boring bodies

My best friend Amanda, who in many ways has taught (still teaches) me the lessons that a mother or a sister might have, made this declaration during my sophomore year of college, as we sat around the table with other girls on the brink of womanhood at our beloved Columbia Cottage, drinking boxed wine in carafes and eating Chinese string beans until late into the night:

"Can we not talk about our bodies?  It's just so . . . boring."

Prior to this, I had suffered from some garden-variety body dysmorphia.  Nothing unusual or extreme.  I don't have the will power to starve myself or exercise excessively, and I really can't throw up to save my life (when I have had the flu, I have often actually wished for the ability to gag myself so that my nausea could pass).  But, like most women, I didn't like the way my body looked.  I wished for many things:  rounder hips, smaller waist, more petite and arched feet, thinner fingers, more symmetry.  These were things that would never be "fixed" by losing weight or working out harder.  In fact, the list of complaints I had about my appearance never shrunk, even as my size ebbed and flowed over the years.  And Amanda was right:  oftentimes, when women get together, we fill the silence with complaints and accusations toward our bodies.  If you don't want to participate in this kind of conversation, you risk being left out.

But the one thing I wanted more than for my body to be perfect was to be not boring.

So I decided that body shape and size would not be a pressing topic of discussion for me anymore.  I would own my body and how I felt in it, even if it sometimes felt uncomfortable.  Of course, this was 19-year-old me, still light years away from the drastic things that childbearing and nursing, depression and neglect, trauma and heartache, would do to my body.  And this was also still a judgmental me, now turning that laser beam of criticism away from my own appearance and onto others, compared to whom I was now allowed to feel superior (because they were still over there boringly hating their bodies).  It really wasn't much of an improvement.  I still never felt beautiful, even if I wasn't boring.

But a funny thing happened to me when I began practicing yoga seriously a couple of years ago.  I began to feel beauty and grace emanating from my hands and feet, then from my legs and arms, and finally, over time, from my core - back and belly and chest.  Certain poses were almost too lovely for words, as I watched myself in the mirror.  Who was this lithe creature, whose body seemed to just know what to do?  Who was this woman, whose comfort in her own skin was so amply evident?

I began to love my hands and feet as their ropey sinews gripped the earth.  Then I began to love my arms and legs as they grew firm and strong from supporting me well.  And then I started to love my middle, last of all.  That took awhile.  But that same middle that grew babies and then grew crepey and soft is the middle that can now hold me up in uddiyana bandha.  The back and ribs that are "too wide" can hoist my legs into a playful headstand.

These are the strong hands and wrists that hold my daughter.

And these are the sturdy, strong feet that carry me around all day and play with my son.

And sometime after I started feeling all this gratitude toward my body, something else amazing happened.  I began yoga teacher training five weeks ago, and it has been an intense experience for me so far, both physically and spiritually.  My physical activity has really ramped up - I'm practicing yoga probably four times more often than I was previously.  I was anticipating this, and thought I might drop a few pounds.  Instead, what has happened as I gain strength is that I am constantly hungry!  I feel like a marathon trainer, or like a woman who is pregnant and growing something inside herself.  I think I've gained a few pounds, even.  But, without even forcing myself to, I don't care!  I feel like a gorgeous, functional machine that is having its controls and dials turned.  More output means more input.  I have also become one of those jiggly ladies who takes her shirt off in class and truly doesn't care.  I'm naturally a very hot and sweaty person, and hot yoga classes make a shirt a total inconvenience.  I strip down to my bra and the shirt is better used to mop my face and neck.  As the kids say these days, IDGAF.  Not only that, but I feel lovely!  I have become a person who starts making videos of myself doing asana practice:

And what's more astonishing is that I watch that video and feel love and attraction toward the person I see.  It's thrilling.  It's something that, in 32.5 years of life, I have never felt before.  

potato no more!

In general, I want to dislike neatly-packaged "programs" that lead to "results."  For instance:  Dave Ramsey.  He seems so slick.  Almost like some kind of snake-oil salesman.  All the little slogans - it just seemed like groupthink.  But then I read the book, and my previous church started running his program.  And dang it.  It works.  His principles (which are really just the sound personal financial planning that we no longer learn from family or in school) help people get out of lethal debt and manage their finances so they can faithfully give.  I really didn't want it to work.  But it does.  I've used the debt snowball myself to great effect, and currently only owe student loans and my mortgage.

Another program I loved to hate was Couch to 5K.  This is super-straightforward.  It's a program of walking/jogging that promises to get you to running a 5K by the end of nine weeks.  It entails three weekly workouts that take no longer than 30 minutes.  I've seen people talking about it for years.  But I scoffed.  And I seemed to think that somehow, magically, I would just get in shape without having to start somewhere.

For a year after the birth of each of my children, I have taken a drug called domperidone to help me be able to nurse them more fully.  Along with a delightful herbal tea, domperidone has been a lifesaver for me.  But the ugly side effect of domperidone is increased appetite and inability to lose weight.  And boy, did each of those nasty effects hit me like a ton of bricks.

My pattern with both kids has been:  I lose almost all the weight I gained in pregnancy within eight or ten weeks of birth.  Then, because of the domperidone, I gain it all back (and then some) over the course of the baby's first year.  I stop taking the drug after baby's first birthday and realize that I've got some serious work to get back to a healthy size.

So here I am three days after Todd's first birthday:  as big as I have ever been, even fully pregnant with either of my kids.

I realized, looking at that picture, that I needed to get serious - and fast - about getting fit.  I needed to get over my suspicion of a program like Couch to 5K.  So I jumped in.  I started the program.  I mapped the runs into a neat chart so that I could mark off finished workouts.  I breezed through the first week.  The second and third weeks took a little more effort, but I got it done.  I had bad foot and ankle pain that was immediately remedied by getting fitted for new shoes and inserts at our amazing neighborhood running store.  I found a super-duper sweet double jogging stroller on Craigslist for $85 and am now a dedicated Baby Jogger brand snob.  I was feeling really good about my progress, jogging with the kids on weekends, with the dog on my day off, and on our walking track at church during my lunch break.

And then I hit week 5, day 3:  walk 5, jog 20.  Twenty minutes of uninterrupted jogging proved to be really, really difficult for me.  I had to re-attempt probably two or three times before I was successful.  Weeks 7 and 8 really slowed me down.  We are getting into jogging pretty long portions:  25-28 minutes.  I will admit that I still have not finished the program! The final week is three workouts of walking 5 minutes, jogging 30 minutes.  I still can't quite do it.  But I work at it.  I jog 2-3 times per week.  And I feel amazing.

And I've lost a little over 20 pounds, to boot.  This is not the end of my "after" story, because I still have a long way to go.  This is really just the end of the beginning!  It's the beginning of me getting over my pride and my ridiculous objections to simple programs that encourage fitness.  I hope, if you're on the ledge, you can get over it too!

our family doctor

Like many families these days, Jeff and I never had a "doctor," per se.  Jeff has had myriad specialists and always has a gastroenterologist because of his Crohn's disease.  I saw a nurse practitioner or midwife every year for an annual exam - as most women do - and that was it.  Because I was in school for so long, I benefited from the clinics that are associated with universities.  I never had to pay for these visits, but I also had no continuity of care.  I saw a different person each year that I went in. 

One of the things I loved about being pregnant was going to the midwife.  It was like a fun little social appointment with some measuring and weighing added in.  I really looked forward to those visits, and when they became more frequent toward the end my delight was multiplied.  It made me realize that I owed it to our family to find a medical professional who could care for us, and with whom we had a solid, lasting relationship. 

The search for a doctor for your baby starts when the baby is still in utero.  They tell you to really begin calling and looking around at about six months.  Most people ask some friends, check with their insurance company, and find a pediatrician who is part of a large practice that specializes in child medicine.  I decided I'd rather have someone who knew our whole family, and would be able to see Vicki Jo past the age of childhood.  I wanted a family doctor.

A general practitioner is surprisingly hard to find these days.  Topeka is a city of about 120,000.  I found exactly four family doctors.  A couple were older and weren't taking any new patients.  One wouldn't accept our insurance.  That left us with Ryan Bennett, DO.  I was curious about what those letters after Dr. Bennett's name meant.  She (yes, Ryan is a she) is an osteopath.  When I began researching DO vs. MD, I discoverd I much favored the approach of the osteopath, anyway.  These doctors are trained in the almost-lost art of diagnosing illnesses with the hands, rather than relying so heavily on testing and analysis.  Also, I loved reading that osteopaths tend to favor a more whole-person approach, finding out about mental, emotional, and physical health as part of one package. 

We made an initial appointment with Dr. Bennett and it was a smashing success.  I was heavily pregnant at the time, and she caught on immediately to the fact that I was quite swollen and my blood pressure was up.  She was actually the first person to suggest I be screened for pre-eclampsia, just based on her initial observations.

She was also knowledgeable about Jeff's Crohn's (although, as I mentioned, he sees a specialist for that).  When we explained that we were still deciding how we felt about all vaccinations for our child, she encouraged us to make informed decisions and offered resources, rather than just pushing a party line. 

After the baby came along, Dr. Bennett was thorough and thoughtful.  Although the baby never gained weight at the rate most doctors would have like, Dr. Bennett never freaked out on me.  When we decided to slow down on our vaccination schedule, she just asked to take a look at it so she could familiarize herself.  She trusted that we had done our research and found what was best for our family.  The only thing she ever pushed was Vitamin D.  She spends a lot of time with us at each visit, and we never feel like our baby is being pushed through a factory.  I kind of love the fact that there aren't a lot of babies in her practice, because she isn't constantly comparing Vicki Jo to a million other babies in her mind and using that to judge whether she is "normal" or not. 

Jeff threw his back out recently while riding the bike I got him for his birthday, and Dr. Bennett helped him regain strength and ease his discomfort through a series of stretches and exercises, rather than just prescribing him painkillers.  That's the kind of thing I love about osteopathy. 

All in all, I am so happy with the decision that we made.  I love that Dr. Bennett can identify patterns in the health of our family, and encourage us as a unit to make better choices for ourselves.  She can see if Jeff's Crohn's is making an impact on Vicki Jo's digestion, or judge whether my anxiety is causing her to have sleeping troubles.  I hope that Dr. Bennett remains a part of our family for a long, long time.

world's worst runner

I always have memories of running running in my family.  There seems to be some kind of natural aptitude for it passed on from my father to my brother and sister.  Dad was kind of a crazy runner - the type who would run fifteen miles in the heat and then show up at parent-teacher conferences drenched in sweat and acting like nothing was weird.  After Dad and my stepmom Tammy moved to Arizona, they would go on these insane endurance runs in the desert.  Dad coached track at nearly every high school where he taught, and they regularly competed in races and triathlons. 

My brother, in turn, was a fantastic cross country runner in high school.  Indeed, when he went to Macedonia to visit Dad and Tammy while they were teaching at the American High School, he competed in a race with no training, holding a beer and a cigarette the whole time, and still beat everyone!  (Sorry if you didn't want this awesome fact revealed David!)

My sister didn't do the pure running thing as much, but she played volleyball throughout high school and into college.  She recently had her second child, and went for a jog a few weeks after . . . a cool 2.5 miles without having run for nearly a year!! 

Naturally, thinking I could cash in on this clear genetic advantage in our family, I joined the Lawrence Track Club when I was about seven.  I quickly found out I was really no good at running, so I got into racewalking.  Nope, I'm not joking.  I did the sashay, I kept one foot in contact with the ground at all times . . . and I still sucked at it.  Going into high school, I was always more "bookish" than athletic, but I still went out for Cross Country . . . twice . . . and never competed in an actual meet.  I always had a sprained ankle, or didn't feel good, or thought my heart was going to explode during practice.  Mostly I just want to carb-load the night before races and then not burn anything off.  Poor Coach was always totally unsurprised when I quit each year. 

So, when I decided I was going to do a sprint triathlon this fall, I knew running would be my challenge.  Swimming?  Fun!  Biking?  Cool breeze in my hair!  Running?  Sweating, legs hurting, failure.  I started training in June (and am already a month behind schedule!  Why do babies have to be so demanding all the time?)   I started with very small runs, and would use a timer app on my phone to only record the time I was running.  So, I might run/walk 45 minutes, but only get 14 minutes out of it in terms of running.  I hadn't been having a whole lot of success, but I had been keeping it up.  So, about a week ago, I decided to go for a walk after a glass of wine, on one of the hottest nights of the year so far.  I really didn't think much would come of it.  I strapped the baby into her jog stroller, lasso-ed the dog onto her leash, and set out for the high school track just across the street. 

I decided to do a little running.  I made it around the track jogging once, twice, three times, and suddenly I realized I was about to do a whole mile without stopping!!  I felt like I could conquer the world, truly.  This probably sounds absolutely silly to any self-respecting runner, but a mile for me could have been a marathon. 

My observations on why I seem to be able to go longer now?  Labor makes a big difference.   I have been through one of the hardest endurance events I will ever face.  Also, psychologically, when it gets hard to run, I can remind myself that I birthed a baby and felt every pain, and made it through!  I can certainly keep running a little longer!  Also, the jogging stroller helps keep my stride in check.  Although the stroller and baby present extra resistance, I run a bit slower and at a more sustainable pace.  All in all, I'm loving the new endurance, and, as with most things in life, having some success makes me want to do it more.