At the beginning of this year I decided I wanted to go for it and do an Ironman (~154 pool lenghts, 112 mile bike ride, 26.2 mile run, all together). I dropped all group classes at the gym, got a coach. I wanted to write a bit about two things. One of them is how training an Ironman changes you, and the other is about weight. Before I do, though, a little explanation of what this blog is. It's a description of the journey. This is not how a journey should be or even what people should follow, this is just how it is for me. I use this kind of a stream of thoughts. This is not right or wrong, this just is.
I went to this relay race last week, and people that "knew" me on Facebook commented on how "tiny" I was. It bothered me a lot to be referred to as tiny, and that is because, in my mind, I really am not. It's a lie. I wouldn't call myself obese, more somewhere of chubby, and some days are just downright Fat Days, when I just feel fat. I'm not "thin" or "skinny" by any stretch of the imagination and I have no clue why people are saying that (this is what goes on in my head.... I'm 5'4" and 123 lbs, so yeah, objectively, I guess I'm thin). I've had a feeling from the beginning, and it's been validated a lot lately, that if you're fat/obese for 31 years, part of you inside always remains fat. At the beginning when I was still heavy it seemed my mind became "skinny" waaaaay before I did, wanting more and more and more, before my body got there. Now they did a switcharoo and while my body can do more, my mind's now the fat one.
I was at the gym the other day in my bathing suit and I took off my Garmin to weigh myself (it IS kind of bulky.....) because I wanted to get as much weight off of me as I could. When I was putting the watch back on this woman approached me and jokingly asked if taking the watch off helped. I told her it did, I needed as much help as I could when it comes to the weight department. She looked at me and laughed. She thought I was kidding. She didn't know the truth, that I'm fat.
So there's two weights, 114 lbs and 108 lbs. If you look at BMI, 108 lbs still gives me a health BMI. If you look at weight charts (I'm small framed, based on a 5.9" wrist.... <6.0" small, 6.0-6.25 med, 6.26+ large), the lowest healthy one is 114. Shooting for 114 lbs so 9 more to go. And I was thinking the other day what if I get to 114 and I still think I'm fat. Hell, what if I got to 108 lbs and still thought I was fat. But I'll be dammed if I let myself become underweight. So I decided for now to settle into 114 since everyone agrees that's healthy and then make a decision on 108-114. And if I get to 114 lbs and still think I'm fat? Then I will live fat the rest of my life. If my mind never catches up to my body, then so be it.
I'm reading a book about anorexia and I think anyone who loses a significant amount of weight (107 lbs for me so far) should read at least one book about anorexia. You need to immerse yourself in that frame of mind and explore the thoughts and impressions of people who go through it to make sure it never happens to you. It's very seductive to feel the power of having total and absolute control over your weight and getting to 80 lbs if you wanted to. And you may think you can toe the line and really control it and stop losing weight if you want to. That's where you have to be really careful. We all think we have control, but it's a veeeeeeery slippery slope and that control can be lost in a second. That's why I like charts and numbers. I can't trust my mind, my eyes, to tell me how I "look." From the beginning I decided to go by charts to make sure "that" never happened to me. I guess I could see the ease with which one can be lost into that mindset of never skinny enough. And who knows, maybe it wouldn't have happened to me, but I think you should expect anything in life and be prepared for it. We're not immune.
And I think it was just good fortune that I went seriously into triathlons when I did, because I now think of triathlons as my fail-safe. Lose enough weight and performance suffers, and performance is king. I don't think you can be seriously underweight and have a good performance. If performance suffers, weight goes up. I don't eat for emotions or stress. I eat to fuel. To perform. To nourish and give back and give thanks to a body that allows to do most of what I want. You get into something like triathlon and you appreciate health, fitness, your body so much more. You treasure it. You seriously want to thank it.
So that's where I am in regards to weight, 9 more lbs to go. Stay at 114 for a while, maybe forever, try to find out what the difference between 108 and 114 is. I do think as a society we have supersized ourselves as there's a knee-jerk reaction to think of people as "too skinny." There's a fear about thinness. We go too far in both extremes.
Now about the triathlon journey. I was taking 20+ hours a week of group classes last year, and then I went to a trip to Israel for 2 weeks in which I couldn't take any. It was like being cut off from a drug, having to abstain. I think that is what finally allowed me to transition (ha....) into triathlons, something which I tried to do last year and couldn't as I couldn't imagine life without group fitness classes. Zumba, TurboKick, wasn't for the waist, it was for the soul. I wasn't exercising to lose weight, I was exercising because it made me happy.
It started being about the endpoint, about Ironman. That first hour bike ride I did was horrible, I wanted to quit soooo bad, and I spent the whole hour riding to the next corner where I would quit and go back to Zumba. I had told my spin instructor about my IM aspirations and that helped me a lot in not quitting because I didn't want to go back after a month with my tail between my legs, a quitter. Shame is a very powerful motivator. It really is true, share your goals, it helps in reaching them.
Slowly, it has become about the journey. I have come to really enjoy swimming, biking, and running. At the beginning I realized I spent the whole time I was working out thinking about sitting down doing no thing and I spent the whole time sitting down doing nothing wishing I were working out. And if I always wanted what I wasn't doing, I was always going to be miserable. So I very consciously made myself feel, connect, and enjoy what I was doing at the moment and really live in the moment. You can train yourself to do that. If I'm biking, my mind is biking, I feel my muscles biking. I bike. If I'm sitting down, I enjoy sitting down. Instead of wanting what I'm not doing, I drown myself in the moment and feelings, colors, sensations that go along with it. And yes, that does increase happiness exponentially.
When I first wanted to lose weight I didn't want it to change me. I thought I could lose weight and remain the same inside. You can't. It changes you both outside and inside whether you want to or not. I don't take "credit" in losing weight, I was just hanging on for dear life while it was happening to me trying to make sense of the situation. Society tells you to lose weight, but it never mentions the psychological effects it has on you. You lose your identity (and I've always believed weight is a huge (no pun intended) part of identity, and have to create and embrace a new one, or a series of them as your identity keeps evolving. There's books on diets, exercise, etc., but no books that I've seen on how to psychologically deal with weight loss. No one gives you tools to psychologically deal with the death of your old self.
So, having slowly began to realize I was going to change inside whether I wanted to or not, the goal then became to guide myself into becoming someone I could be proud of. Guidelines. Don't become someone who thinks that, or does that, or feels this or that way. I'm being vague on purpose, but I saw how losing that much weight could turn me into a person I'd despise, and I worked hard to avoid that. But it was a very conscious decision.
The Ironman journey has done something else entirely. I've always been kind of laid back, the kind of person you can "walk over." But it was mostly because I didn't want to deal with the fuss and the work of standing up for myself. It was just easier to just ignore it or walk away. IM has changed that. Because let me tell you, you can't train yourself for something like an IM and think of yourself as weak. Something happens inside. You develop strength, confidence. Strength, mostly. It carries over to every aspect of your life. And I've found myself being a LOT more assertive, something I never was before. So what if there's a fuss, bring it. And I started weightlifting and that has added to it, because as you start feeling stronger physically, it awakens a hunger and a strength and just a feeling of power. That's really what it is, power, you feel powerful.
There's a danger to that to, that you go from laid back to assertive to a bully. And hell if I'm going to let that happen to me. Power is intoxicating, it's liberating. You want more. It's ok to feel powerful, but it has to come intrinsically, from inside, or at least extrinsically from inactive sources, i.e. conquering a hard bike ride. It should never come from comparison with another human being. Should never come from belitting others. Should never come from feeling better than others. And it should never come from abusing others. And I think there's a danger to that if you're not conscious of the possibility. Never think "that," that being anything, can't happen to you. Because ironically it's the same thing, isn't it? Thinking something imperfect can't happen to you is akin to being thought perfect. Know the vulnerabilities of being human and be conscious of what different life experiences can do to you so that you end up where you want to be.
The same thing happens to me strength-wise at the gym as it does shape-wise in front of the mirror. I'm going through a period of self-discovery. We had to do this thing in which we stepped up into a step, jumped up into a pull up bar, used the bar to pull our body up, hold it there briefly, and lower back down slowly. And I'm at another machine while someone else is doing it and I'm told I'm next. I laughed. Debbie doesn't, can't, do something like that. Doesn't have the strength. I actually laughed out loud, I seriously thought it was a joke and that it was something I would eventually do, but certainly not today, or the near future, just something I would look forward to being able to do after weeks or months of weightlifting.
She wasn't joking.
The first few times I was held up. I've discovered recently that I have a fear of heights. And I never knew this before because I had never been IN heights. My fear of heights appears proportionally to the distance I'm away from the floor. So I used someone to allow me to push off into the bar above. The last time, as I was getting more comfortable with the height and the whole process, I did it by myself. Maybe not as high or as long as the next person, but it was mindblowing that I could do something resembling what people stronger than me were doing. It's made me think a lot about the preconceptions I hold about myself. That's another thing this whole journey does. If you're wrong about this, what else are you wrong about? If you can do something that at first you find so ridiculous to even consider you could do, then what else are you telling yourself you can't do in other areas of your life? How can you use this process to better yourself? Because there's really no point in losing weight and gaining muscle if you're not also going to grow emotionally, culturally, spiritually, socially. And I don't think you can, as it's all interconnected.
I think an IM is what the person makes of it. If someone wants it as a physical bucket list, then they train, do one, and move on, and that is what they got out of it, and what they wanted to get out of it. Nothing wrong with that, in my opinion. There's no right or wrong, in IM or life, just what the person wants from it.
I want the IM to change me. I want it to be a life-altering experience. I think if you want to, you can change drastically through an IM and it can have far-reaching implications into the rest of your life.
My life seems to be full of life-altering experiences, and I've realized for a long time that that's just because I start every day looking for life-altering experiences. Be open to being changed, and it happens, kind of thing. Everything is a big deal because you are expecting it to be a big deal. Everything is special because you are expecting everything to be special. I want the IM to reach to my core and come out changed, stronger, different, more secure, confident, better. Better in the good sense of the word.
Know you're going to change, embrace the change, and just guide it along the road you want to follow. If you can't stop it, control it, use it, learn and grow from it. And enjoy it. Don't just look at goals, look at the journey, love the journey. Because that's where most of it happens, not at the end, but on the road there.
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