stormy weather

I know I’m supposed to dread getting older, but honestly, I never really have. That’s probably at least in part due to the fact that my parents have both aged incredibly gracefully, and I have every hope that I’ll follow in their footsteps—but also, I feel as though I’ve learned and grown so much through my late 20s and early 30s that it’s pretty hard to wish that process would stop. I definitely wouldn’t choose to go back, even if I could.

Still, thirty-five does ‘feel’ like a big birthday on some levels. I mean, I’m a whole new survey demographic now (not an ‘18- to 34-year-old adult’ anymore). I’m officially a CrossFit Masters athlete (yay!). And if I were to have a kid (which at this point is pretty unlikely), I’d now be formally classified as an ‘elderly primigravida’ (sexyyyyy).

At any rate, the steady turning of the earth just has me thinking this year, a bit more so than other years. So, just for fun, here are a few things I’ve learned—some silly, some semi-profound, but all thoroughly true, at least in terms of my own experience of the world.

Any of these ring true for anyone else?

1. In general, seeking out new experiences is more fulfilling than trying to recreate old ones. There are always exceptions — I’ve seen the Broadway show Wicked something like eleven times, in part because I honestly enjoy seeing the different actors’ takes on the characters that I (now) know so well. I ran the NYC Marathon a second time, because I didn’t have the race I wanted to have when I did it in 2014. But in general, our most cherished life experiences are special at least in part because of their uniqueness, and we’re happier when we accept that awesome day or event or moment as a beautiful standalone memory, versus trying to duplicate our joy.

2. At a restaurant, order the thing that you’d never cook for yourself. Restaurants are special, or should be. Most of us don’t eat out every day, or even every week—and we also don’t typically go out on our own; it’s usually a date with a dining companion (or two, or ten) with whom we’re looking forward to spending some quality time. So if you’re in it for the experience, then you kind of owe it to yourself to get the tuna tartare or the fried ice cream or whatever amazing thing you’d never go to the trouble of learning to make at home.

3. Nope, that to-do list is never going to stop scrolling through your brain… One unfortunate fact of adulthood, it seems to me, is that there will never not be something that you ‘should be doing’. There’s a certain level of baseline chatter that you just have to learn to shelve.

4. …but travel is one huge thing that helps with hitting Pause on that list. If you’re only focused on the next couple of hours—where exactly is that ferry port, how do you say ‘bathroom’ in Greek, and what should we have for lunch today?—then it’s hard to remember the closet cleanouts and plant repotting that you’ve been meaning to do.

5. Speaking of which—carry-on only. Always and forever. Even if you’re staying for a month. There is always a way to do it. Bag fees aside, it also keeps you from ever being separated from your stuff, and it’s also just so much simpler logistically—I’m a travel backpack devotee, and I can’t count the number of times my life has been made easier by the fact that I could physically manhandle my own possessions without assistance (up steep flights of hostel stairs in London, through a tropical downpour in Zanzibar, during an hourlong border crossing in Nicaragua).

6. You don’t have to love your job. I mean, it’s easier if you don’t HATE it, either, but… they call it ‘work’ for a reason. You’re not failing if your job isn’t the thing that drives you to spring out of bed in the morning. Despite what social media would have us believe, very few of us actually have the luxury of having our personal interests, our inherent talents, and our actual income all line up—and there’s nothing wrong with that. (And, also worth considering: if my paycheck actually depended on language-learning or CrossFit or international travel, would I still love those things quite as much?)

7. For the most part, vegetables are legitimately delicious. Subtitle: 'Please Stop Steaming Your Brussels Sprouts'. A food you think you don’t like is usually a food that you just haven’t had cooked properly. (Okra isn’t slimy if it’s sliced into medallions, tossed with a little cornmeal, salt, and pepper, and sautéed in just a tiny bit of oil. You're welcome.)

8. Just because you are CAPABLE of doing something—physically, mentally, or emotionally—doesn't mean that thing is necessarily the best FIT for you. As a teenager (with many natural intellectual gifts, but going through a rather unfortunate Shania Twain idolization phase), I was once told by an authority figure, “To whom much is given, much is expected.” Yikes. Talk about feeling like you’re not measuring up. Whether real or imagined, that burden stuck with me for decades—and my resume is sprinkled with some pretty impressive entries from my 20s and early 30s. But what you can’t see there is the associated anxiety, insomnia, weight gain, and general dissatisfaction. It’s taken a long time for me to shake off the reflex that I ‘should’ be aim to be the ‘best’ at absolutely everything—to internalize the fact that, while my abilities matter, so does my own personal happiness. I have a far better work-life balance—and feel like much more of a ‘whole person’—now, at age 35, by virtue of having accepted a position that (on paper) is a little less impressive. In my current role, I still make a difference in people’s lives—but it turns out that I actually have more to give to others by virtue of the fact that I’m also able to take care of myself.

9. Almost no decision is actually permanent. The one exception might be the choice to have a kid—once you take that leap, you’re kind of in it for the long haul. But everything else—romantic relationships, career choices, homeownership—sure, it’s all super stressful and keeps us awake at night… but almost all of it IS still changeable, if we need it to be.

10. Most people you meet are struggling in ways that you know nothing about... The ones who seem to have everything? Rest assured, they don’t. And the ones who are acting ‘off’ and making you second-guess yourself? Chances are good that their behavior has nothing whatsoever to do with you. We humans are inherently short-sighted, selfish creatures whose default mode is to look out mostly for ourselves—evolution made us that way—and yet, in this society filled with modern comforts, we can and should be kinder.

11. ...and strong people only get that way by having gone through something. When you meet someone amazing, remember that they usually had to pass through some kind of test to become the person they now are. I often find myself looking at brilliant, kind, steady, smart, capable people with equal parts admiration and curiosity—wondering, “What darkness did you fight?”

12. The way to tell a ‘good’ lie is to include one solid detail. I’ll preface by saying that lying in general just isn't worth it, not least because it becomes super hard to keep track of… and people can also smell overcompensation a mile away. But on the occasions when you need to tell a relatively harmless fib—to turn down an invitation, to spare someone's feelings, to get out of a party, whatever—include just one good bit of realism. “One of my friends is going through a breakup and I told her I’d meet her for drinks tonight.” “Turns out my parents are coming into town next week, so I don’t think I should commit to that quite yet.”

13. Art is the best travel souvenir. Food gets eaten, clothes blend in with the rest of the closet and lose their connotation. But art is a colorful home addition, a perfect conversation starter, and a constant visible reminder of the adventures you’re had. And if you can simultaneously support a local artist from whatever awesome place you’re traveling to, so much the better.

14. Trains are way more pleasant than planes. The trip might take just slightly longer on paper, but think about it. Free wifi, plenty of legroom, a café car, the ability to stroll, zero required ‘cushion’ time for security screening… and, in sharp contrast to airports, train stations are typically right in the middle of the city center, which (chances are) is likely where you were going anyway.

15. If you’re lucky enough to have a cool family, stay consciously grateful for that. Families look all different ways and have all different dynamics—but we hear so much about all the problems that we sometimes take for granted the millions of ‘normal’, down-to-earth, cohesive, functional family units. Plenty of people out there are doing a really solid job—supporting one other’s various life transitions, thoughtfully listening and providing navigational advice through unforeseen challenges, raising reasonably well-adjusted kids, and straightforwardly taking each other down a peg when needed. We all screw up here and there; that’s inevitable—but if you’ve got one of the awesome families who generally puts the ‘fun’ in dysfunction, it’s worth recognizing that fact and savoring it.

16. A little bit of real stuff is better than a lot of fake stuff. (Just read the famous Amazon reviews of the sugar-free gummy bears!) But really, this is true of just about everything. What would you prefer: one deep conversation or six hours of superficial small talk? One dense fudgy brownie or a whole box of SnackWells cookies? One pair of high-quality leather boots vs a dozen pairs of knockoffs?

17. Not everyone is going to like you. And this works in gradations as well as absolutes—some people are going to like you a lot more than you like them, and lots of people won’t like you nearly as much as you like them. It’s the law of averages in action, and there generally isn’t a lot you can do about it. The takeaway is that it’s a huge waste of emotional energy to continue seeking approval from those who aren’t going to give it.

18. It’s OK to make dumb decisions once in a while as long as you accept the consequences. One of the perks of adulthood is that we're allowed to make less than optimal choices. There are times when opting to stay on that sunny rooftop for a seventh cocktail with our friends really is the ‘right’ decision for our mental health.

19. Nobody else sees your body the way you do. For better and worse, 'perceptual adaptation' is very much a Thing. We see ourselves in the mirror twenty times a day. The holiday belly or PMS bloating truly is not visible to anyone else. Not only are we just so much more highly attuned to fluctuations in our OWN bodies than those of others, but, likewise, other people are also generally way too preoccupied with their own physical ups and downs to even notice yours.

20. This country needs a Life Skills class. In recent decades, we’ve (happily) been moving away from traditional gender stereotypes—and yet, objectively, there was a lot of practical value to some of the stuff our parents learned in Home Ec and Shop. When my sister and I were teenagers, my family once sat around the dinner table and drew up a curriculum that we thought every modern public school student should have to learn by the time of their high school graduation, featuring lessons like changing a tire, sewing on a button, balancing a checkbook, and cooking a couple of basic recipes. I freely admit that, while I am a shining example of a very ‘successful’ twenty-first century student, I’m also significantly lacking in a lot of knowledge areas that would have been considered ‘basic’ not so many years ago.

21. The majority of us wake up with an ‘earworm’. Start paying attention. It’s easy to disregard, but I’ll bet you wake up with a random song in your head first thing every morning.

22. Learning a second (or third, or tenth) language literally causes your brain to work in different ways. You know that pleasant collective lingering that sometimes happens after a group of people have eaten a meal together? Where they all stay around the table—conversing, laughing, relaxed, maybe sipping one last drink? Yeah—in English, we don’t really have a word for that. Dutch does, though: ‘natafelen’ (after-tabling). There’s also the well-known ‘gezellig’—which means ‘cozy’, warm, familiar, but can apply to people or events as well as to spaces. Or what about ‘uitbuiken’—which is basically what we do after Thanksgiving dinner, ‘letting our belly out’—that phase where you push back from the table and take a few minutes to relax and digest. And it’s not just untranslatable words—even concepts that are able to be directly interpreted just ‘feel different’ in other languages. 'Onzichtbaar' (literally: 'unseeable' in Dutch) ‘feels’ just sliiiightly different from 'invisible' in English. Another great example is the large number of ‘creative’ names and words that exist in the Harry Potter series—for instance, in English, the name Dumbledore just sort of calls to mind the image of a tall wizard with a white beard. In recreating that same feeling in Dutch, the translator settled on Perkamentus, a derivative of the word for ‘parchment’, which creates that same gut-level impression for native Dutch speakers. This kind of thing is why translation and interpretation are such art forms—and why the opportunity to learn a new language via adult immersion is so incredibly enriching. You don’t simply gain a new vocabulary; your world inherently becomes broader, because with new words and ideas also comes an ever-so-slightly different vantage point for perception.

23. Split your auto-deposited paychecks. Even if it’s just a little bit, diverting a percentage of each check into a separate account that you rarely access is a way of giving yourself a tiny safety net. If you never see it, you get used to living on what you have. And then, when the day comes that you really need three pounds of coffee and a carton of protein shakes, but are trying to survive until payday because Costco doesn’t accept American Express (ask me how I know)… well, you’ll be really happy when you realize you can make that grocery run after all.

24. Not everybody needs a four-year degree. We will always need skilled tradespeople. (Every single one of us has had that moment when we’ve been deeply, overwhelmingly grateful for an experienced plumber!) A college degree is a great accomplishment, but we’ve perpetuated the idea that possessing one is somehow a mark of intelligence and essential for lifelong success. In reality, four years of undergraduate study have become an increasingly expensive commitment that isn’t necessarily the best value—or the best fit—for everyone. Trade schools and community colleges are undervalued resources that are worth considering. Furthermore, a non-linear path is also okay, even preferred. Take a gap year. Do some service work. Try a part-time job or internship. Read some books. See the world. An expensive and lengthy education may, in fact, be the best choice after all—but give yourself the tools to make an accurate cost-benefit analysis before deciding.

25. Athletics are empowering. Being able to unconsciously trust your body is a wonderful thing. Furthermore, you learn fascinating things about your own individual physical and mental machinery when you explore its limits. This doesn’t necessarily mean deadlifting 300 pounds; your own personal light bulb might be learning to differentiate between the sensations of a high heart rate versus true muscular fatigue, or discovering that the reason your back often hurts is because your superior mobility has allowed you to slide through life with insufficient muscular stability. We all need to get more ‘comfortable being uncomfortable’—because that’s how we grow.

26. Let kids fail… The helicopter-parent epidemic is resulting in an exceptionally anxious generation. The fact is, the way that children grow into confident adults is by being allowed to calculate small risks (that feel large to them, developmentally) and experience both positive and negative consequences. Maybe that steep downhill on their bike will be the most exhilarating thing they’ve ever experienced, or maybe they’ll fall and get badly hurt. Maybe they know their exam material well enough that they can get by okay without studying, or maybe they’ll fail and have to work that much harder for the rest of the semester. Either way, their world is slightly broadened—and their fear slightly lessened.

27. …and, as adults, we should continue to move toward things that scare us. It is a reality of life that you will eventually be forced to confront just about everything you fear, whether large or small. So when the moment arises for you to confront a fear on your terms, that’s a growth opportunity—and, as with everything, having that degree of control sometimes makes all the difference. Actively choosing to undertake an experience is usually a lot more comfortable than being forced into it.

28. Pro-birth isn’t the same thing as pro-life. Meaning, if you’re staunchly anti-abortion, then you’d better also be pro-social programs to support those kids once they’re actually on the planet. (And ideally you’ll also be pro-contraception, pro-health education, and pro-living wage / paid family leave.) In other words: please make sure your moral opinions line up in a way that makes logistical sense.

29. Knowing what you don’t know is just as important as knowing what you do know. And people respect you more when you own that fact confidently. This is true of any life situation, but is actually a concept that I learned firsthand as a healthcare provider. We PAs are exactly (and only) as good as our own self-awareness; we can do so much, but only if we remain acutely aware of the boundaries of our knowledge and experience.

30. The relationships that stick (romantic and otherwise) are the ones that you don’t have to look for—they just find you. This is true of lots of things, actually—career options being another big one. The takeaway is that when something is ‘meant to be’, it tends to be ‘easy’. That’s not to say that we don’t still have to put in work—rather, that the way forward is clear and obvious; the path opens itself up to you, unforced.

31. On the flip side, letting go of a relationship that is no longer serving you—romantic, friendship, or otherwise—is a vital skill. It’s also one that we never truly master, because the context is different every time. But this is one of those situations where life experience pays off big time—not because you necessarily have more tools in the toolbox, but because you’ve had more practice at the flexibility with which you can wield them.

32. Parents learn just as much from their kids as the other way around. I’m not a parent, but I have parents—a couple of pretty awesome ones, as a matter of fact. And while I definitely have one of the ‘good’ family stories and still tend to run straight to my folks anytime I have a ‘life question’, I also recognize that they’ve been stretched, pushed, and challenged in many ways by virtue of the people that my sister and I are. I’m sure they’ve lain awake at night worrying about me at times, but I’ve also nudged them into traveling to new cities and countries, have introduced them to people from different walks of life, and have indirectly forced them to examine their own ideas and beliefs. I’m at a point in my life now where it doesn’t look likely that I’ll end up having kids, at least not biological ones, and this is really the biggest piece of regret that I feel about that: missing out on so many unknown (and unknowable) experiences. What might I have learned—how might I have grown—from those hypothetical kids?

33. Stress is stress is stress. Your poor little body is always trying to compensate for the various abuses of life. It does not know whether your cortisol is high because you had a crazy workday, because you’re in a calorie deficit, because you did a two-a-day training session, because you had a fight with your partner, or because you only slept four hours. It does not know whether your sympathetic nervous system is activated because you just did 100 GHD sit-ups, because you had an awesome birthday cheat day with a couple thousand more calories than usual, or because you just completed a 12-hour road trip in bad weather. It just knows that it’s stressed. Treat your body kindly. After all, you only get the one.

34. One of the absolute greatest things about getting older is self-awareness—learning how to drive your own individual machinery. There’s a lot to unpack here, but basically: life gets a lot better when you can ‘manage yourself’ proactively instead of simply reacting to every small event. Personally, I know that I’m wired for an early bedtime and an early wakeup; that I need a lot of time alone to recharge my batteries; that I’m a more settled and positive person when I make time to write first thing in the morning; that I am prone to become unduly stressed in a competitive setting; that I shouldn’t commit to anything in the evenings after a full workday; that week two of my monthly cycle consistently delivers my strongest days in the gym; that I’ll sleep poorly if I don’t eat enough on a given day; that my emotional intuition is generally accurate even if I can’t put it into words; that endurance training beats up my body much more than heavy barbell work; that I consistently underestimate the physiological stress of driving a long distance; and that despite often dreading a task beforehand, I will almost always immediately commit to doing it perfectly once I’ve actually started. TL;DR—if you know your inherent patterns and tendencies, you can build your life around them in a way that makes you a better, happier, more optimally functional human.

26.2 miles: done and dusted.

I’ve been told that ‘Murphy’s Law loves running,’ and it’s true that it’s rare for a race to ever go one hundred percent perfectly. But in this particular case, the bar was set pretty low, and I’m pleased to report that my 2018 experience was a dramatic improvement over my 2014 experience. The TL;DR here is that I did exactly what I wanted to do: ran a consistent race, finished feeling strong, bested my previous PR by a large margin, and feel mentally satisfied with my performance to the point that I finally (finally!) have some closure on the specific challenge of the full marathon.

Marathon morning dawned bright and beautiful. Saturday had been gloomy, and Monday would prove to be cold and rainy, but we were given a race-day gift in the form of 52-degree sunshine. This was fortunate, not only for the hours we spent on the course, but for the pre- and post-race logistics. I always forget the horrors implicit in trying to organize 50,000 runners in New York City – between two trains, the Staten Island Ferry, the 45-minute line for the start village bus, and then the actual bus ride itself, it legitimately took me THREE HOURS of ‘transit’ to get from my friend’s apartment to the race start line! – but not having to worry about freezing temperatures and multiple layers of clothing was a pleasant start to the day (and a major difference compared to 2014). And I do have to acknowledge the beautiful early-morning views of Lady Liberty and the cityscape from our vantage point on the ferry (as well as the hilarious volunteer, who was shouting as we disembarked en masse, “You may NOT turn back! You signed up for this! You may NOT turn back!”).

Mile 1 was a steady climb up the Verazzano-Narrows Bridge to exit Staten Island, the first of the five boroughs. However, we were all so excited to finally be there, finally be starting, finally be doing this huge thing that had consumed our lives for the past four months, that I don’t think any of us really registered the steep grade. There was a lot more exuberance on the bridge than I recalled from 2014, maybe because of the gorgeous weather; lots of people were pausing to climb up onto the concrete median and fling their arms over their heads for a photograph. Police officers and medical support were parked along the bridge, but there was no air of concern or stress; they were all just smiling and cheering us on.

Miles 2 and 3 were the descent down the bridge and the first taste of the riotous Brooklyn crowd support. No surprise, then, that these were my two fastest miles (9:07 and 9:14), despite bobbing and weaving around slower runners and intermittently swinging out to high-five little kids along the sideline.

Miles 4 and 5 were where we all finally started to ‘settle in’ a little bit and find a groove in terms of pace. However, by that point I was also realizing, with some frustration, that everything people say about the extraordinarily crowded NYC course is one hundred percent true. A relevant detail here is that if you’ve ever run with NYRR before, they sort you into a corral automatically, based on the results of your prior races – and the last time I ran this marathon, I was fresh off a stress fracture and thus severely undertrained. This meant that, based on 2014, I was seeded near the back of the pack, when, with my true 2018 capabilities, I probably should have been closer to the middle. Just about every major road race has tens of thousands of entrants, and I’m quite accustomed to running with a crowd – however, I am not accustomed to running THROUGH a crowd (read: wanting to move faster than everyone around me)! I couldn’t run more than seven or eight steps at a time without finding myself stuck behind another runner. My pace was therefore changing in uneven spurts, and I was also doing a significant amount of side-to-side zigzagging (to the point that my Garmin was slowly picking up extra hundredths of a mile / diverging ever further from the mile markers along the course). All of this meant that I was starting to feel more mentally stressed than I knew I ‘should be’ this early in the race.

I hit the 10k mark (6.2 miles) right at one hour, meaning my average pace was just under a 10-minute mile. This had been my overall average pace goal (“if everything goes perfectly”) for the whole race, which would have yielded a 4:20ish marathon – but I knew I’d be slower during the second half than the first, and so had privately wondered whether I might not, just possibly, end up going fast enough to crack two hours on the front end. Checking my watch, it was obvious to me by this point that that wasn’t going to happen (in hindsight, that idea was overly ambitious anyway), and so I made a conscious decision to start viewing the repeated blocking of my path as ‘forced energy conservation’. It was intensely frustrating to not be able to move as fast as I wanted to while I was still feeling good (since I was well aware that I wasn’t going to feel this good for much longer!) – but I also knew firsthand that you cannot ‘bank time’ in a marathon, especially not a tough course like this one. There was nothing I could do to change the crowd situation, and if I allowed it to continue to annoy me, I was going to expend unnecessary mental and physical energy and probably negatively impact my overall experience. So, with a sigh, I mentally let go of 4:20. (But when the inflatable “punch Trump!” doll showed up along the sideline at mile 7, you best believe I hauled off and clocked him AS HARD AS I COULD.)

Miles 8-10 were the sweet spot. Brooklyn brownstones, orange and yellow autumn leaves in all their sunlit glory, enormous cheering crowds, a gospel choir swaying on the steps of their church. I noted incidentally that I hit the 15k mark (9.3 miles) at 1:31, which is a significant PR (there’s a great 15k race in my hometown that I’ve run a few times, but never faster than 1:45 or so). One dude was apparently running the entire race while dribbling a basketball (!), multiple pacers were dressed in full Statue of Liberty regalia, and around mile 10, one of the sideline DJs was blasting the Macarena – prompting the river of runners to start moving our arms in unison through the old familiar rhythm, catching one another’s eyes and giggling. This was the best stretch of the race, and I was happy to be part of it, but even here, I ‘checked in with myself’ and realized that I was still thinking, Nope – this is an awesome moment, but I definitely don’t love this enough to keep on training the way I have been. On some level, it was actually nice to have that certainty.

All of my training had been geared toward specific effort levels and time domains (read: not at goal ‘paces’, numerically speaking), and so I’d picked up no fewer than FIVE different pace wristbands at the expo, because I truly had no idea what range I should realistically aim for in terms of an ultimate finishing time. I’d finally just shrugged and acknowledged that I didn’t really know ‘how’ to run for a time anyway, and that the smartest thing I could do would be to just treat this race like training and ignore my watch. So, during these relatively early miles, I kept silently asking myself, Effort-wise – even if you don’t meet any of the time goals you want – is this a pace where you’ll know, when you get to the end, that you pushed hard enough? Is this a level you can sustain for another three hours? Does this feel like a stimulus where you’ll be able to walk away proudly, feeling good about your effort, without wondering whether or not you truly did your best? I was pleased to realize that the answer was always yes.

Around mile 11, I started to feel just a little tired – nothing worrisome, but enough to where I knew the good times were probably over. And at that exact moment, I passed a Team Achilles athlete with bilateral prosthetic legs, jogging with an escort on either side. “Way to go, girl, keep it up!” I said, just as a male British athlete beside me cheered, “Nice work, guys!” He and I looked at each other, smiled, and shook our heads in identical wonderment. After we’d run a few steps further, I said to him, “You know, just when you start to feel a little tired, you see something like that!” “Absolutely phenomenal,” he responded. We ran together for the next few minutes, talking about where we were from, previous races we’d done, how we trained, and how grateful we were for the lives we were privileged to lead. His longer legs were holding a pace that was slightly faster than I knew I could sustain, so after a mile or so, I reluctantly dropped back and let him go ahead. However, I knew I wouldn’t be sorry for that extra effort – it had gone toward the experience, not toward a finishing time.

A strategy that I had not consciously planned, but that I found myself employing automatically, was thinking of the race in small bites – the same way I would with a CrossFit metcon. At some points, I broke it down by time (I was estimating roughly nine 30-minute segments); at other points I broke it down by fuel (three more gel packets before I’m finished). Every athlete knows that when you’re mid-effort, if you try to think about your entire task as a whole, it becomes utterly overwhelming; your brain starts to shut down with the impossibility of it all. The way to get it done is to think about only the next rep or two, and then the rep or two after that. The mantra looping in my head during the race stretched out for two or three miles at a time – something like, “At mile 13 we’ll be halfway. At mile 14 I can eat another gel and put on my headphones. And at mile 15 we’ll get that godforsaken Queensboro Bridge out of the way.”

Until this point, I had really only walked through the water stations, for maybe 30 seconds at a time – long enough to suck down a gel and slam a cup of water – before starting to run again. (My programming never had me walk for longer than one minute at a time in training, and being accustomed to brief breaks, as opposed to open-ended ones, served me well here.) Every time I’d think about wanting to walk, I’d see something ahead of me – a timing mat, a funny sign, a mile marker, a curve in the road – and I’d tell myself that I’d run just until I reached that point. Then I’d get there and, somehow, I’d go a bit further. Even though I knew I wasn’t going to meet any of my (wishful) goals for the first half, I still didn’t want to tack on any more time than necessary.

I passed the halfway point at 2:11 (which, incidentally, is still less than five minutes off my PR half marathon time – and more than 20 minutes faster than I’d been at this same point in the race in 2014). Once I crossed the timing mat, I allowed myself to walk for a moment – the first time I’d done so apart from the water stops – and within thirty seconds or so, the dark embrace of the pain cave started to envelop me. Oh. So here you are.

It wasn’t pleasant; it never is. However, there was a degree of objectivity to the experience this time that I didn’t recall having in the past. I took a quick physical inventory and realized that it was really just my feet that were feeling true pain – there was no trace of the progressive vise grip that I recalled tightening around my hips and knees and glutes four years ago. I was certainly ‘systemically’ fatigued, and therefore was in a place where I ‘could have’ panicked – but somehow there was no need. This was uncomfortable, but not unfamiliar, and therefore, my breathing and heartbeat stayed steady. You’ve been here before, my brain reminded me calmly. This is okay. It’s nothing you haven’t felt before. You know how this works. There’s always a second wind. Just stay calm and wait for it.

I had planned to run without headphones for as long as possible, but had also known that they would be a potentially powerful weapon against exactly this type of misery. I pulled them out of my waist pack, cranked up Pat Benatar’s “Invincible” to top volume, and started running again – slowly…

…until a sudden cramp in my right oblique at mile 14 promptly forced me into another walk break. I tried to ‘breathe it out’ the way I would with a diaphragmatic ‘stitch in the side’, but this was a different phenomenon altogether, and there wasn’t much I could do except wait for it to go away. It did make me laugh, though, because four days earlier, my awesome bodywork team had been specifically focusing on techniques to try to get me to recruit my core/stabilizers while running. Rolling my eyes, I made a mental note to tell them that they had succeeded!

I sucked down a gel, drank some water, swallowed two Tylenol (another secret weapon!), and moved on to mile 15 – the Queensboro Bridge. This was the marker that I had simultaneously been anticipating and also deeply dreading; In some ways, I’d been thinking about this bridge ever since February 28th, when I first saw the unexpected words, “You have been accepted into the 2018 TCS New York City Marathon!” In 2014, some of my deepest misery had taken place on this bridge: dry-crying while stopping every few dozen meters to clutch the handrail, stretch out my legs, and force myself onward and upward, knowing all the while that even if I survived this climb, that I had eleven long miles still to cover. I remembered the Filipina nurse that I’d met at this point on the course, and how we’d walked the next three miles together, chatting to each other to try to distract ourselves from how much we hurt.

As the incline grew steeper, I felt my own escalating effort, and promptly slowed to a walk, as I’d expected to do. However, I was immediately startled to realize that I actually still had a spring in my step! I wasn’t trudging; I was legitimately power-walking. And it felt… totally fine.

The next instant, I realized that this was probably also strategically smart. On a long, steep grade like this – and at this point in the race, with 15 miles down and 11 to go – running would have expended significantly more effort and would have still been well below my average pace thus far. Using some different muscles for a moment, while simultaneously saving some energy, was setting me up to feel better – and probably move faster – over the long haul.

As I moved resolutely forward, I passed runners on my left who were reenacting my memories from 2014 – pausing, stretching, squatting, grimacing. On one hand, I felt overwhelming sympathy for them – I remembered exactly how badly that hurt. But on the other hand – what a powerful visual for me now, in 2018. It might have only been inside my head, but the words that I whispered to myself were, You have come so far.

The incline stretched up and up and up. It seemed impossibly long, and I realized it was because I actually wanted to start running again. An ambulance driver, parked at the top of the bridge, began blasting “Eye of the Tiger” over his loudspeaker, watching us pass by while rhythmically tapping his air horn in time to the beat. Nobody had the resources to acknowledge him very enthusiastically, but a wave of tired chuckles swept across the crowd.

At long last, the grade began to flatten. We weren’t quite on the downslope yet, but the angle was finally low enough that I felt like running would be all right. On some level, I was waiting for the moment when my legs decided that they simply weren’t going to let me start again – but they cooperated smoothly. We crested the hill and started down, and there it was: my second wind. Suddenly, I felt okay again. Sixteen miles down, only ten to go. Only ten more? I blinked in wonderment.

That was also the moment that I realized that for those entire first sixteen miles, that I had never, not for one second, doubted my capacity to finish this race. That the steadily decreasing number of miles remaining – fifteen, twelve, ten – hadn’t felt large or intimidating at any point. That this distance, and this experience, was flying by significantly faster than I recalled from 2014. That even now, hurting and tired, slightly disappointed that my ‘stretch’ time goals weren’t going to happen – still, here I was at mile sixteen with my feet still moving steadily under me, confident that this challenge was entirely manageable, secure in my own ability to get it done.

This level of self-confidence was an entirely new experience for me with a marathon. I acknowledged in that moment that, whatever my finishing time, I had already won.

My memories are a little hazy from miles 17-21. There were large chunks of time where I just couldn’t be as ‘present’ as I wanted to be – it almost felt like I had to dissociate a little in order to be able to keep going. I kept my headphones on, and Sia, Lady Gaga, and select 80s tunes kept me going through the Bronx. My two-mile mantra kept inching ever forward: at mile 18 I’ll eat a gel; at mile 19 I’ll walk for a minute. I do recall that there was an incredible drum line near mile 17, whose ferocious rhythmic energy somehow put a fresh spring into everybody’s step – and I remember laughing out loud at the distinguished, mustachioed gentleman at mile 20, whom I could hear even through my headphones, yelling as we crossed the bridge out of the Bronx, “Get the hell outta here; go back to Manhattan!” I also passed a runner with a T-shirt that said, “It never gets easy; you just get better”; as I went by, I pointed to the CrossFit logo on his shirt and gave him a smile and a thumbs-up. Upon review of my Garmin data later on, I was somehow steady as a rock through here; I actually ran the 30-35k chunk of the race at a slightly FASTER overall pace than the 25-30k chunk.

I took my headphones off at mile 22, when I ate my last gel. I knew I did not plan to ever run another marathon, and that I would therefore likely never feel this particular constellation of sensations ever again, and I had some storybook idea that I wanted to ‘savor’ the last few miles. Although I’d love to say that it worked out for me, this was actually one decision that I think might not have been the smartest; I took a brief dip back into the pain cave at mile 23, and I suspect I might have been sufficiently distracted to avoid that if I’d kept the music going until we actually entered Central Park. Related: although I found the texture of the AccelGel packets (which contain a bit of protein) easier to eat than traditional Gu, I also think the added protein slows the carbohydrate absorption slightly; my sense is that this may have contributed to my five or six minutes of misery. Ah, well, live and learn.

When thinking about this race for the weeks and months beforehand, my anxieties had centered mostly around the middle miles; I thought the last 5k would fly by. I remembered, from 2014, the sudden sense of urgency, the setting sun glinting off the skyscrapers on the perimeter of Central Park, the realization that it was all about to be over, that everything was suddenly moving too quickly. This year, the final miles through the Park passed by at the same steady pace as the rest of the race – not too fast, not too slow. I gave myself a brief walk break at mile 24; then another during an uphill portion. When we hit mile 25, I told myself that was it. “You don’t have to run fast, but you also don’t want to look back and know that you walked during the final mile,” I said to myself sternly. “Just keep your feet moving, just like this, for one more mile.”

We passed a red sign: 800 METERS TO GO. Just keep your feet moving. Two more laps around the track.

Next sign: 400 METERS TO GO. Just one more lap. Just like this.

And then: the finish. Cameras, lights, screams, hugs, smiles. In 2014, I had burst into tears as soon as I crossed the brightly colored line. This time, I ran across it grinning widely, with both arms up.

I stopped my watch – official time, 4:45 – and before I had time to really register any emotion, a young woman asked me to take her photo in front of the finish banner. She did the same for me, and then, en masse, we made our way through the finish chute. Medals, heat sheets, more photo ops, a recovery bag full of water and Gatorade and pretzels. Everyone around me was shuffling along with their pain faces on, and I remember wishing they’d move faster, then feeling amused at my own energy; I was bouncing along, singing to whatever song was pumping over the speakers, unable to wipe the grin off my face. It’s over. It’s finally over. I briefly pulled each knee up to my chest a couple of times while walking – my hips and glutes were a little tight – but I otherwise felt shockingly fine. I couldn’t believe it. That, more than anything, was really what made the pride start to hit me – we just did this crazy thing, and everybody around me is hurting a lot, but look at how amazing my body is! Look at how okay I am!

We started ascending out of the park, up to where they were handing out the finisher ponchos. The girl next to me groaned loudly. “Who put a hill here?!? What were they thinking?!?” “How ‘bout that Queensboro Bridge at mile 15?!” I countered. “That thing was never-ending! Like when our grandparents used to tell stories about walking to school ‘uphill both ways’!” A ripple of laughter moved through the line.

I received my poncho, then moved toward the subway (where, I would like to add, I descended the steps and ran to catch a train without any trouble at all).

Another day’s work, done. Back on the east side, spinach tortellini, ice cream, and a tub of salted brownie bites were waiting for me.

…Now, back home in NC, I’m feeling a lot of things this week, the two strongest emotions being pride and relief. This has been a long, hard training cycle; I’m so glad it’s over and that I can finally get back to the ‘fun’ fitness goals, the ones in which I feel so much more invested (think linked muscle-ups and a bodyweight snatch). But I’m also so proud that I did exactly what I wanted to do in the face of this challenge. Time goal-wise, it’s human nature to imagine miracles – to start to think, as an event draws closer, that maybe it’ll be possible to make some unlikely magic happen. But I had said from day one of this process that my primary goal was simply to finish strong and to truly feel like I had done my best. And I did that. In the days and hours leading up to the race, I’d gotten distracted by the idea of a shiny 4:20s time and had momentarily forgotten what it was that I’d really set out to do here. But somewhere along the way, I’d apparently also internalized it – because my certainty in THAT ability never wavered for a moment.

There were so many reasons why that shouldn’t have been true. My training plan was decidedly non-traditional; I literally only ran ONCE A WEEK. I got injured twice. I never ran longer than 14 miles. All of my running was in timed intervals; going into this race, I literally had no idea what a sustainable marathon pace would be, numerically. But I knew what it would FEEL like, and – as it turned out – that was all I needed to know. When I looked at my Garmin data later, I was surprised and pleased to see that my LAST mile (9:25 pace) was actually my third-fastest one of the whole race! The fact that I had the ability to ‘kick’ like that at the end implies that I kept a really good, steady effort the whole way through.

And, objectively, 4:45 is still a solid time, a time to be proud of. It’s 24 minutes better than my best marathon EVER (Philly, 2012), and over an hour’s improvement from the painful 6:08 that I logged on this course in 2014. It was fast enough to beat the cutoff to be listed in the New York Times the next day. And furthermore, what with all the bobbing and weaving on the crowded course, my Garmin says that I actually covered a true total of 26.9 miles – and that my time for 26.2 was therefore actually only 4:39. (NYRR would obviously never count that, but I sure will.)

The overriding goal here was just to feel mentally satisfied with my performance, to the point that I could finally walk away from full marathons for good. I feel like I can do that now. Do I have the capacity to get even better, run even faster, perform even more impressively? Sure – if I decided that I wanted to, if running were the form of exercise that I loved most. But that isn’t what I want. I have no desire to ever do this again – which, yes, I’ve definitely said before – but now it’s because I’ve put in the work, faced down the tough stuff, done it properly, and truly just don’t love it. It’s no longer because I’ve been disillusioned by it or because it ‘beat me’. I can proudly say that I met this challenge well – so I now have the luxury of deliberately choosing not to tackle this particular one again.

I can hardly believe it, but we’re down to single digits. Just nine days out from the New York City Marathon! And, I’ll admit, now that ‘the hay is in the barn’ and most of the work is done, I’m finally starting to feel just a little bit of genuine excitement.

I’ve said before that training is generally my favorite part of any given day, because I usually find it validating and motivating just by its own nature. I’ve been CrossFitting for over six years now, and I work on things like muscle-ups and snatches and toes-to-bar simply because I want to be better at them. One of the best (and worst) things about this sport is that there’s a huge variety of skills to master and none of them have true endpoints. (In other words, “It never gets easy; you just get better.”) The way you remain ‘in love’ with CrossFit over the long haul is by learning to quietly recognize your own tiny victories, the kinds of things that nobody else would even notice (two more steps on that handstand walk, five more pounds on that split jerk, one extra unbroken rep of toes-to-bar) -- acknowledging a moment of satisfaction about whatever it is -- and then immediately looking ahead to the next milestone.

By contrast, for the past 3-4 months, my training has been ENTIRELY structured around a single fixed endpoint. Based on how many weeks remained until The Big Day, training volume has risen, weights have fallen, session duration has lengthened, variety in movements has dwindled. There have been very few of those small personal victories; yet I have definitely dealt with major challenges on every level -- physical injuries, emotional frustrations, nutritional conundrums -- to a degree that I seldom experience in the course of my regular training. It has been, without question, the toughest cycle I’ve ever done. And although I’ve learned a tremendous amount via the process, I’m also a 34-year-old woman with more than enough ‘chores’ in my life already -- so the transformation of training into yet another joyless task has been deeply felt and tough to reconcile. It’s been hard to muster enthusiasm for the ‘endpoint’ -- even an event as exciting as this one! -- when it has taken so much mental and emotional energy just to continue to put one foot in front of the other (both literally and figuratively).

However, hindsight being what it is, I’m relieved to realize that I can look back now and acknowledge a fair number of valuable milestones:

 -- Most obviously: I got faster. Like, a LOT faster. My last few long runs have been programmed in 2-3-minute intervals, for which paces in the 7:00s are pretty normal for me now. I definitely won’t run the actual marathon at that pace, but knowing I can consistently hit that level of intensity bodes well. (At one point, I unwittingly came within 2.5 minutes of breaking my half marathon race PR... during a casual interval training session!)

 -- I’ve gotten a lot better at the ‘boring’ bodyweight movements -- the low-skill stuff that CrossFit HQ tosses in there for the sole purpose of jacking up your heart rate and fatiguing you a little. Specifically, I’ve always dreaded burpees (in reference to when we first started working together, my coach once rolled her eyes and said, “Your burpees were NOT my favorite thing about you!”)... but somewhere along the way, they stopped sucking quite so much -- probably because, along with increasing my aerobic capacity, I’ve mostly internalized how to pace myself for a given work requirement. (There was one memorable 45-minute metcon that contained two sets of 50 burpees, and my times for the two sets were within 1 second of each other!) I’ve also improved a lot at wallballs -- they’ll never be my favorite thing, but they also just aren’t nearly as fatiguing as they used to be, even when she programs the 10’ target or the 20# ball. Same thing with the Airdyne, a.k.a. the devil’s bike. I still don’t love it, but I do feel like I ‘understand’ it now... and there’s that whole thing about ‘the devil you know’ being marginally less awful than the one you don’t. :)

 -- Nutritionally and bodyweight-wise, I did exactly what I wanted to do: MAINTAINED. This is actually a pretty huge victory. I started this training cycle in July, averaging about 140-141# (and 17% body fat, per DEXA scan). I had a brief period of unintentional weight LOSS in the beginning, before I figured out just how much I needed to be eating (spoiler: it was a LOT), and now, 14 weeks later, am sitting around 141-142#. This makes me really happy, because in my particular scenario, a 1-2# gain is vastly preferable to a 1-2# loss. It means I likely did NOT lose muscle mass -- which is no easy feat during an intense endurance cycle! -- and another hugely positive consequence is that I also did not lose my period. This was really important to me, since two of my previous marathon training cycles (2013 and 2014) resulted in stress fractures. I’m thrilled (and relieved) that I was able to figure out what I needed to do in order to get my hormonal biochemistry to hang in there this time, because if history is any indication, my body otherwise might well have not made it through the training intact! Rest assured that it wasn’t always easy -- as my overall volume increased and I approached a state of true ‘overtraining’, I started to experience some unpleasant appetite suppression (a first for me), yet those were often precisely the days when (mathematically) I genuinely NEEDED to eat 3500 calories (!) in order to stay at homeostasis. I truly feel like sorting out the nutrition may have been one of the biggest victories of this entire process.

 -- Related: I also became significantly more flexible and forgiving with regard to my mentality around food, which is something that was long overdue. Renaissance Periodization has worked so well for me that I’ve had a hard time allowing myself to loosen the reins very much, even now that I’m on maintenance and living in a healthy, functional, normal-sized body that I’m happy with. However, something I finally internalized during this cycle is that our metabolism is flexible, adaptable, forgiving, and anything but linear. It’s smart to learn the underlying science and to practice habits that support those tenets -- and we obviously can’t go off the rails every day -- but (on maintenance, anyway) counting every meal’s macros down to the exact gram probably isn’t necessary, either.

 -- Also slightly related: for the first time ever in my life, I found myself truly comfortable running outdoors in just a sports bra. Like, for most of August and September, I legitimately PREFERRED that over wearing a shirt. Who even am I?!?

 -- While I can’t go quite so far as to claim that I ‘didn’t lose strength’, (1) the loss has actually been pretty minimal, (2) I know it’s a temporary state and is probably related more to a recent lack of exposure to heavy strength movements than to any major changes in my underlying physiology, and (3) the silver lining is that all the light repetitive technique work has actually still netted me a couple of recent PRs on my weaker lifts (hello, split jerk!). That was a nice surprise and has me feeling hopeful for even more progress once strength can finally be a focus again.

 -- Another major learning opportunity: I have now experienced what true ‘overtraining’ feels like. Meaning -- I spent about 12 days earlier this month (following four peak-volume workouts in a row) where my BODY was okay, not in pain or even sore -- but I was ‘systemically’ not okay. My appetite was weirdly suppressed, I was exhausted yet couldn’t sleep, felt constantly on the edge of tears or anger, resting heart rate was elevated, had a near-panic attack underneath a (super light) barbell, struggled not to cry when trying to push through high-intensity work, was logging Garmin ‘daily strain’ scores that were double my baseline (even on rest days), etc etc etc. This was all extraordinarily unpleasant, as you might imagine. HOWEVER, (1) I’m glad to know what it feels like so that I can recognize it for the future, and (2) reaching that point was also useful (and even validating) in another sense -- because even though my actual running mileage (on this decidedly-non-traditional training plan) didn’t ever really get super high, overall volume and intensity DID reach a significant peak, and those are more difficult to quantify. Seeing the effort reflected in my physiological responses is what helped us to recognize (correctly) that a three-week taper was going to be more appropriate for me than just two. (And although I’ve obviously still got a week to go, I can already ‘feel’, physiologically, that this decision and timing have been PERFECT.)

 -- And although this isn’t generally something I’d claim as a ‘victory’ -- because, well, grownups are expected to stick to their commitments; it’s not really negotiable -- I do think I get to be at least a little bit proud of the fact that I kept showing up even when things really, really, really sucked. Not once, not one single time in 15 weeks, did I miss a day, skip any pieces of a workout, or half-ass what I was told to do. When push came to shove and I genuinely hated what I was doing, I did it anyway. #adulting

And -- because no training plan ever goes perfectly -- here are a few milestones I DIDN’T meet:

 -- I never ran longer than 14 miles. This was partly because of losing a couple of weeks due to injury (see below), and partly due to the heavily-CrossFit-based training plan. Even so, I actually don’t have doubts about my ability to make it through the race -- I’ve done this before and my own personal bar is set pretty darn low; I don’t feel the need to log a 20-miler to ‘prove to myself’ that I can go the distance next Sunday -- but, yeah, in a perfect world, it would’ve been nice to get to 16-18.

 -- Although nothing truly ‘serious’ happened, I didn’t make it through this cycle without injury. Around the halfway point, I developed an overuse-type problem in my left foot and had to take a couple of weeks entirely off from running, and then I rolled my right ankle HARD just this past Sunday (entirely my own damn fault for running in the dark... but I had to get the miles in before work!). However, the silver lining is that both these things made me incredibly, overwhelmingly, pathetically grateful for the awesome team that I have around me in terms of coaching/PT/bodywork. Even though I’ve been pretty vocal about how much I’ve disliked this training phase, I have also NEVER felt so well-supported as an athlete as I do right now, and that is such a tremendous gift.

 -- Despite ample free meal opportunities, I somehow never made it to Monuts or Gonza or Cowfish! I can conveniently blame this on my weekend work schedule (and that finger-pointing is not without validity -- I currently work 4 out of every 6 weekends)... but this still represents a major and unacceptable failure on my part. :)

 -- And... I did not, ultimately, learn to love running. :) Yes, you can laugh -- but honestly, I was an endurance athlete (swimming, running, and triathlons) for a solid decade prior to CrossFit, and so, like I said before, I tried to keep an open mind to the idea that I might actually end up enjoying this process. It could have been fun to do something a little different for a while. ...Turns out it wasn’t. :) However, barring any kind of catastrophe over the next nine days, one thing I CAN say is that I’m definitely on track to have my best marathon ever -- ‘fastest’, sure, but what I really mean is, a race where my overall performance (consistent pace, minimal discomfort, easy recovery) may finally reflect my capabilities. And THAT means I’ll (theoretically!) finally be able to close this chapter. It hasn’t been enough just to ‘complete’ a marathon (or five); I wanted to run WELL. I wanted a race of which I could genuinely feel proud; a race where I could walk (or hobble!) away at the end knowing that I truly did my best, that I ‘met the challenge’ well. And I think -- knock on wood -- that, nine days from now, I might finally actually do that.

The thing nobody tells you is that the true ‘marathon’ is run long before you ever toe the starting line of those long-awaited 26.2 miles. By this point, I’ve learned so much that I honestly feel as though there’s nothing left to prove! I’m still excited for race day -- to be a part of such a special collective experience, to see all five boroughs of New York in a single afternoon, to satisfy my curiosity as far as what I’ll be able to do athletically, to run alongside 50,000 others who have all gone through their own variants of this same process over these past few months. But whatever happens next Sunday, I’ve still definitely never (EVER) been headed to the starting line this healthy, this fit, this prepared, this light, this calm, this cognizant, this capable -- and that alone means that I ALREADY have to acknowledge the inherent value of this very very very hard thing I just did.

I’m in the homestretch of my training for the New York City Marathon; the race is a little over five weeks away. Honestly, I sort of can’t believe I’m saying that -- because it seems like just a minute ago there were multiple months stretching out before me like the Great Dismal Swamp (which is an actual place) -- but now I’m realizing that there’s actually a faint light emanating from the end of this endurance tunnel. Somehow, I’ve only got four more ‘long runs’ left before the taper.

This is marathon number six for me, which might give the impression that the process is old hat by this point, but that would be thoroughly untrue. There have been a ton of ‘moving parts’ this time around, physically, mentally, and nutritionally -- maybe more so than ever before -- and I’m definitely due to set some of it down on paper. I had intended to do regular updates every couple of weeks as the training progressed, but (surprise, surprise) never actually managed to do so -- meaning this will probably be another of my infamous ten-page missives. So… pour another cup of coffee and strap in.

Back Story

I have a rather long and karmically-entangled history with the NYC Marathon. I was never a runner in adolescence -- swimming was my sport -- but took it up gradually during my senior year of college, mostly because my roommate nudged me into accompanying her on a couple of races of various distances. When we graduated and I no longer had easy access to a pool, I started doing road races and triathlons regularly, almost by default -- at that point in my life, I needed something concrete to train for in order to ensure that I remained consistently physically active. I gradually built up to marathon distance, starting with the Marine Corps Marathon in 2008, and although I entered the NYC lottery more than once, I was never selected.

In 2012, I finally just bit the bullet and bought a charity slot for NYC. Thanks largely to my PA classmates, I successfully raised 100% of the money (!) -- but those of you playing the home game may recall that 2012 was the year of Superstorm Sandy, and that the NYCM was therefore canceled that year for the first and only time since its inception. (I was literally ON THE BUS from Philadelphia to New York when the verdict came down.) Along with most of the field, I deferred my entry to 2013 -- and ended up with a stress fracture in my foot. Thoroughly annoyed, I deferred again, to 2014 -- and, a month into training, promptly sustained a stress fracture in the OTHER foot. (Pretty sure that’s what the kids call #facepalm.) However, by then I was out of deferrals, and I sure hadn’t raised that $2500 for nothing, so I adapted a CrossFit Endurance-style training plan to keep my fitness at a reasonable level while avoiding anything involving repetitive impact. Three weeks before the race, I was cleared to run.

So I did. My longest training run was five miles. It was by far my slowest marathon. It wasn’t the race I’d envisioned, to say the least. But I finished it.

That was supposed to be it. The end. The closing of a chapter. Yet somehow, every year, I have consistently managed to end up in New York City on marathon weekend. Typically, I’m just there visiting friends or seeing shows -- but this past year, it was because a dear friend of mine from the Netherlands was running the race herself. And, reliving that experience from the fringes last November -- walking around the expo with thousands of excited runners, dashing around Manhattan with my friend’s husband to try to catch a glimpse of her at various mile markers, standing on the sidelines cheering with my camera at the ready -- well, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me wish I were running myself.

So, on the spur of the moment, I threw my name in the hat, for the fifth time in ten years. And then promptly forgot about it.

...Until the evening of February 28, 2018 -- when my mind was entirely occupied by Week 2 of the CrossFit Open -- and my phone suddenly beeped with an alert for ‘Unfamiliar Credit Card Charge’.

Over the coming minutes, my initial alarm changed to confusion -- then, as the realization dawned, to equal parts shock, excitement, and dread.

Oh, shit. What had I done?

Fast-forward another seven months or so, and here we are.

Physically

The metaphor I keep using is that I feel like I’ve been driving a 4-cylinder automatic transmission for the past decade and am suddenly being asked to master a stick-shift Maserati. That’s not to say that I’m any kind of speed demon in the grand scheme of things, just that I have a much larger number of ‘gears’ than I used to. I spent a solid decade doing ‘long slow distance’ in various forms prior to discovering CrossFit in 2012, but back then, I was basically either running or walking (or crawling!) -- there wasn’t much of an in-between option. Nowadays, I’m much stronger, faster, and lighter than I used to be -- all good things! -- but this kind of training also utilizes an energy system that we just don’t routinely tax to the same degree in CrossFit, and it takes time (and mileage) to get comfortable with that. Therefore, much to my dismay, I’m having to become intimately familiar with the feel of a ‘threshold’ pace -- a.k.a. the place where I’d LIKE to slow down, but don’t objectively NEED to slow down in order to complete a given work requirement. This is occasionally validating on the back end when I review my split times -- never could’ve imagined a day where I ‘accidentally’ hit an 8:15 mile IN THE MIDDLE of a long run! -- but also inevitably involves some ‘overshooting’, a.k.a. those sessions where I come out of the gate too hot, hit a wall after two miles, and spend the remainder of the time feeling like death. Yet, slowly but surely, I’m starting to internalize how it feels to run at an 8-minute pace, vs an 8:30 or 9:00 or 9:30 pace. There are two processes happening simultaneously -- physically training my body to run faster, and mentally training my ‘sixth sense’ to learn how to calibrate a pace that can be held for MANY miles, not just two or three.

I’ve learned a couple of interesting things about myself so far, including that, on a physical level, I am inherently a more aerobic athlete (read: not a power athlete). This had already become apparent in recent months via barbell performance -- I can use a pretty high percentage of my max with decent form for a lot of reps, but tend to struggle in terms of getting my actual one-rep maxes to move upward. It turns out I’m similar with regard to running -- I can hold a ‘moderate’ pace for a relatively long time (on one of my earliest long runs, I averaged 8:54 across seven miles and felt pretty great the whole way), but, as above, I’m learning that ramping that pace up even just a little bit past the sweet spot will quickly lead to a major crash and burn. However, I suppose I’d prefer to be built this way, as opposed to the alternative -- and one silver lining is that, since my 10-rep maxes are a lot closer to my 1RMs than they have any right to be, my working weights on the current (muscular-endurance-focused) weightlifting cycle haven’t had to drop down SO far as to make me sad. :)

In terms of programming, at my request, we are continuing to prioritize my CrossFit fitness, just with a necessarily heavy slant toward endurance and bodyweight strength. Running isn’t my primary sport and isn’t going to be; my goal is simply to ‘complete’ this marathon in relatively good shape -- to stay healthy as possible throughout the training, to feel strong for the majority of the event, to soak in and thoroughly enjoy the atmosphere of such a special race, to crush several very large piles of food afterward (first stop: milk bar!) -- and then immediately jump back into ‘normal’ CrossFit training. A new PR would be a bonus -- and I do think it’s well within my abilities -- but I also won’t be too upset if it doesn’t happen; I’m playing the long game here, and I’m much more concerned with retaining muscle mass and overall fitness than with earning the fastest possible marathon time.

This all means that my actual ‘mileage’ is relatively minimal -- which is good for me, both in terms of personal preference and due to the fact that my feet are typically the part of me that ‘breaks’ first when subjected to high volume. (Other CrossFitters have wonky shoulders or knees; my own personal Achilles’ heel -- pun intended --  has always been my feet.) I started out having weekly long runs programmed on Sunday mornings and two-a-day sessions on Wednesdays (light CrossFit in the morning + running speedwork at the track in the evening). However, I promptly sustained a (mild) foot injury in the third week of increasing speed mileage (#typical). This led to us changing the sprints over to the rower and assault bike -- so now, with five weeks to go, my only true running is the long Sunday-morning piece. However, almost everything else I’m doing supports those sessions by having taken a sharp turn towards aerobic capacity and bodyweight strength. My ‘metcon’-style work these days is usually ridiculously long and pretty boring -- think anything that taxes the legs: biking and rowing mixed with long light high-rep sets of wallballs, thrusters, air squats, deadlifts -- but I’ve just had to accept that. (I halfheartedly complained at one point early on, and Coach shrugged and said matter-of-factly, “Well, it’s either this or more running,” so I immediately buttoned my lip!) :)

This brings me to...

Mentally

Going in, I tried to keep a semi-open mind -- after all, I did this for a solid decade prior to CrossFit; this could turn out to feel like a refreshing break for me. It might even be exciting to do something a little different for a while. No such luck, though; I’m actually finding this type of training to be tremendously more mentally fatiguing than regular CrossFit, for two main reasons.

First (and most obviously) -- compared to barbells and handstand push-ups and ‘three-two-one-go’, endurance training is just LONG and BORING. There have certainly been a few gratifying moments -- ‘accidentally’ running a sub-27-minute 5k during training, crushing 3000 calories in a day, realizing I’ve somehow become that girl who truly is most comfortable running in just a sports bra (who even AM I?!?). But it simply isn’t where my heart is. In hindsight, I’m pretty sure the only way I was able to convince myself that I ‘liked’ this for so many years is because back then I wasn’t physically ‘training’ so much as giving myself a forced MENTAL break -- shoving in my headphones, zoning out, letting my mind wander. Fast paces were things that occasionally ‘happened’ on days when I felt good, not things that I could deliberately strive for. As I mentioned above -- turns out it’s a whole different ball game (and a lot more mentally taxing) when you’re actually TRAINING at a prescribed intensity level and staying attuned to keeping yourself there.

And secondly, this type of training is a lot more isolating than I had bargained for -- both physically and mentally. Gym-wise, I knew it wouldn’t be fun to watch other people crushing their CrossFit goals while I sat on the assault bike plugging away at another hour-long conditioning piece… but I was at least somewhat mentally prepared for that part. What’s been harder has been the (many, many) hours when I’m NOT in the gym. Getting up at 4:00am to cover a dozen miles in the dark before work is not much fun, nor is forcing myself to drive to the track at 7pm after I’ve worked a full clinic day and just want to go home to bed. It’s also tough to feel as though nobody in my life can relate to both this odd set of obligations AND the (even odder) accompanying headspace -- after all, most endurance athletes choose this method of training because they genuinely enjoy it. And -- to add insult to injury -- because the repetitive pounding beats my body up in a whole new way, it means I have to be hyper-focused on recovery (I’m getting to that!)... which then FURTHER detracts from time that I could be spending training in a way that I DO actually enjoy.

Training is generally my favorite part of any given day, because I usually find it validating and motivating just by its own nature. So, lately, it’s been frustrating and demoralizing -- and, frankly, a little frightening -- to feel such a major piece of my life evolving into a chore. I’ve certainly completed marathons on far less training than this (albeit a lot more slowly and painfully), so there have been many moments when it’s been hard to stare down the gun barrel of WHAT DO YOU MEAN TEN MORE WEEKS (or however long). However, I’m trying to remain cognizant of the fact that this is temporary -- and that, the better-prepared I am for the marathon, the less of a toll it will take on my body -- and therefore, the faster I can jump back into the stuff I really love.

This brings me to…

Recovery

I'm being extraordinarily careful about prioritizing my recovery, in part because, with endurance training, problems tend to show up LATER rather than declaring themselves in the moment. Aches and pains tend to be related to overuse, rather than to any kind of obviously-pinpointable injury, which makes them more slippery and insidious -- and therefore more difficult to prevent (until the horse is already out of the barn, that is). This is not my first rodeo with regard to distance running -- I've completed five marathons, over a dozen half marathons, and quite a few triathlons -- so I’m well aware of this dynamic by now. I had a bone deformity in one of my feet as a teenager, and although it’s been corrected, I've still had the pleasure over the years of dealing with shin splints, Achilles tendinitis, severe plantar fasciitis, and two metatarsal stress fractures. The latter is the worst-case scenario for any runner -- because by the time you 'feel' a stress fracture, it's already too late. That’s exactly where I’ve ended up during two of my previous marathon training attempts -- and is a place that I’ve been valiantly trying NOT to revisit.

Knock on wood, this training program has kept me considerably healthier overall than any of my previous attempts (not coincidentally, it’s also been the plan with the smallest weekly run mileage!). As I mentioned, I did end up with a mild foot injury a couple of weeks ago (nothing ‘specific’ enough for a true diagnosis; my left foot/ankle just got ‘angry’ through the retinaculum and the lower segment of the tibialis anterior) -- but it was definitely a soft-tissue problem this time, nothing bony, and responded well to a couple of weeks off running, some RockTape, a better-fitting pair of shoes, and a couple sessions with the PT and the bodywork guru at my gym (both of whom I’m seeing about twice a month for dry-needling, cupping, taping, and various other ‘hurts so good’ interventions!). My coach and I are perfectly in line with our opinions on this, which is that -- if we have to choose -- it’s vastly preferable for me to reach the start line healthy and perhaps slightly underprepared, versus crush every mile of the training and then be in pain from the first five minutes on the day when it actually matters.

Honestly, I am feeling incredibly well-supported in terms of the team I have around me -- more so than I have been maybe EVER, athletically speaking -- and so (general saltiness aside) I’m actually managing to stay pretty calm, even during the acute injury phase. First, because it always feels like a small miracle to be able to lie down on the therapy table with legitimate pain, and then stand up a little while later with it having essentially vanished (!) -- but second, because of the sheer emotional comfort that lies in the knowledge that (for once in my life) I actually don’t have to worry about EVERY little thing, that ‘other people are taking care of’ some pieces of this puzzle. The three of them are all aware of ‘where I’m at’ physically, and are in communication as far as what they think is best for me, which is such a gift. Just the awareness of that support network provides me with a huge amount of reassurance -- AND additional motivation to ‘do my best for them’, after all the time and energy they’re investing in me. (The first time she dry-needled the injured area, the PT bade me farewell after the session with the admonishment, “Don’t f*ck up my good work.”)

Unrelated: one other thing I’ve found useful for recovery purposes has been my new Garmin watch (Fenix 5S). It’s definitely not a hundred percent accurate -- it’s very much an endurance watch and thus has absolutely no idea how to interpret regular CrossFit most of the time, so it occasionally tells me my weekly training load is ‘light’ or that my performance condition is ‘peaking’ when that is BLATANTLY FALSE -- but in terms of things like heart rate, daily stress level, and sleep quality, it’s fascinating to see numerical data that backs up my own internal gauges, and it’s admittedly also been pretty helpful nutritionally in terms of calorie burn estimates (I’m getting to that!). And although it’s apt to underestimate my effort output at times, there are other times when it keeps me honest; on one memorable occasion, my coach sent me a new month’s worth of programming, and I saw that my long Saturday metcons had been dropped in favor of more movements that were labeled as ‘for quality’ or ‘not for time’. This is the sort of stuff I tend to find ‘boring’, and I groaned internally as I made a note to ask her why she’d done that. However, before we even had a chance to discuss it, I completed my first Friday session on the new plan (over 60 straight minutes of biking, rowing, wallballs, lunges, running, and air squats, if you’re curious!) -- and as soon as I clicked my stopwatch off, Garmin popped up with a cheery little note: “Recovery Time 45 Hours / Easy Effort Recommended.”

Well then. As usual -- it seems Coach knows what she’s doing!

Awesome support crew and techie gadgets aside, a few other essential recovery things: -- compression socks or calf sleeves for the 24 hours following a long run -- supplements: vitamin D, krill oil, zinc/magnesium/B6, probiotics, vitamin C -- a consistent 9-9:30pm bedtime -- Epsom salt baths after the heaviest leg days -- tart cherry juice in my workout shake (helps reduce inflammation) -- and doing my best to NEVER be in a calorie deficit (more on this below).

Which brings me to...

Nutritionally / Fueling

One enormous and unexpected side benefit of this whole process is that I’ve had to become much more flexible and forgiving with regard to food. (This is something that definitely needed to happen, but I just couldn’t really foresee exactly how I was going to get there!) I’ve been following Renaissance Periodization for 18 months now (cut #1, short maintenance, cut #2, long maintenance, third/SHORT cut, now currently on maintenance again), and it has done phenomenal things for me (which is why I’ve stuck to it so rigidly until now); however, the origins of the program lie in weightlifting and strength training. To their credit, RP has put forth a lot of effort recently to try to tailor their approach to make it work for endurance training, and I definitely found their tools to be a pretty useful starting point in terms of calculating carb recommendations for long run days -- but I also learned that the math could really only carry me so far. A standalone long run is one thing, but it gets trickier when I’ve got (for example) a day with two training sessions, or a workout that’s maybe only an hour long but is almost entirely composed of sprints, or one of those super long Fridays where my ‘metcon’ is 60-100 minutes of work at “70% effort”. The bottom line is, at some point, you just have to take the toolbox you’ve got, start experimenting, and figure out what works for your body.

I’ve said before that I think one of the official RP hashtags should be #alwayslearning, and this training cycle has been no exception! While I obviously knew I would need more carbs/calories on long run days, I did NOT expect for the caloric demand to increase ACROSS THE BOARD as much as it did. It didn’t present as traditional ‘hunger’, so I didn’t recognize the ‘deficit dynamic’ at first -- but after a couple of great weeks initially, my performance and general well-being started to fall off around the 4-week mark. I wasn’t sleeping well, was feeling generally moody and anxious, and my long run paces were significantly slower than they had been up until that point. I also knew the scale had been running rather low, in the 138s-139s. However, none of this by itself was THAT far out of the range of ‘normal’, so it took me a week or two to put it all together. The larger picture didn’t fully click until, independently of one another, two separate CrossFit coaches (both of whom I’d only known for a month!) asked me if I had lost weight. That finally prompted me to look back at my daily scale trends, and I realized that my ‘maintenance’ was not actually maintenance; I’d slowly lost about two pounds over the course of the first month of endurance training.

Now, while two pounds is obviously not a tremendous amount of weight, this was still a super important phenomenon to identify and address, because in my case, it would NOT be beneficial for me to get any smaller right now. From a general health and performance standpoint, I’m already right where I need to be (my DEXA scan in July measured me at 17% body fat), which means that losing weight would fly directly in the face of ALL my goals: not just day-to-day performance and recovery, but also muscle retention. Muscle is a heavy and metabolically demanding tissue, so the body doesn’t want to hang onto more of it than it truly NEEDS -- so it’s one of the first things to go during heavy endurance training (ever checked out the physique of a Kenyan marathoner?). Since my primary goal is to preserve CrossFit fitness and performance, the last thing I want to do is sacrifice my hard-earned muscle on the altar of marathon training.

Another SUPER important facet to all of this is hormonal health -- which, unfortunately, seems to be one of those things to which I’m more sensitive than some other women. During the past 18 months of intermittent cutting, my body has shown me repeatedly that it haaaaaates being in an energy deficit (and that it will respond to this by promptly grinding my reproductive cycle to a halt for MONTHS). And while I don’t necessarily love everything about the monthly cycle, it’s an inescapable fact that estrogen is one of the best defenses I have against all this repetitive pounding on my feet. As I mentioned, I already have a history of two prior metatarsal stress fractures, both sustained during marathon training -- therefore, I absolutely need my biochemistry to hang in there this time around!

At any rate, in hindsight, I’ve been playing this RP game long enough now that I felt pretty stupid for not recognizing the ‘deficit phenomenon’ sooner. Once the light bulb came on, I started increasing calories, mostly carbs (amid a lot of jokes about my need for ‘supplemental frozen yogurt’); this immediately made performance feel much better and got my run paces back to the range where they needed to be. I’ve learned that 200g carbs seems to be the absolute minimum on a training day (and on most days it’s significantly more!), and that even on rest days I need a few more carbs (for recovery purposes) than my templates officially prescribe. However, it eventually turned out that in order to truly stabilize my weight (and to stop waking up hungry at two o’clock in the morning!), I ultimately had to slightly increase my training day fats as well. As we got deeper into the training plan and my sessions got longer, I also had to tweak my pre- and intra-workout strategies to figure out how best to fuel for a longer time duration (it’s not unusual nowadays for my Friday gym workouts to take over three hours -- meaning my regular fruit juice and whey shake alone simply isn’t sufficient) and/or what types of things I prefer to carry and consume while I’m out running. (On the plus side, my iron gut serves me well here; many runners suffer GI distress related to intra-workout nutrition, but it turns out there’s not a whole lot that I can’t tolerate!)

I’m definitely still tweaking and refining -- it (unfortunately!) isn’t as easy as just stuffing my face round the clock, because GAINING weight right now obviously wouldn’t be ideal either -- but I’m learning a ton, and, equally important, am also learning how to relax a little. My modus operandi for just about everything in life is that I tend to dive in at 120% enthusiasm, then have to slowly work my way back to a place of more moderation, and RP has been no exception. But this endurance training cycle has really forced me to try some different things as well as be a bit less rigid in general -- i.e. more willing to eat ‘combination’ foods (that don’t fall squarely into one macro category), and even to dine out in restaurants once a week or so. (Exhibit A: the best free meal I’ve had recently was a fried green tomato biscuit from Rise, when I did my long ten-mile run on a Sunday morning and then met up with two other runner friends for breakfast. LOOK AT THAT HEALTHY BALANCED RP MAINTENANCE LIFE. :)) Additionally, the necessity of (on many Sundays) fitting a homemade high-carb meal in between an early-AM long run and a full day of work means I’ve also learned how to make certain things in such a way that I actually enjoy them just as much as (or even more than!) the restaurant versions. For example, Aldi’s frozen sushi is surprisingly awesome, a home-assembled burrito bowl is totally on par with Chipotle, and (for me) a flatbread pizza in the toaster oven really does satisfy a pizza craving. I’m reaching the point where (MOST) food just isn’t really that exciting anymore -- which is actually a pretty great (mentally healthy) place to be.

Unintentional weight loss is one of those things that sounds like a #firstworldproblem to a lot of people -- and in another scenario, I can see how it could be! -- but honestly, I’m grateful to have experienced this ‘problem’, because the necessity of tackling it has been a pretty big eye-opener. This whole process has required a new level of intuition -- less straightforward following of a numerical macro chart, and more paying attention to my body’s physical, mental, and emotional cues. If I’m feeling ridiculously tired and depleted after a long workout (even if I don’t feel obviously ‘hungry’), or if I’m noticing that my hand ‘wants’ to flash out and grab the frozen yogurt when I open the freezer, then I probably need more carbs. If I wake up hungry at 2:00am, I probably didn’t eat enough fat that day. And, when eating foods I didn’t ‘plan’ for, it’s been validating to see that what often feels to me like a ‘crackout’ is usually just my body trying to maintain homeostasis. During the first few weeks of trying to sort through all this ‘data’, there were several occasions where I ate a larger-than-normal amount of something (usually the better part of a pint of frozen yogurt...) that I didn’t necessarily ‘plan’ to have. Each time, I fretted guiltily for a few minutes -- then did the actual macro/calorie math in the context of that morning’s workout and realized that my body had done EXACTLY what it was supposed to do, almost to the point of being eerie (as in, I worked for X minutes longer than last week, and today’s calories worked out to be X amount higher than last week -- without any intentional effort on my part to make it so. Biology is pretty neat). On some level, I do still ‘expect’ myself to self-sabotage -- and maybe always will expect that to some degree -- but these past couple months have reinforced to me yet again that my body truly does ‘know what it needs’ most of the time, and that I can actually ‘trust myself’ on a gut level a lot more than I tend to believe I can on a cerebral level.

What’s Next

We’re not quite tapering yet, but getting close. Tomorrow is my peak-length metcon -- by my reckoning, that portion alone is going to take about 95-100 minutes (!). But after tomorrow, Fridays will get somewhat shorter; the metcon portion will probably only take 20-30 minutes or so for the remainder of this cycle (and I’m laughing out loud at the fact that that genuinely sounds like a SHORT metcon to me now!). My long runs on Sundays will continue to build for another 3-4 weeks; the programming is written in ‘minutes’, not miles, and we lost some time because of the foot injury, but my rough calculations would suggest that I’ll make it to about 14-15 miles (on October 21st) before the two-week taper. (Which, yeah, is a bit shorter than ideal, but as I said above -- better 15 and healthy than 20 and broken.)

November 4th is the big day. I’m so, so ready to be done with this training, yet (I’ll admit) am also getting something of a ‘second wind’ mentally now that the end is finally in sight. And while I have no plans to ever (EVER) do another marathon after this one, I’m also not so jaded that I can’t recognize how very grateful I’ll be, come race morning, for all the blood, tears, and sweat (SO MUCH SWEAT) that I’m putting in right now.

For just a four-week (and relatively gentle) cut, this most recent adventure was definitely more of a roller coaster than anticipated! It started and ended on relatively high notes, but with a great big dip in the middle. This was my third time through the Renaissance Periodization gauntlet, and the logistics feel pretty familiar by now, yet I still somehow manage to come away from each of these with progressively deeper insight into my own physiology. I feel like one of the official RP hashtags should be #alwayslearning! I've definitely posted a lot more in the Facebook groups than anywhere else lately, so this post is going to be long, even by my standards — apologies in advance! :) Quick background recap. I finished my second cut in late January 2018 with an all-time low scale weight of 133.7# — and also with a lot of metabolic and hormonal issues. I couldn't sleep, was freezing all the time, had a nagging back injury, my hair was falling out, I had through-the-roof anxiety, and I lost my period for nearly four months straight. The goals had been to (1) get my first ring muscle-up, and (2) get below 20% body fat (read: lean enough to eventually do a massing cycle), and while I did meet both those goals, it was clear to me in hindsight that I should have stopped that cut about 3-4 weeks sooner than I did. It was also clear that I subsequently needed a LONG maintenance period, both to let my body heal and to regain some of the barbell strength I'd lost over the previous year (while focusing on gymnastics and fat loss). The immediate post-cut period was a mixed bag. Physically, I certainly started feeling better in every respect. My back pain completely disappeared within a week, and I also ultimately got my muscle-up about two weeks AFTER the cut was over (a testament to the magic of a smaller body that is ALSO properly fueled!). Furthermore, I finally listened to my coach and began rating my workouts appropriately (generally 'Moderate', not 'Light') in terms of my carbohydrate consumption, which helped performance and recovery tremendously. However, despite a fairly slow and careful reverse-diet progression, the scale definitely climbed higher than I'd hoped — my Cut Week 12 average had been 135.8#, and I finally plateaued at 140-141#. Objectively, I'm 5'5" with an athletic build (and literally haven't been in the 130s since puberty), so this wasn't unreasonable on the part of my biology by any means, but after 12 weeks of such close analysis of scale data, it took a while for my brain to settle down about it. However, in mid-April, performance finally started to hit its stride — I was still feeling pretty light and efficient on gymnastics, and when we tested a few barbell maxes, I shocked myself by easily recapturing almost all of my old numbers (most of which had been attained more than a year earlier, when I was 30-35# heavier) and even exceeding a couple (crushed my overhead squat PR by 15 lb!). After that, I finally accepted that the 140-142# range seemed to be a good all-around functional spot for me. And then I went to Cuba, on the same wonderful health professionals' trip that I took last year. Leaving aside the mojitos, beaches, and classic cars, one unfortunate wrinkle to this year's trip is that almost every single one of us developed some degree of GI issues. Apart from being rather irked that my famously iron gut had let me down, what this meant in a practical sense was that I could barely eat for almost a week (while still doing a ton of standing, walking, and other low-level activity). I had rolled my eyes at myself while obsessively packing a cache of nonperishable RP-friendly snacks, but I was ultimately grateful that I had done so, because I knew I needed to at least force myself to gag down a casein shake every night no matter how nauseated I was! I came home having dropped back to 138-139# territory — and, in hindsight, I think this served as a 'mini-cut' in the true sense of the word, in that it predisposed me to gain weight. I wasn't fully recovered from the metabolic aftereffects of my previous cut (had literally just gotten my period back for the first time while we were in Cuba... because of course that would happen), and so that week of unintentional severe restriction, combined with (undoubtedly) a major shift in gut flora, PLUS my coach putting me on a strength cycle... well, it was the perfect storm to lead to a bit of a rebound weight gain. I had stopped checking the scale daily or even weekly at this point, but throughout late May and early June, most of the numbers I saw on my spot checks were in the 143-146 range. Beyond just the scale, my clothes were also starting to fit differently (my hard-won 34C bras were getting a bit tight), gymnastics were feeling tougher than they had in months, and I was suddenly feeling self-conscious in my gym clothes. Something had to be done — but with the aftereffects of January still fresh in my mind, and with heavy barbells now the focus of my training, I had more than a little PTSD about the idea of embarking on yet another cut. The quirk of fate that provided my 'accidental' acceptance to the 2018 New York City Marathon (which is a whole other story) is what ultimately nudged me into pulling the trigger. I’ve run marathons before, but not since starting 1:1 CrossFit programming or since following RP. Knowing that a shift in my training would be coming soon, I posted a question in the RP Endurance group about my situation. I had the vague idea of combining a cut with the early or middle phase of the marathon training plan, when a calorie deficit would be easier to hit. One of the endurance coaches promptly replied — with exactly the opposite of what I'd expected to hear. "Cut now. Start today. Finish as far out from the marathon as possible." I blinked for a second, and then it clicked. For some reason, it took someone ELSE saying it to trigger the light bulb. Of course. For goals like mine — maintenance of strength and muscle mass — heavy barbells are actually the perfect time to cut. Marathon training, by comparison, would be the WORST time for someone like me to cut, because although the scale would certainly drop, I'd also be a lot more likely to lose precious muscle along with fat. I started back on strict Base the very next day. If nothing else, this made me very aware of all the tiny luxuries I'd managed to work in — no more extra glasses of milk, sneaky spoonfuls of PBfit, or "tastes" of Reddi Whip squirted directly into the mouth! :) However, because I was still fearful of pushing the limits too far and knew that I objectively didn't have very much weight to lose, I also set myself some parameters. My three 'hard stops' were that I wasn't going to go below 138#, wasn't going to extend the cut beyond 8 weeks, and wasn't going to utilize the third/harshest phase of the cutting plan (since slashing carbohydrates would be counterintuitive to my performance goals). Week 1 Starting weight: 147.2 lb Week 1 Average: 144.2 lb The first thing I noticed was that my mental state calmed down tremendously. I hadn't fully acknowledged how much this situation had been worrying me, and I had also forgotten how lovely the 'control' of a cut can feel. From day one, I was no longer afraid of the number on the scale, because now — rather than being passive (and therefore frightening) information — it was a tool that I could use to make changes. Further, I knew I got to look forward to watching it go DOWN! :)

I also knew I had a peak week programmed in (what would have been) Week 5 of this cut, so every time the scale showed a number that was higher than I'd hoped, I felt an odd mix of disappointment AND reassurance that "at least that's more mass with which to move the barbell!" Oddly, I think the fact that I had a rationale for not entirely WANTING to see a massive scale plunge helped me to approach this whole thing with a bit of a healthier mental state. The second thing I realized during this first week is that I had drifted further from my templates than I'd thought. In many instances, I was habitually shorting my fats and (not always consciously) exceeding my prescribed carbs. I made sure to write this down, so I could correct it when I started to work my way back up towards Base; however, I also didn't re-add all the fats I had dropped, because that seemed like a silly thing to do in the first stage of a *cut*. As such, my first week of this adventure was spent on an imaginary 'gray zone' tab that I named 'Cut 0.5'. :) This first week was, honestly, pretty smooth sailing. My parents had been in town for a visit, and we'd eaten at a couple of restaurants, so my starting weight of 147.2# was a bit artificially inflated; however, this meant that I had a very gratifying water weight drop across the first week (five pounds!). This made my clothes start to fit better AND my gymnastics feel instantaneously better, both of which were big morale boosts. I started to wonder if maybe, just maybe, I might be able to knock this out in six weeks instead of eight. Week 2 Average: 143.8 lb This was where the plateau started to hit; that lovely five-pound drop was (naturally) followed by a RISE of 4# across 4 days. This was partly being driven by hormones (PMS week), but in a shorter cut like this, you don't wait around if you don't have to. Midweek, I could tell that my average was going to stagnate, so I went ahead and moved onto the first fat loss tab. This impacted my sleep almost immediately (hello darkness my old friend...), and also led to that annoying, familiar feeling of weakness and shakiness on non-training days when carbs were low. However, in general, I continued to feel pretty good — handstand push-ups in particular were suddenly feeling awesome, and although barbells FELT noticeably heavier, my hard numbers hadn't actually backslid. I had two notable non-scale victories in week two. First, I had two unavoidable restaurant meals in the span of 4 days (a dinner and a post-workout breakfast), wherein I managed to (1) stay compliant and (2) calmly enjoy myself and my company in the process, feeling neither deprived NOR the usual overwhelming creeping dread about the unpredictability of the food in front of me (green salad with grilled shrimp/veggies for the dinner, an egg white omelet with salsa, veggies, and toast for the breakfast). It sounds so simple, but I just never learned how to do that very well on my first couple of cuts — how to simultaneously make good nutrition choices in a social setting AND truly FEEL okay mentally about those choices, rather than anxious or apologetic or defensive or self-conscious. This set of coping skills would have been a worthy takeaway no matter where the scale ended up. Second, this week made me recognize and appreciate the value of cycle tracking. Losing my period for so long after my last cut was admittedly nice on one level, but was also incredibly annoying, because I had no hormonal context in which to confidently interpret my day-to-day physical and mental fluctuations. That experience prompted me to start paying MUCH closer attention to such things during maintenance, and now that I have a couple months' worth of notes, I absolutely see a very strong correlation between where I am in the month and how I feel (both gym-wise and mood-wise). It's pretty neat to write a description that says (for example) that I woke up roasting hot overnight, or the scale went up, or my mood was calmer than I expected, or my skin started breaking out — and then flip back to the previous month and realize I'd written the exact same thing on the exact same cycle day then, too. In addition to being just plain cool information (female bodies are weird and frustrating and also kind of incredible!), this is also extremely comforting, because it reminds me that I often have additional reasons to feel 'off' that aren't necessarily directly correlated to cutting. 

Week 3 Average: 142.1 lb This third week was where I really started hurting. Training started to feel like utter garbage — I could still hit my expected/prescribed numbers on MOST things, but it was taking significantly more physical and mental effort to do so, and every so often I'd run headlong into an unexpected wall. Despite ZMAs and melatonin and even the occasional Flexeril, I couldn't sleep through the night at all anymore. My right shoulder got 'tweaked' and refused to calm down (much the same as my low back had done, during my second cut). And non-training days felt absolutely horrible — I wasn't "hungry" per se, but I felt persistently weak, and would get lightheaded every time I stood up. I checked my BP at work on one such occasion, and it was way down at 86/63.

Part of me was sufficiently freaked out that I almost wanted to go ahead and call it right here — not because I was struggling with hunger or cravings, but because I was extremely leery of (potentially) losing muscle or impacting performance without (by this point) any particularly good reason for continuing to do so. However, I also knew that the wise RPer overshoots slightly, when feasible. I was also able to recognize the fact that, since I'd already made the mistake once of not stopping a cut when I should have, I was probably a bit hypersensitive to discomfort this time around, from the perspective of not wanting to make the same error twice. I decided I had at least one more week in me. And this third week wasn't all bad: I practically danced a jig when I started my period (on time!), because I knew it would be sending the scale on another nice downward trend. This was also the week when I started to feel really good about my physical appearance — which I guess shouldn't have surprised me, but did, probably just because my first two cuts had felt like such long slow slogs. But the very reason that this one was shorter was because I didn't NEED to lose very much — and it was definitely gratifying to feel this degree of satisfaction so early in the process, comparatively speaking. I also measured myself this week and compared the numbers to my old log, which made me realize that — though I was (fortunately!) not as tiny as I was at the very end of my second cut, I was generally matching up with where I'd been about three weeks from its end — at a point when I had weighed (wait for it) 138#, a.k.a. the weight I had picked as my 'hard stop'! Given this — essentially the same measurements as before, while also 4# heavier — I realized I'd probably increased my lean body mass significantly during maintenance (hooray!), and therefore should probably adjust my boundary lines accordingly.  After some thought, I decided the cutoffs should be: — an average of 140# (rather than 138#) — since, along with performance, my other highest priority was (and is) muscle preservation. If I was measuring the same at 142# as I had been at 138#, then willfully cutting all the way to 138# this time might have been flirting with the edge of diminishing returns. — a maximum of SIX weeks rather than eight — because, the shorter the cut, the less it would spill over into marathon training (which was *definitely* the setting where I'd be more likely to lose muscle). — a plateau on the FIRST cutting tab, or possibly a 'gray zone' of tab 1.5, rather than going fully onto the second tab... a decision that was also related to my impending marathon training. I have a prior history of metatarsal stress fractures as it is, and hence am highly motivated to NOT screw up my hormones again at the moment, which made me reconsider the wisdom of dropping my fats all the way down to 7g/day (as I'd have done on the second tab). All of the above is perfectly reasonable from every angle. However — although I didn't quite say so out loud — in my mind, by the end of this third week, I had already made the decision to call it at the end of week 4. That certainly wasn't how I'd initially planned for this adventure to go, but I was feeling rotten, I had a peak week coming up, and it was seeming pretty obvious that the cutting process was serving neither my body nor my priorities very well. Privately, as this week drew to an end, I was feeling like a bit of a failure, knowing that I was going to ‘quit’ sooner than I had planned. I'm accustomed to thinking of myself as 'strong' on all levels, more than capable of pushing through discomfort — and the cutting process is pretty familiar to me at this point, not particularly difficult or intimidating anymore — so I truly did not expect to be experiencing the physical effects quite so strongly at this stage of the game. Even though it wasn't a terribly logical thing to feel, I was definitely more than a little disappointed in my body for 'letting me down'.  However, this is one arena where my loquaciousness served me well; I started writing a blog post about the negative things I was feeling — and by the end of it, I had convinced myself that (1) it's also a victory to recognize the point of diminishing returns and know what the responsible decision is, and (2) the fact that I was 'feeling' the cut this strongly this time could, in fact, be viewed as a direct reflection of the tremendous progress I've made in my training over the past year, how very hard I'm working every day, and how well my current baseline nutrition habits are serving me. In other words, the major impact I feel when I mess with my homeostasis is itself a testament to the healthy habits I've developed in SUPPORT of that homeostasis. Looking at it that way made me feel better.

Week 4 Average: 140.2 lb Nadir: 138.3 lb ...So then, of course, things immediately improved. :) The gym started feeling closer to normal, AND the scale took a nosedive (both of which always happen in cycle week 2 — note to self: structure ALL future cuts this same way! :)). I also saw a new sports massage guru for my shoulder, who did some cupping (which I'd never had before — interesting experience) and was able to help the discomfort pretty significantly. It's not gone, but it's better, and I bet a few days of higher calories will be the tipping point. As per my mental wrestling match last week, I was always going to choose to stop today, regardless of the numbers. HOWEVER... my average for this week has ultimately ended up being 140.2#, with this morning's weight being the lowest I've seen so far, 138.3#. Meaning, based on my parameters above... it's officially time to stop ANYWAY! ...Which just makes me laugh and shake my head at the workings of the universe. :)

I’m into my third week on maintenance, and still hanging in there. I have my ups and downs, but overall, there is SO much good stuff to report.

Athletics: I’ve been on one-to-one CrossFit programming for the past few months -- not because I have any particular competitive aspirations, but just because I have some individual goals I’m trying to reach (specifically: my first muscle-up!). I’m really, really enjoying the process -- primarily just on an intrinsic-motivation level, but I also have to admit that it has been absolutely invaluable to have so much individual attention and feedback during the relative physical chaos that I’ve been inflicting upon myself here recently. :) Performance-wise, it has definitely been a year of two steps forward, one step back, and six to the side -- and since performance was by far the primary driver behind my choice to do this second cut, right now it feels very rewarding to realize that the gym feels pretty damn awesome.

First, I’ve been shocked and thrilled at how fast my barbell strength has started to return over the past couple of weeks. Cumulatively speaking, I’ve spent almost the entire past YEAR in a caloric deficit (and am technically still in one right now -- more on that in a minute), and therefore truly can’t remember the last time I PRed anything with a barbell. Raw strength just hasn’t been the priority this year -- and I’m okay with that, because, objectively speaking, I was pretty deficient in gymnastics skills and needed to stock the toolbox with a wider range of abilities. But, with the recently increased fueling alone, I’m already a lot closer to a few of my old strength numbers than I’d expected to be (example: over the past two weeks, I’ve added FORTY pounds onto my tempo back squat sets without any change in the perceived level of effort). I’m definitely not yet as strong as I was a year ago (when I weighed 40 pounds more!) -- but I also didn’t realize how comparatively fragile and ‘brittle’ I had felt for the past couple of months. It’s like the old metaphor about putting the frog in the pot of water and slowly turning up the heat -- if you do it too fast, he’ll jump right out, but if you do it gradually, he’ll just sit there and allow himself to be cooked. Now, since coming off cut, heavy barbells suddenly feel like something I can successfully ‘fight for’ again, which is a relieving, exciting, and validating place to be.

And, secondly -- knock on wood -- none of my new gymnastics abilities seem to have taken much of a hit this time either. Last time I came off a cut, there were some performance changes -- handstand push-ups, which were a brand-new skill at the time, suddenly started feeling a lot harder (which, granted, may have been partially mental), and my overall pulling strength also took a sneaky decline (which took a while for us to ‘notice’ and address, because it just seemed like random bad days at first). This time, I’ve been proactive about keeping extra pulling work in the rotation, just in case -- but so far, none of the gymnastics feel any harder than they did three weeks ago, and a lot of stuff feels a bit easier -- my muscle-up pulls in particular have gotten a lot stronger. (Coach used to have a lot to say about those attempts -- “look for the ground,” “don’t pronate; keep neutral grip,” “don’t slack off with the pull” -- but a few days ago, the last time we worked on them, she just silently watched me swing -- then cocked her head to the side, paused, and said, “...You know, at some point you just have to decide you want it bad enough.”)

Sleep: My sleep is slowly recovering -- I’m tracking it with my FitBit, and I’m gaining a couple extra minutes every night. I was averaging about six (often severely interrupted) hours during the cut, but have now worked my way up to an average of seven uninterrupted hours, where (1) I barely wake up and (2) can successfully put myself back to sleep if I do wake up. And if I wake up starving overnight (which has happened a couple of times), I’ve learned that I overall respond better if I get up and have a bit of protein (as opposed to trying to tough it out without extra food, the way I did on cut). There have also been a handful of nights where I have slept ALL NIGHT LONG -- like, didn’t even wake up to pee -- which feels kind of miraculous.

Social: I’m still feeling a bit socially isolated -- turns out, when you continually make excuses to not hang out with your friends (in an attempt to avoid food-centric situations), they eventually stop asking. :) However, I know this is going to get better over the next few weeks -- first because I’ll take the initiative to make it so, and second, because with increased calories AND gradually-lengthening daylight hours, my mood is now dramatically better and I actually want to be social again. (Something I did not take into account is that, as a born-and-raised Floridian, I already suffer from significant seasonal affective disorder now that I live in NC, and cutting during the winter definitely made that ten times worse!)

Visually: for lack of a more ‘PC’ way to phrase this -- shit is POPPIN’. The newly increased carb stores inside my muscles means the definition is unreal. My upper back, shoulders, and arms in particular are making me super happy. I look so much fuller and healthier to myself than I did just a couple of weeks ago, and yet my clothes are still fitting the same way (really hoping I get to keep this awesome new smaller bra size over the long haul!).

Food/bodyweight: This is the arena where there have been a few bumps in the road.  On one hand, maintenance is (obviously) absolutely delightful. I can have a couple bites of chocolate after dinner, eat the samples in Costco, order a nonfat cappuccino at Starbucks instead of black coffee. When I’m working a 12-hour shift, I can toss a Quest bar in my bag for dinner rather than having to prep something that contains zero fat. I can sprinkle goat cheese on my egg whites, add whipped cream to my coffee, and just ‘eyeball’ the green beans and rice in my meal prep containers instead of weighing them down to the tenth of an ounce. And when I have a workout that feels ‘moderate’ by RP standards (like last Friday, when I had tempo back squats AND jerk clusters AND deadlifts), then I can eat as such -- an extra 60g carbs spread over the remainder of my day -- which opens up my food options considerably.

On the other hand, the scale has definitely taken more of a jump than I wanted it to -- and, unfortunately, right now I’m still in a transition phase where that number does carry objective significance.

Cut Week 11 average -- 137.2 Cut Week 12 average -- 135.8 (Final end-of-cut nadir weight: 133.7) Maintenance Week 1 average -- 135.6 Maintenance Week 2 average -- 137.7

For reference, while it’s normal to gain as much as 5# on maintenance, you definitely don’t want to jump anywhere near that high right out of the gate while still moving through the steps back up to base. I’m still on the tab they refer to as Maintenance 2, meaning I’m still one or two notches below the caloric intake that someone my size ‘should’ require in order to stay steady. However, I’m also not super starving (most of the time!) at this level of intake, which means (sadly) that my metabolism is still depressed from the months of cutting -- it’s not yet firing on all cylinders and ‘asking’ for more food. I have total faith that it’ll get there eventually, but the official opinion from the RP group is that I’m not ready yet based on the above numbers; I’m looking at at least another week on this tab, and probably more like two weeks. And while I’m eager to jump back up to what’s called New Base (where I get more fats with my meals -- a.k.a. back to whole eggs, avocado, and more cheese and peanut butter!), I do know the group is right and that I need to listen. Fortunately, the scale is starting to (appropriately) very slowly move down again (daily weights for the past few days have been between 136.2 and 137.3) -- so this week’s average will likely be lower.

I don’t need (or even want) to stay at my end-of-cut weight. I really don’t even need to care about the number at all, as long as I can keep all my gymnastics abilities. And I was (surprisingly) one hundred percent okay with the first couple of pounds of regain. But I’ll admit, in spite of all the hard mental work regarding emotional detachment from the scale -- all those weeks of telling myself that I wasn’t going to be ‘married’ to a number and that anything ‘around’ 140# was okay -- that it was still very hard to watch the scale climb up and up and up every single day during that second week. And also that, for some ridiculous reason, I’m currently still finding myself inexplicably attached to the concept of 136# -- which somehow just ‘feels’ like a good number in my head, significantly better than 135 or 137 (yeah, I have a Thing against odd numbers). However, my gut is telling me that my final sweet spot is ultimately probably going to be more like 138# -- and so I need to internalize the fact that that is (1) completely okay, (2) completely arbitrary, and (3) -- in the grand scheme of life -- also completely unimportant. :)

I’m very eager to reach a point where I don’t have to focus on the numbers so much. Honestly, that’s mostly why I’m so eager to get ‘through’ this phase -- apart from wanting more food (LOL), I’m also just ready to be rid of some of the mental burden. However, realistically, I know that I have significantly depressed my metabolism over the past year, that I’m in a more extreme situation now than I was following my first cut, and that it’s therefore normal for it to take a while for things to ramp back up. Which also means that I have to continue to pay attention for a bit longer, because a lack of prudence during this crucial phase could easily mean loss of progress -- which is the last thing I want after so much diligent work.

Just a quickie here—but so many people cross the RP finish line and then disappear. I don’t want to be that person. If nothing else, this adventure has gotten me back in the habit of writing, so I’m going to try to keep it up.

I kept my word and didn’t go all the way to the harshest phase of the RP plan, so my first step back up toward maintenance (on Friday afternoon) was just adding a half serving of fat back into two of my meals. So I did—a birthday cake Quest bar for lunch (sadly unimpressive after such anticipation, LOL) and then some Dr. Praeger’s veggie puffs and cilantro salad dressing with my turkey and broccoli dinner (effing delicious!).

The response from my body was immediate and dramatic. I slept six hours straight. Woke up on Saturday morning, went to the gym, and nothing hurt. Without realizing it, I doubled a split jerk weight that I hadn’t hit in many months. Added some accessory muscle-up pulls, and they felt possibly the strongest they ever have. Came home and, along with my breakfast protein, ate a maple French toast bagel (50g carbs, all at once!)—then started happily assembling my new IKEA chair, organizing my storage closet, and cleaning my house from top to bottom. Energy level was absolutely through the damn roof.

And, honestly, that’s still the thing that amazes me the most—how downright joyous I’m suddenly feeling. Like, spontaneously cranking up the music and dancing around the house. (Currently obsessed with Ellie Goulding and Kygo on ‘First Time’—pretty sure my neighbors hate me.) It’s as though I had been in a chemical depression for these past couple months, and suddenly the clouds have parted. The degree of the change is truly shocking. I knew I had not felt ‘good’ these past few weeks, but I absolutely did not realize how prompt and significant a difference the end would actually make.

I’m still mostly just eating my ‘usual’ template foods—turkey, roasted broccoli, shrimp, cauliflower rice—but they are rendered phenomenally more exciting by getting to have some guacamole or salad dressing as an accompaniment. This afternoon I made a panini (deli turkey in a low-carb wrap, grilled on the stovetop, with salsa)—but I also got to add some cream cheese and goat cheese, which immediately transformed the meal into a savory taste explosion.

And I had three bites of Halo Top after lunch—because why not? And a couple spoonfuls of chocolate milk in my coffee this morning—because I could. And a spritz of whipped cream on my bedtime casein—because it looked pretty and tasted good. Because these are the types of tiny freedoms that are okay now. And also because it’s kind of magical to realize that these, alone, truly feel like enough.

It hasn’t all been wondrous. The second night, I got a grand total of three hours’ sleep because I woke up absolutely starving at 1:00am. This was, undoubtedly, in response to my metabolism remembering how great food is and asking for more (which, in the grand scheme of this process, is a good thing). However, I hadn’t anticipated that, and didn’t know how to handle it—when you’re in that situation on cut, you just ignore it, but this time, I wasn’t sure whether the appropriate response was to get up and eat or not. I ended up not eating, but tossing and turning sleeplessly for 2-3 hours, and finally just getting up and starting my day early. I’d had high hopes for the gym based on the day before, but the severe sleep deprivation definitely offset any potential benefits (it all went ‘fine’; I just didn’t feel like Superwoman, as I’d hoped). And then, naturally, I was a walking zombie for the rest of the day. I took extra magnesium last night, along with a Flexeril (because I was pretty damn sore)—and ended up sleeping a grand total of eleven hours, so today has gone much better. :) I can’t wait to see how the gym is going to feel tomorrow. I have snatch balances, 3-position snatch complexes, tempo front squats, handstand push-ups, and dumbbell snatches. Assuming I feel decent, I’ll probably also work some MU attempts in there somewhere…

Scale-wise, I ended the cut at 133.7, woke up Saturday morning still at exactly 133.7, then saw 135.8 yesterday morning and 135.9 today. This is a completely appropriate increase—it’s water and food! I don’t look different to myself in the mirror—still have deltoids and a ‘back like a map’, can still see abs if I squint really hard—so I’m pleased and proud to find that I’m genuinely not freaked out. The next step is to keep tracking these daily weights and wait for them to start falling again. I’m technically still in a caloric deficit—as I said, the scale bump I’m currently seeing is (1) increased water due to increased carbohydrate stores, and (2) the literal weight of food inside my body. What’s supposed to happen is that the scale moves upward, and then—as metabolism starts ramping back up—hunger levels increase and weight starts to fall again. That’s when you know it’s time to hop up another level, closer to base. (Translation: more peanut butter!) This is the part of the transition process that I didn’t really get to track last time, since I left on a three-week trip almost immediately following the end of the cut, so I’m mostly curious about it from a ‘data’ standpoint. I know that I maintained 3# above end-of-cut weight last time without any counting, measuring, or numerical tools whatsoever—so I fully trust, now, that my body will follow the same scientific laws as anyone else’s—but getting to actually watch it happen is pretty cool.

So, the thing is: progress—even huge, major, life-altering progress—does not always look the way you think it will.

This isn’t quite the post I thought I’d be writing today. After all, I’m a planner—and a wordy one, at that. For months, I’ve been contemplating the perfect words to describe my muscle-up journey, the culmination of which would obviously dovetail nicely with the end of my cut.

But we work with reality. And reality is: as of today, I still don’t have the muscle-up.

But you know what? I’ve mastered all the individual components, and so have earned the right to fling myself up toward the rings and actively try to put the pieces together. Which is more than I could say twelve weeks ago.

It’s not quite the timeline I wanted—and I’ll undoubtedly be pretty salty if I don’t get it before the Open—but I also know it WILL happen, whether it takes another six days, six weeks, or six months. And although my progress, objectively, probably has MORE to do with my awesome coach and programming than it does with my numerical bodyweight—I do also wholeheartedly believe that RP is one of the factors that has helped me get so much closer. (And I do have a shit-ton of other non-scale victories, for sure!)

In anticipation of the other (in my mind) likely outcome of this cut, I’d also been searching for the words to justify my rationale for (probably) ending my cut early rather than moving to the third tab, for why 140 lb was (likely) going to be the range where progress stalled.

But, again, we work with reality. And reality is: when I stepped on the scale this morning, it read 133.7 lb.

To put that in perspective: I weighed 142 lb in tenth grade, 155 lb when I graduated high school, 165 lb as a college swimmer, 148 lb as a post-college marathon runner, and 156 lb during my first couple years of CrossFit. And when I started this most recent body composition adventure back in March 2017, it was at my highest-ever weight of 173 lb.

Now, almost eleven months later—across eight weeks of traditional calorie restriction followed by two RP cuts and one RP maintenance—it would seem that I can officially claim to have lost FORTY POUNDS in the past year (whaaaaaat?!?).

I’m turning 34 on Tuesday—and it’s amazing, humbling, and mind-boggling to realize that I’ll be significantly leaner and healthier at 34 than I was at 24, or even at 14. And although this cut was tougher than my first—because the leaner you are, the harder it is—in terms of the hard numbers, from peak to nadir, I actually lost more weight on this round than I did on my first (a full 15# this time).

Granted, for once in my life, all the potential factors coincided in a good way to send me out on the most successful note possible; today’s final weight of 133.7 is likely a bit artificially low, mostly due to the juxtaposition of several factors from yesterday:  —a non-training day (very few carbs / holding less water)  —getting dry-needled by the PT (for some reason this always seems to cause me to drop a pound or so)  —low-volume foods, because I spent most of yesterday on a road trip  —being on day 6 of my period (which I rarely even get at all while cutting, so this was a total surprise) and therefore taking perfect advantage of the hormonal water weight drop. …However, I actually feel okay about all of this. It was neat to see a number that low—but I’m pleased and proud to realize that I truly don’t feel anxious about ‘hanging on’ to that number. Barring catastrophic illness or some other such life event, today is probably the lightest I will ever be—and I am fully okay with that.

To be fair,  I do anticipate some intermittent future angst in that regard, which is one of the reasons I wrote a separate post of my non-scale victories across this cut as they related to my bodyweight at the time—my coach is continually talking me off the ledge in this regard, when I complain that I ‘feel heavy’ on a given day and that my bodyweight must be the reason that handstand push-ups feel so hard. :) But honestly, as long as I can stay somewhat close to 140—which, objectively, shouldn’t be an issue—then I don’t really need to care about the exact number on the scale. (Although, admittedly, I do really hope I get to keep the smaller bra size! :))

And here’s something else I wondered about, planned for, and worried over—which may, actually, be the biggest victory of all.

I worried that I wouldn’t know when to stop. After all, I live in America, surrounded by media messages of ‘thinness’ as the desirable body type. I was fortunate to grow up in a family where healthy eating was prioritized, and I’ve always been fit and active, but I’ve also never been ‘thin’. And because I’ve never experienced myself as a ‘small’ person, I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like psychologically. As a primary care provider, I’ve had some experience treating patients with eating disorders—and this second time around, starting from a much lighter size and not really ‘medically necessitating’ any further weight loss, the clinical part of my brain was mildly concerned that I, like so many other women, might lose perspective. This was one of the reasons I set my rule about not moving to Cut 3 under any circumstances—because I knew, objectively, that it wouldn’t make sense for my goals, and I halfway suspected that I might reach that point in the process and be tempted to do it anyway. Having never been truly ‘lean’ before, how would I know where the line was? How would I know when I was ‘done’?

As this cut progressed, it was both fascinating and unsettling to notice certain familiar ‘disease’ characteristics in myself—both physical (hair loss, dry skin, constantly feeling cold) and psychological (taking photos of my meals, menu planning, stockpiling tasty snacks in the pantry ‘for later’, unconsciously spending an excessive amount of time in the kitchen). However, it was ultimately empowering to realize that, all throughout, I still retained a certain degree of analytical distance that my former patients never could. This experience was, therefore, enlightening on two levels: experiencing some of the ‘disordered’ symptoms firsthand, while also sensing the position of the dividing line between an illness versus a short-term, controlled, goal-oriented plan. It reaffirmed my sense of my own psychological health, and (as a healthcare provider) deepened my understanding of anorexia as a true psychiatric disorder.

Because, long story short: I KNOW that I am done. I feel it clearly. And I am fascinated—and oddly proud—to realize that I objectively do not love everything about the way my body looks at this particular moment. I have loose, slack skin on my belly that I’ve never had before. None of my work pants fit. The lower halves of my quads are basically the same diameter as my knees—like a knobby-kneed preteen. With my hands on my hips, I feel bones. When the bathroom light hits me the right way, I can see every single one of my chest ribs. There’s a concave bony hollow at my xiphoid process that I’ve never seen before. My boobs are, for lack of a better word, deflated. My spandex workout shorts are legitimately baggy, and I’ve had to stop wearing the capris and tights entirely, because they’re falling off. With hollow holds at the gym, my posterior pelvic bones are meeting the floor. And I still (STILL) have barely any visible abs, no matter what tricks of lighting or flexing I employ. ;) Some of this is the ‘normal’ end-of-cut flatness (which will go away as carbohydrate/glycogen stores are replenished—in hindsight, the first time around, my post-cut maintenance photos definitely looked leaner, healthier, and more muscular than my end-of-cut ones). But the ability to look in the mirror, acknowledge that I have successfully wrought a major change in my physique, and then also genuinely feel that I have officially found the outer limit of ‘leanness’ in terms of the physical appearance that I desire for myself—well, that’s pretty damn empowering.

My official DEXA result this morning put me at 18.6% body fat—which comfortably beats my goal of sub-20% (and feels pretty incredible in light of my 34% BodPod result from this past May, which had me sobbing in my car from heartbroken frustration). However, on another level, given that my level of ‘health’ is firmly established (and was confirmed today, when the DEXA tech commented that my level of ‘visceral fat’ around the internal organs was one of the very lowest she’d ever seen), that number is also arbitrary. In a practical sense, it means nothing. It has zero bearing on how I feel inside this body or how I’m choosing to proceed from here. I still genuinely don’t want to be any leaner, for either performance or aesthetics. My body, mind, and metabolism have earned a long rest, and we’re going to be maintaining for a minimum of six months—after which I can reevaluate the idea of a muscle gain cycle, if I decide that makes sense for my athletic goals.

This also means that I’m not fearing maintenance this time around—not only because it’s familiar territory now, but because I would actually like to see myself fill out a little bit. The first time, I was so anxious about seeing the scale’s inevitable (appropriate) rise that I shoved it under the sink after my final weigh-in and didn’t look for six entire weeks. …At which point I was up by three damn pounds—precisely where I was supposed to be, without having used any numerical data to guide my behaviors. That was an eye-opening moment—to realize that my body had done exactly what it was supposed to do without any conscious help from me, and that I am not, in fact, exempt from the laws of science (because we all think we are, right?).

The ‘maintenance anxiety’ stemmed from the knowledge that I couldn’t ‘do anything about it’ if there were a major scale change or if I started to dislike the way my body looked. Cutting provides infinitely more control, not only because the rules are fixed, but because in that context, the scale is a tool; the fluctuations are telling you something, and you have the ability to use those numbers to make adjustments. Maintenance is much more passive—which is supposed to be relaxing, but, for many of us, the lack of control is anxiety-inducing.

Today, by contrast, when I got home after my DEXA, I made protein pancakes. And when there were a couple extra spoonfuls of leftover mix in the container—I just dumped them into the mixing bowl. Then I made a cup of coffee, and put a little spritz of whipped cream on top—just because I could. Because that’s the kind of thing you can do on maintenance.

I drank the coffee. I ate the pancakes. I smiled. And I moved on with my day.

Another of my biggest takeaways this time is how incredibly flexible our metabolisms are. There was a phrase in one of the RP blog posts at some point that I’m sure I’m going to misquote, but it was describing the goal of maintenance as ‘encouraging your body to accept the largest possible amount of food on a consistent basis’ without gaining weight. I really liked that wording, and the associated understanding of our bodies’ chemical processes as adaptable and intelligent. And during this cut, I felt the truth of that statement; after my quick Christmas trip home, once I got back on template / back into a hypocaloric state, I realized that my hunger levels had increased a lot—which is a sign of a healthy metabolism, ramping up in response to receiving more food. This is why most of us are able to maintain reasonably close to our end-of-cut weights—because adding 100-200 calories here or there is (fortunately!) not a mathematically linear process that results in pure weight gain. Granted, promptly being hungry again 15 minutes after finishing each template meal doesn’t make for a terribly pleasant day on cut—but I enjoyed the quiet insight as to what my body was up to, and I’m actually looking forward to feeling my appetite surge back over the coming days and weeks as I figure out what a sustainable maintenance is going to look like for me.

Mentally, I am feeling ‘ready’ without being ‘desperate’. These past 2-3 weeks have been more of a struggle in terms of feeling mentally ‘blah’ and just trying to put one foot in front of the other—but it has truly not been difficult to stay compliant. I have not craved off-template foods. I’ve felt more cold and cranky and weak than traditionally ‘hungry’.

But, physically, my body also ‘feels done’ cutting. I can understand why we are supposed to go to maintenance when we get injured. My back ‘tweak’ around the midpoint of this cut was (fortunately) not severe and doesn’t come into play with gymnastics movements (which have been my primary focus), so, with the help of a fantastic PT and some programming modifications from my CF coach, I’ve been able to keep progressing with a minimum of disruption to my routine. There has been tremendous improvement in the pain. However, it’s not entirely better, and the nagging discomfort—which moves around, bothering me in different places to different degrees on different days—is annoying, so I’m curious (and hopeful) as to the effect that proper fueling may have on recovery.

I’m not going to faceplant into a box of donuts—but I am eager for the next phase. Eager to truly internalize my maintenance macros as my base (rather than the Cut 1 tab feeling like my instinctive ‘base’, which is how it’s been for the past year). Eager to see what the scale and the shape of my body and the fit of my clothes will naturally do now that I have the resources and the wherewithal to passively track those changes. And eager to ‘feel strong’ in the gym again—and see what this smaller body can do when it’s got a bit more fuel on board.

I will freely admit that I’m posting this ‘timeline’ mostly for my own benefit, so that I’ll have it to refer back to at a later date; it may not be of tremendous interest to anyone else. But as I type this, I have 24 hours to go until the ‘finish line’ of my second Renaissance Periodization cut. I’m once again feeling pretty satisfied, proud of the journey, and, in most ways, dramatically more prepared and mentally ‘settled’ about the endpoint than I was after my first cut. However, the one concept that continues to make me (irrationally) anxious is the prospect of slightly higher bodyweight potentially impacting my CrossFit movements—thus this post.

Objectively, I do recall from my last cut-to-maintenance transition that the concept of improved fueling / increased glycogen stores pretty effectively offsets any slight bodyweight bump. However, I’ve been CrossFitting for over five years and just gained the bulk of my gymnastics skills within these past six or seven months. In other words, I’m still so new to this ‘toolbox’ that any performance fluctuations (which I’ve long been accustomed to with a barbell) still feel irrationally frightening on this new playing field—like, but I could do FIVE strict pull-ups yesterday, and today FOUR feels hard; therefore THE WORLD IS ENDING! (…My coach is continually talking me off the ledge in this regard. :))

At any rate, this is one reason why I kept track of certain gym accomplishments (a.k.a. ‘non-scale victories’) as the cut progressed. I am definitely not someone who PRs barbell movements on a cut (quite the contrary; my strength has suffered significantly this year), but my gymnastics have improved literally beyond all recognition, of which I am very proud. As such, I wanted to keep track of my performance milestones at various bodyweights along the way, so that I’ll have this mental tool for the inevitable struggle bus days. When sets of handstand push-ups feel impossible, it might help to be able to look back at this post and say to myself, no, your bodyweight is NOT the issue, because you did this same thing in a metcon when you were TEN POUNDS heavier! It’s just time for a rest day, that’s all. :)

Without further ado, I give you RP Cut #2: the Non-Scale Victory Edition! :)

Week 1 average: 148.4 lb (although, admittedly, about a pound of this was Bagel Bloat from my massive cheat weekend in NYC just prior to starting the cut—I had been averaging 147.4 prior to the trip) Non-scale victory: recaptured a 193# back squat (which is only 7# off my all-time best despite weighing 20-25# less than I did at the time I achieved that PR).

Week 2 average: 146.4 lb Non-scale victory: 2 sets of 5 unbroken handstand push-ups (single abmat, no plates) in a metcon setting!

Week 3 average: 145.3 lb Non-scale victorIES: five unbroken strict pull-ups! three unbroken ring dips! 4 sets of 50 unbroken double-unders! ...It was a big week :-)

Week 4 average: 144.2 lb Non-scale victory: PRed Fran at 8:28. Definitely still on the slower side, but I was thrilled by consistently large-ish sets (thrusters as 14/7, 8/7, and 9 unbroken; pull-ups as sets of 3-5 the whole way!). Afterward, my coach made the point that I likely could have gone faster for competition purposes by doing smaller sets, but that this was the right approach/stimulus to use for training.

Week 5 average: 142.6 Non-scale victory: basically blitzing through a metcon that included both TTB and HSPU (two relatively new skills for me), and staying consistent with both. Did all the sets of 10 TTB as 6/4, and sets of 5 HSPU as unbroken 5s (albeit again to just one abmat, no plates).

Week 6 average: 141.2 lb Non-scale victory: weighted pull-ups with a 10# plate! Also, sets of 4 HSPU with 10# plates—something I had struggled with as recently as three weeks prior—felt EASY. (The high point of this week was the moment when my coach grinned at me after a particularly sharp set of those and said, “See, this is why, when you get salty about stuff, I say to you, ‘remember when you couldn’t do a handstand push-up negative?’” :-))

Week 7 average: 141.0 lb (but this was a bit artificially inflated because it was the week that I ‘should have gotten’ my period; in reality, this was also the week I broke the 140 barrier / saw a couple of weights in the 130s for the first time ever in my adult life!). Non-scale victory: not a big flashy accomplishment, but I was pretty pleased when I felt basically fine / barely sore at all after doing the equivalent of about 90 pull-ups in one training session.

Week 8 average: 140.9 lb (but again somewhat artificially inflated, this time by being home for the holidays) Non-scale victory: non-gym-related, but: going home for 2.5 days for Christmas and meeting both of my goals, which were (1) getting my protein in every day and (2) eating and enjoying normal food without ‘cracking out’. I was also proud that I could recognize the exact moment (on the morning of the third day) when I was starting to lose my restraint, and was able to use the clock as a tool to reel myself back in.

Week 9 average: 138.7 lb Non-scale victory: there were three this week: (1) got my first truly RXed handstand push-ups (abmat + 25-lb plates), on New Year’s Eve, (2) did 50 burpees in 2:58 (!), and (3) did a set of 10 easy unbroken toes-to-bar that felt as though I could’ve kept going!

Week 10 average: 138.1 lb Non-scale victory: ‘graduated’ to performing official muscle-up attempts! I have all the ‘pieces’—five strict pull-ups, three strict dips, sharp transitions on the low rings, strong hollow swings on the high rings—I just have to figure out the combination of mental cues that allows me to put it all together.

Week 11 average: 137.2 lb Non-scale victory: sets of two RXed HSPU in an EMOM setting—that actually felt dramatically easier than the singles I had done two weeks prior! Also, coach started programming my wallballs with the 20# ball—which I obviously despise, but also secretly love, because it feels like a vote of confidence. :)

Week 12 average: 135.4, with a nadir of 133.7 lb (!!!) Non-scale victory: sets of 3-4 unbroken false grip ring pull-ups (which feel weird and uncomfortable, but several of the boys in the gym spontaneously commented on how good they looked and how “you just add a little kip in there, and [you’ve got your muscle-up]!”, which felt really good to hear. :)

…I’ll soon link this post back to the fuller/longer one detailing more of the multidimensional ins and outs of this second cut, but thought that the above timeline deserved its own section (in the interest of partitioning the various aspects into manageable ‘chunks’, rather than writing my usual rambly novel :)).

My most recent few posts have been about Renaissance Periodization (RP) and the success I’ve had with it. Given that I’m one week from finishing my second (and hopefully final) RP cut, it seems like a good time to summarize the past year, give a quick recap of my time on maintenance, and set myself up for next week’s ‘finish line’.

My first cut started in May 2017, and was a smashing success by pretty much any measure. (Here are the links to the back story, the tipping point, some of the logistics, and the final result in August 2017.) In fact, it was such a success that for a long time, I naïvely thought—or perhaps ‘fervently hoped’ is a better phrase!—that I would be ‘done’, potentially even ready for a muscle gain cycle, right after finishing that first cut. However, the more reading I did, the more I realized that it wasn’t going to work out that way, for two primary reasons. First, because I had (and still have) a lot more work to do on my gymnastics before adding pounds back on—and second, because, although I didn’t get professionally measured, the general consensus among those in the know was that—despite very significant weight loss—my actual body fat percentage likely still wasn’t low enough to take full advantage of a massing cycle. (Ideally, you want to be below 20% before you start, because that’s the zone at which you’ll theoretically achieve the most advantageous muscle-to-fat ratio when gaining.) The combination of those two truths, therefore, put me staring resignedly down the gun barrel of a second cut.

The big question was whether or not I should go ahead and attack Round II over the Thanksgiving/Christmas holidays versus wait to get started until January. The vast majority of people would likely have opted to wait, and there were certainly a host of reasons to do so (starting with maple-bacon Brussels sprouts and ending with peppermint bark). However, I opted to proceed, for the following reasons:

—I ‘felt ready’ mentally and emotionally—which is not a small thing. This is RP’s general take on maintenance, and I was, objectively, back to that mindset—eyeballing my portions, not feeling any particular emotional attachment to food, keeping only a loose eye on the scale, and feeling minimal guilt over cheat meals. (This was, incidentally, one of my biggest takeaways from RP—a dramatically healthier approach to food and eating that had also, somehow, become far more intuitive and ‘easy’ than any nutritional mindset I’d had in the past.)

—With regard to the CrossFit Open (which starts in late February): although I could see a solid argument for both approaches, my gut sense for my particular situation was that it would be more logical to shave off a few more pounds beforehand. Different athletes react differently to cutting (and have different baseline strengths and weaknesses to begin with)—but, based on my first RP experience as well as my specific individual makeup of CrossFit skills, my hope was that if I got the cut out of the way, that the lighter body would lend itself to a bit more continued gymnastics progress than maintenance might have allowed, after which I’d be done in time to have a solid month of training—and properly fueling—at my new maintenance size prior to the Open. (As a rule, the Open tends to lean toward lighter, faster movements rather than super heavy barbells—and although nearly 40 pounds of total weight loss means I’ve inevitably lost some degree of ground on almost every barbell lift in the past year, I still felt as though I’d rather ‘level the playing field’ as much as I could in terms of my skill toolbox.) The alternative approach—spending the holidays on maintenance and cutting in January—would have meant bigger strength regains, but potentially smaller gymnastics progress, and then would also have meant being in a caloric deficit / sub-optimally fueled at a time when I’d want to be able to perform at my best.

—For better or for worse, I’m single, live alone, and don’t have any family nearby. Therefore, I actually have a decent amount of control over my food intake and my social obligations, even at the holidays. I knew I would be home with my family for Christmas, but I also knew, objectively, that two or three days of slightly looser reins wouldn’t ruin twelve weeks of discipline.

—As a bonus, my CrossFit coach had casually planted the (earth-shattering, to me) idea that I could potentially get a muscle-up by the New Year, and I figured that cutting again in Nov-Dec would give me a stronger chance at proving her right! :)

So the decision was made. A holiday cut it would be.

For details on the logistics of RP, or details of my previous cut, it’s easier to refer back to the links above. However, to summarize, I had somehow succeeded in doing things almost exactly right—had cut down to a nadir of 144.6 lb, then (appropriately) regained about 3 lb during maintenance, and had maintained that weight without much effort (or even looking at the scale, really). For informational purposes, I started tracking my daily weights prior to officially starting this second cut, and was comfortably sitting around 147.5 (though my official weekly starting average ended up being 148.5, thanks mostly to the long weekend in NYC that I treated as my ‘last hurrah’ prior to starting—let the record show that if you spend five days hanging out with marathon runners, you will eat well!).

My goals for this cut were: (1) to get my first muscle-up—this was really the primary goal, (2) to get below 20% body fat, thus opening up the potential option of a future muscle gain cycle, and (3) to maintain around 140# after I finished—therefore, the loosest of the goals was to hit a scale number of 136#.

However, I also set one important rule. Aware that I had spent the vast majority of the preceding year in a caloric deficit and that I had knowingly shorted myself slightly on my maintenance phase (ten weeks instead of twelve), I was suspicious that this cut might well be harder than my first. Therefore, I made sure to clearly outline my ‘why’ to myself—and it didn’t take much soul-searching to determine that my most powerful motivator was not a scale number or a clothing size; it was to get the muscle-up. Therefore, I was firm from the very beginning that I would not go past Cut 2 (the second of the three cut phases), even if I did plateau and stop losing weight at that level. The next tab (the most aggressive phase) involves slashing levels of carbohydrates, which would be counterproductive for someone with a primary goal of performance. I’m well aware of the ‘tunnel vision’ that can result when cutting at this level, and nearly every day—sometimes more than once a day—I’ve quietly reminded myself of the larger goal, and the fact that I needed to be okay with gracefully withdrawing from this fight if my body were to show me that it was done.

Those of you with basic mathematical abilities have probably already glanced at the calendar and determined that I did not, in fact, plateau to any kind of significant degree—which still amazes me (my body is such a trooper!). RP recommends calculating a weekly average weight (since there are so many reasons for water fluctuations from day to day), and tweaking the macronutrient approach based on the speed at which that average drops. Although I had to move to the second (more aggressive) tab significantly faster than I did the first time around, and although my rate of loss has definitely slowed down over these past couple of weeks, it hasn’t clearly stopped, so I’m in this for the long haul.

At this point, I have six and a half more days; my DEXA scan is set for Friday the 26th at 11am. It’s purely informational—I will be maintaining for a minimum of six months no matter what the numbers show; I’m well aware that my body, brain, and metabolism have earned a long rest!—but I have to admit, I’m incredibly curious. This has been almost a full year of hard work, and I do hope to see that reflected.

As far as the other two goals, my nadir on the scale thus far (a couple of days ago) was 136.7 lb—which I’m perfectly thrilled with, even if I don’t see that number again in the next six days—and the muscle-up is also tantalizingly close. All the pieces are there—five unbroken strict pull-ups, three strict dips, sharp transitions on the low rings, strong hollow swings on the high rings—and I’ve graduated to performing official muscle-up ‘attempts’; all I have to do now is mentally figure out the right combination of cues that will let me successfully assemble the pieces. I’m creeping a teeny, tiny bit closer each time I try—and, in an odd way, the anticipation is truly part of the fun.

My CrossFit coach (who told me firmly, way back in Week 2, that she wasn’t going to ‘let me’ cut again once these twelve weeks were up!) has been incredibly patient; she is nearly as proud and excited as I am about how much gymnastics progress I’ve made, and at this point, she is of the mindset that the scale no longer matters and that it’s time to focus on “getting STRONGER, not ‘lighter’.” Although I didn’t totally believe her back in the fall, I’m in full agreement now. I truly don’t need or want to be any leaner, either for performance OR aesthetics—which is both an empowering realization and an extraordinarily unfamiliar one—and it well may be that the first few days of maintenance, when I get to start adding slightly more fuel to this smaller body, may be the tipping point that allows the muscle-up to happen. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Cutting fucks with your emotions in all kinds of ways.

You’re hungry all the time—all the time—and can’t wait to be allowed to eat normal food. Then, when there IS a special occasion that you’d planned for, even if you keep things ‘reasonable’ and feel at peace with your choices, the scale still transiently bumps five pounds, and you immediately can’t wait to be back on plan.

You’re thrilled about all your gymnastics milestones—sets of ten toes-to-bar, RXed handstand push-ups, sets of five strict pull-ups. These aren’t things you’ve ever been able to do before, because your area of comfort has always been the barbell… which all your CrossFit classmates are currently using to PR their snatches—your favorite lift—while you wistfully dangle from the pull-up rig.

When you fit comfortably into your petite younger sister’s jeans, it’s cause for celebration—but when you drop a bra size for the third time, even though you’ve complained about your large chest for your entire life, you stare at your visible xiphoid process in the mirror, bite your lip, and feel oddly unsettled. Is that me?

During those middle weeks, when your favorite sushi is a distant memory and the celebratory end-of-cut tacos are still way too far away, you lie lethargically on the couch and make lists on your phone of all the desserts and treats you can’t wait to eat once you’re done. ...And then the end comes, and you start the slow reversal back up to maintenance calories, and it’s actually okay to add one or two treats back in—and you inevitably realize that the sugar cookies and Halloween candy really don’t sound that good anymore, and all you REALLY want is just a little bit larger portion of that chicken and broccoli.

When you see the earliest beginnings of some six-pack ab cuts, it’s hard to leave the mirror alone. You’re wide-eyed, disbelieving, fascinated by the form and structure of this new secret body that’s been hidden for all these years. …And then you slip into a previously beloved piece of clothing, and it hangs on you like a sack, and you suddenly feel a little scared by what you’ve wrought.

As the end approaches, when the scale does one of its random jumps, you don’t want to stop because ‘I just want to get back where I was last week before I call it.’ But when your weight is steadily dropping, you also don’t want to stop because ‘ugh, now I have to quit when things are finally going well!’

You’re freezing all the time, to the point of wearing two sweatshirts and a hat while hanging out at home. (Note to self: next time, do not cut in January!) Yet, in social situations, you’re still always trying to wear the smallest clothes you can, because, honestly, one of the only day-to-day benefits to this painful process is the perk of occasionally feeling more confident in your aesthetic appearance.

Daily, when you’re starving but it’s not time to eat yet, you inevitably find yourself in the kitchen—doing something, anything. Organizing the pantry, making a grocery list, boiling water for tea, meal-prepping for the remainder of the week. Killing time on all those little food-oriented tasks is somehow soothing, psychologically. And then you remember these very behaviors from the anorexic patients you’ve treated, and are both fascinated and a little alarmed to observe such patterns in yourself.

Looking at your ‘new body’ in the mirror at the end of the cut, you’re flat-out thrilled. You’ve never seen yourself this way, and can’t imagine how you could ever possibly be dissatisfied with this incredible physical creation. This is your body; you did this; you get to keep this! Pride, disbelief, and joy are at a heady zenith. …But fast-forward to six weeks on maintenance, and you’ll be terrified by how ‘fluffy’ you look. Your clothes will still fit. The scale will only be up by three (appropriate) pounds. Objectively, it’ll all be one hundred percent fine. But you’ll anxiously swear that you just LOOK so different to yourself. (Because ‘perceptual adaptation’ is yet another mindfuck that we all have to contend with during this process.)

Seventeen days to go, y’all.

There will undoubtedly be a much, much, much longer post forthcoming. Because there are a lot of really good, sensible, positive, thoughtful bird’s-eye-view ruminations about why I’m doing this, about what I’m hoping to get out of it, about how far I’ve come, about where I hope to go next.

But this right here is the homestretch—the flat, blank, boring, tiring final mile—where the physical and mental fatigue collide. When hunger is constant but food doesn’t satisfy, when you’re always tired but can’t sleep restfully, when you’re cold to your bones no matter how many layers you wear, when you’re genuinely not tempted to eat off plan but also can’t really even imagine a day when you will.

This is the part where I need to remember the ‘why’—which, for me, this time, is getting that damn muscle-up, or at least getting as close to it as I can. (And I really am so close.) I’ve wanted that skill for over five years, but I just haven’t done the work until now. I haven’t deserved it until now.

It’s okay if it doesn’t happen by the end of this cut. It’s okay if it takes another six weeks, or even six months. But I finally actually believe, deep down, that it’s going to happen—which isn’t a certainty I’ve ever felt before. It’s empowering to know that, together, my coach and I have built a body that is both strong enough and light enough to do this.

There will be many more (better-organized) thoughts on all this in eighteen days—when I feel a bit more like myself again. For now, it’s just got to be one shuffling foot in front of the other. But I’ve done this before and I can do it again. This is familiar territory and this, too, shall pass.

(This is the fourth and final section of a multi-part post. If you’re interested, you can read about the back story, the tipping point, and the logistics here.)

I posted one of those ‘transformation’ posts on social media yesterday—not because I necessarily wanted to insta-brag (although the pride is real), but more because I needed to define an endpoint for myself. By putting it out there, by showing everyone what I’ve been up to, I gave myself the accountability to STOP, and to intentionally begin the reverse diet. Progress is so slow when you’re seeing it in your own mirror that it’s easy to get stuck in the purgatory of “well, I’ll just stick with it for one more week / until I lose one more pound / just until I get to X benchmark.” We humans are extremely adaptable, meaning we eventually get accustomed to just about anything; even a reflection that we initially feel pretty awesome about eventually becomes ‘the new normal’. It hit me yesterday that I have been in some kind of a caloric deficit for SIX ENTIRE MONTHS. I needed to take a step back, observe the (tremendous) magnitude of what has objectively been accomplished over the past 180 days—and then do the responsible thing and let my body and mind have a rest.

Accomplishments:

 -- Numbers: March 9, 2017: 173 lb (yikes) May 24, 2017: 156 lb at the start of RP Sept 2, 2017: 144 lb (!) for a total loss of 29 lb (which, by the way, is 16.8% of my starting bodyweight—whaaaaaaat?!?)

 -- I lost 3” off my waist, 4” off my hips, and dropped from a 36DD to a 34D (which some women might dislike, but personally, I’m absolutely thrilled).

 -- I am literally lighter than I was when I graduated from high school, yet also have significantly more muscle. The two little ‘folds’ in my mid-back have vanished, and I have defined deltoids for the first time ever. In the right light, I can see on myself why quads are called quads. And I’ve always loved my upper back, but now I’m positively obsessed with it; there are contours and ridges that I’ve never been able to see before.

 -- The biggest practical victory—more so than clothing size or reflection in the mirror—is that I’ve seen major CrossFit progress for the first time in years. I’ve always been a better barbell athlete, comparatively weaker in gymnastics skills; that skill set has now almost been flipped. When I started this journey, I had zero bodyweight pull-ups; now I can do sets of four unbroken strict pull-ups, three kipping chest-to-bar pull-ups, and nine proper toes-to-bar (no monkey swing!). I also got my first-ever handstand push-ups to a single abmat (25# plates, I’m coming for you!), and although I’ve admittedly lost a bit of raw strength, particularly off my squat, I’ve actually ADDED weight to my bench press.  Granted, I’ve been specifically working on these skills; they didn’t ‘just happen’ with weight loss—but physics also dictates that certain movements are just easier at a lighter bodyweight.

 -- Mentally, there is a certain freedom to be found within the RP headspace. You eat what you’re supposed to eat when you’re supposed to eat it, and that’s that. Food becomes ‘fuel’, rather than ‘fun’. One day last week, I was coming down with a cold and realized that (apart from the 8g of fat), a full pint of black cherry Halo Top was almost exactly the right post-workout macros. I decided that would feel really great on my sore throat, and that I’d have it the next morning after the gym. But then, when 8am rolled around, I didn’t have a sore throat anymore, and ended up with my usual Cheerios, egg whites, and salsa—just because that sounded a lot better than ice cream. TL;DR—knowing you CAN have just about anything you want makes it so that you don’t actually NEED anything you may want.

-- Bonus: I also accidentally met my longtime ‘capsule wardrobe’ goal of 100 clothing items, because LITERALLY 60% of my clothes are now too big. :)

This new body is both mesmerizing and, sometimes, a little odd. It’s not my first time being ‘leaner,’ but it IS my first time being this lean as a CrossFit athlete. I’ve never been down this particular road in terms of body composition changes—I literally don’t know how my adult body behaves at this size—and some of what has happened has been unexpected. For instance, I have a few more visible veins than I did before. There’s a new wrinkle in my belly when I’m sitting down. A particular contour of my trunk that I always thought was a fat roll has turned out to be, in actuality, defined by my hip bone (duuuuh—I swear I am a medical provider!). And I come from a long line of apple-shaped women, and as such, STILL do not have visible abs—yet can now clearly see my ribcage, which, in the right light, consistently startles me. And although I can’t SEE my abs, I can FEEL them—as in, when my fingers trace the topography, I can feel the sensitive separations of the six-pack—which is both fascinating and slightly nauseating.

Moving forward:

I’m back in a place where I’m eager to put the scale away and stop focusing on it—because, practically speaking, I really don’t need to care exactly what it says as long as I get to keep all my newfound gymnastics skills. Physically, I’ve definitely felt under-recovered for the past few weeks—not ‘injured’, but just a general sense that I’m pushing the envelope in terms of how much my body can take—and I’ll be happy to feel a bit more ‘consistently strong’. Especially on rest days when my carb intake is slashed, I’ve noticed some unusually low blood pressure (87/63) and resting heart rate (43), which corresponds to feeling a bit shaky and weak. Being back on the base plan will allow me to ‘rest’ for a little while—my weight should theoretically stay stable (after a couple pounds’ expected regain over the next 1-2 weeks), but over the next couple of months, I may still see a very slow positive shift in terms of lean mass to fat mass. In other words, I may find that even just the base plan allows me to get slightly stronger, while hopefully also maintaining the level of leanness and new gymnastics skills I’ve worked so hard to achieve. I’m well aware that I’ve lost a bit of raw strength throughout this prolonged process (it is extremely strange to look at my legs—my favorite body part for 30+ years—and now perceive them as ‘too small’!), and that there is likely to be a squat cycle in my future—and that a massing nutrition plan may well be a part of that (gulp)... but this right here, this 144 pounds, is a really good spot to sit and breathe for the moment.

I was texting with a Philly friend yesterday, and in hearing my own responses to her, I was finally able to put words to the core of why things had been so different this time. With previous nutritional approaches—whether Whole30, keto, intermittent fasting, or what-have-you—I was always just sort of ‘riding’ a plan until it stopped working. I’d see some small changes, and then that would be it. With RP, I’ve been forced to take the time to educate myself on the actual physiology of what I’m doing—because with such a complex plan, that’s just necessary, both for psychological reassurance as well as to understand how to make logical adaptations on the fly when circumstances call for it—and that broader understanding is precisely what now reassures me that just because this rewarding ‘phase’ is now over, that that is not the same thing as declaring that all POTENTIAL for progress is now gone. The same rules still apply. The intrinsic makeup of carbs and fat and protein isn’t changing. The same framework still holds true—will always still hold true—as far as how to manipulate them in order to see results. It’s simple math. More importantly, it’s science. This distinction between ‘progress’ and ‘potential’ is not a concept I’ve ever been able to see before.

Transitions are always scary, especially when they involve the end of a phase that’s yielded so many visible benefits. But there’s also a profound reassurance in knowing that this new knowledge will be there whenever I need it. This was merely one season of a lifelong cyclic journey. Pausing is not a ‘weakness’, and it also isn’t the same thing as declaring myself content to not ever progress any further. Resting, and maintaining, are in fact necessary parts of ultimately continuing to move forward with my goals.

And, practically speaking, hanging out at maintenance for a couple of months is going to be really nice. The RP base plan actually encourages 2-3 cheats per week—the prescribed numbers already account for that—and I am really looking forward to having a social life again. :) I also remember how wonderfully I was sleeping back at the beginning, when I first added the casein protein shake to my bedtime routine, and I’m hoping to recapture that. And certain packaged foods that have been languishing in the cabinet for the past few weeks (like RX bars and single-serving packets of nuts—because they haven’t been the right ‘ratio’ to be included in the most recent menu), can now be reintroduced, which will make certain aspects of meal prep easier, especially on workdays.

At this moment, sitting at my kitchen table, it feels extremely odd to NOT be hungry. Today is the first day of incrementally (slowly!) increasing the amount of fat I’m eating (this is how the reverse-diet works, to slowly bring the metabolism back up to speed over a period of weeks), and I’m alternating between fascination, relief, awe, and anxiety. I had creamer in my coffee (!) and two Brazil nuts with my regular “egg whites and veggies” breakfast this morning—two freakin’ Brazil nuts—and a whole three hours later, I am just starting to feel a little bit hungry. For the past few weeks (in the second phase of the cut, with minimal fat intake at all), the grace period without hunger has been more like 45 minutes. When I take a moment to truly think about it, it deeply amazes me, this symphony of quiet chemical processes constantly taking place in our bodies. On a molecular level, we are pretty incredible physical creations.

I’m a bit concerned about my ability to continue to slowly increase my intake in a controlled way, because I’m about to be plunged into a thoroughly uncontrolled environment—I leave on Friday to spend 17 days (!) in a language immersion program in Costa Rica. I’m obviously tremendously excited about this, but it does compound the nutritional anxiety just a bit! The Central American diet is notoriously carb-heavy—rice, beans, plantains, fruit juices, and so forth—and I’m going to be staying with host families, so I’m not going to have a ton of control over what I’m served. I’m just packing a bunch of nonperishable protein sources and crossing my fingers. At any rate, I’m definitely glad I stopped now, and didn’t carry the cut right up to the last minute before departure.

Once I’m back, general goals for the next couple of months are:  -- maintain the RP base plan—six ‘meals’ a day, including the two shakes,  -- loosely maintain weight somewhere in the 140s—right now this seems to be the sweet spot for performance—but keep the scale out of sight for the most part,  -- continue to work on ‘pulling’ and ‘pushing’ strength in the gym—short-term goals include confident ‘RXed’ handstand push-ups (meaning, with 25# plates) and consistent sets of 10 toes-to-bar, and  -- definitely pound some shrimp chilaquiles from Gonza at the first available opportunity. ;)

This post has used a lot of ‘words’ to explain something pretty straightforward, which is that the biggest takeaway from this whole process hasn’t been pounds or inches or even reps. Plain and simple, it’s empowerment. I haven’t been ‘dieting’; I’ve been eating for a purpose, working toward specific performance goals. And it feels pretty incredible to be on the back side of such a major journey and to have the sense that the potential is still limitless—to know that whatever my future fitness and body composition goals may be, that I will always possess the tools to wreak this kind of transformation if I so choose.

(This is Part III of a multi-part post. Read about the back story and the most recent tipping point here.) 

I’ve fought the body composition fight on many levels over the years, from Paleo to Whole30 to intermittent fasting to gluten-free to a ketogenic diet. I had varying degrees of success with each one, and plenty of ‘non-scale victories’ and learning experiences, but none of these methods were proving to do the trick this time. I even tried training for a half marathon (since my lowest adult weight had been just prior to PA school, when I was participating in a workplace weight loss challenge, exclusively running for exercise, and had never heard of CrossFit). The race was fun, but even all that extra cardio training really didn’t impact my body composition at all.

I happened to make a PCP change around this time, and I knew my new provider was a fan of phentermine. We talked about it at length, and after reading a couple of studies and hearing her thoughts, I decided I wanted to give it a try. I won’t say that I wish I hadn’t done it, because the quick progress—which was reflected in the gym; it was suddenly much easier to hold a handstand, to kip a couple more reps on the pull-up bar, etc.—definitely helped with the motivation to stick this out over the long haul. However, I eventually stopped the medication of my own accord after eight or nine weeks; it was severely impacting my sleep and I was noticing heart rate issues in the gym. By that point, I had lost roughly 17 lb and was back at my ‘Philly weight’ of about 156, which is what I’d maintained easily throughout my two years in the city and which I’d always thought of as a healthy/functional size for me. However, it ‘felt different’ this time—in hindsight, probably because my body fat percentage was still significantly higher than it had been when I’d been this weight before. The fit of my clothes hadn’t changed as much as I would have expected, and nobody in my life was ‘noticing’ that I had lost weight; despite the pretty significant numerical difference on the scale, my outward physical appearance didn’t seem to have changed much. I wasn’t sure what to do next.

And then, the universe offered me a gift in the form of a dear friend from Philly, who texted me that she and her husband were starting Renaissance Periodization—often abbreviated as simply ‘RP’ or ‘RP Strength’—and she thought I might be interested in ‘playing along’ with them from afar.

RP consists of two major tracks: ‘cut’ (fat loss) or ‘mass’ (muscle gain). At its core, the approach is just regular macro-counting—carbs, protein, and fat—but with emphasis on nutrient timing as it relates to workouts. In this way, it’s different from other ‘diet plans’, because it’s athlete-specific. Another wrinkle is that RP bases its ‘workouts’ on the amount of strength being demanded of a muscle—pure cardio sessions are generally not ‘counted’ by RP. CrossFit is considered a ‘light’ training day under the RP plan (whaaaaat?), and straight endurance exercise, like running or biking, doesn’t count at all. (This is one reason that the RP plan may not be the best approach for the average Joe or Jane who isn’t strength-training.)

I’m the first to admit that RP’s core tenets are pretty dramatically different from anything I’d been doing before—and as someone who came into this approach with a pretty solid base of nutritional knowledge and experience, that truly shocked me. I definitely had a healthy degree of skepticism at the outset; ultimately, it was reading the 100+page RP e-book—which delves deeply into the science of the rationales behind each of the guidelines, and explains why it all makes physiological sense—that convinced me to go all in. To summarize (in decidedly less than 100 pages), RP is based on the following premises:

(1) WEIGHT loss requires a caloric deficit… This one is pretty obvious. Physiologically, you’ve got to take in less than you burn off.

(2) …but to avoid MUSCLE loss, a certain amount of protein, spread throughout the day, is required. RP calls for five or six ‘meals’ in a day, with total daily protein split evenly among them, and with two of the ‘meals’ being shakes—a whey shake (quick-release protein) during training and a casein shake (slow-release) at bedtime. This advice isn’t guided by the old school of thought that we need to eat every couple hours “to keep our metabolism from slowing down”—science has long disproven that one; rather, RP asserts that frequent protein intake specifically prevents muscle catabolism during fat loss.

(3) Carbs should be taken in predominantly around the workout—including DURING the workout itself… As a 6am CrossFitter, I trained fasted (on an empty stomach, just drinking BCAAs dissolved in water) for four-plus years. Now, I drink a shake made with orange juice and vanilla whey protein—about 1/3 prior to arrival at the gym and the other 2/3 throughout the session. After an initial couple days of belly discomfort, my body adjusted, and now I eagerly look forward to my ‘liquid Creamsicle’ every morning. (And I had to admit: certain movements, particularly wallballs and thrusters, started to feel just slightly less horrific once there were some high-GI carbs floating around to provide some extra power.) For me as an early-morning exerciser, this whey shake and the immediate post-workout meal are the two ‘meals’ where I get the largest amount of carbs; my carb number then tapers off throughout the day as I get further out from the training session. (This pattern will obviously be different for someone who trains at noon vs at 5pm vs at 9pm; one of the things you get when you buy the ‘official’ RP plan is a multi-page Excel spreadsheet that specifies exactly what the numbers would be for your gender, bodyweight, and training schedule.)

(4) …and, therefore, on a non-training day, an athlete requires far fewer carbs. On a day without a workout, the total amount of daily carbs is slashed approximately in half (partly accomplished by the omission of the whey shake). The permitted amount of fat goes up a bit (depending on how ‘deep’ into the plan you are), and stays more steady throughout the day.

(5) As you move through the phases of the plan, carbs and protein remain essentially the same; it’s the FAT that changes. I dare you to find me an athlete on a low-carb diet. (I’ve tried it, more than once, and, to be frank, it made me feel like absolute shit.) Just as protein preserves muscle, carbohydrates (a) serve as the body’s preferred fuel for workouts, and (b) prompt the insulin response that ‘opens up’ muscle cells to allow protein to enter. Since both these macros serve a purpose in terms of performance and muscle-building, it doesn’t make sense to cut them. The purpose of fat, on the other hand, is primarily for taste and satiety. (Of course we all need a little fat for hormonal purposes, especially women, but the necessary amount isn’t hard to get when your diet includes meat and nuts.) So the RP plan starts with a ‘base’ (maintenance) plan, then moves through three progressive phases (either ‘cuts’ or ‘masses’ depending on your goals), each of which changes the overall calorie balance primarily by adjusting the amount of FAT that’s taken in. The progressive adjustment is necessary in order to continue seeing changes, because our bodies are smart and can alter their metabolism to ‘get used to’ anything after a little while; this is one reason why RP doesn’t recommend sticking to ANY plan for longer than 12 weeks without taking a solid couple months at maintenance. Personally, while I did do the full 12 weeks, I had great results from just cuts 1 and 2; I didn’t ever go all the way to cut 3, because that’s where the plan starts slashing carbs, which didn’t make sense for my purposes (I’m trying to be a better CrossFitter, not win figure competitions).

Things I Like:

It’s straightforward. RP counts a food item as just one macro, rather than making you count everything. Nuts are ‘just’ fat, meat is ‘just’ protein (assuming you’re sticking to stuff that’s 90/10 or leaner), and non-starchy veggies are altogether ‘free’. There are certain exceptions (like beans or dairy), but in general, you don’t have to count all three macros for each food.

It’s not possible to ‘run out’ of macros. Since RP mandates that the meals are spaced out throughout the day, with specific numbers based on what time of day you’re training, you can’t take an IIFYM-style approach. I clearly recall previous macro-counting days where I would happily eat pizza for lunch… then realize it was 3pm and my carb/fat macros were mostly used up, so all I had ‘left’ for the rest of the day was (say) 40 grams of protein. Not only is that an annoying and stressful situation, but it’s also difficult to plan for in terms of what kinds of food you need in the house to fill in the gaps. Which brings me to my next point…

RP is predictable. Most of us stick to more or less the same gym schedule—a 6am athlete is pretty much always a 6am athlete. So, after the first couple of weeks, you’ve learned what your macros are on training days vs rest days (and at what times of day), and have figured out a few options for meals you can build around those macros. Once you’ve learned what foods correspond to the numbers, you don’t have to think about the actual numbers so much. (By this point, I don’t even remember the specifics of what my AM and PM shakes actually consist of; I just know how much of each ingredient to dump in.) Food is mentally simplified to just ‘fuel’, rather than ‘fun’.

It’s cheap. Once you do what I affectionately call ‘the protein load-in’ (frozen meats in bulk, giant containers of whey + casein proteins, a big jar of nut butter, and a stock of any shakes/bars you’re going to incorporate), then you’re pretty well set for a while. The only extra things I’ve had to buy on any kind of consistent basis are bananas, orange juice, deli meat, egg whites, and Trader Joe’s frozen carrot noodles (one of my staples—only 16g carbs in half a box!). I also happened to start getting a weekly CSA box right around the time I started this adventure, so one of the ways I keep things from getting boring is by finding ways to use whatever fresh veggies happen to show up that week.

Things I Don’t Like:

It’s a lot of math. Especially in the beginning when you’re first figuring it out, and especially if you’re batch-cooking things with a lot of ingredients that you have to add all together. There’s definitely an ‘overwhelm’ phase in the beginning, partly because…

It never feels like enough food. If you’re like most of us, you’re accustomed to two or three large-ish meals throughout the course of a day, and also to the concept of being able to eat until you feel generally satiated. With RP, you get a set quantity and that’s it, and the quantity you get is going to feel a LOT smaller than a ‘normal meal’. (Which is a good reason to load up on veggies…!)

It can be stressful. Trying to scan a restaurant menu for something you can eat is an awful feeling. If your schedule is unpredictable, you have no time to meal prep, and/or you have a bustling social life, RP may be more trouble than it’s worth.

YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN THIS MUCH TUPPERWARE. Seriously. When meal-prepping on RP, I am regularly reduced to using Ziploc bags and empty gelato containers to store my portions.

Egg whites. I dislike them on principle because all the nutrients are in the yolks! But on an RP cutting template, one whole egg will push you perilously close to the threshold of your allotted fat at any given meal, while still leaving a lot to be desired in terms of the protein count. So, yeah. Egg whites. (Sigh.)

However, overall, learning and incorporating this complex plan—and seeing how well it has worked—has been an absolute light bulb moment for me, partly because it draws on my medical education in terms of just how much sense it all makes. In hindsight, I can’t believe how much I’d been unconsciously working against myself. Apart from the fact that I was consistently training in a fasted state (the very point at which muscles most need nutrients and, physiologically, are most primed to absorb them), my standard post-workout breakfast for years had been chicken sausage with two hard-boiled eggs (which is obviously high-protein, but contains (a) almost zero carbs to help that protein be absorbed, and (b) a fair amount of fat, which slows digestion and therefore causes the protein to be absorbed that much more slowly). And we won’t even discuss my attempts at intermittent fasting or a ketogenic diet. This also explains why I saw comparatively minor visible results with the phentermine despite a 17-lb numerical loss—because I wasn’t paying attention to macros and therefore probably lost a significant amount of muscle during that time period (which kills me!). In short, I’d been shooting myself in the foot—with multiple weapons—for literally my entire CrossFit career… and never realized it.

I’m in week 12 as we speak, and am definitely ready to be done with this cut, because I’ve reached a point where I can tell I need a break, both physically and mentally. I’ve been feeling under-recovered in the gym for the past few weeks due to the persistent calorie deficit, and I definitely miss having a social life and the occasional cocktail or restaurant meal. An RP cut isn’t intended to be sustainable over the long haul (again: no more than 12 weeks—it’s not a ‘diet’ that you stick to for the rest of your life; it’s a plan to help you to eat for a specific performance goal), so these are all completely ‘expected’ complaints at this stage. By contrast, the RP base plan really did feel easy and sustainable (and actually encourages a couple of cheats each week), so I’m excited to soon be able to return to that.

(This is Part II of a multi-part post. Read the back story here.)

I’ve written before about the power of community when it comes to exercise, and recently read an old article in the New York Times that makes the same point regarding diet and general longevity—that healthy habits are often mutually reinforcing, but only as long as there’s a network of support. Almost everyone I know has heard me gush about how much I loved my Philadelphia CrossFit gym and its associated social network, and although the move back to North Carolina has overall been an extremely positive change, it took me a while to find the right exercise fit once I got here. Every place I tried was missing something—either the location wasn’t convenient, the class times didn’t work with my schedule, or the coaching style wasn’t a good fit. I briefly found ‘my tribe’ at a brand-new CF gym—that ultimately closed after less than a year for financial reasons, its members fanning out across the Triangle to all manner of other facilities.

Out of frustration, disillusionment, and lack of options, I ended up taking six months off from CrossFit altogether and trying a different style of training, focusing on stability and mobility, with a lot of isometric holds and kettlebell work (one gym member, casting about for a description, called it ‘strength yoga’). To its credit, this style of activity—watched closely by very knowledgeable coaches, with form as the absolute highest priority at all times—went a long way towards helping me neurologically rewire my posterior chain and finally heal a nagging back injury. However, it just wasn’t CrossFit, and although I kept showing up—half-jokingly referring to it as “taking my medicine”—I didn’t have the same drive that I remembered from years past. In Philadelphia, I’d walk out of the gym after a tough session on Monday morning already feeling excited about what we might get to do on Tuesday. In this environment—although I certainly saw others around me who exhibited that enthusiasm—I just didn’t feel it myself. My attendance slowly dropped from 5-6 days a week to four, sometimes even just three. My social circle, which for years had been centered around the gym, shifted to other outlets—which wasn’t altogether bad, but meant that there was inherently a lot more food and drink involved, with a lot less communal understanding of how that food and drink fit into a larger health framework. This combination of factors meant that weight gain—already an issue due to having lost my physically intense city lifestyle of bike-commuting and walking several miles a day—accelerated.

Eventually, the coach at the ‘strength yoga’ gym, who was also a personal friend, told me to my face, “You’re coming in here every day wanting this to be CrossFit, and it’s not. You’re not bringing your best attitude in here because you’re not doing what you want to be doing.” He was right; more importantly, he had a specific gym recommendation that, although it was a comparatively longer hike from my home, turned out to be a great fit. Finally, after two years, I had a community again.

The first six months were spent recouping some of my strength—I had lost a lot of ground, more so than I would have expected. I started matching most of my old barbell numbers after a few months; however, gymnastics movements—not my forte even at the best of times—did not progress at nearly the same rate, in part because I was still carrying 15 extra pounds. I kept showing up, kept completing the workouts, but during those first months, there was still a sense of ‘duty’ about it. Mentally, I was glad to be back, but my abilities were still so far below where I used to be that, emotionally, I didn’t yet feel like I could fully commit without simultaneously opening myself up to the full impact of that crushing discouragement.

I didn’t sign up for the CrossFit Open in 2017, mostly for the bruised-ego reasons above—I knew I wasn’t at the level I’d been in years past and that attempting to perform as such would only serve to frustrate me. However, we still completed the Open workouts as part of the regular class sessions, and during the second week, I ended up completely on my own at a 6am Open session with my favorite coach. And out of the clear blue, that day proved to be the mental turning point for which I had been unconsciously waiting for so long. It wasn’t that I turned in a particularly noteworthy performance; the bigger motivator was the simple experience of a knowledgeable and perceptive coach matter-of-factly giving me her full attention, making a strategic plan for how I should approach the workout based on my objective level of ability—and then my being able to successfully execute that plan in practice. Gasping on the floor afterward, I forgot the workout itself almost immediately in the shock and unexpected relief of its execution. Despite a thoroughly mediocre score, the waves of emotion surging through me were overwhelmingly positive. It felt good to treat a physical task as though it mattered. More than that, I was completely taken aback by the forgotten luxury of having someone else accurately analyze my capabilities and tell me—correctly—how to attack a challenge, rather than me having to make strategic decisions on my own. I realized that because I was ostensibly an ‘experienced’ athlete now, that upon changing gyms, CrossFit had become yet another area of my life where I had to be the one in control—and that I had somehow resigned myself to that state of things without question. But in Philadelphia, it had been a relief and a joy to walk into the gym each day and know that I could surrender, that those coaches knew both their sport and me as an individual athlete well enough to consistently know what was best for me in any given situation. They knew when to push and when to back off, how to keep me physically safe while still helping me to progress as an athlete. I didn’t question or doubt them, because there was simply no need. And there had been a quiet joy in releasing that responsibility. In our modern adult world, that kind of unconditionally trusting relationship is rare and precious. I had understood that, and treasured it—and had sadly assumed that I’d just never find it again once I left Philadelphia. The day of 17.2, I realized I had missed that trust so deeply that I had entirely shut it out its potential.

Still sitting on the floor bathed in sweat, I was abruptly reminded that THIS was what I loved about CrossFit: the relationships. The sense of feeling thoroughly and intimately ‘known’ and being advised accordingly, in the face of something very hard. Being able to fully trust someone else’s guidance. Feeling like someone else is ‘invested’ in you, even just for a few minutes. These were experiences I’d had all too rarely in the previous 18 months. Leaving the gym that day, I felt the flicker of the old fire reignite.

I actually said aloud to a friend of mine, as he arrived for the 7am session, “Okay. I know this sounds weird. But I feel like I might be ready to ‘start trying’ again.”  

“Welcome back to the club, kid,” he said with a grin.

I can vividly remember a time when weight didn’t matter. For Halloween at age ten, I dressed in a garish neon-flowered bikini—the first two-piece bathing suit my mother had permitted—and a crepe-paper grass skirt, with a flowered lei around my neck. Never mind the huge ‘90s glasses and home-cut bangs—in my mind, I was a graceful Hawaiian hula dancer.

Looking in the mirror at my flat preteen tummy in my bathing suit, I remember struggling to understand what all the fuss was about. The books I’d been checking out of the library lately—consistently several grade levels above my calendar age—seemed to make a lot of references to body image, insecurity about appearance, issues with food. But this was just me. This was what I looked like. Not ‘big’, not ‘small’… just me. For the first time, I wondered: was there going to come a time when I looked in the mirror and saw myself differently?

The idea was troubling. I promptly reassured myself that, by being aware of the fact that things might change, I could surely stop it from happening. Therefore, I had nothing to worry about. This occupied my thoughts for a total of about twenty seconds before I grabbed my empty candy bag and bounced happily off into the humid Florida night to collect my sugary loot.

I also remember the very first time I lied about my weight. I was fourteen years old and in my fourth year of playing YMCA basketball. When the time came to take those team pictures so ubiquitous throughout youth sports, posed in team uniforms with bright unsmudged basketballs balanced on bony knees, one of the photo package options was a specially designed playing card. Just like the pros had. Teenaged girl on the front, perfectly posed and smiling in her cheap nylon jersey. On the back, her vital statistics. Team name, age, height—and weight.

At fourteen, body shapes and sizes span a wide range. As a group, my team that season tended more toward the prepubertal side—smaller, thinner, less developed. At five feet five inches, I was the tallest on the team and actually played center that year. It was a distinction I usually enjoyed. However, peeking from side to side at my teammates filling out their forms, I was surprised and dismayed by the numbers they jotted down. 115, 120—those were weights I’d long left behind. I’d had my yearly physical a month or two before, and had weighed in at 142 pounds. At the time, that had just been a number, nothing that really mattered, and nothing that I had much of a frame of reference for. Now, suddenly, it was an embarrassment.

135, I wrote on the form, quickly shoving it across the table at the team parent—nonchalantly, I hoped—before anyone else could see my shame.

Only seven pounds—certainly not a huge fib by any stretch of the modern adult woman’s imagination. But as a teenage girl, it was the first time I had compared such things and been found wanting… even if it was by nobody except myself.

My mother was ahead of her time when it came to nutritious food and the value of protein. This isn’t to say that we were particularly good eaters; my sister and I were as picky as the next kids when we were little, and certainly ate our fair share of frozen fish sticks and buttered pasta. However, there were certain items that were simply never present in our house—white bread, soda, candy, boxed mac-n-cheese, sugary cereal—and certain items that were always there—bananas, filtered water, salad, almonds, yogurt. I was the kid who got a granola bar in her lunch box for ‘dessert’ while everyone else had Hostess cupcakes; I literally don’t think I knew what a Twinkie was until I was in high school. Not that we were total hippies; there was usually a half-gallon of low-fat ice cream in the freezer, the occasional Pop-Tart wasn’t unheard of, and at birthday parties and restaurants, we were free to eat whatever we wanted. But, as most children do, we grew up with preferences that largely reflected those of our household. To this day, I cannot stand soda—and can vividly recall being ridiculed at Girl Scout meetings (by the troop leader!) for asking for water instead.

At any rate, whether as a direct result of better-than-average nutrition or simply a genetic fluke, I was always tall for my age, towering half a head over the rest of my kindergarten class. I wasn’t the typical petite, fragile five-year-old with pale skin and fairylike limbs, but a strong, robust child with thick hair and sturdy legs, tan from a lifetime of outdoor play under the Florida sun. My sister and I were constantly riding our bikes, building forts, and climbing trees—when we had neighborhood friends over, we were actually forbidden to play inside unless the weather was bad. I’ve always been known in my family for being ‘strong’ and enjoying physical activity—as I grew up, I rode horseback for many years, played basketball and Ultimate Frisbee, and competed in both pool and open-water distance swimming. I wasn’t overweight until I reached college, and was certainly never obese—even then, I was regularly competing in endurance events, including a half Ironman triathlon, a 12.5-mile swim around the island of Key West, and a relay swim across the English Channel—but once I was no longer living at home, my weight stabilized at a range between 160 and 165 pounds… and there it stayed. Despite a relatively reasonable (though, in hindsight, definitely ‘Standard American’!) diet and large amounts of exercise—at one point, a coach calculated my daily expenditure as nearly 4000 calories!—I still never seemed to lose weight. After college, I once shed 15 pounds in a determined effort during a workplace weight-loss challenge, which stayed off for two years, but I gained it back (and then some) during the intense two years of PA school.

Then, in 2012, within the span of a few weeks, I graduated from PA school, moved to Philadelphia, discovered CrossFit—and suddenly found myself indoctrinated into a whole new way of looking at food. I had the blind good fortune to stumble into a gym where nutrition was prioritized—my new coaches considered it to be the ‘base’ of the athletic pyramid, atop which any movement skills must necessarily rest, and emphasized that it was essential for athletes to understand how to fuel their bodies for their sport. Given that I was in a brand-new city without an established circle of friends, the gym community rapidly became my social network, and their norms and values became my own. Via the multiple free educational seminars and group challenges, my understanding of athletic nutrition—and my awareness of how different it was from the ‘Standard American Diet’ I’d been taught with my medical education—grew by leaps and bounds.

Not only did the science make sense, but my lifestyle had also changed dramatically since living in a true urban environment for the first time. Along with my 6am CrossFit addiction, I was walking to the grocery store, biking to work, and generally avoiding my car at all costs, mostly because it was far more of a hindrance (and an expense!) than a help. With all of the above factors combined, I promptly lost 15 pounds almost without noticing—I literally woke up one day and realized I had a different body than the one I’d entered the city with. Even better, I truly didn’t care about the number on the scale—I cared that I could run a 7:30 mile AND deadlift over 200 pounds, do kipping pull-ups AND confidently swing a 24kg kettlebell. For the first time, I truly understood the tenet of ‘function over form’—and there was an incredible freedom to be found in that.

I’m two-thirds of the way through my fourth Whole30. This means I’m into the familiar ‘maintenance’ phase -- done with the horrible sugar cravings, done wanting to kill all the things, resigned (if still unenthusiastic) about meal prep and cooking -- and am now starting to enter the even-more-familiar anxiety phase: oh geez, what happens when I STOP?

Since I didn’t do a daily post this time, let’s back up a bit. Apologies in advance for what is probably going to be a bit of a lengthy back story.

Background: I’m not a newbie to the W30 endeavor, but this is the first time I’ve tried it in over two years (January 2015 was my third and last one, shortly after moving back to North Carolina -- before that, it was May 2014, and before that, my very first crack at it was in January 2013). In Philadelphia, my CrossFit gym’s underlying philosophy was strongly rooted in nutrition and holistic health, so I had an unusually supportive community for this type of thing. I also lived within walking/biking distance of multiple grocery stores, so food shopping and meal prep were standard parts of my weekend. I easily stayed 100% gluten-free for 2+years (which seems incredible to me now), and ate what was, essentially, a Paleo-based diet with the additions of rice, some cheese, the occasional beans, and a cocktail and/or sweet treat once or twice a week. Life still had its challenges, but overall I felt great, slept well, performed well in the gym, and effortlessly maintained a bodyweight I was happy with.

Fast-forward to moving back to North Carolina in August 2014. From a bird’s-eye view, this was absolutely the right move, and I have no regrets; however, it also meant that every single aspect of my life changed dramatically in one fell swoop. The initial transition wasn’t smooth -- I ended up living out of a suitcase in a friend’s guest room for the first six weeks, had a hard time adjusting emotionally to my new gym, and started a new job that entailed significantly more responsibility than the one I’d had in Philly (as time went on, this would lead to anxiety, insomnia, and migraines). My NC social circle was also inherently different in terms of its priorities; it wasn’t built around a gym, so there were more food-centric events with much less focus on the content of said food. Furthermore, Southern cities generally aren’t constructed to be easily walkable or bikeable; I was thoroughly dependent on my car for transportation, which meant I lost out on the huge amount of daily low-level physical activity that I’d had when I lived in the city. As if all that weren’t enough, I also took on some financial challenges; within the first six months, I had to buy a new car, and at the twelve-month mark, after 13 years of being a serial renter, I chanced across the totally unexpected opportunity to buy a wonderful home. Again, zero regrets; however, the huge array of ‘moving parts’ in my life (and, honestly, my lack of emotional attachment to my new gym community), meant that health, nutrition, and athletic performance slowly started to take a back seat, and I had a slow ‘weight creep’ of 15-20 pounds.

‘Pre-Contemplative’ Phase: Fast-forward again to the two-year mark in NC. I was finally settled in my new home, had gotten accustomed to my extremely tight budget, and had made the decision to switch to a lower-stress job, all of which made a huge difference in my mental state. I had also taken six months off from CrossFit to pursue a different type of training -- what I can best describe as a hybrid of strength + stability + mobility training, using a lot of kettlebells. It was fun and different, the coaching was incredibly solid, and I certainly saw improvements in my posterior chain engagement (my back pain resolved entirely) as well as certain aspects of my overall strength (I added 15 lb to my deadlift, and my ‘usual’ kettlebell swing nowadays is with the 24kg). However, it just didn’t pique my interest in the same way as CrossFit. I continued to show up every morning because I knew it was ‘good for me’ -- I jokingly referred to it as ‘taking my medicine’ -- but it just wasn’t something I genuinely loved. The coach, much to his credit, finally had a conversation with me about this, and we decided together that it was time for me to return to where my heart was. He made a recommendation for a specific gym that proved to be a great fit, and in August 2016, I went back to CrossFit.

I had some ground to make up after so much time away, and while my raw strength improved pretty readily to a level near where I’d been in Philadelphia, my proficiency at the bodyweight movements (pull-ups, sit-ups, toes-to-bar, etc.) still lagged well behind what I’d previously been able to expect of myself. I knew it was due at least in part to the excess bodyweight I was now carrying, but I also knew precisely what changes would be required to tackle it, and the idea was, in a word, daunting. (No more gluten, no more alcohol, no more sugar? ALL THAT MEAL PREP?!?) I halfheartedly tried a few different nutrition and exercise strategies -- intermittent fasting, training for a half marathon, a ketogenic diet -- but nothing really made a difference, primarily because I just wasn’t mentally ready.

Then the 2017 CrossFit Open came around. I was doing the workouts because they were written into our gym’s regular weekly programming, but I wasn’t officially signed up for the Open, with my formal excuse being the fact that I was running an out-of-town half marathon in the fourth week. This was technically true; however, on the inside, I knew that it was also a lie. In years past, CF would have been the priority regardless; I wouldn’t have let anything keep me from an Open workout, race performance be damned. I’d have adjusted my travel plans or dropped in at an out-of-town gym to get the workout done. The REAL reason I was half-assing this year was because I felt like I couldn’t keep up, like I had backslid and then stopped progressing, and I wasn’t mentally ready to face that fact or do anything about it. My struggling ego somehow still felt like I ‘deserved’ to perform well in the gym just for showing up -- but, as in most areas of life, you don’t get to NOT work at something and still expect to excel at it. In my world, athletic performance is inextricably linked to nutrition; maybe some people can crush their metcons while being fueled by Big Macs, but in my personal experience, you don’t get one without the other.

Then, finally, out of the clear blue, Open workout 17.2 was an unexpected turning point. It was absolutely not a workout I was excited about -- far from it; none of the movements were strengths of mine by any stretch. However, I ended up doing it all alone, first thing Friday morning, with my favorite coach -- herself a top-200 regional athlete, someone I trust and respect and who, by this point, knows my individual capabilities. I was more nervous than I had anticipated, but she calmed me down, warmed me up, nudged me into sticking with the RXed division (I was wavering), and coached me through a strategy appropriate to my current level of ability -- a strategy that I was, ultimately, able to execute as planned. As I was gasping on the floor afterward, she told me that RXed had been the right call, and said, “You’d have done the RX without question if the second skill movement [bar muscle-ups, which I can’t do yet] had been, say, snatches -- which means you should do the RX, period.” She was right.

That day, I suddenly started to feel a little of my old CrossFit fire come back. It felt good to treat a physical task as though it truly mattered. It felt good to remember how to develop a strategy, make a plan, and execute that plan. It also felt good to have someone ELSE genuinely invested in me and my performance, even just for a few minutes. I didn’t realize until that morning how much I had missed that. As I walked out of the gym, I realized I finally felt ready to start taking CrossFit performance -- and, therefore, nutrition and overall health -- a little more seriously again.

Day Zero: I started this Whole30 on March 21, the day after I arrived back home from the half marathon. Therefore, day zero (3/20) was grocery shopping day. I stocked up on the basic meat, fish, eggs, greens, bananas, and sweet potatoes, then hit my ‘specialty’ grocery stores for a couple of the more specific ‘compliant’ items that I knew to be vital: Trader Joe’s for nuts, dried fruit, jerky, almond meal, and one particular variety of Italian chicken sausage, then Whole Foods for plantains, pre-spiralized veggie noodles, compliant spice mixes, and a couple of Tessemae’s dressing/marinade flavors. Done and done.

In some ways, I knew these 30 days would be a ‘whole’ lot easier this time around (pun intended!). By now, I already know what foods are compliant and am familiar with which recipes I like to make, so I’ve required basically zero research beyond “where’s the recipe for that awesome spaghetti squash casserole?” or texting a Philly friend to ask “hey, which method of making salmon cakes did we ultimately decide we liked best?” However, in other ways, it’s been a LOT harder this time -- primarily in terms of the support system. I cannot stress enough the importance of community when taking this on. I shanghaied a few friends into tackling it with me via a secret Facebook group, and I’m genuinely not sure I would have stuck it out if not for them. When you’re PMS-ing on day 6 and miserable for want of ice cream, or STARVING on day 11 and trapped (due to an ill-timed flat tire) in the middle of Costco’s free-sample hell, and the end still seems so very far away… well, it’s a heck of a lot easier to cave in if you don’t have that accountability at your fingertips.

One of the biggest challenges was getting back into the required habit of regular meal prep. Pre-Whole30, I had been batch-cooking maybe once a week, and filling in the gaps with protein shakes, various pre-packaged bars, and some prepared foods. I had also fallen WAY off the veggie train (I won’t tell you how many bags of salad greens have rotted away in my fridge over the past year). The first two weeks of Whole30 were a major challenge in this regard; I did the required work in terms of meal prep, but definitely complained about it. I burned out on sweet potatoes and bananas pretty quickly, which meant that I was cooking SOMETHING nearly every single day, which was a major change that I initially really resented; however, most of it was familiar dishes that were also sort of fun to see and taste again. I recreated the ‘5-Ingredient Spaghetti Squash ‘Pizza’ Casserole’ that had been so popular with my Philly crew, made a ton of egg scrambles with various meat/veg ingredients, and invented a ‘W30 Taco Salad’ (just taco-seasoned ground turkey topped with salsa and guac, served over baby spinach). My absolute favorite thing was the Paleo salmon cakes, which I managed to make a lot less labor-intensive by using boneless/skinless canned salmon and canned sweet potato puree. I also discovered a few new items to work into the rotation -- for example, Trader Joe’s has a pre-cooked packet of roasted Brussels sprouts seasoned with just olive oil, salt, and pepper! Although I prefer the taste of my own preparation when I’ve got the time, I appreciated the ease of this option. One of my favorite ‘easy’ meals was Bilinski’s pre-cooked chicken meatballs; the garlic and spinach version is W30-compliant and one package can stretch across three meals, so I would toss them into Tupperware with baby white potatoes and some kind of vegetable (like the aforementioned Brussels sprouts) for a quick ‘heat and eat’ option.

My snacks were mostly bananas with almond butter, baggies of raw almonds and cashews, some dried apricots, Chomps jerky sticks, Whole Foods pre-cut fruit, baby carrots with single-serve guacamole packets, and boxed raisins. Interestingly enough, 100% baking chocolate is technically also Whole30-approved (because it consists of a single ingredient: cocoa mass). Even though it’s super bitter, one tiny piece of that after dinner, melting in my mouth as I drank a mug of sweetly flavorful Bengal Spice tea, coaxed me off a metaphorical cliff on more than one occasion. I still went through a very rough stretch around days 6-10 where, in the late afternoons, I was literally making written lists of all the sugary, carb-y, processed things I desperately wanted to eat (excerpts included my grandma’s macaroni and cheese, The Parlour’s birthday cake ice cream, a Rise fried green tomato biscuit, Trader Joe’s salted brownie bites, my mom’s carrot cake, one of my own coconut-lime rum cocktails, a big warm soft chocolate-chip cookie, a Cowfish All-American cheeseburger roll...), and for a while I was worried that it was just never going to stop being hard, that it was going to be like this for the rest of the month. However, in hindsight, I think there may have been a hormonal component, because one day (not a moment too soon!) it abruptly stopped.

Day 15: Somewhere around the halfway point, everything got easier. The sugar cravings decreased as my taste buds adjusted (and things like mango, sweet potato, and tomato started to taste oddly ‘sweet’ by comparison). Food also just stopped feeling so ‘important’ -- when I was presented with something in which I’d normally have indulged, it was easy to think to myself, “meh, this isn’t the last opportunity I’ll ever have to drink a cocktail,” or “I can get those cookies from the grocery store anytime I choose.” I also largely stopped eating out of boredom or because ‘food X would taste really good’ -- more often, when I was figuring out what to eat for a meal or a snack, the decision just revolved around ‘what needs to be used up before it goes bad?’ or ‘what can I put in my mouth just so that I will STOP FEELING HUNGRY?’.

Most importantly, I finally stopped resenting the meal prep. Rather than a dreaded chore, it had reverted back to being ‘normal’, just another part of my day. I did have to learn to schedule it appropriately -- my current job nets me more time off overall than my last one did, but also has a somewhat irregular schedule, so I have to consciously plan around that in terms of when to do my shopping and cooking to make sure I don’t run out of food during a busy work stretch -- but once I had it figured out, it didn’t feel hard anymore. I just turned on some Netflix in the background and got down to business. I’m not sure I’m ever going to LOVE cooking, but neutrality represents progress.

Day 20 / Sprint to the Finish Line: Those ‘on the outside’ usually think that finishing a Whole30 is cause for celebration. “What’s the first thing you’re going to eat?” they all ask eagerly. The weird thing is, by the time you’ve committed 30 days to living this way (or just 20 days, as today’s case may be), you actually start to feel a strange case of nerves about the end of the program. Almost invariably, you’ve seen SOMETHING (or multiple somethings) improve dramatically -- sleep, mood, skin, body composition, or what have you -- and the anxiety usually stems from the idea of losing all that progress.

One of my own focal points this time was/is body composition. I’m finally having some success in that regard, which is translating into better gym performance -- being a few pounds down means I can string together more pull-ups, have more control during wall walks, was able to drop one abmat from my handstand push-ups, etc. Another side benefit that I didn’t expect, but certainly appreciate, is that my rosacea cleared up a lot; not only did my face get way less puffy, but my skin is practically glowing. I haven’t worn any makeup to work for the past week (!) and I still suddenly look five years younger to myself in the mirror. I’ve heard a lot of people reference this as a side benefit to Whole30, but it is definitely not something I have EVER experienced myself. (On the contrary, I started most of my previous Whole30s with high hopes for improving my skin, and then it just never really happened -- probably because my stress levels were always sky-high, my hormones were therefore consistently whacked-out, and I wasn’t yet using a rosacea-specific face wash. This time I honestly forgot all about my skin, and voila, progress! Go figure.) To be fair, I had definitely also ‘fallen further’ in terms of my baseline diet prior to this challenge than I had prior to any of my previous ones, so that also might be contributing to the difference I’m noticing.

Going Forward: I’ve got ten more days of Whole30, but it’s worth planning ahead. Now that I’ve (finally!) reestablished some good habits, here are some of the more important ones I plan to keep:  -- actually COOKING breakfast on my days off (egg scrambles + meat + veggies are a lot easier than I’d been giving them credit for)  -- keeping a package of salad greens in the fridge to throw into whatever meal I can. (This means shopping at Whole Foods on a more regular basis, because their greens really do seem to stay fresh longer than the competition.)  -- drop the damn protein shakes. I’ve been told before by nutrition experts that these aren’t necessary, even for athletes, unless you’re trying to GAIN weight (which I definitely am not). Although they are super convenient, and SEEM like they fit great into a nutrition plan when the macros are counted up, the anecdotal evidence for my individual body and life definitely supports the fact that I do tend to gain weight during periods of drinking shakes. This might not be true for everyone, but for me, the perceived convenience isn’t worth it.  -- black coffee (which I like just fine, but had somehow slipped into the unnecessary habit of getting a latte as a ‘treat’ roughly twice a week)  -- avoiding pre-packaged snack foods that have more fake ingredients than real ones. I still believe these foods can serve a purpose, especially in a busy life with long work hours, but there’s a definite chemical difference between an RX bar (egg whites, almonds, dates) and a Costco chocolate-covered granola bar (hydrolyzed soy protein, canola oil, etc.).  -- eating dried or pre-cut fruit as part of a snack or (even better) as my end-of-meal ‘dessert’. For some reason, even as a child, I just never really liked fruit much, but the older I get, the more it’s growing on me -- I’m really digging the fresh kiwi/berries from Whole Foods and the dried apricots from Trader Joe’s).  -- returning to being strictly gluten-free in terms of what I prepare at home. Besides the protein shakes, this is probably going to be the biggest game-changer. As above, I was totally gluten-free for the two years that I lived in Philly, primarily because I had a strong nutrition community who supported that. That same support system does not exist for me down here, so I have no illusions that I’m going to be able to stay 100% GF, especially not in social situations -- nor do I really ‘need’ to, honestly, because I don’t have a medical intolerance to gluten. What I DO have is a lack of ‘brakes’ when it comes to foods that are based primarily on grains; not only do I never feel full, but if I eat them regularly, I gradually require larger and larger amounts of these foods to satisfy me -- almost like a drug. However, food is also an important part of our human social universe. So when I’m on a trip to Cuba (in 13 days!) or when my sister and brother-in-law make our grandmother’s famous Southern macaroni and cheese, I don’t have to abstain. However, I also don’t need to be filling my own personal pantry with bread and cereal when (1) I KNOW these things don’t affect me in a positive way, and (2) there are so many other (MUCH more nutrient-dense) things I could be eating instead.  Mantra: “this is not the last opportunity you will ever have to eat _______.”

On the other hand… Stuff I Can’t Wait to Reintroduce:  -- rice. I don’t tend to crack out on this the same way I do on bread products, and it works well as a ‘base’ for meats and veggies. It helps to think of it as a ‘starch bolus’ -- when I’m CrossFitting 5-6 days a week and avoiding gluten, I generally do need the extra carbohydrates from rice in order to feel strong in the gym. (The alternative is eating like four sweet potatoes or bananas every day, which gets reeeeeal old reeeeeal fast.)  -- beans. Legumes are not Whole30-approved because they have components that can easily mess with some people’s digestion. I’ve always done okay with them in moderate amounts, and I really like adding them to burrito bowls and so forth for a little extra bulk and flavor. Chickpeas are also in this category, and I love me some hummus.  -- CHEESE. ‘Nough said. Again, not Whole30-approved because a lot of folks have issues with dairy. I was a daily milk drinker until my late twenties, and am fortunate enough that I really don’t seem to be sensitive to dairy at all. Nowadays I do tend to drink almond milk because it’s higher in calcium and (practically speaking) lasts a LOT longer in the fridge in this single girl’s house as compared to regular cow’s milk -- but I am really looking forward to adding some goat cheese into a spinach and sundried tomato omelet.  -- Halo Top ice cream. Confession: I have had three pints of this stuff in my freezer since Day Zero (because during my initial shopping trip I stumbled across it at Target, where I had never seen it carried before, AND it was on sale). I don’t feel super guilty about this because it’s made with mostly ‘whole’ ingredients, is high in protein, and quite low-calorie (240-360 cal per PINT). The challenge will be keeping it in MODERATION -- I don’t need to eat it every day, and I definitely don’t need to kill the pint every time I indulge.  -- RX bars. These are made from mostly ‘whole food’ ingredients (egg whites, almonds, coconut, etc.), but I’ve been off them for these 20 days because every flavor seems to contain one little ‘borderline’ thing (i.e. cacao or ‘natural coconut flavor’) -- not to mention, ‘bars’ are one of the habits we’re supposed to try to break on Whole30, even if they’re made from 100% compliant ingredients. I understand the concept, but these are just so convenient for late workdays! My weekday shifts (of which I only have 2-3 per week) are long; I’m at work until 7:30pm and getting home around 8pm. Since I’m in bed at 9 (because of my early-morning gym habit), I don’t like to eat a huge dinner when I get home. The solution that seems to work best on these days is to have a bit larger breakfast and lunch, then nibble an RX bar for ‘dinner’ around 5-6pm in between patients.  -- the occasional cocktail. I’m not one of those people who ‘needs’ a daily after-work indulgence or a post-dinner aperitif -- I can go weeks without a drink and not feel terribly deprived -- but I definitely enjoy a good craft cocktail when out with friends or when hosting people in my home. I’m excited to add this back in mostly because it means my social life will be taking an upward turn -- I have been SUPER boring for the past three weeks. :-)

If you’ve read this far, I’m really impressed. Brevity is not my strong suit, and especially not when describing an up-and-down physical, mental, AND emotional journey of several years’ duration. The bottom line is that I feel very lucky to have finally rediscovered so many healthy habits, and to be seeing corresponding progress both on the scale and in the gym. I finally feel like I ‘recognize’ the person in the mirror again, in an invisible as well as physical sense. This has been a tumultuous couple of years, and to be entering a period of relative calm and stability is MORE than welcome. I’m still a little anxious about what may happen in ten days (especially since I have a 9-day international trip starting literally two days after the W30 ends!)... but on a gut level, I feel like I’m going to be okay. It took a long time to fall as far as I did, and it will take some more time for these new patterns to be fully cemented, but I’ve been here before; I have a road map, and I know how to do this.

I did not throw away my shot. I was willing to wait for it. ...And I got into THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENS!!!

This weekend I was in New York for a few days in order to run the NYC Half Marathon this past Sunday. I’m from NC, and although (like so many of us nowadays) I know every single word to the soundtrack, I had yet to actually see the show. The one day of my trip where it worked out for me to try the cancellation line was Friday 3/17 (also St. Patrick’s Day... luck of the Irish?).

Part One: The Line

I got there at 6am (in 26-degree weather), thinking hopefully that I might actually be first -- and was a little disappointed to discover that there were no fewer than SIX professional line-sitters already there, who had all arrived between 4 and 5 AM. However, that crew ultimately turned out to be super friendly; chatting with them made the hours go by MUCH faster. (They were also exceptionally well-prepared for the cold, so making friends with them was a good idea -- one of them lent me his sleeping bag for a little while when he went to get something to eat, which was definitely the most comfortable chunk of time I spent in the line!)

The six line-sitters needed a total of 9 tickets, though they warned me it might be as many as 12 if we were made to wait until the last minute prior to curtain (because then they’d have to go in as their clients’ plus-ones). I was the first non-line-sitter, so I would get ticket #10 if all went well. Another girl showed up at 6:30am and got in line behind me (#11). There was a long gap after that. Another woman came by around 9:45 and asked us about standing-room-only (SRO) tickets; we of course had no idea, so she went into the box office at 10am when they opened, then left shortly thereafter without coming back to the line, so nobody found out what was said.

The six line-sitters had one another’s backs, of course, and they were constantly swapping in and out of line to go warm up, use the bathroom, get food, and so forth. I was grateful for the presence of the girl behind me, so that I had a ‘buddy’ to swap with also. The weather was EXTREMELY cold (and we were under the overhang, so no sunshine) and despite long down coats, gloves, hats, scarves, two pairs of socks, and foot warmers, we literally could not feel our feet for most of the ten hours we waited there. For the first hour or so until the sun came up, I really questioned whether I could stick it out all day long, because I was already going through periods of violent, uncontrollable, teeth-chattering shivers (while casting envious glances toward the cozy sleeping bags of the line-sitters). Hot coffee proved to be the best antidote -- I think I went to Starbucks three separate times in those ten hours. :-) The Marriott Marquis is right next door (with a Starbucks on the ground level) and they are very tolerant of the cancellation line folks' comings and goings as long as you're not obnoxious about it. There was some kind of medical conference happening on this particular day, so the third-floor bathroom doors were propped open, which was convenient (normally you’d have to go all the way up to the business center on the 8th floor).

A mom and her grown daughter showed up and joined the line around 10:30am (they had gotten there at 4pm the previous day, had been #15-16 in line, and had not gotten in, so they were a little put out to realize that they were still numbers 12 and 13 for tickets even now -- but they ultimately did stick around after debating about it for the better part of an hour). Then another super nice mom and her young son got there around 11. The little boy was a big fan and had begged his mom to “just walk by the theater!” They were not dressed for a long wait in the freezing cold, and after talking with all of us and doing some mental math, they actually decided to hire the line-sitters for the following day rather than wait in line with us. (I bet their company gets a ton of business that way!)

Someone came out and offered premium tickets ($750) around noon or 1pm, which nobody took. Then the line started to get longer in the early afternoon; I’d estimate that there were 16-18 people there by the time the line-sitters were called in, which was around 3pm. They all got their tickets, all of which were second-row unclaimed lottery seats ($199); the online lottery had closed at 1pm, and the window for the winners to claim the tickets therefore ended at 2pm, which I think is why the action started around 3.

The rest of the line (about a dozen of us) got really excited when the line-sitters’ tickets were passed out; we were all up on our feet after that, alert for any sort of continued action in the lobby. But once the line-sitting group left, there was a lull. I had overheard one of the sitters (on the phone with his boss) say that when he was inside, he had heard the ticket seller say they were releasing 10 lottery seats, but the long lag after the line-sitters’ departure made me think he must’ve gotten it wrong. Those of us left in line therefore decided that that was probably it for the unclaimed lottery seats and the rest would probably be true ‘cancellation’ seats, the ones in the general vicinity of rows 6-10 that they usually give out just a few minutes before curtain. Yet somehow none of us sat back down. Four more hours felt like nothing compared to what we’d already endured -- heck, the temperature had risen to 35 whole degrees; we were feeling great! :-)

Another hour ticked by. There was a guy in an A.Ham baseball cap pacing the lobby and occasionally coming outside or looking out at us, so when he opened the door to let somebody out, I approached him, put on my best smile, and said, “I’m in no rush, I’m happy to stand here all the way til curtain -- but since I’m first in line and I’m all by myself, I just wanted to ask whether I have time to run next door to the bathroom, or whether you think there’s going to be any more action in the next ten minutes?” I was doing this for two reasons: first because I really did have to pee, and second because I wanted him to know that I was a single ticket, not a pair -- just in case there really was a tenth seat left in that second row. He smiled and said he would let the box office know that he had let me go to the restroom. I made it back in record time, caught his eye through the glass, and gave him a thumbs-up. Not even three minutes later, he came back out the door and said, “You just need one?” I breathlessly said, “Yes.” (OHMYGOD OHMYGOD) “And YOU just need one?” he asked the girl behind me. When she also said yes, he said “Okay”... and held the door open so we could come inside!

I literally danced into the lobby, punching the air and chanting “YES, YES, YES!” (It was either that or burst into tears!) And then, wonder of wonders, I was handed a SECOND-ROW TICKET -- the tenth and final unclaimed lottery seat (the girl behind me was inexplicably given a seat in the lower mezzanine). Not only was I FINALLY going to see Hamilton, but this was EXACTLY where I had hoped to sit. I truly think I would have kissed the ticket-seller if there hadn’t been glass between us!

Ultimately, I think close to 20 tickets must have been given out; the last people in line at 4:15pm (when I got my ticket and left) were a mom and her 16yo daughter from Texas, both celebrating their birthdays that weekend, who literally came straight from the plane to the theater, arrived around 4pm, and (happily) managed to get tickets! Compared to everyone else’s arrival times, it would have been easy for me to regret getting there so early and sitting in the cold for so long -- I definitely still would have gotten in if I had arrived a lot later -- but I actually felt really validated, because I got exactly the seat I wanted, and the way the chips fell on this particular day, I wouldn’t have gotten into the second row if I had arrived even just 30 minutes later than I did.

In conclusion: the cancellation line was WORTH EVERY SINGLE MINUTE. I would do it again in a heartbeat. Although the temperature was pretty miserable (which might be part of why the line wasn’t quite as busy that Friday as it sounds like it was on Saturday), it still truly did not feel like ten hours (and there was definitely some exceptionally interesting people-watching that day, it being St. Patrick’s Day and all -- LOL). I read a few chapters of a book when I first arrived, but after that, I honestly spent most of the time talking to others in line! The waiting in and of itself was part of the experience -- in an odd way, it felt like I was ‘earning’ the ticket -- and the whole day was one that I’ll never forget.

Part Two: The Show!

At 7:30, I walked into ‘the room where it happens’. I took a playbill (handling it VERY carefully; I knew I’d want to frame it later), advanced a few steps further into the theater -- and just sort of stood there in the aisle, blinking numbly at the stage with my mouth hanging open. Even though I’d been waiting LITERALLY all day for this, it somehow still hadn’t sunk in that I was ACTUALLY THERE, ACTUALLY GOING TO SEE HAMILTON, until that moment.

I felt tears welling up -- but was snapped out of my trance by a girl next to me, who walked in and had exactly the external reaction that I was having internally -- she stopped in her tracks, stared at the stage, clutched her hands to her heart, and squealed. I grinned at her. “I know. Me too,” I said. We just looked at each other for a second, speechlessly shaking our heads and grinning like idiots.

I found my way to the second row (!) and took a few photos of the stage. I wasn’t too starstruck to note how lucky I was to be sitting on an aisle -- the Richard Rodgers notoriously has horrible lines for intermission bathroom breaks, and with this position, I’d be able to jump up and sprint. (This was crucial, because I was already thinking ahead to securing a good stagedoor position, and so definitely didn’t want to have to pee AFTER the show.) Once in my seat, I flipped open my playbill and scoped out the performers -- and was further thrilled to discover that Andrew Chappelle, a swing actor whom I follow on social media, just happened to be on as Lafayette/Jefferson! This was a fantastic surprise; until that moment, it hadn’t even occurred to me that I might get to see him. Could this night get any better?!?

A mother and daughter came and sat down next to me; I didn’t recognize them from the line, and when we started talking, I found out that was because they’d hired two of my line-sitter buddies to get them there! It was fun telling them about what the line had been like, and how awesome their ‘representatives’ had been. Our conversation was promptly cut off when… the house lights went down, and we were underway!

At those first familiar notes, I was promptly in tears. I can’t describe how it felt to actually SEE the faces, gestures, and staging that I had imagined in my head so many times! Some of it fit what I had envisioned; a lot of it didn’t, but that was precisely where the magic was. I could see every single detail of the actors’ expressions, costumes, and body language, right down to the (distinctly 21st-century) Band-Aid on one actor’s finger. It took me halfway through the second number to stop crying -- around the point where I shifted from disbelief to awe, realizing that Brandon Victor Dixon as Aaron Burr was an utter masterpiece. For me he brought the character absolutely seamlessly from soundtrack to stage; it just 'felt right' from the very beginning. All the subtle changes Brandon made to Burr in terms of his tone and inflection conveyed exactly the man in my imagination, while simultaneously giving the character a third dimension. To me, his portrayal felt like a key in a lock.

By contrast -- because I’d never actually SEEN the performance before -- I had no idea King George was quite so HILARIOUS in person! Taran Killam nearly stole the show. He was only onstage for a combined total of eight or nine minutes (which is a running joke in the Hamilton universe, that such a significant character gets so quantitatively little stage time) -- but he was so utterly hysterical during his brief appearances that the entire audience consistently burst into laughter at the mere sight of him, before he even opened his mouth. This is another character who definitely takes on an added dimension when he is visible on stage as well as audible; I had admittedly never reveled in the King's songs all that much on the soundtrack (at least not by comparison to the rest), just because it's difficult to imagine what, if anything, might actually be happening while he's speaking – but in a live theater, each of Taran's all-too-brief segments was a true highlight of the entire show. I'm listening to those tracks differently now, because I’m STILL laughing aloud when I think back on Taran’s body language!

It almost goes without saying that Jevon McFarrin (the actor playing Hamilton, who was on because Javier Muñoz was injured) was absolutely superb. He found a lot of little mischievous facets to the character in the first act, tiny things I hadn't ever pictured; I honestly couldn’t take my eyes off him. One of my favorites was when Angelica is reading her flirtatious letter aloud: "with a comma after Dearest / you've written My Dearest, Angelica. / It changed the meaning / did you intend this?" Jevon silently reads along with her, moving his lips, with a small smile -- and then NODS HIS HEAD YES when they reach that question! Loved that nuance. Andrew Chappelle as Lafayette in the first act was similarly impressive; his French accent was absolutely perfect -- I’ll make a bold claim here and venture to say he was BETTER than the soundtrack -- no small feat!

Another Act I observation was that this was quite possibly the most INTENSE show I’d ever seen. There were multiple numbers (“My Shot,” “Yorktown,” etc.) where the energy among the ensemble was so ferocious that my instinct was to jump out of my seat and give a standing ovation, because it felt like the type of power that you associate with the END of a performance -- but these guys somehow kept returning to that place all throughout the show. It was utterly breathtaking, and the full-throttle audience engagement pushed the energy even higher. So many people know the show by heart at this point that nearly every actor got entrance applause, and everyone was laughing, clapping, catcalling, and cheering at all the right places. I'm sure this wasn’t unusual for the cast, since most Hamilton audiences are probably on the same wavelength by this point in the show’s existence, but for me as a theatergoer, this was unique compared to any other show I've ever seen. I often feel like I'm "leading the charge" in a theater audience (in terms of my reactions dictating those of other people), but this time there was so much enthusiastic involvement on all sides of me that I could react however I wanted in any given moment without being self-conscious.

Usually during a show, there’s a part of my brain still keeping track of real life (how long until intermission? what kind of pulley mechanism do they have on that prop? is the girl next to me crying too?) but this time I was completely wrapped up in the action, mesmerized, entranced, totally lost in it all. When intermission arrived, I was honestly shocked; I would have sworn I’d only been in the theater for about ten minutes. I felt the same way during Act II; the only time I cast a single thought to the clock was during “Your Obedient Servant,” when I felt a sharp stab of dread at the realization that the performance was, inevitably, going to end.

Act II was just as delightful as the first half; Andrew Chappelle reappeared, this time as Jefferson, and I loved the sassy, slightly effeminate nuance he added to that character. In contrast to Brandon as Burr, who felt beautifully familiar from the start, exactly the way I’d pictured him, Andrew’s Jefferson was so markedly DIFFERENT from how I’d pictured him that I couldn’t look away from either one. Both portrayals were brilliant, made all the more so by the actors’ contrasting approaches. I am not a performer by any stretch of the imagination, but I know this particular story and soundtrack so well that watching this performance, observing all the miniscule decisions that each actor made, truly gave me a new respect for the necessary level of effort and detail-oriented insight involved in crafting a character for the stage. It was thoroughly humbling to behold.

I can’t count the number of times I cried during those three hours, for one reason or another -- but another of the most memorable moments was during “It’s Quiet Uptown.” I was close enough to see every gulp and grimace, and this is where Jevon really sold me -- because he had real tears streaming down his face by the end of the song! That wholly genuine response pushed me over the edge; I can’t remember the last time I saw a male actor cry. I was simultaneously devastated and awestruck; I didn’t realize until the end of the scene that I had my hand over my heart. I wasn’t alone, either; as the music faded, I could hear quiet sniffling from every corner of the room.

My only full-on ugly-cry was at the very end, during the Burr-Hamilton duel and Eliza’s final monologue. Somehow I always just want it to turn out differently, and then I melt down all over again each time it doesn't. It simultaneously thrills and crushes me to remember that these were REAL people, that this is a REAL story. I had visited Hamilton and Eliza’s gravesites at Trinity Church on Thursday when I arrived in the city, and I felt the same shivery tears there, knowing that I was so very close to what remained of the physical selves of these incredible people -- individuals that I now feel like I know so intimately.

It was ‘Broadway Cares’ season, so we got a brief curtain speech at the end of the show, which included a sidelong political joke about how this fundraising would also support Meals on Wheels (this was the week when it hit the news that Trump might pull funding from that organization). Afterward, I zipped out to the stagedoor and, after some subtle finagling, wiggled my way to the front of the barricades. Not everybody came out (I was really hoping to see Taran, but no dice); however, Andrew did (I got the chance to tell him how lucky I felt to have gotten to see him, and that I love his social media persona), and Jevon did, too. He was definitely the highlight; I thanked him for signing my playbill, then said "I've been here since 6am; I waited all day, and I feel so incredibly lucky to have seen you!" He grinned and gave me a high-five, then stopped, looked at me a little more closely, and said, "Wait, where were you sitting?" I grinned a little sheepishly and said, "Yeah, second row." He laughed and said, "You cheered SO LOUD for Meals on Wheels! I was like, 'new favorite person'!" He gave me a big hug. My friend Mike, whom I met in the stage door crowd, got a couple of candid pictures of this interaction. :-)

I think you can sum it up based on my final stagedoor interaction, which was with Anthony Lee Medina (who plays John Laurens / Philip Hamilton). As he was signing my playbill, I thanked him and told him, "That was just about the most fun I've ever had." He looked up at me, grinned, and said, "You too, huh?"

...Yeah. Me too.