Failure is My Middle Name or "Chubby Girl Gonna Chub"

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I used to be kinda fat. Like can't shop in a regular store fat. Order from the extended catalog sizes fat. Size-18-but-your-friends-pretend-you're-big-boned fat.

Not like, Learning Channel fat, but I was a chubster. Chubby is my natural inclination. I gain weight insanely easily, and I was never one of those "Oh, my 20 year old metabolism will save me" types. Nope. I went super chub the moment I entered college and stayed that way until I forced my body to comply with my wishes when I was 23. I went from hovering around 200# to 142# over the course of 6 months in my last year of graduate school.

That was the first full scale battle I waged against my weight. I've waged two others in the last 20 or so years, but pretty much every day is a minor skirmish. Sometimes I gain ground, often I lose it. I've been fighting the same 15 goddamn pounds for the last 10 years.

Are you enjoying this military metaphor? 

Last year before the state powerlifting meet, I was 77.1kg. That's 169.6 pounds in Real American. I then proceeded to cut to 71kg (156.2RA) over the course of 3 months. It sucked. It was brutal. I was reed thin at the end of it (also a fucking goddess but whatevs) and determined to stay there.

Sadly, I'm also super old in addition to being unbelievably lazy. So my weight slid up and down for the next little while as I tried to determine WTF my actual maintenance calories are. I make this difficult for myself by not tracking as consistently as I should or thinking that a splash of half and half or a pat of butter or like a dozen Girl Scout cookies won't make much difference. You know. Small stuff.

Here's the thing. For me, in this stupid fucking body, it does. My body loooooooves to be squishy. It's my default setting. I can put on 5# in a weekend. Don't believe me? I have data. It's not as though I was mainlining Crisco, either. I'm talking I had a couple of beers and a burger. With a side salad. I can choose salad and still gain 5# in 2 days. It's like a superpower. The shittiest superpower ever. 

Sadly my clothes don't expand.

After my vein procedure in February (it worked! Huzzah!) I sat around for 2 weeks. In compression-wear and sweat pants. Hard to tell how much weight you're gaining when you're crammed into Spanx covered with giant pants. Could I have tracked, cut down my eating, worn my FitBit? Well sure, I could have done that. But I didn't. Because chubby girl gonna chub.

Actual picture of me eating frosting from a can. I'm kidding. 

I ate an entire container of sea salt caramels from Costco.

Bulk chub, bitches.

Once I was allowed to lift again, I did. Here's the thing...it felt like shit. It still kinda feels like shit. I'm still doing it, but I'm having to force myself into the gym. I'm still reestablishing the habit. I'm a huge lump of sloth, remember?

I feel you, sloth. I feel you.

Today I weighed in at 77.3kg (that's 170RA). This number makes me NOT HAPPY. I have put on TWELVE POUNDS over the last 2 months. Now some of this is water after ending a water cut, and some is hormonal bloat (your welcome for the TMI) but it fucks up the way my pants fit, you dig?  I know why this happened. I got lazy with tracking, I ate too many cookies, I didn't drink enough water. It's my fault. All my fault. 

I've always held out hope that there is a promised land where my weight will stabilize and I'll be able to eat without having to weigh and track every goddamn thing. That after years...no...decades of work and dedication that I'll reach a point where I can just...live. When every goddamn day doesn't have to be a battle. I've tried a lot of different methods over the years, and they all worked for a while, but my baser nature ends up fucking everything up eventually. Chubsters gonna chub. 

At the moment I'm coming to terms with the fact that I'm going to have to track what I eat forever. There's really no way around it. There is no end point. No destination. Just more goddamn road, and that road is paved with Samoas. And I can't eat them. Ever. Blah blah moderation. I've proven that I can't be trusted with cookies. Or large containers of caramels from Costco. Or bags of chocolate chips. I'll overeat anything. You got a loaf of bread you want cleaned up? Bring it here. 

77 goddamn fucking kilos. Son of a bitch. 

I'm migrating over to Cronometer from MFP (fuck MFP). It is clear I have to track, but I hate MFP with the burning fire of 1000 suns. Cronometer seems fine, and a new app makes it feel more like a game again instead of a punishment I've brought down on myself for 20 years of inconsistency and failure. I'm back in the gym and I'm going to work on my weaknesses-imalances and mobility problems I've neglected in the past. I'll be doing yoga more frequently as that helps me mind and body. And I'll be...le sigh...running again. 

Last year I decided I wasn't going to buy gym clothes or gym equipment this year. Basically I have no choice but to figure this shit out because I cleared out all my big clothes. I thought I wasn't going to get chubby again. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa LOLZ FOREVER. 

I got these pants when I was 12# lighter. 

I think I heard them crying.

Progress isn't linear. Backsliding is inevitable, at least for someone like me. I try not to be all-or-nothing, but "all" needs to be my default setting. This 41 year old body doesn't leave me a lot of room for mistakes, and this has to stop now. I intended to gain weight after the state meet...but not this way. Not the way I always fuck everything up. I know I must weigh and track all the things. I have to watch my weight and measurements like a hawk, and I need to get on top of things before they reach critical mass.

Critical mass being splitting my goddamn pants. Ain't NOBODY wants to see my cottage cheese ass. No time like the present to pick up where I left off. Tracked, ate, drank all the water, lifted all the weights. Yoga in the morning, rinse repeat.

Exactly 4oz beef, 125g asparagus, and 148g of potato.

Son of a bitch. 

It's Not You, It's Me or "You're Not Special, I Ghosted Everyone"

I took a break from social media starting 11/1. I intended to stay off FB and IG until after 1/1/19, and I did. Longer than that, actually. I ventured back onto Facebook a few weeks back, and at first it was fine. The app never went back onto my phone, so it was computer only.

It didn't take long for me to remember why I left in the first place.

There's a lot of vitriol on Facebook these days, and sometimes it comes from unexpected quarters. I unfollowed a lot (and I mean a lot) of people during the 2016 election because I couldn't handle feeling enraged all the time and the unfollowing helped. Fast forward to recently and my generally peaceful feed full of dogs and kids and vacation slides will suddenly vomit up a wildly inaccurate meme about vaccines or politics and I learn something I didn't want to know about a person in my social circle.

A lot is two words, people.

Add to this constant posts about various MLMs, a billion sponsored ads about things I didn't even looks up (WTF, big brother?), and the ever present vaguebooking status updates. (Seriously, what is with this? If you don't want people to know what's wrong, then why post at all? WHY?) I'm just sort of...tired. I used to post quite a bit, everything from stream of consciousness posts to pictures to memes. On occasion it would spark a fun discussion, but mostly I was just screaming into the void and I can do that by myself. 

Or with a friend, whatever.

Instagram used to be fun for me. It's less negative overall than FB, slightly less sponsored content, more pretty pictures of places and funny pictures of dogs. Most of the content I followed was gym or animal related. For a while I used it to track my workouts, because I watched a lot of other people's content and seeing real people working on their goals was inspiring to me.

Then I started thinking about how I looked in the videos. If what I was wearing was flattering. If my veins and cellulite were too much on display or if my belly was hanging out. I started paying attention to how many views a post got. How many likes. In short...it was making me feel like your basic thirsty bitch. I hate the way that feels. 

I am deeply insecure, but I don't want to be thirsty. 

I opened up IG a few days ago because I'd read a dialogue exchange in a book that really struck me and I wanted to post it somewhere. I scrolled for a few minutes and...yeah. I don't need to go back down that rabbit hole. Instagram is also a place I end up comparing myself unfavorably to others. Especially now. I haven't worked out for two weeks because I'm not supposed to use my legs. Watching other people lift is bittersweet. The vein procedure I had has caused me some pain, and I've put on 5# just sitting around doing nothing. I'm very afraid that the procedure didn't work and it will have to be repeated...or worse that I'll ultimately require surgery to fix my legs and groin. I'll try squatting again this week, but it could potentially be a very long road back. I need to focus on that, and less on reps for the 'gram. 

I'm on the fence about Snapchat. I don't use it as much as I did previously, but I have a tendency to vomit a lot of stupid shit into my Story. The funny thing is, I really don't ever watch other people's stories, and I don't know if they watch mine. I'm guessing not, because I'm pretty sure nobody really gives a fuck, and that's probably for the best. It's a speedy text-plus-picture format, and I like that, but otherwise...it's just texts that don't stick. Disappearing ink for the modern age.

As far as the ghosting. I deactivated my FB and IG completely for a few days while I decided what I wanted to do with them. I've arrived at let them be active, but idle. I don't want people to think they've been blocked or unfriended, because it's not about y'all. It's about me.

Social media has it's own gravity.

I'm not dead. We're still friends. I'm just going to be over here hiding in plain sight. K? K.

Just like this. 

Life and Lifting Lessons or "Hasta La Vista 72kg"

I made weight for yesterday's powerlifting meet, but only just, and the cut leading up to it was brutal.

I swear it gets smaller every time I wear it.

Saturday was the Wisconsin State Powerlifting meet. Last year's rookie session was my first PL meet and I was terrified. If I hadn't had the support of the 920 Power Club I would never have done something like that. It's difficult to describe how much the support of the team adds to an "individual" sport like PL...at least the support of THIS team. This year was no different. I can honestly say if it hadn't been for the team I probably would've skipped the drive to Racine for yesterday's meet.

I stole this from the FB post. 

These people are fun, supportive, and humble in spite of being really (really) good lifters. We laugh, help each other get in and out of lifting belts, scream "squeeze your ass!" at each other...and random strangers. You want a hype squad? This is the best one out there. 

I had a rough couple of weeks leading up to this meet. I tweaked my back a month or two ago doing banded deadlifts and since then I've been timid with that lift. My squats went from feeling amazing (including hitting a personal best at 215# in November) to being inconsistent and painful thanks to an inexplicably cranky hip and these stupid varicose veins. The cut to 72kg (from like 74, it's not as though I had to cut a LOT of weight) felt almost insurmountable this time around. Saturday morning I drove through blizzard conditions for almost 3 hours to reach the meet venue. It wasn't going to be my best day.

I can't help feeling like I don't deserve this medal.

Strangely, my squats felt amazing on the platform. I was nervous, but I lowered my opener a bit to make sure I would hit it, and I did. My second squat felt fantastic which was almost confusing because they'd felt so shit for weeks. My third squat would've been a meet PR, but I got red lighted for depth. Coach (and others) said it looked plenty deep so I'm left feeling a little robbed...but even that squat felt perfect. 

Bench was another story. I missed a lift I have made 100 times (probably more, actually). I missed it twice. I'd like to blame white-knuckling the steering wheel for 3 hours for this failure, but that's a cop-out. One good thing about that drive? I was so emotionally exhausted after trying not to die that I didn't have the energy to be upset. 

I invoked the name of Jesus a few times, and I'm an atheist. 

Deadlifts were okay. My opener this year was higher than where I finished last year (at the time that was a lifetime PR) and it came right off the floor with little effort. My second dead was fine, I've hit it before and I will again. The third was sort of a YOLO. It would've been a meet and lifetime PR. It came off the floor, but I didn't have it in me to bring it all the way up to lockout. 

A solid deadlift will leave you seeing stars and weak in the knees. 

So will other things. 

Yesterday's total was 10kg higher than last year's total at the same meet and I was 5.2kg lighter. That's an accomplishment, albeit a small one. More importantly I won my category, scoring 12 points for my team. If I'm proud of anything about yesterday, I'm proud of that. 

My competition moniker is "Third Place Amy". Not yesterday at least.

Competing with this Crash of Grhinos is always an enjoyable experience. I came to athletics late in life, so witnessing young women excel at this kind of lifting leaves me in awe. I didn't have the discipline or patience to pursue those kind of goals when I was that age. In addition, there are plenty of women like me who found this sport later...and they are crushing goals and setting records. It's inspirational (and aspirational) for me, but I'm playing the long game. I'll set records when everyone else is dead. Based on my family history, ridiculous longevity is my superpower. Come see me in the 80-89 year old age bracket. 

So what were my lessons? 

1. You can only do your best on any given day, and that's enough. I knew I was going to have a rough meet but I did it anyway. I didn't give up, I adjusted my expectations. That's being a grown up. Live to fight another day.

2. Lifting is cyclical. You go up, you go down. Progress isn't linear, and a step back now doesn't mean a step forward isn't coming. 

3. Life is a lot happier if you can celebrate the successes of your friends as much as you celebrate your own. I am so damn proud of everyone. They accomplished amazing things! I can't wait to see what they do in the future. 

So what's next for me? Well, I'm going to stop trying to be 72kg. I'm going to intentionally gain weight in a controlled manner and see where that takes my total. What I've noticed over the last year is that I feel strongest around 74kg. I realize that's only a 5# swing, but it makes a difference. So I'm going to listen to Alex and put weight back on slowly. Maybe that means I'll be 75-77kg at the end of this experiment, but if I'm also squatting 100kg and deadlifting 135kg? IDGAF.

Not dirty bulking, promise.

At the beginning of February, I'm finally getting my leg veins fixed. This means I won't be able to squat or deadlift for 2-3 weeks. I'll get to wear some super sexy compression garments for a while.

I love how they use people with nice legs to advertise these.

Like anyone with legs like this needs medical level compression.

And not just socks. They don't go up high enough. Since I'm lucky enough to have veins all the way up into my ladygarden, I get to wear long line compression underpants (I will not say panties and you can't make me). You know who makes those? Spanx. Fucking Spanx. I swore I'd never put on shapewear again, and here I am. 

This will all be worth it when the bloodflow to my legs is fixed. With any luck my squats and deads will be better than ever because the blood that became trapped in that maze of conduits to nowhere will get oxygenated and delivered to the appropriate muscle tissue. 

All that blood, just wasted.

While my leg (and ladyparts) recover, I'll focus on the bench press. The stupid fucking bench press. Bring on all the upper body accessories. Lemme get my back in order for tank top season. 

I wish I had Trex arms for bench. I'm more like a condor.

The plan is to put competition on the back burner while I eat, recover, and get stronger. Right now I'm hoping for the Wolf Open once again. That would allow me to test out my bigger (hopefully much stronger) physique and compare it to this past summer as well as give me a baseline as I go into my 42nd year. 

Only good things coming. Onward and upward.