The Dreaded Fat Slap

I am not sure if I wrote about this before, I looked back over all my old posts and couldn’t find anything, so if I did, my apologies.  I know I shared this story in my TBL video last winter/spring, which is probably why I am not sure if I shared it here or not.

Anyway, anyone who has ever had a massive amount of weight to lose will know EXACTLY what I am talking about when I talk about the Phenomenon of the Fat Slap.   For those who don’t know, let me explain.

When a person of a certain size exercises vigorously strange things happen.  Weird noises are emitted from the body that should not be there.  If one does the given activity once or twice, it can sound like a fart, which of course is quite embarrassing!!  However, if one does the given exercise/motion repeatedly in a rapid fashion, it can sound rather like applause…except there is none!  Again, quite embarrassing!

What kinds of exercises might cause this sound to be emitted you ask?  Well, just about anything that causes you to move up and down.  Jumping Jacks, Jumping Jessie’s(jacks followed by a squat), Olga squat pulls, anything that is jumping related really or really really fast running!

What causes this you ask?  Again, let me tell you, for those who do not know.  A brain may tell its body to jump or run as the case may be.  So the body jumps.  However, what happens is, the body starts its return to earth long before the belly has had a chance to get up to the height of the rest of the body.  The body lands and shortly thereafter, the belly lands too…and slaps against the body…causing the dreaded “noise”.  Coach says this is my body applauding my efforts….I however, want it to withhold its applause and simply show its appreciation by growing smaller and smaller and simply SHUTTING UP!!

So how does one combat the dreaded Fat Slap?  Well, one doesn’t run at high rates of speed.  One doesn’t do jumping activities.  By refraining from such activities, the body is not forced to go in two directions at once and ultimately meet together in that humiliating fashion.

So…you must know, that I am not just talking about the Fat Slap in theory.  Sadly I have experienced it and work hard to never experience it again…up until now, my work has been mostly in avoidance methods.  However, when one hires a trainer to do a certain job that they are trained and experienced in doing, it is best I shut up and listed and do as they tell me to, right?

Theoretically.  However, when G.I Jess tells me to jump in some fashion I find myself timidly doing so.  She has pointed this out to me, about how timid I am being, but I am not sure she knows why.  (well if she reads this she will know now:-)  When I am supposed to hop backwards into a squat and then pull Olga to me, I first hop one foot back then the other.  Part of this is a balance thing.  NO WAY do  want to fall in front of all the mirrors and the entire gym!  Part of it may also be due to leg fatigue, at least at the end of a set.  However, much of it has to do with Fat Slap avoidance.

I realized all of this tonight when G.I Jess asked me to do a two footed jump and hit the pads she was holding with my knees, 15 times in a row.  At first I didn’t think I could do it.  I don’t like jumping!  I think I have good reason, don’t you?!  I started out pretty timidly, first one foot then the other going up.

She didn’t like that move.  After a couple tries I got a “Good Job” from her.  However, with that one came the “noise” and I reverted back to my one-footed ways.  Now mind you she is standing right in front of me,bent over.  In my imagination her entire view is taken up of my belly going up and down inches in front of her face and then…out pops this noise…Awful I tell you!!  Awful!

While I have all this going on in my head, I also want to do this stuff right.  I mean seriously, if I am not going to do what she asks me to and trust her expertise, why am I paying her?  By the time we got to the second to last set of this awfulness, I was finally getting comfortable with the motion and she wanted me to attempt it without a pause between jumps.

“Dear Lord, she knows not what she asks for!”, I thought.

I did it though and with every jump I heard, “SLAP!  SLAP! SLAP! SLAP!….PAUSE….1 FOOTED…Pause…SLAP! SLAP! SLAP!

Either she didn’t notice or simply did not care or had no idea what the noise was.

So for my last set, I decided, I would just pretend it wasn’t happening. I did it.  Shot off 15 jumps in a row, no pauses.  Lots of Slapping going on….but whatever…one day, the Fat Slap will be a distant memory…for me and for her.

It is fascinating to me as I sit here, how much internal conversation goes on about this stuff and how much it holds me back from what I say I want.   I mean, what if there is another reality.  Perhaps no one notices, but me.  No one hears what I hear or sees what I see.  What if Jess heard nothing and saw nothing but a woman working hard, doing hard things.  What if I lived as if THAT were the truth..as opposed to all the above fodder.

I am certain this won’t change overnight.  I am sure I will still hesitate when she wants me to jump.  I am sure I will still have fears of grand embarrassment.  But perhaps, each time it will get a little bit less until I no longer hear the Fat Slap myself, regardless of my size.

Yes, that is where I want to be.

Exhaustion!

It is 12:40 AM and I am awake.  This normally is pretty routine for me and no big deal.  However earlier tonight as I was leaving work at 5:30 I was feeling tired.  Really tired.  My eyes had that exhausted burning feeling of someone who hasn’t slept in days.  (This is not true of me, just the way my body felt)  As I tried to plan my run route in my head, knowing I had 5-6 miles to do tonight, I felt tears come to my eyes.

I can’t do it.

I need to sleep.

I was extremely hungry, far more so than usual for right after work and just wanted to eat.  Not in an unhealthy way, mind you.

But I need to run.  My plan calls for a run.  How can I not run?

I texted Aaron and Coach to let them know I was considering not running and why.  I think what I was really looking for was someone to tell me that it is ok if I don’t run.  That it won’t mean I am a failure or that Nashville won’t happen if I don’t run one night.

Coach gave that to me and I really started crying.  I felt so relieved.  Like the pressure that had been building was suddenly released.

But then I heard from Aaron, who encouraged me to just go one mile at a time.  I thought, I can do one mile.  If I can just start I am sure I can do one mile.  Maybe that is what I will do.  Commit to one and only one and see from there…but not until after I got some food in me.

As I continued home, I planned a one mile run route and I felt ok.  Still exhausted but mentally I felt like I could do one mile.

I got home, made some dinner, and tracked my calories for the dietitian.  While doing this, I was still thinking about and wondering why I am so exhausted.  The last several nights I have been falling asleep before 11PM (unheard of for me) and waking up at my normal time.  Here is what I came to.

• For one month now, I have been running intensely 4 days a week.
• According to my Polar, I have been burning more and more calories with each workout…often over 1000 calories a run.
• In the last 2 weeks, I have begun adding strength training with Jessica and on my own.
• The last 2 weeks have been 6 days a week of very intense workouts.
• My calorie intake has not changed.  Still working at 1800 a day.

My conclusion.  I think my body is just exhausted and if my calorie burns are remotely accurate then my calorie intake is CLEARLY not sufficient to fuel my body and I don’t think any amount of sleep is gonna really help.

I have noticed that any food I do put in my body lasts about an hour before I am hungry (starving) again.  My body is burning what it gets really quickly which I am sure is a result of strength training or perhaps from my body finally trying to get me to understand that I am NOT helping it function well.

I talked to Jen tonight too while eating dinner. She said this to me. “Kimmie K, oh how far you have come that you are crying because you don’t want to miss a run but you need to listen to your body!”

So I decided, for my mental and physical health, I was going to finish dinner and go to bed without running.  Yes, I decided not to run.  So by 8:30, I was in my jammies and in bed and suddenly I couldn’t fall asleep.  I just kept thinking, I should at least go do one mile.

I think I have flipped over to the crazy side of exercise obsession…not good folks, not good.

I forced myself to stay in bed and to simply lay there and to simply let my body rest.

A little while ago, I woke up.  Very hungry.  I figured it must be almost time to wake up so I went to the bathroom, looked at my watch and saw that it was only 12:15 AM.  Shit!  I slept for 2 hours, sort of, and now am wide awake, HUNGRY, and trying to figure out what to do and what is going on.

I know that now that I feel my emotions more, it can cause me to not be able to sleep…but I am not sure what is going on there, other than the earlier emotions I talked of.   My eyes still burn with that really tired feeling but I can’t sleep.  I am melting down folks as I struggle to find the balance I need for success.  The balance I said this year would be full of and the grace I need to be able to let the balance happen.  I feel out of control.  Oh crap…THAT is probably the sleeplessness…that is what it was when Crazy Kate visited last…and that is a primary feeling right now.  Good grief…I need to give this up!

I am not sure I am going to be able to keep up this 6-7 day a week schedule.  On Monday, I will talk to Jess.  On Thursday I will talk to the dietitian who happens to be running Nashville too!  Tomorrow, I will stop by the running store and see if they can’t help me tweak my run schedule/plan.  Perhaps I can take my running down to 3 days a week so I can do strength training 3 days a week.  Perhaps I will lower my expectations for Nashville and give myself a mental break and tell myself it is ok if I walk portions of it.  Right now I have it in my head that it is only a success if I RUN the whole thing straight.

Right now, my schedule calls for 7 days 4 run, 3 strength…I just haven’t been able to do it yet!

This journey continues to be about whole health, not just losing weight or running a half-marathon.  This means I need to sometimes look at the big picture and take a time out so that my body can be better in the long run.

I know this is rambling all over the place.  This is more for me to get my thoughts out of my head so perhaps I can sleep…hopefully.

Calorie Crisis

This past week we had a retirement banquet dinner to go to for a co-worker who was retiring at the age of 73 and after 28 years with the organization.  (This woman doesn’t look a day over 55, I swear!)

Anyway, halfway through the day, my manager sent out the menu for the evening as an FYI for us all. Here were my choices with the calorie king calorie estimates  I got for them.

• Chicken Parmigiano (769 for half a breast)
• lasagna (407 for a 4 1/2 in x 3 1/2 in. pice)
• fried chicken tenders- didn’t bother checking, fried foods are a pitfall of mine, cannot go there at all!
• fried fish and chips
• baked ziti – (800)
• fettucine alfredo (1169)

Umm yeah, so do you all see the crisis I was in?

There was no salad option or baked chicken option or anything.  I quickly ran through my options.  If worse came to worse, lasagna was the best choice calorie wise, however it still seemed obnoxiously expensive to me, considering I don’t LOVE a lot of tomato based things.

I wanted to stay within my calories.  I wanted to make the best possible choice.  In the past I would have simply decided those are my only options.  Yet, I thought it odd that there was no “lighter” option.  I decided to ask the person coordinating this thing what the possibilities were for getting an alterna-meal.  I didn’t want to make it a big deal and I didn’t want to be a pain and yet I wanted to at least feel like I was doing the best I could to choose ME in this situation and that I exhausted all possibilities.

My manager told me to email her with a choice that would be acceptable to me and she would check for me. GREAT!!

My other alterna-plan was to go to Subway on my way to the dinner then just have some of the dinner salad they had there.

However, my manager never got back to me.  So I went to this thing not knowing what my options were and still knowing I had about 1100 calories left for the day.  So no matter what, I could make choices to fit that.

In the end, I ended up with lasagna for approx 500, some dinner salad for about 200, some bread for about 200 and a few bites of cake for about 200 or so.

I stayed within calories, but man was dinner an expensive meal calorie wise.  But I was glad to have averted the crisis by making the absolute best decision possible AND by doing some research ahead of time.

What I learned.  It doesn’t hurt to ask, if for no other reason than to open up the HINT of possibilities so that I don’t go into something feeling backed into a corner.  I went in with a clear head and full knowledge of at least the best calorie estimates I could get.  My ultimate vision was kept in the forefront so that I could not be distracted by something else…and…I knew that I knew that if I needed to…Aaron was a text message away…if I really really got tempted to throw the plan out the window for the evening.  Not to mention, as soon as I got the menu and saw the calories…I emailed it all to him.  I kept everything in the light!

Calorie Crisis…averted!

Trickery attempt by the forces of evil…thwarted!

Calories for that day 1800!

Deciding On My Plan

Diane, over at Fit to the Finish had a great post today about How You Decide Which Plan to Follow.  My response was far too long for a comment so I thought I would just make my own blog post about my Aha moment.

Basically, I am not sure I had one.   I cannot recall a specific moment or time that I said, “Yes, now I am ready to lose weight!”  If anything it was a process and in reality I probably chose the worst time for an emotional eater to begin to try to lose weight.

God had been working on me all summer long (2008) on various areas of my life and I had finally stopped resisting him in some of those areas.  Namely, I agreed to look at how sexual abuse as a child had impacted my life.   I was in counseling and I had just begun this class that would walk me through my story from beginning to end.  I had inadvertently taken the summer off of whatever “plan” I had been on before and had no immediate plans to start-up again.

I had previously tried all sorts of plans. I had done Curves, and weight watchers, calorie counting and low carb diets.  I knew what needed to be done, I just didn’t want to do it, I guess.   In September as I began to watch the latest season of TBL, I decided I would try one more time, but this time, I would tell no one.  No one to watch me.  No one to hold me accountable.  No one to know if I failed again.

After 2 weeks of doing I have no idea what, I was too excited to not tell anyone.  SO I told Aaron.   He of course was quite excited and happy for me, offering to support me in any way he could.   SInce then my basic plan has been to count calories. However the specifics of that plan change all the time.  How many calories has changed as my body changes and adjusts.  How i track those calories has gone through several renovations.  Exercise was at first minimal and has increased over time.

One thing has been constant though.  I have chosen to do this.  For me. Not or anyone else. I am choosing me every day.  Not perfectly and certainly not without some major failing going on at times.   Diane is right.  The plan itself doesn’t matter.  What matters is am I making good choices every day that are going to benefit my health and vision or not.

So I guess, how I chose a plan still has not been answered.  I don’t think I chose the plan, I think it chose me as I chose me.   What has worked simply evolved as I chose to live and to live abundantly!

Hoping And Declaring

My interview went fantastic!  Despite my best efforts to stay low key about it, I am very hopeful and excited for the possibility.  They said that as soon as I walked out on Tuesday last week, that they knew they wanted me back for a 2nd interview.  I will know by next week.  I might be devastated if I don’t get it, but I guess that is the risk to take in feeling the hope.  Besides, I am not so good at stuffing my emotions like I once was.  I am finding it far more painful to stuff them than to simply allow them to be.  Weird, eh? (yeah I live close to Canada and intentionally say, eh…as opposed to “huh”.)  It used to be nothing to stuff them.  In fact, I did it without knowing I was stuffing them.

In other news, I am struggling with getting out there and being focused on my running.  Sure part of me is just excited to ride a lot before it gets too cold to, but I can’t neglect the running either.   So, I think I am going to do a 5 K race on Oct 4th.  That will get me motivated to run, knowing that I can do a 5 K so there is no excuse to not run the whole thing.

Then, here is the big declaration!  I am going to do a 10K on Thanksgiving Day.  A local bank sponsors the Detroit Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot which precedes the Thanksgiving Day Parade!  I am gonna do it!  Then for the first time in my life, despite growing up in the Detroit area, I am going to watch the parade live and in person!!  Perhaps I will get my brother and nephew to run the 5K together!

I have no idea what it will take to train for a 10K.  I wonder if I can even do it…and yet I know I will do whatever it takes to do my best.  Is it just more of the same…running lots and all the time?  Is it speed/sprint stuff?  Jason!!!  Would love your thoughts on this since you run Ultra’s!!  I know a 10K is nothing to you, but hey…you started at this level at some time in your running madness!!