I read an interesting tidbit this morning on SparkPeople.com, an article about working one's muscles to fatigue and weight lifting to strengthen bones (by Daphne Stevens)
"In weight training, failure is a good thing. Failure means you've worked so hard that your body is saying, "Enough already! I give!" It means you haven't lost control - you're not in danger of injuring yourself - but if you don't stop now, you might be overdoing it.
I like thinking of failure that way. I wonder how our lives might be different if we thought about impending collapses as signals that we're working to the point of failure - the place of needing rest and respite. What if we were to simply stop, pat ourselves on the back for doing our best, and take a break, instead of judging ourselves or pushing to the point of injury?
Resistance training is teaching me other things, too. It's impossible to think about your troubles when you're working a muscle at full capacity. And it's almost as impossible not to sail through the rest of the day when you're fueled by an endorphin high. Strong bones, I hope, will be the reward for this discipline. But meanwhile the sense of intercessory exercise suffices very well. I pray for the women who have gone before me whose fragile bones were taxed beyond limit by backbreaking work. I pray for those who don't have the strength to move for the sheer joy of moving. And I pray in response to the sense of gratitude that pulses through my body."
I really needed to read that, and keep it in mind as I navigate through my daily obstacle course of self-disgust and mental flaggelation over not losing weight fast enough and eating too much, or not eating enough of the things I'm supposed to, like vegetables, lean meats and whole grains.
Whenever I have a hot dog, even if it's a nitrate and preservative free, all beef hot dog from the company that answers to a "higher authority" I feel riddled with guilt. Or when I consume three dairy-egg-free waffles instead of the recommended two.
Even though I'm working out for at least an hour 5 days a week, and weight training at least once a week, there are days when I look in the mirror (lots of days, actually) when I feel like I have gained weight, instead of lost it, and I want to shout "Whale, ho!" at myself. I enter "Oh-Be-City" every day and feel like I am at home. I worry that I will not feel like myself if I get back down to a "normal" weight, because so much of my identity over the years has been tied to being a larger woman, a BBW, if you will. I dream of visiting England one day, yet I can almost hear the derision of the gatekeepers at Harrods, who've been known to turn away smaller women than myself because they were "not appropriate" for the store, ie too fat. I figure they'd take one look at me and say "What a cow!"
But then I read articles like the one above that make note of using failure as a sign that you've done all you can, not a sign that you've given up or done something wrong. I would like to think that strength training is doing that for me, along with all the other exercise I do, that it is giving me the ability to move forward, to have a healthy heart, strong lungs, firm muscles that I can feel under the padding of fat on my body.
And, as Ms Stevens says, I must be grateful for the ability to exercise, to move my bones and muscles and challenge them to be stronger, so I can carry this weight that I've attained through a love of food and sweetness, to the end of my life. Hopefully, I will carry less fat and more muscle as time goes on, and will be at my target weight by 2009. I want to be comfortable with my body when it is "normal" sized, and not feel like I've shrunken to nothing, so ordinary and miniscule that I am invisible. That happened after my first weight loss, 20 years ago, and I felt alone, isolated, frightened and trivial. I wept when I discovered that I couldn't shop at Lane Bryant anymore, because their clothing was all too big. I remember thinking that I'd been shopping there most of my life, and I felt like I was part of a society of women who tried to be fashionable, and look good, though they were bigger women and constantly being told they were ugly in the eyes of American society. I was a rebel with a cause, and I loved meeting other women who refused to be cowed by societies dictates of body facism. I wanted to feel like I was worthy as a woman whether I was a size 24 or a size 12. But I didn't feel like I was looked at with any more respect when I was a 12 than I had been at size 24. I got lots more leering, and was treated like a convenient piece of meat, but rarely did anyone treat me like a human being first. I was ignored as a woman when I was larger then, and now I've learned that I have to stand up for myself and not allow others to ignore or disrespect me because of my size.
And I've got to keep going, not give up and have the strength to respect myself and my belly, even though its still bouncing around my middle and not laying flat as I'd like it to be.
I'll get there, I just have to use all my badger-like patience and stubborness to bring my dreams to fruition.
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