An Ideal Body: Lessons for a Healthy Life

We've had our WiiFit for over two years. My mom gave us the balance board (we had the Wii already) because it wasn't ideal for her. At that point I was knee deep in PPD and needed exercise, but wasn't able to get out and do so. I used it for awhile, but it was often set aside for a run/walk outside when I got up to being able to. I like the fresh air!

These days, it's my husband who uses it regularly. Almost daily in fact, and given that he works in an office all day, when you combine his workouts (and all the strength training in it) along with his short walk to and from work, he's been losing weight right along with me.

We're both much healthier than we used to be!

I'm about 10 pounds from my 'goal' weight. I use goal loosely because as I started losing significant weight and watched my shape change I could see how much work there still was to do to arrive at a strong body with a healthy amount of body fat.

Strong is the key word here. I'm not strong, not really at all. Baby girl isn't a baby anymore and she's over 13kg. That's a lot to carry around and it's hard on my body. So I have stopped doing that. I'll note that she gets my hubby to do so, and she still doesn't want to walk very far most of the time. So when it's just her and I, most days she goes into the stroller and I walk briskly. Great for cardio and my legs, not so much for my neglected upper body. As of today I can only do two pushups. It's sad and something I am changing.

When I lost weight the first time after being diagnosed with fibromyalgia, I was enrolled at a gym and working with a personal trainer. I really couldn't afford it, but this was a very serious situation and I was determined to not be one who gave into to the disease and let it control my life any more than it already had. I was too young (23)! And that's not a criticism on others who suffer horribly from it, but at that point I hadn't been dealing with the symptoms for too long and I had a chance to overcome fibro. I took it. Along with stress management, it worked!

I don't have the luxury of a gym these days. But boy do I miss the equipment. Even back home I had some light dumbbells I could use. I've tried using things like soup cans here, but it's not enough and hard for my hands to hold. In the discount store (TK Maxx here, TJ Maxx in the US, Winners in Canada), I saw the perfect solution! Soft neoprene weights with a 'handle' that you slipped your hand into while holding the weight. They were easy to grip, conformed to my hand and I couldn't drop them. I saw them twice but couldn't buy them at the time. I went back with money in hand and sure enough they no longer had them. Damn! I'm still on the hunt for an inexpensive pair (the ones I saw were 3lbs each and only cast £7).

I yearn for that strong body because it was resistent to injury and I was sick less. Very clearly my immune system prefers me to be fit and strong. Funny that...

While working out on the WiiFit, there's a part in the yoga and strength training sections (I can only do the ones that don't require my hands on the board as it hurts too much), the 'trainer' tells you to picture your ideal body.

Easier said than done! What's ideal anyway? How do you even gauge that when you are first starting out? I think for most women who are overweight, picturing some skinny person with a flat stomach who clearly hasn't had children or dealt with stretch marks and cellulite is rather self-defeating. After all, they aren't you! So how do you begin to imagine yourself smaller?

I think it's a fairly accepted fact that when you are overweight and then lose a significant amount, your brain can have a hard time adapting and actually seeing yourself as being smaller, trimmer. Our clothes shrink and we know we're smaller but we can't convince ourselves of it.

I weighed myself two days ago. 26 pounds lost since July 2011 and I've finally moved from the 'overweight' category according to BMI, into 'Normal'. I know it's all relative, but considering I started out in the 'obese' category, this is no small feat! It was my first goal in all of this and one I'm very proud of.

But I'm still struggling to see myself in my new slimmer body as actually being as trim as it is. I've dropped 3 sizes and yet, clothes still don't fit me as well as I would like. I had a baby. I know at some point I just have to suck up the fact that my body will never be the same, but at the same time, I know with a bit of work those last ten pounds will result in a stronger body. And that is the most important thing here, right?

* * * * *

I just paused a couple minutes in writing this post. Subtle topic change now:

My nearly three year old grabbed my hand and made me get up to dance with her. The show she was watching had music on and she wanted to dance! With me!

Baby girl loves it when Ryan does the Wii. So much so that she actually directs his workouts most mornings by pointing at the screen to the ones she wants him to do. Sure, it can be annoying somedays and she really is a little slave driver, but we are so excited that she sees exercise as something fun and there is no way in hell we're going to discourage it!

This brief interlude in writing served two purposes: one, I paused, got up and made sure to move a little so that my perpetual sitting doesn't aggravate my fibro; and so much more importantly, two, baby girl reminded me that regardless of how I look, how I choose to treat my body (and mind) matters! Our example has a profound affect on her actions, especially right now when she imitates everything. If my husband and I can teach her to be respectful and loving to her body, to treat food with respect, and to value exercise and being healthy, I think we've accomplished something so very important.

The wonderful side-affect too is that we will continue to be healthier and more active, not just for her, but for ourselves too.

Now those are family values I can get behind!

* * * * *
Before Pic:

Current:

*Slight disclaimer: Sort of hard to really compare, since the before pic isn't me standing and it's cropped from a photo back at Christmas 2010. It's the best I have. And that denim skirt I'm wearing in my current pic is awesome to my body. So stretchy and it sucks me in. Not the perfect comparison, but I think you get the idea. A second note: that grey sweater looks like a bag on me now! I've finally committed it to the donate pile that's growing...

Birthdays in Perspective

Yesterday was mine and my mother's birthday. Yes, you're reading correctly, we share our birthday! It's always been a special thing and while usually I love celebrating birthdays, yesterday was a very weird day for me.

It was made all the better by an anticipated phone call from my mom.

While we use Skype, sometimes it's nice to just be able to listen to each other's voices and chat like we used to, even if we're 7000 kms apart. I forget that little detail at times, on purpose, because otherwise it's enough to make someone's eyes bug out.

I turned 29 yesterday, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. I suppose I'm sort of ambivalent about it really. Yes I'm approaching the end of my 20's but I don't feel like I'm getting older. Perhaps it's because I feel aged in many ways to begin with. The ups and downs of life will do that to you after all. And certainly it didn't help that I slept horribly monday night and woke up feeling terrible.

There's something decidedly wrong with that. My friend, whom I saw at the toddler playgroup I go to occasionally on tuesdays said, "Aww, you're not allowed to feel poorly on your birthday!" She proceeded to give me a hug and you know what? That made me feel like yes, my little pity party was possibly justified.

It wasn't a terrible birthday, but it wasn't exciting either. I was actually just hoping to make it through without curling up in a ball in pain. All in all, while extremely tired, I did fare alright by the end of the day. I survived another day and that seemed to be the most important bit. Though I will interject that seeing just how many messages were on my facebook page this morning astonished me! I felt humbled and blessed.

Another friend asked how my birthday was and I told him quite honestly that it wasn't the worst birthday I ever had. That honour belonged to 2008. The year of my miscarriages. It's strange actually, because I can look back at that second miscarriage with some perspective and it is both at once something to shake my head and laugh about and something that makes me cringe. Laughing? At a miscarriage?

Well, I did cry a lot just prior and after my hospital stay, but spending one's 25th birthday in the ER from massive hemorrhaging (from the induction meds I took for the failed pregnancy that wouldn't end itself) wasn't exactly what I had in mind. The whole thing seemed decidedly absurd to me after a few hours in the ER. Especially since in the end I ended up having the Gynecology ward attending on my case, as well as a resident and an intern. It was almost like a little party when you tossed in a nurse plus my husband! Maybe I should have demanded a balloon?

Did I ever mention that the poor intern was trying to do an internal exam and there was so much blood he couldn't see what he was doing? The attending made a comment, 'when this woman says she's bleeding, she means it!' He made me laugh. Then the speculum broke. I wasn't sure who to feel sorry for, myself or the poor flustered intern who was dealing with his first miscarriage patient.

26 hours of no food before I finally got surgery. I was scheduled for a D&C the next day, but I got bumped by a last minute liver transplant. Okay, I'll give them that one! But because they didn't know they could get me in, and I couldn't eat within 12 hours of surgery, I was stuck with glucose in my IV. Though that took a long time to get since they sort of forgot about me for a bit. The headache was unreal! Later when they got me a room on the ward, they gave me morphine through my IV for the headache. I couldn't have tylenol because I couldn't take it orally and I told them absolutely not to sticking it anywhere else. I had had too many people up there as it was!

Morphine is funny stuff, literally. As in, when it kicked in (rather quickly I might add), I fell into fits of giggles whenever my husband said something, even if it wasn't funny. This just added to the overall absurdity of the whole thing in my mind, which is forever planted in my brain. Whenever I think back to that birthday, I can't help but laugh. I don't need to cry over it anymore.

I find it surreal that that was 4 years ago. Four years? Really? The passage of time astonishes me sometimes. It's like time is swirling around me at different speeds, and if I reach out and interact with it, I'll find it has moved faster or slower than I anticipate. Human perception is truly a strange thing.

Reflecting on this birthday, I do not feel 29. Yesterday I easily felt twice that given how my body hurt. As I watched my daughter run around with that reckless abandon of childhood, I realized that age truly does not matter. Our perspectives are so skewed about it anyway that perhaps birthdays should serve as a marker, a resting point to reflect on what's happened since you last came to the marker, and look ahead and wonder and dream about what's all to come. Nothing more, nothing less. Celebrate what you can and carry on living.

Regrouping

I have fibromyalgia. I know those from the old blog that followed me here will know that, but I will state it here again for the reference of others.

What is fibromyalgia? It is a debilitating chronic pain disease that affects the soft tissues of the body characteristic by widespread pain all over the body and a very heightened senses. Each person who has it manifests the long list of symptoms in different ways. Some hurt more, some hurt less, the sleep issue can be different, the triggers are different, the outcome is different. There is no one size fits all here, which makes it very difficult to diagnose and since they currently have no root cause, they can only treat the symptoms.

It won't kill me, but there is (currently) no cure. They are still trying to understand what actually causes it. A recent (about time) study did functional MRIs (fMRIs) on both people with fibro and a control group to try to better understand how the brain of a fibro patient works.

This is the study and the the summary of the study with a link to the full text journey article at the bottom: http://www.anapsid.org/cnd/diagnosis/brainpain.html.

I read this and want to yell 'Yes' and 'Duh' at the same time. Both for the revelation that it really isn't something we fibro patients make up, and also for the slight 'well I could have told you that we process everything more intensely'. The point is though that fibro acts upon my brain in a way that is different from those without this condition. And it has all sorts of strange affects on my life.

For example, it drives my husband nuts that a slight touch makes my skin itch and caressing gently my skin make me snap and brush his hand away. I can't handle the sensation. It makes me go crazy!

I am no longer a morning person. Okay, full confession, I never was. But for work I used to get up at 5:45 am and have a 30 minute workout, have a shower, get ready and go to work for 7:30-8:00 am.

Being at home with my daughter of course brings a different routine, but during the times when my husband is away and I am the one to get up with her, 7 am is painful. It takes me awhile to wake up, in part because I use a sleep mask to help me get a better sleep. It works wonderfully but it means that I haven't had that gradual increase of light that signals to the body it's time to get up and going for the day. I'm lethargic and it's best to leave me alone for the first 20 or 30 minutes after I get up. If I'm up around 8am feeling rested, it's a good start to the day.

I am extremely fortunate that am currently managing without medication. And while I could get my meds here for very little, I haven't reached that point that I need them. I think. It's a debate going on in my head actually and I'm not sure what will come if it. After all, I'm not opposed to medication, but it does limit me in some ways and I'm not sure I want to add that complication to my life right now.

I am in flare. Flare simply means a flare-up of (some) my symptoms. For perspective, at my worst pre-diagnoses back in 2006, walking 3 blocks left me utterly exhausted. I was diagnosed 1 month shy of my 23rd birthday. I slept whenever I could, even on bus rides to and from work and was always in pain.

Today the symptoms are much less severe, with aches and some acute pain in parts of my body I've overworked (most often my hands and wrists, and a general feeling of tiredness. Chronic pain breeds depression and I am always at risk for it. These days it is generally just a brief 'funk' I get where I am unmotivated and rather pessimistic. I can see it in the posts I write and also in the silence between them.

Hence why its been three weeks since my last post. I've had a lot of stress lately and my body has been saying 'hey! time to stop for a bit, to slow down'. I'm trying. But I am caring for a very opinionated toddler and frankly, it's wearing.

I don't have the reserves and resilience I used to, or that most people do. A cold can knock me on my butt for two weeks. Stress like we have right now (work visas and finances) has left me with spurts of motivation that I try to make the best of inevitably do too much and suffer afterwards.

Balance is tricky.

But I'm sorting it out. I know I can't stay in flare for too long or it really affects my family as well. I don't want that. One thing I've come to realize is that I might need to approach blogging in a different way. I only have so much time in a day and when I'm motivated to write, I could easily put up five ro six posts in a row and then nothing for 2 weeks. So I need to write them, and then schedule them to space them out. If I have stuff in between and feel motivated to write, I will.

So this is what I'm doing. I'm not sure how it'll go. It may not work, and if that's the case, I may have to accept that blogging may just not be for me anymore. There won't always be bad days, but the line between good ones and bad ones is so fine it's rather overwhelming. And scary.

I'm not as okay as I'd like to be. That's the truth. I could be doing better. Sometimes it's an awfully lonely feeling that is hard to articulate because you don't want to worry other people or endure lectures about being positive. I am an optimist, remember? I try. I'm not perfect. My brain also doesn't work the same way. Trying to convince me I should be more happy and carefree when I'm in flare is not only pointless, it's almost hurtful. Sometimes you just want someone to say, 'It's okay to be not be alright' and 'Everything will be okay.'

Though it's days like these that the old saying I used as a motto for awhile springs to mind: "Everything will be alright in the end; if it's not alright, it's not the end."

Duly noted...

Hanging In There

Well, so much for my scheduled posting. Best laid plans and all.

It was my hubby's birthday on Monday and I had the crazy idea of throwing him a surprise birthday party. It turned out wonderfully! However it also meant that I did a hell of a lot of work on my own and that night and the next day, I paid for it with a lot of pain care of my fibro. Then a second night of not sleeping well made yesterday a rough day as well. I'm managing better today after sleeping well last night and taking along nap this afternoon, so fingers crossed it leaves me well for the weekend.

It's a not so gentle reminder that there is an all to fine line for me between well and ill, and tipping over it is awful.