Zumbaversary!

So it’s official: I’ve been going to Zumba class about three times per week for a whole year!

I have two teachers with very different styles: one class is like dancing in the basement with all your friends in a party of youthful enthusiasm and the other is a bit more like participating in a Pitbull music video. Both of them use completely awesome music, and both of them probably get tired of me asking, “Oooo – what song was that?” so that I can go home and download it. The positivity, patience, and enthusiasm of the people who teach Zumba is infectious and something I’m eternally grateful for.

I’ve also made friends in class and met other Zumba instructors for outside events such as the two Master Classes I’ve attended, and soon I’ll be going to a special “Glow Zumba” event which takes place in the dark with black lights. I may crash into somebody, but it’s going to be awesome.

My gym is very judgment free and I’m so grateful for that as well. I’ve never felt out of place or looked down upon for being the biggest/slowest/clumsiest/weakest person around (which I frequently was during this first year and often still am).

That being said, here are some health improvements I’ve enjoyed over this past Zumba year:

Greatly Improved Stamina – I have always loved to dance, and for a non-dancer person I’ve got pretty good rhythm. When I was in my twenties I used to go clubbing a lot, not every weekend but a few times per month, and I would spend hours on the dance floor. At some point in my thirties (I don’t recall exactly when) I found myself sedentary, weighing around 300 pounds and in a situation to dance again. I found to my horror that I couldn’t dance any longer; one song in I was exhausted, sweaty, in pain, and done, and it was a heartbreak. I started Zumba after losing seventy pounds, but it was still an uphill battle to get my stamina back. When I first started I did none of the high impact movements (things that take both of your feet off the ground simultaneously). Now? I do all of them. All the jumping, all the hopping, all the lunges (and I used to really hate lunges). Also, I went to a wedding a few months ago and danced for three hours. Nonstop.

Resting Heart Rate – My resting heart rate is 60 beats per minute. I know this because I wear a Fitbit and it reports to me each day what my resting heart rate was over the past 24 hour period. 60 beats per minute for a 41 year old is fantastic, when I began Zumba I believe it was around 75 beats per minute.

Coordination and Balance – I’m naturally clumsy with poor balance due to a combination of fluid in my inner ear from persistent allergies and completely flat feet. Although I’m still clumsier than an average person (there’s no cure for flat feet) I’ve improved noticeably over the past year. Within the first few months of starting Zumba I fell in class twice, one time spraining an ankle badly enough to keep me home for the next week. That hasn’t happened in about six months now.

Confidence – Zumba forces you to get over a lot of your inhibitions. When I first started there was no booty shaking for me, just a sort of embarrassed little wiggling shimmy. Now? Yeah, I shake what God gave me like nobody’s watching. I don’t care who’s watching or what they think because I’m enjoying myself. That physical confidence actually carries out of the classroom and into everyday life as well.

What hasn’t happened this past year? Well, I’m still not thin. This is no fault of Zumba and entirely the fault of continued binge eating episodes in my life. I’ve said it a hundred times and I will again now: you cannot outrun your fork. But if I didn’t have Zumba in my life? Who knows, I may have skyrocketed back up to 300 pounds by now and beyond. My body is prepped from a lifetime of destructive eating patterns to gain weight almost effortlessly, and Zumba has been a big part of keeping my weight stable for the past year. That’s something to be extremely grateful for.

The best piece of advice I have ever received about health and fitness came courtesy of James Fell who writes the fabulous Body for Wife blog and it is this:

“Find something physical to do that you love, and then eat to perform better at it.” Truly words to live by.

Meeting a Zumba Jedi Master

One of my Zumba instructors from Retro Fitness invited me to attend a “master class” this past Friday night with a “Zumba Jammer” named Raffaele Verrillo. In addition to teaching these master classes, Jammers often teach routines to other instructors, making them the teacher’s teacher. Aside from knowing that the master class would be 90 minutes long (instead of the normal 55) and more challenging with routines I was completely unfamiliar with, I had very little concept of what this experience would be like, so of course I signed up. Secretly, I was hoping that a Master Class would endow me with Jedi Master abilities.

Going in, I was pretty nervous. I’ve been doing Zumba since last August and I know my stamina, coordination and balance have all improved, but I’m a big girl and I’m forty-something instead of twenty-something, so I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to keep up.

Friday morning I was coming down with a fresh head cold and had barely slept the night before. I was really tempted to back out and stay home. But with a little encouragement courtesy of Ted, I threw on one of my nerdy t-shirts (REPRESENT***), strapped my nerdy glasses firmly onto my head, grabbed my water bottle and headed over to a local YMCA.

Oh. My. Gosh. Very high energy, very friendly, very positive, very Italian! I hid in the back so as to avoid any direct confrontation with our intimidatingly enthusiastic instructor (plus… I always hide in the back, that’s my spot).

He has a fierce look on in this pic but he was SO happy, crazy-bouncy, and nice!

But I kept up! The moves were totally doable for me, just with a ton of exuberance and a lot of instructor-audience participation involved. I dripped sweat onto the floor within the first ten minutes (I always consider a class successful if I notice I’ve sweat droplets on the floor around me). Raffaelle was up front, on both sides of the room, then he was in the middle of class, then splitting us into two halves for a dance-off battle, then doing the tango with one of the class members, it was nuts and wild and so much fun!

I was so proud of my instructor from Retro! (There were five of us total from her class in attendance). At one point Raffaelle called her to come dance with him up front and she jumped in with both feet like the badass Jedi she is. I’m clapping and grinning in the back of the room like, “YEAH – that’s my teacher!” Still no shouting or whooping on my part though, I have yet to overcome my verbalization aversion.

I would absolutely do this again, and I’m not calling myself a Zum-Newbie anymore either. I’m not a Zum-Jedi Master (and I sadly have yet to evidence any superpowers as a result of my adventures), but I feel comfortable at least calling myself a Zum-Padawan.

Me, my instructor, and four of my classmates with Raffaelle (and his Italian flag, of course!)

***I almost always wear nerdy t-shirts to workout in. If you're curious, this one featuring one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Who is what I wore to the Master Class.

On Being Average

Today I got a great compliment.

I’m addicted to Wegman’s produce department, which manages to have a high degree of both variety and freshness regardless of the time of year.  Today I stopped in for my weekly fix, which amounted to a heaping huge pile of fruits and vegetables.  That’s all I had in my cart, since I get the rest of my groceries at a cheaper establishment.

The woman ringing me up said something to the effect of, “wow – you eat healthy!”

I smiled at her wryly and replied, “I follow a high volume, low calorie diet.”

Although I was using the word “diet” in that sentence simply to refer to what I ate, not deliberate calorie restriction, she took it to mean a weight loss attempt through calorie restriction.  She blinked at me, then leaned over the counter to get a better look at the rest of me, and upon looking back up at my face said, “you’re on a diet?  You don’t need to be.”

Essentially, I passed as “average”.

One of the things that started me on this path was being crushed by the hydraulic lap belt on an amusement park ride, which forced the realization that I no longer fit into the world.  I still have fifty pounds to lose, but I already fit into the world again.  When I was at my heaviest I daydreamed a lot about being slim, but I also just daydreamed about being unnoticeable.  About being a size that people do not pay much attention to because it’s a size that a lot of other people are.  To some people (not all) I now look like an ordinary sized human being, and it took a total stranger to point that out.

To myself, I still seem very large.  So when I got home I made a list of things about my prison of fat that I so desperately wanted to escape from:

• Walking into most clothing stores and knowing that if anything in there fit me at all, it wouldn’t be anything I thought was pretty.
• Constantly readjusting and pulling at my shirts so that they covered my belly as thoroughly as possible.
• Pathological avoidance of putting my sweaters and pants into the clothes dryer because I was afraid they would shrink.
• Walking down the street and cringing every time a group of teenagers passed by in a car or on foot because I was expecting cow and pig noises to be screamed at me.
• Avoiding stadium seating, theatre seating, and chairs with arms on them because they pinched and crushed my hips and thighs.
• Having to allow extra time to stop breathing hard and sweating when I was rushing to arrive somewhere I wanted to look presentable.  Particularly if it was located on a building’s second floor.
• A generalized, vague feeling of apology and embarrassment that plagued me almost all the time out in public.  As though I felt that inflicting my size and appearance on the people around me was a terrible imposition.

I have escaped these things.  And I promise I will never, ever take these freedoms for granted.  And I’m going to try my hardest to hold onto them.

Conquering One Shame, Still Living With Another

The other day I was listening to two people discuss the benefit of smaller apples because the bigger ones are difficult to finish.  I gave what has become my usual response to such conversations, “not being able to finish my food is really never a problem for me.”

Which caused me to realize, much to my delight, that I am no longer ashamed of my appetite.

I’ve written before about how admitting to any hunger whatsoever, let alone the substantial size of mine, has caused me great shame and embarrassment throughout childhood and young adulthood, persisting even into last year.  Although it's true that a big appetite in women is sometimes considered sexy, it is only so if the woman in question is also very slender and/or athletic.  If it's a bigger girl with an appetite she's just gluttonous/lazy/undisciplined, etc.  I'm still trying to figure out the cultural thought process going on behind that one.  When I was younger, even saying the word ‘hungry’ caused me embarrassment and I hid away in private to eat my lunch at school.  Despite still not fitting the body type for sexy women with big appetites the shame over having one has gone away.

I don’t know if it’s being a grown up that did it (ie. old enough not to care so much what other people think), or if it happened through desensitization.  Whenever I’m in a conversation with someone who is elaborating about their tiny, delicate appetite (I’ve only ever met women who do this, but I would imagine there are men who do too) I’m always quick to point out that my appetite would probably be more appropriate for an NFL linebacker than an average woman, but it is what it is.  It’s what I was born with and what I’m working with.  I certainly didn’t choose it, so being ashamed of it is very silly.

I think I reiterate this to other people so often because I want both them and particularly myself to embrace the idea that having an appetite, being hungry, and even (gasp!) eating are okay things for us to be and do.  The sense of morality that’s been assigned to food choices and eating in our culture is both ridiculous and incredibly harmful.  Although I’ve conquered my shame over possessing a big appetite and feeling hunger, I still suffer from awful feelings of self-hatred and failure when I tip over eating 2,000 calories per day.  If I eat 1,200 I feel virtuous and triumphant and if I eat over 2,000 I feel like a horrible person.  If I fall somewhere in between (which I usually do) I’m morally neutral that day.  That is incredibly messed up.  I can see it going on intellectually and get how stupid it is, and yet I’m still helpless to keep that tidal wave of shame from washing over me at the end of a day when I’ve succumbed to a binge.

I guess I just have to keep repeating these things to myself over and over until I get them to sink in too.

And hot dang… I’ve managed to lose 75 lbs. while dealing with the voracious appetite of an NFL linebacker on a daily basis.  It doesn’t make me more moral or virtuous than the next person, but it is a pretty awesome accomplishment.

Coming Clean

The reason there have not been steady status updates in a while is because it has now been officially a quarter of a year (three months) since I lost any significant weight.  I’m not gaining, I’m holding steady at around a 75 lb. loss.  I go up a pound, I lose two, I gain three, I lose one a week for two weeks, I gain one, etc. etc. ad infinitum.

I’m not quite ready to call it a day and decide that life at just over 200 lbs. is good enough, but I also haven’t yet cracked the code for shedding that final 45 to achieve my goal weight.  After losing as much as I have, it feels tantalizingly close, and yet as stubbornly slow as my metabolism has become it also feels endlessly out of reach at the same time.

Sometimes I’m highly motivated for three or four days at a time, sometimes I’m spending three or four days firmly wedged back in my old habits.  The problem is half metabolic slowdown due to extended starvation conditions, and half a motivational loss.

I haven’t found the secret to getting back on track, but I am glad that I’m maintaining and protecting the investment of all the work I’ve done so far.

If anybody has a suggestion for getting things moving again, I am all ears.

Status Report: 1.8 lbs. lost, 59 lbs. total

For those playing the home game, I haven’t given a status update for a few weeks because I’ve been on what is usually referred to as a “plateau” – meaning that although one is still working at it, no additional weight has been coming off.

Moment of honesty: have I been working as hard as I should be?  No.  But I haven’t been horrendously off-plan either.  My highest day in the past two or three weeks has been around 1,900 calories and my workout schedule has been right on track.  So, as usual, at no point did I consume the number of calories (2,300) needed to maintain my current body weight – but I’ve been successfully maintaining it anyway.

This week I finally had a small drop, which is a relief.  It’s really difficult to sustain this level of discipline and obsession without getting a little reward in return – and no matter how many times we tell ourselves that, “the scale doesn’t matter that much!” it’s still the reward every weight loser is looking for.

In unrelated news, my new bathing suit for this summer has arrived!

And that is SO not me in the picture!

No, you do not need to adjust your screen.  Yes, it’s a bikini.  Since this type of suit is designed for a plus sized woman to wear it’s sometimes referred to as a “fatkini”.  I know that some are offended by the name, but it’s mostly used by the people in the fat acceptance movement who are trying to de-stigmatize the word “fat” as a descriptor.  The goal being that “fat” becomes no more fraught with implied slovenliness and moral character failings than the words “blonde” or “tall” are.  I don’t think they are going to succeed, but I appreciate where they’re coming from, and the name doesn’t really bother me.

Regardless of the name, it’s really cute and made from quality fabric (none of that awful, shiny, cheap, nylon fat-girl swimsuit fabric that catches on your fingers if your skin is dry).  Most importantly, to my relief, it fits!  Ordering was a bit hairy since according to the size chart at Forever 21 I’m currently wearing a 1X on top (same size as the model pictured) and a 3X on the bottom, and you can’t order two different sized halves.  I admit the bottom half on me is a bit of a squeeze, but I’m hoping in a few months when I actually wear it in public I’ll be carrying slightly less junk in my trunk.

Someone asked me recently what prompted me to order a bikini.  It’s not just enthusiasm on account of my weight loss.  For years I’ve complained about being dissed and ostracized by clothing designers who I feel don’t want their pretty things on my fat body.  So since a designer and distributor is willing to carry a bikini in my size and made for my body type, then they’re getting my business (and might I add that at around $30 this suit was quite a steal).  The only votes that count here are dollar signs.  Plus, they get a shout-out on my blog: you go Forever 21!

What the Birds Know

Did you ever notice that the seasonal shift is something you can smell before you see it?

Both this time of year and again in the fall, when I leave my house in the early morning I take a deep breath; searching for that hint of change.  In autumn it smells like crisp, when humidity leaves the air and the refreshing breeze is tinted with russet leaves and fire smoke.  When winter’s first snow arrives, before a single flake falls you can smell an icy water-sweetness in the air.  This time of year I’m sniffing for the loamy darkness of the earth warming and starting to awaken, that first hint of green growing things on the breeze.

I haven’t detected it yet, but the birds definitely know something that I don’t.

My house is old and its heating system isn’t the most efficient.  When it’s warm-ish downstairs our bedroom is generally a sauna, so all winter long we sleep with a window cracked to let in some fresh air.  These past few weeks as I’m getting ready in the morning, I have heard the birds singing outside like mad.  You don’t hear them over the winter, they hide out or migrate away, but lately they’ve been in full throat as though each new dawn is the perfect spring day.  They can’t understand physics, but their tiny bodies can sense something that ours, steeped too long in the comfortable world of technology, cannot.  God has gifted them to be in tune with whatever shift is triggering the onset of springtime, and despite the ice still coating our sidewalks, the snow on the ground, the salt covering our cars and the bitterly cold breeze, they are celebrating.

Each morning they comfort me, drawing me onward, assuring me that it won’t be much longer.

Ted and I jokingly referred to this winter as “the winter of my discontent,” assuming last fall that it would be so because I’d be spending most of it without any food that wasn’t a liquid dietary supplement.  Instead it’s been a far more enlightening and challenging journey than I ever expected.  I’m halfway there now, and I’m ready for what comes next.

Spring is coming, the chrysalis opens, and I will be running toward the light.