Atalanta Rising

…is just what you need to get some perspective.

I had meant to make this post on Monday, but it has been a challenging post for me to write. Less challenging then the email I had to write that preceded this, but still challenging -trying to condense and define a pivotal moment in my life so that it would make sense to the casual passer by.

And here is what I have concluded that the last 8 weeks of my life have been about: sometimes, you need to remember where you came from, so you can decide just where it is you really want to go. It turns out what I’ve been doing the past 8 weeks -going backwards.

Going backwards just far enough so I could see all the roads that lie before me.

As some of you are aware, I have been participating in a 20 week body transformation “Boot Camp”. As of Monday I was 8 weeks into the program. In the past 8 weeks, I answered some questions I didn’t even know I was asking, and, found answers no one, not even myself, expected to find. Two Sundays ago, I suddenly found myself at a crossroad with this Boot Camp and I made a decision. It took me a week to follow it through, but Monday I turned my car, hit the gas and burned the bridge so I couldn’t go back that way again. As of Monday I left Boot Camp with 12 weeks left to go. I didn’t slink out but left decidedly, then closed and lock the door. This was a very significant decision for me and not nessasarally an easy one.

I have had a long working relationship with the founder of these Boot Camps. I found Coach D.G. and his fledgling on-line coaching program 10 years ago this August. I have participated in many of his boot camps and programs over the years. He has helped me make a lot of progress over the years. He is a decent man, and very good at what he does: helping people improve their lives. I respect him, and I am grateful for his help. He was able to help me push and pull myself out of the destructive and vicious cycle of self hate I was trapped in for too many years.

My self hatred came in part to the helplessness I felt from my out of control body swallowing me up in a coffin of fat. The best I could do on my own with all the: Richard Simmons, Weight Watchers, Body-for-Life parade of things I tried was a 40 pound weight loss. I started out 260. When I came to DG program 10 years ago, 2002, no one was doing what he did. On-line coaching, selling a self published transformation e-book; He billed himself as “The Next Level” from all the other programs. It was 30 bucks a month to be a member of this on-line club he coached, with something like a 12 month commitment. It wasn’t cheep and could easily be a scam.

But it wasn’t, he was the real deal.

He was, “The Next Level”. At least for that 32 year old fat frustrated housewife.

I lost 70 pounds in under nine months and had become significantly stronger and fitter then I had ever been in my life up to that point. Most certainly since I had been 18 and left high school. DG helped me see how much control I could exert over my body. Knowing that helped remove the intense pain of helplessness I felt in my life. I had spent 10 years flailing around, drowning ever more in my fat, unable to stop the weight gain or take it off. I feared that I was going to live with the same horrid, crushing and debilitating morbid obesity that so many of my family members suffer with.

DG taught me I didn’t have too. He taught me there is no free lunch; he took all the mystery out of energy balance and how to make the numbers work for my favor in that first year. I was no longer a victim. I had control and choice. That removed so much of my fearfulness and depression. So even when I would regain and lose my weight over and over again through the years, I never fell prey to that same self hatred and fearfulness again. I knew why it was happening, and I knew that I had tools that worked whenever I wanted to use it.

Sometimes I used them.

Many times I didn’t.

But even though I had tools to fix the girth of my body, they couldn’t fix the part of me that was broken and used food as my primary fix-it tool to begin with. Which is why I recycled in my progress so much.

One of the good things that DG did for me was teach me how to push. To do what I needed to do, so I could make a weight goal when I got behind from splurging. Learning to push was a good thing. But it also created other problems for me -no implied fault on him- at the time we both thought that I was just learning how to loose weight from years of poorly learned lifestyle habits.

But really I had an eating disorder.

I learned how to abuse my knowledge, hide it, and created more problems for myself. I started out as just a compulsive over eater, but now I had tools to manage the binges and soon developed a cycle of overeating, than, starving and exercise purging to compensate. And it was easy to not see it as a disorder, because I was going from morbidly obese (bad problem) to lean and attractive (where’s the problem there?). Everyone was proud of me and took every occasion to tell me how wonderful I looked. From mine and everyone else’s perspective I was finally just doing the hard work needed to be healthy and attractive.

At the root of things over eating is easier and exercise purging and starving is not. And so when I’d get to a point that my body weight was higher than I’d like, I’d join one of DG’s Boot Camps to give me the external motivation I needed to make myself lose. Every time, I would end up falling into the same pattern of splurging off calories, getting behind goal, than exercise purging to make up for that.

This almost turned into the same story it’s always been for me.

Except.

I found Crossfit between my last boot camp and now.

The next “Next Level”.

And,

A spare pair of girlie cojones -diamond encrusted, of course.

And the girl that hates to hurt anyones feelings found the courage to tell a man that has helped her a lot in life; “Thanks, for everything, but it’s time we part ways.”

That wasn’t easy.

I’ve waffled wether or not to post my letter to him and have decided I should, because it’s an important part of my journey.

So here is most of my email to him:

“….two years ago I promised myself that I was going to stop pursuing food and exercise goals for a better appearance. I decided I had wasted too much of my life caring how my body looked and judging my worth by how attractive I was or wasn’t. Instead, I was going to start going to this new Crossfit thing I had found and learn how to train like an athlete. Learn how to do all those physical things I could never do; maybe even find a sport and learn how to compete. I was going to focus on that rather than struggle with food, fat and body shape. I was just going to let my body tell whatever story it wanted to tell. If my actions created a lean and attractive body, great! If not, great! The main thing I was going to be concerned with was; am I making progress at overcoming my preconceived mental, emotional, and, physical limitations. I found a great gym, where I’ve been making often slow, but still steady progress in these things.

So even though it may possibly mean that I’ll always have fat rolling over my jeans and my butt wider than what is considered attractive, this new world I’ve been building is really where I want to invest myself now. I want to recommit to the work I started there because I feel a much deeper sense of satisfaction and purpose in what I am doing.”

There was a price to quitting and/or not performing in boot camp, so I took a financial hit dropping out. I was both deliriously joyful that I found the courage to end what I knew was ultimately destructive for me in the long run, and incredibly anxious while I waiting for my response from DG. After I hit the send on my email, I surfed over to Crossfit Lizbeth for some tough love comfort, mercifully, this was her WOD post for the day.

So for me, for right now, I don’t consider it the price for quitting; it’s more just the cost for an upgraded pretty, pretty, new pair of sparkly diamond encrusted girlie cojones.

So while this girl my be prettier to look at than…

…this one.

This one is better at life and won’t trade it for pretty anymore.

I know, what a verbose and bland story of a ho-hum victory. A lot of people won’t ever be interested in what I have to say because I don’t have brilliant, spectacular story of transformation. Mostly my story is about the fat girl that falls a lot but keeps getting up and getting better at life. And that’s ok. They are my bland ho-hum victories and I am pleased with it just the same.