we sayin' oh we oh.

I hope I haven't made it a secret that I suspended my gym membership. It sort of happened without thought. One week, I was going regularly, the next week I had no drive. I wanted to exercise, just... not there. We have had such a mild winter so far that I've been incredibly lucky to take my exercise efforts outdoors and save myself the fee and the grief that I associate with my gym membership.

Don't get me wrong, it's a great gym. I just get really bored with routine.

I was nervous about running outdoors because of the cold. I was born and raised in the southwest in a desert; I'm a summer kind of gal. I thought that taking my training outdoors in this climate would ensure that I would never run again, because who gets pumped to run in single digit temperatures? I see people do it all the time, but I usually drive past them and think they're either rock stars or mentally unstable. I figured there was no way I could be as equally motivated, because they're awesome and I'm... me.

Time and time again, I have proven myself wrong. It's a great feeling. A week and a half ago, in the face of an impending snow storm, I set out for a run because I felt like it with no distance in mind. Almost 14 km later, I came home crusted in frozen snow wishing that the clock had allowed me more time. Just a few more minutes in the day would help. An extra 30 minutes isn't too much to ask? The dozens of miles I've ran in the cold so far have taught me a few things about how to dress, how to hydrate, how to prepare for disaster, the list goes on, but I'm still terrified of falling.

My fear is 100% legitimate. I have a history of complete knee dislocations and I know that a fall could take me out of the running game indefinitely. I can't run on a treadmill, but I'm afraid to run outside. Even if I reinstate my gym membership there's no way I could keep mentally engaged while running in place for two hours, I just don't have it in me. But drop me on trail outdoors and I would beg for more time. I have no experience in running outside of what I have chronicled here in this blog over the last year, so each run is a lesson for the books. I guess we can say this chapter's topic is snow and ice. I had a minor incident with ice that nearly ruined winter running for me and it's been haunting me ever since. Every inch of the ground is a hidden danger and suddenly I don't trust my feet or my legs or gravity. I had no idea how I was going to overcome this, I just knew that it was a problem.

Fast forward to Christmas day. I was at home with my parents with no plans for the day; we were supposed to graze at the all-day buffet laid out in the kitchen, watch movies, follow whatever whims met our fancy. A change in plans and some unexpected company set us all into action: we had to clean the dining room, put together a proper meal, and groom ourselves for our guests. As I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth and putting on my contacts, the urge to run struck me so hard that I couldn't resist. If I have learned anything this year it's that YOU NEVER IGNORE THE NEED TO RUN. Never ever ever. Our guests were thirty minutes out and I seized the opportunity to dress for a quick run. Since I've taken up distance running, I've avoided short runs because it annoys me to have to spend 20 minutes getting dressed for a 30 minute run, but on Christmas it seemed worth it. I literally ran out the door and didn't look back.

Things you should know: Des Moines has been pelted with the ugliest snow I have ever seen. The roads are 60% clean, with the remaining 40% taking the form of scattered hard-packed ice patches that can't be removed by snow plow nor shovels and have rendered the streets almost un-drive-able and the sidewalks unwalkable.

I ran out the door without thinking twice. It was 9 degrees Fahrenheit when I left, I was vaguely aware of that only for the fact that I needed to borrow a hoodie from my brother, but I didn't let it bother me and I ran. I got through the end of our block to the stop sign when it occurred to me that the awful sidewalk conditions were slowing me down and putting strain on my ankles so I moved to the road. I ran on the left side opposing traffic with my obnoxious neon yellow shirt shouting "Merry Christmas" above my headphones at the people I passed by. I got to the entrance of the cemetery where I was forced to confront my fear of road ice and I tiptoed my way through the minefield without incident.

My favorite part about running in this particular cemetery is that no run is ever the same because I can never remember the exact order in which I follow the paths. There's so many offshoots on the roads, so many ways that they intersect and diverge and reconnect that I could never cover the entire spread in less than a week's worth of runs. Each time I run into that cemetery I never know what I'll encounter. Funerals, family gatherings, private mourning, deer, traffic, and other pedestrians have all played their part in influencing the path I take and the same held true on Christmas day. The ice was in stark contrast to the paved roads and I could see long stretches of road ahead of me; some were clear, some were completely blocked off with ice, and others were patchy at best. I let the roads dictate my path and I found myself in a corner I had never traveled before. The only way out from this corner was through a short patch of very thick, very wide, very unavoidable ice. I put a great deal of faith in the senses of my feet and the traction in my shoes and the roughage provided by salt and dirt and a fresh dusting of fluffy snow to get through the ice and lo and behold, I made it through without injury.

I waved in gratitude to the van that waited patiently behind me as I crossed the icy terrain, chuckling at the realization that I had become that person who runs in 9 degree weather on Christmas day and that my stranger-friends in the van most certainly thought I was mentally insane.

I ran without my watch because my purpose was a quick 5 km in-and-out, I didn't think I needed to time myself. Not to mention, I didn't even want to know my mile time because I was certain that my ice-snow fear had brought me to a near-crawl and it saddens me enough to be slower than shit on even my fastest days. My Nike + iPod ignored my wishes and informed me that I completed 6 km in just under 36 minutes.

Record time.

i'm telling you, i'm telling you.

I try to mind my own business because I firmly believe that we are given one life to live and we should live it instead of butting in on someone else's. Like, for serious. I don't understand why people are so anxious to live my life for me when they have their own lives to live, you know? I spent a lot of time in philosophy classes in college so I think about this stuff more than any person should, but that's how I feel.

Anyhow.

If I ever have an opinion about what someone else should do with themselves, it's usually my own insecurity rearing its ugly head. Most of the time it shows up in the form of jealousy or condescension or anger, but underneath it all is insecurity. With that insight in mind, I usually reserve my comments (but not my judgment) knowing full well that I most likely have some sort of underlying issue with the topic at hand. That being said, I've mulled over this issue for almost a week now and it's eating me up inside to try to squash it when I'm almost certain that I'm right and not just for reasons of superiority.

(Jeez, I feel too much pressure from all this buildup.)

The issue: treating food as treats.

When I was younger I used to complain to my parents that we bought generic food. There were never Doritos in our house, only nacho cheese tortilla chips. As a kid, I wanted to fit in but it seemed impossible because the juice we kept in the fridge had the store name on the label instead of Juicy Juice or Tropicana. Conformity almost ruined my childhood until my dad told me that food is not an investment, it's not worth spending more money for what the package says when the stuff inside is all the same. To be fair, he sort of had a point, but his very declarative statement of "food is not an investment" is an argument I'd be willing to take up on another day. Onward.

I always hung on to this idea that food is not an investment (in the MONETARY sense, it certainly has a different meaning if we're talking about health and nutrition) and therefore it's wasteful to spend money where you don't have to. At the grocery store, I always wanted the brand of carrots with Bugs Bunny on the packaging, but a carrot is a carrot is a carrot no matter the spokesperson. You can't eat the packaging so there's no sense in paying extra for it to rot in the trash, so my dad says. I guess what my dad was trying to impart on me was that food isn't special, you have to eat to get through the day and there's no sense in getting all worked up over it. It's like breathing and blinking and sleeping: unavoidable, non-negotiable, and uncomplicated.

I carry that notion with me to this day, having realized over the years that food (as delicious as it can be sometimes) will always, without fail, turn into shit. Evolution is THAT good. There are HEALTH reasons to spend more money on food (such as organic) that I wholeheartedly support, but for the most part I do believe in the bottom line when it comes to picking brand name versus generic. Thinking of food as a necessity rather than a commodity has integrated itself so deeply in my thought processes that a conversation with a dear friend came to a screeching halt the other day when she mentioned her new diet plan.

I don't know the specifics of it, but the gym she recently joined has her on a program of strict eating with "cheat days" periodically thrown in. The program seems to have some successful effect (but please don't ask me to comment on that because I DO have an opinion and it is most likely unfavorable) and my friend has lost several stubborn pounds in the process. Yay. My problem with this plan, and all diets in general, is the forbidden list.

FOOD IS NOT SPECIAL, but the moment you disallow an item or a food group is the moment it becomes appealing. The only reason people LOVE pasta is because it's a "bad" food, but if you actually allowed yourself to experience pasta as it is you would know that it's not that great. Neither is bread. Or cheese. Or chocolate. Or ice cream. Or any other edible that has been deemed a diet abomination. The only truly satisfying component found in indulging in such items is the rush of knowing that you're breaking the rules, in which case... go run a red light instead and save yourself the calories.

My friend spent her single allotted "cheat day" binge eating raw cookie dough and egg nog, and as much as I disapprove of how she chose to imbibe her daily calories, my main concern is the pending emotional fallout. Mixing emotions and food is exactly how eating disorders begin, and I'm not saying that my friend will suffer from an eating disorder, but you'll have a hard time talking her out of another cookie dough binge next time her emotions go unchecked. From now on, she will remember egg nog as a happy thing and the feeling she had while breaking her diet rules will come rushing back next time there's a glass of egg nog in her proximity. It's rebellious. It's dangerous.

The entire concept of a "cheat day" is a dead ringer for positive reinforcement in conditioning, a process best used on dogs. DOGS. We are not dogs, we should not have treats. Sadly, the same behavioral processes that have trained my puppies to expect food at certain stimuli also apply to humans and I think that's very scary and very sad.

So the issue at hand is the complications of using food as treats, and there is a very simple solution: with the exception of life threatening food allergies, no person shall create a list of "bad" or "forbidden" foods and instead be open to the whimsy of one's gastrointestinal desires.

You would be surprised what you're not craving when you open the floodgates. The moment I stopped fretting about bread and cheese and pasta was the moment I realized that I didn't really want them in the same way I had lusted over them before. And what a world of good that did :)

some day love with find me in the rough.

How to be happy while losing weight.

I wish this was a comprehensive list, a fool-proof way on how to find inner peace when you're in the middle of a very complicated process. It's totally not, and if that's what you're looking for I will absolutely fail to meet your expectations. But I can tell you with certainty that happiness doesn't start when you reach your goal; happiness is every bit a process the same way that weight loss is. Each day you're a quarter pound skinnier and an ounce happier and if you nurture it you will find one day that these tiny contributions have added up to something grand.

With that being said, here are my thoughts on How to be happy while losing weight.

1. Don't wait for happiness to start. It's not a magical possession that flits in and out of your life, it is a way of being and you have to create it from the ground up. You are probably not ever going to suddenly wake up happy. You don't go from slums/depression/whatever to waking up content, it doesn't appear overnight because it's not something that pops in and pops out at will. If you wake up happy, it's because you decided you were happy.

This morning for me was a happy morning. Some would say that I'm happy because the semester is over and I am feeling relief from being done with finals, but if you ask me, the truth is that I woke up happy this morning because I wanted to be happy. I was happy that the blankets were so warm and smelled so familiar. It really was that simple. If you want to relate this to weight loss, I'm happy in spite of what's going on with the scale these days. It read 2 pounds more than I would like to see, and most people might be disappointed with such a reading, but these two pounds in the grand scheme of things aren't going to make me or break me because I'm still a winner loser and that makes me happy.

2. Do it with purpose. Any purpose. Seriously, anything. Whatever it is, make that your goal. If you want to be happy, find something to motivate you. It can be short-term or long-term or micro-term, just as long as you keep moving forward.

I don't derive any pleasure from what the scale says. The number itself does not make me happy, it's the feeling of accomplishment that I enjoy the most. If I lose a couple of pounds by cutting corners and doing things in unhealthy ways, I do not feel good about it. Weight loss (at least the numbers) should not make you happy because weight loss is not a purpose, it's a consequence of leading a better lifestyle. [Leading a better lifestyle]... THAT's a purpose. Whatever lies between [the brackets] for you, that's what you should be focused on. For me, it's [running]. The weight loss will follow.

3. Look for it everywhere you go. In tiny crevices, in an abandoned project/hobby, in those extra minutes you spend in bed between hitting the snooze button. Happiness isn't necessarily big, it can be found in grand gestures as much as it can be found in the routine and the mundane.

I was thinking that it's less than a month until I see my neurologist again and I weigh exactly five pounds more than I did last time I saw her. FIVE POUNDS. I should be making progress. I thought about how I was disappointed that my weight is not below 200 by now (SO CLOSE, yet so far away) and I imagined my doctor's disappointment when I shared the news with her. And then as I was putting on a pair of skinny jeans in the mirror I realized that they fit MUCH better than they did a month ago and I actually like my silhouette. Not only that, but I'm learning to love my midsection. It's still soft and doughy, but for the first time in my adult life I can see the shape of my skeleton underneath it all. I'm not one to advocate finding happiness in the mirror, but today I found acceptance in a place I never expected, and for that I am happy.

4. Make it your own. Happiness should be something that no one can take from you. If you own your spirit of liveliness, it is important to remember that it is yours to keep and yours to give away.

Every day I carry my pride and my cheer with me, being intimately familiar with all the things it took to get me to this exact moment in time. Strangers, however, don't share my outlook. To the person I bumped into with my "abnormally large ass," I'm sorry you felt the need to point out my "abnormally large ass" and I wish you could have known me a year and a half ago when my ass was much, MUCH bigger. To an outsider, maybe all they can see is the 50 pounds I still have to lose, but that IN NO WAY diminishes the 75 I already lost. I am still a winner, even if you can't see it that way.

5. It doesn't have to cost anything, unless you allow it to. It doesn't matter if your currency is dollars or opportunities, happiness should only cost you what you want it to. Being unhappy shouldn't keep you from doing something you want to do, just like being happy doesn't come from spending money.

I've been thinking that my weight loss slump is because I don't have a New Years trip to Las Vegas motivating me this year. It just wasn't in the cards my bank account balance to make it work and I am bummed. Having LV to look forward to last year gave me serious motivation to work my ass off at the gym, so of course I feel like I need another trip to jump-start my exercise ethic. I'm unhappy that I can't afford Vegas and it's costing me chances to lose weight. There, I said it. But in the vein of "money can't buy happiness" clichés, I can't let money (or my lack thereof) cost me my happiness so I have to find it elsewhere. Like [crafting] and [running] and [that feeling I get when I know I put hard work in and lost weight].

Yeah. All good things.

Whenever I'm feeling particularly down, I ask myself, "Have you done everything you can possibly do in this moment to reach your goals?" If the answer is "yes," then I know my happiness is within reach and the anxiety and frustration and disappointment I feel about not being able to speed up the weight loss process dissipates. Sometimes it is a matter of waiting for time to pass but if you're happy you won't even notice :)

blow my whistle baby, whistle baby.

I was in a panic about my run last night because it was cold and I was nervous.

The cold ended up not being much of a bother, it was a freezing 19 degrees but my favorite fleece and my repurposed sherpa-lined hoodie took care of the details for me. It took a while to work out the kinks of running in such strong winds, but I found that tucking my sleeves into my gloves and alternating hands warming in my pockets really helped. Sadly, there was no cure for my right foot going numb (it's happened before and eventually I regain sensation) and I will probably always have a skin reaction to being out in the cold, but it's nothing that'll kill me.

The first time I ran this course I did it without knowing where it was or how long it was; I had a vague idea and the blind faith that kept me going in a moment of panic, so I can definitively say that adrenaline got me through the distance. This time it was at least 12 degrees cooler and I definitely lost the spark of being stranded without a plan.

As much fun as it was navigating myself through an unknown path in the woods, I've learned not to do that again because I could have gotten into serious trouble and no one would have known to look for me there. Knowledge is power they say, but it's hard to fight an adrenaline rush. As usual, the doubtful thoughts crept in and I feared my first stab at this course was an anomaly and I was bound to fail this time. Forget the fact that I'm well conditioned and I've been training for over a year. My stupid girl thoughts wanted me to fail.

I proved my stupid girl thoughts wrong by completing the course four minutes faster than I did on Wednesday, but a rare run-in with a very very thin layer of ice on the asphalt had me shaking in my britches. I spent the last 5 kilometers scared of every shadow, every streak of dirt smeared across the pathway thinking that it was frozen water threatening to end my run ruin my life. I started thinking about the possibility of falling and all the different ways I could land: on my wrist (broken wrist), on my bum (broken tailbone), on my knee (dislocated knee), in the splits position (hip problems for life)... the list went on and on. I was so petrified of hurting myself and never being able to run again that I literally came to a stop.

My fears LITERALLY stopped me from running because I was afraid that I would stop running. Yeah, that's logical.

My affinity for running (1) at night (2) on an unlit course (3) away from traffic (4) and without my cell phone means that my future in outdoor running is in jeopardy, at least during the winter months. I looked into getting YakTrax or similar products, but I'm not sure that's the best idea with FiveFingers and I don't exactly want to change my footwear so I guess this means I'm fucked. The half marathon training schedule that I'm follow is actually pretty low key, so I'm thinking maybe I should reinstate my gym membership and suck it up outdoors for maybe only one or two long runs per week.

Anxiety is getting the best of me.

sous le vent.

I teared up during a run last night. It was the last 3 kilometers of a 12.37 km run that I ran completely without plan. I gave a knockout presentation during my last class of the semester and I was pretty excited to realize that I have one final (minimal studying) before I get to celebrate another 4.00 semester with one month off. I came home pretty excited about all of this (plus I drank a liter of Pepsi at dinner) and I felt like running.

Side note: everything about the gym right now feels BLAHHH. I think about it and my thought is BLAHHH. My upper body strength is obviously suffering from the lack of weight lifting, but I just can't get my mind to embrace being stuck in a gray box (our gym is floor-to-ceiling concrete save for a wall of windows).

I dressed, set my Nike + iPod to a 7 km distance and started running. It wasn't in any particular direction but I've been favoring a certain road lately; since most of my runs used to start post-gym, I've had to accommodate my gym-less lifestyle by changing my runs which has led to me to the most magical area of Iowa City: Camp Cardinal Boulevard.

If you head north on my street, make a left turn and follow that for about 2-3 kilometers, there's a part of the city that is COMPLETELY untouched by street lights. No traffic lights, no building lights, maybe the occasional car headlights, but at 10:00 at night it's less frequent than you'd think.

It is absolutely breathtaking to realize that there are parts of this world that are completely unlit, and it's closer to home than you even know. It's probably not the smartest idea to be running on an unlit street at ten o'clock at night, but there's a certain magic in night running that everyone should get to experience at least once. As soon as I turned the corner from the main street, the flash of the green street lights was drowned out by distance and I stood utterly humbled at the beauty of my surroundings. The clouds hung in the sky as if they were threatening to rain, and instead floated like fluffy pillows reflecting the moon light in a way that no computer could recreate. If you tried to take a picture it would be just another dark and cloudy night, but the wind danced in my hair and atmosphere glowed in a way that felt electric in my bones.

I knew right then that it was going to be a good night.

The farthest I've followed this road on foot was 4.5 kilometers, and that was only because I was limited by fear that I would reach a point of no return without a phone or an escape plan. I thought I would follow the road to 5 kilometers and then turn back to my make run a nice 10k, but when the time came to turn around I ignored my original plan. At 6km I thought to myself, "I could do 12k, I could make it home if I turn back NOW," but despite the word "NOW" ringing in my head, I trudged on.

At 7km I started to panic realizing how far away from home I actually was while being vaguely aware of how far away the end of the road was from where I stood. I tried to recall the closest business or residential area so that maybe some kind person would open up the door to me and allow me the use of a phone to call home. But I persisted.

Curiosity kept me going. A while back I had read somewhere that the UI cross country course was close on my path but I didn't know where (visually or spatially). It could have been 100 paces from where I was but I wouldn't know because I didn't even know what I was looking for. I was way beyond being able to retrace my steps back home so it was a huge relief to run into (almost literally) a gazebo with park information; I had found the Clear Creek Trailhead. I took 30 seconds to study the map at the information kiosk, plotted my way back home, and set my path to the winding paved trail to the east. There weren't any mile markers but I had a good feeling that the distance wouldn't kill me, at least not before the cold did.

The trail is... surprisingly perfect. Wide, even, new, devoid of any structural cracks or potholes, hardly any debris. There was a nice rhythm to the rolling slopes that made it actually pleasant to run up AND downhill. At one point, the trail splits into different directions and I knew to follow it to the right based on my map reading skills, but there was no way I could have been prepared for what was about to happen next.

The trail leads to a spread of land that I would equate to a well landscaped prairie. It's a geological surprise nestled in between wooded areas, beyond which is a well developed neighborhood and business district. Separated from a substantial metropolitan area by just few hundred meters, this prairie-within-a-forest hit me square in the face as the lady in my iPod said "Congratulations, you have completed ten kilometers. Press pause to end your run." I found the stars in this perfect little haven, feeling completely safe knowing that I was close to home, absolutely loving the way that nature lit my pathway with this inexplicable electric glow of silvery moonlight. I closed my eyes for a few seconds trusting that my feet would find the ground as I kept moving forward and a gust of wind lifted me to a level of happiness I hadn't experienced before.

I couldn't tell you if the moon had fallen out of the sky, or if my legs were still attached, or if there was a murderer planning my death from the hedges; all I knew in that moment was that I was happy.

With my eyes still closed, my iPod shuffled to a song that has deep and personal meaning to me and suddenly the significance of this scenario hit me and I was thankful to be alive. I cried for the first time ever during a run, it was short and quiet, and if I had chosen I could have kept it to myself and no one would have been any wiser about it.

I don't know if what I experienced was a runner's high, but I'll tell you that this run was special for many reasons. First, I can now officially say that I've transitioned into distance running. Running 3-4 miles... eh, that's just a typical running day. But running 7.686 miles is something to be proud of and I did it in bitchin' style. Secondly, I've found a way to fall back in love with my city. Instead of running for distance, I learned in a concrete way that running can take me anywhere... literally. It gives more freedom than exploring by car and it's faster than walking, and because of that I discovered the most magical running trail that I can't wait to run again. I jumped in mid-course so I only got a run a fraction of the length, but my trusty friend the Internet has hooked me up with maps and parking locations so I can make the most out of the 24 miles of awesome this town has to offer.

Thirdly, I can't imagine my life without running. I was thinking that the drivers who passed me by probably thought I was out of my damn mind, and you know what... I was. COMPLETELY OUT OF MY MIND. It was 30 degrees, pitch dark, and I followed a trail that I didn't know and where no one knew to look for me. I admit, it was reckless, but the only reason I ended up running that far was because I was thinking. Thinking! I was reflecting on how my presentation for class went, what next semester will be like, what I'm going to do after I graduate, what songs I want played at my wedding, how I'm going to find new running paths in the city I eventually live my life in, how I'm going to work my way up to running 12+ km on a random Wednesday night if/when I ever have kids. I was thinking about my Vibrams, how much I like my newest pair and what I would like from my next ones. I was thinking about what underwear I would wear on race day. I was thinking about how I'm going to carry more water with me in the future once my runs get too long for my 20 ounce bottles. My entire run, all 97 minutes of it, was an exercise in WHATEVER I FEEL LIKE DOING.

Because those quiet moments in between songs when all you can hear is the quiet pitter-patter of your feet and your slow and steady breath, those moments are all yours and you never have to answer for them.