PFL: Be upside-down

this isn't me...yet.  via

So I went to CrossFit today.  I'd looked over the WOD beforehand and it seemed doable - some not-too-crazy-heavy deadlifts and cleans and that was pretty much it.  Awesome sauce.  I get there just as the previous group was finishing up their cleans, and I try to make it through the gauntlet of snappy hips and flying barbells to drop my stuff at the cubbies.

Oh hey, who's that?  It's the lovely and talented Dr. Shirey, who promised to spot me on handstands...er, sometime.  Hey...now is sometime.  Um.  Right.

I thought about just smiling and not talking, but that would be totally weak.  As I walk by her, my mouth immediately says "So, handstands?"  Damnit, reactive brain!  You will get me killed.  No going back now.  "Yeah!" she says.  "After the WOD?"  Sure...but now I'm thinking about supporting my entire bodyweight with my arms right after lifting heavy-ish stuff multiple times.  Hm.  Hmmmmm.

The WOD wasn't actually that tough.  I may have unintentionally sandbagged it a little because the day I figured out my current 1RMs was a few months ago now and I'm already considerably stronger.  But my form on the cleans can definitely use some work, so we can just count it as a skill day.  So:

• 10 sets of 2 reps on the minute of banded deadlifts at 85lbs (sadly yes, that WAS about 60% of my last measured 1RM) getting up as quickly as possible (I slowed it down considerably on the way down instead of just dropping the bar)
• 12 sets of one full clean and one hang clean (both with a full squat) on the minute at 65lbs.  Decent, but honestly not heavy enough for me to feel like I had to engage my hips all that much. Which is a good thing, especially as the scary elite who watched me totally fail at hang-cleaning 95lbs a few months ago was there.  I didn't fail this time.

And then everyone started doing banded good mornings - step on a band and wrap the other end behind your neck, then bend over and straighten up a bunch of times - which just looks ow and also kind of like Dave just found a sneaky way to get everyone to bow to him.  So obviously handstands are so, so much easier, especially with the ever-fabulous Ms. Scott volunteering to spot me on the other side.  She and Kristen told me they were total Hercu-Lisas and would never let me fall on my head so that I'd have to spend the rest of my days typing out slow but inspiring prose with my eyelids.  In fact, they were going to each grab one of my ankles with their pinky and parade me around the gym.  Why?  Because they're motherfucking bamfs and they CAN, that's why.

Kristen was amazingly helpful and spent a lot of time telling me about how there's an actual physiological reason for why some people start crying uncontrollably when they're put upside-down (yes!  science!), and showed me a couple of ways to start kicking up against the wall and told me the story of when she was learning to do handstands with Dave spotting her, and also demonstrated some absolutely beautiful handstands numerous times and actually was able to look up at my face WHILE she was doing them, which is absolutely inconceivable to me.  And then after enough stalling, it was my turn.

By this time Amy had joined us and I had a fitness goddess on either side of me ready to catch me, so there was really no reason not to.  Except, you know, my BRAIN telling me that the second I kicked up I would fall down/up towards my feet and crash through the roof into the sky and fall into space.  God DAMNIT, brain.  But I knew it was crazytalk and there was only one way to shut it up.

Crouch.

Set up my hands.

Put my feet in position, one behind the other.

Try to stop at least the necessary parts of my body from shaking.

Shut my eyes as tightly as possible.

And...kick.

I probably went about a foot off the ground on the first try, but it felt like a freaking barrel roll.  But I didn't die.  Amy and Kristen were yelling wonderful encouraging things that I cannot for the life of me remember.  And so I did it again.  And again.  Kristen showed me the approximate angle my body was reaching, which was way more than I thought it was...that's good, right?  But honestly it was too terrifying to think about the fact that I was actually doing it, so I just did it again.  And another time.  And then a few more.  And then Team Hercu-Lisa grabbed my ankles and spotted me all the way into a full handstand.

I wish I could remember it better.  I was so focused on locking my shoulders and elbows out and not opening my eyes and trying to ignore the fact that I was honest-to-gods upside-down under at least half my own power for the first time in my LIFE that it was all kind of blurry.  And then I was saying "put me down now down please now yes down" and then I was down and not crying, by some miracle.

I did it.

And then I wrote it on the PR board and totally forgot to take a picture, but next time I promise.  Because there will be a next time.  And my goal for that one is open my damn eyes already and don't forget how gravity works.

Commenters: leave me more ideas of what to do for Project Fear Less.

-N

Works, meet wrench.

Last Monday, my grandfather passed away.  We'd been halfway expecting it for a while, but it still shook me up a bit - more than I figured it would.  I'm ok, work and school are fine, but I've been more than a little distracted this week.  Still, I made a conscious effort to do scary things (as outlined in my last post), even if I didn't write about them.  Here are a few:

1.  I changed a way-high-up lightbulb at work.  It was in a pendant lamp hanging over a table, so approximately 7-8 feet above the ground.  Recall, if you will, that standing on a chair starts to give me vertigo.  But I hopped on up there like it weren't no thang, and hopefully looked just as nimble getting back down, although it was more of a tactical fall.  But isn't that exactly what parkour is all about?

2.  I cried in public.  Tuesday morning I had work early and was still pretty shaken from the previous night's news.  Now, I don't like ANYONE to see me cry, not even family or close friends.  Why?  Partly vanity.  Red face and eyes, and also the fact that my nose turns unto a faucet when I cry...not very attractive.  I also think it shows weakness, which is the last thing I want to do.  But I went in, even though I probably could have called off.  And I got through my whole shift and did some damn good work, because I'm good at what I do.  And there were more than a few times that I couldn't see what I was doing because of the damn onions people kept cutting* but I kept working, and got a bunch of hugs from my awesome boss and a bunch of kind words from everyone else.  The owner of the restaurant, who was there to unlock the doors when I got there and saw the worst of my crying jag, came back to the kitchen later on and exuberantly asked me to tell him something awesome about my grandfather.  A lot came to mind (Ensign Papageno?  The rajah (and everyone else in the world that he knew)? Quick-As-Scat and Tail-In-Air?), but I told him the reason we called him Papageno, because that is pretty much all due to me :)

*No one was actually cutting onions.

3. I did 100 squats, 100 push-ups, 500m row and 400m run for time last Monday.  I was sore for  literally the entire week, but I didn't sandbag a thing and got some decent times: 2:18 for the squats (second to finish of the women, approximately 3rd or 4th overall), 6:34 for the push-ups (the first 30 real ones and the rest on my knees, not 25/75 as I wrote on the board), 2:05 for the row (I've done better but not too bad) and a slightly depressing 2:48 for the run because my legs were pretty much completely seized up.  Fun fun.  Why was this scary?  Because it was a lot more arm-and-shoulder-type things than I've done in over a year, and I wasn't sure if my shoulders could take it.  But they could.  So there, brain.

4.  I texted that one guy to see if he wanted to hang out and conversate.  He hasn't answered yet.  Meh.  His loss.

That's it for now.  It wasn't every day, but I'm working up to it.

Any suggestions for more things to do?

-N

Running the numbers: Round 4

I wish I wish I wish I had gotten these taken right after I came back from Gahada!  Ah well.  Next vacation, I'm getting my stats right before and right after I go.  And possibly also trying to make my life less hectic and more vacation-y year round, because that would probably make some sense as well.

Numbers!  As before, I'm including the first, second, third and most recent stats.

Weight: 161/155/149/151.  Meh.

BMI: 25.06/24.28/23.34/23.54.  Meh.

Body Fat Percentage: 26.3/24.9/23.3/22.9.  Woo-hoo!  I know it's small, but it counts.  Basically, I didn't gain any fat, just muscle.

Total Body Water: 59.7%/64.0%/68.5%/74.3%.  Bonesetter Stew says this is awesome. Let's go with it.

Basal Metabolic Rate:  1540/1518/1492/1501 kcal.  As to be expected.

Daily Energy Expenditure:  2002/2278/1940/2252 kcal.  And I FINALLY got a decent explanation of what this means.  It's basically a guess, based on the BMR and my activity level.  

Waist-to-Hip Ratio: Waist=28 and hip=38 so it's 0.73.  Not bad!  Last time I measured (like two years ago) it was 31/41=0.76.  Still aiming for a perfect 0.70.

I talked to Stew for a while after that about what sort of tweaks I can make to get to my goal (which right now is 21%).  In the most basic terms, either I can lose fat or gain muscle, or (preferably) both.  I'm heading to CFD for some craziness as soon as I publish this, so that plus aping it up is likely going to help a lot with the former method.  As for the latter...I'm trying a couple things.  I've been following a Tim-Ferriss-esque plan of being fairly strict on every day but Sunday, and then spiking calories and carbs in particular, but not going hog-wild.  Stew's advice was to go hog wild.  I'm not sure if this has a physiological reason or just psychologically makes you want to cheat less during the week.  I tried it out yesterday and definitely do not feel like eating anything, let alone the pastries (and ice cream, and beer, and burrito, and duck frites, and sushi) I had yesterday.  So I'm combining crazy cheat day with keto-ish IF for a while and seeing what happens after about 6 weeks.  

In other news, I got my pull-up bar put together!  But now I realise it's too big to go through the door into the room where I want it.  Womp, womp.

Project Fear Less: Post The First

It could will happen.  via

I had been thinking about the topic of my last post for a long time before I wrote it.  The culmination was simply that day when I kept whining about being scared and weak like I had been for freaking ever and suddenly got all meta about it.  But it had been in the back of my mind for some time, and I kept half-thinking that it would be kind of a cool idea to act on that quote from one of my namesakes:

"Do one thing every day that scares you."

At first, when the idea emerged, I thought it would be too unrealistic and unsustainable - I'm not scared of THAT many things, right?  Um.  Well.  Upon reflection...yeah.  Below is a partial list of just some of the stuff I can think of right now:

1. I'm scared of being upside-down - doesn't matter how far I am from the ground.  Even downward dog in yoga makes me nervous.
2. I'm scared of falling.
3. I'm scared of speaking up in class.
4. I'm scared of asking this one person to hang out because he'll misinterpret it as flirting and I honestly just want to have a really good conversation.
5. I'm scared of being by myself in the woods at night.
6. I'm scared to ask for a raise even though I'm amazing at my job, am frequently complimented by my bosses and have been there almost a year.
7. I'm scared to go to new places alone.
8. I'm scared to walk around my neighborhood (let alone run in my exercise shorts).
9. I'm scared to get rid of a lot of the knick-knacks and objets d'art I've collected over the years because I feel like they hold my memories better than my brain can.  But now I have boxes full of stuff in a tiny apartment with one 1x3 closet.
10. I'm scared to practice any of the parkour-y stuff I'm beginning to learn on my breaks at school because PEOPLE WILL SEE ME and presumably...laugh?  Or something.
11. I'm scared of writing back to my friend because it's been way too long since she's written to me and I'm afraid she hates me now.  So I do what I always do in these situations and stall even more.
12. I'm scared of hitting "Publish" on this post because it got a lot more personal than I was expecting it to, and the internet can be cruel.

I can give you an embarrassingly large number of other examples...but you get the picture.

So now that I have the fodder, what's the plan?  It's dazzlingly simple: take the words of that other brilliant Eleanor at face value, and do (at least) one thing every day that scares me.  It could be something as small as attempting to walk backwards up the wall into a handstand, which scares the ever-loving piss out of me because my brain suddenly screams "OH MY GOD THERE IS NOTHING BENEATH YOUR FEET YOU ARE GOING TO FALL OFF THE WORLD" and then I fall over.  But hopefully that's not going to happen.  It could be as big as planning a solo overseas trip, which stupidly enough scares me way less than the thought of being inverted.  But at least one thing.  Every day.  Doesn't have to be unique, just has to get the butterflies going.

DAY 1:  Today I hollered at a class of 60+ people to shut up while the professor was talking.  And when I say holler, I mean holler.  I can be loud when I want to be.

DAY 1 BONUS:  Today I stepped between two rocks that were 5ish feet off the ground, jumped between two more rocks that were farther apart than I honestly thought I could make and swung under a rail multiple times without re-tearing my labrum, as my brain assured me would instantly happen.

That's all for now.  Keep me honest, people - bug me if I don't post.  Yes, I mean that seriously.

What scares you?

-N

Fear less

So last Friday, I headed to Chapel Hill to ape it up for a while.  As it turned out, my ape sensei for the day was not the Caveman Ninja, but someone else, equally as cool, but apparently moving to the fricking Swiss Alps, like, yesterday.  And amid all the jumping and rolling and whatnot, I found myself saying, over and over, some version of "I can't do that because I'm too weak and/or scared."  Even though I actually did go through with a lot of the stuff, I feel like I wasted the opportunity to learn as much as I could have because I was too caught up in what I couldn't do (at least, what my head told me I couldn't do).

Then I realised...that's been pretty much the defining factor of the past year (at least) of my life.  Fear.

It's not that I've failed to accomplish anything.  I got back in school, aiming for a dual degree in physics and engineering, and finished the first year with only one B.  I found my own place - a nice little duplex in Durham, less than two miles from both my main workplace and school.  I handled 65-70 hours of work per week over the summer and saved up a small chunk that should come in handy in the future.

But...I also neglected my physical fitness.  A LOT.  I stopped going to PT ostensibly because it was too expensive, but also because it hurt so much, and I was afraid of the pain.  I didn't start back up with training when my body could have handled it, because I was terrified of hurting my shoulder again, and because I was ashamed of being the weakest person there.

That's how it started.  I feel like that physical weakness and fear of pain transferred over into other aspects of my life, and made fear the main motivator.  I studied hard and got good grades because the spectre of failing at school yet again and thereby damning myself to a life in shit jobs constantly hovered over my shoulder.  I blinded myself to the bad and spent all my spare time trying the same bad fixes on relationships that kept not getting fixed because I was terrified of being alone in a big scary world for the rest of my life.  I worked so ridiculously much because I felt absolutely certain that if I didn't, I wouldn't be able to make rent and feed myself and would have to live in my car and probably get hassled by the police or possibly mugged by someone who would creep up and slash my tires at 3am and then just wait, laughing and sitting on my hood while I pissed myself trying to dial 911 but my phone would be dead.  That's how my brain works sometimes.

Some might say that it doesn't matter what your motivation is if you accomplish your goals in the end.  I think that's bullshit.  It's the same kind of effect that a lot of women get from trying the "motivation through shame" sort of transition to a healthier lifestyle: take a picture of yourself in a bikini or underwear and tape it up on the fridge or near your exercise equipment,  using that (presumably disgusting beyond words) image as negative motivation to eat better and exercise more.  The problem with that is the constant, poisonous inner monologue it can create, endlessly repeating how YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH...and you never will be.  You might lose weight and look hot to others, but the voice will remain, and it's a tough sonofabitch to evict once it's in there.  I know this.  There are still times when I have to literally smack myself in the head and say "shut UP!"  Usually this is a silly enough move to help me get over it already, although it might freak onlookers out a bit.

I recently gave some advice to a friend who was considering the shame-picture method.  My alternative was to buy a cute bikini and use that as the motivation.  It's almost the same, but there's one major difference: with the picture, your motivation is something you're running away from.  With the bikini, it's something you're running towards.  And that small shift makes a world of difference.

I don't want to be simply "not living in my car" or "not alone" or "not weak and in pain."  I want to be actively seeking out a life of amazement and adventure - which, I'm now thinking, might actually include living in my car for a while (or at least out of a teardrop trailer...ideas, ideas!).  I want healthy, fulfilling relationships with interesting people...and I also want the security of being able to depend on myself first and foremost.  As for the pain...I can put up with that if it leads to the ability to hold a weight heavier than I am over my head, and vault effortlessly over a wall...and DO A DAMN HANDSTAND ALREADY.

That's right.  There are a lot of scary things in the world, but one thing that I am still absolutely viscerally terrified of is being upside-down.  And that's going to change.  This is going to be the year of fearing less in all areas of my life, and a sudden (literal) 180-degree switch in worldview is only going to aid that process.

Now, who wants to spot me?

-N

Back from Paradise

I will never, ever get tired of that view.  It's always exactly the same, and it's always absolutely perfect.

For the past week-ish, I've been in upstate New York, out of cell phone and GPS range and only around wireless once to send some emails.  So basically lost to the rest of the world, and it was FABULOUS.  Here's a basic day:

7ish: wake up, lie in bed for a while marveling at the fact that I have absolutely nothing that I need to do.  Eventually roll out of bed and don my swimsuit.  Grab a cup of coffee and a towel and walk down the hill to the lake.

8am-dinnertime: swim, lie in the sun and get dry, swim again, walk barefoot through the woods over a century-old carpet of pine needles, go for a quick paddle or row across the lake, head back up to the camp (that's Gahadaese for "house") for some ridiculous dinner made by my wonderful uncle - something like grilled marinated lamb.

9ish-the wee hours: campfire time!  Shooting the breeze, jamming, taking an impromptu trip across the lake at 2am to see what the creepy light that appears there sometimes is (and then turning around before we got there because SOMEONE who happened to be rowing got skeered), roasting marshmallows, midnight swimming...and then finally picking your way back to camp barefoot in the dark to fall asleep and do it all over again tomorrow.

I spent the entire week barefoot, only slipping on my flip-flops a couple times but always kicking them off again before too long.  I sang with some old friends who are now incredibly good at guitar for a talent show (although our jam session earlier was miles better because I'm not used to microphones), danced for several hours straight at a square dance that also included multiple playings of "The Electric Slide" and wished it could have been twice as long.  And every morning I walked down to look over the lake, at that view that's been refreshingly unchanged ever since I first saw it as a baby.  Forget Paris. As long as we have Gahada, I'll be one happy camper.

Hunger. Also, human contact is good for you (whodathunk?)

I'm eating this right. now.  And it is delicious.  Stir-fried chopped squash, chicken hearts and ground beef in a hell of a lot of butter, with a little salt and more than a little coconut sprinkled on top.

Last night I got really hungry.  This isn't a very common occurrence.  It's not that I intentionally try to eat ahead of hunger with lots of small meals - tried it for a long time and it just doesn't work But the stuff I do eat, which is more and more based on medium volumes of meat and veggies, with that order of importance, in a large volume of fat, just keeps me so incredibly satiated that I almost never feel really honest-to-god(s) stomach-grumbling hungry any more.  Yesterday was a fluke because I'd woken up lateish and run to work with no breakfast, then worked through the day on two cups of creamy coffee and one (ONE!) piece of bacon.  And...no hunger until around 6pm.  None.  I also didn't feel totally up to scratch, but I can remember feeling meh before I ate like this, and always being hungry throughout illnesses, even though I always secretly hoped I'd be non-seriously sick for a few weeks and totally lose my appetite so I could finally get rid of my gut.  Nope...never happened.

Right now, though, the obvious extreme efficiency of what I'm eating makes me think about trying intermittent fasting again, reason being that although it's relatively easy to maintain my figure and abilities eating like this, I'd like to start getting noticeably better at badassery again, part of which includes (for me) lowering my body fat just a bit.  My first bout with IF, as I've mentioned before, got me kind of wacko as far as specifically planning what to eat when, and skipping or rescheduling other things so I could eat on time.  Disordered eating is disordered eating, whether it's how much or how you think about it.  But now I think I could be a little more successful at it - I know I can go a very long time without suffering ill effects from not eating, so I can worry a little less about scheduling and just eat more when I have the time.  More on that one later.

So this morning I finally got to hang out with my lovely friend Amy, for whom I was a mother's helper last year, and her adorable little monster Jojo, who is now literally twice the size he was when I first met him at 3 months.  It's cray, as the kids are wont to say these days.  We had a great time just sitting at the table over coffee and alternately talking about our lives and cooing at Jojo trying to ride his horse on wheels (which is a CAR, as anything with wheels is a CAR, even those rolly desk chairs) but not realizing that he can scoot it with his feet, so he just straddles it and then stands up and walks around with it.  Her neighbor stopped by too, unfortunately because she had locked herself out of her house, but it still turned into a fun girl-talk-and-coffee time.  I have missed that SO much.  There's a big disconnect in American society - people live so close together, but just stopping by to chat and have a cuppa is absolutely unheard of.  In my own life, I make myself so busy with work and school and Man that I feel like I've run out of room for more human connections once I actually get some time to myself, so I generally spend it running around in the woods, alone.  And that can be a wonderful thing, but I've starved myself of the other kind of connection to nature - plants are all well and great, but when it comes down to it, humans need other humans.