Notice: I swore I would never write about being fat and how much I hate it or start writing about a “weight loss journey” because I am NOT one of those people, except, OH MY GOSH NOW I AM ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE. I am doing it and I am both disgusted by myself and proud of myself for putting this out into the world. I did not write this to fish for compliments. I generally like myself and pride myself on being authentic and relatable. That said, I wouldn’t mind being authentic and relatable and also a swimsuit model. Of course, the good Lord knew this and knew I would shamelessly flaunt my assets, so to keep me humble, he made me too short, pasty skinned, and gave me the bone structure of a circa 1970s Little People toy, even when I was young and thin. I will never frolic on a Brazilian beach in a thong bikini, posing for Sports Illustrated, which annoys me, but God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change…

I turn 40 this year.  That sounds so old to me, and yes, I am a little angsty over it.  In my head, I still feel like I’m 18, so it never fails to shock me when I see the dumpy, middle aged woman in the mirror.  Who even IS THAT? But I can’t even ask myself “How did this happen?” I know how it happened. My response to stress and big feelings has always been to eat. I am high strung and sensitive, despite my attempts to appear happy-go-lucky and chill, so I am always over-emoting one way or another. EAT ALL THE FOOD, GIRL! 

Over the years, I have sometimes dabbled and sometimes been serious about exercise and diet.  When I have been serious about it, as when I was training daily in Krav Maga and religiously counting calories, I dropped 23 lbs in four months, which was totally awesome. I was still heavier than I wanted to be, but I felt so much better. Then I got a concussion that prevented me from being able to work out for about six months.  It was awful.  And so I ate.  All the weight I lost, I regained, and then some.  Eventually, I started working out again (though not nearly as intensely as before, because the older I’ve gotten, the longer it takes me to recover) but I haven’t been able to push the numbers on the scale (or the pants size) down.  I am strong and I have pretty good endurance, and I know there are some awesome muscles under there, but I feel like I’m wearing one of those inflatable Sumo suits. I hover between a size 18 and 20, which is the largest I have ever been, even pregnant. I know I need to (again) couple my exercise with calorie counting.

My outward appearance does not match the me in my head.  It hasn’t for some time (like, 20 years) and I’ve just sort of tried to ignore it, or blow it off with some humor, or even Pollyanna my way through all the work it takes to look and feel half decent. But now I’m just mad.  I have reached the stage in life where it takes me longer to recover from everything from staying up late to walking the dog. I find myself saying things like “I’m just glad that everything is still working okay,” (which is true) and “I want to lose weight to be healthy, I’m not concerned about looking a certain way,” (which is a lie, because I want to look hot. I want a slim waistline, no belly flab, and perky butt and boobs again.  Is that so much to ask?) My kids  and their friends see me as the fun, but decidedly matronly mom. (I am not opposed to being seen as the FUN MOM, but the FAT MOM? Ugh.) I cannot wear the styles I like because my limbs end up looking like sausages about to burst their cases, or like I put on a circus tent.   I hate this. I HAAAAAATE this.  There is no amount of camouflaging, lighting, smoke and mirrors, or contouring that can hide this.  On the upside, I really do like working out.  A few years ago, Krav Maga classes helped me discover the joy of really moving and working my body. I love feeling muscles move and stretch and burn. I just wish they’d burn calories more efficiently, like when I was 24 or even 34. Come on, guys—get it together!

I know I’m fat because of my own choices, and I am working on this. Exercising more, but also (and more importantly) watching my calories and trying to make smart food choices. I don’t even like junk food much, I just like to eat A LOT of the healthy stuff, and apparently, eating A LOT of healthy stuff still makes you fat.  Stupid, man. That’s just stupid.  But, I am sucking it up and disciplining myself. I’ve done it before and I know it works.  I am beginning to see progress again but it is SO. SLOW.  And so easily undone.  I want results NOW, darn it!  This discipline stuff is hard. And annoying.  And why does my body want to cling to every pound harder now that I’m pushing 40? Why do my muscles and joints ache after two consecutive days of Krav Maga or kickboxing workouts? Or 45 stupid minutes on the elliptical?  Life is not fair. Wahhhh!!!

A few months ago, I printed off some inspirational quotes and stuck them to my bathroom mirror, so that every day, I’d see them and read them and be reminded that “I’m doing this for me” and “Nothing tastes as good as fit feels” and “I can get up and get scared or I can get up and get ready.” But this kind of inspo is not working. It is not me.  I have read these horrible quotes so much that now I greet my mirror and my Scotch taped messages with the scorn of a thousand Grumpy Cat memes. 

I joined a workout group at my gym a little while ago, complete with a hard-nose personal trainer. I worked out for 12 weeks with this group and this trainer and while it was fun, I was in good enough shape (under the chub) that it wasn’t much of a challenge.  I couldn’t relate to the trainer at all.  She is fit and she knows her stuff, and she is no-nonsense, but she has never had children and has been a gym rat since high school.  She doesn’t get so bloated the week before and during her period that she doesn’t fit into her jeans.  In fact, she doesn’t wear jeans.  She told me this—she only wears compression shorts. (Occupational necessity, I guess.) Also, she’s 26.   I like her as a person, I admire that she knows 125 variations of squats and can kettlebell with the best of them, and has killer triceps and a butt you can bounce a quarter off, but does she get that just because she can bench press a billion pounds doesn’t mean she can take a hit from a guy twice her size and stay standing? Does she have to cross her legs when she sneezes so she doesn’t pee her pants?

I don’t know that there is a trainer for me in the real world (that I can afford.) So, I decided to make one up.  Yes, I have an imaginary personal trainer.  He (yes, he. I can’t bring myself to swear at a lady.) is a cross between Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson,Tony Stark, and Gru, from Despicable Me.  Make fun of me if you will. At least I finally figured out what motivates me.  Smack talk. Anger. Masochism. Macabre silliness. A vaguely Slavic accent. His name is Hulk Smash, because I am incapable of zealous earnestness.   He is the perfect trainer for me because he does not spout fitspo at me.  He barks at me to quit whining and stay on task.  When I swear at him and tell him to go to hell, because I’d rather eat that second helping or sleep in, he gives me a dead-eyed stare as he swats the muffin out of my hands, grinds it underfoot, and orders more time on the treadmill, more reps, more burpees. He is relentless.  When I am feeling discouraged or lazy, he calls me a pansy-ass sissy and reminds me how much I like to hit things. The angrier I get, the harder he laughs. The more he laughs, the harder I work.  When I’m done working out, he applauds me with, “That’s all you got, Hellcat? You better bring your A-game tomorrow.” At that point, I flip him a friendly bird and we call it a day.

I read a lot of blogs, because I am interested in how other people think and live.   I also just like to read good writers.  Here are some of my favorites:

Mel’s Kitchen Cafe

This blog was the first one I started following—my friend Ann turned me on to it because we both liked writing and good food and recipes.  My very first blog, www.wheresthebeefbaby.blogspot.com was very much a copy cat attempt at food writing.  I realized early on, however, that I like writing about lots of other stuff besides food, and enjoyed reading Mel’s food and recipe blog more than I liked writing my own.

Rage Against the Minivan

I stumbled onto Kristen Howerton’s blog when I was looking into adoption.  Knowing that if we adopted, we would likely adopt transracially, I wanted to gain some insight into that possibility.  Kristen adopted across racial and national lines and also had biological children. What I love about Kristen’s writing is that she doesn’t JUST write about her family and kids, but she keeps it pretty real, talking about frustrations and cringe-worthy experiences as much as the high points.  She uses self-deprecation and sarcasm to poke fun at herself, while remaining pretty upbeat and earnest about her goals to raise good, socially conscious kids.   Kristen is a Christian and pretty liberal in her political views, which I find refreshing and relatable.

JJen Hatmaker

I found Jen Hatmaker through Kristen Howerton and I cannot get enough of her writing.  Jen is a Christian writer, but unlike other Christian writers—she is so very real about her life and her foibles, while loving Jesus at the same time.  She is also very social-justice minded, and she is just hilariously relatable.

Livesay Haiti by Tara Livesay

Another blogger I found through Kristen Howerton. Tara is a midwife at a maternity center in Port Au Prince, Haiti, and I love her writing for her candid observations about life in a materially poor country, doing work that is so necessary and sacred, but so very, very difficult.  She wears her heart on her sleeve, but if she were calloused and clinical, she couldn’t reflect the beauty and mess that is specific to life in Haiti and universal in being a wife, mother, and woman.

Momastery

Written by a woman who overcame alcohol addiction and bulimia (along with a few other things) this a blog I didn’t think I would get into, but find myself turning to again and again.  Glennon Doyle Melton writes candidly about her own struggles in life—which makes her so incredibly relatable.  In being so open about her addictions, anxieties, trials, and triumphs, she has opened the door wide for everyone with insecurities and addictions to overcome them, or at the very least, manage them.  She has built quite a tribe, and through her writing and online activism, I have met and made friends with people (via Facebook) that have enriched my life—that I never would have encountered otherwise. 

Awesomely Luvvie

Another blogger I found through Kristen Howerton! Luvvie Ajayi is awesome. Born in Nigeria and raised there and in Chicago, Luvvie’s life is completely different than my own.  She is absolutely unafraid to say what’s on her mind and call people out for their stupid behavior.  She is a Black woman who is intent on building up other Black women, commenting on pop culture, and making fun of all that is ridiculous in the world.  She is hilarious and spot on in her observations. I don’t quite get some of her cultural references (pop, Nigerian, business, etc.) because those have not been my experience, but I’m learning!

I am glad it is 2017. I don’t have any grand plans or resolutions, I’m just continuing to chip away at what I’ve always been working on, but it does sort of feel like January is the “re-set” button on time.  I started homeschooling the kids in a January. Talk about a re-set! At the time, I had plenty of resolutions and grand plans, and none of them worked out like I expected—some things went horribly awry, and others went better (and more differently) than I could ever have imagined.  Homeschooling has been a fantastic lesson in how to live well, because it became a lifestyle rather than something we just “do.”

I turn 40 in about seven months and I realize that this means I am likely about halfway through my life, and that from here on, I will slowly deteriorate physically and mentally. Already, I have learned that it takes me longer to recover from late nights and crap food and even exercise, than it did when I was younger. I find my brain sort of short circuiting when I’m tired, making it so I have a hard time remembering words and thoughts. I’m more easily distracted and have a harder time mentally getting back on track. I used to listen to older people talk about how annoying it is to get old and I would shudder inwardly and tell myself “I am never going to get that way!” Well, whether I want it to or not, it’s happening.

I have friends that are younger than me who quip “Age is what you make it!’ and “Age is just a number!” but they are fools, because there really is something ugly and unpleasant about getting older physically and mentally.

Now, I should say, to people ten or twenty years (or even only five year) older than me I am still a youngster in my prime, and have no reason to start moaning about old age yet, but it’s all relative, right?

I like to think that I’m as young and hip and elastic as I was in my twenties, but I’m not, and no amount of thinking and wishing will make it so.  Maybe with some plastic surgery…

This is the part where I should probably say something conciliatory, like even though I am no longer a slip of a young thing, I am, at nearly forty, really confident in who I am as a person and not all freaked out about what everyone else thinks—and this is true, but I still would like my 18 year old body back, thank you.

I would also like my idealism and sense of invincibility back. I would like to be taken seriously as a human being and not be relegated to “soccer mom” or “someone’s wife.” We praise the young and encourage them because they have their whole lives ahead of them and they can “be anything” they want to be.  One of my pet peeves at church is the focus on telling the kids how awesome they are. They don’t know a damn thing without the generation that came before them, and even thought my kids ARE awesome, they didn’t do it alone.  Sure, they came with proclivities towards kindness and industriousness and studiousness, but if I and my husband and a host of other people our age and older hadn’t nurtured that, my kids would probably be snaggletoothed little trolls. Let’s be real here.

Temptation and struggle don’t go away when you become a grown up and take on adult responsibilities. In fact, I think temptation and struggle intensify. Being a decent adult is hard. Attempting to be an exemplary adult is even harder. I want an A for effort. And a cookie.

Now tell me I’m pretty.

How do you live so that you have no regrets? I don’t think it’s possible. We all make mistakes that impact ourselves and others, often in ways we may not be able to foresee, and unless one is a sociopath, we will occasionally regret the things that hurt others, especially loved ones.

When we have regrets, I think we need to find, if possible, a way to rectify the damage we’ve done, or the things we’ve lost. If we cannot do that, we need to find a way to forgive ourselves and others and move forward with more understanding and compassion and wisdom. If we can do that, we will truly live a full and meaningful life.

In Shakespeare’s play, Coriolanus, the title character, a fearless Roman warrior then known as Caius Marcius, leads a battle in the city of Corioles, and is wounded. His men admire his ferocity, but worry he is too bloodied to return to the fighting. He shakes off their concern telling them:

“Praise me not, My work hath yet not warm’d me…the blood I drop is rather physical than dangerous to me; to Aufidius thus I will appear, and fight.”

And back he charges into battle.

Though Aufidius escapes, Marcius captures the city of Corioles and is given the honorary title Coriolanus.

When I first read this play, I was training intensely in Krav Maga, and feeling a bit discouraged because I wasn’t physically where I wanted to be with training, after recovering from a concussion some months earlier.  As I do when I’m frustrated with anything, I turned to Shakespeare for some inspiration. I had never read Coriolanus before and was intrigued by the story of this fearless, proud warrior. He’s actually kind of a jerk to the citizens of Rome, whom he feels are weak and fickle, but he’s principled and unrelenting in his commitment to those principles. And he was one heck of a fighter.

I was wowed by his words after being wounded. Nothing was going stop him from getting the job done and taking over Corioles and taking on Aufidius. He wasn’t really doing it for Rome, he was doing it for himself.  Ultimately, his pride  and his disdain for his countrymen are his downfall, but I LOVED his stick-to-it-iveness in battle, because at the time, I was struggling with wanting to quit training and feeling kind of wishy-washy about other things in my life.  Coriolanus wasn’t going to let wounds or the negative opinions of others get to him.  He believed in everything he was doing and barely even acknowledged a gaping, bloody wound as a setback.

Ah, to have such singularity of purpose! To be so focused on a mission, so determined a will to succeed! To be so excellent a fighter! His words gave me courage and strengthened my will to continue in training and rally myself for the trials in life.  Coriolanus was not driven by the desire for power, but for excellence. For whatever reason, that resonated with me. The fact that his desire for excellence turned tragic because of his unbending pride in his own superiority is another topic for another day, and maybe I’ll examine that closer when I need to check my own pride. For now, I will merely focus on his dogged determination to see a task through, come what may.

Whenever I feel down, frustrated, or intellectually stagnant, I turn to Shakespeare.  His plays and characters fascinate me, as do his words.  I won’t pretend to be a Shakespeare scholar. A lot of what I read or see (in live performances or film adaptations) would go over my head without having read online synopses or dually reading the modern translations via the No Fear Shakespeare series, but I think that’s what draws me to it.  I love words, and I love how differently they can be interpreted by stressing different words or even different syllables, or by using different tones and emotions in one’s voice.

Reading Shakespeare, or better yet, watching one of his plays performed, requires me to focus on something outside myself while giving me the opportunity to analyze and internalize what I’m experiencing.  I have seen myself in Hamlet’s undecided anguish, in Coriolanus’ self righteous, unyielding pride, and in Cordelia’s insistence on pragmatism when others want their ego stroked, and in dozens of other ways shown through as many other characters.

Participating in Shakespeare makes me feel smarter than I am and gives me a chance to experience a magnified version of life from the safety of my couch…no real life poisons, betrayals, or mistaken identities needed!