TV's Toughest Trainer

A few months ago I was watching The Biggest Loser, and someone was able to do something they hadn't done in a long time because of the emotional support of the trainer, Jillian Michaels. I can't remember now who the contestant was or what they did, but right after it happened I paused the TV and stepped on the treadmill. As of a year ago I haven't been able to handle the motion of the conveyor under me, so my treadmill had stood unused, and every day not spent on it felt like a defeat. But on that particular day I stepped on, set it to the very slowest speed, and willed my legs to walk forward and my brain to allow my legs to do so. For the first minute my legs weren't sure, much like a toddler isn't sure of her first steps. My legs were stiff and I became dizzy, but I pressed on. After the first minute my legs suddenly had no problem keeping pace with the conveyor (well, while still on its lowest speed). My brain cleared and suddenly what had been so hard became easy. I stayed on the treadmill for an entire five minutes.

The day after this tremendous victory, my body and brain were so slow that I couldn't stand any noise including my own voice, couldn't follow moving objects on the TV screen, and had to use the walker because it took so much effort to lift my right leg. But because of The Biggest Loser, after my episode cleared the following day, I stepped back on the treadmill and did just one minute instead of five. The day after that I had absolutely no ill effects, and since that time I've been keeping steady at 5-minute increments about two or three times a week.

On this past Monday's episode, Jillian confronted a contestant who acted out of fear in order to keep himself in the game. From what I've seen of the Biggest Loser, hard work is the one sure factor in being able to complete your weight-loss journey. Anyone who participates in calorie-consuming game play most often sabotages himself, doesn't lose weight, and goes home. It can be easy to judge the contestants from the couch, but I can't imagine being there in that moment, fearing that you are going to lose your trainers and have to continue your weight loss journey at home with no professional staff to keep you from caloric temptations. While I don't have a problem with eating too much, I do live in fear and act in a way that ultimately does just damage I was trying to avoid. Jillian, knowing the root of this particular contestant's insecurities, wrapped her tiny frame around this huge man and stated, "Don't create the very outcome you fear."

This message really rings true to me right now because I'm wrestling with some information that I've recently learned about my past. Regardless of whether what has happened in the past is affecting my current health, it has contributed to my tendency to create outcomes I fear. I worry about my money disappearing so I spend it all while I have it, which makes it, of course, disappear. I worry about my cold so I take Sudafed which just makes my cold worse because of the medication's side effects. I worry that men I'm interested in are about to leave, so I try to convince them to stay which of course then makes them leave. This circle of destruction isn't that different from the food addict's who scarfs down a jelly donut because he's down on himself for being fat. (For critics of the show, from what I can tell it has grown from being exploitative in its first seasons to medically sound and emotionally therapeutic in its more recent ones.)

I can't erase what happened in my past, and I can't hop on a treadmill right now and start running, or drive the car down the road, or move my body quickly enough to be able to throw fast punches. But every time I conclude that I can't do something, I need to test and retest that theory to make sure it's true. There is no one to save me from what happened. But I got through it. And I'll get through this as well.

Acceptance

It's amazing how quickly a person can get aid when brain abnormalities are discovered. A week and a half after applying for state disability, my request was granted. I opened and read the letter with as much excitement as when I received my acceptance letter to graduate school. Actually, with more. While graduate school acceptance letters are written in the positive, state disability letters are written in the negative: "We have determined that you are unable to work..." This negative statement at first led me to believe that I had been denied. "Unable" is usually not something you want to hear in a letter. But my disillusionment was soon corrected, and unlike receiving my graduate acceptance letter where I opened it and then went back to bed in sickness, with this letter I actually ran down the driveway with a grin from ear to ear. Finally I would be able to receive monetary compensation for my inability to work. Finally my disorder would be taken seriously.

With this officialism of my disability, I walk a tight rope between acceptance and perseverance. I have come to terms with the fact that I may never get better, and this has proven necessary in order to get my life in a place where I can function in my limited space. This doesn't mean I've given up on my goals. I'm still getting my degree, still working on my writing, and starting the process of moving to Seattle through subsidized housing which will take about a year. But what it does mean is that I'm allowing myself to be taken care of by the government. (I've never been happier with America.) I'm allowing myself to be okay with buying clothes from Target. I'm also allowing myself to be okay at 150 pounds with a distended stomach.

My physical appearance has caused me a lot of grief. I used to be 100 pounds, so adding 50 more to that frame has come as quite a shock. A few days ago my grandma, who is starting on Prednisone, pointed at me in fear saying, "I'm going to get fat like you." I don't know whether it was a difference in what I was wearing or just a different attitude, but yesterday she actually said I looked good the way I am. So did a former lover who I ran into a couple weeks ago and hadn't seen in years. This lover herself has always been overweight (yes, I had a fling with a girl in my college days) and I have always considered her to be absolutely gorgeous. What made her gorgeous was no doubt the way she carried herself. She acted like a hot commodity, and so she was. Not only with scrawny me but countless men with whom she came into contact.

I still wonder how to feel sexy when my clothes are off, and I still wonder what I'll tell men when they ask me what I do for a living. I see the latter scenario going a bit like this: Man: What do you do? Me: I'm a writer. Man: What do you write? Me: Book reviews, mostly. Man: Oh, can you make a living off that? Me: (blushing), well, I try. Man: What was your latest review? Me: Umm, I can't remember... It was a year ago. I've been in school. Man: Oh, so do you have your degree: Me: Not quite yet. Man: So are you in school now? Me: No, not really. I also write screenplays. Man: Oh, have you sold any? Me: Well, not yet. Now, I know I don't need to answer to anyone about how I spend my time, but the fact is, up until I got sick I worked all my life, and it's hard to define myself outside of a paycheck.

Acceptance and perseverance is not just a struggle for us disabled folk. It's also a struggle for just about everyone. Today, as I sit at my desk by the window and gaze out at the bright blue sky, I'm accepting my distended stomach because my legs do not feel well enough to walk around the block, nor have they for the past week. I'll accept my inability to read today and instead zone out on the couch in front of the television, waiting for my creative juices to get flowing at about 2 a.m. for an essay I'm submitting to Glamour. When the actual brain fog lifts, I'll read, I'll shower, I'll walk... but when my symptoms are heavy upon me there's nothing to do but embrace them. And now I have the government behind me when I do.

The look of fibromyalgia

I used to be rail thin, thanks to good genes and a sensitive stomach that didn't digest much. This, in conjunction with my big boobs and perfectly shaped butt, gave me quite the ideal body. Of course I took it for granted and envied the girls with a little bit of meat on their bones. As they say, we always want what we don't have. I wore bulky clothing to hide my breasts because they felt too big in comparison to the rest of my body, and I didn't wear my first bikini until I was about 29.

Now I take five medications and have gone from 97 pounds to 145. As an apple I carry most of my weight in my stomach, and it has been quite the transition to learn how to love, accept, and clothe my new body. I finally understand why women are so obsessed about weight and why they count calories and put themselves down. I now understand dressing to hide your flaws instead of to hide your sexuality. Now I wear low cut shirts in order to accentuate my breasts instead of pretending they aren't there, in order to draw attention up to my face and away from my protruding stomach.

The Catch-22 about fibromyalgia is that your illness makes you take medications which make you gain weight, but it also prevents you from being able to exercise to get the weight off. I did Jillian Michaels' "30-Day Shred" until it gave me a new repetitive strain injury in my shoulders. I did a walking DVD twice until it put me in a flareup that lasted for a couple of days. There is a direct correlation between exercise and flareups which contradicts my inherent drive to be active. Instead I regulate myself to Tai Chi, an exercise bike, and walking (not in place), but only when I feel 100% which in the winter is not often.

I abhor the thought of taking off my clothes and having a love interest see my round belly. I may have learned how to dress my body, but what about when the clothes come off? Every woman's fear is looking like her mother, and when my fibromyalgia hit my body grew to look like my mother's middle aged one, only now she exercises enough to keep the weight off so that even she and my grandmother are thinner than I am.

On Monday my roommate and I start diets to lose weight after one party and before another. Luckily my new abode has an exercise room attached to the complex, complete with an exercise bike and a treadmill, two of the exercise machines I can actually use, and which have helped me lose weight in the past. My ideal goal is 130, my attainable goal is 135, and my realistic goal is 140. I will diet in part because of body image but to a larger degree because I like being aware of what is going into that body. Ironically ever since I have gained weight I am much healthier in my eating choices. Now an entire bag of cookies has consequences where it once did not. On Sunday I will wear a killer (stomach hiding) dress to a hopefully killer event, and in two months I will wear a festive 80s outfit hopefully a few pounds lighter.

I want to end this post with an positive spin but in all honesty, I can't. I'm human, I want the body of Salma Hayak, and I want to look good naked. If I can't look good naked, I want the body health to be able to do something about it without flareups telling me I can't. So, what do I do? I don't have all the answers, or even in this case just one answer. Just that I hope my next boyfriend can rub my Buddha belly and feel like the luckiest man alive.

The great outdoors

I live in the Pacific Northwest, and as such I am surrounded by mountains and mountaineers. Almost every guy who shows up on the dating websites I've joined talks about his love of the outdoors: hiking, biking, skiing, snowboarding, kayaking, etc. It's not that I don't love a man who loves these things -- I do. I love hiking, I used to be a long-distance runner, and I would like to repeat my one snowboarding experience. But while I can hike in moderation, my body says no to most other sports. It's not just that my upper body deals with chronic soreness, but my "fibromyalgia variant," as my neurologist calls it, has unique motor issues that prohibit me from balancing on a bicycle like I used to and from going top speed down a mountain. It's hard to explain my body's reaction to the latter, but imagine you are watching a scary movie where something just jumped out at you and you sucked in your breath, tensed your body, and felt like you were going to explode, and you close your eyes in anticipation of you and the scary thing colliding. This is how I feel going down a mountain. It's not so much about colliding with the snow as colliding with each atom of air that I pass through. I know this makes no sense, and this is part of the problem.

If I'm supposed to find someone who shares my interests, how can I find someone who likes sports but doesn't do them? How can I find someone who, like me, loves to exercise his body but doesn't do it in the ways he would prefer because those ways are off limits for him? Do I fall in love with someone who loves to snowboard and have him take off for the mountain all by himself? Isn't part of a successful relationship not only sharing interests mentally but sharing them in actuality?

If this is the case, where are the men who love to sleep in on a Saturday morning and then go for a quick walk around the block? Who wouldn't mind their significant other riding an adult tricycle down the street, complete with a basket to put things in? Maybe I picked the wrong state to live in. Maybe I should live in the Chicago of "Return to Me" or the Manhattan of "Sex and the City." Places where Minni Driver's character can find love with a hot (and completely sweet) construction worker despite her heart problems and bicycled existence or where Carrie Bradshaw "never works out" but lands a millionaire with her perfect unexercised body. Yes, I realize these are TV shows and not real life, but when you spend a significant amount of time in flareups you come to live vicariously through characters on the screen!

For those of you who know me in real life, which at this point in the blog's history is everyone, you know that me spending all my time in front of the TV screen is not an accurate representation of my day. In fact, it is my industriousness and creativity that I'm hoping will compensate for my significant other having to climb the highest mountain without me. Or maybe he'll just be content to stay home and let me snuggle in the crook of his neck while feeding him gluten free pretzels.