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May 21, 2009

The Green House Revisited

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering

As Barbara and I mark our one-year blogging anniversary, and Refuse to Regain enters its second year, I want to revisit my “Green House Philosophy.”

I liken my reduced body to the green house in which I live: a 1910s Cape Ann with pale green asbestos siding, an evergreen porch “skirt” (which we’ve since painted brown), dappled moss green shingles, and Astroturf glued to the porch and front stairs. As I wrote in my first blog, my husband and I had big plans to renovate, but the costs were too high and so we spiff up the place as we can within our means.

I thought about the ways in which I could renovate my own reduced body, worn and battered by years of stretched skin, and arthritis made worse by obesity. But the medical costs were too high and so I’ve been learning to make peace with the body I have and spiff it up as I can within my means.

In the last year, part of that spiffing up process has involved finding the right balance of exercise that doesn’t cross my pain threshold. I’ve paid closer attention to my body’s aches and knots and crunches. As I wrote recently on my website Lynn’s Weigh, gone are the days when I killed myself with cardio. Two years ago, I averaged six hours a week of cardio in addition to one to two hours of strength training. No wonder in my journal I wrote time after time, “I’m sore today.”

I never paid attention to my body the way I do now. Before I lost weight this last time, if I had a stiff muscle, I laid on the couch until it went away. Now I get curious about it. Which one is it? How can I make it stronger without hurting myself?

I’ve spent several hours gardening the last few weeks. Gardening unburies muscles like a trowel. It finds the ones I haven’t used in awhile and magnifies them. One morning last week, I woke up with stiff glutes and wrists. My exercise plan was 40 minutes of cardio and 30 minutes of strength training. Rather than sucking up the pain and plowing ahead with my plans, I backed off and thought about the short-term and long-term consequences of overusing muscles that clearly were telling me they were sore. If I worked out, I not only risked further injury to my glutes and wrists, but to other muscles and body parts, too, as I subconsciously compensated for the weaker, sore muscles.

I realize this sounds simple, but it still takes deliberate, conscious thought to dislodge from my head the chatter from my fat chick, the worry wart, the tight-rope walker that tells me if I slip up even once, I’ll fall back into old habits. There are more things to consider than merely how many calories can I burn today, or rather, how many calories do I need to burn today. What I need is a body that sticks with me for the long haul, flaws and all, and it’s my job as its caretaker to listen to it.

I still believe in what I wrote last year. If I want to live in peace and enjoy its many amenities, I have to accept my body’s “greenness” and see past the skin and stretches and accept its physical limitations. Within my body is muscle and strength but also heart and soul. Where there is sadness and longing, there is also love and joy. My body is capable of empathy. It is determined.

So….is your “house” in order? How do listen to your body? As always, leave a comment. Thank you for making Refuse To Regain such a place of support, for sharing your determination and strategies for maintenance, and your new understandings as well as your past.

http://refusetoregain.com/my_weblog...-revisited.html