The view from the mountaintops will never get old. It’s a magical, lovely world to LOOK at the mountains and then be able to go and climb IN the mountains. Not gonna get old. Nope. No way. Even if {sometimes} I whine and complain en route to the top – the CLIMB is always worth the view. 🙂
4th of July is a National Holiday, yet for the last decade it’s been a day of personal reflection; sometimes deep, sometimes simply grateful but always, always with a big dose of awe… 10 years ago I decided I was tired of controlling my inevitable death from Type 2 Diabetes and attendant complications. I was slowly marching to a grave. I knew it. Taking my prescribed drugs compliantly and not questioning alternatives. I was likely going to lose my feet/legs a piece at a time from our of control blood glucose and wind up crawling, not so much marching, towards that grave. I was resigned to the idea that it was my only choice.
Then July 2, 2011 I woke up and knew in my heart something was profoundly different… I woke up and decided I wanted to live. Whatever days I had left, whatever it looked like, I wanted. to. LIVE. No clue what it would look like to change my life; but game for the fight. I remember I woke up and felt this really odd feeling; iron-hot, fierce determination. I’d never felt it before. I didn’t know how in the hell I was going to make things different — I just knew I had to start flailing forward and figure it out as I went. I knew that where I was in that moment was NOT where I wanted to stay for even one more single day.
I changed everything. And still change things to keep moving toward the goal of being healthy. It turns out that there’s no real ‘finish line’ on this particular journey to health. Go figure. I started eating different, fought to get off meds, started lifting weights and moving more. I started losing weight and helping my body get more active, I got off meds. I’ve been diagnosed with and am in recovery treatment for an eating disorder. And while it’s never been linear or simple – it’s been worth it all. Countless of other great, amazing, wonderful things have graced my life since July 2011.
I stopped giving up on myself and stayed focus on ‘the next right thing’ that would help me continue to live this new-found, med-free, active life.
Life has given me ten years I never thought I would have. Endless awe and gratitude. I have been given a second chance and I don’t think I’ve wasted a single day. I’m living a life I couldn’t think big enough to even dream about. I’ve become a runner. I published a book. I’m in a job I love. I work as a health coach. I have amazing friends in the trail/ultra community. I have a 100 mile finisher buckle. Like… NONE of that was on my radar 10 years ago when I was struggling to figure out how to not die. I was in a body that couldn’t do the things I wanted to do. I was on a ton of pharmaceutical interventions. I was uncomfortable and sick and felt deeply hopeless about the mess I was in with Type 2 Diabetes. And now…. I’m not. I still have to fight for my health each and every day. Yet, I’m alive and healthy and active and deeply grateful for this life I get to live every single day.
I am very grateful for these 10 glorious years I might not have had any other way.
It sucks to have to admit that the YEARS of lifestyle changes I’ve made and adhered to just weren’t enough for this stage of life.
I’ve talked for years about working so hard to get off of meds. And I have spent 8+ years backing it up with a lot of hard work to stay off meds. I had some major heartburn along with a few tears, over having landed back in the land of pharmaceuticals. I feel like a failure on some level. Yet I’m not dumb. I don’t want to die or loose limbs or suffer organ failure and I KNOW that’s the possible result if I continue to deny the situation. And throw in that I did a whole lot of damage for many years. As my friends who were there 10 years ago remind me: I was warned that if I could get off of all the meds and embrace a different lifestyle; at some point meds might still have to be re-introduced.
It appears that now is that time.
Hello again. (I’m saying that in a flat, unenthusiastic, bored-teenager tone…)
I held my own for a long time. Eight years give or take. Got off meds and stayed off meds. Then menopause hit. Perimenopause to be precise. It hit me hard, backed over me, peered out the window and ran over me again just for good measure. In doing some research I’ve learned glucose resistance is common for women during this stage. I’m metabolically messed up anyway… So… I have to be extra careful and mindful. It has been increasingly obvious that I wasn’t going to wait this out with familiar tactics and tools.
(Crappola lines and numbers. 3/27/21)
After some stalling and hand-wringing, I went to the doc to ask for help taking action before things got totally out of hand. I knew – thanks to my trusty Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) that my numbers were not great. You want that line FLAT and low as much of the time as possible. Bloodwork backed up my concern that things weren’t where I wanted them. I was doing everything I knew to do, everything that had worked up to this point. Exercising, lifting weights, sleeping, drinking lots of water, no alcohol, low carb/healthy fat foods, trying to limit stress. That line should have responded by flattening out and laying low. It stayed jagged with random big spikes.
We talked about all the options and decided we could do one of two things; let me keep doing the things I was doing and see what happened or we could introduce a little pharmaceutical assistance and see if my body appreciated the help.
It was up to me.
I opted for some help.
My body REALLY appreciates the medical assist. I need some help to get through menopause and not fall neck deep back into full-blown type 2 diabetes. Three weeks on the new med and I have good numbers and feel so much better. It was the right thing to do.
I keep thinking about the fable of ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’. I was that character for oh-so-many years. For decades I would go to docs overweight, miserable, escalating health issues and totally unwilling to change. They would ask about my health habits and I would lie. To their faces. I would lie. I would plead with them to give me a magic bullet or cure me or solve the problem. The part I never voiced out loud was that I didn’t want to have to do any work. I wanted something to magically fix me and I thought that if I told them again and again that I was doing everything and I needed help – they would finally stop making me work at helping myself and they would just FIX IT.
That’s not how it works. Especially when there are some much bigger/deeper issues at the core.
Shame. SO, so much shame and wildly ineffective coping mechanisms for dealing with it. It kept me from taking action and making changes for years. I would tell docs I was doing ‘everything I could’ and leave their appointment and cruise through a drive-through to drown the shame in a value meal… I was binge eating and hiding it. I was not exercising. I was not being compliant with meds/protocols. I didn’t know how good life could be running and adventuring and being healthy — I thought the only thing that could provide that kind of comfort was food… Took a really good therapist to help me begin to untangle that mess.
Fast forward: I found health, therapy and life. It’s a long story. You can buy the book. Literally. 🙂
Now I’ve been sitting in a docs office telling her I am doing everything I can. And I need help. I became uncomfortably aware of all the times I had said those words to health professionals and NOT MEANT THEM. And I’m proud of myself for being brutally honest and upfront and battling the shame this time. This time I really genuinely meant them.
I’m on 500 mg of Glucophage. It’s a medication I know well. It’s meant to be combined with lifestyle changes. It does have some side effects; gastrointestinal ickiness. Still doing ALL the things I was doing to help myself and getting a little medical assistance to get my numbers to go/stay low.
It is working.
I am proud of myself for knowing when to ask for help. I’m proud of myself for taking the help even though I was also battling the feelings of taking a BIG ASS STUMBLING STEP BACKWARDS. I vowed when I made all of those changes almost a decade ago that I would try to do the right thing for my health moving forward. And I am keeping that promise to myself. Even with some mixed emotions about having to swallow a pill; this is in fact the very right thing for right now.
Spencer and I started this business, Novo Veritas, over 2 years ago.
I love it. All of the work and hours and challenges and success. More and more every day. It’s a hell of a ride, an intense privilege to work with our clients and we’re currently taking this business in directions neither of us ever dreamed possible…
My personal favorite part of the whole business adventure? The privilege and honor of being invited into someone’s life at a time where their hearts and minds are more than likely vulnerable, ashamed, determined, brave, scared, fierce, focused and much more. They invite us in. Trust us with their stories, their history, their fears and deepest hopes.
And then sometimes, if it all works out just right, they even allow us to join their team.
Most of the people we get to work with approach us for one of two basic reasons…
Tell me how to get started.
Be on my team.
(A close 3rd place would be….) Hold me accountable.
In the past few weeks a handful of people have reached out to me asking how to get started – and how to build their own teams. The following is a list I created about a year ago and pulled from one of my previous blogs. And it’s still the advice I give, still what I believe in my heart.
AND it also happens to be the advice I wish I could have listened to when I got started on this journey to change my life.
Here’s what I wish I had been told. And in the cases where I was told; I wish I could have embraced and BELIEVED it…
1. Your weight fluctuates.Daily. It will go up or down during training. If you have your period. If you eat too much salt. You smelled a cake being baked. The rotation of the earth. 🙂 Sometimes it’s really legit gain because you simply ate too many calories over a period of time. But you have to understand that your weight isn’t stable in the day to day. Not gonna happen. Quit even thinking it’s possible. And you know what? It isn’t meant to be. You thought you got to a number and stayed there with just a little effort? That this whole bodyweight thing was simple math and cut and dried? Uh… HELL NO.
2. Take measurements. I really WISH I had known how big my hips or belly or thighs were at my largest. I didn’t take measurements because — hell — who really wants to know that they have a 90” waist? You will wish you had those body measurements for reference and reassurance in the process. At any point when you’re feeling ‘fat’, stalled, discouraged or just wondering how far your journey has taken you — you can pull out a tape measure and be assured, well beyond the confines of a stupid scale, that you were NOT gaining anything but muscle or fitness.
3. Worry is wasted energy. Spend time looking for solutions and opportunities.
4. And for the love of ALL THAT IS HOLY quit beating yourself up. YOU, who you are at the very CORE of your being, has nothing to do with the number on a scale or the packaging of your body. NOTHING. Please, oh please, just believe me on this one. I’m in tears writing this. I am crying for you and for myself too. Because I know you won’t believe me, you can’t fathom what I’m trying to tell you… This is the last thing you can possibly wrap your mind around when you’ve battled your weight your entire life and a number is staring you in the face — a number you hate. A number so large you didn’t know the scale went that high. I know that feeling of panicked desperation and hopelessness as well as I know the sound of my own heart beating. Text me, call me, reach out to me and I will spend the rest of my life relentlessly reminding you of your value to our world. And if you can’t believe yourself, then trust that I’m a way better judge of YOUR value than a stupid mechanical piece of crap you bought at Costco.
5. Don’t pick a number for a goal. (See 1.) Don’t pick a clothing size either. That’s really just another number. Pick a feeling, activity, ability, destination. You want to climb stairs and not be gulping for air? You want to feel solidly OK with how you feel in your birthday or bathing suit? 🙂 You want to be able to hike, run, walk, move better…. PICK something that isn’t a transient, essentially meaningless, number.
6. Know that the BIG picture is worth all the little steps, mis-steps, concerns, questions, sacrifices. It’s hard work. It’s worth it. They’re points of feedback and learning. And this whole ‘get healthy’ thing is in NO WAY linear. No way. There is nothing direct, logical or straight about this path you are on. And you’re going to be making shit up as you go.
7. Do NOT let that scale dictate your mood to the world. So you can’t not weigh… I get that, but we should keep working on that. 🙂 So you step on the scale and it’s up a bit? DO SOMETHING about it. Don’t be a bitch. Or walk around like someone ran over your dog. Or have a short fuse with loved ones. Or start restricting food because you don’t ‘deserve’ to eat. Or start secluding yourself from the people you love because you feel you don’t ‘deserve’ their love or you’re deeply embarrassed. Stop allowing that stupid, effing, scale to affect your mood. Reach out. You may not have great control over how you feel, but you can ALWAYS choose how you act and react.
8. Please, please, please love on yourself.And believe in yourself. Hang tightly to HOPE. Hope is powerful stuff. YOU will do this. And you can’t see the day, but it’s coming; you will be healthy and happy. Your weight should not be allowed to dictate ANY of that. You have so much to offer the world. You’re an aunt. A sister. A friend. A daughter. A momma. A lot of really, really remarkable things that no one else in the whole entire world can possibly be! We were only given ONE of you. One. Do what you can each day to help yourself get healthy so you can be around and enjoy the life in front of you.
9. This isn’t a short-term investment. Trust the process. Life-time commitment. You will look at something daily and judge it as not moving, plateaued, failing. HANG ON and look at this from the 3,000 foot view, look at this from a 365-day investment. You will see growth. YOU WILL. Really! Keep at it. You didn’t gain the weight over night. You will not lose it overnight. Trite and irritating – but TRUE.
10. One of my favorite songs is ‘Live Like You Were Dying’ by Tim McGraw. If you are like me you’re living this weight loss journey with a lot of fear. Fear of going backwards. Fear of judgement. Fear of FAILURE… The ‘what if’s’ can paralyze you… Holy smokes. The fear you have embraced and live with could choke an elephant. What if you could just enjoy the journey for what it was and live each day like you are trying to be your very best? Living like you’re dying doesn’t mean you live with no consequences for your choices. It means you accept each day, each moment for what it is and keep moving toward the goal you want to reach… (And for back-up… See this video by Brene Brown.)
When I was 250+ pounds I used to wear my underwear backwards.
I had a pretty funny flash back to this forgotten and semi-embarrassing fact this morning running with my friend Carlea.
Last year I bought some running tights on super-sale from some obscure running site. I do this periodically. I get wonky, weird, off-season, running clothes bargains. Once in a great while I find something amazing! It’s all super cheap and a fun, daring, fashion-themed shopping-game of adventure.
This time around it was colorful running tights super cheap.
I show up to meet my friend Carlea at the Saddle for a run. I wore the screaming-hot-pink tights today for the first time. They… uh… were built weird. But they were really cute! I told Carlea I figured I would get used to how they fit as we ran. (Always a bad idea. Running clothes/shoes really shouldn’t need a break-in period… But in the face of cute/fun clothes; I always forget this ‘trail rule’.)
How weird was the fit? There was a ton of extra fabric in the front/crotch area and they were what we will politely call ‘plunging low rise’ in the back. So I kept fidgeting with the stupid tights trying to keep them up over my butt.
We finally stopped about 3 miles in while I tried to figure out how to remedy the situation and keep running without flashing everyone in the forest. Carlea and I got to laughing — fairly sure I had to have the tights on backwards. We checked. Nope. But, they sure seemed to be built backwards.
‘I think I figured out why they were on sale’.– Me. Every time.
We got things sorted out and PG-rated for the rest of the run. I got to chuckling. I finally told Carlea that these tights were reminding me of a habit I had when I was obese. I had kind of forgotten about it.
I have always loved the idea of having matching bra/panties. I just do. When I was obese and desperately wanted to feel good about how I looked and wanted to feel attractive – this duo always did the trick. Cute undies was a near-daily goal. When I was wearing a size 26/28 the options were limited. Or ridiculous. Or really, seriously functional; steel belted bras with really wide straps, scratchy/ugly lace and cotton granny panties.
I finally, after years of searching and failed attempts, found a bra and undies set that matched and FIT and was cute. I was so freaking excited! I wore them all day at a conference, felt like a million bucks and was thinking I needed to go out and buy the dang undies in every color they made. As I got undressed at the end of the day…
I discovered that I had in fact worn the underwear backwards all day.
They fit perfectly, totally ass-backwards.
Huh.
Why had they fit so well you might be wondering? Well…. I was close to 400 pounds. And I was built very much like an apple with all my weight in my belly. With a really flat butt. My belly was significantly larger than my butt. So undies are typically cut to cover your bum and lay flat on your belly – right? They didn’t work for me and my apple-shape.
But wearing them backwards worked for my body…
Disney with the family. And yes… I am about 99% sure I have my underwear on backwards in this picture. 🙂
So for about 10 years I pretty much always wore my underwear – cute or otherwise – backwards. A problem accidentally and creatively semi-solved. I never admitted it to anyone, never advertised it. But wasn’t proud of it by any stretch.
I was just too fat and misshapen to wear underwear normally…
So I adapted to what worked for me at that time.
So today Carlea and I were laughing over yet another clothing failure I snagged from a clearance rack.
I have lost weight and had the full-body lift surgery to remove 10 pounds of excess skin from my belly/waist. While I am still built a little funny at my waist with some skin scarring and bumpy surgical ‘seams’ at the sides of my hips — I now have a pretty typical ‘runners’ butt and fairly flat belly.
NOW I can totally wear matching bras/undies if I want to – without having to wear them backwards. 🙂 (I just have to remember to pack them in my gym bag. 🙂 )
Turns out that even putting my underwear on can serve a daily reminder of how my healthy lifestyle now is so different than my Type 2 diabetic/obese days.
Carlea and I both had a really good laugh as I shared this story with her.
I managed to get back to my car and not accidentally show my bum off on the trail.
Today anyway. 🙂
*Screaming-hot-pink running tights are now free to a good home.
I had to pull out my glucose testing kit this week.
It’s been in retirement for 3 years.
I am not gonna lie. It was a bit of a low moment. I was sad and a little scared.
I had a sudden flash of fear that Type 2 (T2) Diabetes was back or trying really hard to creep back in. I was noticing some things… Things that seemed disconnected, but hauntingly familiar.
Fuzzy thinking. Thirsty. Sleepy. Insatiably hungry. Irritable out of the blue/out of porportion. Craving sugar. Feeling ‘puffy’.
Not just the normal things that happen in life, I mean, the ‘symptoms’ were out of place given what was happening in my life.
All of the sudden it dawned me WHY these were familiar… This is the crap that happens when my blood sugars are out of whack.
I hadn’t felt these symptoms in these odd clusters in over three years…
Holy crap.
It was time to test and see what the numbers had to tell me.
I tested as soon as I put the pieces together and realized I was possibly experiencing some blood sugar issues. My post-prandial (2 hours post-meal) glucose was 111. For me — that’s a solid, if tad-bit high, number. But respectable.
Whew. Little breathing room and stab of relief.
I tested a fasting number the next morning and it was 110. Exhaling in relief. On the high side, but arguably good.
Yesterday was 100.
I’m in a ‘safe space’ with the numbers I’m seeing and recording.
They’re not as low as I would like, nor are they as low as I can make them when I’m keeping my diet ‘tight’.
While I’m clinically in a non-diabetic range, I still felt pretty clearly this was a wake-up call.
After Mountain Lakes 100 miler back in September, I had a revelation of sorts. The conversation in my head (and out loud to Spencer…) went sort of like this:
‘I just ran for 100 miles, for close to 30 hours and fueled that effort with about 5,000-6,000 calories of SUGAR. And while that’s pretty typical running fuel for ‘normal’ folks, uh… You aren’t normal. How horribly WRONG/DUMB/STUPID/RIDICULOUS is that equation for someone like YOU??! Can I remind you that you used to be morbidly obese, insulin-injecting, T2 for two DECADES. HOLY CRAP BETSY. You’re a reformed T2 diabetic and you just ran (which you can only do because you are no longer morbidly obese) eating pure, easily accessible to your blood, sugar. This.is.utterly.asinine. You can’t keep doing this. It’s a recipe for disaster.’
So I made the decision that I needed to change some things. Immediately.
It all has to start with my day-to-day food plan.
There’s a health condition called ‘Insulin Resistance’. It also gets talked about as ‘Carbohydrate Intolerance’. I’ve done a ton of research on it, and I have come to understand that I am no longer T2 Diabetic, but I am still insulin resistant. And I always will be. I can certainly manage it, but it’s not going to go away. While it is not an entirely accurate description, I kind of think of it as being ‘allergic’ to carbs.
((Here’s the disclaimer in all of this: I’m an experiment of one. I lost over 200 pounds, reversed type 2 and somehow fell head-over-heels in love with the endurance running world. Turns out that there aren’t a lot of people like me out there, and the ‘normal’ rules for food/nutrition/fueling just don’t ever seem to work well for me. My solutions and chosen paths are not likely to work or make sense for anyone else.))
I’m well aware that if I eat too many carbs {ANY KIND OF CARBS – YES… Even the ‘healthy ones’} I get swinging blood sugars. If I keep carbs {even the healthy ones…} to a minimum — my glucose stays in a horizontal and largely stable line.
‘My body hates carbs!’ — me
‘No. Your body loves carbs. It loves them to DEATH.’ — Deb, my sister.
So…
Good-bye to my plant based diet that I loved and enjoyed for almost three years. (Averaging 300 – 400 ish grams of carbohydrates per day with a healthy balance of grains, fruits and veggies.)
Hello again to my old friend, no-and-low carb. (Averaging 40-70 grams of total carbs per day.)
I’m tightly restricting my daily carbohydrate load. ANY carbohydrate source. Aiming for whole, non-processed foods. And I am most especially vigilant for any of the added or hidden variations of sugars/corn syrups that were truly and absolutely my worst enemy as a T2.
I know how to do this.
I just willingly and knowingly strayed from the basics that got me ‘here’; I strayed from the food plan that helped me lose weight, become non-diabetic, learn to run… I mean I reversed T2 Diabetes — I suddenly felt FREE and healthy enough to try new things with food, fueling, diet. So I did! I’m totally OK with those experiments and what they have taught me about myself and the way my body works.
I just find it humbling and interesting that I am back where it all started.
Back to the very basics of what worked when I first started this crazy journey. Back to low carb, NO SUGAR, low glycemic indexed foods.
((For my running friends who are wondering about fueling during training and events that this dilemma now hands me… Well. Join the crowd. Me too. I’m lost and little bewildered with it all at this moment in time. But I am deeply driven by the knowledge that if I want to stay healthy and running; I have to stay the course in managing this or T2 Diabetes could possibly win this whole freaking thing. I won’t, can’t let that happen. So let the new fueling experiments begin. 🙂 ))
This week has been a solid reminder that T2 diabetes is still chasing me 365 days a year.
One of the hardest questions I get about my journey in losing weight and reversing type 2 diabetes usually comes in the form of…
‘How do I talk to someone I love/know/care about that they need to lose weight?’
The basic answer, based on my personal experience, is; you really should NOT.
You can not motivate someone else to embrace big changes.
Any of the other folks I’ve talked to who have embarked on significant life changes echo my sentiments. We all seem to agree that we were ultimately motivated by some seemingly random moment in time or collection of small happenings or a ‘critical’ incident. The decision to make the lasting hard changes was never spurred on by someone’s ‘helpful comments’.
In fact, the opposite seems to be true. Those times people tried to talk to us about being overweight, unhealthy? We were NOT ready to listen, resentful to the message bearer and/or defensive that someone should personally attack us about our food or weight.
Not exactly a great set-up or fertile ground for healthy conversations.
Nothing anyone ever said to me about my weight or T2 Diabetes EVER convinced me to change for the long term.
Sure, the times someone approached me or talked to me about my weight or health or how my body looked, I’d make short-term/panicked changes out of grief or embarrassment or blind-hope even. But I wasn’t ready to do the hard-as-hell, wholesale, gritty work needed to make a sustainable change. No one could have convinced, guilted, cajoled or begged me into doing it until I was READY.
I was 350-400 pounds, grocery shopping. Yet again embarking on another diet I’d found in some magazine or had been told about by a friend who was miraculously and easily shedding weight. I was loading up my grocery cart for a successful start to a new diet. I had ‘light’ everything — including ice cream and ‘diet’ cookies. Everything in the cart was ‘on the diet’. This skinny, older man stopped me in the pasta aisle, looking in my cart and then looked me square in the eye and said loudly ‘You really don’t need all that ice cream and junk food.’ I remember leaving the fully loaded cart in the middle of the aisle and going home — totally mortified.
I had an aunt tell me ‘You don’t think drinking diet soda is all it will take to make you thin do you?’ (I was about 13 and remembered thinking that I did, in fact, think diet soda was at least one of the answers that was going to save me. I mean it wasn’t sugar soda and Weight Watcher’s said it was Ok…)
I had multiple friends in a variety of ways tell me that the reason I was single was because guys don’t date ‘fat chicks’ and if I could just lose weight I would find that elusive happiness and find the right guy.
‘Do you really need to eat that?’, ‘Aren’t you on a diet?’, ‘Should you be eating that?’.
Another relative gave me the ‘we care about you and you’re killing yourself and you won’t be around to see your nephews grow up’ ultimatum.
These comments and interactions may have meant to inspire, enlighten, encourage, scare or spur me into action, but they were by and large (pun intended) destructive and hurtful no matter how the message was delivered or who said it.
When you’re fat/unhealthy/overweight/out of shape; YOU DO NOT NEED SOMEONE TO TELL YOU ANY OF THAT.
You already know it… In all it’s painful and degrading glory.
You are well aware of your situation.
Someone telling you this obvious truth doesn’t make you instantly go… ‘Wow. Geez. I didn’t know that. I should do something about that. I am so glad they said something!’
It makes you feel deep shame. It pisses you off. Wounds you.
It beats you down because you know you’ve tried so, so many different things and none of them seemed to work and you really, truly do not know what else to do…
You’re humiliated. You can’t hide the problem of being overweight or obese. Hell, you publicly WEAR your problem for the whole world to see every minute of every day.
In no way did anyone’s ‘helpful’ comments ever give me the power and energy to embark on the changes that I ultimately would have to make.
Fat chance.
From everything I’ve read about the paradigm of change; telling someone they have a problem doesn’t usually help them move into action to resolve the problem. The trigger for real, lasting change usually comes from a seemingly innocuous, yet life-defining moment, a health scare, turning of the years or some other very personal ‘bottom moment’.
The moment when inspiration for change strikes and STICKS is very personal and pretty darn hard to explain.
If you are that person who is still insisting that someone in your life really needs to make a change, needs to lose weight, needs to get healthy. You care deeply, are afraid for their health and you genuinely want to help. You just.need.to.do.something…
The list below are the traits I sought out for my ‘team’ when I was finally ready to face the truth, do the work and make a change. In hindsight, these are the things my friends had been slowly and quietly doing over the years to try to get me to a healthier place. These are THEIR tricks…
{Actions speak far more loudly than words ever will.}
Listen. Listen for open doors or pleas for help or blatant defensiveness or fear. Then, and only when they open the door and invite you in, do you have permission to engage in the conversation about how you can help them. Don’t answer questions that have NOT been asked. Don’t offer advice that has NOT been asked for.
Set an example. Sign up for a 5K and invite them to join you to train for it and walk or run it. Move your normal meeting spots to a walk or coffee shop instead of a bakery or fast food lunch. Find subtle, genuine ways to shift the patterns of your friendship away from food and toward conversation, activity.
Be ready to embrace their change WITHOUT JUDGEMENT. There are all kinds of programs that people lean on/cling to/buy into when they are ready to commit to losing weight and changing their lifestyle. Programs and options we may or may not agree with or understand. BUT if someone wants to lose weight, learn new eating habits and get moving — GET OUT OF THEIR WAY! If someone is simply jazzed that they have found something to be excited about — be excited with them! If they’re willing to own it, work it and make it part of their life; who are we to judge?! Our job is to unequivocally support them.
‘You can lead a horse to water, but you can not make it drink.’
This is 2+ years of stable weight for me. Ups and downs, but year over year – I am staying almost the same. 🙂
And THAT is a big deal in my world. A world that was dominated by very consistent weight gains my ENTIRE life. Mixed-in with radical, unsustainable, starvation-style, short-lived weight losses. Such a life-long, nasty, horrible, depressing cycle.
Until 5 years ago.
I enlisted the help of Wade, Hannah, Liz, Deb and Anneke to be my accountability team and help me get control of my life before Type 2 diabetes and obesity killed me. I carefully tracked my weight loss over the 3 years I was losing and checked in with them all weekly. But I have only been tracking my ‘stable’ weight for the last year and a half. This was in part prompted by Spencer asking me why I was paralyzed with fear at a ‘small’ weight gain. I was in total meltdown, convinced I had gained 15 pounds or more overnight. When we really investigated it and broke it down; it was about a 3 pound weight gain. It felt MUCH BIGGER. But the truth was that I hadn’t tracked my weight consistently so I had NOTHING factual to go on. So the past 18 months or so I have documented my weight along with my workouts in my Garmin database. Now I can only argue with graphs and facts. Not my faulty and anxious memory.
I weigh 172.8 pounds today.
The part no one told me about this whole journey was that every little dip, dive, gain on that scale (Which is ENTIRELY NORMAL) often escalates into emotional drama and fear and over-reaction. I am ashamed to admit how many times I have stepped on the scale multiple times within a single day seeking reassurance or in some way hoping that stupid little machine would banish my fears…
Holy crap has the scale/my weight/a NUMBER had me in a chokehold.
This morning it was in graph form for me to see. No arguing with anything. I weigh the same as I did last year. I told Spencer that my weight is now 2 years stable. And his response ‘so what does that make you think about…?’
Good question. 🙂
I thought about ALL of the wasted time, drama, energy, self-loathing that have gone into the last few years where I was SURE every single food choice had the ability to catapult me backwards or derail my efforts. Let alone when I let the daily number on the scale dictate my mood for the day…
But this mornings weight and graph were pretty solid proof that I can actually manage my weight with food and activity. I’m doing the right things over the long haul, even if I don’t get the day to day stuff just right. 🙂
This morning’s realization and conversation also got me thinking… Had I been open-minded at the start of this whole thing and could have listened to and absorbed some grounded advice — what information would have been helpful?
I really wish I could have told myself a few things when I started this whole crazy journey…
Told myself and BELIEVED it…
1. Your weight fluctuates.Daily. It can go up or down during training. If you have your period. If you eat too much salt. The rotation of the earth. 🙂 Sometimes it’s really legit gain because you ate too many calories because your friend Wendie makes this insane guacamole that you can not stop eating. But you have to understand that your weight isn’t stable in the day to day. Not gonna happen. Quit even thinking it’s possible. And you know what? It isn’t meant to be. You thought you got to a number and stayed there with just a little effort? That this whole bodyweight thing was simple math and cut and dried? Uh… HELL NO.
2. Take measurements. I really WISH I had known how big my hips or belly or thighs were at my largest. I didn’t take measurements because — hell — who really wants to know that they have a 75” waist? You will wish you had those body measurements for reference and reassurance in the process. At any point when you’re feeling ‘fat’, stalled or just wondering how far your journey has taken you — you can pull out a tape measure and be assured, well beyond the confines of a stupid scale, that you were NOT gaining anything but muscle or fitness.
3. Worry is wasted energy. Spend time looking for solutions and opportunities.
4. And for the love of ALL THAT IS HOLY quit beating yourself up. YOU, who you are at the very CORE of your being, has nothing to do with the number on a scale or the packaging of your body. NOTHING. Please, oh please, just believe me on this one. I’m in tears writing this. I am crying for you and for myself too. Because I know you won’t believe me, you can’t fathom what I’m trying to tell you… This is the last thing you can possibly wrap your mind around when you’ve battled your weight your entire life and a number is staring you in the face — a number you hate. A number so large you didn’t know the scale went that high. I know that feeling of panicked desperation and hopelessness as well as I know the sound of my own heart beating. Text me, call me, reach out to me and I will spend the rest of my life relentlessly reminding you of your value to our world. I’m a way better judge of your value than a stupid mechanical piece of crap you bought at Costco.
5. Don’t pick a number for a goal. (See 1.) Don’t pick a clothing size either. That’s really just another number. Pick a feeling, activity, ability, destination. You want to climb stairs and not be gulping for air? You want to feel solidly OK with how you feel in your birthday or bathing suit? 🙂 You want to be able to hike, run, walk, move better…. PICK something that isn’t a transient, essentially meaningless, number.
6. Know that the BIG picture is worth all the little steps, mis-steps, concerns, questions, sacrifices. It’s hard work. It’s worth it. And this is in NO WAY linear. No way. There is nothing direct, logical or straight about this path you are on. And you’re going to be making stuff up as you go.
7. Do NOT let that scale dictate your mood to the world. It’s up a bit? DO SOMETHING about it. Don’t be a bitch. Or walk around like someone ran over your dog. Or have a short fuse with loved ones. Or start secluding yourself from the people you love because you feel you don’t ‘deserve’ their love or you’re deeply embarrassed. Stop allowing that stupid, effing, scale to affect your mood.
8. Please, please, please love on yourself.And believe in yourself. YOU will do this. And you can’t see the day, but it’s coming; you will be healthy and happy. Your weight should not be allowed to dictate ANY of that. You have so much to offer the world. You’re an aunt. A sister. A friend. A daughter. A momma. A lot of really, really remarkable things that no one else in the whole entire world can possibly be! We were only given ONE of you. One. Do what you can each day to help yourself get healthy so you can be around and enjoy the life in front of you. Be around for US.
9. This isn’t a short-term investment. You will look at something daily and judge it as not moving, plateaued (favorite Weight Watchers scapegoat phrase right there…) failing. But if you can just HANG ON and look at this from the 3,000 foot view, look at this from a 365-day investment — you will see growth. YOU WILL. Really! Keep at it. You didn’t gain the weight over night. You will not lose it overnight. Trite and irritating – but TRUE.
10. One of my favorite songs of all times is ‘Live Like You Were Dying’ by Tim McGraw. You’re living this weight loss journey with a lot of fear. Fear of going backwards. Fear of judgement. Fear of FAILURE… What if…? Holy smokes. The fear you have embraced and live with could choke an elephant. What if you could just enjoy the journey for what it was and live each day like you are trying to be your very best? Living like you’re dying doesn’t mean you live with no consequences for your choices. It means you accept each day, each moment for what it is and keep moving toward the goal you want to reach…
Even though I was intellectually aware of all of this, I sure as hell did not understand it. Couldn’t figure out how to apply it to my situation. None of it. I know that until very recently I simply wasn’t ready to hear it, understand it.
Today prompted a lot of thinking.
This time I really am listening. 🙂
I hope that anyone else who might need to hear this is listening as well…
It’s been 5 years since I started this whole wild, crazy, life-saving journey.
1,825 days spent working to change my ways.
Most of those days I worked hard, got it right, or at the very least I tried to make the smartest choice I could at any given moment.
Some of those days I just held on for dear life.
A few of those days were walks backwards. Regressions, lessons, pity parties and more than a few tears…
I am 5 years in today — with hopefully many, many years in front of me. I am cherishing the time that this lifestyle change bought me; time I plan to continue to use to love, adventure, run, grow, LIVE…
I have been handed a second chance at life and I am not going to waste a single moment.
Five(ish) years ago my doctor basically told me I could be dead in 5 years if I didn’t make a serious change in my life. Obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol were taking their toll.
Here we are 5 year later…
And I’ve made some serious changes.
I love when someone close to me — who KNOWS what I have been through says … ‘Five years ago would you have ever guessed…?’
The answer is always ‘no.’
Always.
I knew things had to change. But let’s be honest… I really had NO idea how this whole ’embracing a healthy lifestyle’ thing would go.
Or what I would gain. Learn. Love.
How radically different my life would become.
There are inspirational quotes that speak to this — but in reality that time was going to pass anyway. Each day was marching forward no matter what. I could have used those 1,800 days to hone my skills with needles/meds/glucose monitors and gotten to know even more fast food drive-thrus and bought more ill-fitting clothes in the largest sizes possible. I could’ve kept marching toward a sure and early grave, merely treating the disease as I gave up trying to save my own life.
Not to be all dramatic or anything — but seriously? That is exactly what I was doing…
Instead…
I woke up July 2 five years ago and I began to fight.
I built and then clung to a team of support people.
I was fiercely determined to find a way to make this work.
I started to eat less and move more. I started losing weight and gaining control of my blood sugars.
A year in, I kicked diabetes to the curb.
I found running after a lifetime of saying I would only ‘run when chased’. And then fell head over heels (pun intended, although I really have fallen on my face a few times…) in love with running. Trail running to be specific.
I’ve worn tight/short spandex shorts in public. Many times. 🙂 I’ve even run in just shorts and sports bra.
I can cross my legs. I can see my feet. I can fit in an airplane seat. 🙂
And then there’s the whole bathing suit thing… 🙂
I still have to watch portions. I still fret over the scale. I still feel like a 392 pound woman walking around some days. But I NOW have tools and people and goals that make all of those issues seems less-important and way less all-consuming than they were even a year ago…
Nothing happened overnight. It was tons and tons of little baby steps on a wild roller coaster ride.
But I never, ever could have guessed where this was all headed or how my life, body and health would change.
If you would have told me 5 years ago that I was going to be able to use my story of being morbidly obese, Type 2 Diabetic, inactive, really just ambling around and waiting to die…. If you would have told me that I was going to be HELPING others to try to reclaim their lives, I would have told you that you had lost your mind.
And yet that’s the biggest gift of this whole endeavor.
Meeting people like me. People facing triple-digit weight loss, stern orders from Docs to ‘do or die’ and the inability to even know how to take that first horrifically-frightening step forward to save their own life.
I know how they feel.
I was THERE.
I remember going to bed on July 1st terrified out of my mind at what I was about to embark on. And yet MORE terrified of what my life would be like in 5 years if I didn’t get started. I don’t remember sleeping very well that night. 🙂 But I remember that when I woke up on July 2, 2011 — my feet hit the floor and I KNEW in my heart and soul that this time, this TIME, I was going to be successful in making some big changes. My life depended on it.
I’m not done.
I committed to this change for life. I’m still learning and growing and changing. And it’s not linear. There are still good days, bad days and habits that have to be shaken off or replaced. I’m really not done. 🙂
But every single day is a gift.
The people in my life are blessings beyond words.
The people who started this journey with me, the ones who run beside me now and the ones in between at every cross/turn/bump who supported, cajoled, questioned and supported me. It’s an entire, bustling village full of people who got me to this point.
This girl has a heart bursting with gratitude and joy.
American River and the town of Auburn are behind us. Spence and I are heading out to run the Quarry Trail.
I am a California native.
In thinking about it on todays run… I spent all of the time I was an adult and working in California obese, inactive, eating all the wrong things.
I am not really exaggerating.
There were times where I would start a diet, try to get active, only to give it all up in a freaking hurry. As soon as I got hungry or sore – I would quit. And then gain even more weight. Like probably 30 different times. Hell. Maybe 50. Or more. You get the point.
Easily 350 pounds and 20 years ago.
I see California as my ‘fat’ young adult years.
It’s where pre-diabetes walked in the door and would soon refuse to leave. I don’t have memories of California that aren’t of me as an obese adult. Happy, but the obesity and type 2 Diabetes were escalating rapidly.
Doing something new that I never knew existed always makes me introspective… And this time doing something new in California – in a place I drove by for decades – made me sappy, happy, grateful. I mean this is a place that could have been my stomping grounds had I been in any shape to have been stomping around.
Spencer and I along with our friend and fellow ultra-runner Josh Hough are in Auburn, California this weekend to run in a training camp. We will run 70 miles of the Western States Endurance Run 100 course over the next 3 days. Spencer and I did this training camp last year and it is ahhhmazing. Running a historic course. Non race event, just long training runs that are supported. Surrounded by amazing athletes and folks passionate about the sport of trail running.
This year our road-trip brigade came down a day early to get our bearings, get set-up and simply spend one day relaxing.
Turns out that none of us are very good at relaxing. 🙂
Spencer and I went for a run this morning on a new-to-me trail that is right off of a highway I traveled for decades with my family and during College.
I was telling Spencer that my life is just still so surreal on a few levels.
Being in California, eating plant based, running… Those are all things I could NEVER, ever have imagined when I was living in California. I found myself thinking about 6 different times this morning… ‘WOW! Is this really my life now?!’
I’ve driven by this spot for 20+ years and never thought for a split second about trails in all the years we drove by. This specific freeway off-ramp had ALL the good fast food you could possibly want before heading up 84 to Tahoe. I know those locations by heart.
I never thought I’d be back here one day and parking at a trail head so we could go run alongside the American River for a few miles.
Who knew?
I never imagined I would want to climb the trails in the Sierra’s, or run on them, or care deeply about treading the ground of a historic running race.
Yet, here I am.
And I’m loving this view and experience of California that requires me to get off of the roads, explore and eat healthy and move along under my own power. And explore!
I am happy and healthy and do NOT take any of that for granted for even one second.
I have been given the second chance at life. Not everyone gets that chance. I won’t waste it.
I will use this weekend to build new and healthy memories in the state that I grew up in.
I love the Cali trails. And they loved me right back.
Josh, Alan (ran his first ultra!) and me. Running from Ridge, toward Horse.
Mac 50K this year was fantastic! Cool, rainy, muddy, friends, laughter, perfection…
Mac is my favorite race, in one of my favorite places in the world.
I approached the race as a long and supported run to practice for the event I have in September. I was testing gear, making sure of my shoe choice, practicing my new-found downhill skills and I HAD TO WORK on fueling. This was my chance to put it all together and watch it work.
In the back of my head I knew I had run this race in 8:04 in 2015. So I’ll go ahead and admit that yes, I had a trying-to-ignore-it-but-it-was-out-there goal, to try to break 8 hours. I was trying not to think about that. It was NOT the point of the day.
Ultimately, I nailed everything I set out to do.
SOME MAJOR WINS!
Fueling was better than it has ever been.
Gut stayed intact.
Loved my Altras. (I still have all my remaining toe nails!)
Comfy with my hydration pack and know where to stash everything.
FINALLY got to run an entire 50K with my friend/running partner Josh.
Spencer placed 8th overall. He had a fantastic run and wrote a great blog about it. Read it here.
Wendie paced Josh and I the last 5 miles, after cheering and crewing for us the entire day.
It was a perfect day.
Patrick! An important part of our Novo Veritas team. He was at the start line this year to cheer us on.
From ‘The Saddle’ (last aid station) to the finish line is about 5 miles or so.
Everyone was muddy and tired. The finish line was really looking good at this point. I’d slipped and gone down in the mud at least 3 times. I was an unharmed, total mud ball head to toe. 🙂
Josh knew my not-talking-about-it-goal. I could see him assessing the situation. He knew we were in a race against the clock to break 8 hours. We were appropriately tired, but totally healthy. We COULD pull it off, if we picked up the pace.
I knew it.
I was just pretending to ignore it.
A portion of my brain was totally fine with not finding that goal.
To hit that goal would mean that we would have to run consistently and fairly hard for the remainder of the course.
That’s a lot of hard work at the end of a whole lot of hard work.
It had been a day of huge wins ALREADY. I didn’t even have to cross the finish line to have felt like the day was a smashing success.
But as I was starting to push the edges, with Josh speeding up, my brain was busy trying to convince me that we just didn’t need to put in the extra effort to hit that goal…
‘Bets. Just walk.
You’re going to finish close to last year’s time anyway. Close is good.
It’s fine to ease back now, Spencer and Josh and Wendie are still going to be proud of you no matter what.
This was a tough course. Take it easy. You’ve earned easy.
Just being out here is enough.’
I recognized that my head and her subtly negative voices were trying to shut things down.
‘Head’ management is very much part of the training for ultras. You literally have to practice making sure your head doesn’t talk you out of completing what needs to be done.
This is always scary and fascinating to me. Sometimes my brain drags out ‘the big guns’ and I really have to fight to just keep breathing and moving. This time – since this race was essentially a practice run and I was surrounded by friends I trusted deeply – I decided I would just watch and see what demon/trick/weapon my head was going to try to drag out into the light…
My brain went straight for it’s old friend laziness.
‘Take it easy, you’ve earned easy. There’s no harm in just walking at this point…’
I have had years of practice being lazy. Honestly, it’s the natural go to for me. And at this point in the race – 26ish miles in – my legs and back were screaming for me to just. stop. running. My belly wasn’t thrilled. My feet hurt. I had these OBNOXIOUS and painful adductor cramps violently grabbing hold of my upper, inner thigh – and stopping me dead in my tracks a few times.
My body was doing it’s part to try to stop me.
My brain just joined in on the chorus.
I’ve done a few races at this distance, so I can now say that I have been here before in some form or fashion. This is the point where I simply have to buckle down and keep moving forward as best I can. And I have all kinds of tricks stashed away to IGNORE or quiet the chatter in my head that isn’t productive or healthy or nice. I usually just kind of blank out without fully defining whatever weapon my brain has chosen, count steps, breathe, and try my best to ignore whatever tricks my head is playing.
But this time I instantly recognized laziness.
And it was really pretty cool to define it, understand it and then just accept it for what it is.
I didn’t bother trying to evict or ignore the thoughts.
I sure as hell didn’t give into it.
I just decided to run with it – and tire it out.
Here’s where my thinking went… When I’m on a training run – and my coach has given me parameters – I always go straight for the middle or low end of whatever it is that I’m being told to work on. Unless specifically told to do so, I rarely push to the outer, upper edges or beyond in training on my own.
It’s a subtle, persistent form of laziness.
I mean training to run ultras is hard work in and of itself. I’ve done a lot of hard work to get to this point and lose weight and reverse T2 diabetes. So does it really matter that I’m just a tad bit lazy about some aspects of training?
Camera covered in mud and rain. Josh pushed me to give my all in the last 5 miles. I mighta, sorta threatened to throat punch him at one point. Re-enactment at the finish line. 🙂
To be clear – I’m not being hard on myself or beating myself up.
I ran a freaking great run.
And this ‘work’ going on in my head around battling and understanding laziness was fantastic and constructive.
I ultimately kept on Josh and Wendie’s heels and PUSHED hard to the finish. I put down faster miles at the end than I had most of the day.
I’m just acknowledging that I recognized the voice screaming in my head as my long-lost, best-forgotten, crappy ex-best friend named laziness.
And I decided that I don’t want to be friends anymore.
So I just ran away. 🙂
I ignored the normal long-run pains and tiredness and just PUSHED hard to the finish. My training allows for that. My body was working her butt off. And this really was a training run – so why not PUSH hard and see what happened?
As I ran, in the back of my head the idea was clanging around that I am SO FREAKING CAPABLE of being and doing so much more.
If I’m given the chance to push hard, do I always give it my all? Or do I get lazy?
It’s an idea that I just can’t let go of…
What exactly would I be capable of, if I refused to let laziness win?
I got home and Spencer and I were debriefing the race. I walked through the pieces that went great; fuel, shoes, handling the wicked leg cramps. Spencer and I both agreed that we could clearly see the core and strength work we’re doing with Jordan paying off as I was able to manage the slides and the muddy, steep terrain really well. And then I ran faster miles at the end…
I was really proud of the effort I gave at Mac. I’d had a good day.
I also told him that I recognize I get lazy in some of the targeted training runs during a training cycle. I cheat myself and aim for good enough/middle of the road. By doing what I’m told – instead of really testing the limits. I told Spencer I was going to work on learning to push myself harder when given the choice. I confessed that I know that I sometimes let myself off the hook when I really should be capitalizing on the opportunity to push to another level.
The last few miles of the Mac I kept thinking…
I’ve come so far and I’m more in love with trail running and my body is doing things I never, ever thought she was capable of. And I know without a doubt that I am capable of still more strength and more growth and more change and well… just more good stuff.
Laziness isn’t going to win this race. Not this time. I’m going to keep training to out run it.
When I was 250+ pounds I used to wear my underwear backwards.
I had to pull out my glucose testing kit this week.
all bets are off... 