“It” fit, snugly

I tried it on this morning, after weighing in at 122.2 — 3.2 pounds over the point where the body-mass index calculator charts declare that the BMI for my height is below 25, and that I am no longer “officially” overweight.

The BMI, like many measurements, for calculating the health of one’s self in terms of body mass, fat and muscle is an estimate, at best. Calculators, such as this one, http://nhlbisupport.com/bmi/bminojs.htm, usually only compute a height-to-weight ratio, and are not easily able to take factors like the amount of muscle weight that a person might actually be carrying into account. My primary care provider verified this point about a year ago, noting that she has body-builders as patients whose weight shows up as terrifically obese. Still, I’ve been using the BMI as a gauge in my efforts over the past two years to bring my body to a healthy weight, figuring that while muscle weight is good, I still had plenty of fat weight to lose.

But going back to the “it”. What is “it”?

It is a skirt I acquired in 1992 during a trip to Chile. It has a tight, non elasticized waist, a set of pleats that begin rather stiffly at the waist and over the solar plexus and abdomen before relaxing and rippling in quite a lovely flow down to the calves. I have always liked this particular skirt because it is made from a bright colored pattern, featuring oranges, yellows, greens, and some bold touches of black. Wearing it conveyed — in my imagination — a sense of a strong but feminine woman, someone who is strong, blunt, direct, independent, and can get things done. Yet, also someone who is aesthetically pleasing to look at, someone whose spirit contains a sense of fun energy, someone who likes to feel the swish of a skirt around her legs as she dances, walks or moves. 

I don’t remember when I last wore this skirt, but it would have to be sometime before 1995 because the skirt was wrapped in cedarwood balls in a trunk in my basement in Seattle that year while I lived for 11 years in Honolulu, earning two advanced degrees and moving from youth into middle age. By the time I got back to Seattle in 2006, I had gone from being a 32-year-old journalist to a 43-year-old college instructor. I had completed several marathons, some triathlons, and suffered some injuries. I also had gotten married, experienced a certain level of economic stress, and was trying to finish a dissertation. My weight had ballooned correspondingly to an alarmingly healthy 150 pounds. 

I decided that someday I would be able to wear the skirt again.

A colonoscopy in early February required a day and a half of fasting, along with a prescription of laxatives that was designed, without being too graphic, to “clean me out.” Before the fast and laxative regime, I had weighed in at about 124 pounds; on the morning of the procedure, I weighed in at 121. 

I knew the weight loss was unnatural, and would return in a couple of days. My plan was to rest, recover, and then resume the regime of healthy eating, moving my body, and daily weigh-ins that I’d been following for two years. But I knew I was about the same weight that I had been at one point in 1995 before a decade-long series of seesaw gains and losses occurred with a massive gain at the end. I couldn’t resist trying on the skirt, to see if it fit.

It fit, snugly. 

I decided I would try to envision myself wearing the skirt to a conference I was slated to attend Tuesday, April 2, in New York City.

Triathlon training had been going well throughout the month of March. The daily weigh-ins went from the 124s to 123s, and this week to 122s. It might fit, I thought. 

This morning, I tried the skirt on.

It fit, snugly. A little too snugly. I looked at myself in the mirror, trying to gauge whether or not to wear it. And, well, I decided: the skirt fits (snugly), but it no longer fits me.

I thought about how I usually dress as an assistant professor of the humanities: in jeans, dress pants, or in the comfortable slacks that I like to call my “green fuzzies”. The waist is loose, the material is breathable. When I wear skirts, the waist bands are elasticized so I can both sit still and move about comfortably for hours at a time.

My shoes are no longer flats but usually sneakers. I no longer wear stockings or panty hose but cotton socks. My shirts are long-sleeved, soft cotton jerseys, with an accompanying fleece jacket that keeps me warm when I am sitting at a desk for long hours or in a meeting where the thermostat is turned down too low for my comfort.

Have I evolved into a slob? Or simply a new kind of woman? One who is strong, blunt, direct, independent but also more comfortable in her own skin? Does this new style of clothing reflect that shift in persona?

A friend (whom I’ve known since the early 1980s) responded to a post I placed on Facebook after I first tried on the skirt, following the colonoscopy fast. “Forget about the skirt,” she wrote. “Just feel good about yourself.” Her words resonate with a story that break-dancer B-Girl Bean (Colleen Ross) shared with me about her evolution from seeing break-dancing as a hobby into living the art and philosophy of hip-hop via “b-girling” over the years. In the beginning, she felt she had to “dress the part.” As she grew into her art, she realized that whatever she wore was in a sense “dressing the part” because “the part” was her whole self, inside and out.

And, so, as I contemplate two days (one night) in New York City in early April, a few thoughts come to mind: I will walk miles. It might rain. I will use the subway a lot. I will be traveling as lightly as possible but still will need to schlep with me a laptop, charger, cellphone, charger, notebook, pens, and an extra clean pair of socks and an extra shirt. 

Do I really want to be saddled with a dress with a tight waist and firm pleats? Is that the woman I am in 2013?

 

 

Listening … to your body, your mind

It’s the last day of winter, according to the calendar. But spring is not just around the corner, despite the lengthening days and the growing number of seedlings overtaking the interior of my home. We received a dumping of some 18 inches of snow today. When I last looked outdoors, the flakes were still falling. Spring might be around the corner, but right now it seems that it might take awhile to get to that corner.

The anticipation of better weather reminds me of distance training, particularly for marathons. The legendary 26.2 mile distance of the metaphor has evolved into a metaphor for many aspects of life: “It’s a marathon, not a sprint.” “Pace yourself.” “Remember that the hare got the head start, but the tortoise ultimately won.” 

The message behind the madness: Take it slow, one day at a time. Be patient. Set goals, but don’t beat yourself up if you don’t meet them.

At the mid-point of March, I have almost completed one of the two Ironmans in a month that I think I might be able to do. As of Sunday, March 17, my tally was 7,400 yards swimming, 99.9 miles cycling, and 26.36 miles running. I gleefully declared to the Team David community of DIY marathoners and triathletes that I would do a second Ironman in the remaining days of March. I mapped an ambitious workout plan for the coming week, and woke up Monday morning with legs that felt like jello and a body that felt battered with fatigue. 

Listening convinced me to try a run, a gentle run. I did 3.3 miles in about 50 minutes. Not terribly bad, except for the fact that I did 6.2 miles only two days earlier in 75 minutes. Something was off, and I was decidedly slower.

It’s hard but necessary in training to take at least one day off a week. Two days wouldn’t actually hurt. Weekends exist for a reason: the Saturday at the end of the week and the Sunday at the beginning of the next one. Taking more than one day a week off sometimes feel like an emotional cave-in because it’s one more day that the scale reads higher, one less day that you devoted toward meeting your goals. 

But that again is where listening comes in. The goals are important. But so is your body, your mind, and your health long term. 

Training for training

The month of March has begun, and with it, a March Madness challenge. This is the latest challenge from Team David whom I have written about in previous posts. The challenge is to complete the Ironman distance in a month, which is 2.4 miles of swimming, 112 miles of bicycling, and 26.2 miles running. I sort of think that I might be able to finish two Ironmans in a month, but I’m not going to push my luck.

Instead, I want to set as a goal — in addition to the Ironman distances — the full swim, bicycle, and run for the Olympic Distance Triathlon each in one workout. I think I’m at a point where the swim (1,500 meters, which equals about 1,700 yards in a 25-yard pool) and the run (10k or 6.2 miles) are easily do-able. The bicycle still poses a challenge. Getting on an indoor exercise bike is starting to feel like a real task, even as I can see serious improvement in my cadence and endurance levels. But there’s still snow on the ground, and the prospect of a winter warm and fresh snow dump this week. Those forecasts — along with a tightness of funds — that is preventing me from getting my two bicycles into a bike shop for repairs, probably some replacements, and general tune-ups don’t make outdoor cycling seem like an immediate reality.

I have been learning a few things, however, from the triathlon forum at Beginner Triathlete that I’ve been tuning into: 

1. Fitness bikes are better for indoor training than recumbent bikes, unless one has serious back issues and needs the stability of the recumbent style.

2. Mountain bikes, which are much more comfortable when it comes to commuting, are excellent for training, as long as one gets on a lighter, faster road bike once in awhile. 

3. One of the easiest ways for women to dress for a triathlon is to swim in a sports bra and swim trunks. You can do the entire triathlon in a swimsuit, but it’s much easier to pull a shirt and/or shorts over a wet suit after the swim than it is to swim in a fairly cheap tri-suit.

In the meantime, I am discovering (re-discovering, perhaps) a love for homemade baked bread.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve worked out five days each week, usually doing two of the disciplines each day. As I’ve revved up my workouts, my weight has continued its very slow downward drop even as my appetite has picked up. I’m starting to remember what it felt like to devour bread and butter, cheese, and chocolate in manageable morsels several times a day. I’m still very mindful of what I am eating, however, and to that end, I have embarked on an endeavor to make a weekly series of homemade breads. I started with baguettes two weeks ago, did a country French bread a week ago, and tried out a Vienna bread yesterday. The ritual is fun and relatively easy: get the dough mixed and kneaded in the morning, let it go through its first and second rises (in the refrigerator, if I’m not going to be home), and bake it in the evening. One absolute, iron-clad requirement: the bread must be cut fresh out of the oven for a first slice. The recipes usually make 2-3 loaves, which I bake on cookie sheets instead of loaf pans, so running short is not an issue. 

I bring up the bread and the bicycles as I think about other trials and tribulations that triathlon training brings on. Like tens of millions of other working adults in the United States, I am struggling financially just now. As a professor at a public institution, I do have the education and qualifications to earn a decent salary. Luckily, I have that salary. But it hasn’t gotten much higher over the past couple of years, whereas the price of gas, food, electricity, propane, and heating oil has. With these hikes, I find myself wondering if there will come a point where expenses exceed income, with no further cutbacks possible. 

An abundance of bread — homemade, each week — and the strange odd miracle of being a woman who owns two bikes turn that perception of poverty around. Even as I hope to stretch each paycheck far enough to last to the next, I marvel at the fact that I don’t have to buy a fat-heavy, processed lunch because so much of the food that I eat is grown or made by my husband and myself in our backyard and kitchen. Even as I shake my head and say “no” to a $199 tri-suit, I relish the fact that as soon as these two bicycles are out of the box and revved up and running, I can leave my car in my driveway and pedal to work — two or three days a week, getting a workout accomplished with little effort.

Years and years ago, I went for a day hike in the Mt. Rainier National Park. I chose a trail near the Carbon River, where I met up with a single mother and two boys. She had planned a weekend backpacking trip for the three of them, and had stopped at the Ranger Station to get permits so they could camp on the massive mountain. Shortly after leaving the Ranger Station, she told me she ran into a member of the Mountaineers Club, which as I recall, was one of the best organized and respected hiking communities in the Pacific Northwest. The member told her not to even bother considering a hike with the gear that she had: it was too worn out, too shoddy, not attractive. She was hurt and her confidence was shaken. 

I thought of the woman and her two kids several years later. Somehow, I had figured out which car was hers at the trailhead after I finished the hike and I had slipped a $20 bill in through her cracked-open window. At least I thought it was hers. But I remembered her story when, in 2002, I was in a bicycle shop in Honolulu looking for a road bike. A silver women’s bike had caught my attention, but the price tag — $1,400 — was beyond my reach. The salesman tried to convince me that I could not do the Tinman, Honolulu’s People’s Triathlon, without a bike of that calibre. Confused and ashamed, I left the shop, wondering if I could get my $40 registration for the Tinman refunded. Fortunately, I was with a friend who convinced me to try another shop. There, I found the bike that I still have today, for less than $500. I have done two Tinmans, two Sprint triathlons, and a Century Ride on that bike. Properly? Perhaps not, depending on the meaning of “properly”.

These thoughts come to a fuller circle as I think of the health food store where a friend works and where I buy a few items that might be regarded as high-end commodities. I’m not a big shopper because I grow so much of what I eat and because I buy as much as I can from other local farmers who grow food themselves. But somehow in that store my questioning of the price of an item, the unavailability of a good like arborio rice in bulk, or a query about a bill seems to evoke a nose-in-the-air attitude, one of “If you need to ask the price, you don’t deserve to be shopping here.” It’s an attitude I intensely dislike. And, sadly, it’s an attitude I see among enthusiasts of sports, of organic eating, of backyard gardening, and of almost anything else that is supposedly healthy and wholesome. A right way to live becomes a righteous way to live, and in the process excludes so many others who might also be fans, if the price tag weren’t such a dissuader.

My hope is that there is a grassroots mentality that can re-enter sports, healthy eating, and fun — allowing the have-nots to feel like haves, even if only for a few hours of training and sound preparation each week.