Real-World Fitness Milestones

I suspect that some people are tired of hearing about this, but you probably remember that I was very sick with debilitating fatigue for about two years. Even when I began to recover, I felt that I had lost so much of my baseline fitness and wellness that I would never be the same again--I thought I was permanently diminished.

About a year ago, doing a lot of walking at the FGC Summer Gathering, I realized that I had improved enough that I had a baseline of fitness to work with--that I could walk enough to do it regularly, with the goal of being able to do it more, go farther, go faster.

So I joined the Y and I started working out, lifting weights and walking on the treadmill.

I loved my workouts, and I could see, in the gym, how I was improving. My weights crept up little by little, the time I spent on the treadmill increased, my walking pace got faster, I adjusted the incline so that the imaginary hills I was climbing got just a little bit steeper.

But what I really loved was the moments in real life when I realized how much stronger and more fit I was:

The day I caught myself trotting up a flight of stairs, instead of sighing at the bottom, holding onto the handrail, and going up a slow and determined one step at a time.

The day I took some kids to the Renaissance Festival and we criss-crossed the grounds over and over in a very inefficient pattern, and I didn't even think about it, and at the end of the day realized I had never had to sit down to rest.

The day I got all the way up to the third floor at Tiny Tornado's preschool and realized I'd forgotten the snack for the class in my car. I ran down to the parking lot, got the snack, zipped back up to the third floor, and was on my way back to the car again before I realized that I had done that without thinking, when only a few months earlier it would have seemed insurmountable.

The day Raider and I were moving a dresser, and as we picked it up, he said, "Should we take the drawers out first?" I said, "No, it's not very heavy," and he laughed and said, "It's not very heavy for you."

And right now: I have done heavy yard work on four of the last five days. Yesterday I was out there for five hours, moving mulch, climbing up and down the ladder, running the power washer.

I was a little stiff last night.

A little stiff.

That's all.

This morning I feel fine. I expect that I'll head out there today to try to get the last of the mulch where it's supposed to go, and then I plan to power-wash the driveway. (Because I love that power-washer. After I finish the driveway, I'll be standing out there, looking around, thinking, "What else can I blast with a powerful spray of pressurized water?")

Soon enough I'll get used to this and stop having to talk about it all the time. But I may still talk about it more than often than is quite proper, because our cultural narrative says you're not supposed to be able to be fat, fit, healthy, and strong at the same time, and I am. So even when this stops being a ressurection story, a new-lease-on-life story, I think it is still worth telling.

My hero and role model, Ragen Chastain, would say that no one is obligated to meet anyone else's notions of health, or beauty. But, with her, I think it is important to remind people, as often as possible, that it is possible to be fat, fit, and healthy all at the same time; that, as she says, the only thing a person's size tells you is how big they are, not what they eat, how much they eat, whether they have diabetes (or will get diabetes), and not how far they walk in a day.

The summer gathering is coming up again, the first week of July. Perhaps that anniversary would be a good time to retire the "I felt so bad, but now I feel so good" story. It's old news now.

But I will still have a story to tell.