Category Archives: Hygiene & Health

Why I Won't Weigh Myself

Anyone in my life kinda knows I’ve kinda gone cardio-crazy.
With anywhere from 6 to 12 hours of moderate-plus activity in any given week,  I’m working on it. Most of it’s because I’m cycling for commuting. Dialing in between 100 to 150 km of cycling per week on average, yeah, it’s becoming a “lifestyle” and not just exercise.
At first, it sucked, but then I started to feel Strong and Powerful, almost feeling like a “Jock” for the first time in my life, and I feel like that’s kinda hot for a girl who used to push the 300-pound mark.
It’s kinda awesome, actually, just from an inside-my-head perspective, never mind what others may think.
But I have food issues. I always have. I still do. I have this “thing” for bread. And, have we talked about butter? Oh, sweet baby. Buttah. Mm, butter it. Indeed.
So there’s that. There’s those, even. I’ve been off the charts with bread lately, so it’s a mindset I’m battling.
And it’s 25-plus years of habit-forming issues. Bad shit, man. Like a voodoo thang.
But I’m working on it and I keep improving, and my knowledge keeps growing, but the emotional issues reside. They’re there. It’s just my reality. I’ll probably always have a difficult time negotiating The World of Food without danger. Especially when life’s forcing my hand, or sure feels like it.
So, you know, shit happens. Not a lot of shit happens now, not as often. Maybe that’s just age, and the “been-there-done-that” mentality that comes from going around the block way too often.
This isn’t really about size or anything. It’s not about weight. It’s about me having an idea of the diet I want to be eating, just because I define it as truly “healthy”, and I’m not eating it. I’m eating better than I have for 90%+ of my life, and yet. Not quite there. Maybe I never will be, since, as a foodie, I refuse to give up some passions. Moderation. But indulgence follows close behind moderation, you know. Like a shadow, always looming. One step too far, you get swallowed up in it.
Exercise, I’ve got mostly down, and YAY me for doing so, ‘cos it ain’t no walk in the park. So, it’s part of the journey.
For me, it’s about achieving both. It’s not about “size 4” or 6 or 8 . It’s not about appeasing the fashion gods or being off-the-rack-approved.
Fuck hot. Fuck cool. Fuck role model. Fuck it all.
THIS is about being healthy. This is about me doing this just for me, about how I feel 3 minutes after I’ve woken up, or the satisfaction I have when I hit the bed at night.
It’s about not having heart disease or diabetes, like my dad, or dying of cancer, like my mom and other family. It’s about not rolling over and playing dead for all my past injuries & fuck-ups. Not now, not at age 36. Not yet. Not soon. Not.
It’s about feeling strong, powerful, and healthy. It’s about me, not media, not conformity. Not you.
I can do better, and I will.
Until I’ve got BOTH in the same direction, a weigh-in isn’t happening. Because if I have success today, when I feel like I’m eating badly, it will permissively encourage me to eat just as badly in the future.
I don’t want to be skinny-fat and die anyways. What’s the fucking point of all this work, then?
Cholesterol counts. Qi counts. And a million other things all count.
I’ll weigh myself when I know food’s on page. Why? Because I know I’ve lost weight. I feel it everywhere I touch myself. My belly’s never had this kind of tone before. My thighs? Yowza.
Soon, everything will be on page. Soon, I can say I truly believe I’ve accomplished something great.
But right now I’m phoning it in and lucking out.
That’s not good enough.
My lifespan depends on it.

Mental Health: In Which Steff Calls a Spade a Spade

A couple months ago, I proposed to talk about writing for therapy, how to kinda “go there”, via blogging.
The conference was yesterday. It was an “unconference” put on by end-patients and people who work on the peripheries of mental care.
Why did I want to get involved?
For a million reasons. I’ll get to most of them shortly.
But, first: I proposed my talk without knowing the conference’s “reputation” or anything like that. I just wanted a forum to talk about depression.
Unbeknownst to me, I stepped into the thick of a controversial “unconference.” It wasn’t until Friday that I really realized just how controversial it was. Whether it’s because ballsy speakers like Steven Schwartz speak in dismissive vernacular, saying edgy-yet-funny adjectives a lot of boring people object to, or because of who was organizing it, or even the press some of us speakers were getting, the reactions were ridiculously sharp and pointed.
Late Friday night, I saw comments some anonymous dumb fuck left on the Mental Health Camp’s website, and I got pretty riled up. Since then, all the comments were deleted, which I take serious issue with.
Me, I never would have deleted the comments. We convened the camp to fight stigma against the “idea” of mental illness, so why would you delete, and not fight, that stigma when it stands up and attacks you? Deleting and silencing the attack does nothing to neutralize it. But that’s where I stand and it’s not my blog. So, yeah. Moving on.
The asshat’s comments varied, but the most offensive of them all were that a number of those involved in the Mental Health Camp were doing so only to propel their image and get their allotted moments of Warholian fame. Media whores, basically, all faking their interest to get noticed.
Heh. Yeah, okay. Fucking shrewd, that.
A line in the comment made me wonder if I was one of the people they alluded to, just because I had the audacity to do an interview with CBC about the conference.
Here’s the deal, all right?
I’ll be the first to admit there were organizational issues with the conference. That’s what happens with not-for-profit amateur/volunteer organizers, people who have organized a conference just to have discussion and don’t have experience organizing them.
Oh, well. That’s life. It happens. But it’s not about the organizing.
It’s about the messages explored — mental health, stigma, and the fact the lives are destroyed by mental illness every moment of every day, and the fact that EVERYONE in their lifetime will experience mental illness at some point, and YET we don’t talk about it.
Well, I do, and I have for years.
I’ve been writing about depression, weight issues, self-esteem, lack of confidence, and everything else I’ve battled in life since 2005, and blogging since 2004. I’ve been getting real fuckin’ raw and honest since 2006.
There are a whole lot of things I’m willing to do to have success as a writer. Do you know what the least smart of them would be?
Letting myself in any way be any kind of poster girl for any mental illness.
Let’s see, when was the last time a Hollywood publicist suggested their celebrity client embrace their mental illness for the public as a means of netting better starpower in the press? Um, never.
Know why?
No one wants to be thought of as “nuts”.
Why?
Because people who are strong, intelligent, articulate, engaging, and well-liked don’t come out and admit their mental illnesses. They don’t talk about them. So stigma exists because all we see are the nutty fucks you try to avoid in hallways, or the whackjobs they put on television shows.
But those are extremes.
When assholes like that anonymous commenter attack a conference whose only purpose is to bring the overly-shamed and constantly-silenced issue of mental health to the forefront only because they dislike the people behind it, and they use that opportunity to suggest it’s basically Starfucking by those involved, it’s an insult to the seriousness of the issue.
It also suggests they have no fucking idea what it’s like to have been, in my case, an otherwise strong and intelligent person who took the wrong medication and considered suicide before spending the next year-plus trying to claw my way out of the depths.
It suggests they have no idea what it’s like to live under the clutches of your mind, body, and chemistry’s whimsy on a day-in, day-out, year-by-year basis, never being able to rise above a sick world of fear, chaos, and hopelessness that can’t manifest outwardly, that you hear inside your head every time you wake or lie down to sleep.
It suggests they don’t fathom that mental illness is the most costly and insidious of sicknesses in society — it destroys the fabric of life, of all the lives around the sufferer, not just the body of the afflicted. It ends relationships, destroys marriages, causes debt, and is the largest reason for employee leaves of absence in the modern workforce.
I don’t WANT to talk about depression.
But I need to.
Because what happened to me can happen to anyone.
Because it happened to my mother, and, as a 17-year-old girl, I walked in on her attempting suicide with the very pills that caused her chemically-induced depression — one like I myself would experience 17 years later.
Because doctors will tell you birth control pills don’t cause depression.
Because I know my birth control made me want to kill myself and feel like life could never have hope again.
I need to talk about depression because I’m tired of bi-polars, schizophrenics, and other more acute or rare mental health concerns having the limelight in “mental illness,” when it’s depression that’s most likely to touch, and destroy, the average life.
I feel like their more “stereotyped” afflictions make it less likely for seemingly average Jolenes like myself to come out and say, “I’m not that afflicted, but it still really fucked me up, too, and no one saw any big signs…”
I am a good writer. I’m a really, really good writer. I’m a passionate speaker who will not mince her ideas. I don’t back down from a fight. I’m engaging, funny, and even self-deprecating. I’m a great communicator with friends, family, everyone.
And yet depression almost took me out of the game of life.
But I survived.
I made it to the other side. I’m stronger than I’ve ever been. I’m happy most of the time.
Still, I’m surrounded by people I see who are skating through life with the cool indifference of someone struggling with depression. I see it everywhere. And we’re NOT TALKING ABOUT IT.
You want to attack my IDEAS? Go for it.
But don’t fucking attack ME or any of those people who’ve had the STRENGTH to write about all the things YOU make fun of, that YOU won’t trust, or YOU can’t admit about yourself.
We’re out there only for the reason that we can’t be silent anymore. Society can’t AFFORD our silence anymore. We need to hear our thoughts expressed on the page, we believe our experiences are real and representative of the whole, yet largely ignored by the mainstream.
And we’re not going to be quiet about it.
Not anymore.
Until you’ve lost your job — like I once did — for writing in the public eye about your darker self, until you’ve had the courage to write without tempering your weaker thoughts and fears, until you’ve been able to admit you have an affliction the majority of society can’t understand and doesn’t know how to act around, you have no right to criticize us for the moments of acknowledgement we might finally receive after years of having the courage to tell our stories no matter what the prices have been.
Now it’s easier for me. But where the fuck were you in 2006 when I wanted to commit suicide only 9 days after writing the most harrowing things I’ve ever published? Where were you when my traffic dropped to nothing as I used my blogs to work through my depression? Where were you when I lost a job and nearly my home for having a voice on less acceptable topics? Where were you when I struggled to maintain faith in speaking out? Where were you when I constantly had to lower my voice when I said what I wrote about?
Sure, now you know about me, but I’ve been doing this for a long fucking time and I’ve paid a LOT of steep prices for my honesty.
But I’ve paid ’em and now you can’t shut me up. Just try it, honey. You’ll only wind me up more.
If I finally have an audience and a wider means of getting my message out, you’d have to be a fucking moron to think I’d walk away from that opportunity.
Oh, and being single and getting press for having gone nuts, been suicidal, and longterm depressed? Yeah, that’ll be a fucking brilliant way for me to get laid. I hear men are wild about that shit.
Marketing GENIUS, clearly.
Whoever you were, you anonymous spineless motherfucking commenter: Grow up. You’re a fucking idiot. Open your eyes. See that some battles need to be waged with faces on them.
At least I have the guts to show mine.

Diving into Safety Head-First

We have helmet laws here in British Columbia. Even if we didn’t, I’d be wearing mine.
One saved my life. And still I’m different than I used to be.
When I saw this article come up on Twitter, I got pretty choked about it. I started thinking of the friends I’ve seen riding without a helmet — whether for a block or in the thick of city traffic with bad weather — and I found myself clenching my teeth in frustration.
Head injuries are horrible.
They change you forever.
They affect you emotionally, spiritually, physically.
And I’ve had far too much personal experience with head injuries to let the topic of helmets disappear easily into the cybernight without some commentary.
My personal experience, with just people my age?
Well, personally, I almost died. Had I not been wearing a helmet, I would have died when I somersaulted off my scooter and hit the pavement at Columbia and 2nd back on August 29th, 2004.
I spent the next year trying to get back to who I was while I laboured without a diagnosis on my head (because judgment is the first thing to go; you can’t be objective about yourself and you don’t think about the reasoning behind why you’re such a “fuck up” now; it becomes a self-esteem and time/skill-management thing when it should really be a head-injury thing).
I changed as an employee — it cost me my job security and made me first on chopping block when needed lay-offs came rolling around. (We didn’t know then that it was my brain-bouncing that was the cause of my production getting slower and less sharp.)
That started two years of job insecurity as I hopped around the employment world, learning that I couldn’t handle stress like I used to anymore, and realizing I couldn’t learn new skills or organize as well as I once could.
Experience 2 with head injuries is my brother. Hit by a Chevy Suburban, he spent 5 days in a coma in late 2005 and has never been the same person since. He takes longer to understand things, has a hard time processing his emotions, is more inclined to depression, and it’s all a result of the severe head injury he took — since he had another one within 6 months of the first.
Experience 3 with head injuries was a beloved old friend, in 2008, just 34 years old, who was out adventuring with friends just 9 days after the birth of his little baby girl. His ATV tipped, crushing his head on rocks, and leaving him washing down the fast river, where he drowned and died — orphaning that beautiful baby girl in her first two weeks of life.
Yes, head injuries are bad.
So, when I see brilliant, fantastic friends hopping on their bikes in their almost-hipsterness, cruising around town without their helmets, it fucking kills me.
Know what a head injury feels like?
Take equal parts of STUPID, ANGRY, and CONFUSED, throw them into a martini shaker and mix liberally with IMPULSE CONTROL ISSUES and BAD JUDGMENT and you’ll have the start of what you’re after.
Now, take that horrible mood cocktail and spread it over your days — 24/7, 365.
I spent a year at a loss about what I felt, what I needed, where I wanted to go, how to get there. I’m lucky, I’m a writer, and somehow through the act of writing EVERY SINGLE DAY for a year, I managed to get my brain to finally start firing again.
I don’t even remember ANY of the first 6 months except a Pocky Incident and being unhappy about a hamburger while watching World Cup Hockey.
I’ve never been as good at learning things as I used to be, I need more guidance and have more questions, but I’m smarter than the average person so I get it together sooner or later on new tasks, but only after a lot of frustration.
I’m still smart as hell, no doubt, but I forget large chunks of my life.
Large chunks.
And my mother’s dead.
And some of the chunks are of her. When death rolls around with your loved ones, memories are all you’ve got left, and your head is all you got to protect that with.
It kills me, you know. Just kills me.
When you’re a writer, your memory is your most valuable tool. I’ve lost a lot of mine. My years are a hazy blur when they used to have crystal clarity to them.
I have to live the rest of my life with the very real knowledge that head injuries are like a good savings plan — they compound infinitely.
Every time I hit my head, I run the risk of making myself less of who I was.
Every time my noggin bumps a doorframe or something, a shock of fear runs through me.
You parents failing to put helmets on your kids, I’d be all right with calling that child abuse, given what I know has changed in my life from my head injury.
Protect your children. It’s your job. It’s the law.
I can’t tell you how much I wish I could have that day I almost died back. How much I could undo the stupidity that led me to thinking I should be on my scooter that morning.
I just can’t tell you.
Most people who know  me would never think I’d had a head injury. I’ve got razor-sharp wit, keen conversational abilities, and I’m sly as the day is long.
But they’d be wrong. I’m different. Just in little ways I can work around.
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t anger me still that I’m different now.
I used to test at Mensa levels on IQ tests, you know. Between 145 and 170, depending on the day, over the years. “Smart” is a commodity one can’t afford to trade on, not via head injuries or anything else.
Really, it’s not that the head injury takes you out of the game — because it doesn’t. That’s kinda part of the problem — you become the “walking wounded” afterwards.
You go through life okay enough — you look fine, everyone thinks you can do your job, they think you’re as normal as can be. But because you’re rendered some lesser part of yourself as a result of the changes, you’re not even aware of how much you’ve changed — you’re in a fog, a daze, so you can’t say “Hey, something’s off here.”
And because you’re not defending or explaining yourself, those around you think you’re just in some depressive funk and that you need to “shake it off.”
But you can’t.
You hit your brain and you have a boo-boo that can’t be bandaged, doesn’t get air, never sees the sun, and can’t be displayed to others. You’ve seen how long a bruise on your leg takes to heal? What about if it’s under a skull, and all the bruised areas affect how synapses and thoughts and neuro-body-controls occur?
It was two years after my head injury that I finally realized how much I had changed, and only because I was seeing the same stuff happening to my brother with his head damage. A strangely consistent downward spiral in his life mirrored the one that had been happening to me.
Finally, I went to see a shrink I’d been to in the past, who’d had muchos experience in head injuries, and I learned what was going on inside was all part of the healing journey a head injury victim usually takes.
I had a helmet on and I’ve luckily lived to tell my story, even though I’m changed and will probably always have to live with the legacy of that day in small ways.
In fact, everyone I’ve written about here today was wearing a helmet, and yet, look at our stories.
Put your fucking helmet on.
Get over your haircut. Get over yourself.
If not for your own life and the hell it will likely be if you survive a head injury and have to live with it for the remainder of your life, then at least wear it so my fucking tax dollars can go somewhere more intelligent than dealing with your dumb-ass negligence.
Please.

__________________________________

Think you might’ve had a head injury and wonder what the indicators are? Check here. The New York Times has a good cheat-sheet HERE on what to do or look for after a head injury has first been suffered — please read it NOW, not when you need it. Remember how quickly Natasha Richardson died from a ski fall? Yeah. Know your shit.

Game On! Back to Success

Ed. Note: I often forget many of you are new here — so, a nutshell: From Jan ’08 till May of ’09, I lost 70 pounds. The hard way. Myself — no trainers, diet organizations, nothing. Hard work, honesty, and self-awareness.
I burned out after 8 months with a killer back injury. So, I took the year off and gained 8 pounds back. But, I’m back, and knowing what it takes to be successful, here’s my reflection on beginning that experience for the second time. Hopefully some of my methods can sustain others, too.
RAWR, BITCHES.
After a disappointing first weigh-in because I’d gained two pounds — there’s only so much of that you can call “muscle tone”, methinks — I’m now down 2 pounds off my “starting” weight. So, 4 pounds, but I’m calling it 2.
But I’m down 6 inches off my waist! 2.5 inches off my hips! Yeah!
I know a lot of people have the “ohmigod, I’ve gained weight” experience at the beginning, so I want to share a few observations I can make after having been down this road successfully three times in the past.
First is, obviously I gained weight. For me, if I start exercising more, I start eating more. It’s simple math.
You get complacent and used to inhaling X amount of food when resting, so you psychologically think you need more when you start working out. It happens. Get over it.
That, for me, is where it starts. Let’s face it, becoming an active person is probably the most important goal any of us can set — the second should be eating truly healthily, and the third should involve weight/size.
People get the priorities wrong and think it’s about the weight.
It’s not. It’s about changing your life. Remember that, and it’s easier to deal with the weight hiccups that WILL come your way.
For whatever reason, I naturally gravitate to eating more when I begin hardcore workout phases. There comes a point where I realize my methods are broken, and I’m gaining weight from the muscle tone and eating all that I’ve been burning.
I buckle down and get serious, then I get true results.
“Buckle down” means that I get this epiphany of “HOLY SHIT, I’m working WAY too hard for THAT result.”
When you’re doing two hours and 15 minutes of cardio in a day like I have done a number of times of late, and you have a burger, fries, and two beers, well, on the one hand, yes, if you’re gonna have a burger, that’s the day to do it, man.
But think of the PAYOFF for not having that burger and beers!
Me, I’m NOT cutting out burgers or anything. I’d rather work harder, make smarter choices, and monitor what I’m eating so I know EXACTLY how bad I can be (and be bad much less frequently), and instead of downing Bad Food X with guilt and worry, I can enjoy it with the knowledge that it Fits into my day. It just fits. Therefore, it’s all good.
Weight loss is almost ALL head game.
It’s a head game when you think you’re too tired to cycle further.
It’s a head game when you think the wonky thing in your lower back means you shouldn’t exercise.*
It’s a head game when the numbers go in the wrong direction.
It’s even a head game when you’re trying to understand how you got to X-weight in the first place.
It’s ALL a game.
“Calories-in, calories-out” is an oversimplification of what I’m doing, but it’s about right. I monitor my intake, and I work like shit on the rest.
The difference, I think, between athletes, serious weight loss types like myself, and the average person who sort of works out and they don’t know why they don’t “see more results” for their “five hours” of cardio in a week, is just sheer effort.
I’m bone-tired when I’m done working out. When I get finished, I tend to know I’ve had myself in “moderate to intense” mode since the gate opened. THAT’S what it takes. It takes gasping, wheezing, and pushing forward ANYHOW.
Think you can’t go further and you won’t. It’s all attitude.
Exercise is supposed to hurt. It’s supposed to have you gasping and crying for Mommy. It’s supposed to make you think twice about having any plans for the rest of the week.
There’s a big difference between folks who have a weight to maintain versus if you want to lose it. You want to lose weight just through food? All right, well, that’s about 80% of the deal, if you listen to some folks.
You want a hot body? You’ll likely need to work for it. And I mean work.
I double what people do to “maintain” weight, when I’m losing it. It takes me 5-8 hours a week of working out, but that’s usually just the cardio of what I’ve done — then there’s stretching and here-and-there freeweights in front of the telly.
I hit plateaus, sure, but my body keeps improving, and my fitness does too. That’s my goal, not some number on a scale. Work through the plateaus. Change your food intake or your water, but try to work through it.
Not everyone’s gonna be a size four, so get over it here and now, and the journey will be a whole lot more rewarding for you.
It can’t just be “Did I lose weight this week?” It has to also be “How much better did I perform on that bike ride? How do I feel at the end of my day? Was climbing those stairs easier? Holy, look how much better my breathing is. And, damn, that bag of potatoes feels like air!”
Focus on what IS changing, rather than what you hoped you’d see.
Measure yourself. Monitor your fitness levels. Remember how hard that jogging was the first week you started. Think about the strength you feel in your back now, how much more symmetrical your body feels. Think about how much more lung capacity you have when you’re just sitting at your desk and working on the computer. Appreciate how those jeans feel, focus on that sensation you get with cool crisp clean jeans over just-worked-out-for-90-minutes legs. Damn, it’s nice.
Get over the fucking shit the media wants you to think about.
IT’S NOT ABOUT THE NUMBER.
It’s about your body’s changing state, the acquisition of health and strength.
Know why Jenny Craig wants you on their diet? Because you WILL gain the weight back, but you’ll have “lost it before” so you’ll be a repeat customer.
All they’re doing is counting your calories. Take the power. Learn it yourself. Live with it for the rest of your life.
You wouldn’t take a road trip without knowing how far you had to go, how much fuel you need to arrive safely, and how long it takes, right? Then you know you have to drive, and there are no shortcuts between There and Here. Why is losing weight any different?
Work out as hard as you can a few times a week, and take lazy easy activity in between, with as many hours of sleep a night as you can get, at least one day a week off where you relax, and a balanced diet that’s respectful of the calories someone of your height/weight/age should be consuming on a daily/weekly basis. Enjoy a blow-out meal of things you love on your day off, and KILL IT the next day.
That’s MY secret. And, hey, it’s no secret. Every other system leads to a likelihood of repeating your past ills.
Learn. Act. Believe. Achieve. Simple.
Party on, Garth.
* I’ve learned a really hard workout resets all my back muscles and alleviates backpain, personally. Days when I thought I should rest, rest didn’t help — but cycling for 50 minutes did. Not walking and namby-pamby shit, but stuff where I’ve got to activate my core muscles and push hard. But that’s just me. Learn about your body, but don’t presume you KNOW.
**Disclaimer? Uh. I’m a blogger. Talk to your doctor about this shit. There are risks. I’ve had medical guidance (though not trainers, etc) through all of this and I’ve educated myself along the way. Proceed at your own risk.

The Challenge of Transitioning

I’m in zombieland.
Mono-focused. I know what I want. I’m after it. Period.
Brains. Nommy brains.
Mmkay, no.
I want life to be my bitch. That requires me being strong, fit, and healthy.
It requires me undoing bullshit that caused me to gain back 8 pounds — and probably several inches — of the 70 pounds I’d lost.
That shit’s done, yo.*
A small part of me was enjoying the summer before I destroyed my back, 2008. I was becoming a jock:  strong, powerful, and often making my “fit” friends feel like chumps because Fat Girl could work circles around ’em.
They loved it, I loved it. Good times and great laughs. What a change from them always having to slow up and check on me.
There’s nothing more important in my life to me right now than taking that back.
I fucking love the pride I feel when I know what I’m really getting done.
Nothing says empowered like being able to change a day that’s had me bent over and taking it by having a set of fitness goals and blowing that out of the water. Whatever else life did that day, it couldn’t stop me from killing that workout.
There’s something that comes from that place of knowing you scaled a mountain, rode 30 km, or did a crazy set of highrise stairs.
I love that place. I’ve owned that place.
Since May 11th, I have worked out on more days than I haven’t, usually five days a week. And, on most days, I’ve tried to really leave it all on the floor. I’m getting better at that, and intend to keep pushing boundaries.
Today, my whole body cries for release. This is the consequence of those actions.
All of me is so tight and sore. From my ankles to my jaw, I hurt.
There’s only one thing I know I can do to help it: Work out more, but differently. Like my chiro doc tells me, “Motion is lotion.”
Move it, or lose it. Two days slack is asking for a world of pain. Days off are harder than days on, when you get used to the workload, but there’s a point in between where everything you do’s an effort, and I’m there. So fucking spent.
It’s with weary resignation I know I can’t rest. I know I don’t want to go cycling later, and most of me would rather crawl in bed and die today, but… I know: I can’t.
My “rest day” will be tomorrow or Saturday. Maybe both, since much walking will be required tomorrow and anything else might overdo it.
I cancelled plans last night. Didn’t have it in me, and saw that coming from morning light. I’m sure feelings were hurt. They’ll understand someday.
I know what’s important to me right now, and it’s not parties and big crowds of people. It’s not about finding my contentment through others, or getting their validation, or needing their company.
It’s about rediscovering that place inside that gave me the power to change my world in such a dramatic fashion once already.
And I know what it takes.
It takes cancelling out on parties.
It takes that inevitable night at the end of the week where you’re just fucking DONE and all you can do is crash at 9:00 at night and sleep for 10 hours, waking with already-weary bones that know they’re in for more, and soon.
It takes vitamins, big healthy meals, water all day, planning food in advance, total time-management, prioritizing yourself before anyone else, and avoiding engagements that are too heavily centred around dining and drinking.
I know what it takes.
It takes a total life change.
And you know what else it takes?
It takes pissing off other people who don’t understand what it really takes, when you just can’t find it in you to go and be happy and fun with other people. You’d rather just die on the sofa with only one thing on your mind: You met the goal this week.
People don’t get how hard it is. You can’t POSSIBLY get it. If you think losing 10 pounds is hard, or 20, try 70.
Just fucking try it. I did it. I know. I did that. And it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And I’ve kept 62 off for 18 months!
I know Biggest Loser’s the biggest cheese going on TV sometimes, with the sound editing and the seemingly simplified weight battles edited to fit a TV format, but the emotions those people feel — the breakdowns at the end of the season, of trying to juggle real life with friends and families and weightloss — and how it’s the people around them who always lose out, that’s all real.
Wanting to cry because you’re so fucking tired, but LOVING the joy you feel inside about what you’ve accomplished? That dichotomy is a weird place to live, and the tightrope one walks to sustain each is the toughest balance ever.
To be successful with a “180” health-wise, to take on a radically active life after years of sloth — the focus and drive they take are impossible to explain.
The pain with which your body screams at you after years of giving into gravity and laziness, after decades of shovelling processed food into it, after years of losing lung capacity… that isn’t a one-week adjustment.
And I’ve had a decade of injuries to overcome on top of all that pain.  For me, it means I have to spend hours stretching out the hours of working out, every single week.
That whole-body-fatigue keeps hurting — week after week, month after month — because every pound you lose means you need to work harder to remove the remainder.
It’s why 80% or more of people can’t lose weight and sustain it.
This is the HARDEST mental battle of your life. Win the weightloss headgame and no other game will out-think you in life. I guarantee it.
The resilience you need to get past 50 pounds of weightloss, and to sustain it, is something you can’t learn from a book or buy from a specialist. You create it and nurture it.
I may have gained 8 pounds back out of 70, but I don’t feel like that’s a failure at all. I think 10% gain back after 21 months spent with a life-altering injury, then caught in a year of burn-out, is fucking awesome.
I’m proud as hell of that. GO, ME.
And what a gift for getting back on path, being still so close to the goal I’ve wanted to achieve since I was 17: Being under 200 pounds.
I hope to reach that goal by Canada Day. Scared I won’t. But I’m gonna try real fuckin’ hard.
I won’t feel guilty for focusing on myself right now — be it meaning that I cancel plans, or whatever else it takes.
I’m not likely to cancel on one-on-one time with friends or small groups, but, parties? Yep. The full-body fatigue that comes from this doesn’t tend to always make one a real cheery camper to hang with when it comes to maintaining a “vibe” a host/hostess is trying to create. Can’t do it.
I’m tired. I’m sore.
I’m dreading how much further, harder, and heavier all this shit’s gonna get before I’m at where I want to be.
I’m not some 140-pound chick climbing those highrise stairs or cycling 35km, man, I’m 210-plus. I literally haul every pound of that on this frame — it’s actually there, it’s actually heavy. It’s real fuckin’ heavy.
Gravity finds every ounce of that weight when I’m fighting it, and, believe me, I feel like it after a week like I’ve had.
But I’m elated.
It has begun. I’m at the climax of where it gets real, real hard at the beginning, where every day is filled with hurt and fatigue, but, soon, I’ll hit my pace where it’s just about keeping the wheels spinning ‘cos momentum’s been found.
I’ll be one seriously weary girl for a while. My BEST friends understand it and WELCOME it.
Soon, it’ll just be a new normal, and the determination that emerges from meeting small success after small success is its own feeding frenzy.
And I’ll be Mojo Girl again.
I’ll get that cocky grin that makes people wonder what the fuck I’m on. I’ll get my twinkle in my eye, the smirk that says “Look out.”
Then it all gets very, very fun. Very.
Just you wait.
.
*I think I’ve lost the weight already, or close to it. But I’m waiting until one month in for weigh-day and that’s next Wednesday. It’s really about the feeling. I know the weight will come off gradually — it did before. It’s nice to see the numbers change, though. Rewarding. But not really what it’s about. It’s important to know that before you step on the scale. It’s important to believe it.

No Fatties: The Ethic of Funny

People urge me to try stand-up comedy. A natural, they call me. A funny girl.
And, hey, they’re right.
What, it’s wrong I should know I’m funny? I shouldn’t acknowledge it? Right, like I’ve spent my life cracking jokes so I can play the fool now.
Jokes are hard. Funny is tough. Humour’s a fine line.

I pride myself on a having higher funny “ethic” than I think most people ever will. There are things I won’t touch: I don’t insult people for their size or weight, or for their colour or abilities.
Your job, clothes, where you live, how you act, what you do with your time — those are all choices, and I feel absolutely fine about ripping them apart and going to town on ’em for jokes. It’s commentary on who we’re opting to be as a society. Get on the bus in thigh-high rubber fuck-me boots and a LaToya Jackson studded-special leather jacket? Sure, yeah, I’ll use it for humour. Your choice.
But I don’t hurt people with nasty public jabs made about a weight problem, or vision issues, or a goiter, or anything like that.
You think people wouldn’t change those things about them if they could? You think they’re not aware of how outside the norm they might be?
Somehow “fat” is different from all the other discrimination out there, because people “choose” to be fat. That’s another argument for another time, considering the modern food industry, media, how government’s been bought and sold, and more — so I’m not going there.
This whole posting sprang up because I got all pissed off about some remarks a young guy was making about “fatties” on Twitter today, mocking overweight girls trying to glam it up for a profile shot — saying how they’re just getting fatter and fatter, and he wants to puke.
Who the fuck does he think he is? He’s perfect? Does he KNOW what it’s like to be 300 pounds and feel like losing weight is the hardest thing in the world? Um, no.
Know who does? I do. I know what it’s like. I’ve weighed that. Note the past-tense.
I’ve hauled my 275-pound body up a 30-floor highrise’s stairs and back down again, I’ve cycled 70km in a day, lived through the hellish pain that comes from waking up a body that’s long been hibernating. I know.
I know the looks a girl gets when she’s pushing 300 pounds and has the audacity to enter a gym — the skepticism, the obvious wondering about how long she’s gonna last.
Fat people are NOT encouraged to change. When they try, they’re largely scorned and mocked just for even attempting that. Trust me, I know.
It took watching my father almost die from diabetes to wake me up; I didn’t want to die like THAT. And it was the hardest road I’ve ever travelled.
Mocking fat people clearly hasn’t been working. Look at our world.
Insulting the disabled removes them from our world, while denying us the possibility of another Ray Charles or Stephen Hawking because of shame felt from having to endure the mockery that comes from a large portion of the public.
Making a non-specific insult about a body-type or disability or skin-colour doesn’t have to have an intended recipient — without one, you’ve broadly painted everyone. They’ve all been struck by the ignorance of that comment.
Have YOU ever been that person behind the computer screen when an insensitive generalized remark is made, and you react with “is he talking about me?” because it could totally be about you?
Passive-aggressive hate is everywhere on the internet. Its passivity should in no way suggest it is impotent. It rises up and harms many.
My tweet about it said it best: Being mean isn’t cool. It’s never been cool. And if you make it funny, it’s still not cool. Grow up. High school’s over.
We’re an unhappy society. What’s causing it? Is it the ever-present derision and commentary about each other that sets us constantly on edge? People are less secure than ever, and some are striking out at others as a result. Suddenly, it’s no longer a grown-up world, but a return to all I loathed about being in grade 10.
Seriously, what’s going on?
When I hear waif friends panicking about calories, “oh, god, I’m getting fat!” and they’re a size four, I wonder where the fuck we all went wrong.
Maybe some people still haven’t gotten over their elementary-school mocking and want to take it out on everyone else. I don’t know.
What I do know is, in an age where we have greater glimpses into other people’s lives than ever before — their pains, their sorrows, their struggles — I find that we’re getting crueler, more ignorant, and more insensitive when we’re supposedly civilized.
I often wonder if it’s the culture of the celebrity-gossip blog that’s killing kindness in society.
Instead of pettiness being confined to blogs about celebrities, we’re now visiting it on everyone.
The thing about this whole thing that’s most odd, this little fight with this ignorant kid, is I might consider myself somewhat overweight, but I know I’ve changed a LOT about myself — I’ve lost more weight in the last couple years than most people could even fathom. I KNOW what it takes to lose 3 pounds in a week, I know what kind of hardcore activity is required week-in, week-out. I could probably kick your ass.
There’s a reason most people fail in trying to not be “fat.”
It’s not a two-month course-correction — it’s trying to change for the rest of your life what it took you a lifetime to become. There are years of up-and-downs as you learn about yourself before you one day figure out what it takes for YOU to have success. There are medications and environments that can artificially influence weight. It’s not a black-and-white thing.
And there is no addiction in the world more difficult to overcome than food: We are faced with making choices about it three times a day, at least. Every holiday revolves around it. Every social outing is based upon it.
Overcoming weight issues and other addictions is a massive challenge.
It’s NOT society’s job to fix anyone’s life. It’s on EACH PERSON to improve themselves, and using excuses why you won’t change just doesn’t cut it — because some of us find the strength to change even in the face of our largest adversities.
I don’t accept that being unhealthily fat is a lifetime sentence. I believe every unhealthy overweight person* can change their life and improve their health — because I could, even after a decade of injuries.
And I think we can be better people.
We can be a kinder society.
We can accept that words and actions hurt others.
We can try to understand how it might feel on the other side.
I don’t WANT a world where everyone’s NICE all the time. Do I strike you as a sunshine-and-roses kind of girl?
I just want a world where people are treated with a little respect.
I didn’t need the world to give me a hug and tell me everything was gonna be all right when I was super-fat. But I sure as hell needed less skepticism when I finally had the courage to go to the gym and try to change my life. I needed people to understand and support me when I started on my path of change, rather than presupposing I was just going to be another failing fatty who would give up on everything.
I may have ate the food, but EVERYONE in life around me helped perpetuate my mammoth size that by saying all the things that made me insecure and hurting in the first place — which drove ME to my security blanket of food. Yes, I still take the blame, but at least I understand the reasons, too.
Too bad I didn’t have an emotional dependency on cocaine — at least then I might’ve been a hottie and socially-accepted in my svelte size four. After all, nothing tastes as good as being skinny feels, says Little Miss Kate Moss, who might be confusing how skinny feels with the high she’s riding from her cocaine addiction that fuels her size-zero money-maker.
We’re ALL fucked up.
Don’t try to pretend you’re not. YOU know it. I know it. We ALL have things we’d rather not have come to light at a party.
People with obvious physical issues can’t hide theirs, though, so they don’t get off easily. Instead, they’re publicly hurt.
That’s my problem.
That it’s somehow been deemed acceptable behaviour in today’s world?
That’s our problem.
* “Skinny-fat” is the new phrase out there — people who look healthy ‘cos they’re skinny but their numbers are off the chart, all because they luckily have a quick metabolism so they can hide their true health. There ARE overweight people who are healthy, I’m definitely one — since I can climb/descend 30 floors in a high-rise after cycling 15 kilometres and get my 6 cups of veggies a day — but society still isn’t talking about how health is about internal numbers, not outward appearances. Stop judging on looks or abilities.

Fit To Be Tied: A Woman's Right to Choose?

In 2006, I asked my doctor about getting my tubes tied so I wouldn’t have to worry about exploding with toddlers.
I was 30. He said no, that if a woman hasn’t had a child already, they typically won’t tie tubes when a woman’s under 35.
I’ll be 37 this fall and nothing has changed: My tubes are untied, I’ve never had a child, I never want one.
Moments, however, pass.
For a fleeting second, I’ll see a mom and her daughter, and the exchange is so silly and cute, that I smile fondly and remember my own mother and the bond we shared. I’ll never have that?
Yeah, I know. I’ll never have that. Yes, it’s a choice I’ve long made, and, yes, my choice sometimes saddens me.
But I know why I’ve made my choices, and I’ll stick to them. I’ve NEVER wanted to have a kid. And after life got hijacked by bad times, well, I want to sacrifice whats left of my life to a kid even less.
Even as a kid, I didn’t pretend my dolly was “my baby.” I’ve always liked kids, never wanted one.
This, unfortunately, makes me pretty unique.
Last night, some Twitter friends were caught in a debate about this news story out of Ontario, in which a young family has decided they’re full up on tykes. They don’t want any other kids beyond their two. Part of that young family is pictured here.
But she’s 21 and her husband is 23, so doctors won’t let her do a tubal ligation. She’s too young, too much life can happen, they say.
Now, I’m a woman, so I guess I should agree with the mom and dad, right? A woman’s body, woman’s right?
But I don’t.
I see their point. It makes great sense. And in a perfect world where parents have kids and kids grow up healthy and strong, it DOES make great sense.
But it’s not a perfect world. Marriages end, families split. Kids get sick. They die.
This mother could conceivably have more kids until she’s double her age. DOUBLE. Are her choices are coming from the right place? Is she just agreeing to a tubal ligation so they don’t have to risk having more kids, so they don’t have to buy contraceptives and fuss around?
Because getting tubes tied is no guarantee. A woman can conceive after a tubal ligation and it can be fatal.  My former sister-in-law almost died when she had a tubal pregnancy — it happened so quickly, too. Like a flash, she was hemorrhaging on a table and likely to die, leaving a 2-year-old boy to mourn her.
Luckily, she was saved. Miraculously, she reversed the procedure and, a decade later, has a new baby. With a new husband.
It’s not that no woman can make this decision and be sure, it’s that decisions like this are often made too lightly — even by “older, wiser” types.
Should it be allowed for young women to say, “No, I know what I want, and it’s not a KID” so they can have their tubes tied off? What do YOU think?
I’m torn. Yes, it should be allowed, but it should be a very hard decision to reach, and should be scrutinized by all involved, including a mental health practitioner.
Personally, I think a 21- and 23-year-old don’t know shit about life yet, so to think they’re “all done” is cute, at best.
But I get it. I understand.
Still, their ages aren’t in their favour.
I’ll be the first to admit I know what it’s like to be 21 and pissed that everyone thinks they know more about life than I do. I was a very wise 21-year-old and I took it personally when people questioned my age-appropriate wisdom.
But now I’m 36 and I’m telling you, I knew jack shit about life then. I had some ideas, but I’ve had a whole lot of years of confirmation and debunking since. When I’m 50, I’ll likely be able to say that about the age I am now, too. That’s life.
We grow, we change, we learn.
At 21, I’m pretty sure this woman has much to learn about life. And maybe she’s right and she’ll never have more kids.
Maybe.
But maybe she’ll be another marriage statistic with a broken home. Maybe a tragic accident will take the rest of her family from her.
Maybe.
Tragedies don’t just happen to OTHER people. Life doesn’t go according to plan. We’re stupidly naive little humans.
The doctors know this. It’s certainly worth their considering — especially when they spend 15-30 minutes tops with us for each appointment.
And if the only avenue doctors have is to say, “Well, you’re 21. SERIOUSLY,”  then there you go, maybe we need to hang onto that — because the wise among us are rare, and most people make decisions with knee-jerk considerations, not the gravity matters deserve.
But what do YOU think, and why?
Quick Facts:

  • SOME tubal ligations can be reversed. 6% of American women with tied tubes try  to reverse the procedure.
  • Depending on biology, it can often be done but chances of success depend drastically case-by-case.
  • 75% of tubal ligation reversals are as a result of divorcing and wanting kids with the new spouse.

The Piano Has Been Drinking*

So too has the blogger.
And, boy, has my body decided it’s had enough.
I became social again last year, which effectively doubled the amount I’d been drinking. It became far too regular, and had it not been for the drinking, I’d probably have lost more weight instead of just having maintained my numbers for a year now.
The drinking escalated last fall. More this spring. A good three or four nights a week would be 2-3 drinks, maybe more often than that if it was a busy period.
Just how often became a significant realization this week. Continue reading

In Which Steff Talks About Her ADHD

I found out last Friday that my company’s letting us work from home when the Winter Olympics rolls into town in a couple weeks. My office is in the thick of Olympics Central in downtown Vancouver, between the major “live event” locations and all the sports stadiums. I was already having panic attacks about getting to work in what planners suggest will be the same volume of traffic influx daily as THREE Superbowls would generate, with possible two-hour waits just to get a train. (I died a little inside when I heard that.)
But working from home? Like, omigod. Discipline will be tough, but a deadline is a deadline, and my work has tangible starts-middles-finishes, with daily deadlines, since I watch television and caption it for a living.
My biggest struggle I face right now is not my weight; my weight is partially a byproduct of my ADHD — because ADHD causes problems with maintaining a routine or even achieving one, but also makes me prone to becoming hyperfocused on whatever I’m doing at any time — like eating.
Because I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD for well under a year, it’s been a massive learning curve — Continue reading

10 for 2010: Mindset for the Munch-Challenge

Weightloss is one of those things. Some fail at it — or almost succeed then fail — repeatedly until they finally Get It. The disease of morbid obesity, or even the dreaded beer-belly syndrome, is almost always as a result of one or both of two things: ignorance or lack of accounting.
Me, I was both ignorant of just how bad my diet was, and dishonest about to what extent I was misbehaving. That was then. Now I’m only ever guilty of the  lack of accounting. Ignorance isn’t such a problem anymore.
But that’s the thing with weightloss. Everyone talks like it’s only about the diet or the exercise, but, for me, the head game’s been at least 50%, maybe more, of my success.
I doubt I’m alone on that. Continue reading