Another Fork in the Road……..Do I dare

I haven’t written anything in this blog for a long time not because I didn’t have anything interesting happening in my life or that I didn’t feel I had any positive changes in the past eight to nine months.  I did.  But…..I didn’t feel like I had enough of an exciting change that was blog worthy.  I’ve been consistently doing CrossFit workouts and in fact had started an exercise group at work.  I have been consistently eating 80 to 90% paleo.  I have in fact become a little leaner, a little stronger in the last year. I’ve been able to through exercise and nutrition keep my diabetes from getting worse. That’s the problem; all the changes have now become itty bitty increments and the diabetes is still not 100% cured.  Boring and frustrating. 

Oh I have had pep talks with myself.  My loving and supportive husband has tried to encourage me with compliments.  Even my doctor has relayed to me how proud she was of me for having reversed my diabetes which she says almost never happens with most patients. It has been three years now since I have embarked upon this fitness journey and I am wondering is this as good as it’s going to get? It can’t be.  It can’t be because I still have this image in my head that sometimes I don’t even dare to imagine.  It scares me to imagine the future that I truly desire.  I feel that I shouldn’t have the audacity to hope for the future self that I have imagined.  So I have actually kept my desires a secret.  I fear people will laugh and think I’m a crazy old lady for daring to want something so ridiculous. 

I still have fears but I have come to a fork in the road.  I have to choose between maintaining the status quo, a state that most people would be happy to maintain and taking a different path altogether.  Customized programming; YIKES.  The safety and comfort of my tried and true CrossFit classes has taken me as far as it could.  I still believe that it was the absolute best way for me to have gotten out of my unhealthy, unfit state and bring me to this stage.  But now it’s time to strike out into what is for me unchartered territory.  I will still do some CrossFit classes but the bulk of my training will now be a strength progression program along with sprinting.  Yes, sprinting, my old nemesis. 

So here is what I have dared to want.  I want to be Not Only leaner and stronger but I want to be RIPPED, to be a Bad Ass weight lifter and to be a true sprinter. And I WILL NOT STOP until my diabetes is OBLITERATED! Yes I dare to dream these dreams. It starts now, today. I don’t know how long it will take and it doesn't matter.  The goal may be always expanding so that it is a lifetime endeavor; I certainly hope so.

 

Current State

 









 

 

Dare to Dream State

 

 

The Refined Palate of the Modern Day Cave Woman

Kicking and screaming I fell into the Paleo/Primal path of eating.  Everyone who knows me knew that “Cuisine” not just food, was very important to me.  I am a “Foodie” and will always be one.  I would ALMOST rather stay fat and sick than to eat food that was not splendid.  Almost was the key word.  I had no choice but to change everything I understood about food.  I had to learn about food as fuel and not just as something to satisfy my appetite for sublime flavor.  For someone who grew up in the restaurant business and spent the majority of my adult life in pursuit of gourmet dining experiences, learning how to give up the rice and noodle dishes of my Chinese heritage, the wonderful artisanal breads that my husband had perfected in baking or the delicate French pastries found at the local patisserie was absolute torture.  But I also understood that indeed my much loved foods would actually do me in because I was overweight, diabetic and also mildly gluten intolerant. 

Another thing that people who know me understand is that I am extremely persistent and stubborn.  I looked at this dilemma between tasty food and food that was healthy and decided that I had to find a solution.  I tackled the easy things first such as meats, vegetables by tweaking my favorite recipes to make them Paleo/Primal.  After a few months my husband and I were enjoying our usual standard of dining equivalent to and sometimes better than the non-paleo meals of the past.  However there was still a hunger for the things that were off limits; the cakes, cookies, breads, etc.  I yearned to have a lazy Sunday brunch with crispy waffles, fluffy pancakes or luscious muffins.  Oh I scoured the internet for Paleo websites looking at recipes for treats and breads.  The word disappointing would be an understatement.  They were edible; just edible. 

These simply were not going to work for me

To some people this pickiness about taste may seem a bit much.  But I like to think that I simply have a Refined Palate due to my exposure to really good food.  Whatever the case, my stubbornness and persistence would not let me give up on finding a way to have my cake and eat too.  During the next year and a half I found myself in the kitchen every spare moment creating, tweaking, creating and tweaking again and again to find that perfect combination of ingredients and spices to develop recipes for my beloved treats.  There were plenty of failures.  Trying to make non-grain and non-processed sugar ingredients behave and taste like grain and processed sugar ingredients is really, really hard.  However there were also successes and boy were they successes.  One success led to another as I learned more and more about the properties of each ingredient such as almond meal flour, flax seed flour, coconut flour and coconut palm sugar.  For example I learned that I had to balance the slight but very distinguishable off aroma of the coconut flour with certain spices and extracts in order for it to not overpower the end product. There are so many characteristics of  food that determines whether or not it is really “good”.  There is visual appeal and smell; there is the texture and finally but most importantly there is the taste.  However all these characteristics have to harmoniously come together to be truly considered “cuisine” and not just food. 

These treats made me happy And guilt-free

Life is too short to drink bad wine and life is certainly too short to eat mediocre food.  Yes I had to learn how to fuel my body properly so that I can thrive and be healthy.  But my soul had to thrive also and it is just as important for my soul to be happy.  There had to be others like me out there; people who cared tremendously about their health and were committed to that lifestyle but also were not willing to compromise on enjoying great food.  So a business was born.  Sharing my passion for great tasting healthy food with other like-minded people has been a dream come true.

“Climbing that Mountain”

A while back this summer my husband and I went on a mini vacation to Eureka Springs, a little resort town in Arkansas.  We stayed at a quaint historic hotel called the Crescent.  What I did not know at the time that I booked the hotel was that it was going through a major rehab of their elevator system.  In other words there was no elevator service and the stairs were the only way to get to our room.  I find this out about a week before we are supposed to be there.  I can tell you that I was scared of the prospect of climbing several flights of stairs several times a day for 4 days.  It’s funny how even when intellectually I knew that I had made progress in my fitness level through Crossfit training somehow my mind did not completely register how much I had changed.  In my mind I was still the person who struggled to make it up a half flight of stairs in my split level house all the while huffing and puffing.  So I agonized over the prospect of tackling those stairs every day for 4 days. In fact I became very indignant; I mean, how dare the hotel not tell me beforehand.  “I should just cancel our stay there” I told my husband. For various reasons I decided not to cancel; I’ll just deal with it. 

When we arrived I found out that we had to go up 3 flights of stairs to get to our room.  What I discovered was that I had indeed transformed into another person. I glided up those stairs almost effortlessly, barely increasing my breath. I’m not sure if I have the right words to describe how I felt. At the top of the stairs I almost cried with happiness.  This may seem like a small thing to most people.  If you have never been in a position where your body could not do what your mind willed it to do then you will not know what an accomplishment this was for me.  But If you have been in the position like me where even the smallest physical exertion was a monumental task then you know exactly how I felt.

Crescent Hotel Grand Staircase

The next day after breakfast in the main floor dining room we started to head back to our room.  As we got near the stairs there was a woman standing on the landing looking up at the flight of stairs.  She was fairly large but more importantly she was very flabby, no muscle tone.  She looked about mid-thirties, considerably younger than me.  She just stood there looking at the stairs.  The look on her face was one of fear and dread as if she was about to climb a mountain.  After a while she started her very slow climb, clinging to the railing, struggling to use her arms to help pull her along.  Her breathing was heavy and loud.  She made her way half way up to the mid landing and rested, leaning against the railing.  I felt like I was looking at my former self; I felt her pain.  I felt for her.  I wanted to reach out to her but of course I could not.  This is a journey that one has to decide for them self to embark on.  I don’t know what happened to her climb; I hurried up the stairs past her to go to our room. 

When I got to the room I couldn’t get the picture of that woman out of my mind.  That scene made it crystal clear why I do CrossFit and why I can never stop pushing the limits of my body.  The reason that I needed to climb mountains in the gym and at the track is so that I don’t have to in the daily activities of life.  So that the simple act of living does not become an unattainable struggle.  So that the normal everyday physical obstacles are easy for me overcome.  I don't have any grand goals of becoming some kind of athlete; all I want to do is just be able to live.  To really live; not just exist, not just survive, but to embrace life fully. I will of course age but I do not have to give in to being being weak.  I have made a decision to fight. The great thing is that I'm enjoying this battle as I bound up the stairs barely increasing a breath and not breaking even a drop of sweat.

“Riding the Backdraft – In the Presence of a Champion”

You have to understand some things about me; one is that I am seldom impressed and certainly very rarely in awe of someone else.  The second thing is that although I am extremely competitive in most everything I do I have no such desire to compete in the athletic sense.  I was the girl in grade school who would ask the teacher can I skip recess and read instead so that I would not have to go through the humiliation of not being picked for dodge ball.  The only time I had some semblance of physical skill was when in high school I joined the Karate club.  That was because it was about fighting and I was always ready and able to fight.  So I grew up knowing my limitations relating to any sporting activity.  Even now as I continue to pursue doing CrossFit I know my limitations.  I know that even though I can get better, I won’t ever really get to the point where I can be considered an athlete or a competitor.  I got sucked into competing in the ‘Baby Games (beginners competition) about 7 months ago because apparently I had a momentary loss of sanity.  Of course I came in last; there go those limitations again.  Now this is not to say that I don’t enjoy the workouts or that I don’t try to do my best and even make improvements along the way because I do all of that.  I’m just a realist.  Which brings me to this dilemma, I am in AWE; I’m in awe of my husband and he has caused a warp in my thinking. 

He has just shown me that there are no limitations or obstacles that cannot be conquered if you have the will and the fortitude to defeat them.  My husband was on a quest, a quest to do well enough in the 400 meter race at the State Senior Olympics so that he can qualify to run in the nationals next year or so that is what he told me.  Here are the obstacles one by one.  First – he hadn’t run in over 25 years, second – he had to have surgery just when he was supposed to start training.  Third – as soon as he was able to recover from the surgery and start training he developed Plantar Fasciitis (an extremely painful foot condition), fourth – even with the foot situation he continued to train and then pulled a hamstring and then fifth – he pulled another hamstring.  Needless to say his training time was nowhere near enough to have a real chance at the race.  Then sixth – about a week and a half before the race he gets a terrible allergy condition that derailed his remaining training time.  I lived through all these issues with him.  Every Sunday when we went out to the track for his time trials I watched him in pain and agony.  I watched him come home to ice his foot or ice and massage his legs just so he could walk.  And yet he pushed forward every week, putting his body through torture.  I watched him load the bar and lift heavier and heavier weights every time he went to the CrossFit gym; I watched him push himself to levels I have not seen from him before. Then of course he would come home and do the ice and massage routine so that he could simply just function.  All during this time I would silently worry and ask myself, why is this so important to him, why can’t he just realize his limitations?  I did once comment to him that maybe God is telling him something with all these injuries.  At the time I did not understand the fire in him; I didn’t understand his need to push his body beyond his limitations, to push towards greatness just for the sake of accomplishment. 

In all our conversations about the upcoming race and there were many, he always told me that he just wanted to do well and of course qualify for the nationals.  Qualifying meant that he had to be at least 4^th place.  He laboriously studied the times of the previous state races and the previous times of the regionals very carefully and deduced that he had a chance at 4^th.  At least that's what he told me.  It seemed a reasonable plan; after all he still had so many obstacles (limitations) to overcome but 4th may be a possibility.  

                                                           

What I did not understand at that time was that my husband was a “Champion”.  The Heart of a champion does not accept anything other than victory, anything other than absolute defeat of an obstacle.  There are no excuses, no limitations; there is only the drive to Win.  It is ironic that what I have always known and practiced in other facets of my life I did not make that connection in how it relates to physical accomplishments.  It took my husband defeating all his obstacles to drive home this lesson.  He Won! The beauty of his run was the culmination of all his pain, struggle, determination and his unrelenting pursuit of victory. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A8IQacyquo&feature=youtu.be.  He is my hero and I need to ride his Backdraft; I need to embrace that tenacious spirit. 

“The Truth Shall Set You Free”

“It’s not what we say out loud that really determines our lives. It’s what we whisper to ourselves that has the most power” by Anonymous.  

There are going to be some people who will not like me much after reading this post but I am hoping that there will also be people who understand that the truth, although painful sometimes, will indeed set you free.  Not only will it set you free but it will save your life.  What I am talking about is FAT people.  Yes I said that terrible word; that politically and socially incorrect word in describing people who are extraordinarily large.  In some people’s mind that makes me a horrible person with no feelings and no soul.  Just plain mean.  Someone posted these exact sentiments about me on Facebook.  In fact that’s why I decided to post about the state of being FAT and the painful truth. 

Ok, Ok I need to give you the back story.  A friend of mine posted this picture one day and a whole lot of people commented in various non-flattery ways about her size and let’s just say her outrageous outfit.  I also commented, basically saying something to the effect that the woman in question was really huge and had really bad taste in clothes.  All of a sudden other folks came out of the woodwork to let me know in no uncertain terms that I was the most terrible person on the planet because I was discriminating against larger women.  I had to think about this for a moment and examine myself and my true nature.  Was I really that much of a bigot?  I didn’t see how I could be since I was also overweight.  True enough I am in the process of trying to lose weight and has had significant success but the fact remains that my body fat of 28.3% is just a little bit under what is considered obese.  It was probably not a good idea to make fun of someone but it is also not a good idea to coddle a person and not tell it like it is.  In our society today we are all so scared of sounding politically or socially incorrect that we invent very creative ways to describe a situation or a person.  The entire American society has found ways to make being FAT not only acceptable but even beautiful.  We have television reality shows glorifying fat people and their antics.  We have magazines glorifying being big such as BBW (Big Beautiful Women). We have clothing catalogs called “Big & Beautiful”.  We use “Queen” to designate large size panty hose.  Stores that call their clothes “Plus Size” instead of extra-large. The list goes on and on all the while people are getting larger and larger; I mean fatter and fatter.   And all the diseases associated with obesity, heart disease, diabetes, strokes, etc. have become epidemic.  Why are we not telling the plain and painful truth which is …. Being fat is not beautiful.  Being fat is not healthy.  Being fat is a sure way to get a myriad of chronic diseases that cause you to have a terrible quality of life when you get older and will shorten your life.  There is nothing good about not being able to do the simplest things in life such as running if you had to, or bending over to tie your shoes or going up the stairs without having to stop to catch your breath or being able play energetically with your children.  All of these things and so much more is what the human body was designed for.  Being fat robs you of these simple abilities.  What is good about that?

How about as a society we tell the truth for once and look the problem in face as it really is.  There is one thing that I absolutely know and that is you can’t fix a problem if you don’t first admit there is a problem.  I can absolutely relate to how painful it is to acknowledge that I was obese.  I tried to shut out the voice inside of me, the voice that was whispering the truth to me.  Believe me I understand as much as anyone how easy it is to pretend that I didn’t have a problem.  I understand as much as anyone how desperately I wanted to believe that I wasn’t really that fat; that I was just a little overweight and that I still looked good. 

And here is the proof. 

See, even I can wear something so completely inappropriate for my weight and look like a fool.  I just wished that someone had pulled me aside and told me the truth.  I looked hideous. I wished that my husband would have said to me “sweetheart, you know that I love you but I really feel that you need to rethink that outfit”.  Yes it would have hurt for a minute but it would have given me the kick that I needed to face the truth, the wake up call a little sooner to do something about my FAT. I don’t blame my husband; he didn’t want to hurt my feelings.  My FAT is MY responsibility.  However, we as a society are NOT doing anyone any favors by coddling their feelings on this matter.  We have to find ways to convey how important it is for them to not only do it to look better but to do it to get healthier.  That is the role that we can play and should play.  If we don't do this the people we care about will fall to diseases of obesity and they and us will have to pay for the associated medical cost either directly or indirectly.  The people on Facebook who criticized me about being mean saying that they didn’t believe that I had the guts to tell someone to their face about their size.  Well I do have the guts.  I have a couple of good friends who I gently but firmly told them that they needed to do something because they were getting too large to be healthy.  Their reaction at first was one of hurt but then they realized that I told them because I cared about them.  Both have taken action and have started on their own journey toward fitness.  I know that what I said was not the only catalyst that started them but it played a part.  Ultimately the responsibility lies with the person who needs to change but our responsibility as friends, family and society is to tell the truth and to encourage.  There is no denying that the Truth Will Set You Free to be the person that you know you can be.

“The Gift – Giving Myself a Fighting Chance”

Life is hard as hell! All the crap that comes at you from all directions all the time is hard enough to deal with without the added disadvantage of being unfit and unhealthy.  I know; I know I’m sounding pretty damn pessimistic in this blog.  Really I’m not trying to be a downer; I’m just trying to relay how tough it was for me to fight the daily challenges of just plain life and work when I was not at my fighting weight, or health.  It is amazing how much your fitness level can impact your emotional and psychological state.  In the normal course of a day I would come home from work so mentally and physically exhausted that all I wanted to do was crash on the couch with a glass of wine and zone out.  Unfortunately in order to make it to the couch I had to climb up a short flight of stairs and out of breath wheezing hard. Damned this split level house! Psychologically I was so scared that I would end up like my Mom who died of complications due to diabetes.  All the while I was her caretaker for the last two years of her life I kept thinking about my own demise.  Would I also end up bedridden and in horrible pain from diabetic neuropathy?   The fear escalated when my doctor recommended that I start on insulin injections because my meds couldn’t contain my disease.   Oh I rationalized with myself and told myself that it wasn’t that bad.  I’m not going to end up like that; I had time to straighten this thing out. The truth was I was running out of time.  No matter that in my mind I wasn’t any different than when I was twenty, the fact is I was middle age.  I was looking at the precipice of being old and it was now or never to turn this thing around.   It’s really strange how things come into your life, not planned but just what you need. Crossfit and the Paleo diet came into my life; took hold and turned my life around.  It gave me a fighting chance to save myself from the inevitable end that I was headed to.  Now, I know that sounds really overly dramatic and that I sound like some fanatical zealot trying to evangelize you.  Well I am. I make no bones about it.  The reason I’m writing this blog is so that I can influence you.  To persuade you to look honestly at your state of being whatever that is and if you are not satisfied, do something.  Do something different than what you have been doing. 

Crossfit and the Paleo diet is something so radically different than what I was doing.  What I was doing was the recommended path: moderate exercise, mostly cardio and a low calorie, low fat and whole grain diet.  This plan led me down the path to weighing over 200 pounds, escalating diabetes and high cholesterol.  I had been following this plan for over 20 years.  Sounds familiar?

Now for the good news; the Crossfit/Paleo makeover.  Numbers don’t lie.  I’ll let them speak for themselves.  First let’s look at the outward results (body measurements) from one year of this makeover.  Oh and yeah, I went from a size 16 to a size 10. This is important to because basically I'm pretty vain, hahaha.

   

What’s way more important was the internal results.  Here are the numbers from my quarterly doctor’s checkup and lab blood work. Ta Da! Diabetes, take that! Crossfit and Paleo put a whoop ass on you!

 

I’m not finished with the makeover yet; I’m nowhere near where I want to get to but I won’t stop this journey. My goal is to completely get off all meds, get down to a size 6 all the while getting so strong that I can be labeled a badass.  I have given myself a Gift, a fighting chance; I have taken my bad health out of the equation of life.  Now I can deal with all the crap that will always come at me.  The difference is that I’ll be coming right back at my fighting weight, bounding up the stairs, hardly missing a breath.

“Vanity Thy Name is (Me) & What is Beauty”

On the one hand I am ashamed to admit and on the hand I don’t think I should be ashamed to admit that I have some vanity.  I have chased “Beauty” or what I thought was beauty almost all my life.  This chasing has not been an easy path. In fact the concept of beauty has been a love hate thing for me.  You might be thinking what a jerk; thinking that I should just get over myself.  Well that’s pretty much what I have been telling myself most of my life.  But if you will be honest with yourself for a minute, you can just think about your own ideas and thoughts about your own state of beauty.  I think that if you are honest you will acknowledge that everyone, including yourself, is concerned about how you look.  It is natural.  That is why women and men put great amount of effort in choosing clothes, getting a good haircut or finding products so that our skin is as good as it can get.  If not the pursuit of beauty why then is the cosmetic industry a multi-billion dollar industry?  So let’s all be honest, we all aspire to be the best version of ourselves in many respects including beauty. 

Starting from a very young age I have had a tremendous battle with how I looked.  In addition to the normal craziness that young girls go through I had the added issues with being of mixed race.  I am half Chinese and half African American.  Through no fault of my own but rather through genetics inherited from my parents I have a very exotic look. For most of my early life I just wanted to look normal because looking strange is not a good thing when trying to fit in with your classmates at school.  The last thing I wanted to do was to stand out. I was teased a lot, really a lot and sometimes in pretty vicious ways.  I learned to survive by either fighting back or by trying to make myself invisible.  As a teenager I purposely made myself look unattractive by wearing horn rimmed glasses and two ponytails on the side of my head until I was almost 18 years old.  But there was one thing that I could not disguise and that was my body.  Since the age of 13 I had a really hot body, not skinny and not fat but just right.  So no matter what kind of frumpy clothes or stupid hairstyle or lack of make-up I always had the knowledge that my body was “smokin”.  This was like my secret weapon.  As a young woman I finally came to terms with the way that I looked.  I started to appreciate my uniqueness and no longer wished to just blend into the crowd.  I don’t believe that I was vain; I was simply grateful for what I had.  I realized that my brand or version of beauty is just that, mine.  I never sought after looking like someone else and I was never jealous of someone else’s beauty.  That was their brand.  You might ask yourself what have this got to do health and fitness because this is supposed to be a blog about that topic. 

Well you know the story if you have read my previous post; along the way later in my life I lost the one thing that I thought I would always have, my smokin body.  I knew that I would one day get older and that my face was not going to be the same.  I was not prepared for how my body would fail me.  So in that pursuit of fitness and health as I embraced CrossFit and the Paleo diet, initially it was to gain back my ideal body again.  I wanted to be “slim” again.  Slim was my idea of beauty.  All I could think about was what clothes I would be able to wear once I got slim.  You know the kind of clothes that only very thin models can wear.  But something happened in the last few months. 

I had a change in perception of what is beautiful.  As my body started to change, not only get smaller but to get more muscular I realized how beautiful a deltoid can be.  Sometimes when I inadvertently catch a glimpse of my arms or my legs and see a slight shadow of bicep or quadriceps I get a tingle of excitement.  I sometimes can’t hold in my amazement and have to giggle to myself.  Gaining this new appreciation for this different version or brand of beauty has made me not necessarily jealous of others but somewhat envious of others that are much more endowed with this beauty.  At the CrossFit gym I am overwhelmed on a regular basis at the beauty that I see around me.  Men and women with such perfect bodies and radiating with health and vitality.  I want that! What I want now is so much more than what I had when I was a younger.  What I had before is not good enough anymore; my current ideal of what is beautiful no longer fit into that paradigm.  So yes “Vanity, thy name is Della” but it is a vanity born of the pursuit of true beauty that can only come from being fit.