really have felt good if you tried to skate to wisconsin on the first day?

Dude! I practically threw up as it was. I think I'd be a lot better at it, now. Time CAN actually make you better; you DO need more than willpower. Learn learn learn.

it teaches you how to be effective with it wrt other folks' bods, as opposed to "skinny" or "strong" in isolation :)

Ahh, yeah! That's one thing that felt really good about biking, etc. I felt like more than anything, my body was effective at something. I'd like to take up aikido, but time doesn't currently allow for that. prhaps later. Plus, your description sounds like sex, which intrigues me.

Re: meekly, my aunt fanny

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

hm. well, it may or may not be coincidence that all of the people i routinely have sex with i also routinely practice aikido with :) but i'd say you have a reasonable point in making the comparison, though i'm not sure that the details work out the way one might first imagine.

on a semi-related note, back when i was practicing in seattle, i'd watch sensei lovingly pin this particularly gorgeous uchi-deshi, and i'd be thinking, okay, just lean over and KISS HIM ALREADY, why don'cha? and me and a fellow student would talk about making an aikido porn flick, to be entitled, "acts of harmony" :)

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

If you would like to feel better, read Woody Allen's "Confessions of the Overwieght" or something like that. It's in Without Feathers or perhaps Getting Even but it's available. The subtitle is "After reading Dostoiefsky and Weight Watchers magazine on the same cross-country flight".

So, where is the link to the medicine that made you smell like a shopping mall and your recent spate of avoirdupoids?

-everyone's favorite hulking pot of kasha, Dante

hey, I like kasha!

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

the medicine that made you smell like a shopping mall

hee hee! No, that's just some OTC crap I was taking yesterday. The drug that helped me down the path of avoirdupois, though, as you so neatly put it, was Depo-Provera (http://www.depoprovera.com), a birth-control shot. It works marvellously well, but had the creepy side effect of not leaving my system for a full 11 months after I stopped taking it.

Bodies

[ectophylla.livejournal.com]

No, none of this is unreasonable. No you aren't rationalizing. (Pain during exercise means stop doing the exercise.) No, it isn't just you. (Your post actually sounds a lot like some of my worries lately.)

Of course you're going to reach a point where you want to change your body. Happens all the time. You just got a new haircut, right? The only difference is that weight loss and weight gain are slower. As long as you aren't doing stupid, self destructive things to change your weight, you're okay. You're allowed to want to change your body--it's not trivial and it's not succombing to the fashion SS/patriarchy/stereotype/whatever. You have to live in your body 24/7; you should like it.

As far as advice goes: pick something reasonable, do it regularly, and don't get stressed about how far you have to go to "catch up." It almost doesn't matter what the first step is. Do something trivial. Eat 1 more piece of fruit a day. Walk around the block. Anything. As soon as you're doing something, even something small, the process gets easier because you aren't so down on yourself all the time. (At least this is how it goes for me.)

And, for god's sake, "bore" us by talking about this. You wanna hear my dessert-insecurity rant? It goes on for 45 minutes. I bet more of us feel more stressed by our bodies than we want to admit.

Re: Bodies

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

As soon as you're doing something, even something small, the process gets easier because you aren't so down on yourself all the time.

This is completely the logical approach. But I'm so much better at enormous changes than I am at the small ones! Perhaps that's the lesson I need to learn, here: small steps can be good for me, not just for other people. I'm starting with eating, I think; partly taking veek's advice about consciously listening to my body, partly taking your trick of not eating anymore when I am no longer hungry. But, god, I can't diet. I just suck at it, it's not fun, and it's not nearly as good at making my body leaner and harder as aerobic exercise is.

And, for god's sake, "bore" us by talking about this.

I'm always afraid people are going to interpret my angst as "oh my GOD I am like SOOO fat" which is not really what I want to be saying. But perhaps I will bore you with it next time it bugs me.

BTW: cute bat!

Re: Bodies

[gleblanc.livejournal.com]

I bet more of us feel more stressed by our bodies than we want to admit.

I'll bet you're right. I certainly fret, though mostly that I'm not even remotely "famine resistant," as my friends say.