Who Am I?
Hi Folks,
As someone who is on the verge of turning 40, I set, what I believe to be, three obtainable goals. My first and most important goal is to be in the best shape of my life. Growing up, I was an athlete. I was always active, enjoying a wide variety of sports from tennis to soccer to track and field. I excelled at my favorite sports. Eventually, I was introduced to weight training. Actually, my favorite coach, George Constantino, was a real leader in encouraging me to cross train. I grew to really enjoy lifting weights as part of my training.
My Sophomore year in high school was the beginning of the struggle I have had with weight loss and weight gain. I injured my knee playing soccer, which not only took me out of the game, but began my painful battle with weight. Because I was so active growing up, I never thought much about what I put in my body. Though, my mom was very good at making sure we always had healthy food to eat. I ate what I considered to be healthy at the time. My problem wasn’t so much quality as quantity and occasional trips to the “little” store around the corner for “snacks.”
I never thought much about weight at all, until I started to gain weight. At first, I didn’t gain a lot of weight. My knee recovered and I began the next seasons sport, cross country skiing.
Then I had another painful blow…
The summer before my junior year, it was discovered that I had some kind of growth in my abdomen. I originally was told not to worry about it by my family doctor. I went away to work at a camp. I was in really good shape by the time I went to the camp, but something was wrong. I had several dreams that the thing in my belly was being removed by doctors.
My summer proved to be extremely stressful, and as the stress increased so did the size of my belly. Though I was thin and fit, my belly felt like it had a solid mass inside it. After returning home, I had a doctor take a look at my abdomen. Sure enough, I had an ovarian Dermoid cyst that had grown to the size of a grapefruit. I was immediately brought to the hospital for surgery.
Sadly, half of my junior year soccer season was spent recovering. I think at this point my metabolism was in for a ride, because I lost weight at the hospital from lack of eating and then gained it back again when I started eating the way I normally was eating at the time.
Shortly after that, I was dealt a second blow…
My Senior year my track coach had a heart attack and passed away suddenly. He had become more than a coach to me. He was someone who really believed in my potential. Someone who made everyone believes in their potential. He expected the “best” from all of his athletes.
Some people say eating can be a response to an emotional need that isn’t being satisfied, some kind of empty space that is urging us to fill. I think that for me that was the case. I found comfort in food. It was consistent, reliable and made me feel good. It was one thing I had control of in my life. My coach passing away made me feel powerless, and I needed something to have control over, and it also temporarily made me feel good. So, I turned to food. Once again, I didn’t gain too much weight, but enough to notice my chest was getting heavier and more uncomfortable.
When I was feeling really sad about my coach, I found a note that he wrote to me as a way to encourage me to train after track season ended. He was a man of very few words, but they stuck with me. He had scribble on a blank piece of paper, “remember to keep your weight down and train hard”. After reading that note, my obsession with food turned into an obsession with exercise.
By the time spring track season arrived, I was running every morning before school for 30 to 60 minutes and lifting weights at Syracuse University’s gym. During the season, I continued to train on my own, as well as, practice after school. I was exercising all the time, but my weight didn’t change too much. I was really fit, though. I was also competing in many different races. I was on the way to burning my self out.
I graduated high school and spent the summer before my freshman year of college with my dad in Arizona. Although I was exercising like crazy, my weight didn’t change much, mainly because my diet was the same. I decided to experiment with diet and took it to what I consider a dangerous level of self deprivation.
First, I decided not to eat anything with fat in it, which translated into salads with out salad dressing…etc. I made sure no fat was added to my meals. It became easy for me to exclude fat. I started to see results pretty quickly, especially because of my level of exercise. Losing weight became an obsession.
As I entered my freshman year at the University of Arizona studying exercise science, I began training all the time. I would bike for 2-4 hours three times a week, and run every morning and lift weights three times a week and swim three times a week. I also decided to decrease my food intake to almost nothing. I was eating a bagel for breakfast, a salad for lunch and maybe, if I felt like it, a small bowl of pasta for dinner or soup. I was literally, wasting away. I went from a healthy 125lb frame to 108lb frame. My muscles seemed to be shrinking despite all of the weight training (hmm…wonder why?).
I also felt like I had this secret. I was a heavier girl in a thin body, looking for love/approval. And because I was getting attention for my looks, I believed that I was loved and valued. Even though, I was getting lots of attention for my looks, I still think my obsession was more about love and approval than being thin or fit. I wanted to attract people, but I was literally too busy. I found myself turning down dates because it interfered with my workout. But my need to exercise left me no time to connect with anyone, and get what I really wanted for myself. I felt really lonely after all.
Then one day, I thought to myself, am I going to have to do this for the rest of my life? Is this what it feels like? I felt lonely and isolated and miserable. I was depressed and suicidal. Something wasn’t working. The formula for happiness and success wasn’t standing the test of time. Thin didn’t equal happy for me.
I was getting hungry for something more than getting into shape. I wanted love, connection, friendships. I was wasting into nothing, disappearing. I was what I would call later an exercise bulimic.
So I started eating again. My first indulgence was ice cream, which actually made me sick. I continued to exercise, but ate much more than I could burn. And you guessed it, I gained weight quickly. Since my metabolism was running for its money, I gained and gained, despite exercise. The more I gained the less I exercised.
Then the pendulum swung the other direction. This time I was heavy for the first time in my life. I still wasn’t happy. Happiness didn’t equal heavy for me either. And I didn’t want anyone to talk to me about my weight. Though, I immediately noticed a shift from people telling me I was pretty or attractive to I had a pretty face (what an insult that became!). No one talked to me directly about my weight; it was a boundary I think everyone understood. Interestingly, I lost weight again, when I fell in love. But the pendulum swung up and down for many years through breakups and stress with out ever really finding a happy medium.
Through all of those experiences, I learned the value of a healthy balance of exercise, diet, social life...etc. It is important not let any one thing determine my happiness, but a combination of all things. I believe life is an experiment and I have to be courageous enough to accept the challenges that come with that. Through this Blog, I hope to use my life experience and experimentation to encourage others to do the same. This is one of many experiments I plan to explore.
Most exercise programs talk about making new habits or changing habits. They talk about what to eat, how to exercise, how to measure body fat. They even talk about the power of visualization. Rarely do I see anyone talking about exercise psychology in a weight loss program. The reason so many people are on the rollercoaster is because they don’t ask themselves why? There is some deep psychological and physiological reason for this problem to exist. Sure, we were hunter gatherers originally, and our ancestors lived a feast or famine lifestyle. We see food, we eat. Like cavemen we are subject to our genetic ancestry. The reality is deeper than that, and if we dig we will unlock the block that keeps us on the ride.
Day 1
Height: 5 feet 4 inches
Weight: 145.4
Left thigh: 22 inches
Right thigh: 22 ½ inches
Waist: 33 ¾ inches
Chest: 37 ½ inches
Right bicep: 12 ¼ inches
Left bicep: 12 inches
Goal 12 percent BF
Goal 120-122 Pounds
Between 25.4 and 23.4 loss
6 month goal
4 lbs per month
1 lb per week
Stay tuned for my daily progress reports.
Dakota
April 30, 2009: Day 60: Top pictures
