Taking Up Space (And Trying Not To Be A Dick About It)

Have you seen the study that says Men take up more space than Women? I can’t find the initial study that I read but I did find this absolutely not scientific at all study. It doesn’t take a genius to see that. Look at any subway, bus stop, doctor’s office or coffee line. Men stand wide, sit wide and command a greater portion of the room. The women I see right now are standing with arms crossed close, sitting demurely while the men in the room have a wide berth. Arms resting on the coffee machine, legs spread wide when they’re sitting.

They take the space they want. So lately I have been doing the same thing. I am taking my fair share of space and I like it. I went to my first Krav Maga class (more on that and why I’m taking it later) and while we were waiting for the class to start there was a good space on a couch. I sat down and crossed my legs like a man would and spread my arm across the top of the couch. Something like this…without the suit, Krav Maga remember?

Man I love stock photos

 

 

There was not one woman who sat next to me, however there was a very nice man that motioned my way and sat down.  I was honestly very surprised at how the women really did shy away, not saying anything to me or to the other men, really sticking with the girls. I tried to strike up a conversation with them before the class as well, only this time I stood firm. Feet apart, open arms but smiling. Always smile.

Side note: A mentor once told me to always smile, on the phone, when you meet someone, whenever you talk etc. it will always make you sound better. She was and is right.

Still the ladies wanted nothing to do with that. I started class near them and througout the warm-ups and the class I slowly migrated toward the men. They were kind, open and welcoming. These bad ass guys who nearly knocked me into next week in the class were as friendly as all get out when I presented myself to them as an equal during the class. Not one of them spoke to the other women in the class and here is where this got interesting.

I am pretty, I know this, I’m proud of the way I look. But I am in NO WAY what I have been told to believe the everyman wants. Boobs? Nope, A/B baby, Hips that will make birth an easy chore someday and thighs like trees. There is no way you would ever confuse me for a model, nope. And yet, because I presented myself to these gents as another bloke I was in. The other ladies in the class were pretty, long legs, nice hair blah, blah, blah but I took up space. I had presence. I was there. Women all too often are not there. Whether they do not want to be there or they don’t have the courage to BE there we are underrepresented in physical space.

While I was very conscious of all the physical changes I was making in taking up space (while trying not to be a dick) I kept seeing a big ol’ lady in a flower. Very cheesy, but it was like a lotus flower and this female buddah like babe was just hanging out in this giant flower. Since I can’t draw and no one at laughing salad central aka photostock has decided to make this image I’ll leave you with an image of my favorite flower in the world big world. The ranunculus, and no, I did not spell that right the first 12 times.

THIS FLOWER!

As you can see it’s like a normal flower on roids. Like a rose wanted to bloom, then it sploded. I love them. I would sit in this flower.

 

Well, I don’t really know what this post has to do with paleo but I’m sure glad I wrote it. And I eat Paleo. So that makes this a paleo post.

PFX13 and what happens next

Hey all (A.K.A. mom and one friend who reads this)

This past weekend was PaleoFX13 in Austin, TX. For those of you who may not know what PFX is here’s the down and dirty. It’s a convention put on in Austin for all things surrounding the Paleo and Primal community.

It. Was. Amazing.

Not only did I have the chance to get away from work for a few days but I got the chance to be around some of the most influenciail and intelliegent people in the paleo community but also some people that are just pretty to look at. Which led me to the most interesting epiphany of the conference. I was sitting in on a panel about transformation. There were some amazing speakers. Jimmy Moore, Stacy Toth, Steve Cooksey, Jimmy Moore, Abel Bascom, and George Bryant. I was expecting it to be something on par to a before and after panel but it took a few unexpected turns.

The Transformation Panel

* First, the frank talk of addiction and how it comes in all forms in our world of clean eating. From the norms like food and alcohol to the ones that are sometimes lauded like cardio and exercise.

* Second, the varying approaches to their success. Everyone has a different start point, everyone has a different path and everyone has different downfalls.

* Third, and the most surprising, was the brief little bit about orthorexia. Basically un-healy obsession with being healthy. Stacy Toth, the lovely woman behind Paleo Parents was touching, lovely and true. Something rarely met in this world of beauty and images.

This one was the most surprising because it was obvious, painful in some ways, how many people were struggeling with this. You see the big, small and pained faces in the panels and in the audience. You see it in some, but many hide it well. I’m not sure how to address this topic best but one of my favorite tweets from this session…I was live tweeting like a fiend…*amazonann77 if you’re interested* was this:

Ann K Flynn ‏@amazonann7730 Mar

#PFX13 separate yourself from false images, forgive yourself, and cancel your f@$king magazine subscriptions.

It’s as simple as that. Every day? Ug, yes every single day. Sometimes this feels like a trudge, sometimes it feels like a breeze. Ok. So here’s the great people.

The amazing and lovely Stacy Toth

Ahhh yes, Mr. Able James. Representing ATX!

The ever inspiring Jimmy Moore!!

Transformers

Well, I think the end of my carb experiment has come to an end. I don’t like the results but it looks like i can go back to a better Way Of Eating for myself. Today marks the worst I have felt in the two months that I have done this little experiment. This is how I look today.

And this is where I feel the most comfortable.

The difference between the two is roughly 20-25 lbs. These are the Lubs that make me uncomfortable. Granted the picture of me in the pink shirt is from a few years ago, no matter, that is a weight that is about 138. I don’t weigh myself right now. It gets me into my head too much. I can’t get out and I get depressed. This is where i am today. I’m depressed, I’m down and I’m ready to make the change.

A friend who was trying to help suggested testing my adrenals. I did and they are a bit kooky. Now I’m on a journey to calm down, stop running around like a crazy person and heal my body (including my adrenals). So I’m cutting out the carbs again, possibly to get into ketosis, maybe just low carb. I just feel like cwap today.

After spending an amazing three days at PFX13 I feel like my body has had enough and I don’t think a person should be worn out to the bone after just three days of hard work. People have done this for centuries. I can do this too. Everything feels weird and bloated today. But something else is different from the time the pink shirt picture was taken. I’ve done a lot of work. I’ve seen a lot of counselors, I’ve seen a lot of docs and I’ve worked really hard to work with an eating disorder. I think this is the first time I’ve ever typed this somewhere that the general public can see. I won’t go into details now but I can say I continue to get help and I consider myself a recovering patient of ED. Today I eat, I’m not starving and I’m trying not to overeat. I’m getting nutrition and that is key. I just want the belly to go away. It’s not just vanity, I want my body back so I can keep doing the things I want to do. I want to play!

Here’s my thing. I’m never happy and the weight never seems to make it better. This time the goal is not just fat loss, it’s feeling, it’s emotional. It’s for me and my brain and my health. I’m ready to look like this again.

But for now I have a mind that is better and I look like this

It just seems so far away when I look at it. I want and I need to get this body back in line.

Care to join me?

 

Sometimes you have to mark the good stuff

I’ve been mulling over another post a lot lately. I’m not sure where it’s headed but I’m just going to leave this window up during the day and I’m going to see where it goes.

I’m feeling really good. For the past few days I’ve been sleeping really well, feeling really good and my clothes are the tiniest bit looser. Looser. Is that real? Anyway, I don’t know if these things are connected but I think it has something to do with this one thing. Running. I’ve added running back into my schedule 2-3 days a week and I have missed it so much. I am almost always smiling while I run. I’m always really enjoying the feeling of moving even if it’s slow, really slow, almost painfully slow.

Yes, I got another metric. I got a heart rate monitor and per a chiropractor orders I’ve been keeping my heart rate at a low rate 135-145 for the entire run. It’s actually feeling really good though at that level. I can run and run and run and I don’t really get tired. I just get bored with some of the sights so I think I’m going to hit the trails soon and see how that goes.

I just love to run. To get out there. Yes, it may take me some time, some boring time in the house just fiddling around but I need that time to get into the head space and the more often I run the faster that head space comes.

I’m not sure what it will do to my adrenal system. It’s a concern but the biggest thing to worry about with adrenals is stress and I have not been under more stress then when I can’t get a run in. And I haven’t been running for a few months (consistently).

 

Well, after a few stressful days I’m back and I haven’t checked my temps but I’m feeling better. I’ll fill this space with some info about a wild week.

 

Soon.

Swimming in a sea of numbers

So lately I’ve been hot on the idea of numbers. 

They are everywhere, they confine us, define us, restrict us and move us. They are our height, our age, our weight, our blood, our emotions. How do you feel on a scale of 1-10?

The numbers that concern me the most are the ones that I personally have obsessed over in the past. Weight, bust size, and recently blood sugar. I’ve had to reign myself in when it comes to all of these numbers. Oh my GOD how fast they can take over my brain, your brain the brains of women and men everywhere. That’s what we love though, to quantify, to fit ourselves neatly into some file. Because that is simple. If I am a size 2 I will fit the emotional status of a size two, be happy and be whole. I think Drew says it best here. 

Toothpaste for dinner

Drew, you and Natalie are amazing. I can’t thank these two enough for their humor. They got me through some hard days in college and beyond. 

    Anyway, I was talking about numbers right? Well, the Blood Sugar testing was an eye opener but I’m happy to move away from it now that I know how my body works for the most part under normal food circumstances. Under odd circumstances I’ll still play with this. For instance, last night I couldn’t eat until 10 pm and I wanted to see how it affected my B.S. during the next day. Turns out it regulates very well. Better than I expected. 

   On the subject of weight numbers I have a piece to say about this. My darling fucking-amazing husband threw out our scale, or hid it, I don’t know and I don’t care. That freaks me out to a certain point but it’s also so amazingly freeing! Do you know what it’s like to have something that is so hard deal with everyday REMOVED COMPLETELY?! It’s like a confession booth every morning that I don’t have to deal with. NO guilt, NO shame, just responsibility for who I am and what I do/eat/enjoy. But like I said, it does scare me a bit. The not knowing. The fears of “am I getting fat?” and then it hits me. Time and time again I come to the ah-ha moment of the fact that BEAUTY FADES AND I’M HEALTHY. 

10 years from now I’ll be 10 years older! If I’m still healthy that’s a gift, a gift I still work for. 

See, they know what’s going on. 

As long as I can manage to get older, get better, maybe faster, maybe thinner, but wiser, smarter and change a few things for the better. Well then, looks like I’ve got a life worth living there. 

Boom. 

Perfect Health

Perfect Health, isn’t that what this is all about?

These are the rough guidelines for Paul Jaminet’s Perfect Health diet. 

This is the basis for some of the ideas I’ve been gathering over the last month in the search for my best health diet. I have done a lot of thinking about when I was my slimmest, what I was eating then and I’ll tell you what, it was not the LOW-LOW carb. It was moderate carb, moderate fat, moderate protein.  There was little deprivation, other than from cookies. It was when I was following WW, which is a good plan for so many people but I hated the meetings, the ladies, the judgment. I can’t stand it. 

   I’m finding out that my blood sugar is really normal when I have a good amount of carbs and but I am learning that my protein may have been too high and my body was turning that into a form of sugar. Wait, what? Right?! Not even fun. Nope, the amount of protein and fat I was eating could have been used as glucose as my body saw it, if I’m understanding correctly.  And I may not be getting the science right but you get the point. 

   So here I am, eating carbs 30-40g.s with EVERY MEAL! It’s crazy but I feel different after being low carb and on the diet train for so many years. I believe that Paul is right, that the body needs these carbs for brain function and I was not giving my body what it needed!

   So, here I am again. At a new beginning, eating carbs, eating fats and eating protein like a good person. I don’t want to be the 113 pound girl I was before but I don’t want to be here either. So I want to be comfortably in the middle. They say that this diet change may bring a few extra pounds at first but then it comes off. So, here I go. I’ll try to eat less fruit in the evening. Less of everything in the evening and more food during the day, good food. 

Wish me luck, send me prayers and hope for the best. 

 

Things I find interesting

So over this journey I’ve found a few things interesting while testing my blood sugar. 

1. This could go overboard, just like so many other things in life when it comes to attempting health. I could see going through test strips like water. Going to check after every meal, after every drink just trying to stay within “good” ranges. 

2. I had little idea what really effects blood sugar. 

     Case in point: When I would wake up in the morning with a good blood sugar I would think, “gee, I can just not have breakfast and get it even lower, go down to where glucagon (needed for fat access) will kick in and I’ll lose weight! Great!” Yesh, No. As a matter of fact it went up, way up. 

3.) Most of the time my blood sugar is really normal. There were no really bad readings, even when I was trying to get higher readings it didn’t go above 117. 

Overall, it’s another good tool to use to see how my body reacts to things. While I was doing this I was not eating grain, fitting with the paleo life, but I decided to indulge in one of my favorite treats from the time before paleo…cereal. I didn’t go for cap’n crunch or trix but I went with simple puffed rice and puffed corn. The simple form of whole grains. Just those on the end of a good meal took my blood sugar up, but not as far as I expected. I believe that was the high of 117.  Still, I’m not going back to grains soon. I still don’t think they’re good for me. 

4.) Not B.S. related but I did find out that corn can make me very emotional. When I did eat corn, in the puffed form, I got very weepy. For some reason chips, tortillas, other corn goods don’t bother me as much. Just an interesting aside. 

Also, checking Blood kid of shut down one of my biggest problems, night eating! This may not help forever, and I’m realizing that the emotional is much more involved with this than anything. But, for now, I know that I want to check it one hour after my first bite, which means I have to stop eating after an hour. When I have an evening free it’s spent looking for things to eat and generally I eat too much. 

    I like breakfast, I’m ok with lunch but I love having an open dinner. I will skimp on the two first meals of the day if I know I can totally pig out at dinner. Even if we go out to eat with friends and I eat very wisely I will still have a dessert and maybe even a “second dinner” like I’m a friggin hobbit! 

    So, I’m working on the emotional bit here and in another realm. It’s painful but It’s needed. It’s hard, but to remove these obstacles it’s worth it. To lead the life that I love and that I’m able to be comfortable with is worth every minute. Worth every pain, feel and hunger. 

So this digressed from just, what I learned about B.S. to what I’m still learning. Still.