(At)tempting Weight

"Note to self: these weigh twice as much as the last ones. Stopping distances will vary drastically from previous efforts. Probably best not to proceed without necessary face protection until arms become considerably stronger, if results like the last time want to be avoided..."

It appears that I'm a glutton for punishment.

I'm sure you'll excuse me if I don't let you know if something happens. This time.  

A Tale Of Two (And A Half) Storeys

"Nic was pondering, mid-climb of a dead escalator and struggling with a 20-kilo suitcase, that she used to have to do everything with nearly double the weight of that laden valise on her actual person... Quite a revelation!"

I got the same heavy suitcase up the two-and-a-half (the house has a strange layout) floors up to my flat boggling at every step. I used to carry twice the weight of this wardrobe on wheels wrapped around me, lagging my legs, encasing my arms, enveloping my body in layers of flesh, a corpulent cocoon out of which I am only starting to emerge.  

It seems such an abstract concept somehow. I, me, this person, used to live, to walk, to work with twice as much weight on them as this very heavy thing I've just hauled up the stairs. It feels like there should be a punchline. Not that I mean I think the whole thing's a joke; on the contrary, although I can't quite explain it yet, somehow it feels like this whole notion is approaching that almost unbelievable end of the seriously real spectrum.  

Where impossible reaches possible.

Snake-Oil Salesmen

"Nic was reading an article about an amazing woman who lost 172 lbs and was going to be featured in a fitness magazine, but after being given a true 'after' photo of her wearing a bikini (losing oodles of weight means that there are things that will never look 'normal' without the help of plastic surgery) she was asked for a different photo with clothes that covered her completely... O_o  And then there was the comments section.

Comments. I should learn never to read the comments on articles like this..."

(Actually, I should never read the comments on any article, anywhere. Unless it's on the Oatmeal, or on ridiculous items from Amazon.com.)

But you know? I think I'm in the wrong job. I should be working for some aspect of the diet industry, because it appears there's a LOT of money to be made out of criticising, cajoling, counterfeit caring, cautioning, comforting, corrupting, and 'curing', and that's just the Cs.  

You're too fat. Try this diet aid. C'mon, you're obviously just not trying - you're still too fat. Here, this diet aid is better. Please, your fatness is offending everyone because they don't want to be reminded that they're not living up to their own warped ideals of perfection. Try this NEW and IMPROVED diet aid. No THIS one, because that one is so last year, darling. STOP - they are all wrong - it's THIS ONE that will solve all your problems. And only ten ninety-nine per fortnightly serving of self-hate conditioning. Twenty-nine ninety-nine for this DVD explaining the ninety-seven steps you can take to be just like them. Fifty-six ninety-nine for twelve monthly magazines brain-washing you into buying more diet aids and more DVDs outlining forty ways to stop offending everyone with your existence and they're so expensive because we CARE about YOU and the HORRIBLE THINGS you have obviously done to yourself to be so very far away from what we think should be normal but WE can help YOU, you poor thing. Bless your probably clogged, surely unloved, unconventional heart.

Oh. Well now. You've lost half your body weight? You're exercising, eating well and enjoying a more fruitful life without us prodding you and selling things to you and constantly telling you you're not good enough?

You're DISGUSTING. How could you do that to yourself? Ugh - all that excess skin and health and contentment. Everyone!!! Do you SEE what happens to you when you're selfish and don't care about yourself and are swallowed up by our awful, uncaring society? But WE care. Try this diet aid and you won't ever have to be as embarrassing or as sickening as this creature...

repeat ad nauseam

She'll Be Coming 'Round The Mountain When She Comes

"Nic thanks the stars that there are periodic outcrops of victory to cling on to in this increasingly difficult uphill struggle to lose weight.

Mind you, the view from up here just gets better and better, 80lbs lighter and that much closer to the top!"

With perhaps less Hannibal, Alps, Elephants, and more Nic, Cairngorms, Highland Cow.

The Hippy Hippy Shakes

"Nic has discovered that there's nothing quite like trying to analyse your gait to determine why your hip hurts, to make your hip hurt more."

We've all been there at some time or other: we've seen ourselves walk down a corridor with reflective doors at the end; we've walked past a group of boys containing the cute one we've been spending way too much time thinking about; walked across a busy intersection where there's a hundred cars waiting at the traffic lights for us pedestrians to cross. You end up allowing a feeling of intimidation to take over, creating an inner panic that somehow your walk looks stupid, or unglamorous, or draws attention to you for all the wrong reasons, and you forget. You lose all memory of how you walked before, and trip, stumble, or walk swinging the same-side arm as leg.*

I've been told that extreme weight loss does extreme things to the body. I usually scoff when someone says that in relation to me, because extreme? Me? Hah!! Well, actually yes. But you see, I look at myself and the first thing I think of is that I'm still enormous and I still have a good few stones still to lose, forgetting that I've already lost the equivalent of a small adult in weight. It sounds contrived, but when you've been one way for so long, it's really, really hard to see yourself as any different, even when you know you've gone through some major metamorphosis or other. So I really do have to get around to the idea that there's some weird crap going on that I have no control over whatsoever, like, for example, the centre of my gravity, how my lessening weight is now distributed in relation to my body frame, and how it affects my balance, my gait, my movement.

So for the last few weeks I've been reliving the over-analysis of my walk by trying to figure out if something has changed enough in the way I get from A to B to cause my hips to complain so much. I've worn my walking shoes, everyday shoes, trainers, tennis shoes, and sturdy boots all on walks of similar length, and ended up coming back with a sore hip each time. And because I was so aware of every single step, trying to gauge whether I was leaning back more, leaning forward more, twisting somehow, limping, putting my heels down abnormally, rolling on to the toe differently in each foot, extending my legs at different angles, or had suddenly developed a shimmy worthy of Marilyn Monroe that was knocking my joints out of... joint... because I was so aware of each step I know I wasn't walking normally.  In all honesty, after this experiment I may never walk normally again.

It's obviously not the solution to discovering what the problem is.  

It has been suggested by a friend who has lost even more weight than I have, that it may take a while for my body to rebalance. She proposes that muscles have to relearn what they need to do for even simple things like standing up straight. Thinking about it, it makes sense. When I was at my biggest most of my weight was carried at the front, so my back and stomach muscles must have had to work extra hard just to keep my balance. I can imagine that they spent an awful lot of time in a state of rigidity. Now I have much less everywhere, and weight distribution seems to be evening up between front and back, these muscles might have to 'learn' to stop working so hard to support a weight that's not so uneven any more?

Maybe my achy lower back, and grumbling left hip are just symptoms of a long-term body refurbishment. But I think I'll steer clear of shoe shops and groups of boys, just to be on the safe side.

*Yes, yes okay, these are all from personal experience.

Eye Of The Donkey

"Nic learnt three things tonight whilst Wii boxing with her new wrist weights:

1: she thought she was using her waist/back/whatever muscles before.  She was wrong.

2: stopping distances for a hook are remarkably longer with weights than without.  Remarkably longer.

3: it is not easy to fake box with a nosebleed."

As I've finally managed to get the hang of not thumping my nose, grazing my chin, or throttling myself with the Wii controllers, I decided to up the ante with the purchase of some wrist weights. The thinking behind this was that I'd have more resistance, and therefore it would be a little more like punching a bag, instead of punching thin air.  

You can probably tell from all of this that I'm not a driver, but I suspect there's a distance/speed/likelihood of crashing formula that you have to learn. I'm sure at least there's a warning on the  side of the car?  CAUTION - MAY CAUSE MATHS PROBLEMS.

It's common sense. It weighs more than before, so if nothing else, my muscles won't be used to carrying them around, and therefore get tired faster, which will increase the chances of my punching my left boob with a right hook instead of the imaginary sand-filled bag hanging from my ceiling. But indeed, if properly thought-out, there has to be a stopping distance to exertion to muscle strength formula that might do the job.  

But until someone tells me what it is, I'll be online searching for hockey masks and triple-padded bras.

Season's Greetings

"Stravinsky. Possibly not the best composer to listen to whilst working out on the elliptical trainer.

Dancer that dies at the end of 'The Rite of Spring'? I know how you feel..."

It's not even the speed. I'm keeping quite a steady rhythm that has little to do with what I'm listening to (which would cause some hilarity if I was doing this in public at a gym - feet turning at a steady pace, arms gesticulating wildly to the beat, or emphases in the phrase - but it's ALL to do with the intention.  

It's possibly just as well I was at home because the Augurs of Spring section had me all dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun DUN dun DUN dun dun dun dun dun DUN dun dun DUN dun dun dun DUN dun dun dun dun DUN dun dun and no-one would have stood a chance anywhere in the vicinity of me, my cycle and my flailing appendages.