Mirror Mirror

Over the weekend, I finally had a chance to really look at my body in the mirror.  (The full length mirror in the apartment having sat on the floor for months, and I always feel a little self conscious standing in front of the mirror at the gym for any length of time.)

It’s been so long that it felt like I was playing that game where you stare at a picture for a while, and then it’s taken away and you’re asked questions about it.  I wanted to remember each small detail.

I’m sure I look basically the same to any outsider, but all the small changes were positively delightful to me.

I’m still lean and taught.  My butt is rather flatter than I remember.  I can flex and see remarkable definition in my quads and calves.  The line of shadow outlining my delts is pretty neat, and when I made a muscle in the mirror, I laughed out loud, amazed.  I can visibly flex my pecs, too, but that freaks me out when anyone does it.  Most of all, I enjoy the lines of my hipbones, which I’ve always found to be one of the most attractive parts of the human body.  My hair is much longer too, reaching past the bottom of my ribcage.

I discovered where the 5 lbs went.  Mostly, it’s around my waist–a thin layer covering my four pack and my obliques.  The definition is still there, there’s just a little jiggle on top of it.  And some of that extra 5 lbs went to help me fill out my bra again.  My traps may be getting a bit overdeveloped, and if I wore a formal dress these days, the line of my shoulders wouldn’t look quite as classic as it used to.  (But it’s been at least a month since I’ve been invited to a formal event, anyway.)

Altogether, it’s a look I love.  While it isn’t the much sought after concave stomache, perky breasts and caramel tan, it’s me.  My body perfectly reflects that I work out a lot, wear a modest bathing suit, and enjoy dessert regularly.  It’s healthy and imperfect.  I have love handles, beauty marks, pimples, and tan lines, and I wouldn’t airbrush any of that away.

 

EDIT: I wish every woman could feel this quiet satisfaction mixed with equal parts amusement and amazement.  I don’t know how to share it.  I know it has nothing to do with the actual shape of my body, though.

No Kidding

It’s not that I didn’t believe my trainers when they told me diet was important, it’s just that I was stubborn and thought if I worked hard enough, diet could be optional.

In the 18 days after the end of training, I gained 5.5lbs.  Said differently, on average, each day I ate 1,070 calories more than I burned.  That’s a lot of ice cream, cookies, and bread with butter.  Don’t get me wrong, it was delicious.  Fun.  Novel.

Do I still look great in and out of my jeans?  Of course.  Am I worried about continuing to gain weight?  Not at all.  What do I think of this body?  It’s great–I love it.

But as temporarily delicious as everything was, it made me unable to do what I’m used to doing.  Excess calories != excess energy.  I feel much better consuming way fewer calories.  I still crave sugar after nearly every meal, but if I just wait 5 minutes, it goes away.  (Or, I have some low calorie ice cream, because ice cream is still my favorite food.)

Not putting crap in my body is much more difficult when I’m not getting meals delivered.  Why are vending machines stocked with poptarts instead of single serve peanut butter and crackers?  It’s still worth the extra effort, though.  Here are my favorites for portable, buy-in bulk, not terribly expensive options:

• get a GNC card and buy boxes of protein bars at the beginning of the month.  I prefer Pure Protein and Supreme Protein because they’re delicious, and have high protein to calorie ratios, along with almost no sugar.  Ditto for the Atkins bars, but I just don’t like the taste as much.
• fresh and frozen fruit.  During the program, we ate very little fruit, so it seems like I can’t get enough.  Berries, melon, and green apples have the lowest sugar.
• cottage cheese and yogurt.  These win because the low fat, plain varieties have a great mixture of protein, fat, and carbs.  Bonus points for calcium.  Mix in fruit/honey/agave yourself to have a snack that tastes like food instead of candy.
• peanut butter.  Again, an amazing fat/protein mix.  Delicious.  On everything.  I buy the kind that only lists peanuts as an ingredient and am looking into making my own.
• old-fashioned oatmeal.  Cooks in 2 minutes, healthier than instant.  If made to the consistency of stew, is even good cold.
• eggs, potatoes, rice, beans.  All great foods.  All remarkably cheap.  But you have to cook them at home before they behave properly on the go.

So with real food in my body and no junk in my body, I have the energy and interest in getting up early in the mornings to go running in the park, and meeting friends at the gym in the afternoons to lift. 

Sleep helps, too.  They weren’t kidding about that part either.

January

In the week between Christmas and New Year’s, my gym moved all the equipment around.  I wonder if this is so all the resolution gym goers feel less awkward about being lost?

Sexy

Thanks, in part, to post Christmas shopping and the acquisition of a fabulous pair of butt-hugging jeans, three super flattering dresses, and one very short skirt, I’ve decided to also try on the idea of sexy.

It’s fun.  I feel 15 or 16 again.  Being sexy is  a very playful thing.  Men smile at me on the subway, and I get to smile back, and then there are more smiles in the world.  Women glance at my outfit, then my shoes, and then look curiously to see what kind of face I have to go with them.  I give them a big smile, and most of them smile back.  Even more smiles in the world!

It’s like playing this giant super-secret adults-only game, and I am really good at it.  It’s a game played out in a million very short turns, most lasting less than a minute and involving no talking.  Seriously, it’s so fun.  I had no idea that so much of New York was playing this game without me.  (Don’t believe me?  Try dressing up and then walk down the street and smile or wink at the next cute stranger.)

I have so much power I didn’t even know I had.

Going Solo

I spent Christmas week at my parent’s home in a small town in Pennsylvania, where I basically overate and tried not to train (but failed–who knew sitting on my butt was so hard?) 

I’m making friends with one of the trainers at the gym back home.  I rarely notice other people at the gym, but I’m very noticeable.  In a weight room in a rural community, I’m generally the only girl.  Not only that, I wear hot pink basketball shorts, and shed my t-shirt after I warm up, and I’m in peak physical condition.  The trainer was very noticeable as well–for starters, he’s black, and we have very few black people in my hometown.  So not only that, he’s very tall, and weighs at least twice what I do, maybe closer to three times, and it’s all muscle.  He’s in peak physical condition too.  We bonded over chat of protein powders, body fat percentages, and fitness competitions.

So that’s one new fitness friend I have.  But he lives 300 miles away.  It’s lonely at the gym by myself these days.  My old crew has been emailing and facebook-messaging each other furiously.  We miss each other.  Someone pushing us to the next level, racing each other to see who could hit 20 sprawl jumps first, and comparing heart rates.  It’s been weeks now since someone teased me about my weight or my waist line.  Normal people just don’t do that.  I wish they did.  I promise not to be offended, I know it’s just another way of encouraging me to work harder and eat veggies, not cookies.

[Note: eating all that sugar and junk over the past week made my knee flare up again, and I was barely using it.  Now that I’m home and back on track, it doesn’t hurt anymore.  So lest I forget: Maria, diet is important!]

Where Is the Off Button?

Since Friday morning after my photo shoot, when I wasn’t sleeping, I was either  eatingor having a stomach-ache.  Literally, I spent the entire weekend eating until I gave myself a stomach-ache, and then curled up and waited for the stomach-ache to go away, whereupon I would commence eating again.  I don’t particularly recommend it as a way to spend a weekend.  It was ugly.

Without the guidelines of the program, I’ve somehow forgotten how to regulate my food intake.  Now what I eat seems to be defined and fully encompassed by whatever I wasn’t allowed to eat on the program.  I get full, but the food just tastes so good that I keep right on eating until I have literally made myself sick.  It’s disgusting, and my body hates me.  Still, somehow, I can’t turn it off–I want to eat large quantities of everything I couldn’t eat for the past 100 days.  But it’s not that I just want a giant bowl of ice cream, I want a giant bowl of each and every flavor.

Clearly, I need a new program, or a new set of guidelines, or something.  This isn’t working and I feel like crap.

Enough is enough.  I will invent my new eating plan from the ground up.  There will be lots of vegetables and whole grains, and some lean protein too.  Maybe even natural sugars.  But all this processed stomach-ache inducing junk is out of here.

While I’m at it, three days off from regular workouts is enough, too.  I know I still need to recover, but if I don’t do something vigorous soon, I think my body will involuntarily go into spasms just to get rid of all this extra energy.

The After

Well, I’m back from my final photoshoot and testimonial.  It was… well:

It was the first time in my life I’ve had my make-up done professionally, soup to nuts.  That was very fun, although I keep not recognizing the girl I see in the mirror.  There were two make-up artists actually–one for the testimonial and one for the photoshoot.  After my photoshoot, I had to wait a bit (probably about 20 minutes) before my testimonial, so I’m chilling in the dressing room when the second one comes in and touches up my lips, “just to keep you moist, dear.  I’ll put the final color on when you come out, but having dry lips is so unpleasant.”  Seriously?  She sought me out because she was afraid I’d be uncomfortable without a fresh application of gloss?  If I wasn’t so touched, I’d be amused.  Then she noticed my ponytail was coming loose, and promptly whipped out tools to brush and comb my hair.  I love having my hair brushed.  It was divine.  And she was just so nice and warm and natural about the whole thing.

Wardrobe was easy–everything I put on looked great–the only recommendations were if I could change into something with smaller straps.  The stretch jeans I had left with them at the beginning photoshoot are loose on me now.

The photoshoot itself was awkward, but thankfully, they had someone that I knew there to coach me.  “Suck in from a point three inches below your belly button, now exhale, squeeze, crunch, and big laugh, Maria–HA! HA! HA!”  He laughed more than I did, and we repeated the sequence dozens of times.  At various points I felt silly and amused.  If it hadn’t been before 8am, and if I had eaten breakfast, it would have been a lot of fun.  I noticed that I accept compliments about my body almost offhandedly now, as if people are only stating the obvious.  (Well?  They are.)  They were fixing the lighting at one point because, “the body is perfect, but her face is hot,” and the guy coaching me looked over to catch my eye and smile.  He may have winked.

The testimonial was where it got weird.  I definitely told my story (which is the same story I’ve told here: being faster, stronger, and more fit), but I got the impression it wasn’t the story they wanted to hear.  They kept asking leading questions about my “old” body vs. my “new” body, but I could only tell them the truth: my old body was great, and my new body is great.  I have a different body now, I’m faster, leaner, stronger, but it’s the same body, and it’s just as fabulous as always. 

I wish I could have better said what I meant.  Which is that programs like this are worth doing because they give you a chance to learn what you’re made of.  It’s a chance to challenge yourself, push the limits, and step outside comfort zones.  As the outside of my body changed and I dropped fat and gained lean muscle, something inside me was changing too.  I dropped unnecessary habits and put on courage, discipline, and determination.

I’m really proud of what I’ve done.  I’m really proud of this body.  Not because 90 days ago something was wrong.  (Even if it was, who cares?  That was 90 days ago.)  But because right now, something is really really right. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t say that.  Or if I did, I didn’t say it nearly as eloquently.  When told I looked fabulous, and promptly asked about my old body, I clammed up.  I was stiff and defensive, as if they were implying I only look fabulous at 16% body fat.  Also, someone leaked information to the interviewers about my love life, and while it’s not a secret who I am or am not dating, it’s not a subject I’ll discuss on national television (or even here). 

I felt exceptionally awkward about it at the time, but really, it’s all very laughable now.  There was little me, with my face all done up, my allegedly “pantene model” hair arranged just so over my shoulders, with a microphone discretely taped to my nonexistent cleavage under my sports bra.  I was standing under tons of really bright lights, looking into an even brighter one, and talking to an interviewer sitting in a director’s chair, shrouded in shadow.  Behind the lights, there were at least 8-10 people in the sound room, drifting around, or standing by to straighten my belt, touch up my powder, or smooth an errant lock of hair behind my ears.  Who thought it was a good idea to wear jeans, cowboy boots, and a belt buckle as big as my fist with a sports bra, anyway?  I swear, I was straight out of central casting.

The Last Day

My photoshoot is tomorrow morning at 7am, which makes today the last day of this program for me. The last day I will work out twice a day. The last day I will suspiciously scan food labels for hidden sodium, sugar, wheat, gluten, or dairy. The last day I try to eat 1.5x my body weight in grams of protein.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s going to be really fun to bake all kinds of cupcakes this weekend. I will still mourn this period of my life. I already miss my philosophy lessons. Thank goodness then, that I will carry this with me forever.

I’ve learned so much about who I am. I know that I have an incredible amount of willpower. I know sugar really is an addiction. I know how to train and radically change my body. I know that I will never know the extent of my own strength, and the depth of my courage.

I’ve redefined myself in some pretty cool ways too. Even after my muffin top disappeared, I was still very attached to it, but I’ve let that go, because I’m much more in love with the definition in my abs–especially my obliques. I used to be the girl in the tight jeans, but now I wear the jeans I bought midway through. They’re “boyfriend fit,” and I like that. I wear them with a belt (so they stay up), boots, and a tight t-shirt; and I know that this is the image I want to present to the world.
I don’t waste time in the gym or in life, and I always pay my dues. I’m in shape, I’m an athlete, and starting in January, I’m a marathon runner (because I have to start training for the Ironman somewhere). I have a whole new respect for people who have also radically changed their bodies, because I know–really know–what it takes.

If this process were to be made into a movie, right now the camera would find me laughing and celebrating with my arms around my friends. In a moment, we’ll turn and walk off into the sunset.

Requiem

A dear friend from the program just called to ask what I was doing today at around 2:30pm, when our class is normally held. “I guess I’m going to the gym,” I said, “Are you coming?”

“Heck no!” he laughed, then paused. I could still hear the smile in his voice, but not the laughter, “I’ll miss you. When will I have the pleasure and honor of your company again?”

We sorted out dates and times to see each other. I tried to convince him to come work out with me today.

It is really wierd to know that today at 2:30pm, I will be at the gym by myself, with no playful kickboxing warm-up and no impromptu ballroom lessons. My heartrate monitor will finally be accurate because I won’t be picking up someone else’s signal. Today, my own labored breathing will be the only work I hear. No one will call me a wimp when I drop set. No one will make funny faces at me during twisting ab work. When I hit the final set, it will only be my voice counting down. I won’t be able to palm sweat off anyone’s back to smooth down my unruly ponytail. No one will ask me to help them stretch after class. My ipod doesn’t even have my favorite workout songs on it.

I was just starting to be really excited about Friday morning after my shoot. I was going to have a big pancake breakfast, eat lunch at Ben & Jerry’s, and have all manner of indulgences. But I’d rather workout with my team than eat any amount of whipped cream. Suddenly, I’m very glad I scheduled my shoot on the final day. It’s going to be hard to let this go.

Words Are Power

I started this blog as a place for me to sort out my feelings about an accelerated fitness plan.  It was to be a place where I could get things off my chest so I wouldn’t talk incessently about it to people who didn’t care.  An immediate side benefit was continuously updating those friends who did care.

And then something else happened.  Someone got inspired.  Listen to her tone, and her words.  The listen to how many things she didn’t say: no excuses before starting, no explaining, no apologies.  She’s just charging forward with her eyes wide open.  How awesome is that?  (I can’t quite explain how touched I am, either.)