Exercising the Right to Exercise – I

Although it’s a lot of work to keep it all in balance, I do have good health, overall. I am almost 50 and have to go to the doctor rarely, and lately mostly for help with balancing hormones as I enter the home stretch towards menopause.

But I am afraid to exercise. I mean, really exercise, get in athlete shape. And I want to.

If I were not so insanely ambitious, I’d probably be happy with who I am and how I am body-wise. I am a little overweight and the weight has settled in my middle. I do, however, have low blood pressure and resting heart rate, and my cholesterol levels are close to normal. I eat vegetables and fruits every day and get enough sleep.  My partner is sweet to make sure that we walk a half hour a day, twice around the loop in my neighborhood, and feeds me well, whole grains, seeds, nuts, cooked vegetables, and fresh olive oil and spices from the garden. I don’t have any grey hair yet and my skin is good , and my body firm with little cellulite. I should consider myself lucky, and I do.

Except for the fact that I am a dancer, bellydancer, jazz, hip hop, ballroom, and modern, and  I am sick and tired of being the middle aged fat woman in the class or performance with the skinny girls. I’m also a soprano vocalist, and tired of the cliche of the fat lady who sings. As a chronic asthmatic, I would love to have the aerobic fitness of a runner or other athlete to support all these activities.

I’m also a bit of a hypochondriac, which is no surprise considering the years of frustrating suffering I went through as a result of peanut and corn and environmental allergies and chemical sensitivity before I got tested for allergies and  readjusted my life and diet.

It’s been a long process. For most of my life I’ve had rheumatoid and fibromyalgic symptoms which only just recently abated, when I gave up wheat for the first time (and what a great thing that has been!) and started taking Circumin – tumeric extract – , SAMe, and quercetin on a daily basis.

My family also has a genetic condition we call the “Knowles’ Knees” – wide bones meeting above and below a hyperextended joint with a ridiculously tiny and wobbly little kneecap floating on top of it. combine that with the turnout of a dancer – shortened Iliotibial band along the side of the leg – and a pronated foot, and you have a recipe for chondromalacia patella and chronic knee problems.

My siblings all ran when they were younger, track and cross-country, and all deal with various knee problems still to this day. My mother is working on her second knee replacement.

For most of my life I’ve battled a vicious cycle; don’t exercise, and end up feeling low and depressed; or, exercise, and suffer inflamed irritable bowel, inflamed joints, esp. the knees, and all-over fibromyalgia pain. Don’t exercise, and feel bad about inability to express my talents in dance and performance: or exercise, and go through bouts of working myself up to inspiration and belief that this time, I really could get in good shape and perform, followed by feeling so terrible physically that I just wanted to die. Needless to say, this cycle wasn’t good for the psyche either.

End of Part 1

Chatting with Fat – II

Interesting to note that, after writing that first blog this morning and noting how I at times crave chocolate, I went to the kitchen to make lunch and found myself thinking a lot about chocolate.

I cut a small potato in thin slices, one of the bakers we made up a few days ago, and drizzled olive oil on it and popped it in the toaster oven. I’ve read that potato starch is transformed by being refrigerated – have no idea if re-heating it changes that factor – and that cooling potatoes and eating potatoes with olive oil and vinegar all lower the glycemic index dramatically.

Since I am allergic to corn and practically all the white vinegar made these days is from corn, I can try some balsamic and olive oil, as I do love potatoes.

Being a strawberry blonde, I know I do have low serotonin levels (low serotonin, allergies, depression, are all correlated with being blonde and red-headed, and women make far less serotonin than men to begin with) and so I have to be vigilant to keep on top of how I feel using diet, exercise, and mental focus so I don’t slide into depression. Menopause and two to three weeks at a stretch of PMS between my increasingly-infrequent periods don’t help, either.)

I do feel resentful and frustrated at times that learning how to eat in a way that’s healthy for me is so difficult, and made more so because of food allergies and sensitivities.

I also felt angry for decades that it took me so long to learn how to love and to have a decent love relationship. Now that I do know how to do that, I feel incredibly proud of what I have learned and how hard I worked to get here. I hope I feel that way some day about my health and about nutrition.

Oh, and I did eat chocolate when I was done with lunch. I melted two ounces of Baker’s unsweetened chocolate with some agave syrup (low glycemic index) and vanilla extract, and scooped the fluffy mixture into a little custard cup. It had a taste and texture like flourless chocolate cake – delicious – and I instantly started feeling like my mood was elevated, without feeling jacked up on sugar.

I have to remember that whatever we learn through experience about how to live more gracefully in the world is a gift to others, and we’re invariably asked to share our wisdom. As an integralist I’m sure that I will be asked to share what I am learning in this regard, as well. Maybe this blog can help.

Chatting with fat

Part 1

Throughout the decades I’ve attempted numerous times, too numerous to mention. to journal as a therapeutic process. It’s never really worked very well for me. However, for some reason the idea of a blog feels more hopeful, as the thought that there might be a witness to this journey – some compassionate pair of eyes reading and maybe even saying, “yes, this has happened to me”, makes it seem more possible. It also means that what I write has to be real, honest, authentic, because other people may have the opportunity to learn from what I have to say.

I probably waited ten years too long to start blogging, because as I begin to write I realize that I have scores of pent-up subjects to dig into. For the time being, I’ll label each topic area Part 1, part 2, etc. and hope readers have the patience to follow along in this fashion.

On  that note, It might be useful to read the Body Dialogues Intro, at least part I, before delving in here.

While a student at the School for Body-Mind Centering(BMC) I vaguely remember sessions where we dialogued with subcutaneous adipose tissue – fat. The fact that I barely remember the sessions is telling. Ask me how to find the “mind” of the bones? I’m there. Wanna feel your connective tissue wrapping and defining the structures inside your body, and supporting, moving from solid to gel to solute, with the warmth of my hand?  Wanna watch me effect a visible difference in skin tone, color, radiance, by focusing in the endocrine system, right before your eyes?

Got a few minutes? Watch me lower my blood presser to 90 over 68.

When it comes to the somatic awareness of the purpose of fat – being able to feel comfortably like I am in the “mind” of it, and understand it’s purpose from an experiential, visceral perspective, I draw a blank.

Subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT). Taste that acronym, feel it in your mouth. It’s soft, round, takes a while to say.  Smooth, but with some definition. Fat. SAT. It’s onomatopoetic – it feels like it sounds.

When I was in my 20s and doing BMC work, I was slightly overweight, but I pretty much liked my body. I did not desire to be thin. I have wide shoulders and a larger than average skeleton, as does everyone in my family. My wrist bones are larger than almost any woman I know. At 127 lbs at 5’3″ I looked too skinny. I spent most of my 20s between 127 and 140 lbs and was more or less okay with that.

Today, on the Equinox, with a whisper of new moon and a bright fall day, a month before I turn 48, I look down at the pad of fat which emerges right below the breasts and falls straight down into my lap, covering the crotch.

I am sitting in the big comfy chair in my sunny little home, naked, writing about my “weight issue” for all the world to see.

I am trying to be detached, observant, just observing what I see and feel.

I feel embarrassed, and really really angry and frustrated that I, who has overcome nearly every obstacle in my life, still has to deal with this impediment to beauty and health and to being the dancer and performer I want to be. I, who has had so many years of therapy, formal and nonformal, and has worked so hard to overcome the trauma of my youth, and to achieve a life with love, a career, a home, and a creative artistic life.

But still, right there, hanging down in the center, the fat.

Not really hanging, cause I don’t have the really pendulous fat, more like the protruding/slightly hanging down.

I note as I write that the disgust and shame I feel thinking of pendulous fat, and the revulsion I sometimes feel when seeing that on other people. Shame at my self, for being fat, shame for being judgemental, being reviled by other’s fat. Then pity  because I know that other fat people are surrounded by eyes, judging, weighing, torturing them, making their lives a living hell. I have never known what it is like to be fat like that.

Over the years I have dialogued with the fat, using somatic awareness technique.

Why are you here? What do you want?

What it tells me is both something I already know and somewhat mystifying. It tells me that it is there to protect me.

Protect – from what?

Maybe I am afraid to be too attractive because I am afraid I might get what I want, which is an attractive boyfriend. Huh. Well I have one, we’ve been together six months, and he really loves me, and even enjoys “plushiness” – is more attracted to women who are not thin.

Or maybe being attractive will allow me to be even more effective as I give men  the business when they piss me off, and I don’t want to deal with the added guilt of that, so I pad on the fat. Well, that angry phase is over with, was over with that a couple years ago when I consciously worked through those angers with the help of a wise 12-step Master. I no longer have any need to consort with the kind of wounded men who circulate through the online dating scene who had become the ready target for my anger. And besides, I gained the weight before my marriage 15 years or so ago.

I have over the years noted that when I feel anxiety, stabbing rushes of fear or anxiety in the solar plexus, they feel deadened or softened by the pad of fat right over that area of my body. When I am able to get over the frozen sense of paralyzed fear that comes with the anxiety and massage that area of my body, it is comforting to have a roll of flesh to roll my fingers in, gently using it to soothe the knots underneath.

But honestly, the benefit of having the fat over the anxiety knot seems pretty minimal. I seem to feel the anxiety just as much as I used to, when I was younger and not so overweight.

I do have instant triggers of wanting to eat to comfort myself when things are going awry in a day, especially chocolate. I do get an instant boost of well-being from chocolate which doesn’t compare to any other high. It can happen from unsweetened or bittersweet chocolate as well as any other form. It will be interesting to observe, over the course of this experiment, how often I crave it in the high calorie, super sugary form, and when I am happy with a small 80 percent cacao square of 25 calories.

But I digress.

In the past when I’ve chatted with the fat it seemed to be telling me it was like an insulation, a storage mechanism – not, as it is often said, to insulate against external input, to protect me from feeling the insults of the world – but internal.

The research shows that eating animal fat both makes one hungrier – turns off the mechanism in the brain which signals satiety – and contributes disproportionally to the development of belly fat and metabolic syndrome, or insulin resistance.

As a colitis sufferer, I have been grateful and thankful for many years for the ability to eat animal fats, and the easy availability of them. Animal fats are metabolized into butyric acid (especially butter and cream products) which is an important and beneficial nutrient for colonocytes, the cells which line the colon. I have been off meds for what I was told was a lifelong, really serious condition, for over five years due to a diet which includes animal fat. My LDLs have been slightly elevated, 118 at last test, but that seemed a small price to pay for a healthy digestive system which has resulted in shiny hair, good skin, and a generally strong and healthy body.

I was never thin in my youth, maybe averaging about 5-10 lbs more than I wanted to weigh at any one time. But I ate a lot of apples. Living in New England, they were a plentiful and common part of my diet throughout the year. Now that I live in the Southwest, it’s been hard to adjust to the hard or mushy, tasteless knobs available in the supermarkets here. Back East we picked our own, visited farm stands, farmer’s markets, or the local coop, where they were purchased from local farmers.

Apples, it turns out, esp. in the form of apple sauce, if I remember correctly, contain compounds that are also metabolized to butyric acid, thus conferring a considerable health benefit to the colon.

According to the Volumetrics dietetic research, foods like apples which are high water and fiber and low calorie- density as a result, are helpful in losing and maintaining weight. Dr. Barbara Rolls did research which showed that people feel more full eating these foods.

As I write this I am biting into a crisp Washington apple. Not as nice as the firm-skinned, dark-red Cortlands and other varieties of my youth in New England, but it tastes good.

Interesting that people with metabolic syndrome are called “apple shaped”.  My partner has added applesauce and apples to the shopping list for this week. Will keep you all informed about how it goes.