Buildup

Goal Post #1

Growing up I was super active: swimming almost every day in summer, biking everywhere, climbing trees, and weekly gymnastics lessons. Unfortunately, none of that prepared me for how my body started deteriorating with age. Rather than approach things constructively, I decided this was just how getting old works and became less and less fit. By the spring of 2017 I was far from healthy. Walking more than a mile made my legs hurt, my back completely seized up twice a year, I needed help moving our coffee table off the carpet, and suffered heartburn multiple times a week.  

Like most people, my weight has fluctuated over the years. When I got my driver's license at 16, I added ten pounds to my actual weight. My logic was if I gained weight, no one could look at it and think “Yeah right, 20lbs ago.” I also didn’t want to have a mythical “driver’s license weight” that was some unattainably low number because I was still a kid. I figured I’d get heavier and that was true. For most of my adult life, I’ve been within five pounds of my driver’s license weight. By spring 2017 however, I had been 15-20lbs over my driver’s license weight for going on four years and started to wonder if this was my new normal.  
 

President's Day 2016, obviously 😊

The last time I was "happy" with my weight was 2010-2011. In that second summer, I decided it was a good time to establish a regular workout routine because my goal was fitness, not weight loss. After quitting smoking by my 30th birthday, I wanted to improve my cardiovascular health and maintain muscle tone as I aged. (Hopefully undoing any damage smoking had done to my bone density in the process.)  

In 2011, I was still in grad school with affordable exercise facilities and classes at my disposal. That winter I had been attending yoga sessions once or twice a month but in June started swimming 40mins three times a week. As usual, I loved swimming laps. It is one of my all-time favorite exercises.

I gained 10lbs in two months. Are. You. Kidding. Me.

Now I can hear you saying “Muscle weighs more than fat.” You are right. But all of my clothes were too tight and I felt terrible. Mostly because I looked worse naked than before I started. Yes, I am that shallow. When the outdoor pool closed I stopped making any effort, gained ten more pounds by New Year’s, and stayed there for a long time.    

That next summer I went hiking with a venture crew. To help prepare, I utilized one of the undergrad trainers at IU. He told me what I already knew- I was overweight and out of shape. He came up with a HIIT (high-intensity interval training) workout plan that I followed. After keeping a food diary for a week he told me I wasn't eating enough. That was actually a surprise. Turns out, there's this thing called basal metabolism - how much energy our bodies need just to survive. Without realizing it, I had been stressing my body by not eating enough. So I tried eating more calories, something I'd never considered in my adult life.

After a few weeks, I could tell he was mystified by my lack of progress and probably thought I wasn't working out on my own time. This wasn’t true, but still didn’t explain the lack of results. Nevertheless, the ten day hike went well with no serious difficulty or injury. Then we returned to base camp. Within an hour my ankles swelled up and stayed that way for days. That’s when I started worrying about my health more than my weight. Was it enough worry to start doing anything about it yet? Of course not!

Unintentional awkward posing!
(one of my special skills)

Whenever I clicked on a weight loss program, it was doom and gloom: “The only thing that will help you lose weight is... our super secret patented program!” “It’s your hormones!” “It’s your metabolism type!” “It’s both!” We all know these are baseless claims from modern-day snake oil salesmen, but I held onto hope that something, anything, could fix me.

Once, after entering my goals into a famous trainer’s website I literally laughed out loud. "You mean I get to eat less than 1200 calories while working out an hour a day? Gee, thanks! That’s totally reasonable!" While it has been proven that restricting calories and increasing activity is a basis for weight loss, most medical professionals recommend making sustainable changes.

Watching active friends was extremely intimidating, especially if they were trying to shed weight "If she can't take off 5lbs running 10 miles/day while eating less than 1200 calories how can I even hope to make progress? Why start trying? Who has the time for something doomed to failure?" There was also my own experience from 2011 proving working out made no difference.

Then there was running. Runners would listen to my story and tell me the solution was running, had always been running and could never be anything but running. A couple of them said point blank if I wasn’t willing to run I was making lazy excuses and would never become healthy. Ever. Well okay then.

Let me be clear: if it’s a choice between running for exercise or being unhealthy, I am picking unhealthy.

  Bodies by beer! (still pretty cute though) 

Speaking of unhealthy, our lifestyle was very Midwestern. Lots of red meat, lots of starches, not enough veggies and way too much alcohol. Between our full-time jobs and my 50 minute commute, eating out 3-4 nights a week was just easier. When a chain started offering ridiculously cheap pizza on weekdays we began ordering pizza every Wednesday - sometimes with wings. It was glorious and ridiculous. It was gloriously ridiculous.

No matter what, why not have a beer with dinner then a glass (or 2) of wine while binge-watching something at home? One thing in our favor: we didn't drink lots of pop. We love unsweetened iced tea and sparkling water so even though I drank more sugary soda compared with today, it still wasn't more than once a week.

We enjoyed our life. We looked and felt like a typical Midwestern couple (without the excuse of 2.5 children) and did not feel bad about that. Before continuing, I want to be clear that this journey was not and is not about being more attractive/hot/sexy. One day in early 2017 I realized I had become the kind of grownup I'd always wanted to be. There, in that moment, at my heaviest, I felt awesome. I will be forever grateful for that realization. No matter what was going on with my weight, I've had moments like that when I simply enjoyed my body. This process has been about becoming healthier.

In the fall of 2015, my mother's health started deteriorating. She was (re)diagnosed with type II diabetes, learned she had breast cancer, had her gallbladder removed, and suffered a diabetes-related heart attack. This is a person who cultivated a beautiful half-acre vegetable garden until I was 11, only allowed pop in the house on special occasions, watered down fruit juice to cut sugar, and severely limited our junk/fast food intake. Overall, she made healthy lifestyle choices for our family, probably drank less wine my entire childhood than I do in an average year, and looked better after having four children than I did at the same age with zero. Needless to say, I'm forever grateful for all of this, especially her limiting sugar and pop, but why was she so unhealthy now after a lifetime of reasonable good choices?

Our family was occupied and preoccupied with mom's health for months. Thankfully, her recovery has been fantastic. She successfully replaced two knees and is now doing better than she's been in a decade. At some point while watching all of this I realized this could be my future. I needed to start taking care of myself now.