You know that saying ‘behind every good man is a good woman’? (Again, don’t tell my husband I wrote that.) Well there needs to be a saying that says, ‘behind every jacked up behavior there is an emotion’.

Our emotions, when left unchecked, have the potential to be the most destructive things in our lives. One minute we can be sane, rational people making major decisions in a board room and a half hour later we can be a crying pile of poo in a doctor’s office because we had to step on the scale. Really? What happened to that put together woman earlier today that just closed a multi-million dollar deal? Which one of you is the real you? And are you willing to show that side of you to the general public because if not, then there is incongruence somewhere and it is time to eradicate it.

I always hesitate sharing anything about myself on my blog—not because I don’t want people to know because I always share one on one—but because when you read it, it sounds like I am either looking for sympathy or I’m whining. I can assure you I am doing neither. When I was going through all of this I was not “endlessly suffering” and I didn’t cry myself to sleep or anything like that; not because I was ‘tough’ or ‘strong’ or any of that other nonsense you hear sometimes but because I was numb. I didn’t feel. I was as cold as ice and could be quite heartless when necessary. If you made me feel even the remotest sense of fear or weakness, I would mow over you like a John Deere tractor with a fresh tank of gas. There was no emotion, no compromise, no mercy, no nothing. Do not even THINK about getting heartfelt on me because I would take you down in a second and I always had the upper hand. Sarcasm? Check. Quick one liners? Check. Ironside personality with a poker face to match? Check. Knew my stuff? Check. Warmth, compassion or humility? Mmmm…not so much.

On the client end, you would never really know so do not be surprised if you have never seen that side of me…but if you were in my inner circle? Lord have mercy on you because you never really knew what Jodi you were going to get. I empathized with clients because they were going through what I was going through so the warm, compassionate Jodi came out when I was doing my job. However, any other time I loathed my existence and if you interrupted that self loathing, you were in for a treat.

We go through many emotions when something of this degree happens and we struggle to make heads or tails of it as it is happening. As I sat and thought about all that I felt or went through, there were four emotions that just kept coming up over and over: pain, anger, self hatred and shame. Each of these emotions in some way drove DIYD, AoN and DD in such a way that I didn’t realize I was in a cycle of defeat until I was so far in that I needed an intervention to get out. I want to truly emphasize this: none of this comes at you straight ahead and you can just “see it” and tackle it. Instead, it creeps in or comes in through the back door and you are completely unaware until someone else points it out. As far as I was concerned, there was no way I had a victim mentality; Demolition Derby proves it. I am still a success; I don’t care what All or None says. That year I spent sucking my thumb was justified; damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Honestly, I look back at times and think, “Who in Heaven’s name were you back then?” I didn’t even know I had any of that in me. Holy smokes! So it is worth me going through these to give you an idea of what these look like because you may think ‘I don’t have any of that’ when in actuality, you may.

Pain
There’s obvious pain and then there’s not-so-obvious pain. Obvious is the girl who can admit that she’s unhappy or that she’s lonely and so on. I find that folks in our industry tend to poke fun at them because they come across ‘weak’ and ‘whiny’ when they should just ‘suck it up’ and make the most of life…you know…set some goals and make it happen. If they just ‘did it’ and stopped crying about it…yadda yadda yadda. But then there is not-so-obvious pain which masks itself as someone who is ‘tough’ and ‘strong’ and can get it done even when they are hemorrhaging on the weight floor. They may say something like, “Oh, just ignore that. I tore my bicep off my arm. It’ll be fine by tonight.” and we are all supposed to just think that they are some sort of hero because they don’t complain but just keep on lifting. Huh??

Pain lacks emotion. Have you ever had someone tell you something tragic about their life but said it in such a way that they could have just as well been describing the color of the shades in their room? That’s pain.

Pain lacks common sense. Have you ever seen someone work themselves into the floor to the point where they are making themselves sick but darned if they miss a day in the gym? They would sooner stick a fork in their eye than miss a workout. That’s pain.

Pain lacks rationality. Have you ever had a girlfriend chase 5 pounds on the scale when she looks show ready at all times because the thought of gaining weight sends her into a tizzy and continuously reminds you of how no one else seems to see it but she does? You think she’s compliment phishing when really…that’s pain.

Anger
Anger is what you give to other people because you are too closed off to give them you. It is the gift that keeps on giving. Anger is a state of being…it is more than just an emotion. I got angry the day I found I was pregnant with Jarrett in 2005 and I didn’t stop being angry until 2009. Anger is necessary for survival when you are consumed with pain. Anger fuels your workouts, your day to day, your nights when you can’t sleep and your overall course of action with regards to your body. If that was all that anger fueled, that might not be so bad…but it’s not. Anger also fuels binge eating, forced starvation, mood swings, caustic humor, cutting remarks, drunkenness, DIYD, AoN, DD, jealousy and so on. Anger is to us as a flame is to a moth: even though we know it is not good for us and it will consume us thereby killing us…we can’t stop.

Self Hatred
Here is something that only shows up when you show up. What I mean is you do not notice how much you hate yourself until you are in front of yourself. I dealt with self hatred with cotton. I was, and still am now but for different reasons, the queen of cotton. Getting dressed brought on feelings of dread like no other. I could honestly forget all that I was going through if I just went through life without having to shower or get dressed. But seeing as I had to do that every day, I could not escape the feelings of self hatred. One trip in front of the mirror and I was in the throes of DD in a minute. I could not stand to be “dressed up” because to me, that just highlighted the issue. Somehow, in my warped thinking, it said that I was “ok” with this; that there was something valid about the way I looked and that was a lie as far as I was concerned. I was not going to love it, dress it, be nice to it…nothing. No…it needed to be silenced and I did that through treating my body and myself like garbage. The problem with this, though, is that it is a self fulfilling prophecy. I look like crap, therefore I feel like crap. I feel like crap, therefore I must be crap. If I am crap, why am I bothering to try and workout and make myself “better”? Again, we don’t actually “say” this, we just live this.

Shame
Shame shows up as justification. If you ever feel yourself justifying, you are embarrassed or feeling shameful about something. Whatever it is, your edges are fraying and others can see. Here is where I really went wrong. I REFUSED to justify to a certain extent. If I felt you needed to know what went down with me, I would tell you but for the most part I didn’t speak about it in public (I did in private) for almost 2 years. It was the big elephant in the room whenever I spoke in public and I was not about to give in to it. However, that didn’t lessen my feelings of shame, it actually made them worse. The noise in my head about what people thought at times was excruciating and it did not subside until I started talking about it. It has taken a long time to free myself of this and I cannot tell you that I am 100% there but I am pretty darn close. It takes a special situation to set me off and I am working towards eliminating even those rare occasions when they pop up. You are not hiding shame from anyone and it is lying to you if it tries to convince you that you will feel better after justifying. Ask me how I know.

I love you, ladies, dearly. I truly pray that you will never have to go through anything like this in your lives. If my blog does anything, I pray that it keeps you from making the mistakes that I made or give in to any feelings of inferiority like I did for so long. You are worth so much more than that. TRULY you are.

I will touch upon these at another time because each one is a blog post in and of itself but for now I will leave it here. Emotionally, this has been a roller coaster ride of a week for me and I need a break. Ha!! I’m going to go hide under my desk again rocking back and forth in fetal position. Thank goodness this isn’t programming week or I’d be in trouble. Not sure what’s coming up next but I hope it is not this intense. See you soon. Woop woop!!

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“It takes all types to move the world”, my mother used to say that to us kids almost daily. Normally, she would say that in response to something wacky she saw on the news. I am going to borrow that saying from my mom and use it as framework for something that applies to us which is ‘it takes all types of things to motivate those in the world’. Some folks are motivated by negative feedback: if he thinks that, I’ll show ‘em. Some by positive things: you look great, girl–are you losing weight? Me? I was motivated by success. In fact, I will take it one step further and say, I expected it. Up until 2004, there was not anything I did not achieve if I wanted it and put my mind to it. Failure, of any kind, was not an option.

To have a mindset like that is basically a tragic situation waiting to happen. For one, it is not realistic. At some point, I was going to meet my match. For two, it is obnoxiously arrogant and sadly naïve. I believed I was infallible when really I was just young and dumb. Had I traveled the world or looked beyond my nose, I would have realized there was much I could not do. And lastly, it drastically set me up for failure because the thing that held me back from getting my act together sooner was me trying to wrap my head around failing. Not being in control, not liking my circumstances, not knowing what I did wrong, not being humble enough to ask for help, not being patient and so on were all behaviors that stemmed from not succeeding at something I had set out to do. I would have had to tell someone that I did not know what I was doing which at that time I would have rather had you remove my finger nails down to the nail bed with a box cutter than tell you I didn’t have a clue.

When you are of that mindset and you are presented with a situation that you cannot “conquer” and you are not ready to admit that you are human and the body does not have to follow your rules, what’s the natural thing to do? Barrel through it and show it who’s boss! Sigh. Welcome to the 2006, 2008-2009 Demolition Derby (remember, 2007 was the ‘Year That Never Was’). Folks, please stay seated throughout and keep your hands in the ride until it comes to complete stop. Off and on, during those three years, I had waves of anger (I’ll tell you about that tomorrow) that showed up in various ways and dictated my behavior:

Decathlon-style working out: If you do not know what this is, you have no idea what you are missing. A decathlon is an athletic contest comprising ten different track-and-field events but for me it was working out, in 2006, on a level that would boggle your mind. I was that girl who would work out in the gym and then come home and do lunges while cleaning then run up and down the stairs about ten times putting clothes away (this was back when I did housework—don’t tell hubby I said that) all before going on a 5 mile walk with my son. Really? All this after I just had a baby by emergency c-section. Seriously?

Grand opening/grand closing: This is when you “start a new plan” but the plan is so outrageously unrealistic that it is a shame. I would want to go from zero to sixty in 2 weeks and then plan to stay like that for 10 weeks or so. Why? I can tell you not because I thought it was healthy or prudent. But because I could not stand to be where I was any longer. Could not. Now this is closely related to AoN and is basically the catalyst but the feeling that drove AoN was Demolition Derby. I am going to obliterate this fat if it is the last thing that I do!

Distractivitis: This is a dangerous condition that creeps on slowly. As you enter into a cycle of failure known as DIYD into AoN with waves of DD, you can no longer stand being in your presence. Silence or time off is your enemy so you work like a psycho/go back to school and get 3 more degrees/become a missionary in the Congo/help NASA with the Space Station, etc., because dang it, you’re going to be good at something! And we’re not going to sit around and be called lazy (because that’s not the problem…drowning is the problem), we have people to help, things to do and vaccinations that need to be discovered. Move out of the way.

Bad case of Al Bundy: Does anybody remember Al Bundy from Married With Children. I used to love that show. Al lived in the past all time and would recount his high school days of football like they still mattered 25 years later. Yeah…I get it. No, I did not endlessly talk about my “heyday” or anything sad like that, but I would want to go into the gym and lift like I just left the 2008 Strongman contest the week before with the first place trophy even though I really should have been at the National Shuffle Board contest instead as a caddy! There was no common sense going on here, ladies, I am sorry to say. I would set up a decathlon-style workout that would have a grand opening, blow out something on me—Lord only knows what—have the grand closing of that program, settle into distractivitis and then talk trash in my head because of AoN. Can anyone relate? Wonder why I can call your stuff to the carpet so quick and can’t get anything past me? OY!!!!!!!!!!

Jurassic Park: Here is a movie that I have never seen in its entirety but I use all the time as an example and I am using it again today. In the movie, the people would hide from the dinosaurs by saying, “If you don’t move, they can’t see you” and for me it was more like, “If I don’t acknowledge it, it really didn’t happen”. This causes some awkward moments in your life that can be both horrific and embarrassing and certainly not worth it. This could show up at the gym because you want to ‘do what you did before’ and not realize that you are about to kill yourself and everyone in the gym knows this but you. This could show up at a family barbeque because you want to race the little kids as if you are still in the same shape you were before but what really ends up happening is that you roll your ankle and now everyone has to empty the ice out of the cooler for your sorry behind. This is the thing that shows up as we age and causes us to not warm up or cool down for exercise as well as not stretch afterwards, too, because ‘we don’t need to do that’. What kind of nonsense is that? Sad. This is a scary condition and needs to be nipped in the bud real quick. Again, get a girlfriend who’s not afraid to tell you that you are being a clown.

All of this came about because of what I put value on: my body, my athleticism, my work ethic. Although they are great things to have, they are not all of who I am. That was my number one mistake. Every single one of those things are fleeting, at best. They will not last, nor will they withstand the test of time. At some point, when they fade away, you will be left asking one of two things: where’s my mojo (series to the right) or why am I bothering? Either one is going to derail you for quite some time if you are not willing to look deep inside and answer some very scary questions. Success, although it is wonderful to some extent, is poisonous when you have too much of it. There needs to be a healthy balance in your life of ups and downs 1) so you can grow as a person and 2) so that you can stay realistic in life.

Tomorrow I will be making my last P.A.S.S. on this topic. Stop by to see what that stands for and how it changed who I was. Woop woop!!

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I entered into 2008 with a very different mindset than 2007 in that I was not going to let this take me down but I knew I was far from being healed emotionally. I will classify this year as the “rocky” year–not Rocky the boxer– but rocky as in a ‘rough ride’ type of year. I was coming out of a 12 month funk and I was realizing that I could not keep going the way that I was going if I was ever going to get my act together and “get back to normal”.

One of the things that I hear from girls all the time is, “I’m an ‘all or none’ type of person”. They tend to say it in such a way as if to say they are the only person that is like that and it is completely unique to them. Poppycock. If you are in the lean community and you follow the culture/magazines/facebook pages, then you are most likely an all or none type of girl. I have one thing to tell you: go eat some dairy—like Greek yogurt or something, pull up some spit from the tips of your toes and then spit like a sailor on that concept because it is a curse! All or none is a jail sentence that keeps you locked up in your junk like no other principle can. Here is what All or None says and why we do it:

• If I can’t do this to the absolute best of my ability and see the results as I am doing it, then I just won’t do it at all.
• I can’t be bothered with subpar work. Do you know who I am?
• No!  I’m going to start this when I know I can do it the right way because anything less than that does not make sense.  There’s no reason why I can’t…[diet harder, stay focused, do better...]
  
• I must do this perfectly and I will not start/finish/try/do this until I know that I can do it perfectly.

We never say any of this out loud–or even admit that we think this way–but if I prod you long enough and ask just the right questions, this is what you will say to me when I corner you like a raccoon on a back deck in the day time.

I have a saying that I gleaned from a favorite author of mine that I like to use all the time because it is so true: the gates of hell are locked from the inside. I spent off and on at least two years of my life wrestling with this crap until I finally went out and bought a shot gun and put it to death. Every so often I hear it whimper a little in an attempt to resurrect itself and I just load the gun again and kill it dead. If you want to come back from something like this, an injury or a major interruption in your life like a death of someone close, you had better release yourself from the curse of All or None or you will get nowhere fast.

I know some of you are going to know exactly what I mean when I say I spent the first half of 2008 ‘starting and stopping’ in terms of eating clean and working out because it was not like a perfect 12 week diet type of set up. I could not comprehend just “working out and eating right” for the sake of working out and eating right. What kind of nonsense was that? I needed to be dieting, working toward a goal, checking off a chart…you know…being “perfect”. I didn’t fall off the wagon and binge eat because I couldn’t get it together, I just subsisted. I had no structure therefore I had no peace.  How do I work out without aiming for a PR? When do I look for results or do I look for them? Is what I am doing now doing anything at all because this isn’t like the way it was before? What the heck is wrong with me????????? I had been so rigid previously that I didn’t know how to just eat 5 small meals a day and have a cheat here and there. Now I could tell you how to do that, but I was a flippin’ fish out of water trying it for myself because I was doing an amazing yo-yo act between Damned…All or None…PASS…Demolition Derby…Arrrrrrggggghhhhhh!! I could not get out of my own way. Not to mention, back then I was just beginning to fully embrace the way I think now. I still had one toe in the culture that at all times we were to be on point. It was awful.

So…I hired a trainer. I’ll get back to this in a minute.

All or None (AoN) is not the same as Damned If You Do (DIYD); with DIYD, you don’t do anything (i.e. 2007 was devoid of movement) and you’re angry about it. AoN, on the other hand, causes you to start over continuously (or perpetually be in the planning phase) because it is not *exactly* the way you want it to be. Every Monday is ground hog day and you get nowhere, although I will say it is better than DIYD. Ultimately, though, I wanted perfection in an imperfect situation and I had not yet gotten to the place yet of realizing that that was crack pipe material. For starters, I was working 90+ hours per week—no exaggeration. Why was I doing that? Because I set up that hellacious situation back when I was in DIYD land (this is why I call a lot of you to the carpet when you try to add distraction into your schedules/lives because I was the queen of distraction and I know what it looks like). I had to walk that out to completion and that took 9 months to change so AoN would have held me back if I kept that nonsense up. I, also, hated food/life/my body/people and etc. so trying to create this utopian environment was quite disingenuous. Having the right diet in place was not going to solve a thing since there was an 800 pound gorilla in the room (aka my emotions) and he was blocking me from eating my 5 meals. Lastly, I was still trying to come to terms with the fact that I did for a living the very thing that I, personally, failed at. With every ‘start’ came this flood of voices that reminded me of how much I suck and why am I doing this if I can’t even get it together and if I just learn a little more or work a little harder or if I didn’t do this in the first place or I’m back on the “I’m just lazy rant” or…or…*gasp*…does this sound familiar to anyone? Now you know why the sodium lady was so important to me. But while that’s all going on in my head, I also had this other part of me that did not believe any of that so Lord only knows who you may have met at that time.

Back to the trainer…

Hiring a trainer was the best thing I did that year because it allowed me to do a few things:

1) Get over myself. Humbling myself to another fitness professional cured me of the “do you know who I am” disease real quick. For one, he was a guy so he spelled stuff out in frank terms and it hurt to hear them like that. Two, I hadn’t moved like that in a little over a year and that brought it home to me in 3-D! and 3) I knew I needed him. If I didn’t do this, I wasn’t getting out of my hole.
2) Go slow. With him in charge, the AoN had to be tossed out the window. It was stupid. He knew it. I knew it. Nuff said.
3) Have some form of success. At that time what I needed more than anything else was to finish something that I started. I would not need something like that now, but back then it was like gold to me. It is amazing how we can get stuck in a rotary and keep going around the thing until we finally get sick of the scenery and move on.

I want to make this point right now for those of you who have made it this far: I don’t want to give you my conclusions or “a-ha” moments so that they can be yours, too, as much as I want to give you the process that I went through to get to the conclusion that I arrived at. The point here is to get out of AoN as fast as you can. Do not pass go and do not collect $200—just get out. It is inefficient, it is pure vanity and it, ultimately, is a time sucker that keeps you from any kind of progress. Get out!

Tomorrow we’re going to a Demolition Derby. Hope you wear a helmet. Woop woop!

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This whole series came about because I wanted to send a wrap up email about my last series and when I tried to do that I just about lost my mind. I simply wanted to say that I knew what those folks were going through because I had been there in some shape or form in my life and I could relate but it was not coming out of my fingers properly; hence, Reverse Engineering. There is a distinct difference, though, between what I am about to share in this series and what those women were doing which is that I thought about all I did, they actually said all that they said. At the time I was going through all of this, I don’t believe anyone knew how deep it went but I am sure I had some frayed edges somewhere. We all do at some time…

My youngest cherub was born January 11, 2006 via emergency c-section. He was 5 weeks early, less than 5 pounds and looked like a greased up Cornish hen awaiting the oven; he was adorable. Why he came early is another series for another time but I was ecstatic because I was HUUUUYOOOUUUUGGGGGGE. I mean wooly mammoth huge because I had issues with my amniotic fluid and yadda, yadda, yadda so getting him out early was a blessing. I know I have said this on here somewhere before but babies are THE BEST THING to reset your metabolism. If you have been yo-yo dieting for years and now it takes an act of nature to move the scale, pop out a baby as your act of nature and you will see the pounds fall off after that (ask Jennifer Hudson). Do I even need to tell you that I had plans—no, I mean plans–for my maternity leave? This was right after I just gained a half of a llama during Armageddon and then immediately got pregnant so I had spent 8 months dreaming of this day to come to “get back to normal”.

As planned, I breastfed him but for only 3 months because I had issues there, too, but again that’s for that other series at another time but it, like my pregnancy, was an omen that hormonally I was still not right. Sometime during the middle of March I am given the ok to get back to working out and I get to it like a crack fiend in a back alley brawl. I was a psycho about it and for 9 straight months I pounded the pavement in every way I knew possible. I dieted, lifted, did cardio, thought light thoughts and so on. Basically, if it was possible to do—I did it. I lost nothing. No…I mean…nothing. Zero, zilch, zip, nadda, not one. stinkin’. pound. I will tell you, if you told me back then that that was possible I would have told you that you were a liar. I was shocked. Actually, I was a whole lot of other things but you’ll find that out by the end of the week. For now, shocked is a good word. I was raised to believe that if you ate right and exercised you would lose weight. It is was a simple as that and up to that time I had great genetics in that if I even thought about losing weight, I would. If I was ten pounds overweight, I just took an extra poop that day and dropped off 7 of those ten pounds and the other two would come from cutting back on something. I had never ever gone through 9 months of dieting and exercising and not lose even ONE pound. Did I say not one? This set me up for the longest year of my life, 2007, aka Damned If You, Damned If You Don’t.

Every so often I run into someone who lies like a rug. They say something cute like, “I love to workout. I love the way it makes me feel. I’ll never ‘not workout’.” Let me preface this by saying that they are always in shape, they are never overweight or could stand to lose a few. Typically I ask them, “Have you ever been heavy?” and they always answer “no” and I then tell them in a very nice manner to Shut. Up. Do NOT talk about what you have never experienced because you are full of crap. Do you want to know why we like to work out? Because we can see the fruit of our labor and it affirms the thoughts we already have of ourselves: we work hard…can’t you see? The minute you take that away you will see how hard it is to keep that fire burning. It. Is. Hard.

The year 2007 was the second worst year of my life (the first being 1994 but I’ll never talk about that year unless the photos show up on the internet somewhere and at that point I’ll plead the 5th) because it was the apex of all that I talked about in The Most Painful Diet. This is where it all came to a head and I began to truly understand that I didn’t just mess up and gain some weight, I royally screwed up and did some irreparable damage to my body and this was not going to be a quick fix. If I had a desk job, I am sure I could have handled it a little better. But I did not…I was a coach who put girls on stage for fitness, figure and bodybuilding. Oh joy. This is like finding out I just inherited my father’s tobacco company a day after getting a prestigious position as a director of a cardiology department at a famous hospital. You have to be kidding me. So essentially I am large and in charge and wishing I was decked out in camouflage. Awful. In come the struggles:

I struggled with authority:

Why in Heaven’s name would anybody listen to me? So, I became really good at what I did to shut everybody up and a total *B* to shut everyone down.

I struggled with mean comments:

Things like…
“Do you take your own advice?”
“How many plans do you give out before you do one yourself?”
“Clearly living what you teach isn’t necessary. What do you need then to do what you do?”

So I stopped talking to people.

I struggled with the loss of control:

I still couldn’t quite accept that I just couldn’t “diet” to lose the weight so I had manic fights in my mind that I must just be lazy and why couldn’t I work out harder? So I berated myself for being lazy or I worked that much harder at my job to silence the noise. I did not emotionally eat; I was a starver at this point.

I struggled with working out:

The thing that used to bring me happiness at one point in my life now brought me nothing but pain. Why am I bothering? What’s the point? No one thinks that I do anyways. If I do, nothing changes. If I don’t, nothing changes. Everyone wanted to tell me how to diet and workout even though I, myself, was putting girls on stage. Unreal.

I justified, reasoned, denied, did a good bob and weave, emotionally stuffed, rebuffed and at times just gave life the finger. I lived out my folly publicly and had no idea how much this truly affected me until November 2007 when I went to see a naturopath. This woman, who was as disheveled and scatter brained as I was at the time, told me in the most calm, sweet voice all that my blood work told her and it was not good. She spent 30 minutes telling me all about my adrenals and a bunch of other things that we were going on and then in the most matter of fact tone said, “You’re not lazy, nor are you crazy.” With that I stood up, went to my car—it was pouring rain outside—and I sat in it for 30 min crying so hard that I think I pulled a tummy muscle. Sobbed like I lost a child. I had no idea how badly I needed to hear that but that ended the “Year That Never Was” for me and I realized I had to change my mindset if I was going to move forward.

First, self pity is not your friend. He is a menace and you need to stomp on him right away. I was too far into a pit to even realize that I was wallowing in it, but I will tell you that I was definitely wallowing in it. Here is the thing that you need to be mindful of if anything like this ever happens to you (like an injury that sidelines you for a while): self pity doesn’t look like self pity when it creeps up on you and you vacillate between it and everything else I’m going to talk about this week. It is nowhere near as defined as just sitting around in marinating in your own juices. It ebbs and flows and it disguises itself in many insidious ways mostly by bogging your mind down with nonsense justifications. We can smell it on other people but we are impervious to our own. Get a good friend to come in and tell you to get your head out of your butt after she has you empty your heart of all your junk.

Second, I had to realize that what happened to me was a reflection of my stupidity but not my work ethic. That was huge. If everybody wanted to judge me by how I looked then God Bless ‘em but I’ll be darned if I begin to believe that I am not worthy of being a nutritionist anymore because I looked like the Pillsbury Dough Boy. Now who understands that that took me a while to really get that into my marrow before I could truly walk that out? There were times of justification, pain, anger, resentment and so on but on a whole, that thought guided me like no other. I was good at what I did and I was more than what my body was telling people.

Third, I am more than just my work ethic. This is our struggle ladies. This is it in a nutshell. We lament gaining 5 pounds or having anyone seeing us less than ideal because they are not judging our appearance, they are judging us. How smart we are, how good we are at what we do, how talented we are and so on because we excel at all and our body is no different. If you see me looking “less than” then I must be lazy, out of control, not disciplined, not fit to be a [mother, sister, friend, leader, trainer, etc] so we should just hang it up now and the list goes on. Our weight says we are ‘worthy’ and I can tell you after this many years since Armageddon that that is a lie from the pit of hell.

All or None is tomorrow. This is just the tip of the glacier. Woop woop!

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Here’s a pic of my dad with my hubby last summer.

My father is an engineer in the true sense of the word. He never went to college and at the top of his career he was a computer programmer for MIT in their Clinical Research Department. He taught himself how to program, build TV’s, build car engines and fix any electronic device you can imagine if you gave him the schematic. He was so far beyond his time and the time of his colleagues and you would have never known it. He was quiet, unassuming and, unfortunately, always working.

When dad wasn’t working, though, he was in the attic. Do I even need to tell you what was in the attic? I truly hope I made you pause at least for a moment and think, “What the heck was going on in the attic? And what is she about to talk about this week that involves an attic?” [Getting ready to click to another site…hahaha] In our attic at my childhood home was the Museum of Science—I kid you not. My dad had a Van Der Graaf generator, computer ‘guts’ of all kinds of half-put-together machines, soldering equipment up the wazoo (remember, I’m old) and oscilloscopes of all shapes and sizes. He was a great guy to have as a dad because there was never a dull moment but he was also One. Strange. Dude. For real. (Now you understand where some of my quirkiness comes from.) I love my dad even though he made it hard to try and feign stupid when it came to the class science project. Who can just imagine what some of my projects were like? However, there was a benefit to hanging out with a dad whose idea of helping his daughter with her second grade Valentine’s Day project that was supposed to be bending a coat hanger into the shape of a heart that instead consisted of taking it apart and soldering it back together after measuring out and blow torching two perfect semi circles for the tops of the heart: learning how to take things apart in an attempt to know how they were made. This time consuming and oddly satisfying process is otherwise known as reverse engineering…and it is good stuff.

The official definition of reverse engineering is all about technology so I’ll spare you the detail but for this week it means looking at what you are doing and asking yourself, “What the &*^%$!* did I do to get here?” If you have ever spent days wondering where you went wrong to get where you are or why do you keep losing the same 10 pounds or how is it possible to eat that much crap in a 60 min span of time or why am I bothering, then you are reading the right series. We never miss our water until the well runs dry and some of us have spent a season or two in the Sahara desert wondering if it would ever rain again; therefore, we need to chat about this since we will not be young forever and “health” is fleeting. Do not put all of your eggs in the “lean” basket or you could find yourself with some cracked eggs, trust me on this one. You never know what is brewing in the body and we are all one egg white away from an autoimmune so if your stability is in your diet ability…then we have a problem. (Wow. That just sounded super fatalistic and very Dr. Mercola-ish. I know I have a little bit of that in me but not to that degree. That honestly was a bit over the top. If one of you ever said that to me I’d crack you upside your head and tell you stop telling yourself to get sick. But for this series, I sort of have to go there so please forgive me if I temporarily sound like your breakfast is life or death. I’ll be sure to tone it down in the next series.)

Before you start thinking, ‘Is she going to take us through what happened to her body when…’ the answer to that is absolutely not, I would never bore you with those details. Honestly, I would rather pluck the individual taste buds off my tongue with a pair of tweezers than go through all that. No, what I am going to take you on is a bit of an emotional journey as to some of the stages you can go through when you hit a rough spot in your dieting. I don’t expect you to vibe 100% with all of the things that I am going to say because my event was so extreme and has lasted so long, but all of us at some point have struggled with gaining weight back after a sizable loss, hitting a plateau for an extended period of time, falling short of a set goal or feeling like a slab of lard packed into a pair of jeans all while our friends and family are watching. No matter what your issue is/was there will be some small piece in here that you can relate to because I was where you are now so I know what you are going through and I have since been through every emotional struggle imaginable just trying to get back on my feet. The one thing that makes my journey worth hearing about is wrapping your mind around what it is like putting Humpty Dumpty back together again in front of the clients that you are busy trying to help put back together again, yourself. There is a crazy dynamic that goes on inside of us when we are being squeezed on both ends like that. I hope you stay tuned this week to find out.

There is a world of knowledge locked up in that brain just wishing to come out.  Every so often I try to make him laugh so hard it falls out.  I’ll keep trying.

As for my father, his journey, unfortunately, has not been ideal for the past 3 years. In September 2010, my dad had 4 strokes (each blocked artery is considered a separate stroke) and one heart attack all at the same time while being operated on for his heart. He survived and was nursed back to health but he lost his ability to speak in the process. His body is back to what it was before the stroke but his mind is not. He is a perfect example of putting your eggs in one basket because my father is just a shell of the man he once was and I truly believe if his speech and cognitive abilities were 100% but he was wheel chair bound he would not have cared. What has stripped my dad of “dad” is the fact that he can no longer pontificate for hours with me (or anyone else for that matter) about gravity, the Hubble constant or dark holes vs. white holes. His life revolved around his ability to live and talk science and now that it doesn’t, he’s asking ‘why bother?’

See you here tomorrow…this will be a long week for me. Much love, ladies

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At times I allude to the fact that I can (physically) be all over the place in a week but not really give any idea of what that looks like. It is not unusual for me to go from a meeting in the morning with someone at Panera, to lunch at a great salad place with another person to an afternoon meeting at Starbucks with someone else just to round off the day. My entire week does not look like that as I spend a significant amount of time on the phone, but I can have a day or two to be like that once or twice a month for sure. As crazy as that sounds, it makes for great people watching and a few great stories peppered in between.

There is a really cozy café type store that I tend to frequent a lot because it has some really good soup. The only drawback of this place is that it is a little too cozy: the seating is very close. When I meet with someone, I have zero idea of what we’re going to talk about or how it’s going to go down and it does not matter if it is the first time I’m ever going to meet with them or the thirtieth. I do not dictate the conversation, whoever I am with does. Trust me when I say there are never any awkward moments and we never run out of things to talk about but I have learned in my old age that your everyday conversation reveals more about you than any “philosophy” that I may come with trying to sound educated. If I shut up, you reveal. It works well.

However, there are times when I may ask a question or poke a stick in something that it is a loaded bee hive and you burst forth like the Hoover Dam. It is never my intention but I don’t apologize for it happening either. Clearly we needed to go there and it always ends up being worth the tissues. With that being said, I never think about the people sitting around us and I never wonder if they are paying attention to us because normally, they are not. But on this particular day, there was a woman, we’ll call her Rosy, who was very much interested in the conversation I was having with a client.

“Excuse me.”
“Yes?” I said in a very warm and inviting manner (big mistake because she took me up on it).
“What do you do for a living?”

I sat there for a solid two minutes thinking…what *do* I do for a living? What in Heaven’s name would you call this? At this time I am sitting across from someone who is looking for an entire box of Kleenex, never mind just one, and I have a woman who looks like Blanche from the Golden Girls shaking me down for info. So I kind of did a soft shoe because I have no idea where she is going with this.

“I’m… an athletic coach and nutritionist… I guess. Although… I am not actively coaching right now and I do not do nutrition…in the traditional sense.” I need you to know that that sentence came out of my mouth like I just got caught nude in a car parked on Lover’s Hill or something. What was my gig? You would have thought that I had 2 kilos in my bag with me and she was the Feds. Ridiculous.

“Oh. Good to know. I knew it was something like that. I am a counselor myself and I could just tell that you were in that line of work.” She sat there smiling at me…awkwardly…for a while…anybody?

She was sitting across from an older gentleman who I think was her husband. She was decked out in the latest Lulu outfit and looked quite fit for an older woman. She was definitely in her mid sixties, I would say, and either just came from the gym or was about to head there. She went on to explain that she counseled women with eating disorders and thought what I did (I said more after I stopped feeling like I was Sharon Stone from Basic Instinct) was really interesting. Our conversation, which by the way was intermittent because in between all of this I was still sitting across from someone (!!), started out light but then it took a crazy turn and I sat there thinking to myself, “Should I ask my client to move over?”

She launched into how she loved the place but the soup had way too much sodium in it (it does not, it is all made that day on location so it is not laden with MSG or other preservatives) and how she needed to avoid sodium because it was so bad for but it was okay because she had already worked out for the day so she had sweat and a little bit of sodium would be okay but that she didn’t want to put on any weight and you know how bad sodium is and…DEEP BREATH…

Who has ever seen my blank stare? Yeah…in full effect at this point. This begs the question now, ‘Who is the client? Her? Or the people she counsels? And what does that session look like?’

Did I say anything? What?? Are you smokin’ crack?

No one is harder to counsel than other health and fitness professionals. We are on the front lines doing personal work in spite of our own personal failures. We have to look like we have it all together even though we do not…not even a little bit. The thought of opening up to someone who is your peer and saying that you need help—or better yet, even admitting you need help is pure heresy. Do not even think about it in this industry. If you want a good idea of what I am talking about, go to a personal trainer’s conference and watch everyone jockeying for position that they know more than the guy next to him. It is like crabs in a bucket each pulling the other one down to get on top (I am only referring to the participants). The saddest thing about that, though, is that every trainer needs a trainer. You cannot be good at giving advice if you suck at taking it. I have two very strong women who speak into my life weekly and I will never give them up. One of them gives me the hairy eyeball while the other gives me the silent treatment. I love it and I love them. If you help people in any capacity, make sure you are being helped yourself because you need a place to dump all of that angst. It is hard to work through everyone else’s stuff all week long and not unload some of that somewhere. Ask me, no really, pleeeaaase ask me how I know? OY!!

Tomorrow, via email, I will wrap this up so be sure to check for it. Not sure what’s coming next but I have two cooking in my brain now. Just need some titles…haha!! Woop woop!!

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Could I do a play on words here with you? Is that ok? Because I would never do a play on words, right? I chose the name of my post to be ‘managed care’. I could not get away from that title and if you are subscribed to my emails you know that I get the titles of my blogs first and then I write them based on the title. No title, no blog. But managed care, in this day and age, refers to (as Wikipedia puts it):

Managed care is used in the United States to describe a variety of techniques intended to reduce the cost of providing health benefits and improve the quality of care.

Well obviously that’s not what I am referring to in this series so I was annoyed with myself when I couldn’t get rid of the title and find another. So I looked up the definition of managed and one of the meanings was:

to bring about or succeed in accomplishing, sometimes despite difficulty or hardship

and I looked up the meaning for care and saw that one of the choices was this:

a state of mind in which one is troubled; worry, anxiety, or concern

Could I just be so bold as to stick the two together and create my own definition of managed care which is a representation of the story I am going to tell today? Managed care in today’s post means:

A lifestyle that succeeds in accomplishing, sometimes despite difficulty, a state of mind in which one is troubled.

Yeah…that’s it. And you ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie with this one!

I went to a house party/gathering/get together kind of thing. There were a lot of people there. It was a mixed crowd of singles and married couples, all colors, all occupations but mostly my age range. It was good conversation for the most part and I had a really good time. I, also, had an interesting “fly on the wall” moment with one of the girls at the party.

There are about 4 of us sitting around chatting, just enjoying the night and having a good laugh. Somehow, and I never pay attention to how until it’s too late, we got to yapping about weight, dieting and everything that it entails. I clam up. I got nuttin’. I want to have this conversation like I want to glide my tongue down a splintered piece of wood. Who understands what I’m saying right now? If it wouldn’t have been so obvious, I would have gotten up and moved elsewhere but I was stuck. So it begins…

Let me start by saying it was not the actual conversation that bothered me. To be honest, I cannot for the life of me remember what we were talking about so the topic wasn’t the problem—the girl that was speaking was the problem.  I will venture further and say, I like her, actually, so it wasn’t her per se as much as it was what she was trying to convince us of. Have you ever been in one of these conversations where you start wondering if the person you are talking to is really even talking to you or not? Or are they talking to themselves, convincing themselves of the things that are coming out of their mouth? And that wouldn’t be a big deal either because we’ve all done it at least once in our lives but most of the time we are honest about it. What was going on here was a total travesty.

Somehow—again, no idea how—we start talking about daily regimens and how we manage eating in general when there are all these bad choices around us. I should be more specific here and say “they” because I ain’t sayin’ nuttin’. Like nuttin’. So they get into how they all have dieted and how maintenance is tough—yadda, yadda—and the girl launches into how life is so wonderful now that she eats “this way” (I’ll explain in a minute) and she doesn’t know why it took her this long to do this and so on. “This way” means that she eats all organic food, nothing refined in any form, she makes all her own [insert whatever you may buy readymade like salad dressing], she eats very little meat and so on and so forth. There is nothing wrong with the choices of what she eats, I have no organic/whole food agenda here and it is working for her wonderfully because she has dropped a good amount of weight. Here is what you need to know: she is much like “Dr. Mercola” from yesterday in terms of extreme eating, and she is one of the most critical/harsh women I have met in a long time—she’s polarizing to be exact. Her claim here is that she is now ‘happy’, yet she is happy like I’m a domestic housewife (sounds good in theory but never comes to fruition). What she described is a life that is absolutely bound to her eating regimen to live day to day ‘happily’. Change anything in her eating and you have upset her balance.

I know what you are thinking: sounds like a lot of folks I know. Yes, I’m sure, but my issue here is much like the one of yesterday in that she had an agenda and she was recruiting. Unlike “Dr. Mercola” whose agenda was the extreme eating itself, this girl’s agenda was ‘now I am happy and you can be, too’. Suddenly, we were all miserable, shameful creatures because we just couldn’t see how happy and stable her life is now that she changed her food choices. The conversation began to get tense simply because she was trying to convince us that this is the life to live and the rest of us weren’t going for it. No one opposed her but no one supported her either. It was just dead air, she was miffed and just like yesterday’s post I said nothing. (When I go that silent, just know there’s something up.)

Why didn’t I say anything?

I would have upset the eco system. One of the worst things I can ever do (and ask me how I know this…sigh) is to enter into a conversation like that, ask a question or two that would have rocked her world and then get in my car to go home and never look back. If you know that you have a friend, not a close one, who is a holy mess but you don’t want to be the one to deal with it…leave her alone. This girl is at least functioning right now. If I had said anything to her to change where she was but then did not offer any assistance when she fell flat on the floor, then I am as irresponsible as they come.

This is hard for us to understand because many of us operate from a place of compassion when we see someone we know or like or even love suffering from the choices that they are making in their lives. (There is no one there who didn’t want to scream at her, “You are not happy!”)  We want to help them and give them some good solid food advice or help them with their training routine, which is all fine and good, but we need to have super sensitive antennae up that tell us when we should leave ‘good enough’ alone. If someone has built their survival around a religious (meaning scrupulously faithful; conscientious) activity and they have gone so far as to convince themselves that this is the way to go…LEAVE THEM ALONE. Only get involved if you are in for the long haul—and I mean long haul. You may disagree with me and that is A-OK with me. I, however, have had my fair share of Humpty Dumpties who have had a great fall all because I stuck a poker in the bees nest and then high-tailed it out of Dodge before realizing I just brought Armageddon to their front lawn. Again…I am reformed.

There’s yet another for us to look at tomorrow before I wrap up via email…hang tight…

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Once a month I go to a leadership type of meeting. No, I’m not a leader in anything and am quite happy with that but I do enjoy listening to the ladies that are there and learning from them. I am typically the youngest one in attendance so there is much to learn every time I go.

About 4 months ago, a new lady showed up to the meeting and really stirred things up. We probably have a new person come every 2 to 3 meetings or so and it’s always nice to get a new perspective and we really do welcome new people with open arms. The meetings, themselves, are centered on leadership and helping each other out in our respective positions so it is always nice to put it into practice by being accommodating to new people. The meetings are not about health or anything fitness related at all as we come from different professions and all walks of life and occasionally we will focus on one particular person’s field of interest, but that’s not the norm. We are there for the purpose of leadership development and supporting each other so who knew that the new woman at the meeting would cause such a raucous this day by not adhering to our purpose.

This is where I want to break and talk about meetings in general with women. WOW. What an eye opener. If you ever want to see the word *insecurity* in the flesh—a meeting will definitely do it. Now, I am not talking about these ones in particular because they are very small and focused, but more in the broader sense. Women are like a pack of dogs all searching for the alpha position—whether they want the position or they are looking to find out who has the position it doesn’t matter, they are all searching. And should you find yourself not knowing which one you are, you can be mowed over by the one who is claiming alpha or pushed out of the way but one who is aggressively looking for the alpha. YIKES.

The meeting time is set for the morning so when we get there our hostess typically has a light breakfast assortment out for us to choose from. The choices range from healthy to nowhere near healthy so everyone there is represented and it is at her house so honestly, no one is expecting her to be IHOP with a menu of choices. I’m happy she’s hosting it, for crying out loud, I know I wouldn’t want to do that monthly. So in walks Dr. Mercola—I mean the new woman. Holy Interruption, Batman! Yes! I am all about health. Yes! I care about the choices that you make and why you make them. But heck no! am I going to torture you if you choose something that is not so healthy.

I need you to know before I go on explaining what went down with this woman at this meeting that I am working on some major things in my personality. One of them is not stomping on people in conversations. If you know me, you know I have my work cut out for me, but dang it—it’s worth it. I can, if given the opportunity, dominate a room…no, wait…obliterate a room full of people if you pick a good enough topic. About 3 years ago, I had to free myself of that burden; too much carnage in my wake and it feels awful when you are done. So, I liberated myself from being the know-it-all that I can be. No…really…I did…stop laughing…sigh. But I also have an incredible knack of blending in the background, too, so that no one knows that I am there and I just sit back and watch the drama unfold. I brought the silent woman to this meeting in case you wondering.

So Dr. Mercola, as I will now call her, systematically went through the room shaming everyone for their choices in a very passive aggressive manner. It looks like this:

“Oh, I love Danish. I haven’t had any in such a long time. They cause too many gastric issues and they’re not good for you. I gave up anything with white flour or any refined foods for that matter. I’ve lost over 100 pounds in 2 years. I don’t let anything unhealthy pass my lips.”

My immediate reaction to this was sarcasm…in my mind. I wanted to say some things out loud…but I’m reformed. My biggest problem with what she said is the “I am better than you because I can make a better choice than you can” kind of tone. It was mean and it was a pot shot. Essentially she was picked on and debased when she was heavier so now it’s her turn to unleash the cracken on someone. Not cool.

The ladies at the meeting are just that: true ladies. So they let Dr. Mercola have her say for a minute or two and then moved right into the meeting. OH…but the nonsense did not stop! The meeting was barely in motion before we heard about how alcohol was so bad for you and that not ONE drip should ever be consumed because it is so poisonous. And studies show that…[my eyeballs begin to bleed]…

Why did I take such offense to that? Because in her ranting she neglected to stop and find out about the people at the meeting and who we all were. One of the participants—whom I have truly grown to love—is a newly life living ex-alcoholic and she needed to hear this like I needed someone to ask me if I ever take my own nutrition advice (another story for another time). It was only about her and it was apparent. The other thing that made this very difficult for us was how much she tried to make it seem like it wasn’t about her and how she wanted to help everyone. Oh how I wish that people—more trainers than anyone else—could see that their soap box is just that—theirs! When you are in the business of helping others…help them! And helping them is not making them look and act like you. OY!

We barely got through the meeting that day. Every way that she could interrupt, she did. She had the most extreme ideas about food, health, health care and so on. I was mortified. And I was also silent. I said not one word. Who can believe that? Not one. Why? For two reasons:

Why bother? Years ago I came to the realization that in the fitness industry everyone is a nutritionist and everyone is a trainer if they, themselves, have dieted themselves or worked out at least once and had some measure of success. If you cannot handle this, get out now. Almost all people operate under the fallacy that ‘if I have gone through it, I am now qualified to take you through it’. This is why you see guys/girls do one show and become a coach. It’s frightening and dieting is no different. Once you have dieted and had success, you are now officially a nutritionist. I have to say that this is the number one reason I avoid social engagements that are centered around food. They are just not fun for me. I either get challenged by someone in the room or I have to listen to Dr. Mercola, Dr. Oz and a splash Oprah all night long.

…the second reason…

Where would I start? That woman’s pain was sitting all over her sleeve. Torment, anger, resentment, vengeance and pride were all abound. Which one would I pick on first? None of that was about food. She wouldn’t know good nutrition if it took her out to dinner for goodness sakes. No…that was 100% about her personal pain and she drags it with her everywhere she goes. I will spare you her diet regimen but she was so rigid about what she ate and how she ate it that I think I let a tear fall down my face for her daily eating plan. We can all be like this at times, ourselves. We truly need to be mindful of this monster because we develop a false sense of security in the rigidity of our choices and the routine of our lives. We think that somehow we’ve erased a painful past or challenging circumstance because we count out 10 blueberries and avoid sugar all day long.

The saddest thing about this is that she looked gaunt. She was not super thin at all, her weight was fine, but she looked unhealthy. I believe that was simply because her frayed edges were showing and she couldn’t hide them anymore…

More to come tomorrow…

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Yesterday we tackled what you needed to do physically to get through the STA. Today, we are going to talk about it emotionally. I am not going to go into too much detail because I would rather cover this more comprehensively at another time but you will get the gist of where I am going and it will give you a few things to think about in the mean time.

Scenario #1 Having to lose weight again within one year of a 10 to 15 pound weight loss.
Pro: This should not be earth shattering in terms of losing the weight again. It is very doable.
Con: You will have to work harder than you did the first time and that is always a bummer.

Things to consider:

1. The weight comes off easier the further you are from the date when you stopped dieting. If you entered into maintenance in April and gained the weight back over the summer, you should not have a hard time come December or January if you follow the guidelines I outlined.
2. The older you are, the harder it is and the longer it takes. Each time may look different so be ready to “re-learn” your body all over again.
3. The way you gained it makes a difference as well. A slow creep is easier to take off than a 2 week bender that happened a month after you entered maintenance.

I find that this is the least debilitating situations out of the four groups. Typically, this did not come about as a “grand revealing” so you don’t have to do the “grand veiling” 6 months later. Most of us who take off ten pounds, just take off ten pounds and there isn’t much fanfare about it. Maybe someone notices and compliments us here and there, but if it took a while, it most likely didn’t cause a commotion. Where the problem comes with this group is that they keep losing the same 10 pounds over and over and over again. This brings on a sense of failure, futility, frustration and guilt that can start to take on a life of its own and also become habitual. I can honestly say that some of us would not know what to do with ourselves if we didn’t have “10 pounds to lose” but if that is the case then I would seriously beseech you to look at the underlying feelings that are causing that craziness.

Scenario #2 Having to lose weight again within two years of a 20 plus pound weight loss.
Pro: If you are closer to the two year mark there is hope.
Con: You will most likely be forced to go extreme to take off the weight if you are impatient–which pretty much describes most of us women.
Things to consider:

1. You lost a good amount of weight and you will not get it off the second time without a fight.
2. Before trying to lose the weight, get all of your ducks in a row in terms of eating and having a rhythm. This means trying to regulate your eating right where you are. Don’t restrict calories, just clean up the diet. Give your body some time to get into a healthy rhythm before putting it through the rigors of dieting again. Usually, when we get off track our normalcy goes with it. Restore that for at least a month before starting on yesterday’s guidelines.
3. If you gained back 20 some odd pounds in less than a year, then it will take an act of nature to get it off again in a year without some sort of extreme measure. Can you do it in 2 years? Yes, you can. But less than one year is going to cost you.

This is a hard one to get through emotionally. Twenty pounds is noticeable and you feel naked before friends and family. What is the hardest, though, are the declarations you most likely made to yourself and others that now you have to live down. Things like “I will never go back to my size { } ever again” or “You just have to make healthy choices” and so on. Insert whatever glib statement you want but many who lose that amount tend to become overnight nutrition counselors to everyone else so when they fall…they fall hard. My weight in last 2.5 years has fluctuated more than the Dow Jones off a bad Tweet. I went for 5.5 years without being able to lose a pound to fixing some major hormonal issues that caused me to drop weight in five seconds flat. So yes, I could now lose weight but I, also, could gain it back faster than I have ever seen before and the roller coaster ride that I went on trying to find a balance was not fun. I have a very different body post apocalypse and I have learned much in terms of the emotions that go with not being able to control your body’s response to things. It will be really tough to go through this if you had much to say about your weight loss to others. To the degree that you were vocal will be the amount that you will struggle on the rebound. If you were quiet, though, your second journey will only be physically hard and only slightly emotionally laborious. Sounds exciting.

Scenario #3 Having to lose weight again after a 12 week hardcore diet countdown of any kind losing ANY amount of weight.
Pros: You haven’t had the new weight long enough to become too emotionally attached.
Cons: If you lost it that fast, EVERYONE knows and is now focusing their attention on you and you feel as naked as a baby’s bum on a changing table.
Things to consider:

1. You have to give yourself at least a 4 week break before you can try to lose weight again. If you dropped into a 15-20 pound weight loss over a 12 week hardcore restrictive diet, you most likely rebounded HARD—meaning almost overnight–when you gained the weight back. This is THE hardest weight to ever take off. Your body is tired from dieting and you are SO over it by this time. Hormonally you need to stabilize before expecting your body to respond.
2. You must drop your cardio immediately and stop dieting. The guidelines are essential—follow them.
3. This was to be expected and I am not sure there was much you could have done to prevent it. It is…the nature of the beast. Knowing that, do not beat yourself up over it because it only wastes time and you don’t have any to waste.
4. You will not rebound this hard the next time you diet. Your body will get used to the dieting and you will be that much wiser the next time around. Trust me on this one.

See my series called Failing Forward to see how this goes down emotionally.

Scenario #4 Having to continue to lose weight when you have a sizable weight loss goal of 30 pounds or more.
Pros: If you have been doing this incrementally and nothing extreme, you just need a refeed here and there and you’re good to go.
Cons: It is a long haul and you need a good team behind you and that’s not always available.
Things to consider:

1. You have to be the master of change: diet, workout, perspective, etc.
2. Cut your cals last. Since you have a long way to go, a cut too deep too soon = plateau.
3. You will lose on the scale, in the mirror and in bodyfat. Do not declare a plateau until all 3 of those have stopped moving.

You need a professional team of rah rah shish coom bah’ers on your staff. They need to stoke you like a coal fire in a steam engine train. There is nothing more to this. If you have to lose more than 30 pounds, you know what I am talking about. Put your nose to the grind, ignore all the people who feel like they are your “Jillian Michaels” for the moment and just keep it moving. Make sure you have a sanity check in your life from someone who knows what they’re talking about and just ride out the storm. Cool? Because the only thing that is going to take you down is taking your eyes off of the road. Looking out the window will cause a crash. Keep your eyes focused on the road.

Oh my, ladies.  Well I’ve lost about five pounds just getting worked up this week over this.  Whew!  Thank you for the workout! Haha!  Next series is a short one…Look for it on Tuesday…Cool?  Woop woop!!

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Today can best be described as ‘rolling commentary’. For those of you who have ever had a conversation like this with me all I can say is, “Thank you for still staying in touch with me.”

Shell Shock
I remember the first time I realized I couldn’t lose weight right away and that where I was, was where I was going to stay. I am not sure that there are words to describe that feeling. Shell shocked was about the only words I can find for you. But you will run the gamut in terms of feelings when you realize that the golden scepter of weight loss has been removed from your life.

Your first reaction will be to put everything back into action again. In other words, go back to the diet you were doing, the same amount of cardio, the same supplements and so on. My reaction?

It’s not going to work. In fact, you will feel like a hamster on a wheel because you are going to be working really hard but getting nowhere. You will go weeks without any weight loss and you will end up exhausted before anything else. If you don’t get really desperate and think about a fat burner, liposuction or gastric bypass,then you will most likely cut your cals down to just sniffing your food and boost your cardio up to endurance training levels.  That’s a surefire way to enter in no-man’s land–fast.

Flim Flammed
Once that doesn’t work, you’ll turn the internet. You will read somewhere that you are not eating enough or that you dieted so long that you are now in “starvation mode” and what your body really needs is calories. But you’re too scared to just increase your cals so you find one of those really “book smart” gurus out there to help you. He tells you that yes, you need to eat more and puts you on a high calorie diet and says, “Don’t worry. This will get your metabolism going so you can take off the weight again.” My thoughts on this?

DON’T DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Is he reputable? I’m sure he is.
Is he brilliant and beyond reproach? I don’t doubt it.
Is he right? Technically.
So what’s the problem? HE’S A MALE!!!!! And he is leaving out the most important thing you need to know: YOU ARE GOING TO GET FATTER BEFORE YOU GET THINNER!!!!! That may not seem like a big deal to a random passerby but I have not met ONE of you who are willing to take one for the team like that! Guys don’t care about the things that we care about. I would rather have someone do a cavity search on me with studded gloves before I’d EVER willingly gain a pound! Am I driven by my body? NO! You all know that—especially so if you’ve met me in person—but I’ll be darned if you send me ten steps back to go twelve steps forward! It takes a LOT to lose weight. Heck, I was gonna say it takes a village for a minute there because it almost seems like that but do not ever, I mean ever assume that that weight is going to come off just because some really knowledgeable guy says so!!!!! Let’s look at why:

1. You know you didn’t tell him all the reasons why you are where you are. To be thoroughly truthful, you probably haven’t told yourself either!
2. You know you are not stable minded when you weigh more than you want to weigh. You will only half follow what he says so you’ll only get half of what he promised.
3. You know he can’t really *make* it come off and since he is giving you that assessment off the bogus information you gave him in the first place, you are playing Russian roulette. Get out now.

So let’s say for afro’s sake that you didn’t go up anymore weight because that just didn’t sit right with you. What do you do? And when you *do* do it, what does it really look like while going through it?
1. Open up your diet but do NOT increase your cals, yet. Whatever you took out to get there, put back in immediately. This includes but is not limited to dairy, wheat, eggs, starch, fat, taste, enjoyment, fun, crunch, salt and anything else that makes you smile when you think about it. Stop eating Styrofoam lying to yourself saying that this is ok. Girl, please! It’s most likely why you fell off the wagon so fast in the first place.
2. Make sure you have a way of tracking your intake that is reliable. I get it…tracking is not fun. It is time consuming and laborious but so is dragging around an extra 15 pounds in your back pocket. Suck it up and get over it (the harshest thing you will ever see come off my keyboard. Sorry, but please do it.) You did not have to do it to get here, but you will have to do it to get out of here. You must know what you are taking in every day. Eyeballing is not going to work the second time around.
3. Start first with a refeed. Do not ever increase your cals for a sustained amount of time but definitely eat a ginormous amount of food for 3 days or so to at least signal your body that you are about to do something. Just coasting into a diet is not going to work and I cannot tell you how many times we try to get away with this. Crazy. What constitutes a lot of food? Around 2300 to 2500 CLEAN cals for 3 days. Doesn’t sound like a lot? Try it. You’ll hate food by day 3 because that’s a lot of food.
4. Whatever way you dieted before, do something completely different this time around. If you were lots of protein and greens before with no starch, you’ll be moderate protein, some green veggies and some colorful ones, too, with a bit of starch here and there. It cannot look the exact same as before. YOU MUST CHANGE IT to get the scale to move.
5. Start with the cals you started with the first time you dieted assuming you were dropping them as you were dieting. This puts you in a caloric surplus but not so much that you balloon up like a tic on a dog.  Do not…I repeat…do NOT gain a ton of weight back thinking it will just “come off”.  You better make friends with that weight at that point.  Start talking to it.  Cuz it’ll be with you for a while! Just sayin’.
6. Leave cardio where it is. Don’t touch it. Whatever you’re doing now is fine. This is a diet issue.
7. Make lifting more like cardio. Stop the splits because you are wasting your time. Get to moving the big muscle movers and for Pete’s sake, increase the amount that you lift.  Or…hire a trainer who will work you hard during this time.  The point here is you must sweat, work hard and lift heavy and most of us are not motivated enough to thoroughly change our workouts like that.
8. Wrap your mind around the fact that this isn’t Kansas anymore, Toto. Gone are the days of 1 to 2 pounds per week. What you will most likely see is:

• Non linear weight loss. You’ll go 3 weeks without losing one pound and then suddenly drop 2 out of nowhere.
• You will get smaller before you get lighter. Don’t ask me why I have no idea but this is fact.
• You will feel like everyone in the world is talking about you. This is not true. Only a few are talking about you and you most likely talked about them so all is balanced in the world again.
• You will not be as hungry. This is a tough one because there is a fine line between stuffing yourself and shorting yourself.  My first instinct is to tell you to eat but if you have to unbutton your pants like it was Thanksgiving everyday, something’s up and I’d pull back.

9. BE PATIENT! If it took you 8 weeks to lose it the first time, it will take you 12 weeks the second time. You will have to put in about 1.5 times the effort to get what you got before.

Wow. I actually tore up some of the fabric on the chair in my office and it is now securely tucked away in my butt thanks to my anal sphincter. I think I’m gonna go for a walk now and let off some steam. Scare the neighbors a little. Hahaha!!

Wrapping it up tomorrow! Woop woop!

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