"perfection": worth a little hunger?

I've had the very beginning of this post in my drafts folder for a few days. Then Monday happened. Finishing one of my usual self-absorbed paeons to navelgazing seemed tone-deaf when a horrible fitness-related tragedy in which innocent people were maimed and killed had just occurred in my own city. But you know what? I have absolutely nothing original to say about that. I have no new perspective. There's nothing I could write that hasn't been better expressed elsewhere. I can only suggest that if you would like to read a moving article (and comments) on the meaning of Monday's events from the POV of a runner, you go here.  And if trivialities in the face of horrible events annoy or offend you, click away from here for awhile. Trivialities are all I've got.

..........................................................................................................................

So. Last Friday marked the end of my six weeks of post-fulk dieting. Six weeks of whining and hunger and moaning and hunger and complaining and hunger. Did I mention hunger?  When I diet by calorie-counting**, I am always so, so hungry.  I have a healthy appetite--I may have mentioned that before--and 1400-1500 calories is not much food.  Oh, it could be worse, obviously. 1500 calories is enough to fit in a glass of wine or some other small treat here or there.  It's not super-strict deprivation. But it's not enough food to keep my belleh from grumbling or keep me from constantly thinking about whether it's time to eat again yet.

Last Friday also marked the first time in that six week period that I got the Random Number Generating Device*** to read 113. This was not my "goal weight" (sigh) but it was, y'know, close enough. Close enough that it was time for me to decide whether I was going to keep dieting or call that mutha. In my attempt to make a rational decision about that, I decided to employ a couple other data points besides the RNGD. I measured my waist: 24.75". And I took several unflattering, badly-lit, non-tanned, non-flexed, camera-self-timer pictures directly out of the shower, dripping hair n' all, in naught but my underwear****.

Note: I clearly do see the point that a person who weighs 113 and has a 24.75" waist and all of whose clothes range between a size 00 and a size 2 could be said to be beyond "rational" when considering whether to continue dieting.  If I did not hang around an online (bodybuilding-related) site where many, many people are obsessed with being extremely lean, I wouldn't even be questioning this. I'd be saying to myself, bitch, you have (vanity-sized but still) 00 jeans that require a belt to stay up. No one who can honestly say that has any business being on a diet. Now go eat a fucking donut and hush yourself. What *is* your problem?

I do have a problem. Beyond the crazee. So you hush up about that. My problem is uneven fat distribution.  As my lovely unflattering pictures made abundantly clear, I have approximately 2 pounds of excess fat on the back of each thigh. If you could suck that four pounds out and slather it back on evenly over my whole body, like spreading peanut butter on toast*****, you wouldn't think I had any extra fat. You'd think, huh, that woman's lean as hell. I'd like to say genetics has fucked me, but truth is, that gynoid fat has been proven to be good for one's health. Genetics thinks it's doing me a favor by depositing that extra four pounds of fat right on my saddlebags. It's me that's fucked myself by hanging around people who are in general horrified by it.

I wouldn't even say it's peer pressure. I threw my unflattering pictures up on the internet and my weightlifting buddies, being sweet kind supportive friends, told me I look great and I'd be fine no matter what I decided to do: cut more, maintain, or start another bulk.  Meanwhile on the same forum, people much leaner than me were dieting and other people were putting up transformation pictures where they hit (DEXA-verified!) 15% bodyfat and being effusively praised for it.  No one was going to come out and say to me, "Andrea, yeah, you are still too fat, so suck it up and starve some more" but it is really hard to see other people being lauded for more and more fat loss and NOT think that there's something a little wrong with you if you aren't striving for that. You're lazy. You're half-assing it. You're not serious. You're not committed. You're deluding yourself about how attractive (or not!) you are.

Meanwhile, as I was struggling with this, in other corners of the interwebs, in a great coincidence, other people were discussing the pressure to be lean, the fear of having any fat at all, the difference between looking perfect and being healthy,  and the conflation of fat loss with healthy behaviors.  There must've been something in the air last week or two. Or else all the crap in the media about getting a summer bikini body has made a majority of intelligent, reflective, fitness-oriented women want to pull their hair out, punch someone, or, y'know, blog.

This is me from the front.

Not a great picture, for (as I said) many reasons, but even so, it does not displease me. If I were tanned and lit correctly, if I were flexing and posed right, you'd see how much muscle I have. But even without that, I can look at it and think that, well, I look pretty athletic. Which was always my aim.

And this is me from behind.

You see whereof I speak, I assume. But honestly? I can't make myself hate this very much either. For one thing, for the great majority of my life I wouldn't have even looked too closely in the mirror at myself in a thong, nevermind taken a picture of such. Nevermind shown it to anyone. Nevermind put it on the interwebs where strangers and friends****** could see it. In my old age I have come to love and appreciate my body enough to look at it in all its imperfections and still feel fondly disposed to it. That's a victory all in its own. I may be deluded, but I think my imperfect body is beautiful. And I'd rather be deluded in that direction than in the converse.  Grandiose fantasies are so much more pleasant than paranoid ones.

So what did I ultimately decide to do?  Well, I decided to take the weekend off.  The weekend lasting through Tuesday, since my son's birthday is April 16 and I had Chinese food and cupcakes to consume. Then I was going to reassess.  Well, here it is, April 18 and I still haven't reassessed. I honestly am on the fence still.  Eating till I was actually full the last few days has been blissful. On the other hand? I could lose four more pounds in another 6 weeks and maybe...maybe...some of it would be from that thigh chub. And then I could take a thong picture that wasn't vaguely horrifying when I'm not in the mood to be deluded. It seems so close to achieving. And then I remember how much I whined from March 1 to April 12.

xoxo

**I can lose weight easily and without hunger by going low carb. Unfortunately I can't lift weights on low carb. My muscles demand bagels or they won't deadlift shit.

***the scale, of course

****I have to admit I did put on "good" picture-taking underwear.

*****you diet for 6 weeks and see how many food-related metaphors *you* use

******not sure which is more embarrassing, frankly

And google chrome doesn't think horrifying is a word. Huh.

in which andrea takes the nsca-cpt

Late on this report but late is better than never! Well, obviously some of my blog posts in retrospect would have been better as "never" but you know, gotta fill the electronic paper, blah blah.

N E Way.  Bright and early on the morning of April 6, I traversed the wilds of East Boston and presented myself to a small conference room in a large chain hotel near the airport to take my NSCA-CPT, paper n' pencil edition. Here's the thing. The NSCA has two ways it will allow one to take their certifications. One is the nifty twenty first century computerized, get-your-results-immediately-after option which can be taken at various (I'm totally serious here) H&R Block locations at your own convenience. You just pay, schedule a date, take the test, and find out if you've passed. The second is the old skool #2 pencil, fill in the lil oval blanks on your score sheet in a proctored room then wait a few weeks for results experience we all remember from out SATs that occurs in certain cities on a few select dates.  I chose option #2.  Why, Andrea? you ask. That seems stupid!  

Well, kids, two reasons. First of all, if it's not patently obvious, I am a huge procrastinator when it comes to certain things.*** When I decided last fall that I was going to pursue this certification and saw that the test was going to be offered here in early April, I realized that having that firm date as the day I HAD to take it was going to serve me better than scheduling it at my leisure. Otherwise 20 months were going to go by as I told myself I wasn't *quite* ready to take it yet and maybe I ought to study a few more weeks.  Secondly and more importantly, they charge you less to take this test the old fashioned way.  And they charge you even less if you choose early registration.  It may not be obvious from the number of pairs of expensive shoes in my closet, but I am ridiculously cheap frugal about certain things.  Why should I pay these people more money than I have to just to take their test?  Besides, if I didn't procrastinate, taking a test at an H&R Block during tax season seemed...unwise.

Back to our story. I did manage to procrastinate enough on my studying that the week before was a huge review-everything-I-ever-read and try-to-cram-it-into-my-brain panic experience. I had bought the (expensive!) practice test package from the NSCA which turned out to be quite helpful. In my studying frenzy, however, I found myself getting stupider by the minute. I sent a friend a semi-panicked text the day before the exam which said something like "omfg the more i study for this test, the worse i do on the practice exams!" to which the response was "um, maybe stop studying?"  Ah, my friends, what would I do without them? Sigh. I didn't heed that advice. In fact, the morning of the exam I was in the hotel lobby an hour early furiously reviewing chapters of the CPT manual on my kindle in between stress-induced trips to the restroom.  About twenty minutes before they let us into the room, I switched to playing a relaxing game of Tetris**** instead. So it's not like I was cramming until the very last minute. She said in her own defense.

There were five other, um, frugal people taking this exam with me on this sunny Saturday morning. Interestingly (to me at least) there were three of us ladies and three guys; the guys all appeared to be in their twenties, the ladies all over forty or at the very least 35.  I'm not sure what to make of those demographics.  Women my-age-ish all wanna make career changes? Young women into fitness aren't confident enough to want to teach it?  Old guys and young women aren't so cheap they'll actually pay extra to go to H&R Block? I dunno.

Just a few things about the test. The first 35 questions are video questions. Not my favorite because they are, necessarily, timed. They show you a video clip, you answer the question, they go on to the next and there's no going back. This is contrary to my own (probably most people's?) preferred way of test-taking. Sometimes you just need a little time to mull over the correct answer. But this was an area the practice tests did prepare me for somewhat. Wouldn't have wanted to go in there not having experienced the format for those. The rest of the questions were just your average standardized test multiple choice questions. The funniest part (oh, in retrospect) was that the proctors had told us they would announce when we had an hour left--out of three--and twenty minutes left. There were 200 answer spaces on the test sheet and when "one hour left" was called, I had just answered question 120-something. Holy crap! I semi-freaked. I am NOT a slow reader, kids, and I have never had a problem running out of time on tests. I started reading questions really fast and not mulling. Then I turned over another couple pages in the test booklet and realized that, oh, there's 200 answer spaces but only 150 questions. D'oh. I had plenty of time to reread the questions I'd blown through and make sure I hadn't made any mistakes.  Oh, Andrea.

Perhaps my favorite part of the whole exam was the guy seated directly to my left at the next table. He was perhaps the youngest of us, a black kid with long dreds who appeared to be only twenty or twenty one. I could see him in my peripheral vision and he was doing exactly the same thing I was doing: acting out some of the various exercises the test was asking us about so he could feel what muscles were working, etc. It made me feel very warmly disposed towards him (as did, let's be honest, his youth...it might not be obvious in my bitchy sarcasm, but I am extremely maternal in nature): kinesthetic learners of the world, unite!  Hope you passed, Long Dreds Kid!

Hope I passed too. We'll know in about five to seven weeks, I guess.

xoxo

***true fact: I'm writing this as I procrastinate on what I'm really supposed to be doing this morning

****if you're having an old skool experience, go old skool, yo

like the loch ness monster

If you don't get it on video, where's the proof it exists, right?

In that spirit I give you: kneeling squats, 205x8. As long time readers will know, taking video at my gym is strictly verboten, and I thus do not get away with it very often. But it was Sunday afternoon, the weight room was as empty as it ever gets, and the employee on duty was someone who would never give me a hard time. Et voila!


Original Video - More videos at TinyPic

I would say "notice how much better I've gotten at the unrack and re-rack!", but uh, you all have nothing to compare this to. So just trust. It used to be much scarier.

xoxo

6 months

Guess what today is? My six month "hysterversary!"

Yes, the hysterectomy support forums do use twee and vaguely nauseating terminology like that. But, hugs! (Yeah, yeah, yeah, do I *seem* like the support group type to you? Let's be cereal here.)

Anyway. Yes. Six months ago at this time I was unconscious while my gyn and her husband** used a magical tiny camera and cauteries and, I dunno, other stuff to remove those girl parts that were trying their best to kill me. Along with their neighbors***. I thought I'd take this opportunity to bore you with reflect on the changes in my body since the big day.

First of all, I'm pretty sure I am now almost 100% healed internally. I have read that it can take up to a full year for all the nerve connections to grow back and so forth, but over the past month or so I can honestly say that I don't feel anything different on my insides any more. Even back in February when I felt mostly totally healed, a few days of physical labor or being on my feet most of the day and I'd feel a little swollen and sore in the cuff where my internal stitches had been. Ten days ago I spent seven hours doing hard physical work and when I was done--exhausted and starving but none of that internal ouchiness. Yeah, baby.  Similarly, it took a long LONG time after surgery for my intestinal function to feel like it had regulated and there weren't weird painful nerve twinges every time it was almost time for a morning meeting****.  Apparently the intestines get really pissed***** about being pushed and shoved aside during surgery and are in a snit about it for quite a while.

Secondly, I am no longer vaguely terrified about the whole works failing and my intestines making a break for it out my hooha while I'm squatting 160 or having sexshul intercourse.  According to the internet it could still happen but I have ceased to worry about and instead choose to believe that a.) my doc did an awesome job stitching me up in there and b.) my body heals super, especially since I took care during recovery to eat ALL THE FOODZ and c.) since I was a really, really good girl and abstained from sexshul intercourse for the 3 months prescribed by my physician (and, okay, even a little longer [see: vaguely terrified]) Jesus/Buddha/the laws of physics are gonna reward me with a fully functioning vagina for the rest of my life.

And now that I have, once again, overshared, let's move on to more blog-topic-related matters.  I lost a lot of muscle mass during recovery. People swore to me that I wouldn't, but they lied. No, actually, they just didn't realize how incredibly restricted I was going to be for the first almost-6 weeks after surgery.  When you're not even allowed to lift your own (admittedly obese) cats or, strictly speaking, your own handbag with its normal contents, and your body is putting forth all its energy towards healing up all the tissue that's been cut and restitched together and regrowing nerves and blood vessels and such, it wisely (from a long term evolutionary standpoint) decides that it doesn't need to expend the metabolic resources to keep all that expensive muscle that ain't being used and ::poof:: GONE.  A month after surgery I was down to 108 lbs. I'm pretty sure the last time I weighed 108 pounds I was eleven or twelve years old, kids.  It did not make me happy. And this with my postop diet of mac n' cheese, calzones, and whatever the hell new cookie recipe I found on the interwebs while I was bored and semi-housebound. So when I was released back to the gym I went on the bulk of all bulks. A fulk, actually. (Fulk=fat bulk.)  Since my birthday and Christmas came in the midst of this there was the added bonus of my friends gifting me with things like bottles of Baileys and the giant Costco gourmet chocolate assortment. And taking me out for drinks and Mexican food and and and. Operation Fatten Up Andrea: successful.

By the end of February I weighed...wait for it...wait for it...121. On the plus side, I no longer needed a belt to keep up every pair of pants I own and I was pretty sure I'd grown all my lost muscle back. I even, in my usual douchebaggery, took pictures and posted them up for my friends, all of whom agreed my muscles were back, baby. So time to "cut", i.e. diet.

It's been one month and one day. NOT THAT I'M COUNTING. I'm back down to 114. I can fit into all my pants (in varying degrees of comfort, ahem) and some of them are back to needing to be belted to stay up. And the saddest fact is, with a lot of the fulk fat off I can see that no, not all my muscle did come back. The extra fat was making me look a lot bigger and fuller than I really was. Right now I'm definitely squishier and softer and smaller than I was at 114 or 112 last summer.

I suppose it's a small price to pay for having my treacherous reproductive organs out of my body, yeah?

Present plan: stay on this muthafuking diet for two more weeks or till I hit 112 (whichever I crack at first), then back to a slow bulk in hopes of regaining more muscle mass. Wish me luck. I'm pretty sure with my ovaries removed I am not in the optimal hormonal condition for muscle growth (ha!) but as I recently remarked elsewhere, thank you functioning adrenal glands! Someone's gotta pump out the measly amount of testosterone my old woman body is producing.

xoxo

**oh, don't worry...he's a gyn too, not a plumber or tax accountant.

***I like to anthropomorphize my organs

****that's my favorite new euphemism for pooping

*****see "***"

everyone's a critic

You ever go to someone's house and they have some completely different stations on their cable/satellite than you have and thus you are sucked into a vortex of TV watching when you don't even ever watch most of the stations you have on your own TV ever? Just me again? Okay.

Well, I was at a friend's house the other day and he has Palladia, which is apparently a music channel, and on Palladia they were playing Later...with Jools Holland, which is apparently a very famous UK show that I'd never seen or ever heard of. (There's a lot of apparentlys in that sentence. I guess I'm weaseling instead of fact-checking today. Deal.) Jools Holland was (not "apparently"--this was internet-verified) a member of Squeeze, a band I like very much and which was part of the soundtrack of my college life. Like, if they ever make a movie featuring me in 1981, "Tempted" will be playing over the montage of me walking around Allston in too-tight high-waisted jeans and a Rolling Stones t-shirt.  Where was I? Oh, yeah. So, on Later the other night, Alabama Shakes were performing. Also Norah Jones, Jack White, The Chieftans, and some English chick I have never heard of who did some very interesting electronica. Why is this not on my Directv, again?

I was watching Alabama Shakes, the lead singer of which, Brittany Howard***, is a larger woman, and she was performing in a long tunic/short dress over capri leggings. I turned to my friend and said, "That woman should wear pants at all times. Worst cankles ever."  And was immediately ashamed of myself.  The woman has a tremendous voice and a hit record.  Her cankles are irrelevant.  But more importantly, why am I judging and picking apart another woman's body?  Who am I to criticize someone else's body parts?  Part of me says, "Well, honestly, she's not an unattractive woman and if she just made another wardrobe choice--boots, long pants, a maxi skirt, even leggings/tights that didn't cut off right above her ankles--she'd just look so much better on TV. It's a criticism of her fashion sense, not her body."  If I could sing (ha!) and Jools Holland invited me on his show, I could imagine viewers at home looking askance if I chose to perform in short shorts. "That woman should keep her cellulite covered, man."  But, really, that's bullshit. Maybe Ms Howard likes her lower legs. Maybe she doesn't see them as an unsightly "problem area" that needs to be camouflaged. Who the hell am I to place that judgment on her?  If I were to appear in public--on stage even--with my cellulite on display, is that anyone's business but my own?  And would I have ever had the same reaction to an outfit by a male lead singer? (Okay, I may or may not have suggested it's time for Iggy Pop to look into shirts. But that's with more fond amusement than real criticism. Also, while we're on the topic...kinda...I can stop complaining about Carnival Cruises using "Lust for Life" in their ads now that recent events have proved that going on a Carnival cruise really *is* like a scene out of Trainspotting. Feces on the walls? Check! Heh.)

So, mea culpa, Ms Howard. You rock whatever garments you choose and if anyone like me suggests otherwise, hit 'em in the head with your guitar.

You know I had to drop that in there.

xoxo

***yes, I did actually look that up too. You're welcome.

larcenous sobs disrespecting other people's property, etc

Not to get all cranky-pants on y'all, but do you see the above?  It's an Altus nylon dip belt that I ordered on Amazon last night for 22 bucks and change.  Why?  Well, lemme tell you.

Yesterday afternoon at the gym, the Y-owned nylon dip belt was missing. I searched the whole entire fitness floor--because people not returning things to wear they are supposed to be kept is a whole nother problem--and it was just gone.  I can only surmise that it was either stolen, broken, or put somewhere totally inexplicable like, I dunno, the locker room, the pool, or the basketball court.  This effed with my planned workout. I was not pleased. And it came to me like a message from on high*** that these things are probably fairly inexpensive and that I should just buy my own and never get irritated by its disappearance again.

You know what else is always disappearing at my Y?

The oly bar collars.  At one time--maybe a year ago?--we had 8 pair, most of which were brand new. We're down to two now. Two. And one pair is kinda wonky.  So six pair were stolen? Really?  Because what the hell do people do with them at home?  If you have an oly bar set-up and a rack in your house, why are you lifting at the Y? And if you have an oly bar set-up and a rack in your house, you've spent hundreds of dollars for them. You can afford to buy a $9 set of collars I'm sure. I've tried to envision some kind of deviant sexual purpose people would be stealing those mothers for but even my warped imagination is not up to it. So, seriously, people, wtf?  I am, again, almost tempted to buy myself my own set of collars to bring to the gym but someone would probably take them off my bar when I went to the bubbler for twenty seconds to refill my water.

Plus, there's a limit to how much crap a person can reasonably expected to haul to the gym. Especially on the bus. I already bring my workout journal and pen, LiquidGrip, iPod, water bottle, usually my Kindle Fire, sometimes my yoga mat, very occasionally a bathing suit and flipflops, gym clothes (if I'm not already wearing them of course), just enough grooming implements to ensure I'm not skeery when I'm leaving, one of my supplements I take immediately post lifting, and--after Friday if Amazon comes through--my dip belt.  I really do not want to swap out my gym bag for a suitcase, kwim?

Does this shit happen at your gyms, readers, or is my beloved ghetto Y just blessed with a particularly sticky-fingered or irresponsible crowd?  And do you haul an unconscionable amount of equipment with you to the gym?

xoxo

***hey, you have your religious experiences and I'll have mine

i drink alone

This post is only very tangentially related to health and fitness, but it does touch on body image so I'ma drop it in here.  I'm just dying to share this experience with y'all.

Last night I braved the snow to go see George Thorogood, who was performing at the Lynn Auditorium.  Before I get to my point, lemme just express some amusement at this whole set up. They're trying to make Lynn Auditorium happen as a concert venue, which is just a little bit bizarre seeing as it's located in City Hall. I told the friend that I was attending the concert with that this meant there would be no beer. I was wrong. They had concessions set up and they were indeed selling beer. Inside City Hall. I don't even... Alright, I'm probably just cranky about that since I didn't have one. I'm on a diet and very much moderating my alcohol consumption. Sigh.  The other reason they are not gonna make this concert venue happen is that there's really no good parking. We found a space on street a few blocks away, but it took ten minutes of riding around. Plus, if they weren't selling beer inside City Hall, there's no good bars around there to pre-game. Um, without getting stabbed.

Anyway.  We found a space, walked over, got our tickets scanned and went in. (They weren't checking bags. I coulda brought my own beer, yo.)  My friend needed to use the restroom before we found our seats and I didn't, so I just waited in the hall, watching my fellow concert-goers.  It was stunning. Everyone--almost literally everyone--was between the ages of 45 and 60. Watching these clots of middle-aged people milling around the halls, I had this weird deja vu sensation, like someone had scooped us all up out of the halls of my high school in 1978 and deposited us 35 years later.  And the 35 years had not been kind.  My friend came out (bitching that the City Hall bathrooms were not really built to handle a crowd, heh) and I said, "Tell the truth. We look just as old as the rest of these middle-aged people, don't we? It's very humbling."

Readers, it's not as if I don't look in the mirror every day. And it's not as if I don't look at my same age friends and clearly see how we're all growing grayer/saggier/wrinklier/heavier/balder/etc. by the year. But it took a whole concert full of 50-somethings without any younger people to break up the visual to feel the full impact.  Humbling.  I was just saying to another friend the other day that, as I'm presently job hunting, I know I'm supposed to be worried about age discrimination and the fact that maybe a younger person is gonna get hired before me, but that it pissed me off, because in my head, I'm thirty.  A wiser, more experienced, less crazy thirty, but still. Thirty. I was joking about fudging my resume to make it harder to figure out how old I am, but the whole George Thorogood experience made me realize that no one but me is ever gonna think I'm thirty.  I guess that's demoralizing as well as humbling!  I can squat and deadlift and jog and go to yoga and all it's gonna do is turn me into a very fit old person.  Which is better than a non-fit old person, but I don't know what that says about my job prospects.

Here's a couple of my favorite Thorogood song for your troubles.

Yes, I DO know the second one is a cover. Shut up.

xoxo

P.S. Another lesson from last night? Drunk and/or high 50-somethings behaving at a concert like it still was 1978 are not cute. I'm talking to *you* bleached blonde chick in the tight pants, falling off your stillettos while dancing in the aisle and having to be removed by security.  I'm also talking to *you* guy two seats over whose miasma of really really skunky weed almost gave me a contact high and who despite all that apparent THC was NOT mellow and had to keep climbing over me every ten minutes to go to the hallway for god knows what.

P.P.S. Final lesson: I should probably cut my hair. All the women my age with long hair looked like shit and I am sadly probably no exception.