self-care

Honoring some things I chose not to do

/ thementallifeofweightlifting / Leave a comment

My training partner and I made a huge commitment this summer to train and enter a competitive weight class for our first-ever competitive Strongman contest. Speaking for myself here, that choice to do meant that there are several things this summer I chose not to do.

I didn’t say no to things because I didn’t want them. Actually, for the most part, most things I’ve said no to are because they didn’t fit with the choice to be an athlete in the way I’m attempting to be right now. This confuses me a little. I can understand more easily the feeling of saying no because I don’t want something, which can often be hard for people like me who are socialized as women. We tend to say yes just to keep the peace, because sometimes our lives and livelihoods depend on our likability.

But saying no because in other circumstances I would say yes, but I can’t right now; or saying no even when I would like that thing very much, but I don’t have the capacity to take on more right now- these are all difficult choices for me to make. I’m someone who tends to take on a LOT and loves doing that, mostly because I have so many cups that there is almost always room to fill one more. But really being conscientious of my limits and my desire to have free time for rest and recovery and play is new for me. I think training has helped encourage me to find more of a balance in what I say yes to and what I say no to.

But there is still something lost in the saying no. I’ve said no to several parties, opportunities for work and speaking gigs and having my writing more visible. I’ve said no to long weekends, beach days, cold beers, sleeping in, staying up late, and cooking some amazing recipes. I’ve said no to new restaurants, baseball games, and walks in the park with friends.

These are all things I want. And I want to take a moment to recognize that these are not things I will say no to forever. Just for now.

Because I want to say yes to other things. A clean home, good food in the refrigerator, quality time with my sweetie and my pup and cat, getting strong and competitive for the contest, giving good quality therapeutic care to my patients, cultivating my spirituality, harvesting herbs, berries, and vegetables from my garden, going for hikes with my dog, and giving myself lots of room to let what’s important emerge. When I say no to something I wish I could do, I am reminded that it’s okay to want things, and I feel grateful for knowing more deeply what it is I want.

I remember, too, that this is temporary. I will soon be saying no to competitive training, at least for a few months while in maintenance mode. It’s also helped boost my creativity by having to say no and then finding another creative way to get a similar kind of experience. I said no to buying a painting recently because I don’t have the funds to purchase art right now- but I did have enough money to buy a couple of canvases and paints, and make my own art. Not only was it a wonderful intuitive process to create abstract art, but it boosted my creative confidence. If I have to say no to something, it means I am doing something else I really want. And that the want of the other does not have to hold any kind of moral weight. It is something I will get to in time, if I still desire it.

IMG_1539

my first painting in YEARS. as long as I don’t try to paint anything specific, it turns out ok!

Ten days out…

/ thementallifeofweightlifting / Leave a comment

I’m popping in here, ten days from contest, to give you a little run-down of what’s been happening during my looooonnggg radio silence.

Q: Why haven’t you been blogging, Tenacious Bee?

A: Well, to be quite honest, since I’ve been on a weight cut my mind has been preoccupied with survivin’. And because all I would be writing about is my diet. Which would be a waste of internet space as well as brain molecules for you, dear reader. Diets are fucked and they are a way to control the masses and increase capitalist production while decreasing self-worth.

Q: Well what else has been going on??

A: Well I’ll tell you!

I’ve been making an effort to let training fold itself into the background of my life. I’m consistent, I show up and put in the work that my program demands, and then I leave for the day and allow it to be what it is. My lifting is a part of who I am, but it’s not my totality. This being my first real competitive Strongman contest, I am going to play a lot of it by ear and by feel. And at this point, I’m about as strong as I’m going to be by September 14.

Instead of allowing myself to be preoccupied with the upcoming event, I’ve been committing to focus on the here and now. I’ve been reveling in my amazing garden that’s bursting at the seams with tomatoes, cucumbers, herbs, peppers, raspberries, carrots, onions, shallot, and zucchini. At least three times a week I make a beautiful salad entirely out of garden delights! My favorite is a tomato, shallot, cucumber, basil, mint salad with a squeeze of lime and hefty dose of salt. It’s fresh and crispy and a delight when paired with baked chicken legs that have been marinating in my favorite spices.

Now that it’s September, we’re planning our fall garden and all the anticipation that accompany new ideas and possibilities. On a recent trip to the North Bay, my sweetie and I picked up a bunch of seeds which we’ll put in our seed starter this week. I’m most excited about the giant white kohlrabi and the watermelon radishes we will be inviting into our garden, but I’m also stoked about the various cabbages and beans we’re about to let nature work its magic on.

IMG_0302

Something’s emerging…. potential! Possibility! Hope… Determination… germination 😉

I’ve also managed to work on several papers and presentations in my field of psychology, which is no small thing to be sure. I’ve even read a book- I read The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. (Powerful- highly recommended.) And finally, I cleaned out two rooms in my house that I left abandoned and neglected for years. Finally these rooms have purpose, light, and fresh air rather than a shitload of cardboard boxes, old paperwork, mold, and A DEAD FUCKING RAT!!! THAT’S RIGHT I FOUND A DEAD FUCKING RAT that apparently my cat dragged in there probably a few months ago? and left there to decay and rot. No wonder we had a fly problem this year, uuggghhh!!! YUCK.

So, yeah, all this is to say- there is life outside of lifting, but I’m still really happy to be on this adventure. I won’t be sad when it’s over and burgers and booze are back in the picture, but damn if I’m not so grateful for the chance to learn what’s really important to me. Stay tuned for more on that….

Back after a short hiatus (Recovery is Queen!)

/ thementallifeofweightlifting / Leave a comment

Hi, all of you three people who read this blog!

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve blogged regularly and I’m here to explain myself with the following reasons:

  1. It’s actually summer for me. I work full-time year round, and September-June I’m also in school for a doctorate. So these past few weeks I’ve really been soaking up the summer vacation.
  2. I started a calorie deficit two weeks ago and it’s killing me! Not really, but certainly my enthusiasm and motivation is a bit lower than when I’m properly fed. So I mostly conserve my thinking energy for what really matters: My job, my friends, my family.
  3. I got my period this week. This makes me feel even more starving and grouchy, and my recovery is a lot slower than usual.
  4. I spent 30 hours last weekend moving heavy furniture and getting my impromptu creative juices flowing due to a furniture mishap in my office, which needed to be fixed before the start of the work week. That burnt out my body AND my mind, and threw off my training for the week.

That’s kind of what I’m here to talk about today- not the burnout part, you can read last week’s entry for that- but the recovery part.

As an aging athlete (with aforementioned full-time job, academics, and family) who is training for a challenging contest at a calorie deficit, my biggest priority is my recovery. This is all worth nothing if I lose my job and break my body and drain my energy sources and can’t recover. I have to remind myself: THIS IS A HOBBY! IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE FUNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

So when the Great Furniture Debacle of 2018 happened last weekend, and Monday I couldn’t squat for shit (but definitely peed), I took two additional days off from my training program. That’s right: I had taken Saturday and Sunday off from my program, and then when Monday went down the toilet I packed it in after those heavy squats and took Monday and Tuesday completely off.

When I say “completely off,” I actually mean it. My training partner, Rage Butterfly, spends her off days doing this, I’m not kidding:

I generally go out to [Local Wilderness Park] Thursday late afternoons for a trail run/swim/run, and tomorrow I’m going to throw in some heavy hill carries as well (I’ve got plenty of logs, sandbags, and an nasty bucket o’gravel) during the first run portion. Yes, the second run is wet, it’s good practice for [Spartan] race conditions. Run is under 5 miles.

You know what I did on my day off? I cooked a boatload of food, 20 meals for the week actually, and in between prepping sat around in the garden eating tomatoes off the vine. I did a load of laundry, took a hot Epsom salt bath, and talked with my brother for a couple of hours. My partner and I talked about whether we should paint the walls of the living room to spruce it up, and if so, what color. The biggest adventure was driving to Trader Joe’s with my bedhead still properly intact to pick up some staples I’d missed during the previous day’s grocery run. Later, I watched a couple episodes of a TV show and did some research on the internet for an upcoming vacation. I drank my fish oil and magnesium and was in bed by 10pm.

THAT’S my kind of day off.

Anyway, I have learned over the years that as much as I enjoy pushing my body, I have to really, really rest at least one day per week. No stress, no plans, no obligations, and certainly no physical intensity.

So, back to those two days off last week, Monday and Tuesday: It screwed up my program a little bit, but here is a vid of my squats on Wednesday. These were a do-over from Monday, when I couldn’t make it through the first set of five and my 85% felt like death:

(Thanks to C who is “helping me brace” by cracking me up)

These squats felt like butter. They were not effortless, as you can see from my elbow positioning- it did still feel challenging to keep my chest up and fire my abs. Part of that is because I’ve lost some mass in my abdominal area and now I’m having to re-learn how to brace against my belt (the physics has changed) which throws me off a bit.

But what I’m attempting to demonstrate is that taking time off really DOES work, and it’s so necessary for my body to be reminded that I love it and appreciate all the hard work it does to keep me well-regulated. If I treat my body well it treats me well back. I didn’t used to have this relationship with my body, but I’m so grateful for that now: When I listen, and respond, in time my body can heal. Yes it’s taken me YEARS to have this relationship with my body- I used to feel so chaotic and disconnected from my body- and I am so grateful for the ways our relationship has grown more loving and connected over time.

I was able to finish most of the 6 days of programming this week in 4 days, by adding my accessory exercises throughout the week and limiting my main lifts (my coach said to eliminate one pressing day). I even took Sunday completely off this week (see above). I’m super glad I took these breaks and highly recommend prioritizing recovery for bleeding, old, preoccupied athletes with full-time jobs like myself!

A “less-than-ideal” training situation

/ thementallifeofweightlifting / Leave a comment

Hey, it’s been a while. Somehow last week I lost a bit of steam when it comes to writing, mostly because I started running a calorie deficit and everything felt like hell. My body is pretty irritated with me, like one might be with a too-rigid parent, for not giving it what it wants when it wants it. But, as one does when all the joy is sucked out of one’s life, my body is complying. I feel sad about making my body bend to my will because I love my body’s unexpected free will, but I have to drop some weight to make it into my qualifying weight class at contest. The calorie deficit means that even last week’s deload week felt like rotten bananas and old garbage.

I have said it before and I’ll say it again: I DO NOT RECOMMEND being in a calorie deficit while also peaking for strength. Don’t do it. Be better than me.

So then, as if the weakness wasn’t bad enough, this weekend I spent about thirty hours changing my work office around. That meant lugging heavy furniture up and down a flight of fifteen stairs and moving books, bookcases, desks, and tons of paperwork for hours straight. Most of the time I went long spans of time without eating or drinking water. I worked a sixteen hour day on Sunday, including three hours at IKEA. Only one of those hours was spent in line! Someone told me I should call my union rep on myself for forcing myself to work a double with no lunch breaks.

IMG_1609I think that if Buddhists went to hell it would probably be filled with assembling IKEA furniture- it’s an odd combination of meditative and terrible. Buddhists, or maybe engineers. Like, it’s satisfying to see a design take shape, but my poor fingers and back from hunching over and screwing in tiny screws!

So, naturally, come Monday’s programming I was toast. Not only did I not get to sleep until 1:30am and then back awake at 7 to fix more stuff in the office before my work day started, but when I hit my first set of squats below my working weight I felt like I was lifting elephants. I added 20# to that to hit my working weight and I couldn’t even get through the first set. I even peed a little on my last attempt! That is rare for me.

It was also a sign to pack it in. A few things were happening at the same time. One, my body was sore, cramped, and neurodisconnected from itself- I couldn’t “think” of how to fire my glutes or quads, I could hardly feel my abs, and I couldn’t “remember” how to brace (hence the pee, I think). Also, I was at the gym in the evening which is unusual for me. The flow is different, the vibe is different, the people are different, and I felt different. I couldn’t get my grounding.

Plus both Mars and Mercury are retrograding so everything’s a little bananas.

So I picked up my shit and went to the grocery store. Another aftereffect of spending all weekend at the office is that I didn’t get to meal prep so I’m having to do it piece by piece. That meant going to Trader Joe’s on a Monday evening with all the post-work zombies (myself included). As soon as I picked up my heavy grocery bag and headed to the car, my body said NOPE and I knew my heavy lifting was seriously done for the next day or two.

(Don’t worry, I didn’t get injured, just a stubborn NO cried forth from my bones.)

I’m taking the next couple of days off and focusing on stretching and mobility, and will get back on the donkey on Wednesday- it’s peak time for Nationals! Stay tuned!

Searching for meaning in my training

/ thementallifeofweightlifting / Leave a comment

It’s funny when the same thing comes up again and again, over and over. This time, it was about my growing strength.

The first conversation was with my classmate, to whom I found myself saying “I’m the strongest I’ve ever been.” “Ever?” He said. “Yes, ever. This is the strongest I’ve ever been in my life.” It felt good to say that and mean it.

My body has been ready for this my whole life: To be strong. I have become tired of not being able to carry my own weight, to feel burdened by my body and its history.

The second time it happened came from the other direction. My coach and I were talking about various aspects of training, including the fact that my body is recomposing rather than losing pounds (meaning, the eating plan I’m on has me gaining more muscle and losing more fat, but the pounds are staying about the same). He said, “That’s actually a really good place to be. You’re the strongest you’ve ever been.” “It’s really true,” I said.

My whole life, I’ve felt like my body was capable of being really strong, thick, powerful, and capable. I’ve never been much of a dancer (although in fourth grade I did a school-wide performance where I interpretive danced to a Eurythmics song). I’m not particularly nimble or sproingy by nature. But I am a damn good deadlifter, and can carry five giant bags of groceries all at once. (#TrainingLifeGoalz)

But this training program I’m doing right now, where I’m training for a specific goal rather than just putting in work, does something to me psychologically. It gives me a purpose, a meaning to the work I am putting in. I tell myself it’s about the contest in September, but really I think I just need a purpose outside my immediate situation to help me keep track of the long-game. To stay in the immediate feeling is too much, too overwhelming sometimes. If there is some kind of destination, even though that destination is not the “end”, it helps me keep going when the accessory work gets boring and the lifts get heavy. Having a long view takes the pressure off of having to be good at what I’m doing right now. It reminds me that there is something else I’m lifting for.

Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust concentration camps, expanded on Nietzche’s idea of having our own “why” in life: “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” Frankl’s life experience led him to understand that if one can find meaning in their situation, one becomes more prepared to survive it. Witnessing the lives of the people in the concentration camp where he lived, the sickness and the misery, he noted that those who maintained a sense of meaning– be it keeping family and loved ones in mind, or in Frankl’s case, writing a book on scraps of paper that he kept hidden in his bedding– stayed healthier. People need a sense of meaning in order to keep going.

Though I am in no way trying to compare our situations, Frankl’s experience and mind has helped me through many dark times in my life. Training is by no means a “dark time,” but it certainly challenges me to put my all into everything and survive what feels like a momentary potential of death or serious injury. It is a psychological game as much as a physical one, and teaches me to trust my body, trust my coach, trust my history, and trust myself to show up for these moments where the implement feels heavy, scary, and overwhelming. It’s a small laboratory which helps me experiment with how I might handle the more terrible things in life.

We are now in a situation in this country where children are again being stolen from their parents (this happened with impunity to Black people and Indigenous people for centuries here, and it is happening again) and locked away in camps. Hard-won rights are at risk of being lost, and it’s being plainly exposed that those “rights” are built for some but not for all. Like the right to bear arms. Philando Castile was a licensed gun owner and shot in front of his partner and daughter because the officer was racist. This is our country. We can’t pretend it “doesn’t happen here.”

The meaning we find in it all has to come from somewhere. If my body is strong I can be strong for the people who need me. I can think more clearly about my actions and how they support or antagonize my white supremacist indoctrination. I can know more readily where I am located in this system. I can survive my own white fragility and turn my anger to where it needs to go: Toward finding alternative systems, alternative structures, and an end to the way oppression plays out over and over again in this country built on bloodshed, genocide, and terror.

I can carry my own weight when I’m strong, so I can better help carry those whom I have wounded by my structural position over generations as a colonizer. That is my bigger purpose, the long game: It is Audre Lorde’s words, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

10175078_1422008498051394_764790018_n

How I balance life with training

/ thementallifeofweightlifting / Leave a comment

In a recent post, I talked about how I have turned exercise from a form of self-punishment into something that provides me with containment, self-care, and encourages self-love. That transformation did not come easily, and there were several things I learned in the process. I’d like to share with you the most important lessons I have learned so far.

  • I pick a sustainable schedule for my lifestyle, including times of the day and days of the week, and stick to that. Even if all I can muster on the day-of is showing up and stretching, I stick to it. If I find that I consistently am unable to stick to that schedule, or it’s burning me out, it’s not the right schedule for me. I’ve discovered that some of the best gains are had with a 3- or 4- day a week schedule because I have time to recover (that’s where the muscles are made anyway).

  • If I wake up in the morning feeling headachey, sick, stressed out, exhausted, or starving, I take a day off. I eat well and abundantly. If I have a food craving, I satisfy it. I stay in bed instead of go to the gym. I take an epsom salt bath. If I can, I go for a walk in nature. I go to analysis if it’s scheduled. I write. I take it slow and easy. I eliminate extra things in the day like social events and errands that are unnecessary. I drink lots of water and consume sodium. I drink electrolytes. I have learned that this is what overtraining feels like in my body, and it is communicating to me that I am over-doing it.  I have learned how to listen to that message and take it seriously.

  • If I don’t “feel like” going to the gym, I go anyway. I train anyway. *This is a different feeling than the overtraining feeling of actually being sick and headachey and starving. The “I don’t feel like it” is more of an emotional experience than a physical one, though it may have physical manifestations. It has taken me YEARS to figure out the difference, but now that I know, I am always honest with myself about which feeling it actually is and respond accordingly.

  • I remember the long game. If I am actually training for a competition, I commit in advance to an exercise and recovery protocol with my coach who works specifically with me to track my body’s response to my program. If there is no competition, I am not training: I am exercising. Exercising is for well-being and health and to support everything else in my life. Showing up at the gym becomes about building on something for the long haul. I remember that if I lower my intensity but keep showing up, my work will accumulate and I will have more strength and skill down the road.

  • The number one thing for me as a Masters athlete and as someone with a very stressful job is to prioritize recovery. I keep a workout schedule that gives me built-in days off to rest so my body can make use of the work I’ve put in. A consistent couple of days off can do wonders for my long-term health and my performance at the gym.

  • This also includes eating. If I’m training for a competition, I do my best to keep my diet abundant with plenty of protein, a variety of carbs, and my favorite fats to keep me satiated and to keep the food delicious. I do my best to cut out most alcohol and sweets and chips unless I am in a position where the craving is sending me a message about giving myself what I need. I don’t see cravings as bad. I see cravings as a communication that I am not getting enough of something. IT IS OKAY TO HAVE ENOUGH. On this note, I take the time to food prep once a week so that I have a better chance of feeling like I always have enough. This feels to me like a form of self-love: To provide myself enough of what I need.

For me, over time and trial and error I have found activities and sports that I enjoy and will keep putting the work into. Sometimes I go through cycles: Swimming in the summer, squatting more in the winter, more CrossFit in the spring, a couple of weeks completely off in the dead of winter. There are so many things to do with your body! I’ve learned that what you love and enjoy may change as you change and grow. It’s an ever-evolving relationship with movement and your body. Soak it up as best you can while you can.

IMG_1170

Sometimes, for those of us who drink, a beer is absolutely necessary. Pictured: A beer with a large foam head next to the book “Killers of the Flower Moon”

From “exercise as punishment” to “exercise as self-care”

/ thementallifeofweightlifting / 1 Comment

(content warning: references to disordered eating and self-punishment)

I am often asked, “How do you find the time to exercise?” I think this question comes from folks who are busy, just like me, but who also maybe expect exercise to be a bummer and uncomfortable, something they “should” do rather than something they want to do. It’s easy for these cultural messages, like fat-shaming messages and obesity concern-trolling (“I’m just worried about your health!”) to turn something that could be fun and enjoyable into something punishing.

If we go beyond these critical cultural messages about “diet and exercise” being the gateway to a moral and worthy existence, we can find that there are so many ways to have a body and so many ways to move it. To me, choosing something that is enjoyable, gives me positive feedback, offers a community, shows me growth over time, and that I can commit to consistently has been the best way for me to “find the time” to exercise.

It took me several years to find a kind of movement that I enjoyed doing. In that process, I also began learning a practice of self-care through developing protective boundaries that support me doing what I choose to do with my body. One of those boundaries is to make a sincere commitment to myself to show up for myself. For me, that means committing to my gym schedule unless I am overtrained, overstressed, or need to compromise for work or family.

My ideal gym schedule is somewhere between 3-5 days per week depending on what the rest of my life requires from me and what I feel I can commit to, and so that is what is programmed for me. I’ve tried anywhere from 3-7 days per week, and I’m at my happiest when I commit to four days a week and give myself bonus days if I feel up to it. I will adjust this frequency depending on what else is happening in my life, such as stress, travel, or work and home obligations, but unless I am severely ill/injured or on vacation, I have a commitment to myself that I trust my program and show up as planned.

IMPORTANT MESSAGE HERE: I do this not because I think I’m “bad” if I don’t go to the gym. I do this because of how much of my self I have invested in my lifting. My community is there. I can see proof of my work making me stronger. Lifting gives me consistent feedback only when I consistently show up and put in the work. I need this feedback in my life, and over time I have benefitted from it.

My history with exercise is complicated. As a young person, I enjoyed moving my body.  As an adult, going to the gym turned into a form of punishment. It became a painful experience of taking out all my hatred of myself onto my body. I would also use exercise to punish myself for eating too much. Yes- I have a history of disordered eating and body dysmorphia. While I won’t get into the details of that, I will say that weightlifting and CrossFit coupled with intuitive eating and psychoanalysis have transformed my punitive and self-destructive mind by helping me understand my relationship with myself, and opening up new options for interacting with my body besides self-hatred and self-punishment.

Eating, exercise, and training can actually be containing, supportive, encouraging experiences, and can offer me positive feedback and a sense of wellness and goodness. I’m so fortunate to have discovered this! But I did not stumble upon it by accident. I realized over the course of a couple of years of exercise-as-punishment that how I was approaching my body was unsustainable, and only served to reinforce my self-loathing.

Psychoanalysis gave me the freedom and psychic space to heal, and I could begin to give myself permission to make different choices about how I approached exercise. Now, lifting has become a space where I have committed to taking care of myself. It has given me an opportunity to trust the process. I have seen amazing strength and skill gains through my programming, but the programming only works if I stick with it.

My commitment to training is different from my commitment to exercise. When there is a competition coming up, I train for that. I made certain trade-offs in the rest of my life to prioritize training. But when there is not a competition on the horizon, my goals and commitments are different. For example, at the moment I am on summer break from my doctoral program, so I have a lot more time to commit to training. Once school begins again after my contest, I know my priorities will shift. At that time, I expect that my focus in the gym will be continue increasing my strength, but at a slower pace since I will have much less time to train and to recover than I do now. During the school year, I will focus more on exercise to support my life as a therapist and student rather than on the intensity of training and competition, which sucks up a lot of psychic and emotional space (not to mention 12-15 hours a week of actual gym time).

In my next post, I’ll share with you some things that have worked for me to keep myself consistent and accountable. Until then, I hope if there’s one thing you remember is that this is all a process. This is your life. Life itself is a process, one which unfolds and shifts and grows and evolves. There is only one final outcome, and that’s death, so everything else is simply a part of being an alive human being. You are always learning! You will make mistakes as you learn! And if you pay attention to your wins and your errors, and don’t let the shame monster gobble you up, I believe you can learn how to live your life in the best way that works for you.

IMG_1114

My cat srsly knows how to self-care. We can all learn a lot from hanging out with my cat.