The First 100 Pounds (91 - 100)

All these posts later, and I still haven't had a chance to go to med school. Lazy, lazy, lazy. Talk to a professional before you decide a poet is a good healthy lifestyle role model of any sort.

Also, thanks to all of you who have commented, sent emails, posted, or otherwise been supportive of these posts (and of me in general). Oh, and there might be a little swearing. Nowhere near enough, if you ask me.

If you'd like to start at the beginning of the list, you can do so here. But here's 91 – 100:

91. I LEARNED TO HONOR MY "GOOD" TIMES OF DAY.

I am terrible between 3 and 5 PM. I just am. If I'm going to fall asleep during the day, that's when it's going to happen. So I don't try to run during those times (I can cross-train if I need to, but those are seldom my happiest workouts). If I'm going to get my best workout, I need to do it in the morning or start sometime between 5 and 6 PM. That's just the way my particular circadian rhythms seem to work—I could try to fight them if I wanted to, but the workouts are much smoother if I honor my good times of day.

92. I LEARNED MY OWN RHYTHMS.

I've talked about rhythms a bit in terms of things like understanding the weird, non-linear progression of weight loss, but it applies to other aspects of the process as well. There are a few days every month where I am simply ravenous, all the time. Sometimes, I can finish an entire meal, be fully hydrated, and still be painfully hungry. It's not, of course, actual hunger—maybe I'm in a muscle-building phase, or losing fat, or maybe it's just that something happens that crosses my hunger/satiety responses, but during these periods, something is going on with my body that I don't totally understand, and while it's uncomfortable, I've learned to go with it. I eat well, I make sure I have plenty to drink, and I have reasonable snacks when I just can't stand it anymore. I recognize the symptoms and know to ride it out. Giving myself the time to understand my own body rhythms—or at least recognize them—helps a lot.

93. I BECAME GRATEFUL TO MY BODY, "FLAWED" AS IT WAS.

And is. This was another tough one. It's hard to look at myself in the mirror and see the good. We're trained to see our faults—just one glance at my Facebook feed gives me ads for reducing belly fat, removing hair, buying some sort of garment or makeup or pill that will somehow make my hideousness more socially acceptable. I read articles that claim to be reviews of running clothes but actually talk about whether a specific pair of pants might make my ass look too big and not about how the garment actually performs. Again, it's too easy to focus on what I'm not instead of what I am.

There's a full-length mirror in our bathroom. For whatever reason, I started looking into it right before I got into my post-workout shower. It was not easy at first. I saw the wrinkles and the bulges and the sags. But I began working on establishing gratitude to my body, for getting through another run, for getting through another day, for getting stronger, for staying uninjured. It's ridiculous and touchy-feely-self-helpy, and it is very, very effective.

94. I BEGAN TO UNDERSTAND THAT I COULD HAVE ANYTHING I WANTED.

Because I can. I just can't have everything I want. Because no one can. The key is in figuring out what I want. If I want to run well, I can't have eggs benedict for breakfast that day. That doesn’t mean I can never have it again—it just means it doesn't fit into my plans for the day. If I want eggs benedict for breakfast, I can't have a good run later. Again, that doesn't mean I'll never run well again—it means I won't run well that day. Both options are available to me, just not at the same time. On any given day, one will win out over the other. I know, for example, that I can do a perfectly acceptable walking workout if I've had eggs benedict several hours before—so maybe I just switch a run day and walk day that week. Or maybe I've been eating out a lot because we've had a bunch of events in the past couple of weeks. In that case, I'll go with a lighter breakfast and a run. It's all available, and I can do anything I want—just not everything I want.

95. I ALLOWED MYSELF TO REDEFINE MYSELF AS AN ATHLETE.

This might be the toughest of all. I was not athletic in school. The only teams where I was picked first were ones for which my size (I got tall FAST, hitting my full height of almost 5'8" when I was about 11) was an asset: red rover, tug of war. (Note to all phys. ed. teachers: you know who the non-athletic kids are. Why the fuck don't you make them team captains once in a while so that the same 3 or 4 kids don't always end up being picked last? You asshats.)

Um…where was I? Oh, yeah. Athlete. It's a weird word for me—certainly one I've never had applied to me by anyone else. And a lot of my personality had been bound up in not being very good at sports. I don't have terribly good eye/hand coordination. I'm not great under that kind of pressure (although I'm fine under other kinds). I was never taught how to build myself up to the point that learning how to push myself athletically might be fun—I was just pushed to go faster, farther, more, whatever, always with the implication that whatever I was doing simply wasn't good enough. That pushing almost never included any versions of the words, "You can do it," and never seemed to take into consideration where I was physically.

But I can run twelve miles. More, actually, since it's not like I drop to the ground when those twelve are finished. I can hike hills like nobody's business. I can do push-ups and crunches and lift heavy things. I have the resting heart rate of an athlete. What else do I need to call myself an athlete? It's not a label that I wear comfortably yet, but it's one that I wear when I can.

96. I BECAME SUPPORTIVE OF OTHER RUNNERS.

Runners might be the most supportive people I've ever met. We're competitive, but largely with ourselves. The vast majority of people who enter races don't do so because they think they'll win—they're looking for a personal record, maybe, or they're doing it as part of their training for another race, or entering racing gives them a reason to keep up with their workouts. The running community is ah-may-zing, and I'm happy to be a part of it, so when a running friend of mine is injured, I ask how she's doing. If another posts to FB that he had a good run, I try to "like" it. Seriously, it doesn't take a lot, but being supportive helps keep me positive, and where's the downside to that?

97. I WRITE ABOUT IT.

Writing is how I process—how I come to understand myself and the events happening around me. Everything I've learned about myself during the past year and a quarter or so, I've learned through writing about it. You might process things differently, but for me, it's not "real" until I can write about it. Learning-through-writing applies to mourning, love, hatred, fear—the whole gamut of human emotion—but it also applies to this…what? transformation?...I've been making. What little understanding I have has come through writing.

98. I SAY HELLO TO PEOPLE I PASS ON MY RUNS.

Just to prove that I can, because the fact that I can speak sometimes surprises the hell out of people, and that's fun. Also, it's neighborly. The saying hi part, not the surprising the hell out of people part. I once realized as I was approaching a runner that we were wearing the exact same outfit. She gave me a little raised-fist-power-to-the-people salute (it was in the days right after the Boston Marathon bombings). I said, "Nice outfit." Then we were both gone in our opposite directions. It made me happier than it had any right to. There's a kid who likes to hang out in his yard and kick a ball around. We say hi every time I pass him (he started it—I don't accost children, even when they're behind fences). I have no idea who he is, but why not, right? And if someone doesn't return my greeting (this is, after all, Massachusetts), what have I lost?

99. I TRY TO LET GO OF WHAT I CAN'T CONTROL.

Like whether someone says hi to me. Or when, exactly, I drop another five pounds. Or whether a given person respects what I'm doing. Or whether a particular skirt fits yet or or or or or. I try my best to let all that go. It goes against the entire nature of my being, but I'm much more content when I can manage it.

100. I FORGET WHAT I LOOK LIKE.

In multiple ways. I force myself to forget what I look like when I run, because I'm sure it's not pretty. I also—despite looking into the mirror to try on clothes or give myself pep talks or practice a little gratitude—quite literally forget what I look like sometimes. A friend of mine took a picture of me a week or so ago, and when she showed it to me, I said, "Holy shit, am I really that skinny?" I'm not skinny (I'm on the cusp of overweight and obese), but I couldn't recognize my own body in that picture for a bit. I don't think of myself as being that size. When I was at my heaviest, it was pictures that showed me how large I was—I had trouble recognizing myself in those, as well. When I started losing weight, it was pictures that showed me where I was. The day-to-day visuals, for whatever reason, mean very little to me, but once in a while, I see a picture and it reminds me of what I look like now. It's a little weird, but I'm figuring it out. I'm figuring it all out.