Reality strikes!

But Am I Really Healthy?


Change is a good thing, particularly when it’s a change in taking care of your body. In recent weeks, I’ve been vigilant; eating well, exercising regularly, very regularly. And I did realize I was feeling – for lack of a better word – peppier. I was sleeping better; I was waking up with energy. And I didn’t notice it until this week, but other things were changing for the better.

Which makes me realize, thing were not that good. Look at my first blog. I talk about being fit but fat; being able to play tennis and ski and do all I want. But as I’ve transitioned to good eating and more exercise, I noticed I was playing better, running better feeling better. Still, I thought it was just from good to better.

Then I fell off the wagon. I knew it was going to happen. After all, this is my pattern: I get all charged up, change my ways to the point of over-perfection for a few weeks and then, bang, it’s over. Only this time, I had not just changed my eating, I had changed my life.

So last Monday, I headed out to play tennis without working out beforehand for the first time in weeks. Since my beginning of change, I’ve been doing a half hour of cardio (the treadmill at 4.0 speed, 5.0 slope for a half hour; just enough to raise the heart rate and sweat a little) followed by a half hour of weights just before taking the court. I’d eat a banana, jump on the court and play. So Monday, I was crazy busy, Deadlines, life, you know the deal. I thought, “I’ll skip today,” and I just showed up at tennis time. Man, was I creaky. I mean, I could really feel a difference. It took me a while to move; my bones and joints weren’t ready to play. Which made me wonder: did I always feel this way before my workout change? Was this creaky play my old “normal,” the normal I thought was okay?

Wednesday I did not repeat that mistake. I got my work out in and then played a match. My partner and I crushed our competition, and the women, who have played me before said, “Wow! What came over you?” It’s a life change, I thought. Even my pro was awestruck.

Then Weds afternoon I went to a holiday party and ate the wrong thing. I mean, really wrong. Guess, what, that night I was smacked down with a horrific migraine. I realized, laying in the dark and suffering, I had not had ONE of these migraines that had started haunting me about a year ago since I’d changed my eating habits. Go off the norm this day and, bang! Migraine.

So today, for me, is about a reality check. I was NOT the healthy but overweight person I thought I was. I really needed change. And that has pulled me back on track. For now.

Image versus Reality

Okay, I don’t need some skeletal entertainment show host to dress in a “fat suit” and walk around to know this: People judge who you are and what makes you tick by the appearance of your weight. I know because I’ve been a thin person for most of my life, and an overweight person for the most recent years of my life. Throughout that entire time, though, I’ve been the same personality.

And yet, the world does not seem to get that.

Take this tennis pro the other day, for instance. Now, this is not my usual tennis pro who works with me to train for matches (okay, time out. It is kind of obnoxious that I even said that “my tennis pro,” because I’m a working Mom, darn it. That’s just plain crazy. But you know what? It makes me happy, and it’s a heck of a lot safer than crack cocaine and some days you just need something that powerful. But I digress).

So Monday I was working with three other spoiled women who I happen to like quite a bit and this pro I have not really taken a shining to. He’s young. He doesn’t know me well. And he told me last year he could tell by looking at me I was missing something. “You don’t have competitive drive.”

Excuse me? Okay, so, I worked for 11 years as a nationally award-winning crime reporter. You want competitive? Try to be the first one to get a murder victims wife/mother/lover/attacker to talk, and then get them to not talk to anyone else. I did that and did it well. You want cut-throat? Try holding onto a top job at one of the best magazines in the world; a job that – I kid you not --- thousands are lined up behind me wishing to have. You want thirst for a win? Try being a competitive freestyle skier. This guy saw none of that in me, base purely on seeing what I look like.

But I have this problem with tennis: I love to win but, at the end of the day, it’s all good. For goodness sakes, it’s the middle of the week and I’m working with my tennis pro. There are women working at chambermaids at the same time. I’m thinking if I lose a match, we are all going to be okay. (I need to point out that not all women in tennis agree with this point of view). This pro thinks I think that way because I’m overweight and weak. Not true. Not even close to true.

So I try to stay away from him (thinking, what’s the freaking point? He’s a moron). But Monday I got stuck with him. Only thing is, Competitive and Egotistical Moira were really on display that day. I don’t know if it’s the going to the gym before playing each day now (a half hour cardio, a half hour weights and then onto the courts), or if it’s the weight I have lost so far, but I’m more aggressive on the court. Well, not more – I always was – but I’m going for more and feeling more confident in my ability to.

So I played my heart out in our drills. I was split stepping my heart out and charging the net. I was on fire. At the end of the session, he approached me and said, “Wow Moira, you were really on fire.” I mentioned the pre-play work out and he said, “No, I think you just felt what competition is.”

Wrong again. But, as I lose a bit, is he looking at me differently? Unfair, I say. Or, could it be that I DO hold back a bit when I have extra weight on? Am I not seeing what someone else is seeing? I don’t know. But I do truly believe that, fat or thin, I am the person I am. Go ahead. Try challenging me on that one. I’m too competitive to ever back down. :-)

Does size matter?

There are those who say – and believe – that we are all born with a “permanent age” and that they spend their lives, while moving toward it or away from it, always in it. You understand the notion: the small child who seemingly has the wisdom of a 40 year old. The 50 year old with the youthful exuberance of, well, a small child. The obvious adult who is as immature as a toddler. I wonder, then: are we all born with a “permanent size?”

If so, I am pretty sure I’m a 12. I know I’m far beyond that now – all I have to do is look in a mirror (or worse, at a photo) or try on some jeans at a store for reality to come into play. And yet, I just pain feel like a 12.

It’s interesting to add that while I must have been much smaller than that (I was a gymnast, a skier and an athlete in general), I cannot recall it. When I look at the clothing tags of my own daughter’s who are 21 and 16 respectively, I wince. The 16-year old in particular. She looks like me and acts like me. All those years I was cutting it up in school in stead of paying attention, I was saving up for the payback that is her. She’s joyous to me though, not challenging. And she’s taller than me. And yet, size five. How, I wonder, can this be? I was so much like her, surely I must have been the size once.

But I don’t recall it. Not because it was long ago, I believe, but because I was always, in my heart, a 12.

I think of 12 as a good, durable number. Sure, it’s not a prime, but it’s respectable. A 12 means you’ve got some muscle, and you’re not afraid to let loose and have a little fun. A 12 is kind of a “best all around,” in my mind. And it is, with 4 and 8 and 10 below it and 14 and 16 and 18 above it, most definitely the middle of the rack.

To me it makes sense, and I wonder if that is part of the issue of those who struggle with eating issues. Is there internal “permanent size” unrealistic? If so, is it possible to be counseled into re-wiring your “permanent size?” I did a little experiment with my youngest daughter, a teen who needed to gain weight – and did – this past summer. We emptied her closet, went shopping with a “no budget” agreement (tough for the wallet but good for her self esteem). When we got home, we cut every size tag out of the clothing, and she’s been happy in it ever since. Did I help rewire her “permanent size” or did I trick her? Whatever the case, she’s stuck with that larger size and looks wonderful. Healthy.

Of course, while I still feel like my permanent size, I am not it. Sometimes, when someone shows me a photo I am in, I gasp in shock. Who is that larger woman? I wonder. But this is what I’m choosing to think today: I feel a size 12 because I am meant to be one. And while I’ve spent the last few years moving away from it, I choose now to move back toward it. Even if it’s one tiny step – and a few rests along the way – at a time.
What’s your permanent size? Do you agree with my notion? Do share.