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Dear Internet: I got fat.

I did. I got fat over the holidays. I'm not trying to sound alarmist when I say this. I really mean it.

December was a fun month for me. In early December, I took a week-long trip to Cabo San Lucas. Then I was back home for only about a week and a half before I headed home for the holidays.

If it feels good, do it.
This is for sure one of my main mottos in life, but especially where food and drink indulgence is concerned (and money, hence why I live in a tiny apartment).

I think about the years I wasted obsessing about my diet, my exercise and my body image, and it saddens me. What a waste of some of the potentially most fun years of my life! These days I try to eat pretty cleanly most of the time, which allows me lots of leeway to indulge when the mood strikes me.

Well, the mood struck me hard during my trip to Mexico, and then again during my visit home for Xmas. Of course it did. Neither of those experiences would have been as fun, in my opinion, without the food and the drink and the lounging around like a lazy blob. Sure enough, the combination of a lack of exercise and an indulgent approach to eating softened me up more than a little. 

It's okay. I had to know it would happen. I mentally prepared myself for it. Even the participants in my fitness classes had to hear my take on holiday weight gain for pretty much the entire month of December: "It's probably going to happen, so let's not stress about it too much! Eat, drink, enjoy -- and then we'll all come right back to the gym afterwards and work it off together." I think they were skeptical at my lackadaisical approach to impending Xmas fatness. They were probably on to something.

Muffin-top acquisition: Accept it and move on.
I don't know about you, but I definitely felt a lot softer and rounder when I got back into the swing of things after Xmas. But it wasn't until I went back to work that I realized the true nature of my holiday indulgence. Specifically that first morning I had to put on non-stretchy pants. Oy. I've been sucking in for three days over here.

I don't ever weigh myself, but I'd have to assume that I am on the high end of the holiday weight gain spectrum. My clothes don't fit right. I feel uncomfortable and uncoordinated.

I'm not exaggerating that I feel very chunky and out of sorts, but I will admit that my reaction to a small bit of holiday weight gain is quite severe. This is how a recovering anorexic behaves, I think. Always and forever.

Time to undo everything I've undone.
I can usually undo a short period of bad eating simply by buckling down for a couple of days. Clean eating and my regular, relatively intense workouts can usually lean things back out to where they were before. But it's been three days now, and I still have a very long way to go.

Should one expect to be able to change their body in a few days? No. But I know how my body reacts to periods of slothiness followed by periods of mindful eating and exercise - I typically bounce back quickly. Maybe it's a sign of my impending old age that it's taking longer than normal to burn off the holiday squishiness.

Whatever the reason, I know I have to be patient.

The lesson learned.
Every step - forward or backward - along the path to wellness is part of the learning experience. We're learning to accept and appreciate our bodies and all of their idiosyncratic behaviours.

I think we all measure our sense of wellness differently; I learned pretty recently that my personal sense of wellness is based on How I Feel About My Body. My goal is to always feel utterly non-partisan about it; to ignore it altogether because I'm more or less content with it.

Right now, my body and its squishy composition are front and centre of mind. For me, this isn't healthy. In a way I'm happy that I can step back from the situation and observe that I'm having unhealthy thought patterns toward my body. Despite the fact that I'm upset about how my body feels, I am happy that I have learned a bit more about myself and how I react to changes with my physique. I know. This sounds corny.

But bear with me. This experience has enabled me to take a breath, look at the bigger picture and realize that it's okay. It's FINE. What's done is done. There is nothing to be gained by obsessing about a 7-10 pound holiday weight gain. 

Meanwhile, I need to balance the frustration I'm feeling at "letting myself go" with the fun I had on vacation and over the holidays with my family. Sure, my jeans are a little tight today, but it was absolutely, 100% worth it.   


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Have you got a holiday weight gain story you need to get off your chest? Share it with me at erin@thewellnessshift.com. I promise to be a sympathetic ear.
 
 

This loaded question was posted on one of the group fitness message boards I participate in - a forum frequented by fitness instructors like me.

The question asked, "Do you ever get sick of it? Of having to be the one up on-stage, motivating other people toward fitness? Do you ever wish you could just give it up for a while and be on the other side of the microphone?"

I only got as far as "Do you ever get sick of it?" The rest of it didn't speak to me. I don't have much desire to attend fitness classes taught by other people because I'd be inclined to judge the songs they've chosen, their music volume, the way they coach things... No sir, I have no burning desire to be a fitness class participant. If I have to go to a fitness class, I'd prefer to be the instructor - I get to choose all the songs I love, make it as loud as I like and get a much harder workout than I would if I were on the floor.

But, do I ever get sick of it? Yes, yes, a hundred times yes.

I've been teaching fitness classes since I was about 18 or 19 years old - almost 15 years. I love it because I get to motivate people, etc. etc.

But every now and then I think, How nice would it be to just go home after work and not have to race around to be somewhere. How awesome would it be to be able to make social plans for, say, a Tuesday evening without adding the disclaimer "...but I teach until 8pm, and then would need to run home and shower, so... I'll meet you at the restaurant for 9:30?" Who eats dinner at 9:30? I do. And I have for nearly 15 years.

I get jealous when I hear people talking about going to that cute antique shop after work, or that awesome one-night-only secret sample sale, or getting together for a quick after-work drink - things I can't do because I HAVE TO go to the gym every  night.

And don't get me started on the weekends. While I have always loved being a "weekend warrior" type exerciser who puts in more than a few hours at the gym on Saturdays and Sundays, it would be super awesome to have the opportunity to opt out if the mood struck me. I can't really go out and get rowdy on Friday or Saturday nights because I have to be up early to teach two ungodly difficult hours of classes on both Saturday and Sunday morning.  After I've finished teaching, I have to eat copious amounts of food and shower, and by the time I get to the relaxing or errand-running part of my weekend day, it's already 2pm. Even if I plan ahead to take a weekend day off so I can go out to the mountains for a hike or go camping or just chill out (as people tend to do on weekends), it's virtually impossible to find subs to cover my classes... BECAUSE - OH YEAH - IT'S THE WEEKEND.

I love to move, I love to exercise, I love teaching and I love being a wellness role model. I do. I do I do I do. But secretly? Sometimes I'd love to NOT be.

It's not healthy when you start to resent the time you spend in the gym.


So, what are you going to do if or when your body or mind revolts against your wellness regimine? It's worth it to work out a plan of attack, to start thinking of ways to refresh and reinvigorate yourself when you get burned out, It can mean the difference between sticking with your habit or abandoning it altogether.

Share your thoughts in the comments, or at erin@thewellnessshift.com

 
 

Erin is a 32-year old copywriter from Calgary, Alberta (Canada), who also teaches a variety of fitness classes in her spare time. A lover of sports, fitness and movement in general, she remembers making a rather sharp shift toward wellness sometime in her late 20s. It continues to be a struggle for her as she wrestles with the demons of years of eating disorders, exercise obsession and body image issues, but every day she wakes up and vows to try to celebrate even her very smallest achievements toward wellness.

What was the catalyst that shifted you toward wellness?
It was a combination of debilitating injuries from too much exercise, a heart rate that was out of control due to abusing ephedrine-based fat-burners and my general state of unwell due to my disordered eating patterns.

The specific incident, though, that snapped me back to reality, was when my resting heart rate spontaneously shot up to about 160 beats per minute. This was due to the ephedrine in my system, and it caused me incredible panic. I remember from some of the medical training I had taken when I was in the military, that one of the signs and symptoms of a heart attack is "a sense of doom." I can only describe my panic as a doom sensation. I think I was saved from death that day. And I realize how hokey that sounds, but if you've ever experienced that "sense of doom" that your brain sends out when your heart is in trouble, then you'd know. I was 26. At that moment, I realized how ridiculous the Pursuit of Skinniness was, and I stopped.

What has been your wellness recipe?
Finding movement that inspires me. I'm lucky, I guess, in that I love to move. I love getting my heart rate up and pushing myself to my physical limits.

Despite my love of aggressive physical pursuits, dance and yoga have actually been two big ingredients in my recipe, with a little bit of martial arts sprinkled on top for flavour. The quiet, inner strength I get from these disciplines really helps to keep me focused on my ongoing journey toward wellness. I like to celebrate the amazing things my body can do. It keeps me grounded, and away from obsessing about every calorie in, every calorie out.

Oh, and because this response is getting a little too Zen for my liking, let me also add that I looooove weight training. I love that feeling of being strong and capable.

I have to be careful to take a certain amount of time away from the gym, too. It's been incredibly important for me to have a couple of rest days per week, and to take up some new (not-fitness-related) hobbies. 

What have been some of your greatest personal struggles on this journey?
Body image is such an ongoing struggle of mine. A combination of factors contribute to this:

- I'm tall. I'm big-boned. My skeleton is bigger than the average woman. I'm large and in charge, and I always will be. It's hard to be big in a world where women strive to be as teeny as possible.

-  I'm a fitness instructor, and so are almost all of my friends. As a group, fitness instructors tend to be leaner than the average woman. Almost everyone in my life is on the extreme end of leanness. I'm surrounded by people who remind me of "the old Erin."  

- My history with eating disorders. I know so many quick, easy and mind-blowingly unhealthy solutions for getting really skinny, really fast. But, obviously, I'm not going to go there.

What have you done to try to get past these challenges?
I try to think about the message I'm sending people around me. People who come to my fitness classes are looking to me to help them on their path to wellness. If I'm abusing ephedrine, starving myself and doing 6+ hours of cardio every day just to look lean, I am in no way, shape or form a good role model. I want everyone in the world to be truly WELL; in order to be authentic, I need to keep myself in the spectrum of healthy wellness.

Sometimes I remember back to how fixated, obsessed and self-absorbed I was. My whole world revolved around how I looked in the mirror. How sad is that? I don't consider myself a vain person at all, and yet for most of my young adult life, I fixated on every inch of flesh on my body - and this saddens me. It was an enormous waste of some of the potentially best years of my life (thankfully I have a lot of great years left - and I intend to enjoy them!). I am a better person than that. We all have a lot more to offer the world than just a good-looking container.

What is your wellness vision for your future? And what's your next step?
In my Future Perfect, I'm competely nonpartisan about how my body looks in comparison to everyone else. I don't need to love my body, but I don't want to hate it either. I want to simply acccept it and then quit thinking about it altogether.

One quick step I could take to make this happen is to unsubscribe to my (embarrasing) celebrity gossip blog feeds. The last thing I need is to watch Lindsay Lohan successfully starve herself down to perfect size 0 nymphette-ness via a diet of cigarettes and Red Bull.

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Do you want to share your Wellness Shift in Progress? If so, send me an email at erin@thewellnessshift.com. Your story can remain as anonymous as you like.