My War With Fat

Fat. It's the stuff that makes butter and bacon taste so damned good. It's a four letter word in a thin-obsessed society. It's dead weight that makes you 3 seconds slower per pound per mile when you're running a marathon. It's defined as a group of compounds that are generally soluble in organic solvents and largely insoluble in water.It's a suitcase full of emotions that most women drag around with them every day of their lives, whether or not they are actually fat at all.

I am at war with Fat.


I don't want to be. I want to be completely content to be a healthy, fit, vigorous individual who just so happens to carry a few extra pounds here and there. I don't want to look at women who are less fit than I am but far skinnier and feel envy. But I do. I don't want to have only half a Thyroid gland that decides on a daily basis whether or not it wants to do the work it's supposed to be doing to keep my body in a healthy range.

I don't often talk about Fat on this blog. I don't often talk about weight. I try very hard to keep my focus on health and not on numbers on a scale. But I have to admit that lately I am losing the battle of self-contentment in my own head. And I know why. My doctor is adjusting my thyroid medication again. This always means that I gain weight. I gain weight even though I'm working out exactly as much as I was a month ago. Even though I'm not eating any differently. Even though nothing at all has changed other than that damn little pill I have to take.

And really, it's only a few pounds so far. The guys reading this are probably rolling their eyes. I can hear you thinking "Hell, I gain fifteen pounds every winter and just take it off when I start up my spring training. Big deal." Well, I got news for you fellas. It don't work that way for 44 year old women. My husband eats one less piece of pizza a week and he loses fifteen pounds. To take off the fifteen pounds I gained the last time my medication went wonky on me it took me a year of killing myself with Crossfit and eating strict Paleo. For me, it's less about the few pounds that I've gained (heck I can still wear my jeans) but more about feeling out of control.

It's even worse when you coach and teach fitness for a living. This compounds the fear from just "I'll have a muffin top in my tight jeans" to "People will come to my class and wonder why they'd take fitness advice from me". It just seems so ridiculous that a healthy fit woman can have nightmares about a few pounds of fat. I won't go into the whole sordid history of being the fat kid in grade school, eating disorders in high school, blah blah blah. I bet many of you have the same story. But I know that whole history of interactions with Fat and the notion of Fat that we get from our society, they all contribute to what we feel about ourselves.

I just need to bust myself out of this Fat Funk (wish it was a Phat Funk, that would be better). What do you do to keep yourself focused on health, fitness, vitality, and all of the things that matter more than a dress size?

Crazy-Making Weather

I live in the Pacific Northwest, so I get rain. I understand that spring is rainy, and sometimes windy, and sometimes a little stormy. But the last two weeks have been ridiculous. All day long, we alternate schizophrenically between sun and rain, hail, sleet, driving crazy winds (the kind with tree branches flying off and going tumbling through the air, not like gentle spring breezes), and pouring drenching ridiculous rain. You can't plan to do anything outside even a few minutes ahead of time, you can look outside and it's sunny and by the time you've grabbed your running shoes there's so much water pouring out of the sky it's like a bathtub got turned on your head.

It's driving. me. crazy.

Literally, I feel like a maddened beehive got turned loose inside my head, it's making me nuts. Can't get outside. Can't garden. Can't bike or run. I can take running in the rain, trust me I do it about 5 months out of the year. But running in a downpour with tree branches hailing down on your head and thunder cracking around? No thanks.

Luckily, we got a small break in the weather for the Ride of Silence on Wednesday, although not surprisingly the turnout was very low (gee, you think the hail, sleet, pouring rain and driving winds had anything to do with that?). That's the saddest I've been in a long time, so maybe that has contributed to my mood. As a mom, hearing a parent speak about losing their child to a collision with a car? That's almost unbearable. And yet, my kids ride bikes. How can I not have my kids ride bikes? How can I not ride a bike? Even knowing what's out there, the possible death that awaits with every driver who is distracted or in too much of a hurry? Should I just have my kids turn into these sofa slugs who get driven everywhere then? Like the blobby kids who pour out of the minivans at school drop-off lines or even at soccer games?

But what about the 10 year old killed at a crosswalk that the Ride of Silence arrived at on Wednesday. The teenager who hit him was going 65 miles per hour, and pulled around a car that had stopped for the young boy walking his bike across the street. He pushed the boy's bike 211 feet before finally skidding to a stop. Thinking of these things makes my head hurt. It makes my heart hurt. I have a 10 year old, no mother should have to lose a child like that, to someone else's impatience in their automobile. Maybe these are some of the bees in my head. Maybe it's not all just the weather.

Still, I can't wait for the weather to clear so I can... get out on my bike? What does that say about my brain then. Hmmmm....

NO EXCUSE FOR THIS

A drunken man plowed into an entire pack of cyclists in a bike race. WARNING: Do not go to this link if you are likely to be disturbed by a horrifying photo of a car slamming into a group of cyclists.

My heart goes out to the families and friends of the dead and injured cyclists, and to the survivors who surely will live with this day in their hearts the rest of their lives.

There is no excuse for this. None. I wish there was a universal zero tolerance on drinking and driving. There's just never ever any reason to operate a ton of moving metal under the influence of anything.

The Ride of Silence was just last week. It's so sad that it's necessary.