Body Trade blog

the first review is in and I'm so happy

2011-11-14T20:31:00.000-08:00

This is the Winnipeg Free Press in praise of Body Trade in part:

"And if a writer has genuine star quality, a sharper, deeper radiance than most, then he or she ought to be identified and celebrated without delay.

Time may be of the essence. Margaret Macpherson, a relatively unknown Maritime-born Albertan, is such a writer, and Body Trade, her seventh book and second novel, is the proof. She writes with the psychological insight of Carol Shields, the gravitas of Margaret Atwood, the poetic reflexes of Earl Birney and the earthy eroticism of Leonard Cohen, but her voice remains uniquely her own."

Well, I may not be Maritime-born, and I would certainly never ever put myself in the same league as the fabulous writers the reviewer quoted, I am so so glad the book struck a chord. After six weeks of silence, this review has buoyed me up.

Let's meet the kids where they are

2011-10-19T14:10:00.000-07:00

This is a letter I still may publish in the paper: I'm incensed about this attitude. I'm posting it here to get it off my chest but we'll see..

I am an Alberta author with a newly released novel entitled Body Trade. Please be assured this letter is not to promote my work. The novel deals with some hard issues: disappeared aboriginal women, sexual exploitation, class, teenagers getting in over their heads, luring, casual sexual relationships, imperialism and the consumption and erosion of culture. In a word, the book is about hard moral choices young people are forced to make. The female protagonists in the book are seventeen and twenty-two years old respectively

Yesterday I was invited to a small rural community to speak about my work to high school students. Imagine my dismay when I was pointedly asked not to say too much about my new novel, nor, indeed my previous book, which deals with identity, institutional manipulation, abortion and domestic violence. “Keep it safe,” was the message I received. “These are high school students. The school board has boundries.” In the next breath the person overseeing the author visit told me her community had the highest levels of STDs, teen pregnancy, cutting (self mutilation) and crack cocaine in the province.

I put it to you, and to anyone who cares about students and literature and telling the truth about the world we live in, is it not safer to learn about the world of choice through books (that one is free to put down) than by acting out in the ways described above? God help us, if we do not address the needs of our young people with stories they can relate to and talk about among themselves. An ostrich with its head in the sand is the stuff of Dr. Seuss. Perhaps the Alberta public education systems need to think about the reality of young Albertans when Seuss says, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”

Read, but not the new stuff

2011-10-17T11:55:00.000-07:00

I often do school visits. I like them. I like the kids. I like the energy. I like demystifying the writing process as much as possible. I love going to rural places, the initial drive through the country, the feeling that I am leaving the claws of the city to go to a fresher more simplified place, Afterwards is the restorative drive home, the depleted feeling of good energy given, of having done something good for kids who may come a little closer to themselves through the documentation of themselves, the process of processing experience. I like it. I like sharing my ideas on the hows and whys of writing

In the last two school visits, I've been told to stick to old material. Someone (the high school board of Education, I assume) has deemed Body Trade and Released too hard for high school students even though they are hungry to read the material. Domestic violence, teenage sexuality, institutional manipulation, friendship, betray...hummmm all the things they are experiencing in the school yard and outside the walls of higher education, but not inside, no never inside.

It reminds me of the librarians who legislate the moment you can go from the children's library to the adult section, that glorious moment that opens up when the censor falls asleep, the guard is dropped and the world of real life opens up. I mention my books. I do not read from the. Perhaps the students are not ready. I wonder if this is so. And who calls that shot?

The fall of childhood

2011-10-12T15:43:00.001-07:00

I took my son to a pumpkin field north of the city on Thanksgiving Monday, after roast turkey and red wine consumed the night before gave back their somnolent power. We drove through town, the unfamiliar north side where dim sum and pawnshops and rows of walk up apartments barely blinked at our smooth Volvo passage.

He wore a leather jacket and a slouch cap and took up so much room in the front the modern seat motor whirred to make room for his knees clashing with the dash. My son, his loping feet size twelve, his shoulders broadening and growling under a stripped new September tee, already too small, his chin a jumble of hormones and whiskers and the wild eruptions of fourteen-year-old man-boy, almost of age.

My boy and I were together for the day despite the fact that I’d encouraged another – his girl, perhaps? – a teenager named Jane whom he’d gravely told me the other day: “you know were dating now,” and when I inquired about the change between “just friends” and “dating” he’d drummed his fingers on the counter asking why there was rarely anything good to eat.

My boy and I on a road, on a sun soaked highway heading past haystacks so golden I swear they have been placed upon the field for the express purpose of calendar shots, that shimmering feast of harvest a riot of warmth for my hungry-for-the-country eyes. We travel fast and talk little and yet what hangs between us is as rich as the farmers yield, as certain as the beets and spuds and strangely misshapen carrots I pulled from our backyard garden the day before. Our silence is a feast of mother/son love, revealed in the autumn glow as the last of this certain light gives way to frost.

We turned into a farm, some pumpkin patch, corn maze place I had found on-line the day before to solidify our adventure and I immediately realize my mistake as he unfolds his slouch frame, surely six full feet by now, from the passengers seat squeeze.

“Mom, this is for little kids.”

And, indeed it is. Small yelping tykes, from age two to eight, launch themselves off haystacks, beg tokens to shoot pumpkins from a blasting cannon for the pleasure of watching them mush against a distance pirate ship, its flags in stringy tatters half an acre away. The parents, thirty-something’s, fresh in the throes of what to do without nursery school, hover nearby, exhilarated by family time, their cameras clutched close to capture the fleeting cuteness of this October adventure.

Oh, my boy is embarrassed.

“We can still do the corn maze,” I cajole. “You like corn mazes. Let’s take a look, we’ve come this far,” and, bless him, he agrees, and we line up with shrieking children mad for the petting zoo, the haunted house, the painted pumpkins and I see the time between then and now is realized in the shifting stance of these patrons, impatient to begin.

Meanwhile my boy, this young man, smiles at me shyly and suggests the entry fee may not be worth the price of admission, but I will not agree and we both know I am buying autumn’s times before he slips away into the silence of his own long winter.

“You like it, Mom,” he teases, and I must admit I do. I chomp on a caramel candied apple while he is satisfied with the least autumnal item, a tin of coke, as we walk together, stroking alpacas and goats, a rabbit hutch of squirming young. When I ask his to hold a tiny bunny he only shrugs, so I lean down into the straw and find another boy, the shadow of my companion, pale and shy and not yet three and I hold the baby rabbit out, “gentle, gentle,” I command as this other long ago boy reaches his grubby hand to touch.

Through the empty pumpkin fields my son and I walk. I make a scarecrow from straw and old clothes and while he allows this mother indulgence, he staves it off by plucking a wizened gourd from the vine and flipping it up and away, his boy smile broader than any jack-o-lantern we have ever carved.

We entre the corn maze together and it’s then I see my son alive as he charges zigzag and headlong through the drying stocks of corn, his comment tossed off like the now forgotten gourd. “Soon I’ll see above the trail” he crows amid the labyrinth maze of this particular harvest.

Oh, I am subdued when at last we leave, but there is something accomplished in our departure and that 32 kilometer drive back to town. He puts his head back, closes his eyes and in the warm afternoon glow I see him into his next incarnation, grateful for the wrong-headed, right -hearted afternoon we have spent together as the husk of his childhood falls away and the bare autumn fields surrender their fruits.

As my son sleeps – for sleep they must – I silently thank the God of Harvest for this lad who, even as he shakes off childish ways, allow me to remain a seed keeper, a sure and certain memory receptacle for all his boyish ways.

now that I know the code

2011-10-11T09:17:00.000-07:00

After numerous attempts I have discovered how to access my own blog! A minor miracle for me. But I think it opens up another conversation and a question I'd like to address: are we spending so much time doing virtual updates, keeping the masses appraised of our every thought synapse and physical movement that we are suppressing and stifling the creative impetuous that leads us to walk, talk face to face, indeed create?

I have been advised to get my new novel out to book bloggers and I would gladly do so as I believe the world vitural has a voracious appetite for on-line reading, Problem is I'm not sure how, and given my comments above, I'm not sure if that is a healthy alternative. I do not see the mainstream press (which, I must admit, I have been a part of for a good two decades) taking up the mantle of new work, original ideas, Canadian invention.

This is a question I will sit with, contemplate, until there is a call to action. Meanwhile, comment if you care to. I am all (virtual) ears,

art generates art

2011-09-29T07:44:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I sold my book to a fellow artist, Lindsay. Yesterday, she arrived at my house baring 17 beautiful pen and ink drawings that illustrate her response to the work I've called Body Trade. So exquisitely tender, so open-hearted is Lindsay's work, I am moved beyond words. I will display her work at the book launch tomorrow so that it can inform the readers. I am so proud that this has happened, so proud and so humbled. Body Trade, if you sit with it, calls forth a response. This is what I needed to hear and know. The literary critics can't touch the book now. Lindsay's drawing say it all. So blessed. Masi cho

If the technology don't kill me first

2011-09-26T22:43:00.000-07:00

Yes, Body Trade is out. It's a product. "Treat it as a product." That's the advice I've been given. My product is $19.95 but, oh the emotions it stirs. What is that worth? What is it to devote four years of your life to writing a book that has been brewing since an airplane when down 39 years ago in some barrenlands in the forgotten countryside of the Territories? Since a 14 year old Inuk boy starved to death.
The Highway of Tears blurs my vision. All the little Rosies that went down that road. I hold you close, little sisters. I have written this book for you.
Oh, it's a Kobo download too. A Kobo download. And Kindle and I-books. I need to post links, direct traffic, but, this night, with sleep in my mind and a book launch that must honour and not diminsh these beautiful girls I've spent the last four years with, I just don't feel like I can.

The Book, is en route!

2011-09-03T12:55:00.000-07:00

So exciting, Body Trade is being sent. To me. To bookstores. To reviewers. It's coming out. I've got a launch date, September 30th at HTAC, I've got invites for lots of people (come one, come all) I've got energy for the project, I've got a good feeling about this one, I'm figuring out pdfs and listserv and website updates and even access to this blog. Who said you can't teach an old dog new tricks. It's a beautiful cover, lovingly designed, meticulously published. I'm afraid my techno-phobia is causing my poor publisher grey hair, but I'm getting it. The book should hit the stores next week and the promo is going out. Why to I feel so tremulous? And, did I just make that word up? Gentle readers, what I believe is an important story is about to hit the stands....

m

A Writers Guild Win

2011-07-11T08:50:00.000-07:00

The work must have spoken. My piece -- unpacking love and death and long term marriage -- A Thousand Years North of Dorothy, was awarded the James H. Grey award for short non-fiction. What a thrill. I was very surprised not because I didn't think it was a good piece, but because of what I have learned in writing that essay. It came straight from a true place. I remember years ago one of my literary mentors Greg Hollingshead commented that my writing in superlative when it comes from a true place. I'd crafted the other piece I submitted, worked on it for hours, and yet A Thousand Years came in three goes, three straight writing sessions that were for no one but myself. Once I put the three pieces together and found the through line, the essay fell together and obviously held together without sentimentality or artifice. It was a great affirmation to win that award from a jury of my peers. And with Body Trade off at the press...who knows what will happen to this writing career? I know one thing: I will stay true to what is real and what matters to me.

Thin Air Festival

2011-06-08T11:56:00.000-07:00

Yippee! I've been invited to Winnipeg's international writing festival Thin Air for a (yes, yes, yes) Mainstage event. That's such great news, and Body Trade isn't even on the shelves yet. There seems to be gathering energy around this work. I hope it all pans out. The closer the pub date, the more nervous I get. I have to trust that it really can carry the content and that my characters are true and believable. Such good news about the festival. These are opportunities to meet other authors, sell lots of books and generally get your name out there. I'm heading to the Alberta Literary Awards this weekend, so it should also be a good time to promo the book. I love the outer part of writing, once a project is finished and you can take it out. I once likened it to bringing your new baby out to meet the neighbours. I'm pumped about the festival circuit. Such fun!! Hopefully I'll get to go to a couple of others. There is such a small window when a work comes out. It's great to poke your head up from the computer and recognize all these amazing people are out there, interested in what you've been writing. Or not....but I won't go there. Not yet.

Reading at Audreys

2011-05-15T17:09:00.000-07:00

I'm short listed for an Alberta literary award! For an essay I wrote about marriage, of all things. It's called A Thousand Years North of Dorothy. I was invited to read an excerpt from the essay along with Alberta luminaries such as Robert Kroetsch, Alice Major, Janice Williamson. Wow, what a thrill. I wanted to read from Body Trade because I'm so psyched about that novel now but, in keeping with the "afternoon with the authors" theme I thought it best if I just read from "A Thousand Years" I told the folks gathered that the real title is A Thousand Years North of Dorothy: Ruminations on Marriage and I think that was a surprise. The subject of my essay, Mark, was not there. He was (bless him) doing the Dad thing at William's soccer game. It was a charming afternoon and I was so glad to be part of it. Thank-you Writers Guild of Alberta. Thank-you Mark.

check out the book trailer

2011-05-15T16:46:00.001-07:00

This is something I didn't expect! A trailer for a book. My book! Body Trade is coming together at last. I'm doing copy edits and Karen (my editor from Signature) is sending me notes soon. The trailer idea came from her publicist and after a brainstorming session, this is what we came up with. I think it's really, really cool. You decide...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlN7oTU6rC0

Not spring, not fall but something inbetween

2011-04-19T13:34:00.000-07:00

Seems there are problems at the publishing house and the book Body Trade, due out in April, may be a late release. I trust it is still a go. I have a lot of faith in Signature Editions, my publishers, despite them being a small press. My editor Karen said this: "There is lots of competition [for profiles and reviews]when books come out in the spring; there is lots of competition when books come out in the Fall. Yours will come out in-between." I have to trust that doesn't mean slip through the cracks. I have to trust that this book, a four year project, with writing and re-writing and re-writing once again, will get the attention it needs. Meanwhile I am trying to get together a marketing campaign, a book launch date and a decent photo of the right resolution (who knew it had to be a certain number of dpi?). The stumbling blocks continue but I believe, I believe it must be told. As a taster I'll post a poem tomorrow.

Countdown to Publication

2010-12-27T08:05:00.000-08:00

It's the beginning of a New Year and I have determined to carry on with my blog despite my, what failure? to obtain my former objective. This seems a good way to process thoughts and I am devoting the blog to the world of writing. I am supposed to have a book come out this spring. I am heavily into edits. I have chosen to use this site to document some of the things that happen around my professional life (such as it is) and post the musings, reactions, events, criticism etc, etc around the said upcoming book. I guess today I'm thinking about totally re-writing the ending. I received a critique from my brother David suggesting, in his own obscure way, a new scene to end the book, something that would help clarify my somewhat sketchy themes. Now a new ending at this late date is tricky but I'm going to start playing with that idea as I dutifully change the perspective from first to third person, a daunting task but do-able. I've told my publisher Karen I'd have the manuscript to her by January 15th so that's where I am with that. Oh, and the other thing, the 50 thing? I must have meant 15. I'm happy with 15. I'm aiming for 15 more but, like a writing career it's gradual, gradual. So may this book be better than my last books. May this blog be better than my last blog and hopefully it will encourage or inspire or simply be a venting spot for someone who dares to put it out there.....MM

Week after Thanksgiving: The Fall

2010-10-20T09:30:00.000-07:00

The fall from grace, the fall to grace, the fall into acceptance, gratitude, love? So much to think about beyond the body. So much to think about when the body fails. I've had too much news of the bodily decline type to continue this blog in any real way. Friends ill, friends dead, friends scared by the failure of the body...Yes, 50 is a time of change, that which we have taken for granted begins to betray us.

Is this code? Is this just Margaret a little on the blue side? I don't think so. I am going to continue my quest for a healthier body weight. I am going to continue to honour my physical self. I am going to attempt to be more active, more aware of what nutrients go into my physical vessel. I believe I will continue to loose weight, gain strength. And I will continue to be accountable for the rest of the year. I wish I could tell you that I am slim and 148 pounds. I can't but I can tell you there is a compassionate, intelligent, generous woman walking in my skin and I am going to continue being proud of her for the rest of my days. I'll post some real numbers in the next little while but for now, so be it. M

End of summer --what week??

2010-09-14T09:57:00.000-07:00

I'm back at my blog after a long hiatus. What with the gym downsizing, summer upon us and my trainer disappearing I let a little bit slip. Well, may be a lot. HOWEVER -- I'm back at it maybe a pound or two up but head for my next twelve, count 'em 12 pounds before December 14th. That will give me a 25 pound weight loss - fifty percent of my original goal. Does it feel like failure? NO. It feels like the beginning of a journey that will take a little bit longer than I expected but will never the less lead me to good and true places with in myself. In two days I meet with my new trainer Stephen -- I've seen him, fit fit and fit!! It may take a while to re-ajust and get completely back on track but I am game. Kids are back in school. I didn't go to the gym for almost 10 weeks and I'm still holding steady (I think) More on that later. M

Week twenty two: Part two

2010-06-24T12:36:00.000-07:00

The results are in!! I've lost 14 pounds of fat and gained 4 pounds of muscle. Does that mean I've lost 18 pounds?? I don't think, so but the measurements look good -- triceps eleven units smaller (cms?) Biceps 19 units down, subscap, whatever those are, less eight. I've lost 15 units on my chest, 12 on my thighs, and four on my calves. My fat mass is down and my lean body mass is up. I'm no longer obese (how I despise that word) I'm now simply overweight! YIPEEEEEEEE. I'm so proud of myself.

Right now, my legs are like jelly having done a 45 minute spin class but, you know what,? It's a dizzying joy to be headed in a healthful direction.....cardio, bring it on, weight training, lets go, spin spun fun, I'm becoming addicted to exercise. (Talk to me tomorrow, right now I seem to have a spinners high.) Thank you Korezone for so much support. Spinning is like nothing else, it's churning legs and dripping sweat and then you have to notch it up 10 percent. It's pushing beyond your limits and challenging yourself. It makes you weak at the knees and light in the head and fully, truly alive. I LIKED it. My sitz bones are going to be complaining tomorrow but for now its all good. It all very, very good. M

Week twenty two: the callipers cometh

2010-06-23T13:51:00.000-07:00

Things are in a muddle here in fat-city. The wonderful women at Korezone are moving to a new space with no membership, whatever that means; my trainer Ashley is moving to a new gym: my weight watchers tickets are all spent and I'm going on a holiday for much of July. I'm also seriously re-thinking my project.

I've decided it will become the 50505050 Project, the first 50 standing for 50% -- Fifty percent of fifty pounds in fifty weeks at the age of fifty years, it's a perfect out for something that I have found extremely challenging. If indeed, this were my new objective, I'd be right on track, maybe even a pound or so above my objective of half a pound of weight loss a week. And you know what? Given my lifestyle and how hard I've been working at this, I think that might be a more realistic objective.

I'm also think about the old adage that muscle weights more than fat and I'm interested in that because I have definitely gained muscle. In fact, I'm so interested I've asked Ashley to do a half way BMI measurement just before she exists the gym. Tomorrow she's going to get those old callipers out again to pinch the flab and determine how much has turned into rock hard muscle. Then I'm going to go to my first ever spin class to ride my bike 45 minutes and sweat off the excess...it's gonna be a good day! I actually like exercising now and I don't want to loose the strides I've made toward becoming healthier.

I look better, I definitely feel better and although I'm not the imagined 22 pound down on week 22, I'm still pleased with my progress. Hey, a woman has the right to change her mind. If I can loose 25 pounds in 50 weeks I'm going to be a very happy camper. Onward, I say, onward towards a more realistic goal. M

Week twenty one: The Project divided by two

2010-06-14T20:31:00.000-07:00

Maybe I should have called this the TwentyfiveFiftyFiftyProject or, better yet the HalfFifty/Fifty/FiftyProject or maybe the FiftyFiftyOneHundred Project, Who knows? All I know for sure is fifty pounds is a hell of a lot of weight to shed. I'm down almost 15 pound since I started and I'm feeling the difference. I bought a pair of size 12 capri pant two weeks ago. That felt fine, yet, I'm not yet prepared to discard my vision. Currently everything is a little up in the air now with the gym downsizing and all the uncertainty around that. It might be a good time for me to shake up my programme, however, try kick boxing or running again or something different. I'm closing in on the half way mark and I'm feeling a bit behind but I'm not going to let that matter; the behind I'm feeling is more muscled and less flabby than the one sashayed 21 weeks ago....it's all a matter of perspective. m

Week twenty: pound up, pound down

2010-06-01T08:20:00.000-07:00

Week twenty! Have I lost a pound a week as I anticipated? No. Have I been faithful to the gym? Yes. Am I fitter and stronger? Yes. Have I been really careful with the food that goes into my body? Sometimes. And that, my friends, is the ticket. Success in this weight loss game is 80% food. And food (and wine) have been a struggle. I've joined weight watchers, but unless you're going to follow the program it's really an expensive fool's game. Every week I promise myself it will be different and I will write down the food I eat and calculate the number of points I have and stay within the 25 point range and every week I last a day or two and then I let the writing down slide and the number of calories jumps and the number of points I've consumed becomes who-knows-how-many the next time I step on the scales. So I have to change that behaviour.

To date I have lost 14 pounds and I'm proud of that and I can tell my clothes are fitting more loosely. I eat breakfast every morning, something I never used to do, and I'm usually on top of things until around 4 pm. the witching-hour!! Then it's snack snack snack....Today, just for one day, I'm going to be more mindful around that time. I know my enemy and they say that is half the battle...the other half is subduing the enemy. Today, strength training and cycling. Oh, and no cinnamon buns....M

Week nineteen: wrestling with the devil (in the form of potato bread)

2010-05-20T08:28:00.000-07:00

Week nineteen and I'm 13 pound less than when I started my little adventure. Last week it was 14 pounds down, which is close to 15 pounds down, which is a bit of a benchmark.If only wishing were weight loss.....

I'm writing this post just before i go to the gym. My exercise sked, which I've been very faithful to for the last few months, is yoga Monday, Wednesday, Friday and strength training Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Since I got my new-to-me bike last week, a beautiful 1976 red, three speed CCM with a honking' huge wire basket, I've been peddling to the gym, weather permitting. I cycle from Mill Creek to Oliver square, a distance of at least 8kms. That adds a half hour of cardio to either end of my workout, three time a week so you'd think I'd shrink away to nothing...

Except for the damn potato bread!

Imagine potato and bread in the same crusty loaf. Now, imagine it hot from the oven. Have I ever mentioned that bread, besides being the staff of life, is also the sabre of diet destruction? I ate half a loaf of potato bread yesterday. H-A-L-F A L-O-A-F (say it fast and it sounds like something only liposuction could combat). It was over time, that consumption, granted, but it was consumed without enough thought and with no small amount of guilt. Did I enjoy that bread spread thick with butter? Yes.

Yes and NO. This morning I made my regular breakfast -- oatmeal with three tablespoons of yogurt. I ignored the damn potato bread. The damage has been done, but that doesn't mean I'm going to carry on with the crime. I fell off the wagon but I've climbed back on. The half loaf (four [and a crust] slices) will mean at least an extra work out. Possibly two or three. I've learned that it takes 3400 calories to make a pound. That means conversely that you have to monitor your intake by 3400 calories to shed a pound. I've been bouncing up a pound/down a pound for the last three weeks. It's like being on a trampoline and I'm starting to get dizzy.

I want to hit that magical 15 pound mark and I'd like to do it before the end of May. It's important that I do, just so I can see my way forward and carry on.

The Tree Stone Bakery, on 99th street, makes the best potato bread in the world. Go there. Have a loaf. Until I can learn a little more about self control, I'll be steering my red CCM clear of the place. If you see me on my bicycle with a baguette in my basket, snatch it out and stick it in my spokes, please. Daily bread be damned. Give us this day, our daily oats...Amen, so be it. More positive news next week.

M

Week eighteen: faith in the bones

2010-05-09T15:54:00.000-07:00

My weight is up, not much, but some. I'm also fragile at this time of the month so I'm trying not to let it get to me. This time, a month ago, I was crazy upset. The scales moved up and up again and then plunged, 4.2 pounds in one week. So I have faith that this is, again, the case. I continue to be committed to exercise, I continue to monitor my intake, I continue to believe this is good for me and, as the Weight watcher people say: Nothing tastes as good as thin feels.
Last night we were invited to a chicken wing feed, something called the spring wing-ding, at a neighbours house. There were 22 types of chicken wings!! Twenty two types!! I made Margaret's diet chicken: Calories on the Wing. I baked the wings, peeled off all the meat and fat, boiled the bones until they were bare, laid them on a serving tray, surrounded the bones with cucumber and sprinkled the whole affair with parsley. I won a prize for nicest presentation! And I didn't eat any wings. I have faith in bones. I want my bones to show. Away I go, in faith...Margaret

Week seventeen: drinking not thinking

2010-05-03T08:16:00.000-07:00

I'm afraid to hop on the scales. I've been avoiding it. Liquid calories have been poured down my throat by some malevolent force beyond my power. I've been in the throes of the burgundy Wine Goddess and, I'm here to report she is one e-vil dame. And fat.

We bid on a high end dinning experience to support a local charity some months ago and, lo, we won! A five course meal with paired wines, in a very upscale restaurant. Hummmm, five courses, five glasses minimum! But if only it were five....Needless to say after all the courses were consumed all six people poured our liquid selves into a shrunken taxi cab and continued the drink-fest as the notorious Commercial hotel where I --thankfully -- was mindful enough to start downing the club soda with lime. The damage, however, has been done and today, in the sober light of Monday morning, I am afraid to step on to the scales... How could I undo what I have worked so hard to do??
This Wednesday is weigh-in at WW so I'll just skip the scales until then, modify my intake and keep up the exercise. I'm off to yoga now, to purify and cleanse this somewhat poisoned temple. Oh dear, if only a glass of wine were a single glass. It's when it's two or three that the sensible me slides inside the oaky Chardonnay, slips into the sensuous Shiraz, toasts the berry and leather and blah blah blah notes of a seriously delicious Cab. Sav....and I become one serious party girl, calories be damned. Maybe AA rather than WW might be a better support group. Nah, I'll just try thinking more, rather than drinking more and, I promise, even if the scale are tipped upwards, I'll report back. Just not quite yet.......

Margaret

Week sixteen: fancy dancy

2010-04-26T07:53:00.000-07:00

I have just spent four days at Jasper Park Lodge. For those of you who don't know it, JPL is a posh Fairmont property nestled in the Northern Canadian Rockies. I went with my husband. He was in a conference and I was "wife of...", not a role I'm very good at for lots of reasons, and we won't talk about the heated argument over oil and gas drilling vs environmental damages to Mother Earth. Suffice it to say, I need to learn to zip it when I'm with people who make their livelihood doing resource based work.
The Lodge is beautiful. But the challenge was copious amounts of food and drink. Besides building pipeline and drilling leases, this group of surveyors really know how to lay it on in the eating and drinking department.
Today, back home, I was nervous to get on the scales. I was afraid I may have gained back the 13 pounds I'd worked so hard to get off, but I'm pleased to report, NO, I have remained the same despite eating and drinking more than usual. And here's how I did it...
I only ever tasted desserts, one taste, enough and that way I never felt deprived. I substituted extra veg for the potato or rice portion. I asked for " only a drizzle of hollandaise sauce on my fish, please, " and I tried to totally avoid the bread basket that circulated first at each table.
Sitting down in a lovely dinning room and eating with strangers helped too, as did dressing up for meals. It slowed everything down and just helped me enjoy not just exquisite food, but fine and interesting people and the mountains all around. And, yes, I did a real full-fledged work out in the hotel gym complete with my weight training and cardio!!
The last night -- at the ball -- I danced. And oh, how I danced. So there are strategies for things like this. I walked, thought about calories vs exercise, danced my feet off, did a really good work-out on Saturday afternoon, and generally had a good time. I didn't shedweight but, hey, I didn't gain any either, and I feel energized to go back at it. Onward...tomorrow is crash week.

And for those of you who are posting comments, thank you. I love the encouragement.
Margaret

Week fifteen: steady on, steady down

2010-04-19T16:50:00.000-07:00

Ok. It's hard to lose weight. That is the one thing I know for sure and, for me, anyway, it hasn't been a steady downward drop the way I imagined. It's more like descending a staircase...with lots of landings. Plateaus have plagued me since I started this endeavour, but I'm okay with them now. I've lost about 12.5 pounds in 15 weeks and that's not too shabby. It's starting to show on my old body, too, and certainly in my motivation. I'm thinking...can I be down 20 pounds by the end of June? Can I? And my answer to the Universe right now is "Yes, Yes, Yes!!" I have an August wedding to attend and I LOVE weddings. I have a periwinkle silk dress with a broken (read: damages, actually, honestly, read: split) zipper. I wore that dress for my Nellie McClung book launch in 2003 and it hasn't fit since, although I've tried it on a number of times just "to see" (hence the - ahem - zipper). Well, now (or in a few more pounds) that beautiful little summer wedding dress is going to fit like a charm. I just know it. I'm confident now that I will wear it again. I'm even taking it into the tailor today to have the zipper fixed. Why not? Love is in the air and silk against the skin feels like nothing else. It hasn't been easy, these last, what, three and a half months, but the rewards are starting to appear. Wearing a beloved old dress again is just one of them. Feeling more energetic is another. Feeling optimistic even when the scales aren't moving is another. Steady on, steady down, that's my new modo. Later

Margaret

Week fourteen: springy

2010-04-09T15:04:00.000-07:00

I've turned a corner. At least I think i have! I went to my WW meeting after deciding I would eat more and lo, I dropped four point two pounds. In one week. It made such a difference to my attitude. Suddenly I feel like this thing is actually do-able. I think I'm about 12 pounds down from my starting date but because they are slow coming off and because I feel like I have worked really hard to loose each and every one of them, I have a sense that this will be weight lost for good. Good-bye, gone type of weight loss, rather than the "I'll see you (plus your damn friends) in a few months."

And here I must tell the story of the silk pants.They are blue grey, quite lovely, purchased, oh a good five or six years ago. I really like them. I call them my cigarette pants. I'm not sure why.Maybe because they're raw silk, maybe because of the cut, tapered at the calf and stopping just above the ankle, I don't know. Maybe just because I feel elegant and sort of classy in them. They are also pants one would only wear in the spring or summer but this time last year, Easter morning, indeed, 2009 I put on my elegant blue silk cigarette pants and saw to my dismay that my thighs were touching the outside of the fabric clear through the lining. My legs looked like sausages packed into casing. The blue spring silk lovely trousers were put away last year until....last week, when, again, to my surprise, I tried them on and lo, two full inches of fabric between my leg and the outside silk fabric. They didn't exactly bag on me but they did fit and with room to spare. I wore those blue trousers to church Easter Sunday and I got about three comments: "You've lost weight. You look great" etc etc. And even though I haven't lost weight quickly, I've toned up the muscles that have to hold all that weight. And, it feels good. I'm well on my way now. My mantra is "Put only good things into your body."

Ashley gave me a new routine.I've stepped up yoga from twice to three times a week and I'm even getting out on the running trails once in a while. It's spring and there's a spring in my step, because I feel prettier, more alive. The body that houses my spirit feels like it's just had a good spring cleaning and it's putting energy into my step and light into my eyes. Away we go into the whirlwind world of feeling good. It's all happening and I am glad. Namaste.

Week thirteen: Black in the saddle

2010-03-29T14:16:00.000-07:00

My mood is much like the landscape these March days – gray and brown, monotone, flat. It’s that in-between season, not fully winter, certainly not spring. April will bring more of the same. We should expect some snowstorms, some bouts of beautiful weather. It’s an unpredictable time and it mirrors my unpredictable mood.

I’m thirteen weeks into my program. I haven’t lost thirteen pound. I am, however, closing in on a solid ten, and by solid I mean that I can count on the fickle scale registering a ten pound loss every time, not nine one week, eleven the next, eight the next, which is how its been going since the beginning of this month. So thirteen weeks of hard work adds up to about 10 pounds. It’s not great, it’s also not bad.

Ashley will be changing my program at the end of this week (Thank goodness) and now I understand how the same routine can become so boring. She also has me doing more cardio this week, which is good. I can feel the pounds melting off with the running more than I can with the weight lifting. I’m moving forwards, slowly, slowly and even though it’s hard and I wish I’d never made this so damn public, I’m glad I have because it’s that very thing that keeps me from quitting.

I’m noticing small changes in the way my clothes fit. I’m hoping by summer I will be down a size or two but I’m trying not to project into the future too much. I need to stay in the now, keep sweating it out and be grateful for the progress I’m making.

M

Week Who-Knows-What: Weeping

2010-03-23T18:27:00.000-07:00

This Monday past I started weeping at the gym during one of my training sessions. It came like a wave and there was nothing I could do to stop it. The tears streamed down my ridiculously red face as my trainer stood aghast. It was, well…it was bad.
I’ve since had time to consider what the tears were all about and I figure it’s because loosing weight at 50 is not like loosing weight at 20, 30 or even 40. Like me, the pounds have become more stubborn. They are clinging to me like 30 year old adult children floating on the basement davenport, refusing to leave the nest. But more than that, I am not, I repeat NOT on the schedule I anticipated would be easy. One pound a week, I thought, would be a snap. At least at first. But, quite frankly it’s not and I’m behind and I’m mad at myself because I am doing everything right.
In fact when I monitored every solitary food item that passed my lips last week and dutifully wrote it all down --- ALL of it, every single grape and dollop of skim milk -- and the scales didn’t budge, I felt devastated. I also freaked out when the weight watcher leader told me I wasn’t eating ENOUGH food!! Then I got a parking ticket and spend the rest of the afternoon at a funeral ….It was that kind of a week.
If it wasn’t for this blog and my truly public commitment to health, I might quit. Instead, what I am going to do is modify my expectations. I’m still going to aim high but if I don’t loose a pound a week – say I only loose half a pound a week – I’m still losing, right? I’m still on the downward slope, my BMI is still dropping. But I am going to go a little easier on myself. Not food wise. Not exercise wise, but pound wise. I’m going to work towards overall fit and health – physical and psychological health -- and that means obsesses a little less about the numbers game.

More (or less of me) later, M

Week ten: Falling off the face of the earth

2010-03-15T08:58:00.001-07:00

Life happens in the weight loss world. People take unexpected trips, holidays unfurl a bit earlier than expected, plans are hatched and acted upon and ones weight continues to drop while their careful exercise scheme stays firmly in place (and who said I wasn’t a fiction writer?)

Gentle readers, if you exist, I must tell you paragraph one is only half true. Yes, I’ve been away, and yes, I neglected my blog for almost two and a half weeks. Has my weight changed since my return from the inglorious Abacos where I imagined myself hauling lines with knotty forearms and swimming masterfully through the surf to dine on the sun soaked foredeck of our sailboat on freshly caught fish and lime juice?

Well, yes and no. My weight loss did not continue during my vacation but (here’s the good news) I have done something about that besides returning to the gym, browner and plumper.

If I am indeed in week ten of this one-pound a week odyssey, I am behind in my weight loss journey. I did not loose more then a few ounce while away. I also did not drink lime juice exclusively. An exquisite three-rum punch is to be found at any number of Tiki bars on the outer islands of the Bahamian archipelago. And yours truly has sampled them all. Have you heard of sweet potato fries? Say no more…

I am proud to confess I didn’t gain weight. But I didn’t loose weight. I just stayed the same. I am eight and a half pounds down according to a number of scales (the gym, my own bathroom, friend’s homes, houseware departments of large stores, produce scales in supermarkets --how much does my arm weight today? -- and my new favorite, baggage scales in large airports) and that’s what I was when I left.

Here is the difference. The good people at the gym who are assisting me in my fitness regime have all told me that toned muscles, which I’m definitely developing, are heavy beasts. They have also informed me that exercise is only 15 to 20% of the strip-down equation of successful weight loss. Food, that stuff I put in my mouth, is the other 80 to 85% of the calculation and portion control is what I have successfully avoided up until now.

Last Saturday morning, knowing full well that eight and a half pounds is not ten pounds no matter how you stretch it, and fully aware that I am behind in my weight loss goals, I joined Weight Watchers, the self help group for fatties who need to re-learn the basics of food consumption.

I have joined WW before. In fact, after the birth of my second child I lost a good 38 pounds on the program. To this day I don’t understand why I quit the program three pounds shy of my ideal weight.

Or maybe I do. I think, back then in my trembling 30s, I had a fear of success. I think the fat that surrounded my body affirmed my maternal state, shouted out to successful motherhood, and the hot curvy babe that almost emerged that one summer many moons ago, quickly became afraid of the attention her non-mothering body was attracting. All this is theory. All this is in the past.

Suffice it to say, I may now have the perfect combination. Less food (Weightwatchers)/More exercise (Korezone)! I can only hope this predictable combo plus my 50-year-old world be damned determination is the key to the 50 pound public declaration that sometimes threatens to choke me. So far, it looks good. Stay posted. I’m still on course for success. M

Week six: Muscle weighs more...

2010-02-19T15:41:00.000-08:00

I'm still letting the scales dictate my mood. If they're dropping, I'm smiling. If they're not dropping, I'm gloomy and defeat-ist. Even Ashley, my Korezone trainer, noticed: "The only thing stopping you is your head," she said. "It's all up here." And she tapped her skull.
And, of course, she's right. But besides the pep talk, Ashley also gave me some extraodinary information about muscle, the stuff I'm building by pumping those #$%^&;* weights and doing those terrible reps and those $%^&&;**(!@ crunches and those horrid machines, which, by the way, always make me feel better about myself and my day.
So here's what she said.
Muscle weights more than fat. Yes, I've been told that before but Ashley really explained it. It takes more calories to make a muscled body move than it does to make a fat body move. So, if you have muscles and you move -- just everyday movement, walking talking sleeping (the easy stuff) -- it takes more energy to do and therefore more calories. If you are muscled your metabolism speeds up but your weight dosen't go down as fast as it would if you weren't building muscle.
I have a lot to learn. I know that I'm not doing enough cardio work, the actual fat burning stuff like running and sweating but I'm enjoying the muscle stuff and the yogo stretching stuff, too. I'm contemplating joining weightwatchers when I get back from my holiday (which I'm also a bit worried about) but we'll see how it all goes. To date, in six weeks I think I have lost somewhere between six-and-a-half to eight-and-a-half pounds. It's up and down, like that, day by day. Sometime my muscles weigh more, sometimes less.
Am I discouraged? The answer is sort of the same, sometimes yes, sometimes not. To be perfectly honest (and what else is there?) I thought the weight would fall off faster. I thought the thrice weekly workouts and twice weekly yoga classe would do the trick. Count 'em, that's five workouts a week as compared to maybe one post fifty workout. In someways, it has done the trick. My clothes are fitting looser, my double chin is less wobbly. Something is shifting but I'm not quite sure what it is yet. It could be my attitude or my sense of self. Will I still loose 50 pounds in 50 weeks? Well, so far, I'm right on course and that's the way I intend to stay...
Stay tuned

More muscled Margaret

Week five: rebuilding the house

2010-02-07T16:34:00.000-08:00

Remember that triumphant nine I bandied around so freely a week or so ago? Remember that number of pounds that slipped effortlessly from my frame before the first month was up? Forget it. It isn't so. The number, as we stand today, is closer to seven. Seven, still a good number, seven, still something to be happy about but not nine, nein nine. C'est la vie.
There, after mixing my French with my German I will reiterate what I initally said at the beginning of my blog/post -- This is not about numbers. (Bare with this post and you'll be treated to a real mixed metaphor). Numbers be damned. I'm finishing up week five of my committment to health and, guess what? I feel healthier. Some of my clothes fit a bit better, some of my joints seem a little more lubricated, even my muscles feel bigger. I feel better for doing this good thing for myself. No, I'm not going to drop weight quickly. In fact I might not reach my goal at the end of fifty weeks, but I'm going to keep trying. I'm going to continue to move my old bones in new ways. I'm going to go to the gym as much as I can. I'm going to continue to be inspired by the gals at Korezone who have made a lifelong committment to fitness and are sharing it with others.
One of the owners said to me recently: "Isn't it amazing that we live in a world where people call it a luxury or an indulgence to talk care of the vessel that holds our spirits." (OK, she didn't say it quite like that, but you get my drift) And how true it is. My vessel is pretty lumpen right now. If my old body were a house for my spirit it would be pretty ramshackle, pretty sprawling, a little on the run-down side. The walls would buldge with old unread newspapers, the floor would tilt, the roof would bag, the veranda would be certainally askew but, so what? My spirit would still welcome people. And it still will, as I fix up the broken stairs, patch the roof, steady and straighten the old walls. I'm fixing up my house that is my body that is the container for my heart. I want the outside to reflect the inside. More later. Right now I have to cook something for my family. Something hearty and healthy and satisfying. And the change will come, slowly, slowly, it will come. M

week four -- weak for...

2010-01-31T20:25:00.000-08:00

...weak for wine, weak for pasta, weak for popcorn with real butter, weak for sad movies, weak for workshops that keep one away from the gym, weak for avocados, weak for mayo, what the heck, weak for bacon, weak for feeling sorry for me sad sad self and the results? A week of not so great results.

Whatever the scale said on that triumphant day last week, whatever was trumpheted all over the internet and the boastful blog-world, reverse it, subtract two or, God forbid three and. let's just carry on. That's the ticket in this game, carry on....

Tomorrow is Febuary 1st, a new month, new new page on the calender. We are all weak, we all fail to one degree or another. I refuse to beat myself up. I look forward to tomorrow and, no, I don't go to the fridge tonigh and comfort myself with food. I'm still ahead of the game. I'm still in the playing field and, you know what? I'm still going to win. I'll deliver more concrete information mid way through week five. It's all a'coming and my arms (firmer, less flabby) are open wide. Bring on the new month. Damn the poundage. Bless the air that I breath, the people that I love, and moving right along, I look ahead to the future. Move, move, move. All with gratitude, all with love, and with particularly fond memories of Craig, who crossed over this time a decade ago but whom I swear I saw in NYC last September, arm-in-arm with his lover.

M

Beginning week four -- Nine

2010-01-26T17:08:00.000-08:00

Nine. That's the number. Nine. Nine-nine-nine. I have lost nine pounds and, yes, that is on Korezone's own Ikea scale, the one I used to loath and today, like the fickle woman I am, love! (Ikea people, put your logo on my blog, sell more happy scales).

I can't write much today because there is too much other stuff going on, but I do want to say a word about time and money. First of all time: You have to make it happen. The Korezone gym folk are on the other side of town from me. It's a drive, well, a 20 minute drive sans traffic. It's not that far. And I do make time because everytime I go through those doors, I'm greeted by a friendly, fit person who knows my name. Yes, they are young, yes, they are lovely, no they don't have too much in common with a chubby, middle-age lady, but they are kind, compassionate people who care about my fitness and strenght. In fact the Korezone mottos are "Strenght from Within" and "Share the Love," which they are good at doing.

There is some confusion, too, around the timing of this blog update. I've pledged to write once a week but, in fact, I've been writing more often. I write when the spirit moves, I write when there's news (did anyone notice the number at the top?) but that doesn't always correspond with the calender time. Am I three weeks into this gig? Is it four? See, I don't really know...and it doesn't really matter.

And about money. Yes, the Korezone owners have very generously waived my gym fees but I am still paying for any services I require. A members rate for pert, personal trainer Ashley, is sixty bucks an hour. I will likely have to see her at least twice a month, maybe more. I have to see her when my program changes (as it will every four weeks) to get a feel for the new exercises. I have to see her during crash week because she helps me make sure I'm doing the triple repetitions correctly. But this old Scottish gal, raised by Depression parents, has clumsily vaulted over that financial barrier mostly because Ashley had the courage to ask me how much money I (read we, as I do have a husband) spent on wine each week. "Now that you won't be drinking so much, it will go twice as far," she perkily pointed out. And you know what? She's right. With the cost of a latte moving into the five dollar range, it's not too much to consider pocketing that money instead, cutting out those milky sweet calories and rather, spend it on something good, like strenght training.

I've got my head around spending money on my health. I won't say it hasn't been a struggle. Spending money on one's self -- indulging, some may call it -- is not easy, particularly if you are socialized to look on the needs of others. Yes, I've had a praticularly generous hand-up with the gym sponsorship but I know there's a lot more to say on women and how they view their own bodies.
My friend Rita calls it the "I'll suck on the pit syndrome" when a Mom divides a mango among her children. More on mothers, mango and money later, right now I'm going to revel in that opening number and try not to think about the fourty-one others that need to vanish in the future.
M

Week three --WineWhine

2010-01-25T15:25:00.000-08:00

I have yet to post a definative number. I don't yet have a photo. What I have is this:

I chose to go away this weekend for a writing workshop and to see some friends. It was out of the city, a new experience, heightened as they are by fresh faces, fresh ground, the excitment of being "out and about." And it was good...
Like all journey's coming home should be the best part. And, yes, it was.
I saw those dear, dear faces my husband, my three children through the fog of the pasta pot, perking away, white sauce simmering on the stove, all creamy and caloric. Now how can one, coming off a long and difficult highway, complain when they walk in the door to supper already made? How can one? No one must be gracious, peel some vegetable, place them on the table and join their family in whatever they have prepared, be it cream, flour, butter, white pasta, or some other rich and thigh inflating concoction. And so I did. Both biting my tounge and salivating like a wild animal (yes, it is possible to do both of those private mouth acts at the same time) I tried to heed my husbands advice to "just take a small amount." And, to some degree it worked. I ate mindfully if not entirely happily. I would have been all right, too, if I hadn't kept adding wine to the already potent mix of pasta and deliciously flavored fat-sauce. I will say no more except to say tomorrow is another day. Tonight, with Mother the fat Nazi back, it will be poached fish and steamed beans and if you're good, very very good, a side of wild rice. Balance, balance, balance and no one ever said it would be easy. Tomorrow is the last day of crash, three sets, endless repetitions, and a promise to step on their loathsome scale and come in with an "end of week three" weigh-in. More later from Sabotage City and the Filler' up Vineyard,

M

Week two.eight -- the horrors of freshly baked bread

2010-01-21T17:30:00.000-08:00

There it was when I came downstairs this morning, a perfect, golden loaf of white (gawk!!) bread. Perfect. Still warm, crusty on top, beautifully aromatic, and, yes, calling my name: “Margaret, Margaret,” it wooed. “Cut me open. Come. Take. Eat.”
My husband made the bread last night. It wasn’t a problem last night. Last night my talking loaf of bread was just gluey gunk with yeast, a mass of white dough, not unlike the image my mirror has presented me with of late. (But, please, for your sake and mine, quickly erase that image.)
The challenge presented itself long after the bread had morphed into its own lovely breadiness. The challenge was hunger and morning and the knowledge that homemade bread spread thick with butter has always, and likely will always be, my comfort food.
What to do, what to do, what to do???

Well, here’s what I did. I had some organic plain yogurt with a dollop of homemade blueberry jam, a small handful of almonds and a titch of granola. In other words I let that loaf loaf on the counter, uncut, uncovered and complete until well past noon. And the healthy breakfast silenced the loaf.
It was a small triumph but I’m counting all the small triumphs. Being the second day of crash week, I knew my muscles needed a substantial lunch. Prior to turning 50 I might have cut a slice of bread, buttered it up like nobody’s business and consumed it standing by the cupboard. Then I would have had another, and another…
Post 50, I cut a thin slice and cover it lightly with cream cheese, I add capers, those weird pickle buds that have so much flavour. I slice a green onion length-wise and lay the bits across my single slice of bread and then, then, I add the crowning glory, lox. Thin to the point of transparency, orange like the flashing underbelly of a slap happy salmon surging up a turbulent stream, and beautiful beyond words, I lay the lox across the bread, I say a small prayer of thanksgiving, blessing the baker who lurks inside my husband, and I eat, savoring every single fabulous mouthful.
I believe there should be nothing I can’t have. I just have to slow down and enjoy it. I just have to take a little less, and add some more care to the food I choose to put in my body. Rather than pushing bread into my mouth as quickly as I can, I now prepare something singularly wonderful. I may not always be able to do this but I did it today! And, guess what? That opened faced lunch salmon sandwich on homemade bread tasted a little bit like love.
More on crash week later. Oh, and calipers. Ashley did the old fat test on me yesterday. While I was stripped down to my skivvies and shivering she marked my body with X's like little kisses and then she measured. It was bizarre and shocking but there's no time to tell now. A salad is on the menu tonight with a small, exquisitely cooked, blood rare steak. The others may eat their steak with bread. As for me, I've already tasted delight and I’m good to let it pass on by…

M

Week two -- the scales fall or Rome wasn't built in a day

2010-01-16T16:20:00.000-08:00

It’s not about the scale; it’s not about the numbers. The scale is not your friend. Do not let the scale dictate, for it will always lead you astray. Muscle weights more than fat. Muscle weights more than fat. Repeat after me: it’s not about the scale, muscle weights more than fat.
End of week two, and I don’t know if I weigh less than I did after the end of week one because the scales in my beautiful, light filled bathroom are different (read: lighter, happier, smarter) than the horrid, high, ridiculous scales at the gym.
I am trying not to think about the scales at the gym which have wiped out my triumphant 4.7 pound weight loss of the first week and replace it with an overall 5.1 pound weight loss at the end of this week. That would mean, this week I lost less than half a pound, but as I mentioned I am trying not to think about it that way.
If my goal is to loose one pound a week on average, I’m three pounds ahead of the game! Yes, that’s a better way to think. I’m three pounds up on my necessary per week weight loss.
Here I should say what I’m doing with my physical body. I have settled into a somewhat regular schedule at last. I am going to the gym to do weight training Tuesdays and Thursdays and Saturdays. The knowledgeable folks at Korezone insist there should be a rest day in between strength training. A rest day is good. Very, very, good.
The strength training is quite new to me. It involves a program written to my specific needs by the woman to whom I am assigned the lovely taut Ashley. She has tested me and looked for my muscle imbalances. Now she has me doing a series of repetitious sets, 15 of this, 15 of that, pause repeat. Quite a lot of time and energy is going into very basic big muscle movement right now. Squats, with weights, lunges, with weights, triceps curls, with weights, almost everything with weights. Except my core stuff. My core exercises simply involve gravity and lifting bits of my own big body off a mat. It’s funny how simple that sounds, and yet how painful and difficult that can be.
Ashley is very encouraging. When I left today she smiled at me and said one word: "Crash". This week coming is crash week. It means rather than two sets of each exercise, I will do three. It’s about building up strength and then pushing that to the max. Crash does not sound fun. Still, I smile back at Ashley, who is casually running one hour on the treadmill full tilt.
Back to the schedule: strength training is three times a week and I supplement that with yoga on the off days, Wednesdays and Fridays yoga is so very different and yet so good. So far, I think I like yoga days better than strength days. I like contemplating my breath, I like energizing parts of my body, I like trying to hold poses and imagining being a cat or a tree or some other etherial being. I like mimicing that thing with my body. I still try not to look in the mirror. In my head I am always lovely. I like the floating, vaguely Eastern feel of yoga and I like the fact that enlightenment seems to have little to do with sweat.
Mondays are my cardio days which means either a long brisk one hour walk (in the woods!! Yes! YES!) or at least 40 minutes on the treadmill, doing a walk one minute, run three minutes routine. Sundays are supposed to be days off, although there is talk around the house tonight of a cross country skiing expedition tomorrow to take advantage of the glorious winter weather. We skated today, too, and that’s not part of the “program.”
However, I realize I need daily exercise to become a normal, natural, desired part of my life. I’m not there yet. Yes, it does feel good to pile into bed at night bone tired and, yes, it does feel good to wake up in the morning and run my hand down my own thighs and feel the muscles there, solid and strong. But I don’t relish exercise, not yet, at least. I know it’s having an effect. I know that I weigh five pounds less than I did at the turn of the year.
I also know my head and my heart are happier because I’m doing something that’s good for me and this is about health and longevity.
I’m not sure about writing this blog. I’m not sure what that’s doing for me except forcing me to jot down some of my thoughts. I’m a bit embarrassed to give out the blog address because I have no idea, at this point, why anyone would want to read my weekly rambling about my own shrinking self. It feels slightly narcissistic, completely selfish but isn't this what the 50 weeks is supposed to me about, in part? Besides, I’m in too deep to get out now. I had my friend Robb set this up. I paid him. I'll soldier on and hope that no one reads.
I have had some thoughts about personal trainers, how I’ve always perceived them as a rich person’s luxury, but I’m changing my mind on that and I’ll speak to that issue later. Meanwhile, I’ll continue my mantra: the don’t let the numbers dictate, the scale is NOT your friend, muscle weights more than fat.
Onward to CRASH week! Oh, and yes, soon I will reveal my starting weight. I’m still not ready to do that publicly yet. And the post after next weeks, should include a photo. The photo -- headless, faceless – will be a body-only profile and front-on shot in black clothing against a white wall. I pledge to change it once a month at the end of each month. I hope it doesn't look like a target...

M

week one.five -- core feelings

2010-01-13T21:08:00.000-08:00

So far, so good. I just thought I should check in. Write down a few thoughts before they get away from me. One thought is my core. When Ashley, the personal trainer girl (woman? yes, she is a woman! just not an old crone like me and anyone else who has crossed the five-oh threshold) told me to engage my core, I honestly had to wonder if I had one. And that's what I'm seeking. A core. A core without the fleshy apple around it. Not a skeleton (that will happen soon enough) but a core, what I deem essential self. It's in there, I know, but it's long been buried. How many of us bury our essential selves under projects or work or deadlines or words or children or partners or, indeed, even the culmination of too much food, flesh? Somehow we are all afraid to be as big as we can be, and I mean that wholely in a metaphysical sense. Perhaps I am big physically because I am not big spiritually, or emotionally, or intellectually? Perhaps those are thing I am still afraid of. What about sexually? Do larger woman disguise their sexuality in flesh, or is that simply society telling us that sexuality is the negation of flesh and only thin, trim, fit women are allowed to have a good old-fashioned swampy romps?
One thing is certain, lifting the weights makes me feel strong. Going to the gym, I still avoid the mirrors for the most part. Sometime I see myself and I don't cringe because I like what I'm doing. It's like sculptin. My body is the block of marble and slowly I'm taking away, taking away until I find the form beneath. I can see it, sort of, who I want to become. And it's still me but smaller, healthier.
I have a young friend who lost 100 pound in one yea. He told me I would be a lot happier when I lost this weight. When I told him I wasn't unhappy now, the way I am he looked me in the eye and replied: "Yes, but trust me, you'll be a lot happier in a year." I don't know if he's right....It will be interesting to find out. I'll check in and post results and exactly what I'm doing on Thursay, the end of week two. Right now, I can honestly say that it's not so bad. I miss bread. I miss wine. (I miss the communion of those two things with others I love) but I will not whine, Not yet, anyway. Later M

week one: why

2010-01-10T17:12:00.000-08:00

It’s working! I knew it would work, at least for the first few weeks!! (How did you guess, I've been down a similar road ?)
     I am not sure it will still be working weeks from now in the deep freeze of February, or the flat monotone of March , or dripping, dog shit surfacing days of April and ever after. But, for now, it is working and I am here to say what is working, how it’s working and a little bit about the way I’m working.
     I plan to write once a week, a reflection on the seven days spent, the successes and failures and up and downs of this journey. The title to this blog is key. The first 50 is what this writing is about. It’s a number, it’s a unit, it is what I have carried around on my hips and my belly and my backside and my upper arms (oh those bat winged upper arms!) for the last, oh, 15 years at least. It is the amount of weight in good old fashioned pounds I am attempting to loose in the course of the second 50 of the title, the time frame, the parameters of the project. Fifty weeks isn’t quite a year, but it’s close and the final 50, my age, is the why behind this reckless public muse.
     I turned 50 two weeks before the turn of the year, thick in the season of eat and drink. A careful look in the mirror the morning of that milestone birthday gave me pause, to put it mildly. In fact, a look in the mirror-- a good, hard, naked-body, naked eyeball look, in a full length upright mirror – arrested me, stopped me dead in my tracks. I’m not talking cardiac arrest here, not yet, anyway, but rather a stock-still take stock shock.

     But besides being surprised at how thick and heavy my 5.5 foot body has become over the years I was also aware of how the next 20 to 30 years would unfold, (or, indeed, not unfold) if I didn’t decide to take immediate action. So I did. I pitched an idea to a private gym – Korezone Fitness.Why didn’t they provide me with gym access for a year and the opportunity to work with a personal trainer, an nutritionist, a masseuse, whatever or whomever I needed at a minimal change in order to whip this middle-aged sagging body into some semblance of shape?
     And, lo, much to my surprise, they agreed. All I have to do in return is write about it….a book in 50 chapters, a blog in 50 postings. This on-line stuff will be short, the chapters longer and, I hope more meditative. There are lots of reasons people, and particularly women, hide inside their bodies, disguise their trembling inner selves with a protective layer of outer flab. That's what I'm interested in, the laying bare, the inward journey. And, as a writer, that's what I will explore on the page.
     For now, and because I don't have a clue how long a blog-post should be I'll just say my plan is working. Since my weigh–in (ugg, how trophy fish–like, how uninspiring that word) I have dropped 4.7 pounds.
My muscles ached for two days, I've been given a weight train program, I’ve been vigilant about bread, I’ve even been eating not only breakfast but, oatmeal for breakfast and, guess what? it’s working.
    Will power, a program, a dream, and the commitment to publicly pursue that dream. Maybe inspire others, maybe not. Maybe just find out something about myself. For now, it all feels right, but I am well aware this is only week one....M