Category Archives: Fat

Three Things Which Bring Me Joy and One Which Does Not

Posted on 21 January 2012 | Leave a comment

Paleo Eating

Grilled Grass-fed Ribeye and Broccoli

I started eating Paleo/Primal in November, just before the holidays. Dumb move, I know. I stopped eating this way from Christmas through New Year’s Day and then hopped right back on it. Here are few things I know from the nearly three months I’ve been eating no grains or soy, no sugar, no manufactured food, and very little dairy:

  1. I have lots of energy to exercise. I am exercising in several different ways pretty much every day of the week. And, I get sore, which is to be expected when exercising, but I don’t drag through my day like I did when I was exercising this much and eating a vegan diet. And, the soreness goes away and doesn’t inhibit my workout.
  2. I get lots of sleep. When I am finished with my day, I go to bed. There isn’t any dragging myself through my day, only to end up lying in bed tossing and turning until I finally fall asleep. I go to bed. I go to sleep. I sleep through the night. And, I wake up, rested, without using an alarm clock around 5 or so, which doesn’t mean I get up then, choosing instead to lounge around in the bed until 6ish.
  3. I can be much more inventive with my cooking. This week’s menu includes fish stir fry, a dish I never would’ve even considered before trying the paleo lifestyle (even when I ate meat before, I wouldn’t have considered it). We will also be eating a beef stroganoff served over spaghetti squash. I find myself wanting to experiment with food in ways I didn’t before, not that I was a bad vegan chef, because I wasn’t, but this is better!
  4. I don’t spend a good portion of every day in the bathroom. Not to be gross, but when I was vegan I pooped at least three times every day. Now I go once, and I happen to believe it’s because my body is using what I am feeding it rather than simply passing it on through.
  5. I am not bloated or gassy. For the last three years, while I’ve been vegetarian or vegan, I have had incredible gas. It’s been pretty disgusting at times. Now, I am not saying that I don’t have some gas, but it’s not ridiculous and it smells less horrible. I don’t belch loudly, for a long time, after every single meal. I also don’t eat to the point where I am so full and bloated that I feel like complete crap, because I am paying more attention to the full feeling I get when I eat meat. I know when to stop.
  6. I am losing weight—s-l-o-w-l-y—but I feel amazing. My original hope was that the weight would just come peeling off of me, like it does for some people who go low-carb, paleo, or whatever, but then I realized that I want to still be able to do long races and swim miles in the mornings, so I need to have some potatoes or yams in my diet. I am consistently losing two pounds a week, so I think that’s fair. In a year, that’s 100 pounds. Ha! I wish.
  7. My mental state is level and even somewhat joyful. I’ve blogged before about using niacin and Vitamin C to even out my moods. It works. I don’t have the pendulumesque, out of control mood swings I’ve had all my life when I take a little of those vitamins. I don’t even have to take large doses to help me out, just a bit works fine. However, since I’ve been eating paleo, I feel so much better in my mind (mental clarity, memory, and mood) that I am going to experiment with leaving even those vitamin supplements behind. I am going to ween myself of of all additives, except my multivitamin. Right now I have pretty expensive pee. 🙂

Barefoot Running

Soft Little Barefoot Running Feet

I have been sneaking in some barefoot running at Ball Gym. I feel rebellious, like I said in my last post, but more importantly my feet are getting so much stronger and my calves are raging! I ran for about an hour the other day, and while my calves—well, really my whole leg musculature—got sore, my feet felt great. I think there’s something to this cavewoman lifestyle I’ve submitted myself to! I just feel so primal and free when I run with no shoes, like there is nothing I can’t do. (I know. Double negative. Shut up.) I feel like I could just keep running and running and never stop, but I know that’s not true, no matter how much joy running brings me.

Swimming

This is actually a high school conference meet, but I swim here sometimes.

I’ve come home. To my first love. I’ve been swimming (if you can call it that) since I was about a month old in the big-ass bath tub at our original little hovel in the big HC. Sometimes I think I can remember what that first feeling of weightlessness felt like, but I know it’s impossible. I love swimming because it’s one sport where being a fat girl doesn’t matter, and, in fact, probably works to my advantage.

At any rate, swimming soothes me, stimulates me, and feeds my mind like no other sport. Maybe because I have been doing it for so long, I don’t have to think at all about it. When I run, I still have to think about my form; though I have to think less about it when I run barefoot. When I swim, the strokes come naturally, gracefully. I’ve been swimming three times a week for the past two weeks, and I feel full. At peace. Calm. Like I can do anything in the water. Swimming is grace. Swimming is joy.

Beer

At Savage's Ale House in Muncie, IN

You aren’t really supposed to drink any alcohol when you go paleo/primal, but I really love beer. Recently, I haven’t been able to drink beer much because of my allergies. I think I am really allergic to wheat, because I feel 100% better and my allergies have all but gone by the wayside since I stopped eating wheat. In case you missed it the first time I said it, I really love beer. So I occasionally have a beer. Like once a week.

Last night was “Festive Friday.” A bunch of colleagues and I go out and have a couple of beers to celebrate the end of the week and look for a better week to come, which is really a way of celebrating life if you ask me. I had a Bell’s Porter, one of my top ten all time beers, and my face swelled up like a little bright red, hot to the touch, strawberry. I had one beer, three glasses of water, a double bacon burger, and some fries, and my face swelled up with hives. It was ridiculous. I still love beer. There is no joy in being allergic to beer.

Here are my top ten, in no particular order because I just can’t decide, but the top five are the top five, in order:

  1. Hacker-Pschorr Dark, Hacker-Pschorr Brewery
  2. Bad Elmer’s Porter, Upland Brewery
  3. Riggwelter, Black Sheep Brewery
  4. Bell’s Porter, Bell’s Brewery
  5. Taddy Porter, Samuel Smith Brewery
  6. Dogfish Head 90-minute IPA, Dogfishhead Brewery
  7. Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, Great Lakes Brewery
  8. St. Peter’s English Ale, St. Peter’s Brewery
  9. La Fin Du Monde, Unibroue
  10. Levitation Ale, Stone Brewery

Sad day that I can’t drink one of each…

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Posted in Beer, Cooking, Fat, Food, Goals, Grace, Gym, Insomnia, Mental Health, Paleo/Primal, Play, Running, School, Swimming, Vegetarian or Vegan

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Paleo Update and Some New Tattoos?

Posted on 16 January 2012 | 2 comments

After one week, I am a little pissed that I haven’t lost more weight. I’ve lost a total of 12 pounds since November, but I want this fat to come off. I am tired of being a fat girl. I just want to be able to run far, play hard, and lift heavy things. If being fat is compatible with all of that, then I suppose my size doesn’t matter, but right now, I feel as if this weight is a barrier to my being able to do fun things like the Tough Mudder. I mean who wants to stop to try to help hoist a fat girl over a wall that she can’t get up on her own. I want to rock climb. I want to stand-up paddle board. I want to do crazy stuff and not be afraid that I’m going to hurt myself because I am fat.

I spent about an hour jogging (within my 55% to 75% heart rate range) at Ball Gym this morning. I got some funny looks for being barefoot, but people left me alone. I like running at Ball State’s facilities with no shoes, because it makes me feel like an outlaw. Though it isn’t posted anywhere, barefooting is severely frowned upon by the powers that be at good ol’ BSU! I always have my VFFs with me just in case I get schooled like I did at Meijer that time. Seriously, people, no shoes is not a crime. Sometimes I understand how skateboarders and parkour practicioners feel! Augh. Ignorance. It’s bliss, eh?

After this one week, though, I am quite a bit hopeful that I have lost the 12 pounds since November, and I want to focus more on the fact that I feel amazing! I don’t feel bloated, weak, tired, or slow. I feel fast and free and strong. I still don’t like the idea of eating animals from factories, but I hope that one day I will have my own little farm where I can raise my own food: eggs, milk, meat, veggies, and fruit. I think I can grow cherries, blueberries, and apples in Minnesota, I know I can raise chickens and ducks and grow lots of vegtables, and two little cows should provide me with plenty of milk and maybe a calf for butchering. I am not sure I want to mess with goats or sheep, but I could make goat cheese, which I love, and sell the wool from the sheep, and I do love some lamb. I think I can do this farmer thing. I think Bec was on to something when she suggested that I teach online. That would be perfect. I could farmer and teacher all at once.

In the spirit of being my own little farmer, I am finally planning to get my new tattoos that I’ve wanted. On the back of my calves I want to William Carlos Williams poem “The Red Wheelbarrow.” On the back of the left calf will be half the poem with a picture of a red wheelbarrow, and on the back of the right calf will be the other half of the poem with a picture of some white silkie chickens. This seems like a nice way to celebrate a new lifestyle, and a new me.

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Posted in Fat, Food, Goals, Paleo/Primal, Tattoos

Giving Thanks. Running. This Whole Vegan Thang. Health.

Posted on 23 November 2011 | 1 comment

Since the first day of November, I have been posting on Facebook those things for which I am thankful. I have not been alone in this. Nearly every person on Facebook has posted about being thankful for something in this month. The thanks range from sickeningly sweet posts to random posts about being thankful for the ability to block people. I’ve tried to not waver too far in either direction. You can decide for yourself if you think I’ve gone thanksgiving crazy!

November 1: I am thankful for steadfast family and friends.
November 2: I am thankful for my soon to be acquired punching bag and boxing gloves.
November 3: I am thankful for Burris’s FCA huddle. What amazing students!
November 4: I am thankful for carbohydrates that will fuel tomorrow’s insanity.
November 5: I am thankful for the ability to even think about completing a marathon.
November 6: I am thankful for being able to recognize beauty.
November 7: I am thankful for students who are open to new ideas and who aren’t afraid to speak their minds.
November 8: I am thankful for coffee, vegetables, and wild rice and the farmers, truck drivers, and grocery store workers who bring them to us.
November 9: Today I am thankful for waking up.
November 10: I am thankful for falling asleep at 7 last night and waking up at 330 this morning. I think I could get used to that schedule. Maybe that’s why opening shift at Starbucks always worked so well for me!
November 11: I am thankful for all of those who choose to serve our country and to guard our liberties, even when they don’t necessarily agree with trivial wars or the choices made for them by their superiors.
November 12: I was thankful when all the sour milk smell was finally off of me after Harvest Fest. There are so many reasons I have never had children, and I think that smell is one of them.
November 13: I am thankful for the beauty with which we are surrounded. I saw two deer while I was running this morning; they ran on the trail with me for about 100 yards and then turned abruptly, jumped over the fence, and scampered up the hill.
November 14: I am thankful for my rainbow toe socks and cabbage/broccoli stir fry.
November 14: Again today, I am thankful for Julie M., who provides me with fresh herbs. Tonight I am making whole wheat linguine topped with butternut squash caramelized with sage and olive oil.
November 15: I am thankful for options. Being able to choose makes me happy.
November 15: I am thankful for the high school choir, who just kindly seranaded my classroom with a musical rendition of “Jabberwocky.” Only at Burris.
November 16: I am thankful for the small things: tootsie rolls, incense, Coke Zero, and gel pens. I am thankful for the big things: compassion, kindness, love, and peace.
November 17: I am thankful for Burris FCA. The faith of these students is amazing. And, we always have good breakfast.
November 17: I am thankful for driving and spending a weekend away. I am thankful for new babies and their beauty and innocence.
November 17: I am thankful for mini-vacations and for Chicago, the city that makes my heart sing.
November 18: I can think of nothing I am more thankful for than running to the end of Navy Pier watching the sun rise over Lake Michigan, then turning around to see the light shimmering off of the windows of all those skyscrapers. Natural and manmade beauty collide, and I love it.
November 19: I am thankful for family in all shapes, sizes, and relationships.
November 20: I am thankful for long drives and a nice comfortable bed at home.
November 21: I am thankful for two days until break, otherwise known as the grading marathon.
November 22: Today I am thankful for my Facebook friends. Some of you I barely know in real life, but you make my days better and my mind stronger. I am thankful for those of you who challenge my beliefs and for those of you who camp in the same thought camps that I do. I am also thankful for my students who come to my room early (or on their lunches, or during their study skills classes) every day to try to solve the puzzles my secret pal bought for me!
November 22: I am thankful for Faith Pennington-Serf. I always leave our meetings with sore abs from laughing so hard, and I never leave wondering why I am a teacher.
November 23: I am thankful for long walks by the river with my dogs. Two miles with the sun coming up and the river burbling is the perfect way to start a long day of grading.

Today, as I sit here typing this in Starbucks, I am also thankful for grace. I look around and realize that I don’t deserve any of the amazing blessings I’ve been given. I am so blessed, but it’s easy for me to lose sight of that blessing when I get bogged down in the rut of my days. I am not a Christian who tends to revel in her brokenness, so it strikes me when I find myself reflecting on how undeserving I am. I sometimes wonder how fair it is to even call myself a Christian anymore, but that’s a conversation for another time and another post.

I tend to try to live in the renewed life and love that we are given as new creatures in Christ, but I sometimes forget that everything is a gift. It’s humbling, you know, when I consider that I could have been born into any circumstance and grown up into any circumstance. But I wasn’t and I didn’t. I was born into an awesome family and given awesome friends. I was encouraged to grow up into a unique little snowflake. 🙂 Every day I am challenged and supported. Every day I am given grace and inspired. Every day I am loved and I love, which is a blessing.

All my problems are trivial and finite, but grace is significant and eternal.

*

My brother and I are running a 5K trail race on Saturday, and I am quite excited for it. Running has been going really well, since I didn’t finish the marathon. My mile times have been up to two or three minutes faster than they were leading up to the marathon, and my feet and legs haven’t felt heavy or tired for a couple of weeks. Since it’s gotten colder here, I haven’t done any real barefoot running (minimalist instead), but I am going to start going to the BSU track in Ball Gym to get in some serious barefoot miles. I have moved my running from the morning to the afternoon and that seems to have helped both my ability to deal with the early sunset, and my ability to run well. Maybe being more alert helps the speed. I am so not a morning person!

*

I am wavering back to my commitment to being vegan. I’ve had lots of dairy in the past two or three weeks, and I am starting to think that my body likes the extra protein. However, I can’t stand the fact that my consumption of dairy leads to the dairy farms we pass while driving in Wisconsin and Minnesota. I can’t stand to see so many animals jammed into such a small, muddy, shitty space with no fresh green grass or pasture. More disturbing are the veal huts set up on the opposite side of these farms. Little baby cows chained to tiny little huts, standing in straw and manure, mooing for their mommies. Yeah, I am a bit cheesy about stuff like this, but I can’t stand it. It breaks my heart, and I absolutely hate driving past the dairies. Then, when my gut is full of cheese or milk, I want to throw up at the fact that I am implicit in this operation. It makes me sick. Almost literally.

I suppose I just need to figure out how to get more protein while still being vegan. Maybe I could add in more nuts or beans. I know I need to get more fresh vegetables, so I am going to try a two-month juice fast from January 1 through the end of February. I am hoping to use that time as a time of bodily cleansing and intellectual purification before going back to being vegan. Of course, the juice fast will be vegan, but it will also be an exercise in discipline. And, of course, I will need to have it finished by the time Elizabeth, Sarah, and I embark on AWP in Chicago!

*

Last, but not least, I have started taking niacin and vitamin C again. The two nutrients are a homeopathic remedy for mood disorders, and since my mood swings have gotten out of control, I decided to take matters into my own hands and take some proactive measures to get things under control. I figure some niacin and some vitamin C is a whole lot cheaper than the $100 an hour a psychologist would cost. (It’s probably cheaper than going to court because I punched someone in the face, too.) Supposedly our insurance provides psychiatric care, but I imagine that it would be equally excellent coverage to our medical care, which is almost like not having insurance at all. Our pharmaceutical coverage is excellent, though, according to the pharmacist. Doctor $$$ > Drug $$$ = The health care system in the US is fucked.

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Posted in Christianity, Family, Fat, Food, Grace, Mental Health, New Year, Religion, Running, Vegetarian or Vegan

There Are So Many Other Things I Should Be Doing Right Now…

Posted on 13 November 2011 | Leave a comment

but I decided instead to write about my week this week. It was an excellent one. Last Sunday, I started taking my niacin/vitamin C again, and I can tell that it makes a huge difference. I haven’t thought once this week about killing myself or someone else. And the way things were going that is a huge step in the right direction.

I’ve also decided to try to remember that people can do whatever they want, but it only affects me if I let it, and usually people’s weird reactions and mean actions have little to nothing to do with me, but with their own state of mind and the other things happening in their lives. I’ve also thought quite a bit about passive aggressive behaviors and how there is no way to control the way other people act and react, and I can say, for this week at least, it worked to view my interactions with others in this manner. If I don’t let the mean things other people say and do interrupt what I am doing, they can’t get to me and make me feel bad about myself. I like that. There’s a saying, which can’t really be attributed to one source because so many famous people have shared the sentiment, that holds quite a bit of wisdom in this regard. It goes like this: “It’s not what happens to you that matters, but what matters is how you react to it.”  I am learning new ways to react, particularly when it comes to people whose actions are abusive or detrimental to my character.

Running has been really good this week. On one of my runs, I somehow managed to run a ten-minute mile after running weeks and weeks of 13- to 14- minute miles. And, today I ran 5 miles at the Mounds on some hilly, rocky, uneven terrain at about a 14-minute mile pace. I wore my nice VFF Trek Sports that have the little, baby lugs for trail running, and they have a bit thicker sole than the classics. These have become my go to shoes for anything that isn’t on the sidewalk or street. My classics serve me well when the pavement is too rough or when the weather is too cold. I have a pair of Flows, too, but I really don’t like them very well at all. They are stiff and my feet get sweaty hot in them, which I assume will be a huge plus when the snow falls and the ice comes. For right now, though, the weather is still good enough that they are bit overkill. I wear them to school sometimes, and my students call them my dress shoes!

Not finishing the marathon has somehow lit a fire under my behind to make it impossible for myself to fail in the spring when I sign up for the next go at it. I am thinking of running an early spring marathon before the pollen starts up. It’ll be challenging to strike the delicate balance between cold air and pollen, both of which are not so great for my lungs. At any rate, I am feeling pretty good about my running life. I’m trying to lose some weight before then, too, but I am not sure how well that will go. I seem to have difficulty ever losing weight, and I just get discouraged if that’s my focus. I have to remember that running and feeling fit are my first priorities. Losing weight is like third or fourth fiddle to all the other things I do for my body.

To that end, the weight loss, I’ve decided to start eating milk products again. Despite how morally reprehensible the whole dairy industry is, I think I need the extra protein that low-fat milk and low-fat cheeses provide me. I am trying not to add back in too many animal products, but only those which I feel my body needs to maintain the weekly mileage I am trying to achieve; I’d like to be at a maintenance level of 17 to 30 miles each week by Christmas, running 3 to 5 miles on weekdays and  5 to 10 miles on weekends. That’s definitely doable, and it will make running a marathon seem like something more attainable without making the training seem like a drudgery. Don’t get me wrong, I love running, but the training (especially the 50-mile week) was a bit challenging to complete during school.

Also, it’s my goal to run at least one race each month this year. I am starting with the Leftover Turkey Trail Run on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, then running the Santa Hustle on December 17 and the Rudolph Run on Christmas Eve. Now I have to find a good race for January. 🙂

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Posted in Fat, Food, Goals, Mental Health, Running, Vegetarian or Vegan

Last Minute Jitters Turn Into Legitimate Concerns

Posted on 8 November 2011 | 2 comments

Menses alert (like a spoiler alert, but more important): As if it wasn’t enough to attempt to move my fat body 26.2 miles, I get to do it while Mother Nature does her thing to my uterus. Thanks, lady, you’re supposed to be on my side. You are a woman after all!

If nothing else, though, I have plenty to think about on this 6-hour journey. I can replay recent disappointments with friends to investigate what I have done to offend. I can revel in recent—and fantasize about future—growths in my professional life. I can contemplate my (partially) new-found spirituality, reviewing the texts I’ve been reading as I run. I will repeat a mantra: “Just keep swimming.” I can pray for personal and universal plights and rejoice over successes. I can consider social justice issues and the ways in which I can . And, if I finish, I will feel like I’ve accomplished something big.

*

Well, it’s the Tuesday after the marathon, and I didn’t finish. I didn’t accomplish something big. This time. I was going strong until mile 10 when I noticed my chest starting to tighten up, and I started to have a difficult time breathing. I’ve run 15-mile training runs, so there should have been no problem. But there was.

I don’t have a formal asthmatic diagnosis, unless you count the exercise-induced one from when I was still young enough to go to the pediatrician, so I hate it when I can tell my lungs are starting to spasm and constrict. I can’t do anything to fix it because I don’t have an inhaler. By the time I turned onto Pennsylvania Avenue, I could tell I wasn’t going to last much longer. Maybe it was the gingko trees, maybe it was my imagination, but my breathing was difficult. I started crying, and then I started walking. I made it to mile 11 where I promptly got scooped up by the slow wagon.

*

I learned a lot about myself through this huge disappointment. I know I need to start my allergy shots, and I am hoping I am part of the 50% of the population they work for. I know I need to train much more diligently and much more thoroughly for the next go around. I know could stand to lose some weight, which would only make running 26.2 miles a little less painful. I know I need to be more careful about what I eat between now and then, maybe adding in a bit more protein and fewer “treats.”

I learned I need to give myself more grace when shooting for lofty goals, like I need to give myself grace for not having time to work on my dissertation. I learned I need to count on my friends and family who are steadfast and true and revel in their love for me.

I don’t know what else to say about this whole journey, except that I lost it on Saturday when I stopped running. The bottom of my world fell out, and all those dark feelings came rushing in and I was drowning. I came back (or to put it evangelically, I was redeemed) when I decided that not making a goal I set for myself isn’t the end of the world, and that I always have next time. Sounds trite, sounds cliché, sounds sickeningly like something I wouldn’t want to hear, but it’s true. I don’t have a terminal illness. I am not incapacitated in some way. There is always tomorrow.

While I was running,  I thought a lot about the legacy I want to leave behind, and the one I was heading toward leaving behind wasn’t exactly it. Recently, I have spent way too much time wallowing in self-pity. I haven’t spent nearly enough time thinking about, dwelling on those things I have to rejoice about. For my legacy, I want to leave behind peace and compassion, not anxiety and anger. I may not be happy in every situation, but I can still be grace-filled and experience each moment for what it brings.

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Posted in Dissertation, Fat, Goals, Grace, Running, Vegetarian or Vegan