Totally Predictable Unpredictability!

Two years....100 lbs.....a different life...sorta.....

2011-11-22T14:50:00.000-06:00

Membership photo taken on Nov 19, 2009
when I joined LTF

This is probably going to end up one of those winding nostalgic posts. I am facing down an anniversary and that tends to make me sentimental (it's a girl thing I know). Black Friday is coming up... the day my life changed. As a co-worker pointed out last night, time DOES move faster the older you get. It is really shockingly so. In ways this week in November 2009 seems like a moment ago, in other ways it is lifetimes ago.

For those that haven't been reading the blog from the beginning. Black Friday 2009 was when I joined Lifetime Fitness, started working with a trainer, started the journey that I thought was only about losing weight, but have since realized was so much more.

Before photo, Feb 2009

When I walked into LTF on November 19, 2009 I could barely walk more than a few steps at a time, and even those were difficult. Partially because I weighted 311 lbs (from my high of 338 a few months earlier) but also because of the nerve damage on my right side from the botched surgery and two ensuing strokes. My goal, do water aerobics, maybe the treadmill, not much more. The outcome (to date) is light years from where I started. I never would have guessed two years later I would have lost around 100 lbs, I would have done an indoor tri, that I would be able to lift the weights I do, and certainly not that I would be horseback riding. At that point I would have been happy if I had been told I would be able to walk stairs and not have to make every decision on my life on whether my body could do it. I have come a long long way, and am super proud of that.

Nick and I at the Vikings
game this year

But I have to be honest, this second year has been MUCH harder on many fronts than the first one was. I am still trying to understand why the first year was so much easier, but I believe it is grounded in how far I had to come. Most of the first year was all major milestones, every day was a new accomplishment, and I do well with that. I feed my energy off it and it helped me fight battles that I thought were conquered, but really were only hiding, especially my eating disorder (the not eating part). This second year weight loss has not come, I am currently around 235. It has been as much about not falling backwards as it has been trying to go forward this year. I am blessed with a personal trainer, Nick, who has stood by me through that, trying to keep me moving forward, but also not giving up when we were just treading water.

Me with Snapper, the horse
who changed it all

This year also added an Eating Disorder therapist, Alecia, to my world. I started with her in the middle of a blizzard in February. I know working with her is what I need to be doing, but have to admit part of me hasn't fully connected with it yet, and I struggle with that. I have struggled with that a lot in the last year and a half, working to let the people in I need to and feeling very detached and distant from them even if it isn't what I want. I definitely have become more isolated in the second year than I was in the first, and think that is part of the lack of success also. As I have said in the blog before, I let more people in the first year, but when that blew up in my face with some people I retreated from it, I am working now to get that better balanced.

Joker and I in the first snow, one of the few pictures
in the world of me laughing...ironically I have no clue what about

The biggest addition to my life in year 2 has been horses, and Woodloch Stable. WL was a very happy accident. I was in no way going near horses by choice (they were big scary mean creatures was what I remembered from being a kid) but the minute I was pushed to do it I felt complete in a way I hadn't in a long time. Horses touch a part of my heart I had walled off from humans. While I struggle allowing people to hug me, touch me, care about me, see my flaws when I am with my horse, any horse, that part of me is fulfilled. I become a very different person and I am open to very different experiences. And along with letting the horses in, I have gained an entire new circle of friends, at WL, at Sunnyside and on FB. My "horsey friends" as my other friends call them.

Etta, Snapper and me

The most central new person in this is my riding instructor, Etta. It always amazes me how the right people fall into our life at the right moment. I was reminded again yesterday how everything really came together that day in May at WL. The right horse, the right instructor. If any of that had been different I don't think I would be riding today. I got lucky to find an instructor who gets my limitations but has no hesitation of fighting me to put them aside, which is what I need, and where I am most struggling these days.

My life has changed a ton in two years, my body has changed a ton in two years, but unfortunately my brain hasn't changed in those two years, I thought for a while it had, near the middle of the first year, but I realized this past week how much I still am locked in "brain fat" and "brain fears". Where I have stopped being a prisoner to my body, I still wrestle with being a prisoner to my thoughts and my memories. I still stop myself from doing things, including riding, based on fears about my body and whether it will do what I want it to or not. I still fight myself around food and eating, based on those old messages.

Which brings me to my goals for year 3.........getting my brain to catch up with my body. To stop living in the past in my thoughts, my fears, my behaviors. Because I fear til I do that I am stuck at this point of "good enough but not where I want to be" with my food, my weight, my happiness, my riding, all of it.

Kola and I off on an adventure

And the biggest lesson I am taking from year 2 is I cant do it alone. I tried this year, where the first year people were freely let in, this past year I tried very hard to hide a lot, to do a lot on my own, to figure it out myself. Even though I had great people wanting to help and to care, I always retreated. I see it most clearly in my riding, I go have my "adventures" on my own and come back and tell people what went on after the fact, but that is just the visual of what I did in everything. Its why therapy hasn't helped, I would go and keep 1/2 of what I felt inside for fear of what Alecia thought. In the last 6 months I have done it in the gym too. I got very very hung up this year in what people think, in going back to feeling like I have to be perfect or I wont be loved or accepted, and this year I need to put that behind me, that has to become old think!

Me on Cheyenne

I cant say I know how to do it, so this year I am asking you all to help me, to push me to do it, to yell back, to chase me down when I hide, to force me to live out in the open and not head out to where I can hide. And yeah I am going to fight back, that is me, but please stop me from running like you all did in year 1 before I shut everyone out. I need my friends to get back to being louder than the noise in my head again. You all have my permission, for one year, to be a royal pain in my butt (at least now I know how to jump on a horse and get away from all of you *grin*)

On to year three.....

Six months in the saddle...

2011-11-15T09:06:00.000-06:00

"Every horse you meet will teach you something"

"You are safer than you realize"

"There is a cowgirl in you somewhere"

Etta Arcand Langer

WOW! There wasn't much else I could say when I looked back last night to see exactly how long ago I had started riding and it turned out today marks 6 months. Just like so many other things it seems like just yesterday, and at the same time it seems a life time ago. In ways it was, I am such a different person now. As we have joked at that barn more than once, I am now "a whole lot more cowgirl than princess". While I still have my great heels and my nails and I still like the dressing up I had discovered in the first year of my transformation, I have to admit, I am pretty darn happy to have "traded Nine West for Ariat".

I was asked yesterday why I think I have taken so quickly to horses and riding. I am sure, like with most things, the answer is a lot simplier than I am going to make it, but I came up with two reasons...

1) I have no history with it. My life comes with a whole lot of baggage. Dysfuncational family, abusive parents, eating disorder, weight issues and most of all the nerve damage/strokes and paralysis. Most everything in my life I run through one of those filters and I measure how I used to be able to do it versus how I can or cant do it now. Riding has none of that. I had never done it before I was "broken" so there is no measure of how much harder it is or how much worse it is, it just is. It gave me a clean slate, a brand new story to write, unincumbered by the past. It has no tie to my mother, to being sick, none of that. So I can just do it and figure it out now and not feel I have to measure myself against the past.

I have found a level of pride in my accomplishments riding that I have never felt (or allowed myself to feel) in anything else I have done in my life. I dont need to measure myself against other people or be the best. I have found great joy in just my "baby steps" of riding, and that is new for me. I have gotten a greater high crossing a stream or walking over a log than in anything I have ever done. I see my accomplishmemts, which I normally don't.

2) It involves the most honest "me" of anything I have ever done. Most of my life I have felt I was playing roles people wanted... the good student, the happy family member, the confident business analyst...sometimes parts of it were true, but more often than not they were truly a role. A facade, a face for the world. Trying to be what I thought people wanted me to be so I would fit in or be liked or accepted. Then I would come home and take off the mask and hide out so people wouldnt see who I really was. But with riding, I haven't had to wear a mask, truth, you can't fake it on a horse. You are who you are. There isnt time for pretend and imagery. And even when people do try to pretend, it is blatantly obvious very quickly. Your horse calls you out on it really fast! All your good and your bad is brought to the surface and exposed for the world. I can tell by watching how someone treats their horse how they treat people and what matters to them and how they feel about themselves. You see the most honest reactions and emotions around horses.

And for me this honesty is liberating. I spend all day smiling and pretending for clients, for people around me, and it is exhausting at times. The barn and with my horse is where that mask comes off and it re-energizes me.

One of the realities I have faced in the last six months is how much I have turned out to be, at my very core, who I fought for the last 30 years not to be and have found peace with that.

I grew up in a small town very much like the Hugo, MN area (where the barn is). That small town country girl is who I really am, even if I thought I had to become someone else for the world to love and accept me. I have done it, I have faked it (I can easily stand in a board room on 5th Avenue in New York City and reshape a fortune 500 company's future, I do it all the time), but at my heart, I'm simple, I'm small town. I'm country music, I am a few close friends and a bon fire much more than I am big cities and night clubs. And I am finally accepting that of myself!

I can't in any way take all the credit for my success this six months or even that I got on the horse the second time. I have always said the right people cross our path when they are meant to. For as much as I believe I was meant to do this "horse thing" at this point in my life, I am not sure if my first day hadn't gone the way it did, had it not been where it was, and the instructor who it was if I would be on a horse today. I consider Woodloch Stables and Etta the happiest accident of my life. I could not be riding at a more welcoming, friendly supportive barn. From my initial fears that I was too fat to ride (met by a comment from my instuctor I will NEVER forget..."Have you seen the size of cowboys"), to the other riders who welcomed me riding with them from day one, to the amazingly helpful barn staff who have never made me feel dumb (even when I ask things like 'do I have the right horse' or 'Has anyone seen my horse, he's missing'). I have never felt once that I didn't belong, and again for me that is unheard of. THANK YOU.

Thank you to my horse friends (and a few non-horse friends) who have listened tirelessly to my stories and accomplishments. Whether you are here with me in person, or an online friend. I love the new dimension of people riding has brought to my life, and the way some of my existing friendships have been deepened.

A huge debt of gratitude to those who have loaned or leased me your horses to ride, for an hour, a couple weeks or months. Etta, Mary and Jessica. You sharing your ponies with me is a gift I wont forget.

Finally the most important thank you. My trusted steeds. Snapper, no matter how many horses I ride in my life, you will always be the most dear to my heart. Your patient, calm, caring way is a gift to all of us you teach to trust ourselves to ride. You do a very important job at Woodloch and hope you realize how loved you are and what a "rock star" you are to so many people who meet you. Cheyenne, I still miss you! You had a caring in you that is hard to explain. Cody, thanks for teaching me I could ride even if Snapper wasnt around. Gunner, just one ride, but you changed how I ride, you taught me how to use my body to ride. Kola....my dear friend. We rode for only a couple weeks, but we somehow bonded. You are still there for hugs anytime I come to the pasture. You made me feel loved and still do. And my special gelding Joker, you my friend are teaching me bravery, in myself, how to trust, that taking a chance is ok. I look forward to what you have to show me in the future. And I look forward to all the horses I am yet to meet......

And to think it all started out with a LivingSocial coupon.............

Ultimate Trust.....

2011-11-12T19:02:00.000-06:00

"Horses lend us the wings we lack. ~Author Unknown"

It blows my mind when I let it sink in that just six months ago I wouldn't go near a horse and now I find my greatest moments of victory on their backs. I started this journey accidently in May and what a ride it has been.

It has been exhilarating, challenging and at times terrifying. To use a phrase my riding instructor used about her horse, I am not "brave by design". This is especially the case when it comes to physical challenges. I fear falling, I fear pain and most of all I feel looking like a fool. That last part leads to me hiding many of my "adventures", riding only in an empty arena with the doors closed or heading out to a field to practice. No one knows about them til I have done them and succeeded. The multiple attempts that fail are only mine to know, and well now my horse's also.

The great part of riding Joker is I have the most trust worthy horse in the world and can try new things on my own. Don't get me wrong, he's a horse, I don't lose sight of that, at any moment he could decide to take charge and take off (most likely back to the barn) or spook, but what I have learned as Joker and I have built our relationship is even on his worse moments, he doesn't have a mean or spiteful bone in his body. He feels he is protecting not only himself but me, and I am blessed for that. He is a partner I can believe in when I am not feeling brave, he is in it with me, he is on my side and he will do all he can to take care of me.

This is going to sound very strange to my non-horse friends (and probably even to some of my horse friends) and if you are one of those "they are just animal" people you may want to stop here, but Joker and I have a mounting ritual we go through before every ride. Before I step into the saddle, I stop, I go to his face, I stroke his blaze and I look him in the eyes and ask he if I may ride him and also ask him to help me through the ride. In my mind he understands what I am saying and I see a change in his eyes, an understanding of his role in my life and a softening. I realize that may be me wanting to impose my world view on him, but even if he doesn't undestand it is important to me to acknowledge that I never take him for granted, that I respect and appreciate that he allows me on his back (let's be honest, this is a 1200 lb animal who could easily be rid of me if he wanted) and takes such good care of me. And to thank him for keeping us safe even when I question my seat.

I thought I knew all this, about how lucky I am and what a trustworthy horse I am riding after our first solo stream crossing alone a few weeks ago, but last night he taught me what trusting a horse really means....we did our after dark trail ride.

The ride started out as a behavior lesson for Joker. Since the season change he has been getting a little lazy riding when the light changes. Even if we are in the indoor arena, he had been deciding he should be done as the sun goes down. So my goal has been to change up the times we ride, to ride him more after dark, to remind him he doesn't have banker's hours.

We set out at twilight, my plan, ride him around the driveways at the barn before we lost all the light. I had no plan for a great adventure. I wanted to be back to the safety of the barn before dark. We did our planned ride, and something came over me. BTW there is a thin line between brave and crazy *smile*.

Not sure if it was beautiful moon, the stars, the previous conversations with Joker's owner about her night trail rides or just how great the ride was going and wanting to test our limits. But something lead me to take it to the next step. Despite the light being gone I headed us out around the track. For those not familiar with Woodloch, there is a 1 mile sand track, that starts out in the open and then cuts through a wooded area and returns back into the open. It is somewhere Joker and I have been multiple times (it is our escape ride when we don't want to work too hard but want to be alone). Last night however was a whole new experience, for me at least.

Not being able to see the ground in front of us (or below me) was not a factor in this outing I had considered til it was too late and we were already on our way. As someone who panics and doesn't trust her own footing when walking in the dark, to cede all control, to have to trust my horse to find his way and to keep us safe was difficult at best. Many times I considered getting off his back and leading him home. But I think what kept me going and not trying to take back control from him was that part of me that hates failing. Because I can't ground mount Joker, it would have meant doing the "walk of shame" all the way back to the barn and that people would think less of me was a lot more scary in that moment than trusting Joker.

And as usual I am glad I rode it out, it was the most fulfilling exhilerating ride I have had yet. Far better than learing to trot or canter, even better than the stream ride (which was pretty darn cool in its own right). Because this meant a level of trust I have never given willingly to any living being. Trust is such an issue for me, but last night I learned that well placed trust is a great thing. That when you have a parter who deserves your trust it can be very liberating to hand over the reigns.

Joker of course handled the entire ride with the same "come on this is no big deal, I got it under control, chill out" look he gives me during our mounting ritual. He safely and calmly rode the entire ride and lead us home like a champ.

And for those wondering, yes he was definitely rewarded with lots of treats. Truth the boy could have had anything in the world he wanted last night, because he let me feel the one thing I have rarely felt in my life, completely secure in where I had placed my trust!!!!! I love you my friend!

The Second Time Around...

2011-11-09T15:41:00.000-06:00

I am not sure as I start this post where it is going to end up, if I knew that answer I probably wouldnt be writing it in the first place, so maybe I am hoping somewhere in figuring out how to say this is my own answer.

The topic has been on my mind for a long time, I have been fighting with myself over this for over a year now, but for many reasons, I have said precious little in this blog about where I am at. Partially because I feel like I am failing and am embarrassed by that, partially because I have heard the word "inspiration" so many times over my weight loss that I am afraid of letting people done, or trying to keep my head in the sand. But a Facebook post this morning by a friend on the same topic has me ready to face it, at least for the moment. Thanks Paul, this is for you.

The topic, the reality of weight loss after it has long stopped being easy, when the scale starts to creep up again and you feel helpless to stop it or to get back on track, but need to.

I have been fighting this battle for about a year now...for about 10 months I bounced around in the same ten pounds, between 210 and 220. And then the scale started climbing. Today my weight stands around 240 lbs (havent weighed myself in about 10 days so not exactly sure the number but guessing that is about where it is).

I could sit here and list a ton of reasons, but as my trainer points out to me periodically, they would be nothing but excuses. The reasons may be true...eating disorder noise, work stress, lack of self confidence, and on and on...but as true as they are, they are excuses. Convenient excuses to hide what weight loss for those of us who are truly over weight, a decision that we are worth the effort (ours and other people's), that we deserve success, that we are worth believing in and that we are valuable./

Paul asked me this morning how I would address this if I was starting fresh, if I didnt have the history of having lost the 100 or so pounds. His question stopped me cold, because I realized, I dont know what made that change in me the first time, and it is probably why I have struggled the last year to get back there. I dont know how I did it the first time. It feels looking back more like a fluke than something I purposely did.

I can look back at the first year of my weight loss journey and I see myself as a person I never was before then and havent been since. I read my posts on here and it is like reading another's story. The biggest thing I see is that I let other people walk along with me, and I have lost that ability again to let people in and admit I can't do this alone. I look back at the people I had with me when this all started...my trainer, so many people on staff at LTF, other people losing weight there, the readers on here, my friends on FB, other friends. And I saw myself doing something I had never done up to that point, letting others in. But in the last year I have moved so far away from that, I have gone back to trying to take on the journey myself, and not knowing how to let people walk with me, even when they want to. And I haven't moved a step forward.

The great irony to saying that, is that at this point I am actually surrounded by better people than I was when I was losing weight. I have an amazing trainer who has tirelessly beat his head against a wall with me for 16 months, an ED therapist who tries so hard yet I still keep at a distance, friends who want to help and who I know logically would do anything I asked them to help me. Yet I dont know how to let any of them in the same way I did before, and that is about ME not them. And if I dig deep enough I think that is a big part of where I have stalled. Because another reality for those of us who have struggled with our weight our whole lives or grew up with abuse is we measure our worth, as wrong as it, by those around us. And what made me believe in myself for the year I was losing weight, was others' belief in me, others telling me I was worth it, and for the first time in my life I believed what I was hearing. But I dont know why or how. I dont know right now how to believe in myself to meet the goals I need to, and I dont know how to believe in what I am hearing from those around me that got me going when I didnt feel it before.

I guess the big question I have to face, that I have avoided the last year, isnt how to get the scale to drop. But how do I get back to believing I am worth the effort, that I am worth making the right choices for. Because that is most likely the root to how I got things going in the right direction before.

Sadly as I said at the begining of this post, I dont have my answer. But at least for the first time in a year, I feel like I know the question.

Vikings Experience....What you didn't see on the big screen......

2011-09-25T18:46:00.004-05:00

"He says it's really kind of simple,
Keep your mind in the middle ,
While your butt spins 'round and 'round...

Take heed to Sankey's preachin',
Keep liftin' and reachin',
And ridin' like there ain't no clowns...."
Garth Brooks

My life is hard to desribe or sum up in a few words, roller coaster is one I used to use a lot, but as I have started riding I think it is closer to broncho riding, a lot of lulls with a few really crazy moments thrown in here and there.

Earlier this week I was struggling badly with some challenges in my life, and said to a couple people close to me how I feel like I always get the harder road, that nothing is ever as easy as it should be and that I had had enough of it. But then today I stood staring at 50,000 or so people all looking down at me and thought, how lucky am I to be living the life I am living. How many people get to have the experiences I do, and in this case got to do twice? Once with the Twins and now once with the Vikings (hey LTF I like Hockey, can we three-peat with the Wild *grin*).

Days like today challenge my thinking. I was raised by a mother who spent a lot of time trying to convince me I was nothing special in the world, that to be proud of myself was wrong, that I was nobody and to think anything different was delusional and that I was more a hinderance than anything to the people around me. And for the most part I have let her thinking control a lot of how I view myself and the world. I have marginalized and minimized myself out of a lot of experiences and chances to have fun - big and small. So to stand there today while people say "you did something worth noticing" was hard for me, and truthfully really uncomfortable.

But today I tried my best to push past that, to take in what was going on and why. That I have done things others havent accomplished, that I do have a story that isn't common place and that it is ok for others to notice that.

The interesting part for me though is the parts of the day that others won't ever know about. Yeah the big deal from the outside was down on the field, but for me that was probably the least miraculous part of the day.
For me the little things today are what I noticed and what made me smile....

Fitting in the seat at the stadium and not feeling like I was either squeezed in or spilling over into the people next to me (although I will admit I still worried about the second part and kept turning to not bump into the people on either side of me...that is "brain fat think" and not sure it ever goes away)
Walking down the stairs in the stadium which had no hand rails without falling on my face
Handling the three flights of stairs down to the field and back up without being totally overwhelmed or having to stop to rest
Being able to balance standing on the light rail all the way back
Having to squeeze between a pole and the wall on our way to get our tickets and not getting stuck or even slowing down
Being able to walk fast enough to keep up with people
Wearing a Vikings sweatshirt from a normal store in a normal size
Being seen with my trainer and not feeling like people were laughing at me and noticing only how fat I was comparably to him.

For me THESE were moments that took my breath away much more than standing on the field or seeing myself on the big screen. These are the battles I have fought to win! It has never been about publicity or fame, but about being normal, about not having my life controlled by my weight.

Am I all the way there, nope. I still looked at my pictures from today and cringed at my stomach and my chin, I still fought all the voices in my head last night and this morning about not eating before I went so I wouldnt look fat (sadly my eating disorder won that battle).

But despite that, when I stood there on the field and looked over and saw my trainer standing there I knew I had a lot to be proud of, of how far I have come, that I havent given up in this last year when things arent going as I want and just how lucky I am to have the ability to have people around me who keep me moving when I stall or start moving backwards, who genuinely care and do want to see me win this battle and who have stood by me even when I wasnt making the kind of progress I should be.

Today wasnt about all the fans or the recognition of others, it was about me having that chance to remember where I have come from, what I have accomplished and how lucky I am to have had the chance to walk with some really great people along this journey!

Another View from the Field.....

2011-09-24T08:11:00.000-05:00

How many people in the world can say their first professional baseball game they got to stand on the field and have their story told. Very few. I figured last year when it happened at the new Twins stadium that I was one in a million. So I am guessing this year I become one in a zillion?

Because tomorrow my first time at a professional football game I get to re-live the same experience. I am being featured as Lifetime Fitness's "Fit Fan". My story of this entire journey (good and bad) will be in the game book, along with my pictures, I will be down on the field during a break in the second half while my story is told and will be giving away a LTF membership.

Ok so let me say right up front, not a huge football fan, but still am jazzed. The bottom line, this is an experience that few people get to have in their lives, and I have been blessed enough to have it twice!

Anyone who has read my blog knows this hasnt been an easy road, especially the last year or so, the scale isnt moving, and my eating disorder is winning a lot more than it should. But I am proud of the fact that I have hung in there. And I credit having my trainer with a lot of that, for not letting me give up the zillion times I have tried to, and lord knows I have tried and fought him on it *smile*.

As much as this is a recognition by LTF, I am also looking at it as a re-energization (is that a word?) that I really need. A lot of me has fought with should I even be doing this tomorrow, I am up about 15 lbs in the last month (my first real gain since I started this journey) and I a feeling far from a role model these days. But things happen for a reason at a time they are supposed to, and maybe standing there in front of 60,000 people hearing my story is what I need to get myself out of the rut I have been in for way too long.

When the LTF marketing person called me to ask me to do this, she didnt ask me because I have lost a ton of weight, but because my story is unique was her wording, and it is, and I need to remember others fight the plateaus, fight with food and eating disorders and that I am doing this tomorrow to represent THEM.

For anyone local who feels like taking in a game I would love the support, please let me know if you are at the game, no clue where our seats are at yet, but will hve my phone with me. Let me know you are there and I'll find you!

Btw for those who weren't in my life last year when I went to the Twins game here is the post of that experience http://totallypredictableunpredictability.blogspot.com/2010/08/important-lessons-you-can-learn-in-nine.html
I was one in a million.

The following pics are the ones I sent in for the playbook (not sure which they are using)...

February 2009

July 2009

December 2010

September 2011

The scary blue tarp....

2011-09-08T22:26:00.002-05:00

“I have an empathy for horses, when something is scared for their life, I understand that.” - Buck Brannaman

The last few months have afforded me some really amazing experiences. It is hard to believe how many different horses I have ridden in just a few months, the things I have accomplished and how far I have come. It still stops me cold when I think about it. But last night trumps them all. While overall the event I was participating in, a trail riding clinic, was nothing unique or awe inspiring. I found in the middle of it a truly life altering moment.

The clinic was based around learning how to help your horse deal with the challenges they might encouter on a trail ride...crossing obstacles, needing to ground tie, moving objects tied to their saddle and packing.

One of the stations involved working with the horse until they would easily walk across a blue tarp on the ground. Until you've done it it sounds easy.

What few people realize, and what I am still coming to appreciate, is that despite the size of these mighty creatures, they are big babies. As prey animals they see the world as out to get them, their instinct is to flee first and ask questions later, everything is the enemy and safety trumps all. Emotions I get!

To a horse a blue tarp lying on the ground has the potential to be a mortal enemy. It is a different texture and feels weird on their feet, the color stands out against the brown sand, it makes noise and when you step on it...it moves. Death for sure! And when Cody saw it that was his first thought. Him being a school horse I actually thought this might be easier, he's pretty bombproof, but at heart he is still a horse. He saw it and he wanted to be anywhere but there. He started his natural behavior of turning, backing and activating his escape plan. My job, help him realize that this is safe, that we can do this and to trust me enough to not put him in harms way. This is where the moment became magical.

Watching Cody work through his fears gave me real insight into myself. After I worked him into at least checking it out, he sniffed it, he moved it with his foot, he took a tenative step on it. But between each of these he tried to flee. He was getting more comfortable but still wasnt ready to put his safety on the line. It might be ok, but why take the chance it isn't? Even 1% risk was more than made sense to him. Throughout it all I could see him thinking, processing, trying to make sense of it all, trying to understand why he should take the risk. And why was I asking him to do this.

Cody wasnt the only one facing a "blue tarp" yesterday. Like I said, in watching Cody face down his fears I saw a lot of my own. But in my case the blue tarp is food, and my goal of getting through 30 days of consistently eating the right foods and meeting my calorie goals!

I have been doing an awful lot of fleeing lately when it comes to eating, my weight and my fears. I wake up every day saying today I will face it down, I take a tenative step, but each time something spooks me I run, I go back to what is comfortable for me, either not eating or eating the wrong things. Like Cody, each step bring me closer, I try to learn from it, but in the end my need for safety overcomes the lesson. I want to succeed, I want to overcome this, I dont want to live in fear, I dont want to let down the people around me who keep telling me it is ok, that I need to do it, but somehow we still havent found the trick to keep me facing the goal like I have been taught to do with the horse.

I want the same success Cody found. By the end of our work he was not only walking, trotting and backing across the tarp, but did it with confidence and almost a look of "why was I so freaked over this, it's fun". A look I have had many times!

I just hope the people around me will come at this with me the way I did with Cody, with patience yet persistence. Letting him have his room to take those tenative steps, but never letting him give up and never giving up on him. Realizing that fleeing isnt quitting, it is just trying to find the courage to take the next step. Understanding that what seems a simple blue tarp sometimes feels like a dragon waiting to strike.

I would like to believe someday I can get there with food and my body, but for now, I am still sniffing the edges and ready to bolt!

Have you seen the size of cowboys....

2011-08-27T10:14:00.001-05:00

When I was first asked to go riding, my greatest fear wasn't falling, it was hurting the horse. That my weight would be too much for them. That I would step in the saddle and would be so heavy it would pull it off the horse's back was all I thought about.

And I will be honest, I still hesitate everytime I go to mount about the saddle moving because of my weight, but I have come to see it as worrying whether I have the girth tight enough for my weight, not for whether I am too heavy for the saddle or the horse.

Part of the reason, probably the only reason, I am still riding today, and am so passionate about it, was that on that first day, my riding instructor, Etta, didnt see my weight. She matter of factly looked at me and said "Have you seen the size of cowboys" and in her mind that was that.

I was a rider, not a number on a scale! I wish the rest of the world saw it so clearly!

I have learned two things about weight and riding in the last 12 weeks....one there is a lot of fat prejudice in the riding community and two there IS a horse out there for everyone to ride, regardless of your size, shape, physical issues. Riding is a totally accessible sport, no matter who you are, and the only ones that find the limits are the humans!

As a friend told me recently, horses dont care how pretty you are or how you look! But we tend to forget that and make judgements for the horses.

It would be easy for me to slip into thinking it is only prejudice against me, and truth I have gone there in the last few weeks. But then I am hit over the head with how it is everywhere. One of the most upsetting experiences I have had recently was sitting at a horse show and hearing another spectator say to the person with them, "God I feel sorry for that horse" as a plus size rider rode by. For the record the horse was MORE than large enough and the woman wasn't any bigger than me, yet these two people felt the need in a public forum to put down someone, who they didn't even know, who had the guts to go show and to follow their passion for no reason other than how it looked.

The ironic part to all this "fat talk" around riding, is that for me, the only time I don't think about my weight is when I am in the saddle. On the back of a horse I am just like everyone else, my body doesnt limit me in any way. It is also the one time the "noise" of my eating disorder isnt running through my head. And after I ride I have a much better relationship with food than I do when I have gone a while without riding. More than once while I was leasing Cheyenne when I was in place where eating was impossible I would pack my lunch and go sit and eat with her. Her lack of judgement of me allowed me to get past all that noise and stupidity I wrestle with around humans. And since ending my lease on her my food has been a mess again. I miss that safe place, but am working on finding another horse to have that soft landing spot with.

I have purposely up to now not blogged about the end of my lease on Cheyenne, I wasnt ready to go there, it has been a hard loss for me. But I feel today like I need to come clean, because my weight was part of the story. I said above, there is a horse out there for everyone to ride, but not every horse is for everyone. Often there are physical limitations of the horse that have to be considered. That was the case with Cheyenne. As an older horse she has back and arthritis issues, and very early on her owner started questioning if my riding her was too much for her. I'm not sure if we will ever really know that answer, how much was horse, how much was human. But for me even the question became dangerous, which is why I ended my lease. Not only out of love for Chey, if there was a 1% chance I was hurting her I would never willingly do that, but also because the question turned on the noise in my head. Every time she mis-stepped I started beating myself up. Every time she didnt want to head down a trail I jumped immediately past it being her being herd sour to it being she doesn't want to carry my weight that far. I found on my rides with her I was still in that dark place, and I couldn't do that to myself. As much as I loved her and still miss her, riding has to stay a positive for me. And watching her owner check her back the second I stepped off, having multiple discussions about how maybe she needed a lighter rider turned on a tape in my head that wasnt sending me in the right direction.

But with all that said, I would be lying if I said walking away has been easy. I have spent the weeks since making the decision in a terrible place with my eating. I have jumped back into ED behaviors I havent fought for 15 years. It hurts knowing that I had to give up something/someone I loved so much merely because I am fat, because I cant seem to lose these last 50 lbs. It has tanked my self esteem big time.

My saving grace has been my riding instructor and the horses at Woodloch. I have been given time with horses far beyond my lessons and just been reminded over and over, that it doesn't matter that one horse wasnt right for me, that there are a million horses out there who are. That I don't need to walk away from my passion because of all this, and also that so much of this is in people's heads not the horse's bodies!

Tomorrow I am going trail riding with a few friends, we will be everything in size and shape from little skinny to big and bearish. The horses will range from tiny to draft. And not one of those horses will care what we look like, how we are dressed, or what the number on the scale says. To them we will all be the same clueless humans who dont get that the grass and the butterflies are their mortal enemies and are going to eat us all alive. And I can't wait!!!!!!!!!!!

Beyond Words....

2011-08-20T17:46:00.017-05:00

The wait is measured in weeks,
Then days,
Then hours.

I watch the clock,
is it too soon to go?

Every milestone brings me closer,

35, 14, 61.

I know the steps by heart.

Left at the church,

Through the light,
Past the gas station,

Past the 40 flavors of brats.

150, 160, 165,

A calm comes over me.

I see the sign,

left at 170th,

the world starts to slip away.

Wooden panel,

visitors welcome,
the front pastures come into view.

The routines the same.

Turn off the radio,
Shut out the world,
Into the driveway.

I'm where I belong.

Nothing else matters.

The dance begins,
Lead rope, halter, find my partner.

A nuzzle, a kiss, and its all alright.

The smells, the feelings,

It is better than any drug they can make.

We go through our routine,

Brush, pick, saddle, bridle,

Each step I become more anxious

and more relaxed at the same time.

In between,

Kisses,
Running my hand over strong muscles and through beautiful mane.

Sneaking treats and setting tack,

the world doesn't matter.

My last worry,
My last fight,
My internal battle.
Mounting.

Stupid voices run through my head,
Telling me I shouldn't,
Telling me I'm too fat,
Telling me it's a bad idea,
It's always there.

Somedays I fight through the noise on my own,
other days with help and reassure.

In the saddle and the world is gone.

Tall, proud, in control, relaxed.
In an instant I am transformed.
The strength below me flows into me,
I am strong, I am normal,
I am worthy, I belong.

Somedays we ride in circles.
Trying to find a rhythm.
Trying not to confuse each other,
Trying to learn each others cues.

Other days we escape.

Through the woods,

Through the fields,
The world does not exist,
These are the rides I dream of.

We walk,
We trot,
I am running,
I am free.

Too soon time has flown,
We head for the barn.
I dont want it to end.

Your muscles tense,
We're headed home.
You want to run.
To race to rejoin your world.

My muscles tense,
We're headed home.
I want you to crawl.

To slow rejoining mine.

We end our dance,

And we walk back toward reality.

I feel the tension,

The world is back.

Dismount,

Bridle, halter, saddle,

Brushes,

and another treat.

We say our good byes,

You celebrate
And run for your friends.

I stand and mourn.

Knowing that the wait starts again,

Measured in weeks,
Days,
Hours.

I forgot to remember I am "broken".....

2011-08-18T20:18:00.000-05:00

I think I say this every time, but tonight truly was the best riding lesson I have had yet. It was my third ride on Cody and thanks to some explanation on his movements from my instructor I really started to enjoy trotting with him, and more importantly felt secure doing it. Switching between horses was more of a change than I expected, but once she helped me realize what I was perceiving as me being out of balance was actually normal for the difference between him and Snapper I stopped worrying so much and really enjoyed the ride.

BTW for those not on FB trying to figure out why I switched, I "graduated" off Snapper *sniff sniff* and on to Cody. It was a bittersweet change, I am ecstatic I am making progress but Snapper will always be "my guy" and it is weird being on another horse and watching others ride him. I did sneak him some treats tonight, he'll always have my heart even if my saddle is elsewhere! But I have to admit, Cody is more fun to ride!

It is hard to believe it has only been about 12 weeks now I have been riding, I cant remember life without horses (nor can I imagine ever being that way again) but being the Type A, over achiever, perfectionist I am, I of course questioned my instructor on if I was where I should be. Especially since I have switched reining styles now 3 times between horses (neck to direct and now back to neck) and feel like my hands are a "hot mess" at times. She had some really nice feedback and for once I actually believed someone was being honest with me and not just blowing smoke, but so much more happened in that conversation. For the first time in 15 years I actually forgot I am "broken" (my right side).

As Etta was going over my progress she pointed out that I was ahead of where many adults are who don't have my physical challenges. And as bizarre as this is going to sound (and it was to me when I realized it). For a brief moment I had no clue what she meant by my challenges. I actually had to stop and remind myself about the nerve damage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It was in that moment that I realized how much riding has changed me, to my core. As I thought about it during the rest of the lesson, it hit me, I haven't thought about my right side issues and riding in weeks, probably since the lesson early on where we worked on mounting. When I am in the saddle I no longer think about do I squeeze unevenly or am I not kicking as well on one side, or any of that. I truly think of myself as a normal rider, and for me that is BEYOND huge.

And as I pondered that change, it hit me, that while riding was the trigger for this, it hasn't stopped there. I knew I had changed in the gym lately also, wanting to try new things, wanting to see what my body would do (like our tire adventure on Tuesday) but what I hadn't pieced together, was that I no longer consider my right side in the equation!

Don't get me wrong, there are still things about my body I find challenging and frustrating...my balance isn't what I would like it to be, I cant move my feet and legs fast enough (something Snapper and I seem to have in common...LOL), I have an immense fear of falling. But the difference, when I come against those challenges now, I just see them as part of my body, I don't think about one side versus the other, and more than that, I don't think of them as being the result of the nerve damage, and I haven't in a while now.

I wont lie, the weight is taking me longer to not think about. I still have that moment every time I mount the horse, where I make someone check the girth, not because I don't think I have it tight enough, but because in my mind I still weigh too much and fear stepping into the stirrup and pulling the saddle off the horse. And I still struggle with it in the gym, when my trainer goes to help me with something my first thought is I am going to hurt him if he has to catch me. But I can honestly say once I am on Cody or Snapper, even my weight goes away. I don't think about it, I forget I weigh over 200 lbs or that there are people who think I am too fat to ride.

Once I am in that saddle I am normal, I am just like everyone else and after 15 years of living as the outsider, that is a greater gift than I could have ever asked for!

Today I truly forgot to remember I am "broken" and never thought that moment would come!!!!!!

It's not the same....it's just not the same.....

2011-08-08T23:26:00.001-05:00

I love my friends, they try to say the right things when I am hurting. But there is one thing I just can't stay quiet about anymore. Whenever I am hurting over something related to my weight, like I am right now, all the thin people in my world want to tell me they know how I feel because they were teased growing up for being too skinny.

As much as I get that everyone has their pain, that bullying is bullying and hurts no matter why it is happening. It isn't the same being too thin as being too heavy. Skinny people are teased, questioned, sometimes even pitied or accused of being unhealthy, but heavy people are not just teased and ridiculed, we are also judged. By people who have never met us, by people who know nothing about our behaviors, our health issues or our story.

I had originanlly planned this post only to go in my personal blog, but decided to put it here for everyone to see, in support of the other people in my life who I know share the pain I have....I am posting this here for those that do truly get it because they have lived it.

It's not the Same....

I know you care,
I know you want to make my heart stop hurting,
I know you believe our pain is the same,
but it's not the same, it's just not.

While you were questioned, teased, or bullied
for being a skinny child or a thin teen,
your story is very different than mine,
it's not the same, it's just not.

You were told by your parents no one would ever love you because of your weight,
You were never mocked by your father for making the house shake when you tried to exercise,
You were never told by your favorite uncle that when you walked above him in his house it sounded like an elephant,
it's not the same, it's just not.

You never had to skip trying out for a sports team or a play or taking ballet for no other reason than they didn't make the uniforms and costumes in a size you could wear,
You never had to stay home while your friends went to the amusement park because you couldnt fit on the rides,
You never had to stand and watch while your friends played on their big wheels or toy cars because if you sat on them they would break,
it's not the same, it's just not.

You have never sat on a bench and had it flip over when the person on the other end got up,
You have never had a lawn chair break under you in front of your friends,
You have never had people make fun of how your car tilts to one side when you are in it,
it's not the same, it's just not.

You have never had to face the look of someone coming down the aisle on an airplane who realizes you are the "passenger of size" in the seat next to them,
Or watch when they go tell the flight attendant they want to sit somewhere else,
You have never returned a rental car because you cant fit behind the wheel, or fear getting on an airplane because the belt wont fit,
it's not the same, it's just not.

You have never had to drive yourself to the hospital with a life threatening illness, because you knew the paramedics couldnt easily carry you down the three flights of stairs,
You have never had a doctor refuse to diagnose what is truly wrong with you because they are too busy blaming it on your weight,
You have never been too big to fit in the MRI machine or a wheelchair,
it's not the same, it's just not.

You have never had someone see you eating desert and comment on how you dont need that, without knowing anything about you,
You have never had some critique the food in your grocery cart despite them having the same in theirs,
You have never had people assume all you do is eat, when you havent eaten in days to try to drop a couple pounds,
it's not the same, it's just not.

You have never had to fear learning to ride because you are afraid stepping in the saddle might pull it off the horse,
You have never passed up riding a friend's horse, because you cant sit in their saddle,
And most of all you have never had to say good-bye to a piece of your heart, your best friend, because your weight is too much for her to bear.
IT'S NOT THE SAME, IT'S JUST NOT!!!!!!!!!!

Snapper Photos

2011-08-05T20:29:00.000-05:00

"A horse is the projection of people's dreams about themselves; strong, powerful, beautiful and it has the capability of giving us escape from our mundane existance" Pam Brown

Chrysalis...

2011-08-05T20:21:00.001-05:00

This story is published in "Chicken Soup for the Horse Lover's Soul" and was written by Jennie Ivey.

I read it and cried and cried, because in so many ways this is MY story. Thank you to Etta for being my "Pat" and to Snapper for being my "Buttermilk"

"Ellen was a fat girl.
She didn't start out that way. but by the time she was halfway through elementary school her lack of coordination and competitive spirit had made her the laughing stock of her more athletic peers.

No matter the game, Ellen was alway chosen last. Chosen last in kickball, because she couldn't catch or run. Chosen last in badminton, because she had never once managed to hit the birdie over the net. Chosen last in red rover, a game even a klutz ought to be able to play>

Junior High was worse.
There was a real physical education class instead of mere playground games, and every day Ellen suffered the indignation of not being able to shoot a basketball through a hoop or skip rope without tripping or even perform a respectable side-straddle hop.

And so she turned to food for comfort.
By the time she started high school at age fourteen, five foot five Ellen was tipping the scales at almost 200 pounds.

Her family's efforts to help her lose weight did no good. She turned up her nose a the special salads her mother fixed for her. She refused her father's invitations to take brisk walks with him. She ignored her sister's warning that a girl her size would never have a boyfriend.

Ellen would toss her head and roll her eyes at her family. Then she'd grab a bag of potato chips or a box of cookies and flounce on the recliner in the den, where she's spend hours lost in the pages of a book.

More than anything, she loved to read about horses. And that's what finally gave Ellen's father a brilliant idea.

'There's a woman at work who's loookinng for a stable hand' he told Ellen one evening. 'Someone to feed her horses and clean the stalls and things like that. I told her you might be interested in the job.'

'She wouldn't want me', Ellen replied.
'Why not?'
'Because I have never been near a horse'
'I told her that. But I also told her you've been reading about them all your life. She's willing to teach you everything from the ground up. And she's offered to pay minimum wage and let you ride whenever you want'

Ride? Ellen's heart beat faster. Somebody was actually offering to let her ride a real horse?

Don't be silly, the voice inside her whispered. Had Dad not told this woman that his daughter was a clumsy tub of lard who could barely keep her balance on a bicycle?
No way would she be strong or coordinated enough to ride a horse. And pity the poor animal that had to carry her weight on his back.

'I told her we'd drop by her place Saturday morning to see about it' her father said.
So that was that.

Pat Cunningham lived on a small farm not far from town.
Dressed in jeans and cowboy boots, she was waiting for Ellen and her father as they pulled into the gravel driveway.

'So you're the girl who loves horses' she said to Ellen, smiling and holding out her hand. 'C'mon lets me show you around'

She lead Ellen to the barn and gestured toward a wheel-barrow and manure fork. 'Every day, these stalls have to be mucked out and then spread with fresh sawdust. The water and feed buckets get scrubbed and filled, the tack room swept and tidied, the gates and fences checked. Think you're up to it?'

'Um...I guess so' Ellen stammered.
'Good,' Pat replied. 'The school bus comes right by here every afternoon. When you're done with the chores I'll run you home in my truck'
'Where are the horses' Ellen asked shyly.
'Oh yes the horses' Pat said. She gave a long, low whistle and within seconds, two beautiful horses trotted up to the barnyard gate.

Pat pointed to the bay gelding. 'That's Thunder. Don't let his name scare you. He's as gentle as a lamb. And the sweet mare beside him is Buttermilk. Which one do you want to ride first?'

Before Ellen could protest, Pat had the horses hitched to the fence posts.
She showed Ellen how to lift their feet and use a hoof pick to dislodge sticks and rocks from around their shoes.
She showed her how to use their currycomb and finishing brush and how to remove cockleburrs from their manes.
Finally she showed her how to pu on blanket and saddle, bridle and bit

'I'd like you to ride at least one of them every day you're here,' Pat said 'Both, if you have time. They really need the exercise'

Ellen felt tears welling up in her eyes. How could she tell this kind woman that she was nothing but a fat girl who had no earthly idea how to ride a horse?

'But, I've never...never actually been on a horse. All I've ever done is read about them.'
'Then it's high time you learned', Pat said. 'Stand there beside buttermilk and put your left foot in the stirrup. Then bounce a couple of times on your right foot and spring into the saddle'

But try as she might, Ellen couldn't stretch her leg high enough to get her foot anywhere near the stirrup.
'Hold on a second' Pat told her. 'Let's try the milk crate'. She fetched it from the barn and helped Ellen climb into onto Buttermilk's broad back.

'There are a couple things to remember. Heels down. Hands on the reins like so. Relax. This is supposed to be fun! Now follow me.'
Pat swung into Thunder's saddle and headed toward the pasture. Buttermilk followed, with Ellen gripping the reins so tightly that her knuckles turned white.
But it didn't take her long before she began to relax. Pat was right. This was fun. In fact, Ellen couldn't remember when she'd ever had such a good time.

Pat showed her how to go from a walk to a trot, and promised that she'd be cantering in just a short time. 'You're a natural' she told Ellen. 'I'm sure lucky to have run across you.'

So Ellen became a stablehand. Every day after school, she cleaned stalls and scrubbed buckets and swept the floor of the tack room. After that she rode. Some days she rode Thunder. Other days she rode Buttermilk. On good days she rode them both.

As the days turned into weeks and the weeks to months, Ellen the fat grils slowly evolved into Ellen the equestrian. Her flab became muscle and her clumsiness, grace. She glowed with self-confidence that was obvious to all around her.

It was near the end of the school year when a heavyset girl sat down beside Ellen on the bus one afternoon.
'My name is Stacy. I hear you work with horses' the girl said hesitantly. 'Do you need an assisitant? I've never ridden before, but I read abou horses all the time.'
'Why dont you get off here with me and we'll go talk to my boss' Ellen said, smiling to herself. She was pretty sure what Pat's answer would be.
'We're lucky to have run across you, Stacey. Who do you want to ride first - Thunder or Buttermilk"

Photo Shoot with Cheyenne....

2011-07-29T19:35:00.000-05:00

I was lucky enough to get to have photos done of Cheyenne and I, by Bailey at B. Olson Photography. This is a just a sneak peak of the amazing photos she took!!!!

Riding through life with looser reigns.....

2011-07-17T23:54:00.001-05:00

"There are times when you can trust a horse, times when you can't and times when you have to..."

Everything I read, everyone I talk to, tells me that how you are in life is how you ride your horse. That horses reflect back who we are at our core. I had heard the comment, but I hadn't taken it to heart, even though it was happening right in front of my face, with both Snapper and Cheyenne. And even in my interactions with one of Cheyenne's pasture mates.

The first piece of the puzzle happened last week during my riding lesson on Snapper. Snapper is usually not the most ...ummm...motivated...horse. He has it in him, I have seen him run, he is a talented smart horse, but he chooses most of the time to give only what you push him to give. Like I said, he's smart, why work harder than his rider makes him. And as a newbie, I was ok with that most of the time. Slow, safe, controlled. They make me feel good. So I was a little caught off guard last week when Snapper decided on our trail ride to show me what he was capable of (well some of it, I know he has more) and actually pick up the pace. We were following another horse and he wasnt going to be outdone and trotted at a moderate clip. My first reaction, reign him in, slow him down. Because while it wasnt fast, it was outside my comfort zone. I do the same when riding Cheyenne. One of my first questions to her owner was how do I make her trot slower.

What was interesting wasn't my reaction when Snapper stepped it up. It was typical me, but my instructors comment when I went to slow him down. When I said I wanted to get him to a safer pace, she pointed out "you are a safe, a lot safer than you realize". I heard the comment, I thought about it, but I didnt get until tonight what it really meant.

The second piece of the puzzle that I was living like I ride, or riding like I live, was in the gym last week. I have had a rough couple weeks again with food. After being on track for a bit I have fallen again. And my trainer pointed out, that everytime we get close to making a breakthrough something happens and we move backwards again. I didnt get it then, but I am starting to get it now. The what happens is me reigning things in when it starts to feel a little fast or beyond my control for me. But even when he said this I didn't connect the comments.

The last piece came tonight reading a book a friend loaned me ("Chicken Soup for the Horse Lover's Soul"). It is a collection of short stories, and one ("Big Brother is Watching") talks about how the main character anytime his horse would gather himself to run he would rein him in from his fear of falling and have to watch as his brother raced off the way he wanted to.

Something in reading that made me connect my behavior, my riding instructor's comments and my trainers comment's. I live like I ride, or ride like I live. There is so much I want to do, I want to run, be it literally on my horse or metaphorically in life. But every time I start to make that progress my fear of falling has me grabbing for the reins. I never get to find out if I am safe or not, because in my mind I have already predetermined what will happen and launched my emergency plan.

Another comment just crossed my mind, one made by Cheyenne's owner. She said to ride and be around horses you have to expect at some point to be thrown, to break bones, to be kicked, to be bitten. My problem is while I am willing to accept that risk with horses, I have spent a lot of my life, and still do, trying to not get bruised, to not fall down, to not be thrown and to avoid anything that spooks me in the rest of my word. And when I do get spooked I, like the horses, follow my first instinct to flee instead of testing out if the fear is founded. Run now ask later!

Today's big lesson, just like I need to learn to trust my horse and ride with a softer reign and less of a tendency to jump right to "whoa" when things feel unfamiliar or chancy, I need to find that same trait in life. I need to figure out how to trust myself more and to willing to be thrown and get back in the saddle. To accept that is part of life, not failing. To not only ride at a pace I know I can manage but to take that chance of trotting at full speed. Otherwise I am always going to be the one watching from the sideline too afraid to move forward and sabatoging myself every time a chance to grow presents itself.

When the Student is Ready.....

2011-07-03T14:19:00.001-05:00

"When the student is ready, the right teacher will be there"

The last seven weeks in a lot of ways feel like a blur. I agreed to take a riding lesson with my friend Janet totally terrified, expecting complete failure and vowing this would never happen again. Yesterday I stood in the pasture surrounded by a wall of at least 10 horses at Woodloch and couldnt have been happier. I felt like part of the herd, and like I had found a part of my heart that has been missing for a very long time.

The day only got better when I got to ride Cheyenne for the first time alone. I just kept thinking the whole ride...I am riding "my horse", how did this ever happen. Actually that thought started yesterday morning, when I went out to walk her and bring her treats and I found myself just stopping and staring at her and she took my breath away. Don't get me wrong, I get part of it is that I do have a personal bond with her, but she is also just gorgeous. And I kept thinking "I have the chance to ride the horse every little girl dreams of". There are TONS of gorgeous horses, and I will admit before meeting Cheyenne I thought I wanted to a horse who was more unique in coloring (a buckskin maybe or a flea bit like Snapper), but she is just that perfect bay that we all thought of when we thought of a horse as a child. She is tall, perfectly shaped and beautiful. Even though I was never the little girl who dreamed of having my own horse, I know now I am living every little girl's fantasy! And I am so blessed to have this chance.

I thought a LOT about that yesterday, how amazing life can be, how the right things fall into place when they are supposed to. I had multiple conversations last week about things happening for a reason. But there is a second part of that I think we leave out often, that the right people also come into our lives for a reason. I read the book the Celestine Prophecy years ago and I dont remember much about it, but I have never forgotten the basic premise that people cross our paths for a reason, and that until their reason is fulfilled they continue crossing our lives.

One of my challenges in life has always been letting people in far enough to fulfill the reason they came into my life. Trust, fear, insecurity. Most people are kept outside the "walls", or they are let in only a portion of the way. This is especially true with situations where I am feeling over my head or new to something. I have always feared failure, letting people down, not being perfect, not having the right answers. It comes back to that fear of screwing up and being seen as inadequate and abandonded. So even when I am doing something new I do everything I can to learn it all. I veraciously read everything I can get my hands on, I practice over and over, I study til I know at least as much as the people around me. But in doing that I definitely make my life harder and don't always learn things the best way, just the way to get through them.

Another realization I have had the last two days, is that that is slowly changing. That my biggest growth in the last year has been learning to admit to people I dont have all the answers. That I need help, that I need something explained again, that I am imperfect and flawed. And in doing that I have realized I have some really great teachers around me when I let them do their jobs. A big part of the answer to the "how did this happen" with Cheyenne is found in those teachers, especially my personal trainer and my riding instructor.

Anyone who has read the blog over the last 18 months knows my trainer journey was bumpy at times. Nick took me on almost a year ago after my training with Gui ended abruptly. And the last year of training with Nick hasnt always been easy (I dont make it easy most days). My weight not moving and my eating disorder have plagued Nick and I a lot more than it did Gui and I.

But at the same time, what I lose sight of too often, is that a lot of other physical stuff and my confidence level in my body has improved in ways it never did with Gui - especially in the last 3 months. I know Nick often feels he lives in Gui's shadow, and I take a lot of the blame for that. I put him there on a lot of things. But what I realized yesterday, I trust Nick in a way I never did Gui. With Gui, I always feared his reaction if I didnt have all the answers, if I couldn't be perfect. That he would give up on me or stop working with me if I wasnt perfect. The last six months of my training with Gui I would say I walked into our sessions more afraid than anything. And in the end, I cant say that fear was unfounded. But that isnt the case with Nick.

With Nick I have slowly learned to say "show me that again", "explain that to me", "I dont get it", "Why". I would rather ask why now than have to go find the answer myself, and that is a huge change. And that huge change is part of what is fueling this new found courage/interest in trying new things, like horseback riding (and some other challenges I have listed for myself to get through this summer).

And I think learning that with Nick was a big part of what has opened me up to the absolutely amazing experience I am having working with my riding instructor Etta. Talk about a person crossing my life at the right moment. From my first lesson with Etta I have had this freedom I have never felt with anyone to admit I am a completely newbie, and I am clueless and please teach me. I have allowed myself to be a sponge and I have found myself turning to her over and over again asking for more help on doing things related to riding or horses and it shocks me, because that has never been me. The hardest words in the world for me, in any situation have ALWAYS been "help me", but with her they come naturally.

If I am honest with myself, that is probably why I have progressed so fast with this in the seven weeks I have, because I am letting the people who know the right answers do their job, not stubborning my way through figuring it out myself and at the same time fighting the people trying to help me! Yeah I have still read everything I could find, but this time more for the background not the training. I still don't get why this immediate trust in being imperfect was there, and a lot of the credit goes to Etta, but not once through all this have I felt dumb because I needed more help or to ask more questions.

Do I have this challenge overcome yet, no. I still find myself doing it with some people. This is still a lesson I need to work on. I caught myself this morning in my old trap when I realized I was shutting down Cheyenne's owner Missi who was offering to help me and that I was shutting her down because I am afraid to let her down with her horse. That instead of finding all the help I can from everyone around me I was trying to find my answers in other ways so she wouldnt think less of me or be concerned about the safety of her horse with me. I still need some work on that end, but I figure that is another part of the lessons Cheyenne is bringing into my life.

When we were riding yesterday Etta made a comment about horses teaching us humility, and they do (I learned yesterday trying to put a halter on Cheyenne that you have never truly been called an idiot until a horse looks at you like you are one *grin*) but what was rather prophetic in her statment is that I am also learning humility from the people around me with my this new passion of horses.

"A horse doesn't care how much you know, until he knows how much you care"

2011-06-25T21:11:00.003-05:00

"Got the blue sky breeze blowin' wind thru my hair
Only worry in the world
is the tide gonna reach my chair
Sunrise, there's a fire in the sky
never been so happy
never felt so high
and I think I might've found me my own kind of paradise"
Zac Brown Band

Six weeks ago you couldn't have gotten me to willingly walk up to a horse if my life depended on it, today I received the lease papers for Cheyenne. Life is sometimes totally unexpected and confusing and flat out wonderful.

My friends keep asking me where this "horse thing" came from and why am I so into it. Truth I havent explained it to any of them, because I am not sure I totally get it yet, I think this is an evolving lesson, but the one thing I know is there is more to this than being "into it". I am "into" working out, I am "into" my gun and my shoes. They are hobbies, pasttimes, stress relievers. There is more to this than that.

I wish I knew how to put it into words, but when I walked into Woodloch stables a few weeks ago and put my hands on Snapper there was this feeling, almost like that of meeting someone and feeling like you have always known them, even though you have never met. There was this feeling that came over me of being totally safe and totally at peace, and anyone who knows me knows that is not how I feel about the world. And that feeling only intensified once I rode for the first time. That day I figured it was about Snapper, but I have had that same feeling when I have hung out with Abi, with Kass, with Cheyenne and even with the horses whose names I don't know at Sunnyside. I couldn't explain it, I couldnt find the words to translate it to, until today.

Over the last couple weeks I have heard the term "Natural Horsemanship" used over and over. In short it is a philosophy of working with horses based on communication and tapping into the natural thinking of a horse instead of trying to bend it to the human way of thinking. I started doing some reading on it today, partially out of curiosity and partially because that is how Cheyenne has been trained". And as I read the first few pages of the book, I was struck by how many times the author (Pat Parelli) kept saying that humans think different then a horse, but then he would describe horses..."they are born cowards and with the absolute instinct to flee first and ask why later....despite their size and power they inherently are afraid of all humans.....respect for a horse means an absence of fear....when something happens that scares them a horse doesnt think logically, they automatically go into full throttle, he tries to escape any way he can even if he hurts himself in the process...they give clear communications with no ambivalence". The descriptions go on and on, and as I read it, for a moment, I lost track that he was talking about horses and found him talking it about me!

That moment of realization helped me start to understand what I felt that day with Snapper and what I have felt since around horses. I felt understood, I felt like I fit, probably for the first time in my life I have found a place, at the side of a horse, where I felt normal. That my fears and insecurities seemed understood in a way they aren't with humans. That the look I saw in Snapper's face that day crossing the stream was him telling me, more than "chill out" but more so "it's ok, I get it" and the same with Cheyenne last week, it wasnt just her knowing she had a purpose, but her telling me "don't worry we are in this together and will figure it out".

I know some of my friends reading this will say "yeah right, like a horse can know that much". But it is one thing I have learned very fast about horses. They do sense where we are at, and they do communicate on an emotional level. All I have to do is watch Cheyenne get impatient when things aren't moving at the pace she wants to know how alike we are.

When you read anyting about horse you see the phrase over and over again "Prey Animal". Horses have an instictual fear of their world, they do everything they do to remain safe in a world that they are unsure about and feel threatened in. And while the same texts describe humans as "Predator Animals", that is not the case for all of us. The reality is for myself and many other people who grew up in less than safe homes we have grown up feeling like prey more than predator. We have lived our entire lives the same way as horses do and still do to this moment. We live on the edge, waiting for people to hurt us, expecting the bad in everyone, giving trust only to find it broken and it reinforcing our fears of the world.

My riding instructor Etta made a comment during my last lesson that really hit me. It should have been such a simple comment that went in one ear and out the other, but it has done anything but that. I have replayed it a million times in the last week. She simply looked over at me riding and said "You look so relaxed". I realized as I was processing that. I have LITERALLY never had anyone say that to me at another moment in my life. I live my life on guard, and she was completely right, that moment on Snapper may have been the first time in my life I felt truly safe, truly fearless and truly relaxed. In another word, like I was finally at a place where I truly fit in.

When you are working with horses they tell you the goal is to become part of the herd, for me I think I started a lot more a part of the herd than I even knew and that I have finally after all these years found my way back to the herd and THAT is what this "horse thing" is all about!

I don't really know how I got here, but I'm sure glad that I did.....

2011-06-20T07:49:00.000-05:00

"I don't really know how I got here
But I'm sure glad that I did
And it's crazy to think that one little thing
Could've changed all of it

Maybe it didn't turn out like I planned
Maybe that's why I'm such, such a lucky man...

All the fights and the tears and the heartache
I thought I'd never get through
And the moment I almost gave up
All lead me here to you

I didn't understand it way back when
But sitting here right now it all makes perfect sense"
This - Darius Rucker

If you think about all the moments in life that if one step changed our whole lives would be different it can be really overwhelming.

There are so many times when we wish things could have turned out different than they did....I wish I had had a different type of family growing up, I wish I hadn't gotten sick, I wish I hadn't had the nerve damage, wish I hadnt moved from the East coast, I wish certain people hadn't left my life, I wish I wasn't battling an eating disorder....but then there are days like yesterday where despite your religious or philosophical views of the world, you have to stand back and realize there are greater powers in play in the world and that things always turn out perfectly, even if we don't see that! That things happen for a reason, even if that reason seems to allude us.

If I tried to put all the steps together for you that lead to me meeting Missi and Cheyenne yesterday we would be here forever. The short version, when I moved to MN I met Tina, my cat "Nanny", she introduced me to Kathy who cleans my house once a month, then I met Janet in my Business Analysis class, Janet pushed me to try horseback riding, Kathy is a horse person and I started hanging out with her and her horse Abi after I realized horses were the calming hobby my trainer Nick had told me to search for, Kathy and I talked about me looking for a lease horse at some point, Kathy knows Missi, Missi's daughter doesn't ride Cheyenne as much anymore and Missi mentioned to Kathy that she was looking to lease Cheyenne, Kathy talked to Missi about me and yesterday Cheyenne trotted into my life! And that is the short version *smile*.

Cheyenne has her own story, she was a rescued abused race horse in need of love. She came into Missi's life in almost as amazing a story as me meeting her yesterday....a horse met in the dark and a face from a dream. Cheyenne has been part of Missi's life for 8 years and has seen her through her ups and downs and been her friend, companion and therapist. And now she has journeyed into my life when I needed her most.

The first thing I noticed about this 20 year old Standardbred mare was the look in her eyes. I couldn't put my finger on it until I looked back at the pictures I took of her yesterday, but she knows. She knows she is needed, she knows she has a purpose in life. That she is more than a pet, more than an animal to ride. Cheyenne knows that she fills a special place in the world. She knows that there are humans she is meant to heal. And I believe she knew yesterday she was meeting me for a reason. For having been ridden by a very few people since Missi adopted her she let me ride her as if we had always known each other, something very rare in horses.

Missi kept saying to me yesterday that Cheyenne likes to teach people. I can see in her eyes how much this beautiful Bay has to teach me, about life, about trust, about ceding control. That many of the secrets I have looked for solutions to in the world don't come from us "twofers" and that that many of my fears and insecurities I need to conquer are going to become part of my time with Cheyenne.

I have to admit part of what has been scaring me about the idea of leasing a horse (which is where the owner maintains control of the horse and you are allotted a certain number of days a week to ride) was knowing that I will become attached and fall in love with something that is not mine forever. That at some point Cheyenne and I will part ways, but I think that is one of the biggest lessons for to learn from her. I struggle with that on a daily basis in my life, worrying about losing people, about when they will walk away and getting so bogged down in that fear and worry that I miss out on the time I have with them. That instead of enjoying today I worry about tomorrow. One of my biggest goals during my time with Cheyenne is to not let that become my focus. Up until now everything I have done with horses has beeen a grounding time for me, keeping me in the moment not worrying about the future and what might happen, and I need to keep that front and center during my time with Cheyenne. Her time in my life is finite, and I need to find every moment of joy in it I can.

I can't even start to thank all the people who have played a part in this new chapter in my life. I don't really know how to express to those around me how much they change my life. They are words I have never really figured out, I just hope they know! I hope they can see it in my eyes!

But there is one little girl I want to thank specifically, who I haven't even met yet, Vanessa, Missi's daughter. Missi shared with me how torn Vanessa is on leasing Cheyenne. And I get that. I can't imagine sharing any of my cats with someone else. Vanessa, I just want you to know how grateful I am to you for letting Cheyenne spend time with me. That I will love her completely and do everything I can to make sure she is taken care of as well as you take care of her. You sharing her with me is changing my life and I will always be remember you for that.

Equines and Escalators.....

2011-06-18T02:22:00.000-05:00

"It's not what I've done; It's what I've overcome that defines me, and makes me different from everyone else" (from a friend's FB status)

I am only one of the millions of people in the world who grew up in dysfunctional, often abusive, homes. And I, like many of those "Children who were Broken", have struggled my whole life with trust in others. Too many broken promises, too many disappointments, too many hurts. I learned to live my life believing that the only thing I could truly believe in with complete certainty was myself, that I was the only thing I could be sure of and feel safe in.

And when that belief in my own body was shattered with my diagnosis of PTC and the resulting nerve damage and strokes my world changed. The reach of my world decreased and my body became like a foreign invader to me. It became yet another thing to doubt, to question, to fear.

It is hard if you have never had a serious illness or injury to describe not trusting your own body to be there when you need it, so let me simply say for the last 16 years not once when I have put my right foot down to take a step have I done it without thinking about and hoping it holds, because many many times it hasnt. I have fallen, I have broken bones, I have been bruised and embarrassed. I have many scars from falls, from burns I didnt sense I was getting (due to the numbness)...I have learned to be cautious, too cautious.

There were a million things I wanted to do or try that I haven't because I didn't have the confidence in my body to make it safe to do them. I have avoided situations where stairs might be involved, I have skipped group activities where I might fall and be seen, and I have planned my life for 16 years around my body. Even with all the accomplishments in the last 18 months, I still pre-think every step I take, I still fear falling and I still limit my life. But slowly I am seeing that falling away.

While balance and core and strength are something my trainer has worked on diligently for the last 11 months, while my body was changing, I wasnt seeing it, or probably better said, I wasnt trusting it. Despite being shown over and over that I was safe doing things I still shyed away from them. I still hesitate before I walk down a flight of stairs, I still panick if I have to step up onto something without a hand hold.

But slowly I see that changing, and I think a huge part of that is my new found passion for horseback riding. I am learning by being in the saddle that my body can do what it needs to if I just let it.

This week in my lesson I was asked to try to ride without holding on to the saddle horn. To me this was the most ridiculous request I could ever have heard. There was no way I could not fall off it wasn't holding on. But for some reason I tried it, I think it was the trust I found in Snapper during our previous trail ride more than anything that got me to let go that first time. I am truly trying when I am riding to stop trying to take control. And what I found when I let go, is that riding was more enjoyable that way, not scarier. That I had more control not less, that I felt safer not at risk. That for all my fear about my balance issues and my legs, my body worked just like everyone else's would on a horse.

That experience really spurred me (no pun intended) to try to push myself this week when traveling. To stop holding on to hand rails so tightly, to get on and off the moving walkways at the airport without holding on. To really begin to believe that all the work Nick and I have put in this past year had changed my body.

And tonight I finally conquered the biggest mountain of all. One of my greatest fears has been escalators, particularly going down. I have not gone near one for 16 years, despite facing them daily with all my traveling. I was scared to death I would step on and go tumbling head over tail.

Overcoming this has been a primary goal for months with the trainer and despite me telling myself over and over I was going to do it, I would always stand at the top of the escalator and freeze. Eventually walking away and finding an elevator (which is often hard to find and time consuming, more than once I have missed getting on an earlier flight because I was futzing around finding an elevator).

And tonight was no different, I got to Detroit and was running super late and again nearly missed the flight they had held because I had to find an elevator. I decided no more. When I got to Minneapolis I was determined I was going to baggage claim via the escalator. I didnt. I stood, I froze, I chickened out and took the elevator! But that was my last straw. I made a vow to myself I wasnt leaving the airport til I had done this, even if it meant moving in.

It took me nearly an hour of standing staring at the thing, of lifting my foot and chickening out, of putting my hand on the hand rail and pulling it away. But all the time I kept reminding myself what I have done in the gym lately and what I have done on Snapper. And finally, awkwardly I took that first step. And my body cooperated. The next thing I knew I was down the escalator (truth after getting on the ride was easy, as I suspected it would be). I had done it. I had trusted my body to be there, and it was!!!!!

Just to be sure I did it a second time. I can't say it was a ton easier the second time, and it was still pretty awkward, but again. My body cooperated.

I truly hope this accomplishment tonight is a turning point for me, or a realization of the turning point that happened the first time I got on a horse. It is time to learn to trust my body again, to believe in it to function and to keep me safe!!!!!

The Horse Lover's Bug....

2011-06-05T19:35:00.000-05:00

My friend Kathy gave me this today, I believe she found it in one of the "Chicken Noodle for the Soul..." books. It was so touching I wanted to share it.

The Horse Lover's Bug....

All horse lovers know the bug.
It doesn't buzz or chirp or hop around.
It doesn't stare back at you with big bulging eyes.
It lands on your heart, does its job and disappears without a trace.

You're not left with a painful sting, itch or a welt,
Just an inexplicable passion that shapes your thoughts, your habits and your dreams.

The horse bug is now a part of your fabric!

Four Legged Lesson in Trust...

2011-06-04T17:13:00.000-05:00

Another amazing ride today, my first trail ride, again on the great Snapper (or Snapple as we may now be calling him...LOL). As usual I got there in a horrid mood, not wanting to eat at all today and really stressed out, and the second I started interacting with Snapper it all went away and I was only in that moment (a lesson Snapper reinforced by stepping on my foot to remind me he was supposed to be my sole focus *smile*)

After we saddled the horses up we headed out onto the stellar property at Woodloch Stables, I hadn't been farther than around the barns and arenas so had no clue the beautiful scenery on the property. We rode back to the fields and the stream. The stream ended up being my classroom for the day. This was the first time I rode on anything other than basically flat terrain and I have to admit all my fears came back about riding (or more appropriately falling off) and that was slightly heightened when the instructor's new horse who has never been across a stream decided he wasn't doing this and she sent us across with her watching from the bank (she only later told us she normally doesnt do that). Truth when her horse balked I was happy because I thought she was going to tell me I didnt have to go either, but now I am so glad she made me do it.

On the first trip across I was panicky going down the bank and even more so about crossing the water, I wanted to stop 100 times and chicken out (like I do in the gym when I tell Nick "I'm done"). And I think Snapper knew that, because after we got across and were turning around something really amazing happened, Snapper turned his head just enough to give me a look, and in his eyes I could see exactly what he was trying to tell me "relax, I got this one no problem".

And in that moment I realized why it is called RIDING and NOT DRIVING. That riding a horse isn't about me being perfect or knowing what I am doing all the time, but about learning to trust that the horse knows what they are doing, that they wont do something they are uncertain about (as George showed us) and that while trust is not something I have ever been good at and I am certainly not good at trusting when it means my sense of safety, that that is part of what I am meant to learn through these majestic animals. That they are there to teach my what humans have never gotten through to me on!

That second trip through the stream was a moment I will never forget. I can say without a doubt it is the first time in my life I have ever felt 100% safe and secure putting myself in the care of another living creature!

The rest of the ride was just beautiful, we rode through a huge open field with 5 foot tall grasses, the sun shining, it was so peaceful. I could have stayed out there forever (and Snapper seemed to agree, he thought he had found the buffet line *grin*). We also got a few minutes on the way back just him and I ahead of the other horses just for some quiet time, it was a great ending to the trip.

Although I have to admit I was sad when it ended, I could have stayed on his back for days. I knew my stressors and the noise and all of reality were waiting for me back in my car, but at least for that 90 minutes I had my silence and calm that I seem to only find on horseback.

Horses make so much more sense to me...

2011-06-02T10:31:00.002-05:00

This whole new fascination with horses has really confused me the last couple weeks. I was never the little girl growing up who begged for a pony or wanted to be around horses. My cousin had a horse I got on a couple times, but it really did nothing for me, and more than anything it terrified the life out of me. So when I agreed to try a riding lesson a few weeks ago the last thing I expected was to find my "thing". That I would now be considering owning or leasing a horse, that I would be taking any chance I can find to ride, or just be around them was never even something I pondered.

In trying to make sense of this new found interest, it hit me part of why I enjoy being around horses....is that they "tell it" like it is...there is no guessing what they are thinking, there are no games....if the horse agrees with something you know it, and if they don't they make in abundantly clear. There is no having to figure out where you stand or what the hidden messages are!

That makes sense to me. I was with a friend yesterday trying to groom her unbroken horse, Abi. Abi wanted no part of it, he didnt stand and pretend he was good with it when he wasn't, he didn't humor us. He stomped his foot, snorted and walked away from us. When Snapper, the horse I ride up in Hugo, wants to eat, he stops and eats, when he wants to sleep, he stops and sleeps, he doesnt care if we are mid ride, or what I want from him. Clear signals, I know if what I am doing is right or wrong.

And he expects clear signals back from me if he is giving me what I need. I actually confused Snapper last weekend because with the strength difference between my left and ride side my cues to him are unbalanced and unclear. He wasn't sure what I wanted from him, so he gave me nothing. They give what they expect to receive - clear commands and responses.

When you are learning to ride they tell you everything you try to communicate to a horse should have three parts. You should warn them what you are about to ask of them, you should ask it and then you should reinforce it. Imagine how easy life would be if all our commications happened like that??

Beyond the most wonderful part for me of being around horses, the fact that it is the only time my mind seems to be able to so concentrate on one thing that everything else falls away, it is also the only time I dont spend time reading into things, analyzing them and questioning everything I do, because the horse gives me honest, immediate, reliable feedback. I dont need to guess because there is no question.

They also take clear responsibility for their behavior. They are proud of what they do and want. They don't half do anything, they don't blame it on others. They either do something or they don't, and if they do they give it 100% or they don't do it at all.

They also do not lose themselves or their needs in things. I am learning horse are MUCH more loving animals than I ever realized. Spending time with Kass and Abi yesterday it is VERY clear they know who Liz and Kathy are, they are bonded to them, they are loving to them and they accept love back. Abi gives the most amazing kisses. But despite that they are true to themselves. When Abi wants to set his foot somewhere, Kathy better know where her feet are because he is doing what he wants/needs despite his love for her. For them being in a "relationship" doesnt mean having to subjugate themselves. There is mutual respect and admiration, but not at the cost of self. I admire that. It seems to me in most human relationships people end up having to lose part of themselves, albeit to gain something in being in a relationship, to make it work. While maybe a worthwhile sacrafice, that we hide behind the word compromise, it still seems wrong to me. The way a horse loves makes much more sense to me. Love means adding to who they are, not becoming someone or something they aren't. Love makes them more secure not less, and too often in human relationships that is a rarity!

Added after posting....

Kass's Mom Liz just posted this on her FB page, it struck me how much it goes along with what I just said... http://www.facebook.com/pages/Buck-The-Film/175055519187765#!/video/video.php?v=170752506319821&oid=175055519187765&comments

Better Living Through Chemistry....me, PTC and "Magic P"......

2011-05-07T21:16:00.001-05:00

This is another one of those posts that I have gone back and forth on, I can never figuring out the line on when I am sharing too much or not enough, but since I know I have many friends in the same boat as I am, here I go again.

I have talked about this before in the blog, but for those who havent been reading that long. I am one of the millions of people in the world with a "hidden" chronic illness. Unless you knew me well you would never know I have lost my sight multiple times, had meningitis twice, had 5 eye surgeries, 4 shuts, and went through a period of time where I was undergoing weekly spinal taps (around 90 in total and hospitalizations every week or two.

To the outside world I look normal, but in 1991 I was diagnosed with Pseudotumor Cerebri (PTC) also known as Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension or Benign Intracranial Hypertension. Essentially for some reason my body make or retains too much of the fluid around my brain, spine and optic nerves and when it is out of control it results in the same symptoms as a brain tumor (without really having a tumor). I think I have had it since I was at least 10 or 12 but it was diagnosed at age 21. The cause is unknown and I truly believe there are a bunch of different causes for different people (that it is more of a syndrome than one disease) which is why one treatment hasnt worked for most and why there are so many possible causes documented.

Luckily for me in 1996 I was in a position (my first career was in bio-med research before I got sick and once I did I switched to actually studying PTC) to accidently find the answer to my PTC. Long long story short, I have a set of enzymes in my liver which dont work right. When I take the wrong medication or eat the wrong food it kicks off a whole series of problems which cascade into decreasing the serotonin in my brain...resulting in too much cerebrospinal fluid production and also often depression (serotonin is one of a group of chemicals our body uses to regulate our moood, sleep, hunger and a ton of other things).

That finding in 1996 led to me being treated successfully with a drug called Parnate (Tranylcypromine). Parnate is a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) which is an old class of anti-depressants that actually work at the liver level instead of the brain level and work well at stopping the chain of events that sets off my PTC. When I started Parnate in 96 within 3 days the symptoms I had lived with daily for 5 years disappeared. We started calling it "Magic P" because of what it did for me, and later other PTC patients.

Parnate, all MAOI's, are not without HUGE risk (which is why they arent used much). Being on one means sacraficing eating many foods, and taking many medications and being very vigil to my blood pressure - simply eating a bite of the wrong food can send it to a lethal level!!!! But for me the risk and costs were worth it. Total remission almost instantaneously. I stayed on Parnate until 2002. When I was able to successfully come off it and manage my PTC by avoiding certain foods and medicines that cause my enzymes to go off kilter again. I have had essentially 15 symptom free years!

Unfortunately I was not careful enough this year, and started 2 supplements in February without fully researching them, and my PTC flared. It wasnt too bad as far as most of my physical symptoms, but it was enough to know it was back. But the worst part was it sent my mood spinning again.

Now dont get me wrong, PTC is not the cause of all the current stress in my life. But the reality for me, even if I dont like to face it, is that I am prone to chemically induced depression and when it is out of control (when my Serotonin is too low) everything that I might normally struggle with, like my eating disorder, is magnified 10000000 times over and becomes much bigger than it should be.

That is where I have been the last month or two. Not only fighting my ED but also the emotional effects of my PTC being back. And I was sinking deeper and deeper into it.

Despite logically knowing all that, I fought a medication answer. As much as I know that for me taking this medication is no different than taking an anti-biotic for an infection or taking chemotherapy to treat cancer, I get very hung up in what will people think of me if they hear I am on an anti-depresant. I find myself being VERY quick to defend it being for PTC not for depression. I also fight medication for as dumb as it sounds, it feels like a cop out to me. It is treating something I should be able to fix somehow myself without the help.

But luckily I am surrounded by some really good people right now, who have figured out how to kick me to do the right thing when I dont want to. This past week we restarted the Parnate, and I have to admit now that it has kicked in I feel like a fool for struggling this long when there was an answer out there for me.

I feel better in the last couple days energy wise and mood wise than I have in a long time. Looking back I almost wonder if something spurred my PTC months ago, before the supplement issue, and it has been out of wack at a low grade for most of the last year. I know I havent felt like myself in a very long time, physically or emotionally, and it has been nice this weekend to see shades of me again.

I still have a lot of work I need to do, none of this erases the mess I have with my eating, but I do feel like it is helping me at least be better able to face that and at least consider the help of the people around me!!!!!

Today was the first good weekend day I remember in a long time...I got my hair done, went for a walk in the park, had a massage, came home and cooked and froze some meals. It is the first Saturday in a year that I didnt end up on the couch vegging. It felt really nice to be part of the human race again!!!!!!!

I know many people are like me, we fight the use of medication, particularly when it is for mood issues, but the lesson in all this and why I decided to share...is that depression IS chemical, it IS an imbalance in the body, it IS a disorder/disease and getting help is no less valid than going in for a broken arm or stitches. Society has marginalized mental health care, but the reality is there really is no difference between "regular" medical needs and psychological medical needs. It is not something any of us has done wrong, or any flaw we are responsible for. Our moods are a reflection of what is going on in the chemistry in our bodies!!!!!!!!

Real life barbie....

2011-04-25T14:04:00.000-05:00

Just got back from a long chat with the therapist about my eating and why I am having such a hard time with it all today, and ironically a friend had posted a story on Facebook about a lifesize Barbie that was made to the proportions of the doll.... http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/42595605

The bust is...... 39", the waist....18" and the hips....33". The picture is quite striking....

This be the verse - Thanks Thom....

2011-04-19T06:56:00.000-05:00

My brother shared this with me as a response to my earlier post, and it made me smile so I am sharing it....

"This be the verse"
Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

For Children Who Are Broken..

2011-04-18T23:32:00.002-05:00

I was given a copy of this poem 15 years ago, and havent thought of it since. But a conversation today reminded me of it and I went and hunted it down. It explains me better than I ever could...

For Children Who Are Broken...
Elia Wise

For children who were broken
it is very hard to mend......
Our pain was rarely spoken
and we hid the truth from friends.

Our parents said they loved us,
but they didn't act that way.
They broke our hearts and stole our worth,
with the things that they would say.

We wanted them to love us.
We didn't know what we did
to make them yell at us and hit us,
and wish we weren't their kid.

They'd beat us up and scream at us
and blame us for their lives.
Then they'd hold us close inside their
arms and tell us confusing lies
of how they really loved us
-- even though we were BAD,
and how it was OUR fault they hit us,
OUR fault that they were mad.

When days were just beginning
we sometimes prayed for them to end,
and when the pain kept coming,
we learned to just pretend
that we were good and so were they
and this was just one of those days
...tomorrow we'd be friends.

We had to believe it so.
We had nowhere else to go.
Each day that we pretended,
we replaced reality
with lies, or dreams,
or angry schemes,
in search of dignity ....
until our lies got bigger
than the truth,
and we had no one real to be

Our bodies were forsaken.
With no safe place to hide,
we learned to stop
hearing and feeling
what they did to our outsides.

We tried to make them love us,
till we hated ourselves instead,
and couldn't see a way out,
and wished that they were dead.

We scared ourselves by thinking that
and scared ourselves to know,
that we were acting just like them
--and might ever more be so.

To be half the size of a grown-
up and trapped inside their pain....
To every day lose everything
with no savior or refrain...

To wonder how it is possible
that God could so forget
the worthy child you knew you were,
when you had not been damaged yet ...

To figure on your fingers
the years till you'd be grown
enough to leave the torment
and survive away from home,
were more than you could count to,
or more than you could bear,
was the reality we lived in
and we knew it wasn't fair.

We who grew up broken
are somewhat out of time,
struggling to mend our childhood,
when our peers are in their prime.

Where others find love and contentment,
we still often have to strive
to remember we are worthy,
and heroes just to be alive.

Some of us are healing.
some of us are stealing.
Most are passing the anger on.
Some give their lives away to drugs,
or the promise of life beyond.

Some still hide from society.
Some struggle to belong.
But all of us are wishing
the past would not hold on so long.

There's a lot of digging down to do
to find the child within,
to love away the ugly pain
and feel innocence again.

There is forgiveness worthy of angel's
wings for remembering those at all,
who abused our sacred childhood
and programmed us to fall.

To seek to understand them,
and how their pain became our own,
is to risk the ground we stand on
to climb the mountain home.

The journey is not so lonely
as in the past it has been ...
More of us are strong enough
to let the growth begin.

But while we're trekking up the mountain
we need everything we've got,
to face the adults we have become,
and all that we are not.

So when you see us weary
from the day's internal climb ...
When we find fault with your best efforts,
or treat imperfection as purposeful crime ...

When you see our quick defenses,
our efforts to control,
our readiness to form a
plan of unrealistic goals ...

When we run into a conflict
and fight to the bitter end,
remember ....
We think that winning means
we won't be hurt again.

When we abandon OUR thoughts and feelings,
to be what we believe YOU want us to,
or look at trouble we're having,
and want to blame it all on you...

When life calls for new beginnings,
and we fear they re doomed to end,
remember...

Wounded trust is like a wounded knee--
It is very hard to bend.

Please remember this
when we are out of sorts.
Tell us the truth, and be our friend.

For children who were broken...
it is very hard to mend.

Monsters Under the Bed...

2011-04-04T13:14:00.001-05:00

Monster spray and flashlights, the weapons we are given by our parents for fighting the monster who lives under our bed. But what are the weapons when our parents were the monster under the bed?

Safe seems to be the big word in my life lately. How often I don't feel safe and how much I long for that safety. It is something as children we should be entitled to and not have to question, but somehow I never got there. And have no clue how to get there...

How does one feel safe in being able to trust others to protect them, when the people who were supposed to protect us as a child never did....

How does one feel safe in who we are, when the people who made us who we are never saw a single good in anythng we did or said....

How does one feel safe in reaching out to others for help, love or support, when those who claimed to love us used and withdrew love as a weapon to control and to punish.....

How does one feel safe in their own body, when that body has turned against you and failed you on such a catastrophic level, when your legs have not held you and your feet have tripped you to the point of broken bones and painful bruises....

How does one feel safe in eating, when food has been dictated as the enemy and the cause of so much bad in your life...

How does one feel safe in their own judgement, when you have been proven a fool and used so many times....

How does one feel safe to show who we truly are, when the world has done little but laugh, criticize and condemn...

How does one feel safe in the words of others, when those words have lied, schemed and hurt more times than they have healed or comforted...

My mother used to tell me over and over again, the past is the past, what she did has no impact on me, that I was now responsible for my own future, to stop living in the past, it's done and it's over, move on...! And I believed her, just like I believed there weren't monsters under the bed!

Stuck in reverse....

2011-04-03T14:48:00.000-05:00

I had a really interesting shopping experience yesterday, I was looking for business clothes appropriate for giving presentations in front of large groups, so dress or skirt or suit type clothes. With where I am at these days with my views on my body shopping is not something I really enjoy, but it had to be done. As usual that meant a trip to the outlet mall. It was probably the least enjoyable shopping I have done in the last 16 months (well of course except for the shoe shopping part *smile* nothing messes up shoe shopping).

I just am not happy with where I am at physically, how I look and that mindset makes clothes look a lot worse to me, no matter how good they look to other people.

In the end I found a dress, a pair of pink capris, a few pairs of pants (all the same style but different colors) and a shirt. They work, others think they look ok. But I am really struggling with them, because of the size. The pants/capris were a 16. A year ago getting into a 16 was a dream I never thought I would reach, the day I got there I felt I had won the lottery. I blogged on here about it http://totallypredictableunpredictability.blogspot.com/2010/07/forwardregardlessrelentlessthat-is.html . Pictures went up on Facebook. It fle like a miracle. But 8 months later, it doesnt feel so great. I have made no real progress in that time, and while my body is somewhat in the same place (I have lost about 30 lbs since then, but not around my waist which is why I am the same size) my brain feels like I have gone backwards!

As I looked today at the clothes today that I bought I was really struggling trying to be happy about them, I logically know I should be so thrilled to be able to buy that size. But I just couldn't get there. So I decided to drag out my "before clothes" thinking maybe if I laid the new clothes on top of them I could see it. It has worked before. Today, not so much. I found myself slipping into "there isnt that much difference" or "there isnt enough difference" instead of that "wow" I used to get at comparisons.

Its so frustrating. I know on one level how hard I have worked, how far I have come, but on the emotional level I am not connecting to it any more. Its funny, I always thought if I found the theoretical genie in a bottle my wishes would be to move my life forward, but I think instead right now, I would wish to go back 16 months...just for one day....to remember how hard life was, how miserable I was then, to reconnect to where I came from, in hopes it would help me refind the value in where I am today, because I have lost hold of it. And my greatest fear, if I dont find a way to value where I am at now, I will start slipping back physically to where I was then!!!!!

The Magic Wand of a Fat Child....

2011-03-30T17:40:00.000-05:00

For many of us who grew up "broken" and overweight, we have believed for a very long time (and in many cases have been told flat out) that if we would just lose weight, get thin, things would be better. That people would love us, would respect us, support us, care about us and want us in their lives, something we haven't felt or believed in most of our lives, if ever. These message may have come from parents who themselves were broken and didn't know how to love, but instead of facing that put the blame on us; from schoolmates who found security from their own insecurities by putting others down; from the media who blares hour after hour how the good people are thin and the bad people are fat. No matter where the messages came from, for many of us they shaped who we are, what we do and how we think, even if we don't realize it that is what drives us.

This post is much more personal than I would normally share. This is something I would limit to my private blog which only my eating disorder treatment team (therapist, dietician and physician) and my personal trainer would see. But in the last two days I have conversations with two of my friends, that made me realize, I need to say this 'out loud'. That I need to be the one brave enough to go public with my feelings on this. Jen and Angie, I am sharing whats in my heart and my head because I love you enough to not want you not to end up where I am!

In my last post I shared I was seeking treatment for my eating issues, I am about a month in now and have gone from just the therapist to working with a team of people. It's one of the hardest things I have ever done, it means exposing my inner thoughts and feelings in a way that, quite honestly, I find terrifying. Every session means admitting secrets I have hidden for years, feelings I am ashamed of and trying to change behaviors that while dangerous are also comforting. It is intense, emotional and at times overwhelming, but despite that, I am glad I was pushed to do it. I feel surrounded by the right people (safe people) who truly want to help and are willing to take me for who I am and that makes this the right time to deal with this. I have also come to see that this is not going to be a fast or easy road for me. That 41 years of thoughts and feelings are not going to be solved in a week or a month, that there is so much more to this than just learning to put food in my mouth and swallow.

The successful end to this journey, if it has an end, is not going to be a number on a scale or loving food and eating, but learning not to wait for the number on the scale to make me whole inside, realizing that you dont find Oz by following a diet or on a treadmill. And I can say that logically, I know that is where I need to get to, but that doesnt mean by any stretch that I am still not trying that solution. I am still battling on a daily, hourly, minute by minute basis somedays to not see being thin as my nirvana, the key that will reverse all the pain I have faced in life, that will make everything that feels so wrong inside myself better. And more days than not right now I still lose that battle and the disordered thoughts win and I dont eat, or I over exercise. Knowing what I need to do and trusting that doing it is safe are still two very different things for me.

Here is my reality, I have struggled my entire life with feeling like I mattered, like I was wanted, like I had value in the world. I have spent most of my life doing everything I could to hear people who matter to me tell me they are proud of me, to love me and to care. I have spent most of my life feeling very alone and out of place. Sadly I dont think many of those feelings are unique to those who grew up in abusive situation, who were overweight as children or both. I have grown up as a child and now into my adult life believing if I disappeared off the planet tomorrow my absence would leave very little impact on people, that even most of my own family wouldn't notice for years, if ever.

But when I started losing weight, for the first time in my life I felt like people were proud of me, I heard that word more in the first few months than I had my whole life. For the first time ever people used words like pretty and beautiful to describe me. I finally had a group of friends and a social life, and simply put, for the first time I felt I had value. And honestly, I became addicted to feeling that way and in turn addicted to wanting to lose weight. While my whole life I had felt I was worthless because of my weight, ironically as I started lose weight my feeling of worth became directly proportional to the number on the scale dropping.

I want to be VERY clear I do not blame anyone around me for how they reacted, what they said or how it impacted me. The problem wasnt what was being said or done, the problem is was and is in my translation of those comments. There is a great irony to being "broken". Even when you do have value to people, even when you are loved and cared about you can't feel it. I know logically that people didn't love me or care about me more at 250 lbs than than did at 338 lbs, but I was more ready to believe it. I had spent so much of my life believing that if I was thinner I would be more lovable, more valuable, that when it happened and people started to notice me and express things they hadn't before, i was willing to believe it.

And the more I believed this, the more the world seemed to validate that. The greatest moment of my life, last August, was standing at Twins stadium, having 40,000 people celebrating my weight loss, but I look back at that now and realize how much that moment symbolizes how warped my thinking (and a lot of the world's) is. That losing a lot of weight would be given that much value was just a reinforcement of my backwards thinking that I mattered now that I was thinner and didnt matter before.

But sadly as quickly as I lost weight and found that feeling of worth, just as quickly it has left. A as the weight loss has stalled, I have fallen right back to how I felt about myself before, except this time into a place of desperation to get back that feeling of having value, of mattering in the world. It was something I had never had before in my life and something that I have become willing to do almost anything to get back to. Whether that whatever is not eating, working out until I drop, considering the use of diet pills, diuretics or other things. All dangerous, all stupid, but truly the sign of how addicted to the feeling of worth that losing weight gave me.

I started treatment a month ago to learn to feed my body, but what I am slowly coming to see, if that treating my eating disorder is going to be much more about feeding my heart, my soul and those pieces of me that never became what they should have. So many times through my life I have felt broken, but something Aleica has helped me see, I never got broken, because the way I grew up I never got the chance to be whole in the first place. Hopefully this is my chance to do that, and the first lesson I need to figure out is how to separate that from whatever the number on the scale or the image in the mirror is saying!!!!

Never Say You Love Me....

2011-03-28T12:13:00.000-05:00

"Never say I love you...if you don't really care
Never talk about feelings...if they aren't really there
Never hold my hand...if you're going to break my heart
Never say you're going to...if you don't plan to start
Never look me in the eye...if all you do is lie
Never say hello....if you really mean goodbye
If you really mean forever...then say you'll try
Never say forever...'cuz forever makes me cry "

Total Disclosure.....

2011-03-09T08:19:00.000-06:00

I started this post over two weeks ago, I have fought with it since, trying to find the right way to say all this. It might be the hardest one I have ever posted, because it means sharing some really deep dark secrets, but I am realizing I need to do that, I can't keep living with my secrets... so here it is, it isnt the perfect post, but it's honest.....those that will read it and judge me I can't worry about any more, if people can't accept that have some major flaws they just have to walk away I guess, I am who I am, I am where I am and pretending for the world isn't helping, so here it is, total disclosure.....

"Hold yourself together like a pair of bookends
But I've not tasted all your cooking
Who are you when I'm not looking?" Blake Shelton
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xXD9-1mLBY
I am a logical, rational, highly intelligent person. I can easily sit across the table from the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and tell him how his firm is falling apart and why, I can stand in front of a room of 10,000 and speak with absolute passion and clarity about middle east peace or philanthropic needs without breaking a sweat.

Just as easily I can sit and spout the biological needs of the body with the best medical school graduates, I am tell you without a single emotion the down sides and dangers of not eating, I can logically share that I have lost 120+ pounds because I started eating and that the scale goes up when I don't.

But not one bit of that matters as soon as I have to face a plate of food, or even the thought of one. For as far as I have come in the last 15 months in some ways I am moving backwards, and when it comes to eating, body image and coping with all that goes with that, I have moved back 15 years in the span of a few months.

I made a promise when I started this blog, to be honest and straight forward, and as I look back at the last couple months I am not sure I did a great job keeping that promise. I have never lied, my sin tends to be one of omission. This blog has become a tug of war for me, like so many other things. I started it to share and to vent my feelings, but people started reading it, and started coming here for motivation, so I felt less and less safe showing my flaws and my falters, to the point I started a personal blog just where I could be fully honest again. And, it wasn't just about the blog, I hid what was going on from many of the people around me (who I hope will forgive me when they read this). I realized this morning (after swearing my trainer to secrecy on something last night) that isn't fair, it's not what I promised and it does nothing for those of the rest of you also battling in silence - and I know there are many of you. So it is time for some honesty.

Simply put food is not going well, my self image is not going well, I am fixated on losing weight vs being healthy and getting fit and I am doing a lot of damage to myself, both physically and mentally over it. That part is probably no secret to anyone who knows me well. In the last 6 months I have retreated from doing any kind of group physical stuff (sat and watched this weekend, quite frankly in tears, as my friends did an indoor tri), I have pretty much cut out a social life because it usually involves food.

In short my eating disorder is back in full force. I am under eating, over working out and obsessing over my weight, my body and the scale. It is back to controling much of my life and it is taking its toll physically. To the point that getting help became a necessity not an option. Yet I have kept that help a secret

I started down the path to help softly a couple months ago. In January I started seeing a Health Coach, Christy. Looking back I know I needed more even back then, but I wasn't ready, heck I'm still not ready but now don't have a choice. I knew from the get go this wasnt the right fit for how bad things were, but I was hiding how bad they were, so it worked, it kept the concerned people around me happy, I was doing something. And that worked til my body told on me.

I have a horrible time with using or hearing the word malnourished about myself. I weight over 200 lbs I still can not wrap my brain around it even being possible for me to be malnourished, I keep hearing my mother say "you could live off the fat of the land for years". But that is one of the sad truths of an eating disorder, you can look fine and be destroying your body, and that is what I have been doing for months living on nearly nothing or the same couple foods (protein shakes and chicken).

And that denial finally crashed in on me sitting in my doctor's office. My body has had enough of it. I am deficient in some key areas and if I don't do something it is only going to be more problematic going forward. So I had to accept the step I have fought and fought again.

On February 21st I started seeing a therapist at an Eating Disorder Program and will be seeing her at least weekly for an unpredicatable length of time (not going away anytime soon I would guess).

I dont know why admitting that is so hard for me, but it is. It feels like the ultimate admittance of failure and weakness. I have hid it from as many people around me as I could (it is what I swore my trainer to secrecy on). It also scares me who in my life will run away screaming when they hear I am this broken. I keep thinking of all the comments that have been made to me about how I am such a motivation to people, and now I feel like I am just letting everyone down by showing my true colors.

But at the same time I also know there are a lot of people around me who are fighting the same battle and hiding it out of their own shame. I am sharing this as much for them as I am for me.

The one thing I am trying to come to terms with in working with Alecia (the therapist) is that being this screwed up isnt my fault. That it has roots in how I grew up, in how I have faced life and that it has gotten me through some really terrible situations. I can logically say that but still working on it being something I can make friends with. Either way it is who I am, it is where I am, and now its time to stop hiding it and face it.

I think in admitting this I am also taking the blog into a new phase of its life also, it is time to admit the dark side of facing issues with food and eating, maybe a lot more honestly than I have up to now. Time to share some of the dirty little secrets from the minds of those of us who battle ourselves and food, whether we weight 300, 200 or 90 lbs.

Normal isn't enough!

2011-02-10T12:39:00.000-06:00

I apologize for there not being many posts lately. I have been at a somewhat tough place emotionally, and trying to sort it all out. I have just been really unhappy with where I am at with my weight loss (or lack there of), with not feeling like I am making all the progress in the gym I used to and a whole lot of self esteem issues because of it.

Things kind of hit the fan for me over it this past week and I turned to two wise men to help me out. The club manager (if I could vote for who in the world I would have had for a dad Tony would have been it, he is so good with wise, straight forward advice and even when I may not like what he is telling me, I always feel better about things after we talk) and my trainer, Nick. Both helped me see sides of this journey I have not seen before.

Tony particularly got me thinking about needing to change the rules I am measuring my weight loss by - that my expectations were right for when I was at 338 lbs to EXPECT a fast weight loss but now I needed to realize that to lose that same percent was going to come at a different percent but that that wasn't the same as failing, it was time for a new set of rules to measure myself against before I throw up the white flag. It was the first time someone has actually given me permission for this to happen at a slower pace (vs the expectations I was living under in the beginning) and just to have someone tell me it was ok helped a lot.

But it was something Nick said has really stuck with me though. We were talking about my feeling that the first part of this journey (Nov 09-April/May 10) I was in such a positive place and just feel like a switch was thrown and I haven't been happy with much since. Ironically I had made this comment to Tony a few months ago, but I was tying it to things with Gui. Nick got me thinking about this completely a different way, related to my body and my view of my body. As we talked it through at first I thought the switching point might have been the indoor tri I did last May (I came in last and was very disappointed in myself about that - to the point I am not doing the event this year) but after a day of thought, I think it was before that that I lost my footing. I think it was when I got back from Israel in April. That trip is the last time I can really say I felt good about myself and was happy for any period of time.

Israel has held an important role in this journey. It is where I reached my breaking points (in Feb 09 and Oct 09) and decided I was done with being so abnormal, where the true realization of how screwed up my body was making my life hit me and where I vowed to change. When I was in Israel on those trips everything physically was a struggle, from walking to getting around buildings to fitting on the bus. It's where because of my inability to do stairs and to keep I up I had to pass up the chance of a lifetime meeting a plane full of Olim because I physically couldn't do it. On the February '09 trip when we were just outside of Gaza during the height of the bombings I realized how truly life threatening my weight was when I realized if a Tzeva Adom warning (this is the warning that a bomb is about to hit) went off and we had to evacuate the bus I would probably not be able to do it fast enough and would put others at risk too. On this trip, and my subsequent one in October 09, I came to the acceptance of how abnormal I was, I came out of my denial about not just being fat but of it being a true liability and I vowed to change it.

BTW here is the blog from those two trips..... http://ylcisrael2008.blogspot.com/

When I went back to Israel in April 2010, I went back a different person, but didn't know it til I got there. I can see it when I read back to my blog posts from that trip (they are in this blog filed under April). It was the place where I realized I had left the land of the abnormal and was now part of the normal. There was nothing I wanted to do on that trip I couldn't. I walked to the marina, I climbed hills, I played on the playground in Sderot. I was like everyone else.

But what I didn't realize until the other night with Nick was I also made a mental leap on that trip, and unfortunately it wasn't a positive leap for me. My expectations changed of myself and where I saw myself in the world physically. I went from being proud of how much I had and could accomplish to feeling ashamed of myself and unhappy with where I was, because I had changed who/what I was measuring against.

When I saw myself as broken/abnormal/handicapped and I could do something new I (and quite frankly everyone around me who was used to how little I could do previously) saw it as an accomplishment but it was ok if it wasn't perfect or as good as everyone else, because it always had that asterisk after it of my limitations..."*she did great considering...!". Nick asked me when I was working out with my friends before that if I used to get upset that they were faster or better than me (like I do now) and I realized the answer was 100% no. I didn't measure myself against them because I saw myself as different. It was ok for me not to keep up with them, just that I was doing it was enough, it was more than I thought I would ever be able to do and it was a great victory. But it's not ok now.

Once I started to see myself as normal, I did start measureing myself against the people around me and quite truthfully I didn't measure up (in my eyes) and still don't feel I do. I am not as fast, I am not as coordinated, my balance is not as good. And for someone who is driven by being the best at everything this has become a real stumbling block for me.

It is a weird analogy, but the reality is I feel like I went from being the winner in all the special olympics races to the last place finisher in the olympics and I am not doing so well with that. Where I saw the first as complete success, I see where I am now as failure. And the result is frustration and fear. Frustration because I don't know how to stop myself from measuring against the people around me and frustration because I don't feel like I have the tools, mentally and physically, yet to get to the front of the pack of normal people (to use Nick's phrase, to become more than normal) and fear because what if the back of the pack is the best I can ever be? I have never in my life been ok with being the back of the pack and I worry that I might have to accept that when it comes to physical stuff, and I'm not good with that. Good enough is not good enough for me.

And that makes the fact that I have retreated the last few months make a lot more sense to me. If I cant be good at something I dont do it, so I have stopped trying in this arena. And I know that is the wrong answer. As Nick pointed out I need to figure out how to find the fire to push myself to move up in the pack, but in all honesty I dont know how to do that when it comes to physical things, and more than that worry if my body just isnt capable of it. When it is something intellectual, I can learn it no matter what it takes, I know I have the capability, but with my body I fear there are limits. Although I know Nick would tell me they are self imposed limits, and am starting to agree with him, I just dont know how to knock them down.

I dont want to make him a big focus of this (the past is the past) but there is part of me that has also been thinking aobut Gui since Nick and I talked about all this. I have thought over and over (and said to people after the last few months) that I felt we stopped being productive around April or May and wished I had opted then to make a change. I think this new realization puts that in a new light. I still think I should have changed trainers in April or May, but I see why now. It wasn't per se personalities as I was putting it on (although what it was did lead us to butt heads for sure). Gui was the right trainer to get me from abnormal to normal, he had that same goal for me. But his intent as I look back at things we talked about, was never to be the one who took me from normal to more than normal. And as I wanted/needed to get to that it became a more stressful interaction between us.

I could say I regret I wasted the months I did from April to July in that situaton, but I have been having a conversation with someone new in my life lately about things happening for a reason, once again I believe that. There is more than fate at work that put Nick at LTF when it did and me not changing trainers until the right trainer was there to help me get to that next level. Now I just have to figure out how to stop being my own limiting factor and make that happen!

Jealous? Of Exercise?

2011-02-03T07:12:00.000-06:00

On first read this article http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703439504576116083514534672.html?mod=googlenews_wsj in the Wall Street Journal seemed a little perplexing. People getting divorced over exercise? Putting it in their wedding vows?

But the reality the more I think about it, is that it does happen. While I am not married and didn't have to face it on that front, I have definitely had adding a daily workout to my life change friendships and relationships, something I never expected!

I would not say I am obsessed with working out (others might) but I do try very hard to workout every day now. If I don't workout I get cranky and out of sorts. The time I spend in the gym a day varies from an hour to 2 depending on what I am doing that day. I am not rigid about the time of day I do it, but it has to happen. I am doing this for me and my mental and physical health and it is a consideration when scheduling my life, home and on the road.

Over the last year I have realized there are three kinds of people in my life, based on their reaction, to my change in lifestyle to include exercise. Those that felt put out (and are mostly gone from my life now, those that don't quite get it but have accepted it, and those that share the lifestyle - many of this last group are new friends from the gym).

That is one thing I felt the article lacked, commentary on the fact that you do start to develop a different circle of friends than you had before, which is often hard for existing friends who feel they are being replaced or pushed out.

I have been really lucky in this regard, in July I got to see first hand out easily my old friends and new friends all fit together, they were all together for Relay weekend it was like they had all known each other for years. I am somewhat repeating that this weekend, with a dinner party at my home with a mix of old and new, and this time I am truly looking forward to it.

The best friends in all this change though are those who weren't exercisers before but since seeing what I am doing have jumped on board. There is no greater feeling than when someone comes to visit and their first two questions are "did you get me a pass for the gym" and "do I get to go to the trainer with you this time". I'll have to admit that still takes me back for a second, makes me look at my life and think "how did that happen" but then it makes me smile, knowing how supported I am.

If I got one wish...

2011-01-27T19:26:00.001-06:00

Most people if given the chance at one free wish would choose fame, fortune or material gains. If I could get my genie to pop out of the lamp I would forgoe all those choices to be able to read other people's minds. Not for some strange lurking or bad movie plot reason, the reality is I pretty much don't care what others think day to day, but I would like the ability to read other people's minds to figure out my own thoughts.

Three times in the last week people have made comments to me about my feelings not being unique, that I am not as different as I think I am. While my instinct has told me for many years that I don't think and feel like others, that other people are happier, have it more together, are better able of capable of managing life's stressors, that keeps getting called into question, to the point even I am unsure anymore.

I try really hard not to spend my life looking backwards, the past is the past and leaning on it is a crutch with little benefit, but the reality is that our past does make us who we are. And if I am honest I have to face that my ability to know whether my feelings are normal or abnormal comes from how I grew up, and in this I know I am not unique. Many people grew up like I did, in families where feelings weren't shared, where showing emotion was a sign of weakness or worse yet a risk. There are many downsides to this kind of childhood, but one of the biggest is never really learning what are normal feelings and what are abnormal. And when every emotion is shot down, they all begin to feel abnormal. Just feeling begins to feel wrong for even happening.

I've overcome a lot in my life time, more than most people luckily will ever face, but I have never gotten past my inability to deal with my emotions or to express them to other people, especially when face to face. Don't get me wrong, I can express opinioins on a situational and logical level. No one ever has to guess if I like something or don't, if I agree or disagree. But when it comes to what I am truly feeling about a situation it is a totally different ball game for me.

And the older I have gotten the harder it has gotten. Any time I have taken the risk and tried to let someone in to that part of me it has seemed to back fire. Too often in life when people say they want in, they really don't once they get there and they walk away, just reinforcing that my feelings must be wrong or abnormal. It has become much easier to hide what is truly going on than to risk driving people away.

I fear saying that comes across as people don't care. That is not what I am saying at all. I have many people around me that care. But caring does not always mean being able to handle hearing the reality of people's feelings, sometimes it is actually easier to talk to those who don't care so much, they seem more open to hearing where I am at and letting me be there in that moment. Too often when people care, they want to convince me to feel otherwise, that I shouldn't feel what I do. And I get it, no one likes to see people they care about upset or hurting. But the reality is when we try to talk someone out of how they feel it doesn't change their feeling, it just drives them to hide it better, or at least it does for me.

I know many times what I am feeling is NOT what I would like to be feeling, I would like to be happy when I am sad, I would like to be content when I feel anxious, I would like to be accepting when I am frustrated. But there is a reason why I am feeling what I am and I need to stop running from that and face where I am. It's time I start dealing with that and not just writing it off to be something else for others. Since I don't know how to do that with other people lately I just keep it to myself.

Is that normal or abnormal, I still don't know.

Heavy...

2011-01-23T13:07:00.000-06:00

I typically have the tv on when I am working, it is my background noise. This morning I caught an episode of the new reality show Heavy. This seems to be the year of the weight loss program, Heavy, I Used to be Fat and another one I cant recall the name of, as well as the next season of The Biggest Loser.

I never know whether I want to see these things or not, sometimes they make me sad because they remind me where I used to be and it brings back a lot of shame, other times they frustrate me, because the message on all of them is "eat less, workout more"and you'll be thinner. Not one of the programs has ever profiled someone in my situation, where eating too little is a big part of the problem. One of the profilees on Heavy this morning was eating 10,000 calories a day, I can't even fathom that when I struggle to scrape up 1500 calories a day, even with a horrible slip yesterday of a Big Mac and fries I still barely made my calories for the day.

Heavy for those who haven't seen it documents the first 6 months of a weight loss journey for two individuals. They are provided a treatment program, a trainer and medical support. From what I saw I like the program in that the participants are going through their struggle mostly (for at least 5 months of the 6) in their home environment, facing the everyday realities. That has always been my issue with Biggest Loser, that most of the participants were doing it all in a controlled environment without the stressors and challenges of their lives. The battle is much different when it is part of your every day life, not something that can be your sole focus.

I was very taken with one of the participants on the episode I saw this morning. Jodi and I shared a lot of the same struggles, she was fighting herself, her inability to open up to those trying to help her and her own thoughts as much as her body. She said many of things I have been thinking the last couple weeks about needing help but not knowing how to let her trainers help her, of not knowing how to feel safe enough to be that vulnerable.

She also broke down in tears at one point admitting she feels like a failure most of the time while training and working out. It was the first time on any of these shows that I have heard that level of honesty. I knew exactly what she meant, because I have spent the last few weeks of my training sessions feeling that way. Worrying I have come as far as I can and maybe now I am just kidding myself. The scale isn't moving so I really don't know what else to judge success or failure on, so I see failure.

A friend made a comment to me in the grocery store yesterday about my blog, she said she reads it and wonders if I think I am the only one who goes through the things I write about, truth, most days, yes. I know on one level that is illogical, but it is how I feel. I look around me, at others on the same journey, and just others in general, and yes I do feel much more disfunctional than the people around me. Others seem to cope so much better than I feel I do, others seem to be able to communicate so much better than I do, others seem to be able to let others help them so much better than I do.

I was kind of floored after I left that friend at the checkout at the grocery store and when I came back to checkout myself the cashier said "wow, your friend admires you so much". I really didn't know what to say or what was said by K that lead to that comment. And as usual the only thing that went through my mind was "Why would she admire me? There is certainly nothing about me for her to admire". Luckily for once I was able to stop what was in my head from escaping my mouth, and just smiled and thanked the cashier and moved on.

There is one more thing I wish we could see on tv if the weight genre is going to continue, the full struggle. These programs catalog the first few months, when it's easier, when a small change means a big weight loss. On Heavy this morning they were losing 10 or more pounds a week. That makes for great television, but what still isn't being seen is what it feels like 14 months in, when you work for months for a single pound, when those around you are long bored with your weird eating or your obsessing, when the victories become much smaller and you battle tirelessly and no one notices. That is the true face of this journey that still needs to be told.

My heart breaks for Gabby Giffords....

2011-01-21T13:17:00.000-06:00

When Gabby Giffords was shot everyone noticed. It was all over the news, I saw it in my friends' Facebook statuses, it was part of everyone's conversations. Today's stories about her was barely an "also happened" but the truth is today, as she leaves the hospital and heads for rehab, is when her fight really begins. For the last two weeks everyone around the country fought with her, now she begins the much harder part of her journey, battling on her own to regain her life.

It seems strange if you have never been where she is, that regaining your life would be harder than the battle for her life she has been in for the last two weeks but it is. During the last two weeks she has pretty much been in the hands of others. The surgeons, the doctors, they could do things to help her, to make her better, to ease her pain, but with entering rehab the battle becomes hers. Others will be there, her husband, her physical therapists, her occupational therapists, her doctors. But they take on a very different role, they are now there for support and instruction but the work, and ultimately the outcome becomes hers to own. It is an incredibly frightening stage she is entering. She will fight this battle as much within her head as she will her body.

When I read yesterday she was going to need to learn to walk, to use her hands and to communicate it my heart broke, because except for the speaking part, I have been where she is, 16 years ago this week actually.

Despite it being over a decade ago I can remember my first days after becoming paralyzed as if it was yesterday. I can remember every thought, emotion and physical sensation. It is truly part of who I am.

For those that haven't read the whole blog let me catch you up. In January 1995 I was 4 years into my battle with Pseudotumor Cerebri (PTC, also known as Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension or IIH). To that point I had had multiple shunt and eye surgeries, around 75 spinal taps, meningitis, taken every medication on the planet and spent more time in a hospital than I care to recount). My disease was fully out of control and another lumboperitoneal shunt was my only option. At that point surgery was routine for me, this one turned out anything but. During the surgery the shunt displaced and resulted in significant damage to my nervous system and I suffered at least two strokes. Unfortunately the surgeon did not acknowledge what was going on (it would take another couple days til I was even fully believed and we had answers). I couldn't move. I kept telling them I couldn't move, I remember saying it over and over and being told to relax it was nothing. I was sedated and moved to my room. Even after I came to in the neurosurgery unit they weren't prepared for what was going on. I remember calling my neurologist in tears (because no one, including the surgeon, had let her know yet what had happened). By that point all I knew was I couldn't use or feel the entire right side of my body, I couldn't roll over, I couldn't do anything. Had the phone not been dialed for by a nurse even that would have been impossible.

It was all too much for my brain to process, and as I have read about Representative Gifford the last two weeks I try to imagine her waking up to her new reality also. It's a moment I cant even describe. In one minute you realize the simpliest thing you used to take for granted is gone, and you have no idea if it will ever come back. You are still alive, but beyond that NOTHING is like it was a few hours before. Terrifying, overwhelming, unreal, helpless, surreal....are the words that come to mind but they hardly touch it. You keep hoping it is a joke, but you slowly wrap your brain around the reality that it isn't.

The worst part is that no one can tell you if or when you will get better and what better will mean. All those people you thought had all the answer are now just as clueless as you are about what the future holds. You try to read the faces, the looks for the words no one wants to say when you ask questions. You try to hear the whispered comments or see what they are writing to know what they aren't telling you. But the truth, when it comes to the brain and nerve damage, there are no answers anyone can give you. Some people make an instant full recovery, some never get anything back and everything in between. In my case it has been 16 years and it still changes, even recently (the last few weeks) I have noticed a change in where I feel and where I don't on my right side.

For Gabby her next phase will begin today as she enters the rehab stage. She will spend her days with physical and occupational therapists learning to do the simpliest things, holding a pencil or a fork, brushing her teeth, standing, using a walker, tying her shoes.

They seem like such simple things when you write them or say then, we teach them to infants and toddlers, but they will take Gabby days, weeks, months to learn, if ever. It is hard, scary and frustrating work for an adult to be patient doing things over and over, often not well, that we know we should be able to do.

I wasn't very good at it relearning these basic skills. I would get angry at myself, at my body, at those around me. Even though none of it was my doing, or my fault, I felt humiliated, guilty, embarrassed that I wasn't capable of these childish tasks. I remember throwing a handful of marbles across the occupational therapy room because I couldn't pick them up with my fingers on my right hand, I remember laying on the floor in my hospital room crying because I couldn't figure out how to get up when I fell and refused help with it, going barefoot for days because I couldn't face the shoe laces again.

I wish I could say that part gets any easier, but I still battle that at times, as in some ways I am still in that rehab and working on some of these items in the gym. And sadly I handle it just as badly 16 years later. I feel like a complete fool when we are working on me trying to learn still to manage stairs, or when my right hand wont grip a weight right and I have to hand it off to readjust it. I have clothes I would love to wear but refuse to take out of my closet because my hand cant manage the closures on them. I have activities I would love to be part of but wont try because I dont trust my body. I don't tell anyone these things any more, but I still sit and cry or swear over them to myself.

The pace of rehab far outlasts the interest of a public who sees news happen in cycles lasting minutes, of people's concerns which will move on and wane in days or even of some of those around Gabby who will tire of it after weeks or months. And even for her therapists their belief that she can go further will also end, they will eventually discharge her to live with whatever she has gotten back and with hopes she will go further, but with no promise that will happen.

Yet for Gabby, and anyone else who has to relearn to use their body, time is unending. You don't have an option for out or to be done, or to move on. The time drags slowly and painfully into years and decades, but life is never the same. The external scars heal, people forget what happened, you learn to cover it up, to work around it, to make it invisible to many, but as much as I keep seeing the words "full recovery" in news stories, I know from being there that is merely a medical term. Ms. Giffords life and body will never be completely familar to her again, she will spend the rest of her life trying to relearn. My heart goes out to her!!!!

Feeling about an inch tall....

2011-01-20T18:57:00.000-06:00

"It's not who you think you are that holds you back...It's who you think you're not"

I saw the quote above on a friend's facebook status (thanks Michael) and it said so eloquently what I have been trying for days to put into words that I had to start with it.

I was standing in front of the mirror yesterday morning putting on makeup getting ready to head to a client's office, and it hit me how much of my life I spend behind a mask, pretending for people that I feel different than I do, that I have a confidence that most days I am lacking, that I am capable of handling things I'm not. Some days I can even fool myself into believing the roles I play for everyone else, but lately, on the part about confidence or believing in myself, I am no longer able to kid myself. And decided it was time to be just as honest here.

I have a great life. I know that, I have so much more than most people in the world. I dont want anything I am about to say to negate that, this is going to be one of those posts that my friends read and immediately tell me why I shouldn't feel this way or how wrong my feelings are. And I agree with everyone thinking that. I truly wish I didn't feel like I do lately, I know I shouldn't, but I just need to be honest with myself and the world right now, because the longer I try to be who I'm not right now the deeper in my hole I feel myself going, and as a result the worse my eating is getting.

I cant think of any poetic way to say this, so just going to say it flat out. Lately my self esteem and self worth has been nearly non existant, beyond knowing I do my job well the rest of my life just feels like I am failing miserable and sadly in a lot of ways that I deserve to fail. I keep feeling that the last 14 months have just been a mirage and now reality is back. I have lost the person I found in the first part of this journey.

I keep trying to figure out when it started changing and it would be easy to point to getting ready to see my family New Year's Eve, but if I am honest with myself I think I have been sliding this way since the trainer change in July/August. For as much as I know that situation was pre-determined by someone else and nothing I could have done or said or been would have changed it (and truth, looking back I wouldnt want it to have changed, I am glad to be with the trainer I have now, it is a much better situation for me) I still think that is when all the work I had done to find a level of pride in myself, my hard work on my body, and my feeling of being worth all this plummeted and I am not sure I ever truly recovered that part of things. Despite the decision being out of my hands I still have days where I think if I had been better, stronger, more worthy, more something it wouldn't have ended the way it did. That I would have been worth continuing with.

However, I realize now, I didnt even know how much that had impacted my views on myself still until the last couple weeks. Like I said I am good at kidding myself at times. I thought I was over that, and I'm not. I am well over wanting to be back with my previous trainer, I am much happier with Nick as my trainer, but I am not over feeling that I wasn't good enough for the last one to want to keep working with me.

I do think seeing my family, and the anxiety leading up to it, after 20 years of not seeing each other, was probably the final piece that sent me to where I am now. Anything the situation with Gui didnt dissolve, or that I had put back together since then erroded seeing my mother and my sister. All the work I had done to be proud of myself, to make myself realize I was worthy of the love and support of people around me, that I deserved the good in my life seemed to get erased in having to go back and face all the things from my childhood that made me dislike myself in the first place...about who I am, about how I look, about what I have and haven't done with my life. It is amazing how quickly very successful adults can be brought back to being an insecure child in such a short time.

So where am I now. In a word, stuck. Back fighting a lot of the insecurities and uncertanties I did a year ago when I started this journey. I find myself questioning whether I can accomplish the goals I have or if I am fooling myself, I find myself scared to try new things and dissatisfied with my performance when I do, I find myself questioning whether I am wasting the the time of the people helping me, particularly my trainer. For the first time since I started with Nick I found myself today considering cancelling my training session for no other reason than so that I he could use that time for someone who deserved it. Which is logically I know an insane way to think, but it is truly where my heart is. In a lot of ways right now I feel more like that fat, ugly girl who walked into the gym knowing everyone was laughing at her and looking down on her a year ago than I do the confident person who actually felt like she fit in a couple months ago.

The biggest problem with it all is that I am back in a horrible cycle with not eating. The thought of food makes me want to be sick and nothing tastes good. I am forcing myself to do the best I can, but I knew yesterday when I had 227 calories in at 6pm that this was not a good situation. That this wasn't just a day or so blip. I had never considered before that my self esteem (or lack there of) was in any way linked to my eating issues, but I have to wonder now. I am actually going to be talking to a health coach next week and hoping she can help me sort some of what is behind my eating out, but I have gotten my hopes up so many times before on finding help with that topic that I am reserving getting too optimistic til I see how it plays out.

I don't have a great ending for this post, it feels as stuck and awkward as I feel right now. I know I dont like where I am at right now, I miss how I felt about myself not that long ago.

One of those days.....

2011-01-16T10:49:00.000-06:00

This is going to be one of those posts that just rambles and probably doesn't have a real point, but I am struggling this weekend and thought maybe blogging it would help me sort my thoughts out, who knows.

As usual I am back to struggling with food, making myself eat and my weight. I am doing my best thought to fight through it. I am on a day of "reverse journaling", writing out at the beginning of the day what I am going to eat and making myself follow it (vs just documenting after the fact what I ate). I am determined that I am not going to slip back to not eating today, but have to admit every bite that is going in my mouth is weirding me out.

The current trigger of my fear of eating is that it is goal time tomorrow with the trainer. Which I am happy about, I feel I have lost my focus a little lately and welcome having more structure to follow, but at the same time I know it is going to start with another tough discussion about food and more importantly a starting weight and taking measurements (something we haven't done in 6 months). There is nothing that makes it harder to eat than knowing I am going to be weighed and/or measured in front of someone else. I go through it weekly (how often the trainer typically weighs me) but this one is bothering me more than average because I know we are basing things off it.

For as much as my logical brain knows that my body needs food, that I gain if I don't eat, I definitely am in that mode this weekend of "I'll weigh less tomorrow if I don't eat today", hence the listing the food and working to it, vs hoping at the end of the day I am close to where I should have been. It doesn't guarantee success but at least I have a plan of sorts for the days.

There is a big part of me that wants to tell the trainer from now on I don't want to know when these days are coming up, so I don't end up on this roller coaster, but I know that is a cop out. I need to figure out how to get through these feelings not just avoid and hide, ignorance may be bliss in this case, but it isn't progress.

The lead up to my session tomorrow actually started Thursday night with the first conversation on goals, and I have been a little off kilter since then. During the conversation I asked a question I didn't quite realize was leaving my lips, although it has been in my head for a while now. Is it realistic to think I will ever make my weight goal???? I am back to doubting if I can get where I want to, not because of my desire, but because my body seems to be having a harder and harder time letting go of weight. I am back to circling around the same few pounds for weeks at a time.

And yes, I get how far I have already come, which was the response the question was met with. That is a response I keep getting from people, but truly don't understand. I get the past, I am proud of the past, I know how hard it has been and how far I have come. But what I don't get is what does that have to do with the future. Just because someone has had past success does not mean their future is guaranteed, just ask all those one hit wonders. And as far as I have come, as bad as I want this, I do worry about can I get to where I want to be, or have I reached where I am going to get (or am close to that).

I did have to laugh at myself yesterday and how ridiculous our minds work sometimes. I was not happy with the scale, I was up 1/2 a pound from the day before (209.1) and came home from the gym miserable about it, then I went through some old pictures from my previous Israel trips (it has been on my mind the last few days after a conversation about how my physical issues have shaped those trips). I found a couple "before" pictures I didnt remember....

I look at myself in these pictures and feel ridiculous being upset about gaining 8 ounces, or even being unhappy at 210 lbs. I would have KILLED to weight 210 lbs when I was the 338 pounds in those pictures. Yet I can't seem to tap into that feeling anymore. I truthfully don't even remember what that life was like at an emotional level. I can tell people it was hard, but as I shared that with a friend the other night I realized I wasn't feeling that anymore. It was like telling someone else's story.

I guess it's good, it means I have embraced where I am at now, but at the same time, I worry that losing that past pain will mean losing my motivation to get away from it. I talk all the time with my clients about change only happening when the grief factor outweighs the benefit factor, as I have said before in the blog, I worry that scale is getting harder to keep tipped and staying with the changes I need to make.

Yup I was right, this post was really all over the place, please forgive me for those of you saying 'what the heck did I just read', my head is exactly where this post went, jumping in a million directions.

January 16, 1995 - January 7, 2010. The battles sucked but I won the war.....

2011-01-07T15:00:00.000-06:00

"I was born a stubborn soul.
Ain't afraid of the great unknown,
Nor the windin road thats all uphill.
This is just a stumblin' block;
Intimidating wall of rock.
If you think this broken heart
will break my will....

I'm gonna take that mountain.
Ain't nothing gonna slow me down.
And there ain't no way around it.
Gonna leave it level with the ground.
Ain't just gonna cross it, climb it, fight it... I'm gonna take that mountain!!" Reba

Downhill skiing is one of those things that has been just outside my reach most of my life. I grew up in the perfect place for skiing, neatly tucked in the Catskill Mountains and within driving distance of some of the best skiing on the east coast. Yet my mother felt it was too dangerous for us to try, so every Friday night the cool kids would head off on the ski bus and we never got to go.

Finally when I made it to college I got my chance. I actually learned to ski on a dare (thanks Heather for that btw, did you ever give up the diet coke?). It was amazing and I was hooked from the first time, especially night skiing. It felt like flying to me and it was one of the few times in my life that my mind shut off and everything else melted away. I was truly at peace on the mountain. For the next two winters I was a season pass holder at Greek Peak and most weeks went 5-7 days a week. Right before I got sick I was even offered a position on the ski patrol.

Unfortunately that all came to an abrupt halt when I got sick and eventually lost the feeling in my right side and my ability to walk (due to a botched shunt surgery and subsequent strokes). Until the last year I had really thought that my skiing was behind me and just a great memory, that that piece was gone forever.

When I started at Lifetime a year ago I was asked to identify three major goals for myself, in addition to losing weight. My three goals were 1) to get certified in scuba diving 2) to walk in the 3 day Susan Komen Breast Cancer walk and 3) to get back to skiing. The first two were important to me, but as things I have never done before they weren't big deals. The scuba diving would be the easiest, my fear around it was getting back in the boat but losing weight solved that (although I still haven't done it I know now I could). And the three day I would like to do but it isn't a huge issue for me.

Skiing however was a big deal, and truth a goal I thought was outside of reality to ever happen. Even my first trainer when we talked about it a few months before he left thought it would be years before it happened. He flat out said he didn't think it would be possible this winter.

But slowly over the last few months the drive to do this, and my belief that I could do it began to outweigh my fears of failing. This was something I knew was going to happen this winter. As with so many other things in my life the people around me helped me realize I could do this, and were there to make sure it was done safely and successfully.

Originally my plan had been to tell no one and to go alone, if it was a disaster no one would ever know I tried and I would quietly put it behind me. But Nick (my trainer), rightly so, pointed out all the flaws in that plan, the biggest being my tendency to chicken out on things. And I can tell you today he was 100% right, I would have gotten there, looked at the mountain and left. I never would have left the parking lot!

In finding someone I had a long list of criteria and a short list to choose from. They had to ski, they had to be willing to tell no one we were doing this, they had to be someone I felt safe with and also someone who could be totally self-less, willing to leave 10 minutes after arriving if it wasn't doable and not feel cheated of not getting to ski. The list only had 2 options on it, and I went with the one that made the most sense, Todd. For those of you who don't know Todd, he is the other trainer I had considered during my trainer change and is now my metabolic specialist.

For only having known Todd for about 6 months now he seems to keep ending up at the biggest moments in my life, some of you will recall he was the person standing beside me at the Twins game. Todd in his amazing style IMMEDIATELY said yes when I asked him if he would go with me about a month ago and it just took us til now to find a date that worked. He was the perfect choice and I am so grateful to you Todd for all your help and moral support today. Not to mention a laugh or two (remember...push don't pull!!!! *smile*).

The actual skiing went a MILLION times better than I expected, to the point I am wondering why I waited so many years to try. I had some major challenges with the people mover (how you get up the bunny hill at this ski slope) and with making left turns. But I am shocked, proud and excited to say I didn't fall once actually skiing. I never made it off the bunny slope, but I could care less. I did it!!!! And now I know I can do it. I know that I can start working on getting better and that I don't need to write it off my list as an impossibility now.

The amazing part was the realization standing on the mountain today that I am now completely whole (or better than whole) from where I was the day the surgery happened. I can not think of one thing now I could do then I can't do now. This was the last piece to the puzzle. I am the weight I was before it happened, I am back to wearing heels, I can walk long distances and I can ski. I'm whole again! Now everything from here is just improvement not catch up, and that is a pretty amazing place to be, especially since I vividly remember what it felt like to wake up after the surgery and thinking I would never walk again.

This post wouldn't be complete without three really important thank you's. Every one of these people would be the first to point out I did the work, and I did, but as I have said many times on the blog before, life is a team sport, no accomplishment I have made was done alone, and it is important to me to remember that. All my progress, especially today was because I let others help me (ok in some cases they helped me despite me fighting them on it *grin* I still have a ways to go on that front).

First Todd. Todd you being there today is more than I can ever express my gratitude for. You are so patient, so supportive and so brave. I consider your friendship a great gift and it is not lost on me how I met you and how lucky I am for that.

Next Nick. Nick you too came into my world by force, and as much as I hated the idea, it was the change I needed (and didn't even know it). My strength, both body and mind, has come so far in the last 5 1/2 months. Thank you for pushing me (even when I push back) and for not giving up on me, even when I probably deserve you too. You made me truly believe I could do this and you helped me physically build the tools I needed to do it successfully. You were truly an "upgrade" *smile* and I consider myself very lucky to be working with you.

Finally Dr Deborah Friedman. Debbie, you were there in 1995, you of all people know how bad it was and that I saw EVERY reason at that moment to give up, and I tried. You fought me, you made me keep going, you rescued me when I tried to end trying (literally and figuratively). I look at my life now and all I would have missed since then and I am overcome with emotion thinking about what could have happened. I truly owe you my life Deb, you knew it was worth saving when I didn't. THANK YOU! I am here today because you didn't stop fighting, for me and against me.

As always I also need to say thank you to all my friends and cheerleaders. You guys keep me going when I lose sight of things, but more importantly you are there to celebrate with me on days like today. I love you all.

I hope everyone gets to feel what I feel today at least once. I have the most amazing life and I wouldn't go back and change one bit of it, because knowing how low things can go is what truly allows us to value how good things are now!!!!!

New Year's Eve 2010...

2011-01-01T20:56:00.002-06:00

As I mentioned in my previous post, I spent NYE in Alexandria, Virginia at my brother and his new wife Katie's home. The premise we were all brought there under was a New Year's Eve Black and White Ball, but it was pretty obvious from the first invite this was a wedding. And it was mainly for that reason I went, to be there to support my brother.

I would be lying if I didn't admit doing this was one of the most stress inducing things I have faced in a VERY VERY long time. Both from a body image point of view but also from a family dynamics point of view.

As ashamed as I am to admit it, it threw me many steps backwards with my food and my weight. I let the stress of it being on the horizon send me back to barely eating and considering fast track ways to make the scale fall. And in the process of worrying if I was going to look good in my dress gained about 10 lbs from not eating.

As I said I went to be there for my brother, at his request. I love my brother Thom and would do anything in the world for him. He is a very strong young man who has been through a lot in his life and has managed to persevere through it all. He has recently become licensed to teach High School and is starting out on a great new adventure with Katie. Thom has been one of my strongest supporters and advocates in the last year. As he said last night when I pointed out my heels made me almost as tall as him for the first time in my life, I am also as close to the same weight as him as I have probably ever been in my life (I am going to catch him SOON though and weigh less than him).

I think what was even more touching than his compliments though was how much of my journey his friends knew about (ie how much he had shared). I am a big believer in what people say behind your back is a lot more sincere than what they say to your face, and obviously he has shared my story with great pride and that means the world to me.

Beyond my brother unfortunately my family dynamics are not a positive situation, and last night did not change that.

My sister Candi was there with her husband and son Lucas. She opted, as I expected, to not speak to me the entire night and instead glare across the room. The situation saddens me, particularly since she hasn't spoken to me in 20 years over a nickname I called her when we were kids. And I have spent a lot of years hoping we could resolve it, I have reached out to her a handful of times to try, without a response. I know now that won't happen she won't let it. And I have now made peace with that.

My mother was also there, this part of things is not as cut and dry as it is with my sister. My sister I really would like to repair things with, I think the whole situation is stupid to have held a grudge for 20 years over a nickname.

My mom however, I don't see it being healthy for me to step back into that situation. There was and is too much abuse history, too much ongoing head games and I need to do what is best for me. But that doesn't make it hard.

It was hard to be there last night and watch Katie's family all together and our family not even able to sit at a table together and not long for life to have been different, but one thing the last year has taught me is to not lose how far I have come in all that old noise.

It would be easy to say my family was the root of my not eating and stressing the last few weeks over this event, but if I am being honest even if my family hadn't been involved, I still would have had a hard time leading up to this event. Things like this are a battle I am still trying to overcome when it comes to body image.

For as far as I have come I still feel so uncomfortable in social settings where I don't know people. I still feel like the fat awkward girl at the party that everyone is staring at and laughing at behind my back. I will say that Katie and my brother's friends and Katie's family made me feel INCREDIBLY welcome and comfortable last night and that part was a lot better than I expected. I was surrounded by a lot of 20 and 30 year olds and didn't feel like the fat ugly girl. I felt old because of the music but not because of my weight *grin*. Truth, if I hadn't been dealing with the family dynamics in the end it was a good party and I truly enjoyed the people there.

I will also admit, for those who haven't already been drawn into the chaos leading up to the party (thank you btw the my shopping helpers and those who reviewed clothing) I did go a little off the deep end trying to figure out what to wear. I had 3 different dresses picked out at different times, two pairs of shoes, about 10 different necklaces.

This is the first time in my life I have gone to a social event where I truly had unlimited choices, not just wearing the one thing I could find that would fit, and it was overwhelming. Up until minutes before I left I was second guessing what I was wearing, but in the end I am really happy with my choices. Especially the great shoes.

The pink 4 1/2" heels got me more compliments all night than I ever imagined, and I grinned to myself every time someone said " I don't know how you walk in those". I know I make a big deal out of my shoes, but for me wearing those heels all night, not tripping once, dancing in them and just being in them really represents a true victory over not only my weight, but all that was taken from me years ago with the nerve damage. Although I can honestly say, even before the nerve damage I never EVER wore shoes with a heel like that.

I may just have to have them bronzed for posterity!!!

Mazel Tov....

2011-01-01T12:47:00.000-06:00

Congratulations to Thom and Katie Ingram. Last night Thom and Katie surprised (sorta) their friends and family by getting married at their New Year's Eve Party.

Since I wasn't able to be at Thom's first wedding, it was great to witness this happy occasion and to be there as they start their new life together.

I also got to meet my absolutely adorable niece (Molly) and nephew (Graham). Molly, their baby, joined the family a few weeks ago....

Their older son Graham, as you can see, was dressed for the occassion (Graham is the furry one in the bow tie btw)...

Not sure which makes me more proud, that my brother married such a wonderful girl or that they celebrated this morning by running a 5K! I do hope Lauren remembered to tie the cans and streamers to their butts.

I wish you guys all the happiness in the world.

2010....

2010-12-31T09:44:00.000-06:00

Most years I can't wait to see the year go, off to the next year for bigger and better things, but for the first time in my life I wish I could stretch the year. 2010 was the most transitional year in my life, and there was more I wanted to do before the year ended. Can't we have another month or so before we say good bye to it??? It was a crazy roller coaster year, but the best of my life. This year I conquered mountains that in 2009 only seemed dreams.

I entered 2010 weighing 292 lbs, barely able to walk, unable to use stairs at all. I was about a month into working with Gui and and the only workouts I was doing was in the pool because I wasn't strong enough to workout in the gym yet.

Clothing wise it was flat shoes, anything that fit and as one of the trainers accurately put it "Pam was a boy". At that point everything in my closet came from the plus size stores. My shirts were a 3x or 4x, my pants were in sizes not even in a normal range (10 or 11 in plus size), my shoes were a 10 wide, my ring size was 9 1/2 or 10, my necklaces were all 24" long.

Food wise I was eating a few hundred calories a day and and those calories usually weren't healthy.

Fast forward 12 months, I weigh around 212 lbs. I can now leg press 400 lbs, I work out 6-7 days a week. I have done an indoor tri, a walk-a-thon and can out lift many of the guys in the gym.

And I do it all looking like a girl *smile*. My shirts are a Large, my pants are a size 14, my closet is full of colors like pink and purple and amazing heels. My shoe size is down to a 7 1/2 or 8 narrow, my ring size is a 7 1/2 and I just had my 24" necklace repaired down to 18".

It's been a good year, the best year!

But I step into 2011 with a sense there was more than should have happened in 2010. It will surprise no one who knows me that I am frustrated over the goals that weren't completed. That is who I am, it's "how I roll". And yes they become the top of the list for 2011's goals, but I hate that sense of not having met the time frames I set out for myself.

So what's to come?

Weight - I need to break the boundary and get to 199, that is my top priority for the next few weeks. After that my goals are 185 (what I weighed when I graduated high school) and then on to around 150, my ultimate goal.

Training/Physical - I need to conquer a 5K this year, I bailed on one at Thanksgiving and need to heal that wound by successfully finishing at least one in a decent time. In the same vein I want to be able to get back to jogging, something I haven't done since college. I plan to continue my training (hopefully with Nick who has turned out to be a wonderful trainer and has really helped me take this to the next level).

Others- I had three big goals coming into this, this winter I want to attack the one that meant the most to me, getting back on the ski slopes. I miss downhill skiing, it was a great stress reliever for me in college, I want that back.

Also in the other list is getting over my terror of using escalators. This is a major hindrance when traveling and I need to face it. I have managed in the last couple months to deal with up escalators. I don't like them still, and I still feel like I am going to fall backwards down them, but I do them. Down escalators are still a mountain I haven't faced, this year I need to overcome that.

Food - Ah food, this is the tough one, my goal for 2011 is learn to more consistently manage eating better. I would love to use the word conquer with this one, but the reality that I am slowly coming to face, in the last couple weeks, is that much like an alcoholic a person with an eating disorder never is rid of their demons, we just learn to manage them vs them managing us. I need to find better ways to not retreat back to not eating when I am stressed or facing a social situation where I am worried how others will think I look. I need to not want to rush to fast track weight loss tricks like diuretics or purging to be thinner for a certain day. I came a long way with food in the second 1/2 of 2010 but not far enough, 2011 needs to be better.

My Big Goal - A few of you know that one of the projects I pondered and dabbled with in 2010 was a book project, taking the blog to the next level and writing a book. In 2011 I want to make that happen. I need to figure out how one gets a literary agent so that I can't find a publisher and get this project going. My hope is that the book will have a group authorship, as this journey has truly been a team sport, and that it will all come together this year.

Here's to a 2011 full of health, happiness and accomplishments....

brought in of course wearing killer 4" pink heels!!!!

The Price of Normalcy...

2010-12-17T17:56:00.000-06:00

Normalcy, fitting in and not feeling like an oddity, was all I was going for with this weight loss journey. All my goals come back to that, being thinner so that people don't look at me with disdain, being able to do more so that I am not the person who holds everyone else back, wearing smaller sizes so shopping is not limited to only special stores. I just wanted to be normal in my eyes and those of the world. I want to blend in.

That is still what I want, it's why I continue the battle. And I am happy to say I have reached that goal in many ways. I walk down a hall and people don't feel they have to move out of my way because I take up so much space, I can easily fit in airplane and movie seats, I can shop pretty much anywhere I want, I can plan activities with others and no longer have to wonder if my body will keep up or not.

For those who didn't know me a year ago they would never even know where I have come from, in more and more ways every week I become closer to the norm. And most days I celebrate that, but at the same time the price of normalcy is weighing heavy on me right now.

Because as much as this journey has brought me to normalcy in looks and behavior, it has moved me farther from the norm related to food. Food has always been a struggle, anyone who has been reading my blog knows that, but this week was the first time I have questioned if I have made a mistake trying to lose weight. I know logically that is stupid, and I wouldn't go back but I wonder if I have gotten in over my head, can I really manage this long term?

I knew coming into this a year ago it wasn't a diet, that this was about a life style change, that I had to make lasting changes, that was a committment I was ok with, but this week the truth of that hit me, and it was overwhelming me right now. I actually started thinking about this a couple weeks ago while visiting friends in NC, when I was asked how much longer I wouldn't be able to eat normal things, but it has really sunk in this week how forever this is, and it scares me.

I was hungry while walking around the mall, and found myself exceedingly jealous and angry at the people able to just stop and eat whatever they wanted, when I knew I couldn't and never would be able to. That the food that others are able to enjoy without a thought would put 10 lbs on me and take a week to work off and always will. I went to a girls night out last night and watched others enjoy the wine and appetizers and I had to pass and stick to water and some turkey breast. I wanted a cookie and a glass of wine so badly and knew both would be a problem.

I am tired of living on such a restrictive diet, I am tired of having to think through every single bite of food that I consider and what it will do to the scale or worrying whether being busy and missing a meal is going to cause a problem. And the reality that those things are never going to go away, no matter how much progress I make is a lot to carry at times.

And in the short term, or medium term which I guess it is now after a year, they are small sacrafices, but my feelings over it this week make me wonder if I have the strength to live like this forever. Have I just gone from one kind of oddity to another?

There is only forwards and backwards....

2010-12-09T23:36:00.001-06:00

I have never believed in fate, that things are pre-set and we are along for the ride. I believe we are each given free will and what choices we make and what direction we go is ours to decide. Those that choose to fight through the hard times make it, those who want to be a victim are just that. We all play a great role in our destiny, there is not someone or some power who has pre-determined how our life will play out like a movie script, we are the directors of our lives not merely actors in life.

But with all that said, I also have a hard time believing that the people who come into our lives are merely a coincidence. Anytime in my life there was a lesson to be learned, or a situation truly beyond me to manage the right person has come into my life. When I was a child and my family was out of control Mr Mossman, one of my teachers, came into my life and provided me a safe person to help me through. When I lost my sight to a rare illness, it just so happened that the best doctor in the country on the disorder was on call at the medical center my local hospital transferred me to. When I was forced to change trainers and there was every reason in the world for me to give up and go back to where I started the right trainer had just been hired at LTF to help me keep moving foward. It's hard to write that off to luck or happenstance. At the end of the day, I do believe in a higher power who helps put us in the right place with the right people at the right time to reach where we need to be. Today was one of those times.

As I said in the last post, I have been going through a rough time with my workouts lately. Wednesday was the hardest training session I have done yet. The physical demands weren't the problem, but my own need to over analyze and over think and beat myself up were the worst I have dealt with on the journey, the panic attacks on the treadmill reached a new level of stupidity and I wasn't coping well with how basic some of what we were doing was, merely to compensate for my body's limits.

I left the session more exhausted than even those first sessions a year ago, not from all I did, but from all the fighting I did to not allow my emotions to be seen and not to cry in the gym (a lost endeavour that I still fought the whole time). I also was questioning where to go from here, for the first time I questioned whether it was time to end my training because of my inability to mentally do what I need to. I wasn't sure when I left yesterday I would be back. Luckily my time to think on the plane yesterday helped me realize quitting wasn't an option, but I still really didn't have my heart in going back on Saturday.

But like so many other times in my life, I met someone today who helped me remember why I started this journey. The right person at the right time for the right lesson. I am in Houston, Texas currently. I am working with a new client I hadn't met before. They are wonderful people who I have really enjoyed being around, but there was one person who really got my attention. She reminded me so much of the old me, her build, her size and her comments about weight. It was clearly obvious that she was bothered by her size and worried how those around her thought of her about it. I felt for her and shared my experience and my blog with her. It was a good interaction and reminded me how far I have come.

But the real "ah ha" moment came after one of our breaks. The office is two stories and the bathrooms were downstairs. While the stairs presented me no real challenge, I saw her struggle to walk up them and the toll it took on her, how out of breath and totally exhausted she was from a flight of stairs and how concerned she was that others not see her that way. It clearly bothered her. My heart broke for her because I know that pain, I lived it for many many years. But beyond my empathy for her pain, it was also the reminder I needed why I couldn't let the current hurdles derail me. I can't let that be me again.

I had convinced myself yesterday that I could live where I am forever, and that maybe that was the right answer. That I have come further than I ever imagined and maybe I should just be happy with that. But today I saw why I have to keep going. I could easily slip back to how my life was before and I don't want that. I didn't come this far to go back to every step being a struggle, to feeling ashamed of my physical limitations and feeling I am less than I know I can be. Today was a good reminder that although I have come this far stopping does not mean I won't go back to where I came from. That I can't stop here and stay where I am, that there is only forwards or backwards and backwards is not an option I can chance!

Fear, Fighting and Frustration...

2010-12-04T22:10:00.000-06:00

This is a blog post I have been trying to write for about a month now. The words just haven't come easy. The very honest emotional entries are always the hardest for me. I write fearing how people will react, how I will be judged. Will people understand or criticize me. I also struggle with wondering if my honesty is going to harm all those who tell me that the blog and my journey inspires and motivates them. It makes it hard to know how ok it is to be honest. I struggle with that in life though not just in the blog.

Worrying that if people know what is really going on with me it will drive them away has always been a challenge for me. That if I show my weak spots will it be used against me or be a reason for losing those that matter to me. The ironic part is that I find it a lot easier to be open and straight forward with those I don't care about. Once I have let someone in enough that they matter to me, deep discussions get harder and more frightening for me. The risk becomes greater. Driving away a stranger is a lot less painful than chancing losing someone you would genuinely miss from your life. There is probably also a level of testing people in that world view also. If a stranger knows how messed up my thinking can be at times (a lot of the times) and still sticks around they are possibly ok to have closer in my circle.

The problem with all this is that once I get to a point where I need help from those around me I don't know how to ask for it, because it may change their view of me. I have fallen victim to that in a big way in the last month or so. I have been struggling and until it blew up in the last week or two I was doing all I could to bury it, especially from those who should know it the most. In this case the trainers I work with.

I am really not sure how to explain this and keep it brief and it still make sense, but simply put, in the last month or so I have become afraid of the treadmill, or more accurately afraid of my body on the treadmill, to the point of panic and freezing.

I have never loved the treadmill, it has always been a challenge for me, both physically and mentally, but I thought I was overcoming it. I had gotten my pace up significantly (to where I could do a 5K, 3.1 miles, in an hour), I was easily able to get through an hour, and to a point I was enjoying it, or at least was enjoying the challenges I had put out for myself with it, both speed and distance. I was doing 5K's, 10K's and was at a pace I was proud of.

But then something changed. I still don't know what started it and only sort of know when, it happened so slowly at first. But I started getting really panicky on the treadmill, my pace dropped, my distances dropped and I started dodging my cardio. And I started to cover it.

I should say falling is one of my biggest fears and that is nothing new. It is something I really struggle with. It is what has kept me from conquering some of things I would like to get past...not being willing to use an escalator, many exercises in the gym, rock wall climbing, skiing. I have struggled with this fear since the nerve damage, because for many years fear of falling was a reality. In the last 15 years I have broke every rib in body (more than once), broken my foot, been bruised from head to toe all from falls. But at this point, my body has moved past it, but my mind hasn't. And recently it has taken over with a vengeance.

It is not just fear of the physical pain of falling, it is also fear of the emotional toll. Of looking like a fool in public. That I will fall, stumble, tumble and that others will see it and think less of me. I spend an exorbinant amount of time worrying about how other people see me physically. If I had my way I would work out in a closet so no one could see me and my inability to do so many simple things.

And even though I was watching all this happen and take me over again, I kept it quiet as long as I could. I hid why I wasn't doing much cardio as often as I should, I told no one about the panic, I started doing cardio where no one would be watching. Luckily, I have a trainer who is a lot smarter than I want him to be sometime. And my story started to fall apart as my 5K we had set as a goal (on Thanksgiving) got closer and past.

I am ashamed to admit this but I need to, I chickened out of both the prep for it (the run club events at LTF) and the 5K itself. I hid not doing the 5K behind it being cold and snowy, about wanting to go out of town and anything else I could, but the reality is, I chickened out. I was worried about not being good enough to do it and how others would view me if I came in last or near last and I let it stop me. And I have beat myself up for that since. And that has only made the panic with the treadmill worse, along with impacting my food struggles.

The final veil came off my secret when I tried to attend a group session as prep for another upcoming 5k. I panicked with a trainer standing a foot away, my times were crap and I was barely able to handle the class. It became pretty hard to deny to myself and any one else there was a problem. My excuses weren't going to cut it any more. And as hard as things have been since then, I am glad the cat is out of the bag. Because I am no longer stuck trying to solve it myself.

I don't understand why I have gone so far backwards, I don't understand how something I had gotten comfortable at is now so overwhelming to me, and truth I am not seeing the path out of it yet. Or maybe it is better put to say I don't like the path out of it.

As I said in my last post, I want to lean on the past and hide from reality. Does it matter I can't go 3.1 mph, I am still so much better than a year ago when I could barely go 1.1 mph. I also want to baby step out of this. I want to take it slow and easy. But as was pointed out to my multiple times this week as Nick and I tried to deal with this, the only way out is walking through the fire. And I can't say I handled that reality well at all.

I think that is why I decided tonight I needed to blog this. I needed to face it head on and not be able to hide. This is definitely one of those posts that I feel should have some great words of wisdom at the end, that I should know what to say about how it is all going to work out and be great, but I am not there yet. I have to walk back into the gym in 2 days and I don't feel a lot more ready to face this than I did when I left Friday, but I know I need to be. That I can't let this win.

I also no I need to learn to get past my inability to reach out for help when things are small problems. I let this get way out of control for fear of my trainers thinking less of me, and in the end I probably let it get so far that that happened anyway around how I have handled working towards the solution.

Snow Angels and Brain Fat

2010-12-04T20:58:00.000-06:00

I had a great day in North Carolina today with my friend Kaye and her family. I came down here to escape the nasty weather at home in Minnesota, but it appears (according to everyone else) I brought it with me. A really freak December snow storm hit NC today and about 2" is anticipated here around Raleigh. So much for being here to enjoy the sun, but it was still a good day with some laughs and even snow angels.

Many times throughout the day today it crossed my mind how different my life is than it was a year ago. While it is something I try not to talk about too often, as it is hard for people to get, I have those thoughts every day. Small simple things amaze me, things other people take for granted, like being able to walk down a flight of steps with a cat carrier in my hand, are a huge deal for me. Walking in the snow without fearing with each step falling is for me as great as winning a nobel prize. There is very little I do day to day that I don't remember how different things are.

Yet for as much as I know I have changed and my body has changed. I still struggle to be ok with where I am now. I had a hard week with that, but really want to focus on today and come back to the other parts later.

I know I have lost an amazing amount of weight in a small time. A friend reminded me tonight that the 124 pounds I have lost since I last saw her is what she weighs. And I am proud of what I have done. And logically I know I have come so far. Yet I realized today, I still am not ok with where I am at even now.

Despite the fact that I am what some would call and acceptable weight (214 on the scale Friday) - I don't btw. I realized it when I was posting some pictures tonight that I still have major issues with how I look and how heavy I am. But I am no longer sure if it is really that I am not ok with what is truly in the picture or just what I see, is this really more about not seeing me as I am now than it is not liking where I am at.

The thoughts all started as I was posting pictures on FB from today. I realized that lately I only post comparison pictures, because when I look at the actual pictures I am so unhappy with what I see. I look at myself and I see fat, I see obese, I see ugly. But I can make myself ok with sharing that if I can say to the world "but I'm not as bad as I used to be". That without realizing it I was rationalizing myself to the world and more so to myself.

I actually thought I had become happier with myself and my body and now I wonder if I have just been tricking myself to a place of comfort, despite being miserably uncomfortable. Every picture I looked at today I found fault with...my chin looks fat, my pants don't fit right, you can see how fat my stomach is in that shirt, I look like a whale laying in the snow. I wasn't willing to share any of them at first. But as soon as I found appropriate "befores" to put them with I was willing to share them, because it made how I look acceptable, better than before.

If I am honest about things that have been going on lately, I have probably been doing this in other areas of my physical life also. I am not ok with how my cardio is going, but I don't need to push harder because it is so much better than a year ago and that should be enough. I am backing off on some of my goals or bailing on them all together, but that is ok because I am doing more than I was before, so that should be acceptable.

But it's not! I need to find that next step. I need to move past where I have come from and get to where I am going. No more comparison photos everytime, only at major milestones. As for the goal and my cardio, more on that in the next post.

Failure or Success.....It's a fine line some days..........

2010-11-26T10:37:00.000-06:00

For as much as I love to shop at times, I do not do crowds. Today is probably my least favorite day of the year to be in stores (followed up closely by the day after Christmas). Which worked out just fine for me this year, as my plan for the day was to stay home and mope. To lick my wounds from what I saw as failure and hide from the world.

As tough as other peoeple think I am on them, the reality is that I am never harder on anyone else than I am on myself. I am horrible at "good enough is good enough" and unless I make my mark or exceed it, I have a hard time seeing any good in what I have done. This is not a mindset I recommend, I logically know it prevents me from seeing a lot of the great in things I accomplish. But it is how I was raised, a B+ was failure for not being an A, coming in second was always followed by the question of why didn't I come in first, second was as bad as last and nything aless than the best was chastized as not applying myself. I have never moved past my mother's admonishments and still do the same to myself. Anything less than ultimate success is complete failure.

And that is how I came into today, seeing complete failure. This is a day I have had on the calendar for a year.....I had to weigh 211 by today to succeed, 100 lbs less than where I was a year ago when I started training. I didn't make it. At my last weigh in, earlier this week, I was 220 lbs. Nine pounds from success, in my book....failure. Yes I know that is stupid, I have lost 91 lbs in a year (for a total of 120 overall...I was at the dr this week and her scale said 218, which is also where the original 338 number in 5/09 was measured). But in my world that is all irrelevant. I missed the goal. I have beat myself up for a week now since it became obvious it wasn't going to happen. And if I am honest I gave up a week ago when I realized it wasnt going to happen. I let myself eat things in the last week I never would have, I blew off my cardio, I just gave up. If I wasn't going to succeed at the goal than so what, why try. Anything less than the goal is irrelevant.

But this morning I was reminded there is a very thin line between success and failure and a bigger picture that has to be remembered. And for me sometimes that remembering requires a slap in the face *smile*.

Despite my total adversion to Black Friday shopping I saw one sale I wanted to hit, Old Navy had PJ bottoms on sale for $5. These are my newest addiction. Considering I am always cold and can no longer wear shorts at home all winter like I did in the past, flannel PJ bottoms are my new thing. And not only are they warm....they are CUTE (oh yeah and the right ones make your butt look good too *grin*). And since the Old Navy here in Eagan is somewhat by itself I figured the crowds would be manageable. So I went.

For the record, Old Navy is not a store I have shopped in before. It is a store I have watched others shop in, but it has never been a great place for someone obese. The clothes are cut slim and they do very limited in bigger sizes. So I have to admit when I walked in my "fat brain" was in control. I expected to find nothing that would fit. In a way I was right, most of the styles I wanted I couldn't buy, but that wasn't because I was too big, the pants were!!!!!

They had more XL's than anything and they were too big on me *grin*. I got to do something I have never had to do, ask a sales person to check another store for smaller sizes! I am sure he wondered why I was happy dancing about having to ask that, but it was one my coolest shopping moments yet...things in Old Navy were too big *giggle*.

In the end I was able to track down and purchase a bunch of PJ bottoms and also some long sleeve tees, all at amazing prices (I spent $65 and saved over $120). I bought things that were Medium's and Large's....a year ago if they had had my sizes they were have been 3x and 4x.

But I found a lot more than just warm clothes, I found that reminder I needed. That while I didn't make the number that was arbitrarily set (had I started a week earlier last year I would have probably been the 320 and would be 100 lbs lighter now) but I have come so much further than I ever dared to dream I would, or that anyone around me ever dreamed I would. I don't think a year ago anyone who knew me would have even bet even a $1 I would be 91 lbs lighter today than I was then, I know I wouldn't have.

Does this mean I am over my goal issues, heck no. I am already refocused. My next goal is New Year's Eve and to be 199. If anything missing today's goal has me even more laser focused on meeting that one. I am who I am, I can't change that, this is what drives me. But I am glad the world steps in periodically to remind me to stop and look at what I have done, even if it doesn't meet my standards.

Thank you again to EVERYONE who has supported me this year...friends, family, trainers, staff at the LTF Eagan, Tony, my facebook friends, those of you who read the blog. This has truly been possible because of all the support, love and understanding you shown me, for all the times you guys put me back together when I came unhinged and all the times you got me restarted when I got stuck. No one succeeds or fails alone. Thank you for helping me be so successful this year.

The Best Black Friday Deal Ever....25% Off that Changed My Life....Part 2....

2010-11-25T06:48:00.002-06:00

In the last year for what I have spent on training I could have bought a new car or a time share in Tel Aviv, but if I had it to do over again I would do things exactly as I have. Working with a trainer has been the best time and money investment I ever could have made. Since my first training session I have lost approximately 92 lbs, I went from not being able to walk up a flight of stairs to being able to leg press 400 lbs and I have a body I trust and am proud of. You can't make a better investment than that!

Before I step forward to year 2 I needed to stop and thank the trainers who crossed my path this year. Considering I am usually growling at them I thought they deserved to hear something nice for once...did I mention I am not the easiest client in the world, I am stubborn and want it my way once in a while*grin*.

In the last 12 months I have primarily had two main trainers and two backup/support trainers. Additionally I have worked with trainers who provided nutritional coaching and metabolic testing. I also have had those from the PT department whose impact was nothing more than cheerleader and support. But whatever role they were filling I have been helped by some great people!

Primary Trainers

Gui...

As most of you know, I started out this journey with Gui and worked with him from November 2009-July 2010. Gui's best quality, at least where I was concerned, is his ability to make people believe they can do what they don't believe they can. From my first meeting with Gui he never used the word "maybe". It was also the sense that everything was accomplish able. He made me believe I could lose the weight long before I believed it, he made me believe the stairs could be conquered long before I was even willing to try. He was willing to figure out the baby steps needed, such as starting our training in the pool before coming up to the gym, that both my body and more importantly my mind needed to reach for greater goals I couldn't even see yet.

Gui challenged me many many times that he felt I could have been as successful with any trainer as I was with him, but I still to this day doubt that. Not because other trainers didn't have the skill set he has, many do, but because he was able to get me to believe in a miracle I couldn't do more than dream about at that moment, and that is a unique ability. Other trainers might have been successful helping me once I was moving, but he was able to get me moving at a time in my life when I am not sure others could have.

It's no secret that Gui and I have had our rough moments (just read back in the blog). In some ways we were too much alike, in other ways majorly different. But no matter where things went and how they ended, I will never be able to thank you enough Gui. You were the person who helped me start to change my life, after 40 years of others not even wanting to try. You will ALWAYS hold a place in my heart for that.

Nick...

Nick is my current trainer, and for this point in the journey a perfect fit. Nick is stubborn and pushy and demanding and that is EXACTLY what I love about him. He keeps me from falling fate to my own worst enemy...myself. He takes no crap, no excuses and keeps me on track, but at the same time does it in a really supportive and understanding and positive way and always with a smile on his face.

Nick has also filled a gap that I didn't quite value until I started looking for a new trainer. While the first stage of my journey was about getting moving, and Gui did that well, this stage has been about finding new challenges and keeping moving. Nick works well with the goal driven side of me. Helping me set new limits just outside my reach and helping me get to them and most importantly celebrating with me when I get there. He gets as excited about my accomplishments as I do, and that is really energizing for me.

Nick, you took me on at a stage in my training that you could have easily run in the other direction (most would have and I am sure some have told you you should have). Despite my best efforts to show you all my flaws and to convince you I was a waste of time and energy you took on the challenge and I will always be grateful for that. You have helped me continue to be successful at at time when I could have found every excuse possible to fail and to retreat back to where I was a year ago. Your patience through the transition, when I know I was less than thrilling to work with, was appreciated more than I ever said. I am genuinely looking forward to working with you going forward and reaching the goals we have talked about and others I am sure we will dream up. You're not so bad for a "12 year old" *grin*.

Support Trainers

Todd...

Todd has been a god send to me in a couple ways. Todd not only filled in when I was trainerless, but also has become my metabolic specialist and also my go-to trainer when Nick is away or my schedule makes it impossible to get a session in during the week. But beyond just being a trainer. Todd has become a dear friend, always there to listen and support me and let me vent. Todd has a heart as tall as he is. Todd's greatest claim to fame in my journey, standing beside me at Twins Stadium the night I was featured by Lifetime. Him standing up and volunteering to make sure I wasn't there alone may still be the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. I was a complete stranger to him at that point, yet he could see how bad I was hurting and he jumped in to rescue me.

Todd, you will always be dear to me and I will never be able to thank you enough for your support when I was ready to give it all up.

Tiffany...

I have only done two sessions with Tiffany (when Gui was on vacation), and two of her group events (aka Sin Bin, which is now Sunday Funday's) but as the Department head at Eagan Tiffany has still been very involved and always been a great source of ideas and information for me. However, Tiff is much more than that to me, and I am not sure knows this part. I see Tiffany as the girl I want to be, my role model if you will. Tiffany is this amazing balance of the strength to outlift and out muscle any guy in the gym, yet being able to do it in killer 5" heels. She is smart, talented, sharp witted and just has this amazing ability to manage it all, whether that is kicking a 400 lb man into shape in the gym or strutting her stuff in a figure competition, she is the complete package. BTW if Tiffany looks familiar to anyone it is because she was also made famous last year for her work with O'Neil Hampton on the Biggest Loser

Tiffany, thank you for showing me that it is possible to be a girl and yet be strong and able to keep up with the boys. Thanks for being excited about my transformation and always there to celebrate new shoes and nails. You are a great role model for those of us trying to figure out how to show the world both sides of us.

I had originally planned to stop there, but as I was writing one other trainer kept coming to mind. I would be remiss if I didn't include Rachael.

Rachael...

I have never actually gotten to work with Rachael, but she has to be thanked as one of my biggest cheerleaders in the PT department, as she pointed out yesterday, even before I wanted her to be. I first remember Rachael in the ladies locker room stopping me and telling me what a great job I was doing. I had no clue who she was at that point and had to ask Gui who she was and how she knew about me. Her first memory of me is me snapping at her when she tried to cheer me on while I was training (don't worry Rach I did the same to my friends who tried that too *smile*). Since then Rachael has always been there it seems to provide compliments and support and just remind me how far I have come. Thanks for being that little voice that reminds me to look at how far I have come, not just how far I have to go.

I am sure there are others I should be thanking, so to the entire PT department at LTF Eagan, THANK YOU. Sorry for all the times I made you lives difficult without meaning to. You guys change lives every day and hope you know what an amazing service you are providing. Thanks for keeping me moving forward through all my unique needs and challenges.

Thanks for helping me be 1/3 the person I was a year ago!

The Best Black Friday Deal Ever....25% Off that Changed My Life....Part 1....

2010-11-24T08:47:00.002-06:00

When I joined LTF a year ago working with a trainer was the last thing I was even considering. In my mind, weight training (more accurately known as resistance training) was something for muscle bound jocks looking to get all pumped up, not for obese women looking to shed a few pounds. And trainers were for those looking to compete and the celebrities in California. It was not even something on my radar. But when the chance to try it at 25% off was made (my free trainer into session was on Black Friday 2009) I took the leap, I am a sucker for a good sale....

Fast forward one year, I have done probably close to 150 training sessions with a personal trainer in the last 12 months and consider it the best time and money I have spent in my lifetime. When my schedule prevents these sessions I get cranky and difficult to be around (although my trainer might question how that is any different than my mood during the sessions *smile*).

These 2-3 hours a week are the hardest, most challenging things I do, but it is the time I look forward to the most. While I love pushing my brain to do more, it is no where near as fulfilling as pushing my body to its brink. I am particularly fond of the heavy weight portion of our training. There is NO greater feeling than realizing you are lifting, pressing or squatting more than your own body weight! Endurance trainer (lighter weight for more reps) is still a struggle for me to stay focused during, it doesn't provide me the same goal feedback that the heavy weights does and that same type of physical sensation. But it is a neccesary evil so I get through it.

There is a lot to the practical side of working with a trainer and doing weight resistance training, lifting weights, nutrition, cardio, but as one of my trainers said to me once, "if the relationship isnt there the rest is not going to work". This is the part that is really hard to make others understand, sometimes even for the trainers themselves.

Trainers have two very different kinds of clients, those just looking to get fit, and those undertaking major life altering changes. What I am going to say is about that second group, including myself. I have never been in the first group, and neither of have any of my multiple friends who are working with trainers, so I can only write about what I know.

As I said in the beginning, I had NO intention of working with a trainer, and even after I started the last thing I was looking for was to build any kind of friendship or relationship with my trainer. I was there for a purpose, to lose weight, not to bond or share anything about my life. Particularly with my current trainer, I fought NOT to let that happen. But I am slowly coming to see that is a battle that can't be won. That trust is integral to the journey and not a choice.

The reality is working with a trainer is not just purchasing a service an hour at a time, like having someone mow your lawn or paint your house. There is too much of your personal life that impacts your weight and your physical journey for the person who is guiding you on that journey to not become part of your trusted inner circle. From the start a trainer sees you at your most vulnerable moments...when you are fighting ever fear, every weakness, every emotion about your inadequacies that you hide from the world on a daily basis, they all come spilling out on the gym floor, sometimes in an uncontrollable flood. If the journey is going to be successful it is as much about facing your insides as it is changing your outside, sometimes more so, and that part has to be exposed and shared as much as your weight, height and BMI. The flaws in our bodies start in our minds and our hearts and unfortunately that is where you often have to conquer them too, and that means letting your trainer in to see them and to help with them as much as allowing them to help with lifting a weight.

This is part of it all I have come to accept, but have to admit I don't like, somedays I truly hate it. Because as I have learned this year, letting a trainer in can be a huge risk for a possible short term relationship. And for me at least, once I have let someone in that far into my greatest secrets and thoughts I don't know how to not become attached. Much like soldiers who have faced the enemy together are bonded forever, this is how the relationship with the trainer becomes, at least from the client's side. Which is a unique challenge because the down side to the training community is that there is a HUGE percentage of turn over. Trainers move job to job at a very high rate, which means clients are also changing trainers often.

Over the last year I have gone through a trainer change, I currently have three friends going through transitioning to a new trainer (two of whom are on their second transition) and have three who have made the transition and are settled in.

Losing a trainer you like and trust, especially the first time, is a blow I am not sure I can put into words. I have cried over it, I have watched friends cry over it, I am currently watching friends cry over it, we have talked about it at length, and I am still not sure it can be described to someone who hasn't experienced it without it sounding weird, obsessed, possessive and even stalkerish, but it is none of those.

Here is the reality, for most of us making a life changing journey from being obese we have 1) trusted very few people in our lives, 2) we are used to being judged and put down for who and how we are and 3) we have created a limited inner circle in our lives as a protective measure. So when you start working with someone who appears to accept you, flaws and all, who has been instrumental in helping you improve a situation you thought would never change and who you haven entrusted to see your darkest secrets the thought of having them gone again is scary, lonely and unsettling. It has NOTHING to do with being weak, emotional or dependent, it is true human nature. Each of my friends who has gone through it has been very different personality types, yet we have all had the same general reaction. This is a major loss and it requires grieving! And that grieving is also made worse by an immense fear that even though we have done all the work to be successful, that without that specific guide the success will end or even be erased. Rational or not (as I have come to know it's probably not, as I have been very successful with my new trainer) it is a fear we have all faced.

The good news, after this post that got a lot more serious than I ever expected when I started writing it, is that there are lots of great trainers out there. And that is where part 2 is going to go, I promise a much happier post...about the trainers who have touched my life this year and my thank you to them!

Happy 1st Birthday to me.....pardon the fact that there is no cake being served....

2010-11-18T21:45:00.001-06:00

From: Lance Vugteveen
To: pamingram@aol.com
Sent: Thu, Nov 19, 2009 12:32 pm
Subject: Life Time Fitness

Hi Pamela-
My name is Lance Vugteveen and I am a member advisor over here at the Eagan Life Time. Just wanted to email you and remind you of our appointment tonight at 6pm. I will be helping you set-up your 7-day trial pass and showing you around the club as well. Feel free and email me back or call me if you are unable to make it. Look forward to showing you our club here.

Thanks,
Lance Vugteveen
Member Advisor
Life Time Fitness Eagan

Very few people in the world get to celebrate their birthday more than once a year. I however now get to have two birthdays....the day I was born (in April) and the day I walked into Lifetime Fitness and got to start my life over, 11/19/09. And truth be told, I only acknowledge the first one under duress, but the second one I would willing to sky write about if I could.

The funny part, is that when I got the email above a year ago I was dead set against joining LTF. Yes I had registered for the free one week trial pass, but had made it very clear in my registration I had no interested in hearing a sales pitch for membership and was NOT going to spend a penny at that point.

While I was ready to make a change in my life, I was very jaded by previous experiences with health clubs such as Bally's and their high pressure, used car salesman tactics. I walked into my meeting with Lance as cold to the idea of joining a health club as one could be. But there was something about Eagan that told me from the minute I walked in and was greeted by the folks at the front desk that this was a place where a miracle could happen for me.

Long story short, at the end of the tour I was ready to sign up, even though Lance's boss had told him not to even try to talk prices with me. We had a good laugh about that this week.

In the last year I have been to many LTF clubs. With all my travels I am able to experience clubs in many states and at many of the different levels within the LTF family (including recently an Onyx club, the highest level in the company). And no where have I been have I found that warmth and support that immediately drew me in at Eagan and has kept me there for a year.

It would be really easy just to thank the Personal Training department because that is where so much of my success in the last year was centered. But the reality is that I feel a debt of gratitude to everyone at Eagan (those currently there and those that were part of my journey and have since moved on). They have ALL been a part of my success, of keeping me going when I was ready to quit and just making me feel so cared about. From the folks at the front desk who are never without a smile and who refuse to let you walk out with telling you to have a good day, to the ladies in the cafe who always have such a great attitude and are so positive, to the staff at the towel desk who I don't think I have ever walked by without them saying hello and asking how I was (despite some days me being super grumpy and trying to talk to no one), to the member advisers who are always there when needed, to the woman who cleans the ladies locker room who is just the most pleasant person every single time you see her, to Tony, the General Manager who some how keeps the place running, immaculate and head and shoulders above other clubs in the LTF chain.

Tony is an interesting person and someone I wish I could be more like, both personally and as a leader. For being the GM and having every reason to be heads down in his office every day, Tony is incredibly hands on. More times than I can count I have seen him folding towels, emptying garbages, scanning cards at the front desk, to the point it took me a long long time to realize he was the GM and not part of the maintenance staff *smile*. No one loves the Eagan club more than Tony and that shows in everything at the club. He is the first manager, of any business I have met, who gets annoyed if his members and employees don't come complain to him when something is wrong. He is a great source of advice and one of the most down to earth people I have ever met.

Beyond the staff at Eagan, Eagan has given me another gift. The many friends I have made with members at the club, some of my dearest friendships started in my EAT class or through others I met working out. My greatest accomplishment this year, completed the Indoor Tri was with classmates I will never forget.

My relationships at the Eagan club have also helped me to meet others within the LTF family at other clubs, such as Todd, my metabolic specialist (and my once in a while trainer *smile*) who have also helped me more than I can express.

I have learned a lot more in the last year than I ever expected, when I started this journey I thought it was about numbers on a scale. Not about life, growth and finding out you are a totally different person than you knew yourself as. One of the biggest lessons I have learned is that life is a team sport and you can't succeed alone. Yes I have had to do all the work in the last year, no one ate for me, no one did any of those damn lunges for me (although I am still looking for volunteers on this one!), no one cried all the tears for me. But for as hard as the work I had to do on my part was, I was able to do it because of the many many people there to catch me when I fell, to cheer me on when I succeeded, to hold me up when I faltered and to kick me in the butt when I tried to quit (over and over again). Some I knew were watching, but some only recently did I realize had been cheering me on all along.

This journey has not gotten easier as the year went on, like I expected it would. In many ways the last 4 months have been the most challenging. But no matter how hard the road has gotten, I have had one of the most amazing support systems anyone could ask for. And so much of that is centered around LTF Eagan.

Thank you will never be enough to tell all of you what you mean to me or how much you have helped me change my life in the last year. I only hope I have made you proud and earned all you have given me.

All my love to EVERYONE who has supported me this year! Inside of LTF and out.

Ok enough gush and celebration, there is still more work to be done, are we all ready to take on year 2?

Failure is not an option....it's a reality......

2010-11-18T11:44:00.001-06:00

This is one of those times when I am feeling stuck between posting, being honest, sticking to the pledge I made when I started this blog - to tell it as it is, good bad and ugly, or to just shut up and hide. I am going to make an attempt at the first, because those of you reading this deserve truth and hopefully it will prevent someone else from making my same mistakes.

I screwed up big time and in the end it is costing me more than I ever imagined. The worst part is not only was I warned over and over and was too stubborn to listen but probably deep in my heart I knew what I was doing was wrong and dangerous, but it didn't matter. All that mattered was my goal.

It's no secret to anyone who knows me that once I set out on a mission there is little if anything that is going to stop me. As a friend put it when she selected my hebrew name in the 90's, Pam does not know how to do anything less than full out. BTW the name she chose was Lehava Rut (which translates in slang to "Stubborn Friend"). I have been on a mission for the past 6 weeks, logic be damned.

A year ago tomorrow I joined LTF, 51 weeks ago Saturday I started training with Gui. The first thing we did in that meeting was set out goals. I wanted to lose 150 lbs in a year, he scaled it back and told me 100 lbs in a year and we would talk about the rest after that. When we wrote it down I never believed it would even be something that I could dream of being possible, but as the year has gone on, it seemed become more and more doable. Especially since the reality is if we count the weight I lost before starting at LTF I am already over 100 lbs.

If I am honest when I was forced to change trainers in August I believed the goal was lost. I gave up. I believed that I had to have Gui to accomplish what I had set out to, it was part of why accepting him moving on was such a blow at first. It wasn't just the thought of losing my trainer, but also of losing my chance at my goal.

Luckily Nick, my current trainer, and Todd, my metabolic specialist, were as determined as I was that the goal become about me and not about Gui or anyone else and if anything I got to a place in the last 6-8 weeks where I believed more than ever that I could do it. Or maybe the wording should be less about believing I could it and more about I became fixated on doing it. I was determined that I was going to prove to myself and to the world that I could be successful...regardless. This is where the problem began.

The goal became more important to me than being smart or being healthy. And for someone with an eating disorder this is a dangerous slope. Thin, or thinner at all cost is pretty much the definition of an ED. But I think I hid that reality from myself. I was able to kid myself into believing that I was doing healthy things that were working, and was able to tune out the voices of concern around me, particularly my trainer's. I was eating, I was getting the right number of calories, so how could it be wrong.

I wont dive into the gory details of what I have been doing, but in short 1) I have been eating essentially the same 4 or 5 foods a day, every day for weeks and 2) I have been getting the lion share of my calories from protein shakes. The second is really the problem.

While doing this has been incredibly successful from a weight loss point of view (about 22 lbs in a month), what I wasnt hearing or thinking about was that I was teaching my body not to deal with solid foods. And that once I reintroduced them there were going to be issues. When I finally agreed to go back to solid food this week, I gained 4 lbs in a day and my digestive system totally freaked. Both of which sent me into a total panic (the weight more than the stomach issues of course). And led to a conversation with my trainer where the realities of what I have done and that I am definitely going to re-gain some weight fixing it, were hammered into my head.

I dont like it, I am not ok with it. And while logically I know it is right, and know this is incredibly dumb to say, feel and think, there is a huge part of me that doesn't want to care about the doing it right side and still wants to meet my goal and deal with reality later. But I know that isnt the right answer.

The reality is in the end, I lost track of one of the other goals Gui and I set down on day one, this is about a HEALTHY lifestyle change, not about fast weight loss, gimmicks and quick fixes. Now I just have to wrap my brain about which goal is more important, long term. I know the answer logically, I just have to get my heart to the same place.

Walking Away...

2010-11-15T07:48:00.000-06:00

To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform. - Theodore H. White

I feel like I have spent most of my life torn in two or three, somewhere between who I am, who I want to be and who the world thinks I am. And I am not sure I have ever once gotten to comfortable with the mix or getting it right.

It goes back as far as I can remember, growing up in a home where my father vehemently believed in being who you are and what you are and let the world deal with it, yet for the most part he was alone and unhappy and had many many people walk out of his life over the years, including his own children from a previous marriage. My mother on the other hand wanted nothing more than to be loved, so she was always who she thought people wanted to her to be and she bounced from role to role, whether it was being married to someone she didn't love, being a parent even though she often resented us and told us growing up we kept us stuck in her marriage, or in jobs and social obligations she found burdensome. She to this day tries to be what the world thinks she should be and never herself, hoping to find love and satisfaction she has never reached.

I look at myself and know I got the worst of both!

I tend to believe much like my father. I am who I am, love me or leave me, on the outside at least. It is definitely how people perceive me. If you were to ask many people who know me they genuinely believe I think I am always right, that I am arrogant, that I am pushy and it has to be my way or not at all. And some of that perception I am ok with. I don't believe you should be fake or someone else just to be loved or accepted or wanted. I also know I use that perception people have about me as a protective mechanism, if people are willing to fight through who they think I am to find out who I really am then they are worth having around me, but if not then I have prevented a lot of hurt in the end, usually.

Yet the truth, inside I am probably more like my mother than I would like to admit to. While I don't bend like she does to be who people want me to be, I do wrestle with all her pain about fear of being abandoned, about wanting to be someone lovable and worth being around and not really feeling like I am worthy of that as I am.

I can look back at different times in my life and can see each part as owning one of these two personality sets. In high school and college, more my mother, wanting to fit in. My adult life up until the last year, mostly my father. Being who I am and accepting whatever that means, even if that meant going the world alone and being ok with that.

In this last year, particularly the last four months, it all just seems like a mish-mash and I don't know who or what I am anymore. In twelve months I have so radically changed on the inside and out and am still trying to figure it all out and just feel some days like retreating back to that safe fat girl who I understood and knew how to live with. It felt so much safer, so much less painful, so much less risk, so fewer tears. It was also less fun, less happy and a lot more existing than living. But I am not sure that happiness is worth the pain it chances, particularly abandonment.

I used to know what to believe from the people around me, because they knew who I was (as did I) and accepted me for who I was or they weren't part of my life. If they said something I knew clear as black and white whether to trust it or not. I didn't spend my life living in fear like I do now, having to question every one's sincerity, waiting for the lies and pretty words to unravel and to be left alone again. I don't expect everyone to love me, or even like me, but I also can't spend my life guessing who in my inner circle is being real with me and who isn't, its too hard and it is making it impossible to figure out who I am.

Twice now in under six months I have faced situations where people (professionals) who I really thought were in my corner have decided I wasn't worth the effort I require, that I am too difficult to deal with, too opinionated, too emotional and have walked away. Part of me would like to believe like my father, if they weren't willing to see who I really am then screw them, but that isn't how I feel. I feel much more like my mother. Hurt, sad, upset, angry at myself for the things I did that made them not want to be part of my life. And total truth I am not sure I can do this a third time.

I apologize to the world for not being able to be who the heck you want me to be right now, because to be quite honest, at this point I don't even know who that is.

Pretty Woman Moment....

2010-11-14T21:12:00.002-06:00

Every girl who grew up in the 80's can tell you the scene they remember most from Pretty Woman. Whether it was the bubble bath, the balcony or Richard Gere climbing the fire escape...we all have at least one moment in the movie that stuck with us. It's part of our culture.

For me it was the shopping scene, where Vivian (Julia Robert's character) is sent out to buy a dress for dinner. Because she was not dressed to the nines and didnt fit the Beverly Hills mold she was rudely told there was nothing for her in the store and to go away.

I have spent most of my life living that scene...being stared at by sales people who know just as well as I that I couldn't possibly fit in anything in their store, or that I was the fat friend just tagging along and holding the bags. It didn't matter if it was jeans or dresses my shopping was limited to plus size stores and limited selections. The worst was definitely formal wear.

In my entire life I have owned exactly two formal dresses...the first was my prom gown (which I reused for a cruise a couple years later), the second was for a conference (the illustrious purple "foo foo" dress). I hated them both. Not because they were all that bad, but because they were what I had to get. I had very few choices because of my size. And the choices were frumpy, boring and just unappealing.

Twendy four years later I still remember the pain of shopping for my junior prom. While my friends were able to shop at great stores, buy stylish dresses and enjoy the experience I got to pick from about 3 dresses shoved in the back of a bridal shop because that was all they had that would fit. The night of my prom I felt ugly and out of place, like a big blue parade float.

Even though I know I am at a very different place in my life and with my body these days, I can't say I have actually put all those old feelings very behind me. When I learned my brother was having a formal New Year's Eve party and agreed to go, those same old fears came rushing back. Could I find something acceptable to wear? How long would it take? Would ever store I walked into just be a dream land for me, looking but not being able to try on and scowled at by salespeople? For as much as I logically knew I would have many more options this time, it was still a hard decision to tell him yes I would come before I had a dress. But I forced myself to do it anyway.

I accepted the invitation on Friday, but immediately started my shopping today, afraid how long it would take to find anything I could actually consider. I already had back up plans in the works such as trips to NYC to shop or altering the "foo foo dress". I wasn't ready to believe this could be any different than it had been before.

And my confidence wasn't bouyed any when our first stop was a vintage clothing store where the only thing I liked was a size 8. Truth, I was ready to pack it in at the point. But luckily I had two friends on the hunt with me today and quitting was no where near as easy as it would have been alone, so off to the Mall of America we headed.

The first store was a bit of a bust, btw when did Jessica McClintock clothing become soooo...ummmm....bold. I remember Gunny Sack dresses and holly hobby patterns, not any more....Jessica is all grown up! Wow!

But even in this teeny bopper land of bright colors and way too short skirts the salesperson was great. She didn't give me the "get out" scowl and tried to help. She even sent us off with ideas for other stores in the mall. It was a really good boost to my ego and made me believe I stood a chance this time.

Then the fun started. We found the newest formal dresswear store in the mall and I was ESTATIC when I realized they had real people sizes. Finally the scene changed and I got to have the other Julia Roberts moment, trying on goreous dress after gorgeous dress. Not one of them couldn't be found in my size, and they all looked amazing. They were trendy, sexy, fun and NORMAL. No old lady dresses, no smocks, just really stylish beautiful dresses. And the trend continued store after store. There was nothing I picked up and wanted to try on that I couldn't, there was nothing I had to rule out because of my size.

This experience could not have been more of a lifetime apart from my previous gown shopping experiences. I truly came away from today feeling so proud of myself, my body and everything I have accomplished. It was amazing to be normal, to have choices and to know that I finally fit in. That me being in those stores didn't turn heads, except for how great I looked in the dresses I was showing off.

While I am sure the question you are waiting for is if I found my happy ending like Vivian.... did I find my dress? That is an answer I am not ready to reveal yet. A girl has to keep some secrets to herself (and her shopping companions). Hang around til New Year's Eve and I'll finish the story *smile*

Technicolor Meltdown

2010-11-12T17:03:00.000-06:00

There are lots of qualities about myself I am proud of. I am very smart, I am funny, I am sharp witted (or sarcastic depending on your point of view) and I am great a my job. I can see solutions that others miss, I can think outside the box and I am incredibly inventive. I am also loyal, dedicated and an incredibly hard worker. I would give my life for those I care about and never give up without a fight. I have a lot of strengths, many of which I am only slowly growing to truly appreciate.

But I have to admit one of my least redeeming qualities is how black and white, hot and cold, I seem to run about things. I am 100% or I am 0%, I am all in or not at all, I have incredible self control and discipline, until I don’t and then it goes terribly bad.

This last one is probably the hardest with food and my eating issues. I have great control. I can stop myself from eating EVERYTHING. It is how I ended up, I believe, being anorexic. I can easily control my food intake to the point of over control, where I eat nothing. For the last 6 or so weeks I have lived on the same foods every single day without a problem (protein shakes, pecans, almond butter and one small serving of fish, chicken or turkey a day). Not a problem. I can be that controlled. It is not hard for me. But once I cracked that, I am in free fall, which is where I am right now.

The last two weeks have been really hard for me schedule wise. I have done two straight weeks of travel (home for about 17 hours in between one week and the other). While from a work perspective that is nothing for me, from a food and workout point of view this is a major undertaking. Part of being regimented is being on a schedule, able to control my life and my surroundings, but doing this level of travel that all fell apart.

I thought I had put safe guards in place. The GM at my local LTF went out of his way to get me a pass to a higher level club in NJ (thanks Tony), my trainer worked up workout guidelines for me to follow (thanks Nick) and I even put a workout with another trainer in that 17 hours I was home (thanks Todd) so that I wasn’t going as long without working out. Nick and I had talked about food, I packed my protein powder and almond milk. But despite that all I knew it was going to be hard, and it was.

I did ok the first week, but the second week has not ended well. I am currently on my flight home and today already I have had a “bourbon breeze” (bourbon, cranapple juice and orange juice), sun chips, 4 reeses peanut butter cups and a gingerale. This is on top of the bagel and cream cheese at my client this morning. And honestly, I am pondering a Big Mac on the way home. The wheels have completely fallen off. And I knew it was coming is the sad part, yet I still couldn’t stop it. How did I know it was coming? Because yesterday I had no where near the calories I was supposed to. When I did eat I had to force myself. I knew I had swung back over to the anorexic side yesterday, and the rebound of that is usually the binge side. Again 0 to 100! And sadly the hard part of the overeating side is that it is not usually a fast repair. It usually sets off a long run of days of eating like crap, which then swings back to not wanting to eat anything because of how many calories I have put on while eating all the garbage.

It frustrates me completely that I can sit here and logically say I know this is all wrong, that I shouldn’t be doing it but I say that with a gingerale in my hand and thinking about what I can eat next. I hate this. I hate all my eating issues. There is not a lot in my life I would change or say I regret, I believe our struggles make us who we are. But I have to admit if given one wish it would be to have a normal, sane, relationship with food, to be able to erase all the things from my childhood, all the being teased, all the slams by my father over my weight, all the pain of growing up fat, so that I hadn’t developed this messed up mindset around eating. It is the one challenge in my life that my stubbornness and tenacity don’t seem able to just overcome.

I have done so well for the last 6 weeks or so, I have easily eaten the calories I needed to, I stayed away from foods I shouldn’t, I managed to lose 22 lbs in a month. I have been perfect. And I know before I even get near the scale tonight that I have thrown all that away this week. That I am probably 10 lbs up and more importantly I am back to struggling with not wanting to eat, or eating completely out of control. It’s horrible because I know what I need more than anything is to go workout tonight, to tell my trainer how far off track I am (he pretty much knows from conversations earlier in the week, but not about the binges today yet) and that I need to be in the gym tonight, have a workout and get my head on straight. But at the same time, it is the last thing in the world I want to do or face. I want to go home at this moment, curl up on the couch and just hide from the world and myself.

People who have never faced an eating disorder are probably reading this thinking “well just get back on track” and I wish it worked like that. Food is so much harder than that when your brain is warped about this stuff, logic and behavior become a world apart. I know I have days or weeks ahead of me to get back to where I was before this week, and sadly I know that even when I get back it will be the point of over control again, because I can’t seem to be anywhere in between no matter how hard I try.

Sweating for the Small Stuff....

2010-11-02T14:20:00.001-05:00

"Only dead fish go with the flow..." (stolen from a friend's FB status today)

Eleven months and 17 days ago I walked into Lifetime Fitness Eagan a very broken person. I didn't believe there was hope for me physically or emotionally at that point, and as I have said before in the blog. I had resolved to let obesity kill me. I saw this all as a last ditch option.

Since that day I have lost 87 lbs (for a total of 116 lbs, as I had dropped some before going to LTF by giving up soda), I have gone from existing to living, my world has changed completely, and, as one of the trainers said today, I have gone from being a boy to a girl *grin* (albeit a girl with a gun *smile*).

And most importantly I have a grasp on the future too. Which when you are as obese is one of the biggest things you sacrifice. You stop dreaming because it is too hard to see the path. You accept where you are and live with the anticipation of it getting worse not better. Hope becomes the enemy!

There is no way a year ago I could have imagined telling my trainer I wanted to start jogging again, or that I would be genuinely excited that I am about to walk a 5k (and have hope that by next year at this time I will be jogging or running in that same 5k) and would be told that those things are very doable.

But for as much as has changed and as positive as it all looks right now, sometimes life comes back and reminds me how close to me that previous life is. As great as the conversation was today with my trainer, with figuring out how to conquer escalators (my last remaining travel foe) and how to get me jogging and how to reach my next weight goals, it all closed in around me in one moment, in one scene.

I had gone to get a towel and spotted one of the clubs newer members, who is just starting their journey, and watched him stand and wait for the elevator to leave the workout area. In that flash I was back those 12 months and it was me standing there waiting. I knew what he was feeling and my heart broke for him. I remember that major let down moment every time I left working with the trainer and being so excited about whatever I had accomplished and how fast reality would slap me in the face when I couldn't manage to leave via the stairs. How many times in that moment I questioned if I was kidding myself that I could really accomplish anything through training and a lifestyle change. If it was all just a cruel joke I wasn't in on.

It wasn't but it still amazes me when I see people I haven't seen in a while and they are shocked at how I have changed. Because what very few people realize is that no one is more shocked than me, each and ever day.

For all the hard work and tears and torment I have gone through to get here, I still am not sure it has sunk in that I have really accomplished what I have. I still don't think I truly "get it" how far I have come and even more so how much of the world is open to me now that wasn't before.

It just doesn't logically seem possible to me that in 11 months life could turn around so fast, and my brain hasn't caught up to it yet. I still have to stop myself from saying "No" when people ask me to do something because I still think about things in terms of the limitations I had before, I still have to get on that scale way too often to reassure myself that I don't weigh 300 lbs, I still sit and marvel at my body like a baby would when I notice the muscles on my legs or a change in my stomach.

I was putting up pictures today on the previous post and was so frustrated because I couldn't find one of me in the raft. And then I realized, I had looked at the picture with me in it at least a dozen times flipping through them. I just didn't recognize me. I saw staring back at me a normal sized person and just couldn't get my brain to wrap around not looking for that fat out of place person.

I love who I have become, and who I am headed for, but would someone please put a name tag on her, because I am still not always sure who she is!

Bringing the Spirit Home...Part 2

2010-11-02T12:44:00.000-05:00

There is a lot that gets talked about surrounded fat people and flying, some by those who are fat and some about those that are fat. Either way it is never a pleasant conversation.

For an obese person travel and flying is one of the most negative experiences you can have. At a time when the airline industry is working to cram smaller and smaller seats on tinyer planes packed with more and more people even being "normal" sized is hard. I have watched many fit healthy sized people have to wedge themselves into rows where there is no shoulder room or arm room. But it is multiplied a million times when you are overweight or obese. I personally had only survived it through upgrades that I get as a high tier frequent flier.

If I am completely honest, my weight and flying probably had a lot more to do with my decision to move to a city with a hub airport three years ago than I realized. It meant flying on larger planes, for shorter amounts on time. It meant less awkward moments having to ask for a seatbelt extender or having to apologize to the person sitting next to me for encroaching on their space.

And YES to the rest of the flying public, overweight people do know they don't fit well on the plane and whether you realize it or not, we feel guilty about it. There is nothing worse than sitting waiting to see if the person who will be sitting next to you is going to see you, sigh and make a face because they got stuck next to the "fattie". I have even had seat mates go to the flight attendant and pitch a fit for having to sit next to me. We hate it as much as you do!!! But we get the added benefit of the embarrassment of knowing how we are making you feel and how we are being judged. One of the greatest changes in my weight loss has been no longer having to face that look when someone sits down next to me. The first time my seat mate actually flirted with me instead of scowling at me I nearly kissed him (yeah that wouldn't have been good *grin*).

But there is another part of flying as an overweight (and in my case also somewhat disabled) person that we don't admit to, and that is the fear. While I never said this to anymore, every time I got on a plane at 338 lbs I worried for my life. Because while I can recite the "Deltalina Safety Speech" with the best of them, I wasn't sure if there was an emergency I would live through it. I honestly feared if I could fit out the emergency door or not, particularly on a small regional jet. And even if I was on a larger plane I wasn't sure I would physically be able to handle going down the slide. I truly believed if I was ever in a flight emergency it would probably cost me my life even if others survived. I knew this was one of the ways that being obese was life threatening for me.

A year ago I was given the chance to find out how I would do, in a controlled environment. Delta Airlines offers a class called "Road Warrior Training". Think of it as flight attendant school light. Flight attendants go through 7 weeks of training at the Delta training center, Road Warriors go through two. The training is about medical emergencies, in flight self defense, fire on a plane (including exiting a smoke filled cabin), slide escapes and the pinnacle...a water ditching and use of the life vests and emergency rafts.

A year ago I passed on the class. I knew I couldn't do it, I knew I would look like a fool and I knew I would hold up the rest of the group if I even tried. Despite fearing for my life, I couldn't face it all. But this year, as part of "airline camp" I had the chance again and this time I went for it whole heartedly.

I have to admit going into it I wasn't sure how it was going to go. I still feared how my body and leg would cooperate, but I needed to know. I needed to know what would become of me if I was in a flight emergency.

In just those few hours at Delta I conquered 10 years of flying fear. If I hadn't admitted to those with me and those training me that I had had the challenges I did a year ago they never would have known. I slid down the slide, I went out the emergency doors, I jumped in the pool and best of all I was able to get in the raft (oh yeah and did that with cute toes showing *smile*).

At the end of the class they gave us a certificate and told us it was now our responsiblity to let the flight crews we fly with know we are an ABP if we are needed.

No greater words could have ever been said to me than ABP...ABLE BODY PERSON!!!!!!