Does a body good

This year I used the birthday check my Nana sent to schedule a couple of appointments with a nutritionist and one with a personal trainer.  My motivation was partly to get a grip on my hypoglycemia-induced blood sugar crashes, partly to get a better grip on my eating habits, and – let’s face it – partly so I could just be a little leaner and a little buffer.

I don’t believe in diets, and around the time I graduated from high school I made a very conscious effort to stop saying anything bad about my body forever and ever. We don’t own a scale, and, unlike in high school, I don’t surround myself anymore with only size-4 white girls. So I approached this with some trepidation, but both the trainer and the nutritionist were great about hearing what I had to say about it and steering the conversations towards health and building muscle, rather than weight loss. (As an aside, Sster has been writing so well about this recently over at Boomerific. I haven’t commented but she’s speaking my language).

And damn, they’re good. After a couple of months, I can see the difference in my arms and shoulders, and my pants are all a little big. I haven’t had a single blood sugar crash (it used to happen maybe once or twice a week), and it was surprisingly easy to rid myself of the skip a snack/eat half a bag of tortilla chips while making dinner habit once I started eating smarter and not ignoring my body’s genuine need to eat something every 3 hours or so. It feels really healthy. Somewhere in there I lost about 6 pounds, which wasn’t the point but I can’t pretend doesn’t please me, patriarchy be damned.

I’ve been thinking about training for a sprint marathon this summer. It’s felt so good to get into better shape – even after working out regularly for years apparently your body can get really used to what you’re doing and this shake-up of my workout has really made a difference. And it’s inspired me to do more. My friend E. has done a bunch of sprint triathlons and is registered for 3 (!) this summer, and she agreed to be my training partner. I’m not actually registered yet so maybe I’m telling you all for accountability.

So in that vein, I’m going to use this blog to track my own training.

I’ve been running, which I hate, but today I ran 3 miles with the help of a treadmill, my trusty ipod, and a People magazine (seriously, how many toys and how much fancy equipment does a person need to do something we were literally built to do?). It’s probably been a decade since I did that. It felt great, though it was only 7 hours ago and I’m sore already, so whether this is sustainable remains to be seen. But a year ago I was in PT 3 days a week for a knee that wouldn’t let me off the floor without groaning, and today I ran 3 miles as the first half of my workout.

I’m a freakin’ machine. (Though tomorrow I may be a rusty, broken machine. I’ll let you know).