Put Down the Snacks (just for a minute, though)

This post is not about food.

Well, I suppose it concerns food somewhat.

I want to talk about a topic I touch on every once in a while because people ask me: balancing my love of junk food with fitness.

This photo shows me from about 2011 (left) to now (right.)

Left was just after I’d lost a lot of weight. Since then I’ve regained and same 5ish pounds of hodyfat without worrying much about it. People ask me how it is that I’m able to indulge in sweets regularly and go through weeks at a time where I get busy or depressed and miss the gym, all without slipping back nearly as much as you’d expect. HOW? they ask.

It’s because for about two years, I did drastically cut down my junk food consumption. I hardly drank anything besides water and coffee. I lived at the gym. Those years saw me learning a lot about balancing my diet to be always enjoyable while aiming for different levels of strictness and control at different times. I built a foundation by living super lean that I’ve been able to sustain while living more moderately. I still go through what I call re-up periods like what I’m coming up on now, where I eat leaner but more protein, cut out candy, and start going nuts at the gym every spare moment I get. Then I’ll relax again and enjoy life again for a while with the foods I enjoy. Fitness is an ebb and flow, not a static position. You have to be willing to double down at times in order to keep it together while being able to have other periods in your life that *aren’t* all about fitness. Everyone has a balance point and yours will be different from mine!

Now back to our regular programming…delicious sugary snacks (after one more comparison photo, that is!)

Skinny Envy (Skenvy?)

I used to look at thinner girls and think that that was what I needed to be. Before I understood different body types I looked at women with ectomorph bodies, girls who probably struggle to gain weight, and wished I was them. All I wanted was to have a flat stomach and fit into size 2 clothing.

But then when I got there, something was still missing. The more time I spent in the gym the more inferior I felt– the exact opposite of what I’d thought becoming a gym rat would do for me. I lost weight  and gain some strength but continued to feel weak and flabby; something wasn’t adding up but I couldn’t figure out what. I stripped myself down so far before realizing what I really needed was to build myself up! 
I have more body fat now then I have at other points in time but I’ve honestly never felt better about how my body looks or about what it can do. Being skinny was never what I needed; what I needed was to define myself and decide what *I* really wanted my body to be. Skinny was just what I thought society wanted it to be, so I ran toward that without thinking about whether weighing like 98 lbs was really a state my body was meant to be in.(It isn’t.) 

Your body is yours. Use it to find your strengths, not to warp yourself into what you weren’t meant to be. 👍

Bodies and Emotions

It’s been awhile since I’ve written here. Just a lot going on in my life. In addition to not writing very much I haven’t been working out often either. My new job provides quite a lot of cardiovascular and resistance activity so it’s really not the ultimate sin that I haven’t been hitting the gym. And yet I feel so undisciplined; I can feel the muscle imbalances growing as I neglect certain parts of my body to preserve energy for the ones I need to get the work done. 

But that’s a bunch of excuses. There are many ways I could work around my work-related weariness. But then there’s the depression. That’s what’s really sapping my energy…not only the depression itself but fighting it. So you know what I’ve decided? I don’t have to fight it all the time. 

What if I pick certain times to allow myself to sit and deal with the pain I’m experiencing, without telling myself I should be anywhere else? Perhaps that will allow me some sort of energy store for the next day. Does it work that way? I feel it’s worth a try.

In a few weeks to months my parents will be moving from Boston to Florida. For me this means the house I’ve lived in my entire life will go on the market. I’ll see all my stuff moved out, go through all the memories I have made here over thirty years. It’s no exaggeration when I say this will be heartbreaking for me, and there are days like today where I just need to cry about it. (No coincidence that I’m 5 days pre-period I’m sure.) Crying is an interesting thing to me. Often times the mind and body have trouble working together, but crying is the perfect syncopation of the release of tension from both the body and mind. It’s okay to cry, kids.  

I guess I’m just writing this to let people know that I believe it’s okay to have times when you go easier on yourself. Health isn’t just about building muscles in the gym; it’s about taking care of your whole self. I know when I’m up to it I work damn hard for the body I have and toward the better one I will have in the future. Right now I’ll just do what I can while I take a little time to breathe. 

Not All Fit People Like Vegetables

“You must eat like a bird to be this thin!” — one of my favorite misconceptions people have about my figure.

I am sometimes amused and other times frustrated by this assumption that since I’m a small person with a small frame and a pretty low body fat percentage, I must find it easy to “eat well”, aka plain chicken and egg whites with dressing-free salad for every meal, celery for a snack and dipping it in peanut butter on the days I’m feeling naughty.

I am equally amused when the same people making these assumptions see me put down half a sleeve of Double Stuf Oreo’s and a Twix with a sugar-laced iced coffee and wonder, WTF?

The truth is, I sometimes eat like shit.  

And here’s another truth: I struggle like hell to eat anywhere near enough fruits and vegetables.

I won’t get into what the definition of “enough” is here; that’s an informational article you’ll have to look elsewhere for. I’ll just tell you that I believe a reasonable goal for myself and for the average person is 2-3  full servings of each per day. And I’ll tell you that I reach that goal maybe two days out of the week. This photo below is me trying really hard to incorporate just one serving of vegetables into my day: 

See that tiny ramekin on the right? That’s one proper serving, composed of THREE different vegetables. And to me that’s a small victory for the day.

When you picture the fit individuals you admire sitting in front of a pile of lettuce, you’re not giving yourself the right image. This is what vegetables really look like in my life a great deal of the time…I sneak most of them in between other foods. Sometimes I’ll enjoy a side of broccoli or fresh pea pods or a sweet potato, but other than that whole vegetables are just not a friend of mine.

Instead of forcing myself to eat stuff I don’t like, which will only lead to sugary eating binges later when I finally give up my charade, I get creative. I chop up REAL vegetables and work them into other foods. This is not the same as the way food manufacturing companies work vegetables into their products. There is never a guarantee that any of those vegetables have retained their nutritional value through processing; in fact it’s very unlikely that they have. Whole and fresh is better, but that doesn’t mean you have to make veggie sticks with hummus your daily snack if that isn’t something you enjoy. Food SHOULD be enjoyed, and while it takes a good deal of work for me to enjoy my produce, that work is worth it.

I speak about this because it’s a struggle that is nearly universal in this country. We are constantly bombarded with packaged alternatives claiming to carry some of the benefits of fresh or frozen produce. A few examples include:

• veggie chips/straws: These are not chips made from sliced vegetables. They are potato-based chips (just like regular chips) that contain trace amounts of dehydrated vegetable powders.
• canned pasta products that claim to carry a full serving of vegetables in the sauce
• Fruit snacks and juices claiming they are made with real fruits and vegetables.

Let me make one thing outstandingly clear: FRUIT AND VEGETABLE CONCENTRATES ARE NOT FRUITS AND VEGETABLES. They may contain some minimal vitamin content, but usually that is added after the fact through re-enrichment processes designed to replace the real nutrients stripped from the food as it’s incorporated into the product.

If I counted Fruit by the Foot as eating strawberries and apples, Capri Suns as real fruit juice and Spaghettio’s as vegetables, I’d be reaching my suggested servings every day with no problem whatsoever. But the difference between products like these and actual produce is HUGE. Your average piece of fruit, for example, provides you with not only vitamins but a good serving of fiber and the water content that’s needed to process that fiber. This is why a Fiber One bar and an apple juice is not the same as an apple…not even close. Nothing can match the nutritional package of an actual fruit or vegetable.

My best suggestion for others who aren’t too enthused about produce consumption is to start sneaking them in anywhere you can. Toss a little spinach into that grilled cheese, omelette, or smoothie (you won’t taste it, I promise.) Make your own applesauce. Pile some extra lettuce on your burger and maybe even add some fresh spinach, which has a much milder flavor than cooked. Try adding some peas, corn, or onions into your soup, some bell peppers into your cornbread, some fresh diced tomato into your jarred pasta sauce.

Basically what I’m getting at is, think about which flavors complement one another, and use them! Also, don’t forget about herbs and spices. They can provide a lot of the flavor you look for in packaged and pre-made foods if fresher stuff seems a bit bland. Healthier eating does not have to be tasteless or unpleasant or happen all at once, and in most cases it’s pretty unrealistic to try and make the transformation just like that.

Remember to be kind to yourself when choosing what you consume; it shouldn’t feel like torture. And most importantly, don’t punish yourself mentally for slipping up because you imagine that other people are eating perfectly. I’d be happy to hear I inspired someone to pass on a brownie and choose a kiwi instead, but I’d never want to hear of someone making themselves miserable trying to be like me when in reality I fully believe that taking pleasure in the food you eat is okay. Most healthy(ish) eaters and fit people I know would be more than happy to share their daily diet regimen with anyone who asks, and explain how they achieve a proper balance of foods they love and foods their bodies need. All you have to do is ask!

Wishing everyone a healthy weekend ahead,

Lauren

The Truth Behind Transformation Photos

I’ve been on Instagram for about two and a half years, and one of the most common themes is, unsurprisingly, fitness. Instagram is a great platform for chronicling any type of journey because it allows for both visual and verbal communication of ideas, with hashtags providing a way to easily connect people to like-minded posters in countless different ways. For example, a shot of me in a new purple Lulu Lemon top at the gym can bear a variety of relevant tags from #purplepower to #lululemon to #favorite. Being able to instantly connect with so many other users who are on similar journeys, many of whom appear to be shining examples worth following, can be very inclusive and motivational…but there’s another side to that.

 Within this plethora of #instafitness accounts the king of them all is, of course, the body transformation journey, and you’d be hardpressed to find an account like this that doesn’t include at least one #transformation photo. Often they look something like this: 

If I were to post this with zero explanation, one might assume this progress from top to bottom was achieved in a matter of months. While that is certainly possible, there is actually a difference of five years here. I am always honest about the time frame, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t take my best (aka most visible definition) and worst (aka bad lighting making me look doughy) shots of the ones I had available from each period being chronicled. While this effort was meant not to deceive but to make the difference between the two properly apparent, the effect is that by doing this ultimately I’ve exaggerated my progress. 

Now imagine that you’re struggling with your own weight loss or bodybuilding journey. You’re doing the work but it’s slow going, and you decide to look to your #instafitfam for some inspiration. As you scroll through pages of people who are just perfect trying to get more perfect, people who were once dangerously obese and are now half the size and beaming with confidence in all their gym and look how big my old clothes are now selfies, and people who seem to achieve impossible levels of change within the weeks and months you’ve spent trying to gain or lose 5 measly pounds, you start to wonder what you’re doing wrong. 

If you’re wondering that, stop it. As good as a lot of users’ intentions might be, every single person on there is painting themselves as they want others to see them. In real life we don’t always have that choice, and that is what I believe to be the true basis behind IG’s popularity among the fitness crowd specifically. Whether your aim is to show off, network, inspire others or simply hold yourself accountable, we all have motivation to present ourselves a certain way (even if that way happens to be the “this is the real me with no filter” way.) 

My advice if you find yourself feeling this way is to start reading the captions. Not everyone gives honest explanations to provide perspective on their posts, but if you take the time to check what’s behind some of those posts that make you feel inferior you might be surprised. As I said, it’s taken five years for my body composition to change in all the ways you see in the above #picstitch of my back, or this one: 

For me it’s never really been about weight loss. I’ve been making continuous effort in various stages for the past five years to improve my fitness level both aesthetically and functionally. To be truthful I’ve noticed more visual changes usually occur when I’m focused on improving my performance. I have spent several weeks or months at a time working particularly hard to lean out at various points, but overall the changes I see and feel between 2011 Me and 2016 Me have been gradual and cumulative. And chances are, that person you just started following whose spanking new abs you wish you had has been at it for quite a while, too. 

As “unfit-to-fit” showcasers most of us have a habit, conscious or not, of making it seem like it was easy, and even worse, like the journey is now over because we look better. Despite the winning combo of photos and words, it’s difficult to accurately represent all the obstacles that can be involved in trying to change your body and maintain those changes, and in this way some fitness accounts can cross the line from being helpful to being toxic. As a user you can’t control the content others present you with, but it’s totally up to you what you are seeking out when you open up that app. When it comes to getting motivated there are two different mindsets: you can look to people and things that inspire you because you can relate to them, or you can salivate over accounts that actually make you feel shitty about yourself because you wish you had what they seem to have. When you indulge in the latter option what seems like inspiration can turn out pretty amotivational. 

The transformation photo definitely isn’t going anywhere as long as health and fitness remain the most popular topics on the platform. But it is possible to maintain a healthy perspective if we can try to keep in mind that social media is there for sharing, not comparing. 

Don’t get so caught up in watching other people that you forget who your journey truly belongs to. You can have 10 followers or 1o,000…either way, your most important follower is you!

Putting my emotions to work

I suffer from morning anxiety.

I actually suffer from general anxiety all the time, but today I’m here to talk about the torture that is unintended early wakeups.

Sometimes it happens when I’m stressed about something specific. Other times there seems to be no direct cause. No matter which is the case, each time I’m jolted from sleep somewhere around first light and am wide. Effing. Awake. (It’s also worth noting that when my alarm wakes me I’m NEVER wide awake right away.)

This has happened for all of my adult life as far as I can remember, but has definitely worsened as more adult responsibilities have made their way into my life. The last year or so I’ve been hit with a barrage of expensive and frustrating problems, and have been researching and experimenting with different ways to try to get these annoying wakeups to stop happening when I’m in the middle of dealing with something stressful. I’ve had my mind on prevention; How can I keep my mind and body from getting so freaked out?

I’ve tried meditating before sleep (which usually actually PUTS me to sleep.) I’ve tried alprazolam. I’ve tried copious amounts of pot before bedtime. I’ve tried dietary changes. Nothing seems to deter it and I’d begun to accept that when I’m feeling frazzled it will happen.

Suddenly this morning as I was driving to work, something hit me (figuratively): I’ve been asking the wrong questions.

My anxiety is part of who I am. The way I deal with it as also a part of who I am. No matter what level of success I achieve with any treatment throughout my life, my propensity for getting disproportionately keyed-up will still be there. I should be asking myself, how am I currently handling this when it happens, and more importantly, how I want to handle it.

What I currently do is cling to my bed and try to force myself back to sleep.

What I’d like to do is motivate myself to get up and do something that will help ease me into the day when it starts earlier than I’ve intended. Yoga. A jog. Lifting. A hot shower. A good breakfast. Writing.  These are things I know would ease the discomfort, the feeling that I could crawl out of my own skin and the knots that form in my stomach when I wake up before I meant to. Instead of fearing these wakeups, I want to learn to take advantage of them. I’ve actually always wished I could be one of those people who wakes up early and gets a workout in at the start of their day. Now my own mental instability is giving me the chance to do that!

I’ve been looking at this all wrong. It’s not a curse but an oppurtunity.

The happiest people I know are not devoid of problems in their lives. Hell, one of my spiritual inspirations lives in a van which I’m sure is not easy (albeit enjoyable to the free-spirited.) She’s been through some serious things in life yet is one of the most positive women I’ve ever met. Her inner peace comes not from lack of problems but from the way she’s taught herself A) to cope with those problems as they come, and B) to accept that there will be more problems to follow and know she will flow through them as well–she is like water, weaving flexibly and independently around whatever is in her path. When I look at her I see that if what one wants is to be free of “the grid”, a van with 5 feet of standing room can be a palace. You can be your own best companion. A slackline can be your path to greatness.

A blog should be a place where the writer can be real and speak with honesty and without fear of judgment. In accordance with these beliefs I will be updating on this topic as frequently as I feel is helpful. If I fail to make progress, having kept a record may be helpful in finding ways to improve. If I manage to find my way to the healing path I’m searching for, I hope my having archived the experience will be helpful to others experiencing similar issues. We’re all human and we’re all in this together.

Back in Action

Readers…
I’ve been awful the last few weeks. I’ve barely worked out and have neglected almost all monitoring of my nutrition and hydration. Things have been stressful in my life, so much so that it took me three weeks to notice my diet was consisting mostly of garbage and I was still only consuming 2/3 of the calories I should per day.
I won’t give you an “I have depression” sob story. I want only to give you the truth of my reality, and that is that no matter how well you manage it, there are times where depression just gets in the way.
The trick behind depression’s insidious hold on its hosts lies in its cyclical nature; few conditions of the mind or body can create a catch-22 like depression can.
Though depression has no cure, there are behavioral methods which have been shown to help. It’s pretty well established that sunlight, nutrition and exercise all play a serious role in regulating mood. Generally speaking, the better you are at adhering to this kind of advice, the better you will feel–both because of their actual effects and because taking positive action creates positive thoughts and inherently fosters feelings of worth and well-being.
Sounds easy, right? It even sounds almost like something you can actually control. Well here’s the catch…

Depressive episodes often health contributing outside factors that play into them, but it’s not impossible to have an episode when everything is completely fine in your life and you should feel great. And no matter what the root cause of the relapse, once you’re in the throes of depression, things you normally do stop seeming worthwhile. Suddenly resisting Oreos and cake is no longer worth it. You start to eat your feelings with or without realizing it. That run you’d normally be pushing yourself to take before is just not that important anymore…
Because its just one day, or because you’re fat anyway, or because you don’t believe you’re really worth the effort, or because just fuck it. Sometimes there is no reason, and there is little logic can do to re-convince the sufferer that the things that will make them feel better, will in fact make them feel better.
Sound ridiculous? It is. But it’s also reality.
So every once in a while, I fall off my fitness horse. I stop paying attention to my diet and pushing myself beyond my comfort zone in my workouts. My appetite goes down. In turn my energy goes down. Instead of exercising I want to nap every chance I get, and too much sleep during the day makes it hard to fall asleep at night. My sleep cycle becomes lopsided or even reversed and by the time I care to fix it I’m a hot exhausted mess.

So yeah that’s where I’ve been. It’s cool though, I’m back now. I’ll try to stay a while.

Functional Squatting

Some people crouch while they work the low shelves– I prefer to practice my squat balance! I’d be lying if I said I do this all the time, but way back when I started getting into fitness and was running several miles a week I began doing a lot of reading about knee functionality. I learned that crouching wasn’t doing me any favors with the pain I was experiencing from too much running and not enough stretching, and that while working in a squat was difficult it would be good stability work. So I started squatting every chance I got! My balance and range of motion while holding a squat position has improved drastically and I can now do most of the things from a squat that I could do from a crouch.

This isn’t the only way I’ve found to work fitness into my retail job. One-legged squats and calf raises behind the register are a common occurence and the ceiling beams in our basement are a great pull-up apparatus (Although I can’t practice my kipping which is a slight bummer.) I’ll pick up boxes and bust out some overhead squats, and sometimes if I get really antsy I’ll start moving cases of water around just to get my heart pumping.

Who says workouts have to wait til after work when you can make it to the gym?

There’s always time for exercise when you want there to be.

Being an expert at everything is not necessary.

Comparison is the root of our unhappiness. Think about how often you find yourself thinking, if I could be like this or do this as well as that person does, I’d be better off, happier, more respected.

Maybe you don’t think this way very often. If not, seriously, good for you. I don’t mean that in a sarcastic way, either. I mean good for you, and then I say to myself once again, why can’t I be more like that?

Being good at things sometimes happens naturally, but mastering them and gaining a good hold of your talents takes work. We all know this, and yet we are trained to expect instant results from everything, including ourselves. If we can’t have what we want right away, we either find a quicker way to get us something close to what we want and settle for that, or just pretend we don’t want it and never did. But the heart and soul still know what they want even when the brain refuses to work for it, which leads me to believe a lot of us would be significantly happier and more fulfilled if we stop telling ourselves that being excellent at everything we do is the only way to be.

The saying everybody starts from somewhere is an important one, and one often repeated without truly understanding its meaning. It’s one of those things you use to comfort someone else but when you apply it to your own life it seems like some useless bs that you’re just supposed to say. At least that’s how I’ve been looking at it without really realizing it. But what is seen cannot be unseen, and so here I am, sitting here with this realization that I’ve been wrong. In realizing this, I’ve added some more pieces to the puzzle that is life, and now I must find the places that they fit.

Until now my pursuits of things like Fitness, yoga, and even blogging have been plagued by feelings of inadequacy. I know they are the frustrations that come with learning the ropes and yet I find myself running from them despite my recognition of this state as a necessary step in the process. The very people and their social media posts that inspire me to learn and grow are the same that lead me to plague myself with that nagging feeling of I can never be that good. I neglected to start this blog about Fitness for so long because so many of the ones I was reading to learn and be inspired seemed way out of my league, written by people way more knowledgeable than myself that would make me seem like a whiny little amateur. And maybe I sound like that now, but I don’t want to be afraid of that anymore. It’s that very fear that has been slowing me down in becoming what I want to be: a fully qualified and inspirational fitness trainer who reaches people both through personal training and through writing. Any of the reasons I cannot be exactly that are concocted by my own mind.

If you were wondering at the explanation for the photo above perhaps you have pieced it together by now, but I will explain anyway. Yoga has been a source of both serenity and frustration as I’ve struggled to teach myself without trying to go too fast and skip important steps just to get to where others are. Yoga is something I should be doing for myself, without holding myself to the standards of what others can do…because it’s not about anyone else. Sometimes I see an experienced Yogi post a photo of themselves in a post that is considered to be for beginners and wonder why they still spend time with it, and yet when I really look at their bodies I can see that despite its simplicity a lot of practice has gone into being able to hold that move just that way. When I think of what the practice of yoga truly is i can see that the real exercise being depicted is not in the position of their body but in the state of their mind, the depth of their breaths, the activity of their soul. And this photo represents that idea for me…the idea of starting from the beginning with a more focused mind and a more patient heart.

Learning is cumulative, as is experience. I lose nothing by starting over; instead I gain new perspective on everything I already know and the things I can already do. I’ll collect new things as I go.

Fitness Word of the Week

And here’s your first Fitness Word of the Week: gastrocnemius!

Often referred to as the calf muscle, the gastrocnemius shares a common insertion point with the soleus muscle at the Achilles tendon. Remember to stretch them daily as both active and sedentary lifestyles can take their toll on this muscle group.

To stretch the calves easily, simply stand with one foot out in front (flat) and the leg you want to stretch out behind you, standing on the toe. Slowly extend the heel down the flour and you should feel a fantastic stretch in the back of that lower leg. Hold. Switch. Repeat