A few weeks back I finally got an appointment scheduled with an endocrinologist.  During a routine Dr. appointment my thyroid levels had come back slightly abnormal but then on further testing they were fine.  My Dr. and I though were still puzzled as to what might be going on in my body that may be hindering/slowing down/affecting in some way my ability to lose weight.

In her words, “Kim, I just don’t know.  You push your body harder than anybody I have ever seen trying to lose weight, you have been more consistent than any of my other patients and yet, you don’t get the numerical results.”

So we agreed that I would seen an endocrinologist and we would use the abnormal thyroid screen as my way in.  (Stupid insurance these days requires a diagnosis for the referral to be legit!)

I got in extremely fast.  They just happened to have a cancellation and I was able to take the appointment.  This amazing PhD asked me all sorts of questions.  He was puzzled why my Dr. even referred me to him since the abnormality was so incredibly low.  I explained the REAL reason I was there and he sat back and asked more questions. Family history and stretch marks and eating habits and workout schedules.  I got through the current plan before he cut me off, and didn’t really get to go over a history of the last 3 years of various things I have done.

At the end of our conversation he said this:

Kim, I am going to do some lab work but I doubt it is going to show anything.  What it comes down to is this.  YOu are simply eating more than you are burning.  It is simple math.

Ok I know that theory.  But what about when I was burning 2500 calories a day and only eating 1200?  How do you explain that?

Kim, if it is not calories in/calories out it is genetics and I can’t change your family.  You should have surgery to lose the weight or a really low-calorie meal replacement program.  I am sure your Dr. can refer you to one.

I left there HOT!  I was hoping that this PhD would be one who wanted to find the source of the problem and not just treat symptoms.  Surgery is dangerous and everyone I know who has had weight loss surgery has had more complications than anything else AND have regained most of their weight back.  The problem is not going to go away simply by having surgery.

I am also not a fan of extremely low-calorie meal replacement diets.  I am sure I could do it and lose the weight but how does that teach me to live beyond weight loss?  How does that teach me to eat and exercise normally?  How does that insure that as soon as I begin to eat real food again that I won’t regain the weight?  These plans don’t make sense to me.

Yes I want to lose weight.  Yes I want to wear normal clothes and do normal active things without fear that I can’t do things because of my size/weight.  However,  I don’t merely want to be skinny.  I want to be healthy and I do not see how surgery or shakes are going to get me there.

What did I learn through this?  Just because you have a PhD and all sorts of certificates on your wall doesn’t mean you all that smart.  I know my body.  I know me.

I will keep looking for answers.  I know that our bodies are not “One size fits all”.  By this I mean that what works for you may not work for me and vice versa.  So, on I go along my little journey…doing what makes sense to me at the time.  For now, that means sticking with Daniel, continuing to Crossfit, and working on his nutrition plan for me….details to come on that soon…

It has been a while since I have received and shared some amazing insight and wisdom from Aaron!

This last weekend, I went to GR for the first time since October!  Unfortunately, I came down with a cold on Friday that just got worse and worse over the weekend.

My plan was to visit Crossfit 616 on Saturday morning and bring as many GR friends with me as possible!  I love Crossfit, afterall, and how awesome would it be if my GR friends loved it too!

One friend, Leanna, committed to going.  By Friday night however, there was a part of me that was wishing that I hadn’t invited people…because if I hadn’t I might have backed out, simply because of this nasty cold.

Saturday morning, I am up and eating breakfast with Aaron and he tells me he has something he needs to talk to me about.

Uh-oh.

I set my bowl down and prepared myself to be open to whatever he had to say.  I had no idea what I had done to warrant this serious sounding tone, but I instinctively knew, that my first reaction was defensive and I hadn’t even heard what he had to say yet!

So I set my defenses down, looked him in the eye, and prepared to listen and HEAR this man who has spoken much wisdom and truth to me over the years.

His words were something along these lines (not a direct quote because i didn’t write it down immediately)

Kim, I just want to let you know, that as you go to this new Crossfit gym this morning, you have nothing to prove.  You don’t have to prove how strong you are or show off all the things you know your body can do.  What you NEED to do is remember you have an injured shoulder and while it doesn’t hurt in this moment, Daniel has given you clear instruction on how to take care of it so it doesn’t become something worse.  You are also sick right now.  It is ok, to take it easy today.  You are strong and capable, but today, you don’t need to prove it.

What I heard was…don’t let your arrogance get the better of you…take care of yourself.

Good word and WISE truth spoken ever so timely…

I WAS tempted to do things I KNEW I shouldn’t do…like Burpees.  Just to show I could, despite my size.  Or to do their modification of a toes to bar (hanging from a squat rack and bringing your toes up to the bar) which was hanging and bringing your toes up to wherever you could instead of doing my modification which is doing them laying on the floor.

As I looked at the workout laid before me, I knew I had to let Brian know about my injury before we got started so he would know how I was modifying things.  I heard Aaron in my head and went over to talk to Brian.

The reality is, if I walk into a Crossfit gym and let them know I have been Crossfitting since June, they are going to assume I can do a lot of things.  What they don’t know is my limitations or at what level things are scaled for me.  It is up to ME to know what I can and cannot do.  It is up to me to take care of my shoulder and to set the limits for what I will and won’t do with it.

Even within Crossfit, this is still my Journey and therefore my Responsibility.  Injury happens because of arrogance and poor form.  Pushing to do something your body is not ready for or pushing to do it faster than correct form will allow can only end in disaster.  Injury can also happen because I fail to communicate my needs to the Coach/Trainer.  If they don’t know, they can’t modify to accommodate the injury!

I don’t know exactly what I did to my shoulder.  Daniel thinks it is stress built up over time.  My Dr. says it is not a torn rotator cuff (Thank God) and that Daniel’s recommendations have been right on so far.  Ice and rest…so I should keep listening to him(her words).  So he has been helping me to strengthen it, and it is getting better.  I just need to not let arrogance get in my way.  I don’t have anything to prove, afterall.

** Sidenote:  If you are ever in GR and want to Crossfit, check out Crossfit 616.  They are awesome…and no I am not paid in anyway to say such things!

In the last couple of months I have had a couple of injuries.

The first one, I threw my back out while doing a squat.  I knew the moment it happened and immediately stopped my workout.  By 4 PM that Friday afternoon, I could barely stand and left work early. I spent the next day and a half laid up, on Vicodin and  barely able to move.  I had to miss my nephews play that he was in and I was beginning to get really discouraged.

You see, my friend Carollyn has been plagued with a bad back.  SO much so that she has spent weeks unable to stand for more than 15-20 minutes at a time, on a GOOD day!  I didn’t know exactly what I did to my back that morning, but if this was a permanent injury, I don’t know what I would have done.

I have come to LOVE working out.  I whine about the muscle soreness after a good hard workout but really I am bragging that I worked hard enough to produce that feeling!

What if I could never work out to that level again?  What if I seriously hurt myself?  What if I couldn’t stand up for more than a few minutes at a time…for the rest of my life?

Saturday night, I decided, that no matter what, I would go to church on Sunday and have them pray for me for healing.  My church friends believe God heals today, not just 2000 years ago.

I showed up at church and because I was slow-moving, was really late and I ended up parking as far away from the front doors as you could get.  Normally a 2 minute walk in, took about 10 minutes.

After the message, my friend Robin came over to me and offered to pray.  She did, then she insisted I go and have Nate pray for me too.  I stood up and shuffled over to him and he called his 2 oldest children over.  You see, our church doesn’t think that the kids should be excluded from seeing God do really cool stuff.  So they began to pray…and after about 10 minutes they ended and Nate asked if I felt any different.

Not really, but the fact that I have been standing this long is kind of a miracle!

As we ended service, I had to go to my car to get something I left out there and as I walked out there, I realized for the first time in 2 days, I was standing up straight…and while the muscles all up and down my back were incredibly tense, the pain was mostly gone.  I walked at a normal pace to my car and back and continued to stand around talking to people for a while longer.  I then went out with friends to lunch and then to watch some Detroit Lions Football.  I soon became convinced that prayer, really does work and that once I laid down and went to sleep that night and my muscles were able to fully relax, that I would wake up in the morning, perfectly fine…

and that is what happened!

God does heal today!  I don’t know how or why He chooses to do what He does or when, but I am grateful for it!

What did I learn besides this?  It is important to NEVER sacrifice form for speed in a workout.  Better to do it right than to do it fast.

 

Wow,I am sorry it has taken so long to write again, especially after that really scary sounding post!

I did meet with my Pastor and my friend Julia that night.  I went in not knowing what to expect and half fearing that they would discover I was possessed or some other strange thing like that and have to pull out the garlic water and perform an exorcism!

Alas, nothing as dramatic or scary as that occurred.  I am not possessed.  No exorcism needed.

Now before you all go getting freaked out and writing me off as some freak, let me explain.  We are spiritual beings living in a spiritual world and contrary to what we may WANT to believe, not all things spiritual are so nice.  So while I joke (sort of ) about being possessed, I am also aware and fully believe that it is possible for some to become possessed.

I went into this time with my Pastor uncertain and nervous.  I KNEW I could not be possessed but there is a possibility of spiritual influence and I wanted to be free of that, if in fact it was influencing things for me at all.

The time consisted of me sharing some of my journey with Jim and Julia.  Where I have been, what I have been up to.  My fears of forever being fat and my deep knowledge that THIS is not what God would have for me.  I shared a deep deep feeling of being unheard in my times of prayer and even worse than that a feeling of being ignored by God.  If I didn’t share this with them I certainly was able to recognize an almost tangible anger towards Him about this being ignored business.

You see, while I continue to work and struggle and wont give up on this journey, I also was finding myself increasingly angry when I would hear of others success.  I would hear of people who cut out soda and didn’t exercise at all and would be losing weight or walk 20 minutes a day and not really change how they ate and I would verbally say congratulations but inside I was seething with jealousy and anger.  It wasn’t fair!  When would it be my time?  When will my hard work pay off?

No small amount of tears were shed in this small room on the upper level of the building that houses our church offices.

Jim and Julia who have great gifts of hearing the hearts of others and then listening for the voice of God in that, listened and questioned then prayed over me.   At various times they prayed fervently and with authority casting out doubt and fear and insecurity.  They spoke words of encouragement over me and in those moments I felt like God was present and able to hear, if not me, at least them.  They prayed over my memories of my sexual abuse and the chaotic home I lived in growing up.  They spoke Truth to me in ways I have not heard in a long time, with great authority.  They prayed about the longings of my heart and my desire to live a life pleasing to God.

After over an hour and a half of sharing and prayer and weeping, I left exhausted.   I left with a new hope.  And I left with a sense of wonder over what this time would mean for my journey.

You see I had yet to set up my appointment with an endocrinologist that my Dr was referring me to.  I didn’t know if I needed to anymore or would this time be the “fix” that was needed.

A couple of days after I left that room, I found myself at work.  A woman came up to me at the Credit Union where I work and said to me, “Kim, I was hoping to see you today!  I wanted to tell you, after talking to you and knowing how much you work out, I started my own program and have lost 20 lbs since Sweetest Day!”

I was surprised by my response.  For the first time in a VERY long time, my inward emotion matched the words I shared with her!  I was proud of her, encouraged by her, and excited for her!  And, I was in awe to see that despite the lack of weight loss in my body, living my life out loud has had an impact on others. This woman, who knows me by name and by story, now has a story of her own to tell, a story to be excited about…and I still had to ask her for her ID before I would give her money out of her account!  This woman, who I still don’t remember her name, is taking up a challenge I gave her to train for and run the Detroit Turkey Trot with me next year!

After she left, tears came to my eyes, as it dawned on me…God did meet me in that room a few nights back, He IS at work in my life and in my heart even if it is not on the timetable I would like.  He has not been ignoring me…He just hasn’t been saying what I want Him to say or doing what I want Him to do.  He is not a puppet on a string that I get to control nor am I a puppet He gets to control.  If anything, in my anger and bitterness, my ears have been closed to Him.  I shared this story with Jim, and He asked if I would share at church.

You can listen here. Choose the sermon called “Gods Heart for Outcasts”

You will have to put up with a pop up that says our church has moved.  Just hit escape!

What does this mean going forward?  Am I still going to see the endocrinologist?

What I know for now, is that I need to keep working out and making healthy choices.  The results, I will leave to my trainer(Daniel) and my Dr. to figure out.  I am going to keep laying my worry and my fears down and keep picking up trust as often as I need to…(feel free to remind me if you see me doing otherwise)  This doesn’t mean I won’t play an active role in the decisions regarding my journey, it just means I am not going to fret about it.

In fact, I DID see the endocrinologist.  Stay tuned for that story…

Daniel has a new plan drawn up for me and I feel good about it…again stay tuned for that one…

I am also realizing that this journey is not one I can do alone.  It is as much spiritual as it is physical and I must seek God as fervently as I seek weight loss.  I must be praying as often as I am working out, if not more.  I must be honest with Him at the moment I begin to doubt or at the moment I feel unheard…and I must LISTEN more than I speak.  I must learn to trust.

The conversations I have been having with God have looked something like one which took place a couple thousand years ago between Peter (I think) and God.

God:  Kim, Do you Trust me?

Kim:  Of Course I trust you!  What is not to Trust about you!

God:  Kim, Do you Trust me?

Kim: Of course I do Lord, why do you keep asking me that?!

God:  Kim…Do. You. Trust. Me?

Kim: I do Lord, but help me in my lack of Trust!

Clearly there is something in me that does not trust, why else would I feel such a clear question coming from Him time and time again?  So now my conversations have been beginning with…Show me where I don’t trust You…and Help me to Trust.

Thank you for reading my story and being a part of my Journey so far.  2012 is going to be an exciting year, I am certain of it!

Hi guys!  Yes I am still here.  I keep wanting to blog but I like to blog chronologically and I have all theses other posts that I want to write about but don’t seem to have time or motivation to write right now, so I have written nothing.  I am realizing that is so detrimental to me.  This blog is a lifeline for me in my processing of all of this stuff and so it is with a lot of intentionality(is that a word Coach?) that I write this post.  Maybe one day I will get back to those other posts and maybe not.  Regardless I will no let their pending status keep me from writing more.

SO I have been here.  Loving my workouts still.  Had a minor back injury that I got healed of (that I MUST write about soon)  It took me out for about a week but has been great ever since.   I have been struggling with the eating a bit with the holidays, but who doesn’t?  My body is doing what it does best with the numbers which is, it works and responds to the new program well for a couple of months then seems to stop changing or reversing.  SO Daniel and I are trying to figure it out.  He has proposed some ideas that I consider crazy and before I say yes or no, I am doing some serious research on them.  I no longer trust trainers blindly.  They may know a lot about fitness and nutrition, but only I have been dealing with the complexity of my body for as long as I have.  Unfortunately, every trainer has their own idea of what will work and what is healthy and they all seem to be completely opposite and in conflict with what I know or from the previous trainers ideas.  So as I research on my own, I tend to freeze up and become paralyzed with indecision.

This journey is long my friends.  I knew this going in that it would not be a quick fix and that nothing would happen overnight.  But this is far longer than I anticipated for this phase of this journey and I am in a place of weariness where it really is a fight to keep stepping forward right now.  Once again I am grasping to find the scripture that says that good things will come “if you do not grow weary”.

In the last 3 years, I have looked at the condition of my heart, I have sought counseling and group therapy, I have looked at diet and nutrition, I have done every kind of workout imaginable, I have auditioned for a tv show and I have brought my community along with me for the ride to help keep me awake when I start to fall asleep at the wheel (so to speak). I have looked at my past and the contribution that it has made to who I am and how I respond to the things life throws at me.  I have sought out my Dr and the possibility that there is a medical reason for all of this.

My family doesn’t know half of this stuff I have done to work on all of this, they only see the workouts and the nutrition.  It was rather difficult on Thanksgiving to have them all talking about me while I was sitting there and how I should be skinny by now.

I know.  I SHOULD be.  While I know they were trying to be encouraging and loving, it was quite difficult to have all of my own thoughts about what should be voiced by others in my presence without actually talking to me.

So what is next?  I am weary and heavy laden, not with the workouts, I love them, but just with the journey.  I am tired of thinking about it and trying to figure it out.  I am tired of getting my hopes up only to have progress slowly stop.

When I whine about all of this, please hear also that I do see strength gains and my clothes do fit different.  Most days those things get me excited and I am able to set aside the scale and measurements and recognize these things as equally important accomplishments.  Like I said, I am weary though and it is much more difficult to battle that fully when all your energy seems to go towards not crawling in a hole.

Tonight, I am going to meet with my pastor and a woman from my church to do some intensive prayer stuff about all of this.  I am not sure how to describe this or explain what it is or even what I hope to get out of it so I am just going to leave it at that and say, I am nervous and since it has gotten scheduled it seems that there has been all manner of discouragement going on.

Since scheduling it, I have felt the most intense feelings of loneliness and despair I have felt in a long time.  My car has a pending repair scheduled that is going to cost a butt load of money I don’t have yet (hence its pending status) and last night my windshield wipers stopped working in the middle of the highway while raining.  The simplicity of having to rely on new friends to take care of me and that situation just left me feeling incredibly raw and vulnerable.  Regardless of it being a holiday week, I feel like this week has been incredibly rough on the eating front.  I know it is nerves and anxiety and am working to control it and give myself some grace about it too. All of this stuff seems to be intensifying as my appointment time draws closer.  Honestly, I am afraid to get out of bed today.  Who knows what might go wrong today that I will have to deal with when I already feel incredibly fragile and oh not so strong at all.

With that said, I’ll be damned if I let the enemy win in this journey or in this day. He is coming after me with all of his biggest guns this week and he has certainly won some battles but he will. not. win. this. war.

So if you read this and are one who prays, my appointment is at 8 PM, but I need mercy today.  I need the pressure to release a bit.  or maybe I don’t.  Maybe the pressure is perfect heading into this.  I don’t know.  (yes I am aware I am talking in circles, that is what happens when I don’t have a plan for my writing and write for the purpose of processing).  So pray as you are led to pray today.

As for me, I am going to get out of bed and make it through another day.