Next Level Shit!

I thought I was pretty much blogged out for a while about training, but no. I'm a blabbermouth blogger! To my trainer Khris:

I already knew that I loved my training. I have more energy and I have less pain. I'm happy with my weight loss and wearing regular size clothes. It seemed like the hard work is behind me. Not true. The hard work is really still in front of me.

I've found that it's actually easier to work at things when the results seem so dramatic and so far away. It seems like it's getting harder now that the results seem smaller and less visible. They are truly inner results. I go weeks now without losing pounds. But I gain muscle and I gain energy and confidence and I'm having fun and making small improvements and maintaining.

But maintenance is a deceiving word. I'm not just maintaining. I'm still improving. If I wasn't doing training, I would just be maintaining. Training is some next level shit. I don't do the same workout every session. Even the sit ups and leg lifts aren't the same each time.

You have me do crazy stuff with steps and ropes and machines and bouncing balls while doing lunge lines. It's something different every time. And I'm different every time. I would never do this for myself. Even if I knew how. You are my coach. I need you.

I know I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing because I had to rest last week after going out and doing things every day.

I hit a little tired wall. I hit a wall after going out EVERY day during a week! I also had another emotional release that made no sense during that rest day after not having one of those for a while.

That means I'm moving forward! I'm ready for the next level shit! I'm so glad I have someone who believes in me in a way that takes me there.

Khris, you inspire me! I can look at you and say, Because of you, I didn't give up."

Acceptance Comes Before Breakthroughs

There's a girl in a little Facebook Fibromyalgia group that reminds me a lot of me where I was a few years ago. She's having a really tough time working and she's desperately trying everything to help her pain and fatigue. She's always reading up on things and trying new supplements or medications.

She talks about feeling envious of people on television and in movies who do fun activities and seem to have energy to do things. She also talks about the emotional pain of people not believing that her pain is real. Thinking she is lazy or doesn't push herself.

I've been there. I'm not exactly there now and it's tricky for me to talk to her without sounding like a reformed alcoholic or smoker who knows it all. I don't know it all, that's for sure. She talked tonight about acceptance.

I remember that during the time I went through the process of being told that retiring was my best option and actually dealing with all the paperwork and appointments and then selling my house and being retired, I had to do a lot of accepting.

I had to accept my condition, which included lots of saying its name out loud. I had to accept my new financial situation. I had to accept my body and all of its physical limitations including its look and asking for help. I think that I had to fully accept everything before I was able to open up and break through any denial.

In the most confusing of ways I had to accept who I was and that I was enough just the way I was, including the pain, the fat, the hurts, the feeling sorry for myself, and everything else in order to stop looking for quick fixes.

If I was enough, I didn't need a quick fix. If I had a thyroid problem, that could explain my difficulty losing weight, but it didn't help me lose weight, so who cares? If my feet hurt because I had bone spurs, they still hurt. All those things were about proving to other people or to myself that I wasn't faking my difficulties.

I knew I wasn't faking. If I really just believed I was enough, any self-development I embarked on was based on my own desires and not on the belief that I needed to do something to make me acceptable to others.

So, now that I have gone through a big breakthrough during the last several months, I think that I'm in need of that lesson again. Maybe this girl is asking these questions not for me to help her, but for her to help me.

I am at a great point, but I still have many things that I need to accept again in order to move to the next breakthrough. New things. I still get jealous of people who get to do fun things.  Even though I have more energy than I did before and I do way more things than I used to, there are still things I'd like to do and don't have anyone to do them with. It's tricky when you are at ease being by yourself, but you'd like to do things with people sometimes.

I love the holiday season, but I still get up and down happy and sad depending on what I'm doing. I can't keep the holiday high going. I try to do Christmasy things, and they make me happy, but it doesn't last.

Every year I have to remember that holidays aren't the same as an adult. I don't get to see my family anymore the way we did as kids and even now the nephews and niece are older and don't come to stay with me for days and do things anymore.

So this December, I shall enjoy the Christmas season and not place too many expectations on myself or on the season. And I shall consider what else needs accepting before I crash through the next set of walls into 2018.

Bursting with Joy

When my little nephew came to my new apartment after I sold my townhouse when I retired from teaching  and moved on up to the suburbs on the West side (haha), he told me it was bursting with joy! His body was bursting with joy as he gave me that news!

When I first started working out, I had some odd and random emotional releases in the way of crying and sadness and unfortunate bursts of hurt feelings and crying for really no reason.

My trainer and my doctor figured that they were from the release of just everything that had been held in the muscles that are now breaking down and rebuilding in better, stronger, healthier ways.

These emotional releases went away after awhile until today. I had a great workout, as always. But my legs were nice and wobbly at the end. On my way out to my car, I just started crying. But this emotional release wasn't sad or crabby or filled with hurt feelings about anything.

I was bursting with joy. When I started exercising back in August,  I was doing it to enhance my weight loss and trying to do more with my life. I never in a million years imagined that what has happened would happen. People talk about how important setting goals is in life. But goals are too small. They aren't enough. They are just the beginning.

I had to go back into the gym and tell Khris that he has changed my life and that it's not just exercise to me. He has given me my life back. I could lose all the weight in the world and it wouldn't have taken the pain away or given me the happiness and energy the way that his personality and his training has done for me.

In true Khris fashion, he just said that's good and he's happy and he hugged me. But he was not surprised in the least, which makes me love him even more. He calls me a unicorn, but he's a unicorn, too. You don't meet people that have that kind of caring and passion about what they do every day. I'm so grateful that I met him.

I truly believe that he was sent to me by the universe.

My muscles were letting go of lots of pain in their previous emotional releases. But now when I cry it's because my muscles are bursting with joy!

Surrender, Acceptance and Demolition

Surrender. Sounds like giving up. I love words. Khris and I were talking about words today. Comprehension and how words don't always mean what we think they mean. There are deeper meanings to words and concepts.

I just read my first blog post from April when I was ready for things to start happening for myself. I had started little things already. I had started cleaning out closets and changing my diet. I had broken out of denial. I was ready to surrender. And I love control.

Acceptance. That was the word Khris mentioned today. That was where I had to get in order to surrender and move forward. I had to accept everything about where I was in order to break out of denial and, as he once put it, wave away all the smoke from in front of me.

Here are some of the words I wrote back then:

I'm really working on change that is true change and happiness change that works with who I am and treating myself with the same care and non-judgment I give to others. It's not a competition or a race. Yoga teaches me that. It's surrender. I need surrender. I love control. I need to let go. I need to be free. I need to live in the now.

Yoga makes you accept what is. Not what you wish were. That doesn't mean things can't change. But they haven't changed yet. You have to accept what is now before you can move. And the growth can be small. I can inhale and twist just a tiny bit more and in yoga I feel great about that. I was able to twist a tiny bit more because I didn't force it or get mad about it. I accepted where I was. I breathed in, I reached and if I got a little further, then I was happy, if I didn't, I still got a nice breath and a stretch.

Everything I have done in the last 2 years has brought me to this point and now I'm ready for my next steps. The renovations on my place are starting and the renovations on myself are beginning as well. It's demolition time! The results will be spectacular. I need to knock down some walls. I'm ready for the magic. I surrender!

I'm still in complete awe of the idea of personal training and how it has transformed my pain levels and my energy and my joy for life and my joy for working out. I used to always say that yoga was magic. Now I believe that training is magic and Khris is a magician.

There is surrender and acceptance in training. I come in without a care in the world and I know that he has a plan for me and I just do what he says. I don't ask questions or complain or wonder why he has me do the things he has me do. I'm past that. I just do. That may not be the right approach for other people and their training, but it's my approach. 

Why would I question or complain or wonder about something that gives me the joy and the results that it has given me. My goal is not weight loss or inches loss or measurable anything. I'm not competing for anything. My goal is to enjoy getting up and having a place to go and someone who is kind to me and makes me happy to be with him and takes away my pain. I didn't even know my goal when I started. 

That's my goal now. I want to have some accountability. I want to know that I'm getting up and going somewhere that there is someone waiting for me. Someone who wants me to feel better and who thinks about my well-being when I'm there and is happy to see me. I know I'll get through this winter because of him. 

It's amazing how fast things have gone since I wrote those things in April. Now that I have a magician in my corner, I wonder where things will go next! I really don't know. I accept where I am. I surrender! 

I'm so fluffy I'm gonna die!

I found out I'm a unicorn!! I've never been fond of unicorns in posters and things;  they're a little too fantasy looking for me, but I love the metaphor now. My trainer told me that about once a year he gets a unicorn and, yep, you guessed it!!

He said as a trainer, sometimes you will get a person that just gets it. Who comes in and is serious. Who has pushed away all the smoke in front of them and is ready. And other people wonder why they don't get the same magic. He said that as the coach he wants that for everyone, but the coach can't want it more than the player. 

It made me think of the 85 Bears. It was just magic. I remember when they made the Super Bowl Shuffle. People thought it was cocky. It wasn't cocky. They just knew. I feel the same way. I just know. 

The Super Bowl Shuffle from John Wholespice on Vimeo.

On the topic of getting it. I had the funniest experience today during my workout. I was doing my sit-ups and during the second round, I was having a hard time. He had told me not to just lay there if I was having a hard time. I finally get what he means now. I always thought it was bad if you didn't do all your reps in one "go". He said, get up, walk around and come back. He means every time! If it takes 2 or 3 times to get my 15 in, then so be it. He said-you ever see those guys in the gym stomping around and then they go back and do the last ones...

So I got up and stomped around! hahaha! He said, Yes! and waited and looked around casually. I know he was trying not to laugh! And then I did one and couldn't do another. Damn! So I got up and walked around a little bit while he waited. Then I knocked out the last 5. #winning  Then we went on to do some other stuff. #gymlife

So, today I found out I'm a unicorn and Otis Wilson! Not a bad morning.

Energy: Tortoise and hare strikes again!

Since I started training, I've noticed huge changes in my pain levels, but I thought my energy levels hadn't changed much. I'm starting to realize that they have. When I changed my diet in March and decided to make changes in general to focus on myself and downsize, etc. in January, I kept reminding myself about the tortoise and the hare.

I tend to be an all or nothing person and when things are really bad, I usually go for nothing and then bad gets worse. I've tried to push myself into making small changes and doing things a little at a time over longer periods of time to accommodate my condition, which has really helped me accomplish more.

It can be daunting and depressing at times when you don't see anything happening, but eventually, you see that dent or light at the end of the tunnel and it propels you. For example, when I cleaned out my closets in January, I took everything out and told myself if it took me a month to deal with it, so be it. And it took about a month of doing a little bit each day (and even some days of doing nothing) and climbing over piles of stuff, but I did it. And it was worth it. I got rid of so much stuff!!

Moving in July wore me out. But I love my new and so incredibly minimal new place! It allows me to focus on life and not worry about clutter.

Now that I'm working out and my pain has decreased, and I have less clutter in every way, I am starting to see comparisons in my energy....yes, back to that. I used to shop on qvc.com for many reasons. First of all, it was the only place I could find when I was in bigger sizes that had clothes that I didn't hate that fit me. When I went to Kohl's or other stores, the clothes were hideous and they just didn't fit. They were too short or wide or clingy. It was very depressing. At least QVC had plain clothes that fit me.

The other big advantage became shopping on the computer and things were delivered to my door. Now I actually go out shopping more. I am seeing how much I used to rely on online shopping because I was too tired to go out to the stores. Now I even go to stores again just to browse and have fun. Even before I could start getting clothes in smaller sizes, just recently, I started to go and hang out at the mall more often just to have something to do. I used to do that a long time ago with Target or Walmart--just wander around for fun.

Even though I still take naps a lot in the afternoons, I am realizing that I used to go out to the grocery store and have to come home and just lay down on the couch because I was so tired and I had to get my feet off the ground. I don't have to do that anymore. I sit more on my chairs and my couch. I can cross my legs.

I take a shower now several times a week as opposed to once a week. Once a week used to wear me out for at least a day after the shower. My arms used to hurt just to lift them up to wash my hair. My body (my skin, bones, and muscles) used to hurt to have me rub the soap on it.

There were times when I'd lean against the shower wall and cry before I got out. I used to have to rest when I got out of the shower before drying my hair and putting on makeup. Then I had to rest before putting on clothes. Then I had to rest after putting on clothes. Now I can do all those things without resting in between. I still think shower days wear me out a little, but that's a big improvement.

I clean things in my house spontaneously. I will clean a bathroom floor just because I see my hair on the floor. I make my bed every day. I empty the dishwasher as soon as it's finished running. I never have dishes in the sink anymore. I take out the garbage. I don't leave things on the tables like I used to. It's not because I've become a neat freak. I realize I have just smaller bits of energy to do things when I'm supposed to rather than letting things pile up because of the complete depletion of energy that I used to suffer from consistently.

All of this just dawned on me yesterday when I got my hair colored and cut. Usually by the time I get to the part where she rinses out my hair after we've talked a bit and I have to wait the processing time, I'm so relaxed and exhausted, I'm practically catatonic at the sink. She's always used to my extreme drop in energy from the time I walk in to the time when she gets to the haircut part.

Yesterday, I was wide awake at the sink. It was still relaxing and felt great to have her wash my hair, but I wasn't limping to the sink and I didn't have difficulty getting up after sitting for 30 minutes. It was such a noticeable difference doing an activity I was used to doing routinely every month or so.

It made me examine my energy levels in a new way. I have to stop saying my energy levels haven't improved-they have! For me, this is a ball of energy!!

Next week I'm going with my friend to her house in Michigan for a little weekend. I'm looking forward to seeing how that has changed. A long time ago we used to hike and go shopping in the little towns. More recently, I couldn't hike and my back would break just shopping in the little towns. I'm hoping to hike and hang out and talk and have a blast for a few days!

The Walking Dead, Chronic Pain and Sharing Stories

When I ran the Twitter account for Undead Walking, I noticed that quite a few The Walking Dead fans were chronic pain sufferers of some sort. I wondered there was something about the show that spoke to us or if it was just a coincidence the way you notice things like the people that drive the same car as you.

Anyway, as the Twitter person for Undead, I shared things more readily than I might in my normal life, because it's part of building a community. People want to connect with you. I was used to this from my work as a teacher. The kids want to connect to you in a personal way through the subject.

It's not that you open up inappropriately or overly focus on yourself; kids make fun of those teachers who go on tangents constantly about their kids and their own lives. But you have to allow your personality to show through and involve them and let them see you as a person.

Most of my Twitter life involves people I met because of The Walking Dead. But we talk about other things at times, too. When I started my personal blog about my life changes and personal fitness journey, I did it for myself. I didn't set out to write at any certain times. I just write a post when I think of a topic that has been bouncing around in my head and I think it has enough to it to devote a few paragraphs.

I never intended to share it on my Twitter. I write them for myself. But I did share them on Twitter. I don't know how many people read them and I don't care if people scroll by and don't read them. But I'm truly surprised and touched by the handful of people who have messaged me or Tweeted me about their own stories because of my blog and thanked me or asked me questions.

There are people who have chronic pain that don't want other Twitter people to know. There are people who are just out there losing weight and don't share it on Twitter but have been sharing it with me through messages. And there are people with pain who are just happy that they feel like they can talk about it a little, too and not feel like they have to keep it to themselves all the time because they know I mention it.

Chronic pain sufferers are often seen as complainers and whiners. I never want to be seen as a whiner, but I don't want to hide, either.

My trainer has done something amazing for me in just these last few months and I hope to work with him and be his friend for a long time to come. Maybe in my own small way, I can do something for some people by sharing my stories.