Eight weeks in, I’ve beat the shit outta my feet, every single day since the purchase of this fucking Fitbit. Averaging 13 miles per day, and topping badges out at 50k per day (that’s 24.28 miles, friends), this thing has become an addictive substitute for basically everything wrong in my life. The angrier and more stressed I get, the more I pound my body, as if to seek absolution via fitness-penance, and get the hell outta here. “Here” being this particular life-place in general in which I appear to be as stuck, as my current weight.
It has become a full-time, full-blown obsession. I can clock in 10-20k before even leaving the office, by pacing during phone bookings, walking the warehouse in a circuit at lunch instead of sitting in the car, have adapted the desk so I can spend two to four hours printing contracts, while literally walking in place, and will hold every conversation, or wait for the coffee to brew, or copies to come out, or fill my water bottle even, whilst doing what the WHS Pimp has titled, “The Pee Pee Dance,” a sort of march perfected down to one arm swinging in-time, as the other proceeds with the actual job at hand. At first I feared this would wonk-out my muscle balance, leaving me with a monster hulk right-arm, and a muppet-left…but so far, so good.
…Yet, even together with radical eating habit changes, instead of dumping pound-for-pound in equal to the amount of sweat I’m leaking daily, I’ve frustratingly instead seemed to fuel myself into mega muscle build –so: not great on the weight loss—however, my potato-mass is starting to regain actual shape…for BEHOLD: I have a waist again! And that ol’ 4-pack is back. As I mourn the loss of my boobs, at least I’ve regained the hitch under m’butt, so like…there IS one now, instead of the general sort of uni-booty I had accumulated. Mid a laundry ER the other day, I even fit into some old size 8’s I had ferreted away…which was a “thing”…as I’d previously been beyond muffin-topping my 12’s before this crap all started.
…Meanwhile, as any woman under the circumstances would, I’ve spent quite a lot of naked study-time in the mirror lately, directly after weighing in to no-change-at-all on the scale. This is a scary enterprise. It requires real bravery…as women (by and large) have the opposite of beer-goggles when viewing themselves in this condition. We tend to find every single “flaw” and “fat-dimple” and focus on it to excessive length. “If I could pull this up, it would be perfect,” “if I could shave that off, my hips would look so damn much better,” “if those were bigger, they’d at least balance out that,” “why did I have to get *this* family gene outta all the damn *good* ones?” These shit-thoughts explode like mental puke, during the first-seconds I have attempted this exercise. Every time. Without fail.
…But here’s what I’ve found: if you brave out the first minute of this task…concentrate on the naked “you” facing back in a kind of point-by-point study, and start to take it in one body part at a time, you can eventually begin to see the work you have put in. Muscle definition begins to poke out with a flex here, a turn there. You see that bone with less “padding,” jaw definition has emerged, the lower arms are slimmer by far. Sure, you have to work on that whole upper-arm flap deal…but look how the shoulder has a shape separate from the arm below it…less dimple at the elbow…less pooch at the belly…the “love handle” area is no longer a hot-mess-handful.
Trying to gauge the real changes taking place, has me at a strange ethical pull within myself. We are NOT a number on a scale, or a pant-size…you can’t compute humanity to a “perfect presence”…it isn’t our point. I have always believed that. And I always will. However, getting bigger, and then working my literal ass off to regain some sense of self-satisfaction in my own appearance, has also reaffirmed the importance of taking care of our instrument as a performing artist…as athletes…as whatever it is we do that fulfills the inside part of us that DOES matter.
…It’s important because it will allow me to do my job better and longer, it will open up and help dispel some of my physical hang-ups and self-conscious traits. The more honest I can be to the reflection and WITH the reflection in the mirror, the more I can learn to use it to be honest and tell the stories I need to tell, to others.
…Which, if for nothing else…perhaps *that* is the point of what was needed in all of this after all.
…It isn’t the weight. It isn’t the exhaustion. It isn’t the size 8’s. It’s that it has forced me to go outside, to breathe free, clean air…to not resolve stress in a bottle or a burger…to LOOK…actually physically take stock of what I’ve got…and make decisions on how to use and work with it.
The point I’m trying to own right now, is that my instrument is getting healthier and stronger, and because of how I’m choosing to do that, it’s making my brain and soul: likewise. I will never be a “small” person. It wouldn’t suit me, physically nor personally. I have a healthy knowledge of the years my body served me best, and it is that “feeling” I am seeking, more than anything else.
Truth is, maybe I’ve hit mid-life crisis a little earlier than most, but I can sit and fester my outrage at that and all life’s little injustices on a couch, or I can pull up Queen on Pandora, and pound the fuck out of the pavement, as another one bites the dust.
So happens: I choose the latter.
Cuz that’s how I mutherfucking roll!
…Also cuz, I mean: Freddie.
(Duh.)
~D
