I've had ups and downs on this fitness journey. Lately, it had been a bit of a plateau, weight-wise and motivation-wise. Not good, not bad, simply status quo. But I really needed the vacation that I just came back from, visiting my sister in the Rockies of British Columbia. It's such a drastically different lifestyle there. Much easier to maintain healthy eating, because it's the norm and it's accessible and everyone around you leads by example (mostly). 

It got me thinking about how much our environment affects our choices, decisions, fitness and health. My sister lives a pretty active life, especially by Ontario standards, and is very healthy. She makes her own granola, grows kale in the garden, dehydrates fruit, and bakes flax-sesame-pumpkin seed crackers from scratch. What she's quick to admit, though, is that it's because there aren't a ton of other options. Not very many restaurants to choose from, and certainly no fast-food joints in the small town. You have to drive out of your way to get to the Trans-Canada Highway for that. Judging by the excitement with which she did her shopping in Calgary when she dropped me off at the airport, there are clearly items that are harder to come by in a small mountain town. No wonder people grow their own, make their own, and use what they have.

Similarly, being active is just part of life, because it's right there in your backyard. If you don't have the gear you need, chances are your next door neighbour does. It's easy enough to come home from work and go for a mountain bike ride. The kind of ride that we'd never be able to do in my neck of the woods because, well, geography. Can't truly mountain bike if you don't have mountains. It was in getting the opportunity to test my fitness levels, to see if the efforts in the gym paid off in real life, that I realized how far behind we are when we don't have access to outdoor recreation. You can go on a one-week ski trip every year, and ski for 8 hours a day, but you still won't progress or practice nearly as much as someone who goes for an hour or two a few days a week. And it's how people are social. You don't go for coffee or dinner to catch up, you go shredding on your bike or you hit the slopes and chat on the way up the mountain.

So, my vacation became quite an adventure, because that's just what you do in the Rockies. The theme of the week seemed to be "doing new things" even if it was in places I'd been to before. In fact, I specifically wanted to go back to some spots so that I could do-over what I hadn't done four years ago. (Next trip, it will be "seeing new things" and we'll go places that are completely new to me). I conquered the mountain that kicked my butt last time. I rode a bike that wasn't stationary. I climbed. I rafted. And it was a really fantastic trip because I felt physically able to try. I said yes, despite fear and anxiety, because I knew I could work WITH my body, instead of fighting AGAINST it.

Two big firsts happened on this trip, both only because of an increased fitness level. Never would I have imagined myself even wanting to attempt to climb a rock wall, let alone having the guts to try it. On our way back from the Calgary airport (via an overnight stay in Canmore), we met up with my sister's boyfriend and another climber friend at Lake Louise, and the three of them talked me through my first outdoor climb. It was an easy one (rated 5.5) and it was called "My Little Pony" - not exactly a bad-ass name. But lemme tell ya: it was hard! Not as physically demanding as I expected, even where grip strength is concerned. You're able to stop and take a rest and call down to your belayer to "take" - meaning you're taking a break and they need to take in the rope. You take your hands off the rock and let them hang to get the blood flowing, and shake 'em out. No, the hardest thing for me was pure skill, using my toes, in particular the ball of the big toe, to balance and grip and lift. I've lost weight, but this is still an awfully big body for my big toe to have to push up, and there were a few times where I just couldn't do it. I was agile and flexible enough (barely) to get my foot up, and sometimes my legs could still power through to lift myself a little bit up, but when there wasn't a clear place for me to put my hands, I'd drop down. I didn't have the mind-body coordination yet. Climbing is much more a mental game than physical, though it's clearly both. 

At one point I was stuck. I just couldn't see where I could put my foot and hand to move myself. I tried a lot of different ways. The gang at the bottom called up to give encouragement and advice. Perspective became apparent: what looked to them like good footholds did not look like anything to me. Partly it was because I was looking closely, and from above, and they were looking from below. And, partly, it was because they had experience and understood that there WERE no perfect foot holds, no ledges that my whole foot would rest on, or any particularly comfortable hand grips. I was ready to give up. The girl leading us climbed up beside me to help guide me, and finally said, "well, we don't do it often, but when you really get stuck, you can get your belayer to haul you up a bit and you climb the rope just a few feet, until you get past the point you're stuck on." So, that's what we did, and that's how I got to practice the rope-climbing move which I may face in the BadAss Dash. 

The second big "first" that happened was that I got to go white water rafting. It was not planned. My sister just got a text from a photographer friend saying that he was doing a shoot, needed two more people to fill the boat, and would we like to come - for free. Well, you don't say no to THAT kind of opportunity when it drops in your lap, especially when it's been on my bucket list for awhile. The Kicking Horse river is at the low end of the season, so it was more of a pony, really. Still, it was a ton of fun. Not something which I can directly relate to fitness, though the ability to stay upright in the raft, and relatively balanced through all the bucking and bouncing, made me realize what it means to have a strong core. It's not just about abs you can see, it's about being able to stay in the boat! 

Those were the two big adventures of the trip, in addition to reaching the mountain peak. Beyond that, the hiking, walking, and bicycling that I did daily with my sister made this a dramatically different trip than the one four years ago. Especially because I was able to experience her daily life with her, actively, and less as an observer. I can't think of a better gift that fitness has given me, beyond increased health.

Both activities reinforced a lot of lessons. (I know, I know; everything's a metaphor with me). No matter what, you can't do it alone. You try climbing without other people and you fall? You get seriously damaged. You try paddling a boat down a river on your own? It will swallow you whole. You have no control on your own, but as a team, you do. Whether it's someone holding the rope at the bottom, giving a little more pull when you need a hand, or six people paddling together to get safely down some rapids, trying to do it on your own doesn't work. Neither does trying to get healthy by yourself. Whether it's a support system at home; friends who encourage healthy choices rather than enabling bad ones or shaming you for declining something; a fitness coach who watches out for your ups and downs and catches you before you fall too far off the wagon; coworkers who say "let's do something active before we go out for that beer/coffee/lunch"; regardless of who it is, you can't do it alone. You also have to take it one step at a time. I found myself telling my feet to keep going on a hike that went longer than expected. "One step at a time. Just keep going." It's how I got up to the top of the rope, where the chain was mounted, in rock climbing. I almost gave up, twice. But with the perspective and suggestions of the more experienced climbers, they got me through and I could make it to the top. The big difference being that I didn't WANT to quit. It was old me vs new me, and new me won. The old habits may still surface, the fears are still there, but you can get past them. In both rafting and climbing, whether you're going up or going down, sometimes you just gotta hold on to the rope. 

In a year of ups and downs, where I've aimed for balance, this was a great break from reality - a vacation in the truest sense - where trying new things and facing fears led to having some exceptionally memorable adventures. My sister noticed the difference. When I lamented that I had gained weight, and was not as thin as I was last summer (meaning the comparison photos were not as dramatic as I'd have liked), she said, "oh, but there IS a big difference. You're willing to try. You can go a lot longer, a lot further, and I can take you places that I couldn't before." It was my attitude that she noticed the most. Fitness and health, they're not perfect and they're not stable, but in the pursuit of them, I've found a confidence I didn't fully understand until this trip. 

I can be up.
I can be down.
I can be.

As long as I keep on trying new things, trying things that scare me, trying things I think I won't like.
As long as I keep on trying.

A little comparison, from 2010 to 2014. Not a significantly noticeable difference (a little less glacier, a little less me), but definitely a massive change in outlook and ability.

I didn't just conquer a road today. I climbed the friggin' mountain!

To get to the Terminator peak on the mountain at Kicking Horse Resort, you have to take a "road" from the gondola landing over to the mountain peak. When I visited my sister four years ago, the man-made road had just been finished a week before. The shale was still a tad loose, and I found it hard to get my footing. The first part of the road is a very steep hill, and I don't do "down" very well. At the time, I got stuck. Mentally, and physically, STUCK. I was about halfway down the second bump in the road, when it was too overwhelming to continue. I was scared. I thought I was going to fall off the mountain. My knees and legs couldn't hold me, and I didn't want to walk. At all. I called to my sister, who was ahead of me at the time, to tell her I wanted to go back. Only, I wasn't sure I could do it. The tears came. She didn't push, she just let me turn around and climb back up, huffing and puffing the entire way. She wanted to see what the fuss was about, and walked a little further along the road while I hung out at the restaurant at the top of the mountain. It was devastating. 

It has bothered me ever since, and so this time around, I was determined to beat that road. Conquer the mountain. Kicking Horse kicked me in the butt, and it was time to kick back. 

I came better prepared. Not only was I in better physical condition, I wore my knee braces and brought walking poles. My running shoes were not the old, dusty, hardly-used ones of four years ago, though I really need to invest in a good pair of hiking boots for this sort of thing. There was no way I was going to fail this twice.

And, yet, a few feet down that slope, the fear kicked back in. What the wha? How could the tears be right below the surface even still? I was surprised by the physical and emotional reaction, because it really didn't occur to me that this would be something I couldn't do. I just needed to do it to prove I could, to myself. It was slow going, and the mantra in my head was "you have to do this. YOU HAVE TO DO THIS." All the way down, picking my way through loose rocks, until I got to the flat-ish part where I could relax. I felt better once I passed the second slope, where I'd gotten stuck the last time, but the anxiety was still there. The rest of the route was up, but what goes up must come down, and I knew what I would be facing on the way back. 

Once we got around Terminator 1, the road kept going behind the mountain to the next peak, with tougher slopes. Terminator 2. I think my sister assumed I'd just walk the road, and asked if I wanted to keep going, up towards the peak. I was hesitant, I hate to admit, but I agreed. At that point, the terrain changed. It was a mountain path, not a road, with no barriers or ledges on the sides. It was narrow. It was rocky. But steps had been built into the path to reinforce it, just in the last few weeks, and that made it a little better. So we kept going. It seemed to take forever! I could see the peak, and still it was always "just around the corner." We kept going. I was hot, sweaty, hungry and out of breath from the steep climb, and then all of a sudden it looked like we'd reached the edge of the world, where land meets sky. I couldn't see any more peak in front of me, I just saw cloud. We'd made it. 

Back down was not so easy. What I discovered with this challenge is that I'm not so good with heights! True, my knees are much stronger when I'm climbing up than down, but a fairly rational fear of falling to my death on a slope that I can't get a good footing on kicks in big time, every time. The thing is, there were other people on that hike, and they all just walked normally along. I became frustrated with myself: "why is this so hard for me?" At that point, quitting wasn't an option because there was no turning back. Getting back to the beginning was the destination. One foot at a time, holding on to whatever rock or tree I could, using the poles to brace for impact, switching back and forth from side to side, one step at a time. I focused on the path, not looking up, not looking down, just looking at what my feet needed to do. Every so often I'd stop where I was sure-footed and appreciate the view and the nature around me, but when I was in the scariest parts, I just concentrated on what was directly in front of me. 

Ultimately, that's how I got there and back. Don't think about the whole thing, or it will be overwhelming. Just concentrate on the section you're in, get through, and move along. 

Having tools helped, too. Gear is pretty important, as my sister and I talked about on the way up. I was saying how much easier it is when you have all your gear out and ready, the helmets, shoes, bikes, ropes, and so they can pick up after work and go mountain biking or hiking or rafting or climbing. It's all there, right in their backyard. She compared it to my going to the gym. At first, it felt like more of an ordeal to get ready, but now I just know what I need and I go. And I have learned what gear I need in order for it to be convenient to go to the Y. Gloves and sweat bands, hand towels, hair elastics, these things all live in my gym bag. I figured out fast that I needed an easy lock with a key, and a water bottle, and now I have my routines and it works. The gear is important, so I don't regret having to use the walking poles or the knee braces. What had initially felt like crutches were just part of the adventure, just as you wouldn't go on that 2.5 hr hike without water or appropriate clothing (given that the weather changed dramatically during that time. We went from snow flurries to sunshine to rain in a matter of hours). 

Fear plays a large part in a fitness and weight loss journey. How to feel the fear, and do it anyway. I seem to hold myself back on so many things, and it's always due to some kind of fear. Learning to push through has been the biggest learning curve of all, and one which I constantly practice.

So, I conquered my mountain. My sister admitted she didn't think I would do it. Not that I couldn't, but that she thought I might stop, turn back, and she was just letting me go for as long as I felt I could. Surprise! I kept on going all the way to the top. Way past the road which was the ultimate goal. Frankly, I didn't even know that the alpine path existed, or that T2 was a place that my sis hadn't hiked before. I'm not sure she's ski'd down it yet. I just wanted to reach a mountain peak. It's maybe not as impressive as summiting a mountain where you do all the work yourself - I mean, we took a gondola most of the way to the top and the path the rest of the way was well established.

But, for a brief moment, I was on top of the world.
Literally, and figuratively. 

It's often easy to overlook change and growth when it's daily, when it's slow. Summertime Tuesdays have become a good barometer of how I'm progressing annually, and especially how fitness has helped me increase my stamina.

I have worked at the same library for the past four summers. Every year, for 7 weeks, my Tuesdays have been packed with back to back to back outreach programs. I start at our local market and do a Family Storytime. Then, I go directly to a community centre and do another story program. There is just under an hour between that and the next thing, during which I usually go home for lunch and a quick email check, because I happen to live just a block away from the community centre. Then, I used to go back to the community centre to do another program for the older kids. This year, I am instead going to the Y (my home away from home), and doing yet another story time for the 3-5 year old day campers. By the time I actually set foot at work, my day is nearly done, and I only have about two hours to do everything I need to before I am on a public service desk for an hour. It's kind of a crazy set-up, but it works because of how close each location is to the other. So, each year, I keep scheduling it this way.

By the end of the day, I'll confess: I'm exhausted. Doing a program takes a lot out of you, because it's a specific kind of energy, not unlike performing. The travel to and from adds to the frenetic nature, and means being really well planned and packed. Timing is everything.

Three and four years ago, by the end of the day on Tuesdays, I was done. Just ... done. I could hardly speak. I'd be at my desk, breaking down in some way, whether it was near tears or in uncontrollable hysterical  giggles. Thinking was hard. Talking clearly was worse. I got a bad case of the stupids. And most of my half-hour desk shifts at the end of those days were generously picked up by co-workers who could see that I just didn't have it in me to serve the public. In other words, I could barely do my job. I went straight home to bed and did nothing in the evenings.

I shouldn't have been so tired that I couldn't think straight, but I was.

Flash forward to this summer. Same routine. Different outcome. Four weeks in, and I have no problem doing the last hour on the desk - pleasantly, helpfully, professionally - and getting ready for the next day. In fact, after my work shift, I go directly to the Y for Group Core and TRX Flexibility classes. I don't get home until after 8:00 pm. Granted, I sometimes get the yawns by the time TRX rolls around, yawns which are awfully contagious (sorry, friends). But I also get a second wind in between work and working out; the stamina and energy I have from the consistent fitness routines is tangible. Last summer I saw an improvement over the first summers. This year, it's even better.

Truth be told, my summertime Tuesdays still tire me out.
It's just that it feels like a much healthier, honest-day's-work kind of tired instead of can't-cope-with-the-world exhaustion. Exercise is helping me to do my job, and do it well. Fitness is helping me live a much happier life.

The proof is in the Tuesdays.

"To all the haters out there..." I don't know why I woke up thinking about the concept of "haters" or enemies, other than it seems to have come up a few times recently in blogs I read. People addressing their haters specifically, or using their haters as motivation. And it only just occurred to me: I don't think I have any.

I mean, I'm sure that there are people who don't like me. It wouldn't be possible to exist in the world and not have people with whom you clash. I just mean that I am not particularly aware of it, and I've never had anyone actively bully or hate on me. Which, in retrospect, is odd for a fat girl. Especially a fat girl in grade school and high school. My dad even questioned me once on it: "don't the kids tease you at school?" It was something he just assumed happened.

It didn't.

The closest I can recall is in Grade 5, when most of the girls had recently gone through puberty, or were in the process of changing. Everyone was jockeying for social position and as a class we were figuring out the hierarchy. There were three of us who were in that "fat girl" category, and for some reason I avoided getting a nickname that stuck, like Whale and Thunder Thighs did, and while I knew I was fat and would be picked last for sports teams, I was never excluded from party invites or sleepovers and I played with the other kids at recess. I had friends. Even in high school, I was not part of the cool crowd, but I had my group of friends. Again, no active bullying or shunning or name calling. Near the end of high school, a new girl transferred, and she tried out different groups to see where she fit. One day, she pulled me aside to whisper confidentially, "I hate to be the one to tell you this, but I thought as your friend, you should know. This guy calls you Blubber Barb." Now, this guy to whom she was referring was someone with whom I barely interacted. I think we maybe had one class together, one year. That was it. Not a friend. Not a consequence. Not something I had to hear (he never said it to my face). The incident told me much more about her than it did about me or that guy: this was not someone who was really interested in being my friend, this was someone who used hurt as social currency. When it came to friendship, I was richer than she realized, so her tactic didn't work. 

And maybe that's it in a nutshell. I had friends. I had good friends, ones who saw past the fat, who weren't perfect themselves, who were smart and fun and kind. They were real. I learned how to make friends (thanks, summer camp!), to be nice, to get along, to find common ground. And kids who have friends don't get bullied. That's actually an important fact for parents and teachers to know. Everyone may get teased and picked on, but it is the kids who are isolated and have no support system who tend to get bullied in the truest sense of the term, and for whom the bullying carries a greater negative impact.

So, it begs the question, how did I end up with such a self-hating body image that it continues to affect me to this day? I don't have that easy answer to point to, that enemy number one who hurt me so bad it broke me. There was nobody who hurt me intentionally, maliciously, repeatedly. There are people by whom I got hurt, and some of those cuts run deeper because it was unintentional, because it was by people who cared about me or who I respected.

But I never had haters.

Life is not that black and white. Obesity and fat shame is not as simple as "I'm going to say something mean to you" because most of the time, it's easy to brush those attacks off. You understand that it says more about the person than it does about you. If a stranger calls me fat as an insult, I deduce that they lack creativity and imagination because - DUH - way to point out the obvious and go for the low blow. It's easy to defend yourself from the attacks you see coming.

It's the ones that you don't even realize are attacks that are the insidious ones. Fat shame is so intrinsic to social norms, we argue whether it actually exists. (It does). I internalized a lot of messages. I looked around and deduced things about myself that were not explicitly said. I saw who the pop idols were and what they looked like and figured out what was acceptable and what wasn't. I read teen magazines that told me what I should change about myself, and how to do it. I watched my mother and father and how they engaged with food and how they felt about their bodies, and I overheard comments from their friends and peers about what they were doing to change their bodies.

I may not have been teased, but I heard what my friends said about other people, and my brain concluded "if you feel that way about them, and I look like that, then you must feel the same way about me." I had a lot of male friends, boys who wanted advice or an 'in' with the girls I hung out with, so I heard a lot about what they were looking for and I learned that I wasn't it.

Messages are everywhere. We send them. We consume them. We pass them along.

It's important to acknowledge those subtle influences. Media studies teaches about advertising tactics, and even when you're aware of them, they still work! I think we focus too much on haters, on the people who make themselves the enemy because they're outwardly mean. For me, not having gone through that, it's the messages that seep into the collective social subconscious which are the far bigger threat. Fat shaming, stigmatization, unrealistic body expectations, and all of the systemic privileges that inherently go with fitting the narrow definition of being attractive.

I kind of wish I'd had some haters.
It would give me an enemy to mentally attack when I need that focus in workouts.
Someone to concentrate on, to have that "I'll show THEM" moment.

All I have is me.
Oh, my god. I'm my own hater.

Which means I'm fighting myself.
But, I'm also fighting FOR myself. There is no "them." I'm showing ME.

What's the take-away from this ramble?

• the messages we pick up as children stick with us because they are so deeply entrenched
• be careful about what you say and what you mean
• talk about and acknowledge bias by questioning everything
• life's a lot better when you have friends, so be nice to everyone you meet because "hurt" is an unstable social currency that will leave you broke in the long run
• and that includes being as nice to yourself as it does to others: don't be your own worst hater

It's official: one year until 40. Every year I get a little reflective and melancholy on my birthday, despite enjoying all the well wishes and social interactions and attention. It's a day full of reminders of how many good people I have in my life.

It's also a day that reminds me that time is one thing I can not control. The angst is often related somehow to my body.

I'm always a little weird about my birthday. I don't so much count down the days as dread them, and then I just accept the well wishes on the day of, and move on. Mostly, it's just another day. Birthdays used to bother me because they were a reminder of what I had not accomplished by certain ages and societal expectations. But, even though I haven't achieved the standard measure of success (marriage, kids, house), I've done a lot of things of which I'm proud. I'm happy with who I am. Birthdays in my mid-thirties were tough because they were reminders of the biological clock ticking down. I've pretty much come to terms with the thought that this body will not likely conceive, carry, or birth a child. There is a certain peace and acceptance that comes with aging.

Still, every year around this time, I start freaking out just a little about getting older. Why is that?

I think it's the feeling that I'm running out of time.

You know, I don't actually mind the physical signifiers of aging that we talk about. Sure, I point out the white hairs that need to be plucked, and I see the wrinkles around my eyes, and my teeth aren't as white as they used to be. I'm never gonna get carded again at the liquor store. It's easy to point to the aesthetics and complain, but that's just because we measure beauty in terms of youth. It's a battle most of us lose, and if I really cared I could cover up with dye and makeup and moisturizer and money. So, I'm really not so concerned with those things. They're just easy ways to give voice to the more deeply complex and troubling aspects of aging.

Ultimately, I think we all fear death, but perhaps even more so we fear frailty. (Or is that just me?) And the older you get, the more realistic it becomes. It's human nature. When you are young, you are invincible. You can ignore and deny that it will happen to you. If it does, you can bounce back. We tell ourselves that good nutrition and exercise will keep the wolves of old age at bay. If I just do the right things, I can out-smart time and evolution. Yeah, right.

I'm not alone in this. A great blog post at stumptuous.com called "the winter of our content" pointed out how unreasonable some of our thinking really is: "In my vision of my 40s, I’d be one of those women who murmurs through still-full lips that Why no, she hasn’t noticed any changes to her body, thanks to perfect nutrition and regular exercise and by the way yoga and Swiss chard juice is quite magical! I’d keep patiently adding, say, 10-20 lb to my lifts per year. You know, reasonable expectations. Modest. Do-able. By the time I was 90, I’d be deadlifting 1500 lb. Of course. I’d say shit like Age is just a number! I have the body of a 20-year-old!  (Well, not my 20-year-old body, which was saturated in alcohol, 50 lb overweight, and usually parked in front of a daytime talk show.) Somewhere along the way, the memo to my body about How This All Works must have gotten confused."

True, dat.

This year, in particular, I think I am struggling with getting old because I am starting to feel it. It's not an abstract idea anymore. I feel it in my knees. My back. My shoulders. My eyes aren't what they used to be. I don't have the same stamina to stay up to all hours of the night. I don't have the ability to sleep through the entire night, either. And, for the first time in my life, I want to be able to DO things I never imagined I'd want to do. I came to this fitness thing pretty recently, when you look at the big picture. I struggled with weight from a pretty early age, and was never really active. The fear and anxiety around getting older is that I won't be able to do the things I want to try. It's not just that losing weight gets exponentially harder the older you get (most people tend to put weight on as they age, so losing fat is also a bigger battle). You start to lose strength, flexibility, and agility, too.

All of a sudden, the mantra "it's about health, not vanity; I want to be fit, even if I'm not thin" becomes much easier to say with conviction. Because the chances of something breaking, becoming diseased, or no longer working increase with every passing year. And that is a sombre reality.

Except.
Except.
Except.

Except that it could all be in my head. I'm not dead yet. I'm buying myself some time by making the changes I've made. I have no way of knowing how many years I've added by swimming and lifting weights, nor do I know how many I've taken off with every binge. It's all unknown. That's the reason to keep going. If I buy myself one more day of feeling healthy, happy, and strong, isn't that worth it?

As she says in her Stumptuous post, I'm still here (and, really, if you didn't read the link above, stop what you're doing and go read it NOW: http://www.stumptuous.com/rant-69-the-winter-of-our-content). I'm here. Showing up. Still fighting for health, still fighting the urge to give in or give up. "I’m still here. Breathe. Move. Rep. Creak. Still here. Because this is it. It doesn’t get better than this. This is how it works. It’s all the road. It’s all part of the journey."

Today's training session with Mat was killer. He came in, smiling, and said, "Happy Birthday. I was going to make today fun ... but I changed my mind. It's gonna be HARD." Insert evil grin. It was what I was expecting and, predictably, he had me do 39 of everything. Started with 39 push ups. Then 39 squats with weights on the barbell on my back (in the squat rack). 9 to warm up, with just the bar (which weighs 45 lbs). Then 3 rounds of 10 squats. I looked at the weights he was adding on each side. "Getting as close to 39 as we can," he said. So ... 37.5 lbs on each side of the 45 lb bar. 120 lbs - the most he's ever had me do. Same story with the leg press: 9 to warm up, then 3 rounds of 10. And so on. That was just the first half of the hour.

They say you're only as old as you feel. I guess if my knees feel 80 and my soul feels 10, then 40 is about the right average. I know the reality, that this gets harder the older I get. I also know that there are some bad-ass 50, 60, and 70 year olds out there who are as strong and as fit as they come. I watched American Ninja Warrior earlier this week, and while most of the contestants were in their 20's, there were a few who are older than I. Age isn't an excuse. It's a reason to keep going, to keep working hard.

It's not going to get easier.

On my 39th birthday I squatted and pressed the heaviest weights I've ever done. Age had little to do with it. Of course, it may have something to do with how I feel tomorrow, and whether I require a nap later on today! But, despite facing 40, I still showed up. I'm still here.

And I'm not ready to act old just yet.

When you're focused on weight loss, it's all about the numbers.
It can make you crazy.
It HAS made me crazy at times, to different degrees.

It wasn't until a major mind-shift from the body numbers to the activity numbers, that I saw any success at significant weight loss. That's what I mean when I talk about health and fitness. Once I focused on that, the weight started to take care of itself.

Near the end of the first round of Biggest Loser, which happened to coincide with my hitting the milestone of 100 lbs lost, we wrote reflections. This is what I wrote, over a year ago. I'm posting it now because I need the reminder:

A funny thing happened on Facebook last week. I had posted a photo over a year ago, celebrating reaching the milestone of 100 lbs lost. I posted the same century club picture that is on my About page. At the time, it got a lot of "likes" and comments, and then it faded into the background of my timeline. But, as with all things on the Internet, it's not like it went away. It is still there, still tagged, still part of the me that is represented on social media. So I shouldn't have been shocked when one person found it, a year later, and hit the "like" button. It happens, when you add friends after the fact and they get curious and go through your photos, or even when a longtime friend gets bored and just wants to stroll down your memory lane. But, the way Facebook's algorithms work these days, it's the pictures and posts with the most recent activity that get to the top of your friends' newsfeeds, and so it started all over again, as if I had just posted the photo that day. The likes and comments rolled in again, even from some of the same people who had commented a year ago.

It felt completely and awkwardly different this time around. For one thing, I can't currently make the same claim. It was a big deal to see the number on the scale that indicated a triple-digit loss. I maintained that for the better part of the year, but am currently up. By how much, I'm not sure, as I haven't stepped on a scale in two months other than during measurements with Mat. The obsessive tracking and weighing and restrictive eating I did to get there hasn't been my latest lifestyle. I've got to get back there. So, how I feel about that "milestone" today is quite different than a year ago: what I was proud of reaching then, I am now humiliated for having lost in a backslide, embarrassed because I couldn't hold on to that goal.

The other thing that made me uncomfortable with the deluge of well wishes was that it made it seem like I lacked humility. Like I had to re-post such a milestone because I haven't done anything since. Truth be told, I wasn't all that comfortable with posting it the first time, for the same reason. At the time, I wasn't blogging and I wasn't talking openly about weight loss or fitness. I needed to acknowledge it, somehow. Now, when I do talk about it, it is with the understanding that it's an ongoing struggle. It's really not often going to be "hey, look at me! Look what I did! Congratulate me!" It's just "hey, this is hard. And this is what I've learned or how I feel about it. Who's with me?"

It felt important to acknowledge that moment in time. A lot of advice columns in women's magazines suggest that you should celebrate every step of the way, every pound, every size, every interim goal. I didn't do that. I was internally proud, but I didn't outwardly celebrate. I'm not sure why. I have a friend who's on a similar journey and she reached her own momentous milestone recently. She'd been thinking for months about what she'd do to celebrate when she reached her goal, and at one point she asked me what I had done to celebrate 50 lbs, and 100 lbs. I think I now realize why I never did.

It's because the journey's never over. I couldn't let myself get so focused on a goal, small or large, to the point that I had a planned celebration, because I know that once you reach that goal, you don't magically stay there. Life fluctuates. When you turn 50, when you celebrate a 50th anniversary, it means you've crossed a threshold and leveled up and you are never going back. Weight loss is not like that. You don't reach the end of the game board and claim "I win!" and put the dice away. You keep playing, and sometimes you land on a square that sends you backwards.

I also don't want to over-celebrate weight loss as an accomplishment, and seeing the accolades and congratulations for getting less fat, it feels ... too much. Like it's all that I am. Like, all the other things I've done in my life and have been proud of are somehow less significant. It is just a tad too defining for my comfort. Surely, I have contributed more to the world, made more of an impact on people's lives, than by losing weight. Haven't I? Shouldn't I?

Milestones and goals are funny things in health. I understand why it's good to celebrate each step of the way. It is a long haul and a slooooow process. It's easy to get discouraged, so we celebrate victories along the way. Using other accomplishments which were also slow and time consuming as a comparison, I can see that it was one assignment at a time, term after term, that I earned three degrees. I celebrated after handing in each essay, after walking out of each exam, and after walking across each stage to get my diploma. The difference in those cases was that, once I was done, nobody could take it away from me. I still have the academic gold medal I earned doing my Masters degree. Those goals, once met, they are yours. And the process is a checklist of one thing at a time. Regardless of what goals you set for yourself in health, there isn't actually an end. No finish line until you're dead.

Perhaps, then, losing weight is more like a competitive sport. You win some races, and - once won - nobody can take away that medal or title. Well, until the next time the race is held. You probably have a lot of games, and some you win, some you lose. Athletes can never sit back and just say "yep. I'm the best." It's all about the next event. Even the greatest names in their sports eventually grow old, retire, get out of shape or injured, and are replaced by someone who's better, newer, faster. Life shouldn't be that kind of competition, but at times it feels like it, whether I'm competing against others (bad, bad idea) or whether I'm competing against my younger, fitter self. Or, in this case, competing against my first-time-around-the-block self, when the weight loss was slightly easier because there was so much to lose, and my body wasn't used to it. I'll admit, I have a bit of envy for those who are dominating their weight loss, hitting their goals, and doing so well. It's hard to step back and say "they are at a different point in their journey" because the part of me that liked the attention, liked how I felt at that weight, is stamping her foot and whining "but I wanna be back there and still have that feeling, too."

Most people need encouragement and congratulations. I'll admit, I liked a lot of it, too. I wanted to feel proud. I wanted to feel successful. And much of the praise was sincere and heartfelt. When genuine emotion was conveyed, I felt it and all of the comments - then, and now - were appreciated. The danger in being overenthusiastic about someone's body is that those words linger when the body changes. It's why I try not to comment on people's bodies, positive OR negative. I'd rather let them know how they made me feel, or how proud I am of something they said or did. I rarely even acknowledge haircuts unless the person brings it up first, and I try to be careful in talking about weight loss when it's raised in conversation. Because the over-exuberant praise when you're at your lowest size becomes a deafening silence when you put weight back on, and that silence speaks volumes.

I usually start with a point, when I blog. This was more of a ramble. There's no pretty little bow to tie this up with, no lesson to learn. (Other than, perhaps, Facebook is weird and people should pay attention to dates, read comments, or think about it for just a second before hitting "like"). Social media has changed our real-life privacy settings. Which means that I get to hear a lot more positive comments than I would have otherwise, and they are always there for me to go back to when I need a boost. I just don't get to control when that praise comes out of the blue or where it comes from.

And perhaps I needed the reminder that humble pie is always on the menu, and to never get cocky about the milestones I pass on this journey, because it ain't over yet.

"Owwww. My knees..." is what my head is saying as I sit at the computer balancing ice packs on them, sucking back ibuprofen. It's a pretty common refrain.

Knee pain is something that a lot of people can relate to. We almost all have knees, we use them daily, and they are one of the first joints to wear out. Athletes often have knee issues, as do very sedentary or overweight people. Let's face it: the knees take the brunt of our impact, regardless of what we're doing. Especially over time (which is a polite way of saying as we get old and crusty). And there are so many things that can go wrong, so many ways to have "bad knees."

I've always had knee problems. As a child, I would wake up screaming and crying from the pain. This was before weight issues, I might add. They were chalked up to "growing pains." (Which I don't fully understand. I am short. It's not like I grew too rapidly, or anything. It just coincided with puberty, when your body goes through all kinds of changes. I suspect that "growing pains" was a way for my parents and doctor to explain something complex and un-understandable). At any rate, my dad would rub my knees and try to talk me through relaxation exercises, but I think it was the Advil or Tylenol that would eventually kick in and help me go back to sleep.

Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome
Sounds impressive, right? It's not. Just a fancy word for common knee pain. The patella is the kneecap, and the femur is the leg bone, and where the two meet is the joint known as the knee. Still, when you have chronic knee pain that can be caused or triggered by a variety of reasons, it sucks. It's frustrating. It holds you back. physically and mentally. And it makes you feel just a little crazy because the same motion doesn't always create the same pain - you can't duplicate the pain when a doctor needs to know what motion causes the problem. Sometimes it's okay, sometimes it's not, which makes you question your sanity. And it's always there, at the back of your mind: "what's the next totally random motion that is going to be THE ONE that causes injury?"

Patellar Dislocations
It shouldn't have been that surprising, then, that I dislocated the patella when I was in highschool, given that it happens mostly to girls, mostly in their teens, and with my history of weak knees. What was surprising was that I did it while playing a tambourine. For real. I went in for the big finish, stepped out the wrong way, and found myself on the ground. I thought someone had pushed me, until I went to get up and realized that my kneecap was on the side of my knee, not at the front. Then the pain kicked in. There is nothing like ruining the last period of the last day before Christmas holidays by being rolled out on an ambulance gurney in front of the whole school because you just had to show off in a performance of Feliz Navidad.

I dislocated that sucker (always the left knee) two more times. The second time was, again, because I was showing off. I was impatiently waiting for someone to come and help me to carry a canoe back to the shed at the day camp I was working at, and I decided to try a solo flip-up and portage it myself. One second too long of extra strain and I was down for the count, lying in the goose poop on the grass, grateful for a co-counsellor who had the foresight to keep the kids away so I could swear and make ugly pain faces. (Oddly enough, it was the very last day of the summer. There seems to be a correlation between popping the kneecap out and various "worst possible moments").

The last time it happened was in Japan. I was there for a conference, it was only the second or third day, it was raining, and we were walking to a restaurant along a gently-sloped tile walkway. It was a tad slippery, but that's all that I know. I still don't understand what happened. I just slipped and fell. It could have popped out, and when I fell I knocked it back in. Or perhaps I lost my footing and the strain forced the knee outwards. I'll never know. What I *do* know is that being in that kind of pain and not being able to communicate with doctors, having to worry about travel insurance coverage, different medical customs, and navigating Tokyo on crutches were all part of the experience that eclipsed the knee pain. I still have one spot on my knee that is numb from where the doctor used the biggest needle I've ever seen to draw blood and fluid from a bruise, to reduce swelling (according to my poor translator), and he hit a nerve.

What has also come along with the three dislocations is fear. It's been over 13 years since the last dislocation (October 2000), and to this day I have a near-paralyzing fear when I'm on ice or anything unstable. The slightest twinge or hint of pain, and the fear kicks in. Because I remember. I remember the pain, I remember the frustration of immobility, and I remember how much weaker I was after each pop.

Arthritis
All the dislocations don't quite explain the dull ache kind of pain, though. This, I've been getting more of lately. Accompanied by a weird crunching when I bend the knees in certain ways. A visit to the doctor and a few x-rays later confirmed early arthritis. Not very surprising given family history, and my own history of obesity. Of course, it could be related to the patelofemoral pain syndrome. The two are often confused. But this is the kind of pain that comes after leg day, or when I'm tired, or when I just haven't stretched or used the leg muscles enough. It's the kind of pain that is annoying, but which I know that I have to push through to keep on exercising, to keep on strengthening the muscles, because that's the only thing that will help to delay the onset of the nasty, debilitating kind of arthritis. I'm just trying to hold it off until, oh, let's say, my 70's instead of my 40's.

Move it or lose it.
NOT moving your knees can be as bad or troublesome as over-use. It's rare that I'm at my desk for an entire day, anymore, but when I am I really notice the lack of movement. The place I feel it the most is in my knees. Getting up after sitting still for too long elicits many creaks and cracks from those joints. They say that sitting is the new smoking, and I can believe it, because I have to focus on getting up and walking around at work or I'll seize up like the Tin Man in Wizard of Oz.

And I recall that it took me twice as long to recover the first time that I dislocated the kneecap, because I kept the whole leg immobilized for too long. At any slight sign of pain, I froze up and stopped, and that caused the entire leg to seize up. It was therefore more painful each time I tried to move my knee. I've since learned to differentiate between the pain. There is immediate, cease-and-desist pain, which tells me that the motion I'm doing is clearly not a good one. Danger, Will Robinson, Danger! Then there is the far more common "ow ow ow ow ow" achy pain that comes with either a lack of use (after sitting, or after standing in one place for too long), which just needs to get the joint moving again, or the "something is degenerating beneath the patella, and wearing away, but there's nothing I can do about it" pain. Those are the ones to push through, for the greater good. In other words, I feel better when I'm moving.

Nice history of your knees. What's the point?
All of which brings me back to why I'm writing about the knees at this particular time. Yesterday was leg day, and after a high-impact class on Saturday, they were still a little hurty. By today? Ice and Ibuprofen are required. As Mat had me doing lunges and other "push" exercises, I felt more immediate pain than usual. Of the patelo-femoral kind, rather than arthritis. Each time, I stopped, but the fear was also kicking in. He made me stop what I was trying to do (well, what I was failing to do), and had me foam roll. Always, with the foam rolling and stretching! What was interesting was that, afterwards, I was able to do the steps with more ease. Still with pain, but far less, and with far better range of motion.

Damn. I hate when I have to admit he's right.

Calf stretches, foam rolling, yoga, TRX flex, anything that gets a good leg stretch. Apparently "just after I work out ... when I remember to ... when I feel like it ..." is not often enough. Yet another daily routine to add to the list of healthy habits, stretching and foam rolling are going to have to be at the top of the list if I want to save my knees. (Which will also make my registered massage therapist sister happy; she's a public stretcher, she believes in it so much).

Mat had asked me to let him know how my knees were, after yesterday.
Me: "One word: ow ow ow ow ow."
Mat: "I'm going to check your alignment tomorrow."
Me: "You make me sound like a car."
Mat: "Cars are easier to fix."
Me: "But more expensive."
Mat: "Are they? You only have one body to live in. Best to invest in that, rather than a new one."

Fighting inflammation. Stretching. Exercise - smart and varied exercise.
That's how you keep your vehicle running for as long as possible.
Even if you got a lemon.



(By the by, if you see yourself in my descriptions and think, "yeah, that's ME!" then check out this resource for everything you ever wanted to know about Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome and general knee pain).

Do you remember your first diet? I do. Well, I think I do. If I was put on a diet before Grade 5, then I don't remember. But I can vividly recall being on a specific and restrictive diet at some point in the fifth grade. It was taped to the fridge, outlining how many half cups of plain tuna, cottage cheese, and cantaloupe I had to eat over a 4 day period. I've seen it circulate the Internet since; it's that lose-5lbs-in-4-days diet that is often recommended before surgery. It was not designed for me, or for a child. I'm not even sure whether it was my doctor who told my mom to put me on it, or whether she thought she'd try it for me out of desperation. Grade 5 puts me around 10 years old. Around the age when I should have been playing with yo-yo's, I was getting caught up in weight cycling. Thus began a lifetime of Yo-Yo dieting.

Recently, I wrote about how early I started having problems with being fat. I'm fairly certain that hormones played a big role, as did environmental factors (parents, peers, media). What likely didn't help was what I did to fight that fat. As I mentioned, I was still sort of active, even though I wasn't good at many sports. And I was not exactly over-eating or eating particularly unhealthy foods. The binging and hiding food and rebellion didn't come until a few years into being "fat."

At some point I think I just gave up and said, "okay, whatever, I'm just gonna stay fat." It wasn't healthy, but it was probably better in the long run because at least I stabilized and didn't continue to grow and grow and grow. The only problem was that I was stable at a pretty gigantic size for my short frame.

This is why dieting doesn't work. This is why getting my eating under control and finding balance is the key. Because, every time I consume too few calories, or even just stay right on the line of barely enough to get by, there will inevitably come a time when I indulge or introduce something back into my diet which I had eliminated. And then the weight goes back on, more than before, and I'm back in trouble.

I have to remind myself of this constantly, because I'm human and I lose patience with how slow the process is. Especially at times like this, when I can feel that some weight has gone back on. Clothes are fitting snugger. I can see it, I can feel it. And my instinct is to panic and crash diet, to lose a lot in a short time. It's tempting. Except that I know that it will go back on. I know it from experience.

So, slow and steady wins the race. One day at a time, doing my damndest to keep the eating as clean as possible, to get enough calories and say no to chocolate. Ditch the yo-yo, and find a better game to play.

Fat. If any word sums up my life, that’s the one.

Lately, the topic of "what's your weight story?" has come up in conversation. (In other words, "yeah, so, how'd YOU get fat?"). For a lot of people, it's something that caught up with them later in life. They were either really active in their youth or had super fast metabolisms, and could eat what they wanted and didn't have to think too hard about health or fitness. It was when they stopped playing a sport, or after they had kids, or when circumstances changed which led to eating habits changing, and the pounds slowly went on until one day they didn't like how they felt. That's not my story. While I don't find it helpful to dwell in the past - it only leads to holding on to resentments and looking for blame - it does help to look backwards every now and again to remind yourself (and myself) of the big picture. How'd I get here?

I’ve pretty much always been fat. Somewhere between third and fourth grade, around the time that puberty hit (hello, hormones!), I went from being a scrawny stringbean to “the fat kid” in school. Looking back at photos, I can see that there was hardly much difference between me and my thinner peers. I was not a poster child for the “childhood obesity epidemic.” I was just … fat. I hadn’t changed my eating (yet) or my activity level, but my body changed. I definitely felt fat, by then, though I don’t think I knew what that meant or the life-long ramifications. Actually, I think I felt ugly before I felt fat, and it all went together. I was still pretty confident. Adults would have said I was cocky. Independent. Self-assured. Social. Most of all, I was stubborn. I emphatically did not like anyone telling me what to do. I sucked my thumb into grade school, and fought all the attempts to force me to stop, mostly on principle. The harder people pushed, the more I dug in my heels that I would not give it up. Once *I* decided I was ready to stop, I replaced it with biting my nails. They were self-soothing actions that I didn’t grow out of until they became socially unacceptable, and then I replaced the hand-to-mouth self-soothing with food.

I was naturally terrible at organized sports, so I did individual activities like ballet and swimming. The rule in our house was that we had to participate in a balance of activities: something social (Brownies/Girl Guides), something in the arts (piano and flute), and in something active. I took swimming lessons. My sister was the team player and did all kinds of sports. My father was extremely athletic. My mother? She hated her body, which used to be skinny until she had my sister and I. So she did classes at the community centre like Dancercize and aerobics. She dieted. And she took me with her.

Food in our house was pretty healthy. Even when my mom cooked hearty meals, they were always from scratch. We never had processed foods. But she was a dieter of the 80’s so fat was the enemy, and what we know now is that it’s much more complex than that. She baked the way my grandmother did, with lots of sugar and butter. We were a meat-and-potatoes family. I was a picky eater, but my dad’s philosophy was that you didn’t leave the table until you finished your plate. Learning to listen to your body and know when you’re full is hard to do when what you put in your mouth makes you gag, and when you have to finish what was doled out (even if you’re full), or get shamed for asking for more (when you are still hungry). When I would have more food than my father deemed appropriate, I’d get called “Miss Piggy.” There was a lot of shame around bodies and eating, in my house, coming from both parents albeit in different ways. My mother defined herself by her cooking, and to this day she takes it as a personal insult if you don’t have what she’s made, and if you don't enjoy it. It's not surprising that, between my sister and I, one of us ended up with such a disordered relationship with food. Given all of the emotional significance attached to it in our family, and the conflicting battles for control, it seems inevitable, in retrospect.

As I got a bit older, I learned how to hide my eating. I had stashes of candy hidden around my room. I would eat at friends’ houses. I would eat after school on my way home, spending my meager allowance at the corner store. First it was bags of penny candy, eventually it was entire bags of chips. By the time I was in high school, I would ditch the lunch my mother sent me with and buy my lunch “in the caf” with my friends. And because I was doing it to fit in, I bought what they all bought: fries with gravy and a big cookie. That was the norm. For teens in high school, fitting in meant everything. It didn't hurt that there was an element of rebellion, the "piss off" to the world trying to tell me what and who to be. It just backfired on me, because I didn't hurt them, I hurt myself.

But, as I grew, so did my sense of shame and self-loathing. Every so often I'd decide to do something about it. I would diet. I would restrict. I'd keep it up for a few weeks, until I lost the willpower and "fell off the wagon" or "caved in" or "was bad." The problem with a diet is that when you stumble and fall, you fail. Rather than getting back up, I'd give up. And then the weight would go back on, more than before, and the cycle would begin again.

And for too many years, that's just how it was. Try half-heartedly to lose weight, fail (most often with an epic binge), blame myself, decide it was either impossible or not worth the effort, and fall back into old comfortable habits.

I know my story. Its roots run deep. But, for me, understanding how I got the size I did, why I stayed there for so long, even understanding some of the biology behind it - it's all important information in making changes NOW. Awareness is key. In particular, I see many of my friends struggling with these kinds of questions with their own children. Do pacifiers used for babies lead to the thumb-sucking, hand-to-mouth self-soothing eating issues that some say they do? How do you handle a picky eater? What do you say about yourself in front of your daughter so that she doesn't pick up her mother's body issues? Which parenting method is better or worse, which one "caused" my eating disorder: the clean-your-plate method, or the catering-to-your-wants method? My parents still argue over whose fault it was that I turned out the way I did. I am beginning to understand just how complex the task is, for parents. Body image and relationships with food start so young, and influences are passed along whether you're trying to or not.

So. That's MY weight story. There are a lot of pieces to that puzzle, and some are probably still missing. But, I have a clear enough picture to be able to address and undo a lot of the things that got me here.

Sometimes, in order to move forward, you do need to look back at where you came from.