By Shalini

So! The school year started! Which means that I have a lot more time to exercise…and I haven’t.

Also, today I found a Tootsie roll on the floor, unwrapped it, and ate it. Just because. I haven’t bought Tootsie rolls…ever (because I don’t even know what they are–chocolate? wax? plastic? poo? I don’t know!). So where did it come from? I don’t know! And somehow I didn’t care when eating it from the floor.  Who DOES THAT? Me! Why? I don’t know!

My motivation for everything is low. I have school volunteer hour commitments, soccer and music classes to shuttle my boys to and from, an increasing load of freelance (which is good, I know, but bad for time management) and…no interest in being Healthy Woman. I’m biking more often, but honestly, not daily, and not enough to justify eating random Tootsie rolls on the floor. *shudder*

What do I do? Sign up for a 5K and summon up all my strength to actually show up for the race and not mind that I haven’t really run in a few weeks? Put myself on an unnecessary diet? Perhaps pork rinds and kale ribs?

I don’t need to lose weight. I do need to gain muscle. My body is a bit like a water bed, all jiggly, no substance. I need help. Well, as long as I view water bed bodies as a negative. I tried to reframe my viewpoint, and re-order the entire diet/weight loss/fitness industry with it: forget the gym! Water bed body in 30 days, or your money back! It didn’t work. (I don’t know why.)

I tried to motivate myself by buying some new workout clothes at that expensive store. You know the one that sells pants that are supposed to make your butt look fantastic? It turns out their pants either it me like a baggy Hammer pants or a tourniquet. Because my butt is nonexistent. I basically have the body of an unathletic twelve-year-old boy. Who has been welded to a water bed. (Don’t ask me for details on how, I’m not a scientist.)

So, what do I do to get out of this slump? Join a gym? Get a similarly unathletic workout partner (from the ether, because where else would I find such a person)? Build a time expander so I have more time to dedicate to exercise? But then I’d be busy patenting my time expander, getting rich, and then taking on the consequences in the time-space continuum for creating such a baseless invention. I’ve seen Back To The Future enough to know I don’t want to be anywhere near Christopher Lloyd.

Tell me, people. WHAT DO I DO? Am I doomed to a life with Christopher Lloyd and bad sequels? Or is there a way out?

By Courtney

This isn’t the kind of post I usually write. I think a lot of folks assume that when you write a blog(s), your life is pretty much an open book. In some cases, this is true for me. In others, it is not. I don’t share very much of what’s going on deep down with you guys. That’s my secret world, and exposing it would make me way too vulnerable and uncomfortable (even if, in all likelihood, I’m never going to actually meet any of you). So instead I exaggerate the good, and I gloss over the bad, and I try to make you want to come back. But today I’m going to share. Today I feel like I must share, because I have a sneaking suspicion I am not alone.

Most of my posts on this site go something like this: I know how to be healthy, I was healthy before, now I’m not healthy and I hate myself, I am going to gather myself and be healthy again, whoops I fucked up and now I’m back to square one, except because I failed I’m more jaded than ever.

And repeat.

This pattern of acting in ways I know to be counterproductive to my goal doesn’t stay neatly confined to my eating habits. In fact, it bleeds into every aspect of my life: my relationship with my boyfriend (or what’s left of it), my relationship with my family, the way I view my job, and most importantly, how I speak to myself (not as in, I’m crazy and I talk to myself out loud, but as in, I talk shit to myself in my head ALL THE TIME).

I’ve known about this pattern for months. I finally started going to therapy for it a few weeks ago. On the new patient questionnaire, I had to give my primary reason for seeking therapy. I wrote, “I keep doing things to sabotage my own happiness.” That pretty much sums it up.

Long story short, my therapist is pretty good. (Unlike the one I had in middle school, who told my mom everything I said, or the one I had in college, who guffawed when I told her I thought about killing myself daily, or the one I had 2 years ago, whose answer to all of my problems was “Why don’t you get a part-time job?”) She’s smart, intuitive, and incredibly well-read. And unlike the other bozos I’ve seen before, she’s genuinely interested at discovering the disease; not just in treating the symptoms.

She recommended a book to me (which I in turn now recommend to all of you) called Women Who Run with the Wolves. It’s a collection of myths about the wild, strong, self-sure female archetype, followed by a lengthy (yet interesting) Jungian interpretation. I love it.

Not even a quarter of the way through the book, I’ve made two profound discoveries. Allow me to share.

Discovery Number One: There is a really fucking evil predator in my head: There is one other specific instance in which women are highly likely to experience “dark man” (a.k.a., predatory) dreams, and that is when one’s internal creative fire is smoking and banking all by itself, when there is little fuel left in the corner, or when the white ashes grow deeper every day, yet the cookpot remains empty. These syndromes can occur even when we are veterans at our art (say, when one actually does have experience restraining oneself from eating everything in sight), as well as when we first seriously begin to apply our gifts outwardly. They occur when there is a predatory intrusion into the psyche, and as a result, we find every reason to do anything and everything except sit there, or stand there, or travel there, in order to execute whatever it is that we hold dear. (page 71)

Discovery Number Two: This is how the predator got there. Women who are raised in families that are not accepting of their gifts (ahem, DING DING!!) often set off on tremendously big quests—over and over, and they do not know why. They feel they must have three Ph.D.s or that they have to hang upside down from Mount Everest, or that they must execute all manner of dangerous, time-consuming, and money-eating endeavors to try to prove to their families that they have worth. (page 90)

It’s complicated, and it’s hard to sort out by typing the words. But basically my issue(s) goes something like this: my parents never found value in the things I was good at, and instead subtly (most of the time, anyway) implied that because I wasn’t good at the things they valued, then I really didn’t have any value. They weren’t mean about it, they were just… apathetic. And so I’ve spent my entire life trying to prove to them—and me—that I actually do have worth. Except, the ghost of the fat, insecure 12-year-old me who was forced to play basketball and be humiliated by her ineptitude in front of the whole school, is still in the back of my head telling me that my efforts to prevail will inevitably fail. No matter how proud it will make everyone (including me) to be skinny, happy, or able to dribble a basketball, I will trip over my own feet and land on my face. So I might as well quit trying.

That’s the predator. The voice that says that my life is good enough the way it is, I shouldn’t expect more, so there’s no use sticking to a diet, trying to get into graduate school (again), or being kind to my partner. He tells me that there’s no use in trying to better myself or my life, because I will fail, and then I’ll not only have a worse situation, but I’ll be humiliated for my failed efforts.

I know who/what the predator is now. I know how he got there. He’s been there for a very, very long time. Getting rid of him will be a long, slow, arduous journey. (And wait for it… she’s about to say something about how she knows she’s up for the challenge…) Honestly, I don’t know if I’m up to the challenge of fighting him alone. (Ha! Got ya.) But I do know that if I let him stay in there, he will kill me . I don’t even know how to get rid of him. Yet. I will keep getting help, researching, reading, looking inward. I will make a conscious effort to speak kindly to myself and to behave kindly to others. My therapist has recommended some great cognitive exercises to help me retrain my brain to not think so negatively. I will keep doing them.

It’s scary, setting out to remake yourself into something different. Something you’ve never been. I’ve always been fat, irritable, insecure, and judgmental. I have no idea what my life will entail without those things. I truly cannot wait to find out.

By Shalini

Umm, guess WHAT? I bet you’ll never ever guess? I’ve been eating sugar like…like a sugar-eating maniac. Just now I had three donuts. Yes, THREE. Why? Why would anyone not coming off of a 50-mile ultra-marathon need to eat three donuts? Listen, I don’t make the rules, so I don’t know the answer.

What I do know is that I might need to step back from the sugar again and get a little bit of fresh, non-sugary air. I haven’t really been eating very well; I mean, I eat fruit, as long as artificial fruit flavoring counts. But other than that, I’ve kind of gone off the deep end of unhealthy eating. So, back to it. No sugar for the foreseeable future. And by “foreseeable future” I mean “the next two to three minutes.” Baby steps.

Actually, I’m going to try to go the next week without sugar. School starts this week, and I’m also hoping to add a few new freelance assignments to work, and I’ve noticed the more sugar I eat, the more anxious I am. It’s for the good of humanity that I back away from it for a little while and see if it helps with my mood and keeps me from crying, “My BABIES! Where did my BABIES go!” when I drop them off at school on Thursday.

*******

In exercising, non-sugar-related news, I’ve been reading the blog archives of Simply Bike and I feel inspired, so I’ve decided I’m going to try going without a car for 30 days, other than ferrying multiple children to places farther than a few blocks. There’s no reason not to for me. The weather in Seattle is still nice and I just got a new fancy bike–the tires don’t fall off AND the brakes work AND the gears shift! I know, I went all out. (Why YES, my old bike was a piece of poo, how did you know?)

If you care to join me, then…uh, join me? Maybe we can have a vicious little biker gang on twitter.

By Hilary

I hear it at least once a week at my CrossFit gym.

“You’ve gotta relax.”

“Just relax.”

“Turn off your brain, and relax.”

I always knew getting good at a sport took strength, coordination, practice, and guts, but I never thought I also had to relax.

I get through much of my day—and life—with a low-level hum of anxiety. It pushes me to meet my deadlines, to exercise, to clean the house, and to get a healthy dinner on the table for my family.

It also has a dark side. It makes me single-focused, resistant to change, and a little too focused on the end result, not the journey.

I’ve always approached athletic challenges the way I do any other assignment—with a focus on getting it done quickly and well. I usually end up enjoying the workout or my writing project, but I never start out with that as my focus. In fact, I start every new project or workout with a small voice in my head, saying, “What if you can’t do this? What if you fail?”

Probably not the best way to achieve a relaxed state.

I had all these thoughts percolating in my head—could my no-nonsense, slightly anxious, goal-oriented attitude be negatively impacting my CrossFit performance?—when I took the kids to the library last week. As they got sucked into one of the computer games in the children’s area, I wandered over to the trade paperback racks. I was nervous leaving the kids on the other side of the library unsupervised, so I quickly scanned the books and saw a familiar-looking blue cover.

Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. I remembered I had heard it was good, but all I knew was that it was about a tribe of people in some isolated place who ran hundreds of miles at a time. That, and it had something to do with barefoot running.

I grabbed it and walked quickly back to my kids, who were still happily absorbed in the game.

I cracked open the book that night and was immediately absorbed. The writing style is fast-moving, punchy, and suspenseful. (Sometimes the cliff-hanger at the end of each chapter seemed forced, but it kept me turning the page.)

At a basic level, the book is about the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico who are able to run for days. The author wants to know their secret, and along the way the book delves into the history of endurance running, physiology, evolutionary biology, nutrition, and sports psychology.

Even thought it’s about the sport of running, many of the ideas in the book apply to all athletic pursuits. And one of the main things the author discovers as he learns more about the Tarahumara and their almost super-human endurance, is that they approach running with love and with joy.

I don’t believe that there’s some unseen hand guiding things as trivial as my book selection, but this book couldn’t have come into my hands at a better time. Just when I was trying to wrap my head around the mental side of fitness, and how to infuse my workouts with more natural movement and joy, I read this:

“… you can’t muscle through a five-hour run … you have to relax into it, like easing your body into a hot bath, until it no longer resists the shock and begins to enjoy it. Relax enough, and your body becomes so familiar with the cradle-rocking rhythm that you almost forget you’re moving.”

Sounds a lot like learning how to do double unders, where the jump rope passes under your feet two times for every one jump. Try to do it too quickly, get upset, try to muscle through it, and everything falls apart. If you relax, breathe, and jump high—it works.

There’s a section in the book about Emil Zatopek, a Czech runner who competed in the 1940s and 50s. He was known for his generosity, friendliness, and love of life. An elite running coach named Dr. Joe Vigil studied Zatopek and the Tarahumara, and concluded that:

“there was some kind of connection between the capacity to love and the capacity to love running. The engineering was certainly the same: both depended on loosening your grip on your own desires, putting aside what you wanted and appreciating what you got, being patient and forgiving and undemanding.”

Another quote from the book, which comes back to me every time I see my kids take off down the sidewalk:

“Remember? Back when you were a kid and you had to be yelled out to slow down? Every game you played, you played at top speed, sprinting like crazy as you kicked cans, freed all, and attacked jungle outposts in your neighbors’ backyards. Half the fun of doing anything was doing it at record pace, making it probably the last time in your life you’d ever get hassled for going too fast.

That was the real secret of the Tarahumara: they’d never forgotten what it felt like to love running. They remembered that running was mankind’s first fine art, our original act of inspired creation.”

So how do I find that place of joy? I love CrossFit—I love pushing myself, I love getting stronger, I love the community. I’m competitive, but I think anyone who gets into CrossFit has to have that side to them. So how do I push myself, but still feel joy in the process?

I think I can start by drowning out the anxious thoughts with positive ones. Just as I am currently working on double unders every day, I could make it an assignment to start each workout thinking, “I can’t wait to work on this movement,” or “I bet I’ll do really well.”

Does anyone have experience with this kind of positive self-talk? Does it work? Any suggestions for how to retrain my brain to look for joy, not anxiety and stress?

By Shalini

Now that I’m a Real Runner, I felt it was time for me to be, you know, invincible. That’s how all you exercise-y ladies seem to me. (That’s what I call you in my head: exercise-y ladies.) You can do pull ups and squats and box jumps and I don’t even know what two of those three things are, but I’m pretty sure doing them qualifies you for invincibility.

But…but I’m not invincible. I’m totally still vincible, and running 5K is still extremely unpleasant (until afterwards, when the Runner’s High hits…ahhhhh, Runner’s High, I love you). Worse, I think I’m in worse health than I was a few months ago. I’ve been having some, err, stomach troubles. The kind of stomach troubles that have me keeping an emergency stash of Imodium in my wallet and doubled over in pain on a regular basis. Yeah, it’s totally sexy, I know.

So, since I’m a certified genius*, I thought I’d look at what was different in my life. And in my thorough** investigation, do you know what I found? That I was eating a lot more sugar and carbohydrates, and almost no protein. I was doing this because…well, because carbohydrates are my one true love*** and I need them to live.

I know I shouldn’t be eating so many carbs. As someone who had gestational diabetes 100% of the time I was pregnant, with a father with diabetes, and with someone with polycystic ovarian syndrome, something caused by out-of-whack blood sugar, I know. I know I should declare the gospel of meat and vegetables and go all paleo/primal/cavewoman shooting arrows or whatever. I know it’s the healthiest thing for me.

The problem is that I don’t really like meat. I go to restaurants and order hamburgers minus the burger. I could live off of frozen yogurt and Oreos****.  I don’t need meat. I gag when I buy hot dogs for my boys*****. Plus, I was a vegetarian for twenty years******, so it makes eating meat even less appetizing.

But I decided I could try and like it. I still don’t like it, but my stomach problems are gone. So I guess it’s working. I’m still eating grains. I’m eating sugary things. I’m eating everything, really, just trying to eat a little bit less of the pasta and a little bit more of the *gag* hamburger *gag*. It somehow makes my sugar cravings go away, too. I guess I’m sticking with it, for now.*******

*Not based on fact.

**I spent at least two minutes considering this situation.

***Sorry Gregg. I hope you understand.

****until I died of scurvy, I mean.

*****Actually, I kind of love hot dogs, but it makes me sound all superior and Gwynethy when I say, “I basically love anything that goes in a hot dog bun…except hot dogs.”

******Not actually true.

*******Using the statement “now” does not include lunch, when I had macaroni and cheese, which is maybe the best food on earth.*********

********Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to see a pharmacy about buying Imodium in bulk.

By Katherine

Two mornings a week, seven other people and I have a date with a boat and the Willamette – and something that I thought would just be a fun lesson has now turned into an obsession. I love rowing. I love pulling the oar, and feeling the resistance from the water. I love Portland at 5:30 in the morning when it is still sleepy and covered in low clouds. I love the way I have to think so hard about what I am doing that I can’t possibly think about anything else – my messy kitchen, my sticky floors, my stack of unpaid bills, and the list of things I need to accomplish – there is no room for them when I row because I am concentrating on keeping my elbow up, on staying in time with the person in the seat in front of me: catch, release, catch, release, catch, release. It’s all I can do to get through those motions one at a time, and man – I love that.

I love CrossFit. I love the camaraderie; hearing my name at the exact moment when I feel like I can’t do one more rep. I love heaving a kettlebell into the air at the exact moment someone in the box lets out a primal grunt.  Man, I love that I can heave a kettlebell.   I love leaving the box feeling like a limp noodle and damp with sweat. I love feeling confident doing things that used to make me feel ridiculous. A deadlift? I have three children and am typically covered in spit-up, and have peanut butter and jelly smeared on my dri-fits, but I can do a deadlift and that makes me feel bad ass.

Man, I never used to try new things.  I started running because it was something I could do on my own.  I ran in the evening, down quiet neighborhood streets.  I charted my progress for weeks and only joined a running group when I felt like I had come far enough on my own to not embarrass myself.  For so long, I didn’t do new things because I am anxious and the idea of looking stupid in front of other people paralyzed me in fear.   I almost backed out of my first rowing lesson, but I was out of town until after the fee was no longer refundable and my husband would have killed me for spending the money and not even trying it. 

 I went, and even though I did feel completely stupid and embarrassed, I went back.  I am still only a decent, novice rower.  But, oh man, I think I am addicted to trying new things.  Since running my half marathon back in June, I have started rowing and CrossFit (thank you CrossFit bloggers!).  I am running  Hood to Coast in a few weeks – and I have a list of things that I want to try – even though I might be terrible, or embarrassed.   Besides how much fun I am having, and at the risk of sounding like a nerdball – pushing through my anxiety to try new things is giving me so much confidence in other, non-fitness related areas as well.  It just feels so awesome to accomplish something I was once afraid of doing.  The worst part about all of it, is there just doesn’t seem like enough time to do all the things I am enjoying.  I know! 

I realize the summer is winding to a close, but please consider trying something new.  Or suggest something to me, while I am still on a roll!

By Lisa

I imagined myself at 7 months pregnant in great shape. I imagined myself eating only healthy foods, exercising several times each week. I imagined strangers stopping me in the street asking me how I did it all, how I looked so fabulous. This was how I thought this pregnancy would be, but not at all how it has turned out.

The reality is that I have absolutely no energy. I have back pain when I do anything physical and I feel like I have erased all of my previous hard work getting in shape after my first child. I am frustrated with myself because I know it is my fault. If I ate better, I would have more energy. If I had more energy, I could exercise more. If I exercised more, I wouldn’t have so much back pain. I KNOW this all to be true but I can’t seem to find any motivation.

I need to make a change. I only have about 10 weeks to go before this baby is born and my lazy side wants to say it’s too late. I will just have to wait until I have the baby and then get back on track. My other motivated side is buried too deep under the chips and ice cream to have an opinion about this. In the past, I have not had issues with motivation. I have never needed a workout partner or someone to take the cookie out of my hand, but my baby brain is different. I feel like I need that now and I don’t have it.

So here is what I can do. I am going to give up or at least cut waaaaaaaaaaaaay back on the sweets. I have never had much of a sweet tooth, but with this pregnancy, it is out of control. I have been doing some arm and shoulder exercises with free weights, but it’s been sporadic at best. I am going to try to do that three times each week… or at least two times. I am going to cut myself some slack. I go non-stop from 6:30 in the morning until 8:30 at night, so it’s not a surprise that I am tired. It is important to rest. It is not okay to eat pizza and chase it with a milkshake when you have all the stuff in the fridge to make a delicious salad. I can do better.

Anyone have suggestions on small changes I can make that will make me feel less blah and more motivated?

By Shalini

I did something amazing (brief aside: I mean amazing in the way that it’s amazing that my two boys pee ALL OVER THE BATHROOM EVERYWHERE except in the TOILET every single day, not amazing in the lifted-a-car-above-a-trapped-baby way, in case I was about to spoil my whole post for you): the other day, I really wanted some Swedish Fish. We didn’t have any Swedish Fish (because if we had any, I would immediately eat them up), of course, so I ate some of my kids’ candy, a few pretzels with frosting (what? it’s good), some ice cream, and still didn’t feel satisfied. (Full, yes, always full, but not satisfied.) Then I had an epiphany: I could go to the store and BUY Swedish Fish.

And I did, and I ate them. I shared one with my three-year-old, who chewed it thoughtfully for a while and then spit it out and said, “Mommy, this isn’t food. It’s wax.” Have wiser, truer words ever been spoken? I think not. Still, it was my wax, and it was delicious. And then instead of piffling around the kitchen looking for something not quite right, I was fine. I didn’t crave anything. I had my Swedish Fish and ate them too.

So this week at the grocery store, I stocked up on all the delicious things I wanted: fudge bars and Scharffen Berger chocolates and brownie fixings. And all of those things are sitting in my house right now. OK, the brownies are mostly gone, but I haven’t eaten the rest, because I took the guilt out of the equation. If I want to eat something, I’m going to EAT IT, damn it. I’m not going to hem and haw and feel guilt and bemoan my self-control. I won’t worry that I really should be munching on some green leafy vegetable if I don’t want to.

And because I took the guilt out of the equation, suddenly all of those sugary provisions I bought aren’t nearly as appealing as I thought they would be. The brownies were pretty good, but not transcendent. I haven’t gotten around to the fudge bars at all. I had a square of chocolate, and it was meh.

I found that instead, I wanted to go for bike rides with my kids in the evening and put on some bad music and do the dishes. I read some books and wrote some probably bad fiction. I even begrudgingly went on a few runs. I emailed and wrote letters. I gardened a whole heck of a lot. I drank some coffee. I didn’t think about whether I was eating healthy or not. I didn’t think about my food at all, except to prepare it for breakfast-lunch-dinner, and to savor it while I was eating it.

I feel a little bit like I did when I discovered that I could just read books that I liked without being ashamed. I love, love, love young adult fiction, usually the kind with embarrassing covers and titles. I used to cringe, bringing those books to the front counter to check them out at the library (and I’m a librarian, for goodness sake), because I knew I should be reading something like Don DeLillo or *hack* poseur *hack* Jonathan Franzen or something like that. Something I didn’t enjoy. Something that made me gnash my teeth with its modern postmodern hatefest of people and humanity and the middle class. But I just wanted to read books and ENJOY THEM. Was there any happy way to do this?

Why YES, there is. And the happy way to do it was to take the shame out of the equation. So I like books that aren’t of supposed literary repute. Who cares what I read but me? Oh, right, no one! So who cares what I eat but me? Oh, right, no one!

And that leaves me with this: sometimes, occassionally, it’s totally alright to give in to the Swedish Fish, instead of denying myself or shaming myself or eating everything else but the freaking Swedish Fish. And ever since then, I swear to you, I haven’t had to choke down my vegetables with disdain that they’re not an ice cream cone. And I don’t know what I’m going to do with the rest of the sweets in my kitchen, but suddenly I feel so completely free and in control. It’s nice. Almost as nice as reading a YA zombie book with an embarrassing cover.

(The author of this post reserves the right to go back on everything she said in this post and decimate the supply of fudge bars swiftly and mercilessly.)

(Oh, and as for running? I totally ran a 5K and didn’t completely suck! Go me!)

By Courtney

Right now in my refrigerator and on my counters I have: eggplant, onions, shallots, garlic, tomatoes, basil, and red and green peppers. Flipping through my beloved Mediterranean cookbook, trying to figure out what to do with the bounty, I saw a recipe for ratatouille. I’ve never eaten ratatouille before, but it looked delicious, and I wasn’t about to let my lack of zucchini stop me from trying it.

However, the recipe I had looked pretty labor-intensive and called for cooking the vegetables separately and to different degrees. I didn’t have time for that today, so I broiled the entire dish until it was soupy, charred, and aromatic.

I’ve yet to try ratatouille, but I assume this dish is very similar. It has a thick, stew-like consistency, and a delicious, sweet aftertaste.  It makes a great vegetarian entree or a side dish, either with a grain-like accompaniment or not. (I served it with quinoa.)

Ingredients

• 1 eggplant, cut into 1-inch cubes
• 2 bell peppers, cut into 1 inch pieces
• 1 onion, halved and sliced into quarter-inch rings
• 3 large (about 1.5 pounds) tomatoes, cored and seeded, cut into 1-inch cubes
• 5 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
• 1/3 cup roughly chopped fresh  basil
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/4 cup chicken stock
• Salt and pepper to taste (about a teaspoon and quarter teaspoon, respectively)

Method:

1. Preheat your broiler to high (if you have that option) and move the oven rack so that your pan will be about 5 inches from the heat source.
2. Toss everything but the chicken stock together in a heavy-bottomed cake pan or on a good-quality sheet pan. I used a cast-iron roasting pan, and it worked awesomely.
3. Broil the vegetables for 5-10 minutes, until those facing the heat begin to char.
4. Stir the vegetables, and replace under the broiler until those facing the heat begin to char.
5. Repeat until the vegetables have reduced by half.
6. Remove from the oven, pour the chicken stock over the vegetables, and cover with aluminum foil. Let rest for 1 hour, or until the vegetable juices and chicken stock have thickened into a stew-like consistency or a veggie gravy.

By Shalini

I don’t really feel like talking about healthy eating this week, probably because I haven’t been doing it. I’m looking for a better balance, but right now balance looks like, “Eat all the cupcakes before the Apocalypse! Which I’ve been informed is in two minutes!” or “Since I can’t choose between the gelato or ice cream, I will eat both.” So, uh, yeah. It’s not going so well.

But hey, you know what ELSE isn’t going very well? Running! So let’s talk about that instead. It will be a refreshing change to talk about another way I’m failing my body as its owner.

I started running two months ago, and save for one run last week, every single run has sucked. I mean, I don’t know how you people do it, because it’s hard and it’s sweaty and then I’m cold no hot no cold no hot no not the rain i forgot my hat! Et cetera. It also hasn’t gotten much easier.

I had this idea that if I kept doing it, it would still suck, but suck in new ways, like, “Oh, I only ran five miles at a seven minute pace, darn it! I know I could do it much faster!” Haaa. Right. I just came back from a run and my pace was 13 minutes. 13 minutes to run ONE mile, not three. At one point last week, a guy with one leg passed me.

My friend Ted, who’s a runner himself, asked me, “Wait, was it one of those springy legs? Or a regular leg?”

“A springy leg.”

“So he was probably in pretty good shape if he had a special leg for running.”

“Yeah, those are probably faster than real legs, right?”

“Uh, no.”

Right.

So, this is me: I suck at eating healthy, I suck at running, and don’t even talk to me about other forms of exercise. I was the girl who “accidentally” left her gym shoes at home and had to sit out PE wearing my winter boots. Oops! I was the girl who, despite daily physical education classes for 13 years, could never do a single push-up or chin-up or anything-up. (Wait, I was awesome at the sit-and-reach, mostly because it involved sitting.)

I have a lot of regrets that high school PE classes aren’t structured differently. I wrote a post on my personal blog about PE classes, and the very smart Swistle suggested that PE classes be tracked just like math classes are. Why aren’t there levels? How could I benefit from running the mile alongside the girl on the track team who ran the sub-six minute mile (except to make me feel like a gigantic loser that I couldn’t run it in twice that time, even at sixteen)? Sure, I would have taken an ego hit, being placed with the slowest and most-likely-to-reread-The-Hobbit-three-times-in-a-weekend girls in my school, but I also wouldn’t have felt so bad about my performance. I might have even had fun. I would have been with my friends (because I’m the kind of girl who has Hobbit-reading best friends). I might have even gotten BETTER at something besides the sit-and-reach.

Because I want to get better at it. I want to challenge myself. I want to have a healthy heart and lungs and body, and strong legs. I read other runners’ posts with something akin to jealousy (but not that exactly, maybe more like puzzled wonderment?). I’m trying, but I’m not there. I’m not anywhere near close. I need some help and some encouragement, and some endorphins, darnit.

Will the endorphins kick in soon?