Boog just came home and handed me my Mother’s Day gift. In tears.  As he is apt to do, he got a little rambunctious on the walk home, tripped, and my traditional Mother’s Day flower pot broke into pieces. He was devastated.

I gave him a big hug and told him that I loved it and he did such a beautiful job on the painting. We’re going to fix it and find a new flower to plant in it.

Things that break due to an epic fuckup are still worthy of love. Don’t forget that.

Man, am I a wreck.  As I mentioned in that last post, I’ve been dealing with all sorts of bodily dysfunction due to overrestriction and overachieving with my training. You may or may not have heard stories about people that dive into extreme restrictive behavior for the sake of competing for something, crash out post-contest and blow their metabolism out of the water and cant do fuckall for, like, the next year? Yeah thats me right now. Over the last few months, I’ve said “fuck it” with strict eating principles and that has helped with some of the issues I was dealing with, but I still have a bit of a road ahead of me. And this road has been rather hellish.

This is what is currently going on with me, and honestly, its been going on for a while.

Incessant Brain Fog and Cognitive Dysfunction. You know when you just wake up and you’re kind of in that foggy, dreamlike state for a bit? I never leave that. It is with me 24/7.  Included with this is the inability to comprehend a lot of things that I would be able to normally, and I have to really, really focus to be able to conduct an intelligent conversation. I have to ask folks at work to back up and explain things more thoroughly, which is rather embarrassing, because I feel stupid. My short term memory is completely shot and I have to write everything down, otherwise I’ll forget. It took me half an hour to assemble this paragraph. It is embarrassing and frustrating. I am sure this whole post makes me sound absolutely stupid.

Anxiety and Stress. Because of the huge stresses I’ve put on my bod over the years, my body is now in this heightened state of alarm and EVERYTHING IS OVERWHELMING. Mind you, it has decreased SIGNIFICANTLY over the past few months since I’ve been tackling this whole whole thing head on, but I’m not out of the woods yet.  There was a point where finding the mental fortitude to get off the couch to get ready for work would put me in tears.  Busy days where there’s a lot of shit to be done absolutely kill me. How many of you have seen me in a public social situation in the past year or so? This is why.

Weight Gain Like Whoa. I am at the absolute worst I’ve ever been in 10 years. This also feeds into the anxiety and stress.

Sleep Disturbances. This is probably the most hellish.  I have not been able to get a solid night’s sleep in a long time and right now I’m lucky to get about 5 hours of sleep a night.  About 2-4 am, I wake up and cannot get back to sleep. Much like this morning. I would write all about cortisol and why this is happening to me, but right now I lack the mental capacity to do so. You can google it if you so choose.

Add these things to the trials of every day life, and to say things have been difficult is an understatement. I am currently getting support with all this shit, and guidance from some very smart and knowledgeable friends. What also sucks is that there’s no real time period for recovery – it could be a couple of months, it could be over a year. I dont really know.

Things I have been doing:

Eating. Making sure I get my food in. Another side effect of all this shit is that I am just not hungry, which can lead to me undereating and prolonging this hell.

Stopping the Lifting. This has been the hardest thing for me. But at this point, any exercise that my body perceives as strenuous puts me back at square one and I just perpetuate the cycle. Because of the state my body is in, the threshold of what is perceived as ‘strenuous’ is really, really low. Biking also has the same effect. I have been able to take walks and that’s about it. I had so many fun plans for the summer that I’ve had to scrap in the name of regaining my health, and it’s depressing.

Mental Readjustment. This has been incredibly mind altering and I’ve had to do a lot of soul searching. Dealing with this shit is hard. I havent been blogging, or interacting on Facebook, or being social because of this, and those things are probably something I need to do to help improve my mental state. But I cant because I’m too overwhelmed with everything else.

My Silver Linings:

Shit isn’t as horrible today was it was a month ago.  My energy levels are slowly but surely improving. Some days are really good, on other days I feel like I’ve been set back a thousand steps. But I’m getting there.

Dennis has been loving, supportive, and understanding, even when everything doesn’t make any sense at all.  He helped me off the couch in the days when I couldn’t do it myself. He’s endured my crying jags, my snapping when things get to be too much, taking over when I can’t, and a whole lot of other stuff.

This, too, shall pass. This was a phrase my Granny always said, and always sticks with me. Every time the song by OK Go comes up I think that if she were alive today, she’d totally rock out to it. Some days I do feel like where I am right now is how I am going to be for the rest of my life, and that freaks me out. This is pretty hellish.

I am still a badass. Its just the degree of badassery I can exhibit right now has to be scaled back significantly. All I want to do is go back to when I was enjoying life, taking advantage of the outdoors, and kicking back with a cheeseburger and beer with no ill effects. Such a simple request, and yet, so infinitely hard for me to do right now.

Hunker down, kids, we’re in for some rough seas.

I knew she was in a bad situation, and at that point I had no abilities or resources to take her anywhere, so I called the APL.  I left a message, and what seemed like a zillion eternities later, got a call back. They were on their way to check her out. I gave them the specifics, hung up, and just prayed, trying really hard to not think of the impending storms.  Or the fact that she couldn’t move. Or sick.  Or that the particular area she was in wasn’t the best. I didn’t hear anything else from the APL, so I just convinced myself that they got to her and took care of her so that the ‘what if’s would not take my head.

I got calls from two different people from the APL the next morning. They were able to get kitty, but she was deteriorating from FIV and sadly had to be put down. But they agreed that she was a really, really sweet kitty.

I am glad they were able to get to her. I am glad that she didn’t spend much more of her life suffering the way that she was. I am so, so glad that the APL is full of loving people who cared and understood enough to reach back out to me to let me know what happened. It might not be on this earth, but kitty is safe now, and for that I am glad, too. I sent them a donation this morning.

There is good in this world and sometimes you have to look really hard to find it, but it’s there.

So, if you recall, my last post was fueled by exhausted rage.  In the last 3 months, I gave myself a lot of attention to figure out just WTF is going on. Extensive medical appointments proved everything was functioning normally, so I was thankful for that.

What bugs me about things like this is how easily we’re inclined to run to the doctor so that we can get pills and be “fixed”. These pills certainly can fix your symptoms, but there could really be a chance that what you’re doing to your body is causing these symptoms. I am by no means shunning doctors or the medical industry at all. They help us live better, healthier, and stronger, and can certainly save your life.  But I think we’ve come completely desensitized to how the way we eat and move affect us.

So you go to the doc with these symptoms. The doc gives you a pill to fix these symptoms. Meanwhile, you could still well be creating the environment that is causing your body to express these symptoms. So now you’re compounding the problem by not allowing your body to deal with the stress you’re putting it under.

Let’s look at a crying baby. When a baby cries, you don’t just try to get it to stop crying, you figure out *what it needs* so that it will stop crying. The same can be said about your own body.

This happens to a lot of people. I see people sit on the couch all day downing nothing but potato chips and wondering why they feel like shit and are tired all the time and just chalk it up to “getting old”. I see low carbers spending hundreds upon hundreds of dollars with endocrinologists in desperate attempts to get one of these doctors to please, please get them on thyroid medicine, meanwhile they won’t touch a sweet potato. I see vegans with thinning hair and reproductive issues wondering why all their doctor visits have not helped them. I see chronic calorie restrictors and undereaters wondering why they’re so cold and tired all the time.

Know that I have all the love, compassion, and understanding for the lot of you. Because I know how it is.

In my case, it was Severe Healthy Eating. My symptoms included:

• irregular periods
• horrible, cystic acne
• severe exhaustion. all. the time. no matter how much sleep i got.
• the inability to lose weight easily
• depression
• horrible, horrible panic attacks. like, shit i have never, ever experienced in my entire life.
• not wanting to exercise. that ain’t me, y’all.
• horribly low body temperature

Healthy Eating did me in.  Which is kind of ironic because you can sit there and say “wtf is my problem? I eat healthy!” and really, my friends, it could very well be that you’re eating *too* healthy.  I was.

3 months ago I said “fuck it”, and let me tell you how difficult it was to do, because there’s a lot of cognitive dissonance when considering a donut saving your life. I do admit that I probably went a little apeshit in the first few weeks. Cold pizza for breakfast. Ice cream for dinner. Sugar back in my coffee. But that steadily settled down into a more diverse and regular diet.

I’ll tell you what, though – I did not gain a pound doing it.

The result:

• ENERGY. holy hell, I can now get up in the morning and not want to crawl back into my bed and die 20 minutes after waking.
• The cystic acne is slowly disappearing.
• normal body temperature.
• regular, steady mood.
• WANTING to go outside and play. I’ve been *forcing* myself to work out for the past TWO YEARS.

And my cycles? Behold:

Only 3 months in, mind you, but they’re now steady and predictable. Right on time. Severe PMS is gone, too.

And again, guys – if you come away from this thinking that I am justifying you to sit on your ass all day and eat cheesecake, you’re wrong, you’re fucking wrong. But I do implore you to take a good, honest and open look at yourself, your life, and how your treating your body first and foremost, because what you’re doing to it could very well be destroying it, even in the name of “health”.

Maybe you need to get your ass off the couch and eat more spinach. Conversely, maybe you need to stop eating so much fucking spinach and enjoy some god damn cold pizza for breakfast. In fact, do both. Eat your spinach, enjoy the occasional cold pizza, and get your ass moving.

Last month, I PRed on my deadlifts with a whopping *315*lbs.  I’d like to thank my awesome muscles and that glazed donut with shamrock sprinkles for my success.

Advance warning: I AM GOING TO BE TALKING ABOUT MY UTERUS.

I’ve been on this weight loss/health/fitness kick since 2006. While no, I don’t have any official certifications in anything, I certainly have experience.  I’ve been there. I’ve gone vegan, vegetarian, low fat, low carb – almost everything.  And I’m pretty smart.

Shut up.

Anyway, onto my uterus. I keep track of my period online and have been doing so for about 10 years. I do it because I believe it is crucially important to do so. Let’s take a look at my cycles from the first part of my weight loss journey. During this time, I was just eating less – while getting more vegetables in, I was also eating things like ramen, tofu, rice, beans, and the odd protein bar from Speedway. Also taking Boog to get ice cream every Sunday night.

you can click this to make it big.

Pretty smooth, right? Nothing uneventful.

About 2010 is when I got SERIOUS about this health/fitness thing and started reading blogs. Blogs from every facet of the fitness and nutrition industry. Coaches, trainers, blah de blah. And, for the most part, the overall message from these people is “X makes you unhealthy and causes fat gain, so don’t eat it.” So I would remove X.

And then I discovered Paleo. Now, I will give paleo credit because A. it helped me cultivate my love for delicious vegetables, and B. It did help cure some gastrointestinal issues that I was not aware of. So I love it for that. But, at the time,  the overall message was ITS THE CARBS. GRAINS AND BREAD AND ALL THAT SHIT MAKE YOU FAT AND UNHEALTHY. So I stopped eating those, too.

AND IT WORKED. I lost 10 freaking pounds within 2 weeks. And holy fuck, I have ABS. And then you get to chatting with other Paleo folk and you try to out-Paleoize each other by seeing just how low in carbs you can go. And that’s what I did, in mid-2010. I went into ketosis. And my period stopped.

And then I gained 30 lbs. I know I’ve talked about this before.

And I spent 2011 in a state of fat and depression, still fearing oatmeal, still fearing grains. I wasn’t particularly meticulous about my food intake, but I still ate my veggies, my proteins, and regular trips to my favorite place ever, Mitchell’s. And lo, you’ll see my period normalized somewhat for 2011.

And then I got tired of being fat again and got my butt in gear. I dedicated myself more to weightlifting, doing some pretty intense training, and continuing to fear those evil carbs. This time is indicated by everything above the red line in the photo.

you can click this to make it big, too.

Do you see what’s happening there? My cycles were more irregular than a 3-sleeved sweater from Goodwill. Overtraining and improper fuel. You can bet your sweet shit I’ve been in an absolute panic for the last 3 months. I took pregnancy tests and had my hormones tested. All normal. I went to the doctor to get a complete checkup and thyroid test. All normal, too. I am not in menopause.

I am a pretty athletically capable person, right? I’m fucking strong. We are continuously outdoors doing shit. I’ve clocked hundreds of miles on my bike. But, at the doctor’s office, would you like to know what happened? After they weighed me, I was handed a pamphlet on how to “Eat Healthy and Lose Weight” and I am totally not fucking kidding.

Until recently, I have turned a blind eye to this all because I am Doing What I am Supposed To Be Doing. Avoiding the “unhealthy” food because any amount of the “unhealthy” stuff will lead to Fat Gain.  Day in, day out, ignoring the fact that some days I was finding it incredibly difficult to get up and move. I still *did* – I rarely miss a workout, but I’ve had to force myself. That’s not me. I am a high strung obnoxious individual who loves to be outside and run around.

Guys, after meticulously tracking and eating nothing but protein, vegetable matter, and a certain amount of fat, set at around 1700 calories a day this past fall, I GAINED 10 LBS. GAINED.

ASLKHGALSKHG”LASKHG”LKshg’ladkhGLKh”glkhda”lkghDALKHG!!!!!!!!

….

I am posting all of this because of many things:

I am being honest with myself.

I am tired of hiding. I neglect to admit failure to the general public at times because I do not want to appear incompetent. But, one of the most frequent comments I get from writing my blog here is the appreciation for me putting myself out there and being honest and real. I am being honest and real right now.

This is by no means a post meant to slag any particular diet. I want that to be abundantly clear, and if I hear anyone saying “well Batty said I could eat all the bread I want” then you just completely missed the point of this post.

In a similar vein, this post is also not written to invite self righteous indignation, where you will say something like “well, this is why I have done X ALL ALONG” because attitudes do not help the matter, at all.

If anything, get this: it is not the oatmeal, the bread, the rice, the cookies, the cheesecake, or the ice cream themselves that cause fat gain. You will not necessarily get fat if you eat a slice of bread with your dinner. If you push away that bread, or the pasta, or the rice, or refuse to have ice cream out of fear and not because you don’t want it, you have serious issues. If you are turning a blind eye to any signal from your body that what you’re doing could not be the best thing for you because some nutritional guru said this is the best thing for you, you’ve got problems. If you think one egg and 3 lettuce leaves for breakfast is adequate nutrition, you’ve got problems. If you keep “falling off the wagon” from a diet you think is THE WAY TO FAT LOSS and keep having to hop on, you’ve got problems. If you feel extreme guilt after eating a rare slice of pie after your dinner, you’ve got problems.

THE WAY is what works best WHEN YOU LISTEN TO YOURSELF.

Eat what makes you feel awesome.

Don’t eat what doesn’t make you feel awesome.

And eat ENOUGH.

Fuck the rest.

Except this.

To this day, I still say that the hardest time I’ve ever had losing weight is when I started reading about losing weight.

And while I will recognize that these kind of images are inspirational for some, and just maybe they DO just give you a little pause before you devour that cheesecake. But, I also think that these kinds of images fabricate a fantasy world in which we all head to the gym with shorty shorts on and perfectly sculpted calves and hit the treadmill and watch our abs glisten with sweat. And, just maybe, there are people out there who will not do anything to better their health because they think the gyms are full of the type of people pictured above.

It’s a fantasy. It’s a fantasy that I think wrongly distracts us from the reality of ourselves and prevents us from truly appreciating the reality of ourselves.  Turning a blind eye to all the awesomesauce we currently have in ourselves.  You are still worthy even if you’re carrying an extra 10/20/30/50 pounds, or if you jiggle when you deadlift, or look like an Italian sausage if you put on shorty shorts.

I am that last one, btw. Pass the onions and peppers.

This is what I want: I want to create a gallery full of *~inspirational images~* full of us regular folks. I definitely do not look *~hot~* (I love doing *~this~* to words. Its so *~MySpace~*) when I head to the gym. When I leave, I’m sweaty, full of chalk, and my hair is sticking up.  I could possibly also be stinky.  I want to create a resource of wonderful, truthful photos picturing people of all shapes and sizes celebrating their own selves and bettering their health. You never know – that person sitting on the bench next to you could very well be battling some inner demons that are telling her (or him) that they are not good enough because the fantasy lady (or dude) in the photo keeps telling them they’re Not Quite Right.

This is what I’d love for you to do:

Take a picture of yourself at your gym. Or outside, whatever. Doing what you do – whether its lifting, or running, or walking, or Crossfit, or Hungarian Toe Sloth Hot Yoga.  The pose is up to you, but full body is preferred. There is no hiding here, there is no shame. Flaunt what you got.

Include your own *~inspirational quote~* if you so choose. It could be deep. It could be  real. It could be something you’ve learned on your own journey on this here Earth. It could be some thing like “I pee when I OHP”. Whatever.

Put that quote on your image with your photo editor of choice. Here is one available online. You could feasibly get all blingee on me, but I do not want you to block your body. If you really want a quote on your photo and have trouble doing so – send it to me with the quote and I will do it for you. Trust me, I’m a designer.

Credit where credit is due. Tell me who you are and where you’re from.

Pack that shizz up and send it to me in an email. I will collect them all and start our own regular peeps *~inspirational gallery~* that we can consult often when we come across the feeling of Not Good Enough. Because that Not Good Enough feeling is crap, no matter who or what you are.

Both Dudes and Chicks apply here, btw. Oh, and you really buff people? You bring it on, too. I will honor all body fat percentages.

Spread the word. Share this post wherever you can. I want many images of all kinds of people.  I think this could turn into an amazing project full of things that we really need – most importantly, appreciation for ourselves.

Fantasy is great sometimes. It can help with creativity and expand your horizons. But to stay submerged in a fantasy world 24/7 can lead to a deteriorated appreciation for what you have right now. That is what is truly important.

I look forward to your photos.

Much Love,

Batty

May 2013 allow you to look back and be amazed at how far you’ve come.

He picked this out himself. That is a print of a cat with batwings with bonus spider and creepy dude in back.

The awesomeness of this defies any kind of words I can put to it.

To all of you and yours: have a fantastic holiday season.

Such a discussion surfaced this past evening, as Boog threw a royal shitfit when I told him it was beddytime. He wanted One More Video, and One More always leads itself to Five. Or 3 hours worth. Gotta cut em off somewhere.

During the conversation, he kept asking me what time I was going to bed. Over and over again. I found that to be odd as this wasn’t something he is typically obsessed with.  Well, now I know why.  At the apex of his shitfit, he told me that sometimes he waits for our bedroom light to go off, and he thinks he wants to sneak his laptop out and play some more minecraft. He *doesn’t* do it, but he thinks about it, and he wanted me to know.

My kid just totally ratted himself out.

There is not one malicious bone in this child’s body.

I don’t like crap too much.

So we decided to make our tree a bit more meaningful and uniquely us.  In case you missed the memo, we’re very much outdoorsy people. Most, if not all, of our vacations are spent in tents. This is us. D and I took a lovely hike through the pine forest a few weeks ago and collected pinecones and acorns to serve as the base of our decorations. We then spent an evening with Boog coating them in glitter and paint. Shut up, glitter totally occurs in nature.

I scrapped the regular tinsel garland and subbed in dried vines. When there’s not 50 feet of mud out there, I am going back to collect some shards of shale. The result of all this is something really pretty and I’m proud of it.

Now let me tell you about that tree bow. We’re a pretty crafty lot here and make a lot of our own things. Our old tree topper was some random metal star I found at Tar-zhay many years ago. Obviously this was not gonna work for our new tree, so I am like, “yes, I will make us a bow. It will be easy.”  And it’s SO easy – I even confirmed this with one of the crafty old ladies at Pat Catan’s who whipped out a demo for me in under 10 seconds.

I went through 6 goddamn rolls of ribbon.

This included 2 extra trips back to Pat Catan’s. My fingers would slip, or I didn’t get the loops right, or when I puffed it out, it looked like a heap of old socks. Now, I am sure at a certain point, most would have just given up and grabbed one of the premade bows for the cost of about a roll and a half of ribbon. But, what good, exactly, would that do me?  What good does attempting to do something once or twice and not being very good at it, and convincing yourself you suck and walking away actually do?

NO ACCOMPLISHMENT, THAT’S WHAT. Call me foolish for blowing cash on so much ribbon, but I didn’t want a seasonal symbol of failure topping our tree.  Saying “I can’t do this” and walking away gives me a pretty contagious case of the “What If?”s. Attempting, failing, attempting again, learning from the mistakes – these things are more valuable to us. They SHOULD be more valuable to us. So the crap WHAT if you fall on your face the first time?

After the 12048612864th bow attempt, I got what you see in the picture, and it absolutely pales in comparison to the pictures of perfection casually farted out by the Pat Catan’s ladies. My bow is not perfect, but it is way, way more valuable and beautiful to me and to my family. We are not perfect, we are us. We are the sum of the pretty things, the perfect things, and the things that don’t go quite as planned. THAT is us. That’s what matters.

We have an awesome tree now. We kept the stuff like the ornaments commemorating Boog’s birth, and these creepy lookin’ painted milkweed pods from D’s side. On future vacations, we’re going to collect a bit of nature from each place to add to the tree.  Quirky trees with memories are much better than any prefab reindeer from the big box stores.

Never be afraid to fail.