THANKFUL FRIDAY

Two, maybe three (?), years ago I impulsively bought a skirt from the sale rack at Anthropologie without trying it on first. Big expensive mistake. A few days after the purchase, I put that skirt on to wear to work and the buttons strained across my belly. I got all of the buttons buttoned, but the one at the waist was nearly cutting me in two. The skirt was too small. I frowned and shoved the skirt into the back of a drawer. Yes, I realize that I probably should have returned the skirt, but I am not good a returns. Particularly if it was a sale item. I feel like I am pulling off a scam or cheating on a test. A few months ago, I bought a dress online (from the same place). It is too big, but I like it like that. When I put it on, Michael said “but…you have no shape.” I cheerfully responded “I know right?!? I love it!” and I do love it. It’s like wearing a soft tent.

Clearly I do not know my size or how to pick up a tape measure and measure my damn hips.

I am reading Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty. It is about a group of people attending a somewhat radical wellness retreat that promises to change their lives. The ten day retreat begins with five days of ‘noble silence’. No cell phones, laptops, TVs. No talking or making eye contact with each other. Diets specialized to each person. Individualized daily schedules. Daily blood draws and blood pressure checks. Counseling, yoga and meditation. It sounds extreme. It sounds downright awful and challenging. It also sounds heavenly to me. One character in particular is attending the retreat to specifically lose weight. She’s desperate to get her body back into the shape it was before having four children. She is recently divorced for the old cliche reason of the husband wanting an upgraded model. This character dived full in to this retreat, without any complaints or objections. In her first counseling session, she asked several times if she had lost weight. The woman in charge never answers her because she doesn’t want this character’s life change to be just about her weight.

Women said they needed to “lose weight” with their eyes down, as if the extra weight was part of them, a terrible sin they’d committed.

Every pound of fat that I have allowed to settle onto this body has made me feel shameful. This wasn’t always the case. In fact I have a very clear memory of the day and moment that my weight became something that made me feel ashamed of myself. Sometimes that memory gets pulled from the back of my brain and placed front and center. I see myself in my hand-me-down swimsuit inherited from my sister and my reflection in the mirror is wearing an expression of shock over not looking anything like my sister did in that swimsuit. I hear the words that came out of my mother; how those words made me curl up with shame. Now that memory makes me burst into flames of rage over how that moment, that one moment, had me wasting so many years trying to get this body to look like someone else’s standard. This week, I pulled out that skirt from the back of the dresser drawer and I tugged it up and over my hips. I buttoned all of the buttons. There was no straining or stretching of fabric. My waist was not being cut in two. The skirt fits. The skirt fits perfectly and I am hyper aware of just how much this body has changed in just a year’s time. Those changes are the side effects. I did not set out to change the landscape of my body. I set out to lower my cholesterol and prevent the Type II diabetes that is so prevalent in my family. I did not lose weight. I gained health.

I have created my own standards.

TORTURE AND STARVATION

Selfie

All of my yearly maintenance exams got rescheduled and landed all in the same week. I spent three days a couple of weeks ago being probed, prodded, joints popped into place, blood drawn and weighed. I waited in three different waiting rooms. It was quite the adventure. When I finally sat down with my doctor that deals with my cholesterol, she told me that I looked great. She looked at my chart and told me that I had lost weight, almost twenty pounds since the last time I saw her. Then she asked me how I’d done it. How on earth did I perform this miraculous feat? I looked her square in her masked face and said “Torture and starvation.”

This is not far from the truth. I started with torture first with a strength training class twice a week. The class consisted of jumping around a lot with weights and I hated it. Every time I did a jumping jack, I felt all of my body fat jiggle. Every exercise we did in that class made me hyperaware of my gross flabby body. Then I would get angry with myself. How could I be so out of shape when every day I spend thirty minutes on the elliptical, do an hour of yoga and walk a bazillion steps?!?! But I stuck with it because the instructor was/is cool and super supportive. She knew that I hated all of the things she made us do and she encouraged me with an appropriate amount of cheer. Eventually, I stopped hating the class. I didn’t love it, but I no longer hated it and I lost ten pounds. So it was obviously working.

Then I started the starvation tactic.

Starvation is a pretty dramatic word. The scientific word that really applies here is ‘fasting’. I did a lot of reading and research about intermittent fasting and then I sent my findings to Michael. He was immediately on board, which kind of surprised me. He usually needs more convincing, but intermittent fasting would mean giving up breakfast and he’s never been a big fan of breakfast. I on the other hand needed more convincing to give up something that has always been a part of my life. I was raised on breakfast. Just ask my mother about that phase I went through at age three or four when every morning for three weeks I requested one poached egg whenever she asked me what I wanted for breakfast. Eventually she stopped asking me what I wanted and made what ever she felt like making that morning, but we ate breakfast every single morning. If we were going to do this fasting thing, I was going to have to wrap my brain around not eating breakfast.

There was something else that made me hesitant to do fasting. I have been aware of my weight for most of my life. I have never ever felt skinny and as a teenager, those feelings created a dangerous relationship with food. There was a lot of eating and not eating and then eating a whole bunch going on, which was made worse by a ‘eat everything on your plate’ rule. The contradiction of being told to ‘watch my weight’ while at the same time being told to ‘clean my plate’ did not make for a healthy relationship with eating. I worried that intermittent fasting would once again lead me into an unhealthy eating relationship. I worried that my growling , hungry belly would cause me to just eat all of the food all day long. Honestly, I was really scared to start an intermittent fasting program. So of course, I went ahead and started an intermittent fasting program. Do the things that scare you and all that jazz.

I lost another ten pounds.

My doctor got very excited when I told her that I had been intermittent fasting during the week. I told her that I have either a green smoothie or avocado toast around 10:30 in the morning. Then I go do some form of exercise, usually yoga, and eat lunch at noon. Then I said “And I haven’t murdered any one yet!” I do not eat all of the food all day long. I eat reasonable amounts of food and I do not deprive myself. If someone brings in apology cake to work, I eat a slice of that apology cake (apology cake is the best cake). My doctor was thrilled with this news. She said that researchers have seen that intermittent fasting has helped Type 2 Diabetes patients get off of their insulin. She also said that I was doing every thing right, which is all that really matters to me, validation that I am doing everything right. So torture and starvation is how I have managed to perform the miraculous feat of weight loss at my age. Though the strength training and fasting thing really do not feel like torture or starvation any more.

It feels more like a mild annoyance.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Fun with lasers

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Michael missed three days of school this week because some yuck virus that seems to be going around. Twenty something other staff members from his school were out with it too. I am determined not to get it and so far my voodoo rituals have been working. My stomach is a little gurgly from all of the EmergenC I've been drinking and my nose is tingly from all of the tree oil I've shoved up there. I came home Wednesday evening with some sinus pain and a slight fever. I guzzled down more EmergenC and coated the inside of my nose with more tee tree oil, took some ibuprofen and went to bed. I woke up the next morning feeling okay. So maybe...just maybe, I'll avoid this round of plague. I'll wipe down the inside of the house with Clorox wipes this weekend and boil all the linens just to be sure we rid the house of all of the yuck germs. Though I am starting to wonder if it's possible to overdose on vitamin C.  

I'm feeling pretty good these days, at least physically. My moods are bit a manic, but it's the Holidays and that's another story. I stepped on the scale this week and discovered that I have officially lost ten pounds. If I lose five more pounds, I will be the weight I was when I was the skinniest I had ever been. Those were the days when Friday night dinner was a bottle of wine and a sleeve of saltine crackers. I'm perfectly okay with being this current weight. This morning, I put on the Levi's I'd purchased a few months ago. I hadn't really been wearing them because even though they fit, they were uncomfortable. Now they fit just right. I keep looking down at my long skinny legs and my somewhat smaller gut and doing a little happy dance. My guilty pleasure music is Kesha's latest album and I've been shaking my butt to it all morning. This body is better at almost forty two than it was at twenty two. When I turn fifty, I'm totally going to walk around kicking and punching and declaring "I'm fifty!"

It's nice to be heading into December feeling healthy. The usual feeling around this time of year is to just throw in the towel and say "I'll fix it next year." I resolve to be healthy! This is not a New Year's resolution for me. It's a daily resolution just like the one I have where I start my day telling myself to be the best person I can be today. Somedays, I am not my best and I don't even try. Somedays, I eat a whole lot of cheese. But most days, I do a pretty okay job of being my best self and not eating my weight in cheese. I am thankful for most days, but I'm not going to lie. I am also thankful for cheese. I am thankful Michael is feeling better. I am thankful for vitamin C and tee tree oil. I am thankful for this body... right now... in this moment.

I am always super thankful for you. 

LET'S TALK ABOUT PANTS, BABY

Day 1 is B&W challenge

4 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Day 1 is B&W challenge"

Remember back in April when I went to my healthy women's exam and realized that I weighed 180 pounds? Remember how I went into panic mode about losing that weight? Well, I've lost ten pounds since then. Yay! I am now somewhere between what I weighed before Chris died and after Chris died. This should be good news. I should be totally happy about this and I am. I've stopped obsessing and I just work a bit harder at the gym and I'm more conscious of the protein source in my meals. And ten pounds! Wow! That's great work! Really. Well done, me.

Then I went to my closet looking for jeans. 

I own two pairs of wide-ish legged jeans that are that nice dark denim. They look great paired with heals or cute sneakers. I'm pretty sure I wore them at some point in my life or why else would they be in my closet. The tag on one pair of jeans says that they're a size 31. The tag on the other has them at a size 30. The same morning I pulled these jeans out of my closet, I had purchased a pair of skinny jeans on sale at Target. They are a size 30. I decided to try on the other jeans to see how they felt. I thought to myself as I started with the size 31 pair that this was going to be good. These jeans are going to be a little bit big now. I tugged them up to my hip and then looked down at the button fly gaping open over my belly. I grabbed the button with my right hand and the button hole side with my left and started wrestling the two closer together. There was no attempting to even pretend that those pants were going to button. This did not bode well for the size 30s, except I pulled those on and buttoned and zipped them up with out having to hold my breath. 

I have other pants hanging in my closet that are not jeans (also sized 30 or 10 or whatever the hell those numbers mean). I call them summer pants because they are either cotton or linen. They have a bit of flare to the leg and go well with slip on kind of shoes. These pants all come from the same store as where I bought the jeans. It is my favorite place in the world to shop because all of the clothes are so pretty. The place is expensive. Stupid expensive. So I only go in about twice a year when they have their 40% off all sale items special going on. I try every thing on that I am considering for purchase and I basically make a pros and cons list for each item. If I'm going to spend the money, it's going to be on something I am going to wear, not just wish I could wear. So I had to have tried those size 31 jeans on and at the time they fit or at least they fit well enough because I would not have purchased them. 

Cut to last weekend when I decided that I needed another pair of skinny jeans for Fall/Winter. I tried on size tens at Old Navy and they fit, but they weren't long enough. They had every other size in a long but the size tens. Then I went to Kolhs where I tried on everything size ten and finally went to a size twelve. The twelves didn't feel any different in fit then the tens, but they had them in long. So I bought the twelves and tried to ignore that even though I've lost ten pounds and wear a size ten, I had to buy a size up. I keep telling myself that it is not really a size up because the people who are in charge of sizing clothes are assholes. I am convinced they have conventions every year where they discuss the best ways to fuck with women's self esteem. Didn't make it into the workshop on how to make a girl feel self conscious about her butt? No worries. We've recorded the workshop and you can access it online. Don't forget to check out the tutorial on fitting room lighting and how to set the mood for the most unflattering fitting room setting. 

Remember at the end of the Color Purple when Celie opened that pants shop where one size fit all? I want those pants. I don't care that the legs are wide. I'm sure I could wrap them around my ankle and tuck them into a boot if need be. I could make it work. I'm ready to embrace that bohemian side of myself where I wear billowy pants with elastic waistbands. 

I ATE THE CANNOLI

Naked

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She jogged past me as I sat waiting for the light to turn green. The woman was wearing a pink tank with matching tiny pink shorts. A giant contraption on her wrist, held her phone. Maybe the contraption only looked giant because of her ultra skinny arms. The woman was all bones and muscle. I had been watching people happily running along the Trolly Track Trail up to this point in my drive. I looked at each one of them while thinking that maybe I could do that and maybe it just doesn't look like something I want to do. Running is such a big thing here. I see people running all the time. I think about it and my heart sinks a little. I don't see any joy in the action of running. 

I watched Mrs. Bones And Muscle cross the street and jog on. The light turned green and I continued moving forward while still running thoughts around in my head. Maybe I should make year forty two the year of lean? What if I added an extra thirty minutes or hour to my cardio and maybe started lifting some weights? I should stop eating dinners and take the dog for more walks. I thought about that roll I noticed I was sporting in the leggings I had on the day before. Then, I arrived at my destination, a Saturday morning yoga class I've started attending. The teacher is silly and she makes me laugh. It is an advanced class, meaning all the students know how to modify without cues. Not everyone can do Hanumanasana with out blocks. It is a good place for me because it lets me challenge myself without the feeling of being in a competition. Failing at yoga 101. 

I move through the poses in class and I as lower my body to the floor for salabhasana, I can feel my ribs pressing almost painfully into the mat. I come into Hanumanasana and I feel like I am this close to being fully into this pose with out the blocks. I feel long. I feel okay about being more than bones and muscle. For now. Tomorrow I will put on a pair of pants that are the tiniest bit tight around my waist or I'll step onto the scale and see that there is no change from the last time I stepped on the scale and I will be back in the old spot of self loathing. I will be forty two years old in about six months and I am still struggling with liking this body, being proud of this body, not being disgusted by this body. I am the only one who thinks I am fat. Well..me and maybe one other person. 

I know that Mrs. Bones And Muscle looks in the mirror on some days and thinks the very same thing about herself. I know that this is a universal feeling. We are all caught up in the same tornado of mixed messages. Size ten here is a size twelve over there. Clothing stores still use 'plus' size to label clothes and lump them together in one section of the store, usually in the back. You find that section only after you have walked past skinny mannequins sporting slim and fitted outfits. At the same time we are being told that all sizes are beautiful and being healthy is more important than being skinny. Being healthy doesn't sell magazines as well as articles on 'how to lose ten pounds in ten days' or 'five easy exercises to bust belly fat'. Then there are all the scientific reports on calorie restriction and mice longevity. By all accounts, healthy is skinny and there are as many companies out there making money off of selling this idea as there are people willing to buy into it. Lowering peoples' self esteem is a very lucrative business. 

God, I hope we are doing a better job of teaching the next generation that healthy really is more beautiful and what healthy really means. Hell, I wish I was doing a better job of setting a good example that healthy is beautiful. This is what I really should be doing. Not adding more cardio or weight training. Maybe I should be setting a better example, at the very least to myself. Stop feeling guilt for the rare occasion when I eat something not so good for me. Maybe I'll eat more cannolis and bread. 

THOUGHTS

I don't know what's happening here

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I have some thoughts on some things from lately, but I don't really feel like writing about them. Some of those thoughts have to do with Okja, the new Joon-ho Bong movie on Netflix. This is not for kids. I love and hate this movie all at the same time. It is an important commentary on corporate food production and it is at times exciting and sweet and bitterly heartbreaking. It does have a happy ending, but dear lord, the things you have to see before the happy ending. There's a scene with Jake Gyllenhaal that makes me truly hate him. Not just his character, but him as an actor for playing that character. Joon-ho Bong has a talent for creating beautiful stories full of bittersweetness. Michael has been seriously questioning his pork eating habits. He's been reading and has discovered that pigs are smarter than dogs. This movie may have closed the deal for him. 

I've also been thinking about all the negative comments left on Patton Oswalt's engagement announcement. People talking about how fifteen months is just too soon for a widower to move on with their lives. These are the kind of people who have no idea. They are the type to say "I just can't image." in response to your tragedy. Every time someone would say that to me, it would take all of my willpower to not snap back with "I hope you never have to imagine." I mean really. Who sits around and imagines what life would be like if the person you thought you were going to spend the rest of your life with just up and dies? The people leaving those comments are just thoughtless. Michael moved in eighteen months after Chris died. I love Michael but there is not a single day where I don't think about Chris or remember something about our life together. I could go into a long, drawn out tirade over the whole thing if I didn't think I was preaching to the choir. 

The other night, Michael and I decided to buy an Amazon Echo. I've been thinking about this for some time. There really is no need for an Echo. It would just be fun and I have plans for the Echo. I think I can tell the Echo where I've put important things, like pictures and documents and teeth. The Cabbage lost a tooth at our house not too long ago. We had to play tooth fairy and Michael wanted to keep her tooth. We put it in an elephant creamer in the china cabinet. I really like the idea of saying "Hey, Alexa? Where did I put that human tooth?" and then hearing Alexa respond with something like "You placed the human tooth in the elephant creamer." Most likely I will just be asking Alexa to play that funky music all the time. Michael is slightly concerned that we are willingly setting up a spy in our home. I rolled my eyes at this and said the spies are already in our home because of our phones. 

The scale at work says that I've lost ten pounds. The scale at home has me holding steady at 174, meaning I've only lost six pounds. I like the scale at work a whole lot more than the home scale. I have not tracked my calories in two months. I'm moving faster in my workouts. I'm eating cottage cheese for breakfast and Greek yogurt for a mid-afternoon snack. I am trying to care less. This post has gone from tragic to comic. You can thank Nora Roberts. She was on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me on Saturday. When asked about writer's block she said "I don't believe in it." She said that you just kept writing even if what you were writing was total crap because as soon as you stopped writing, you broke the habit. Then you're screwed. I'm paraphrasing but not by much. 

Any way this is why you're getting a weird post about depressing movies and where I hide human remains. 

FLUBBER

Snack pack

2 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Snack pack"

Recently, I found myself clicking on a link for an add selling weight loss to millennials. I am not a millennial, more like the teenager who babysat your millennial child, but here I was clicking on the link that promised a weight loss program better than Weight Watchers and specifically geared to the tech savvy, glued into their phones, young millennials. The program itself was basically Weight Watchers. You just take all the personal one-on-one support and the meetings and put them on your phone. That is what "weight loss for millennials" looks like. I was tempted to click on the add partly out of curiosity, but mostly out the need to torture myself. My Google searches of late have been the weight loss version of "is this spot on my arm cancer or a corn flake?". 

It started with the second skirt debacle (that may or may not be the fault of the manufacturer). I've been silently stewing about my weight that seems to be increasing despite my usual activities. I'm the only one who notices it right now or at least that is what Michael tells me, but I stepped on the scale with my boots on a few weeks ago and the number was 185. Taking the boots off dropped that number to 180. I find it really hard to believe that the combination of my leggings, long sleeve T-shirt, tank top, socks and underwear weigh five pounds, which would put me down to my so-called normal weight, which I suppose I could live with. So I have taken to asking Google if my weight gain has anything to do with the following: eating too many calories, not eating enough calories, perimenopause, being forty one, my love of cheese. Of course, Google tells me that "yes; all of those things are true. Also, that spot is totally cancer." 

The internet searching has been my only action taken to combat the whole weight loss thing until last week. Last week, I had to use a different treadmill than the one I usually use at the gym. I entered my usual settings into the new treadmill and started walking. My hands instinctively rested on the heart rate monitor and I soon discovered that my usual pace does not get my heart pumping fast enough to lose weight. So, I picked up the pace and even moved over to the elliptical machine for a couple of days. Then I decided that we eat too many starchy carbs. We tend to rely on potatoes for a lot of side dishes and pasta dishes when we're too lazy to think up another option. Spaghetti is easy and the Cabbage will eat it. I designed this week's meal plan to contain as few of those starchy carbs as possible. We had roasted cauliflower steaks and green beans with roasted tempeh or chicken for dinner last night. This meal was a hit, which is encouraging because I think Michael was worried that we'd be eating weird foods this week. We are not completely eliminating carbs from our diet, but we are restricting them.

I've also introduced snacks into my day. I am not a snacker. I eat three meals a day and usually this is enough, but sometimes I get hungry between meals. I ignore it and when dinner roles around, I end up eating enough tacos for two. I took some snacks to work to have on hand for those moments when my stomach feels growly. Today I ate a handful of nuts, a few pieces of cheese and a couple of strawberries before heading to the gym at 11:00. This way I was able to do my cardio and spend time on my mat without thinking about lunch and hearing my stomach remind me that it was time for lunch. Of course, it is way too early to tell if any of this is working. I expect it will be weeks before I notice a difference. It would be totally great if when I go to the doctor in a couple of weeks for my yearly (torture) check-up, and I stepped on the scale, that scale would read out a number that would make me jump for joy. 

I'll let you know how it goes for me.