Refuse To Regain

Novak Djokovic: The Diet That Conquered Tennis

by Barbara Berkeley, MD

For those of you who don't spend your days watching Tennis Channel, let me bring you up to date.  

Since the current professional men's season began last year, Serbian tennis phenom Novak Djokovic has dominated his sport in a way that is nothing short of astounding.  He has won 64 matches (including last week's U.S. Open) and lost only 2 and has ascended to the number one spot in the world  (view Djokovic's website here)  What makes this so incredible?  He's done it in the very midst of the dominant era of unbeatable superstars Rafa Nadal and Roger Federer.  Federer and Nadal have controlled the two top rankings in tennis since 2005 and, until recently, Rafa appeared poised to claim his spot as one of the greatest ever as he took over from a slightly slower 30 year old Federer.        

Before this season began, Djokovic sat in the number three spot.  His tennis was strong and sharp, but he often struggled with breathing problems, what seemed to be an episodic de-conditioning, and a mental attitude that made him prone to frustration and breaking things. 

That Djokovic could so completely turn things around in one short season is mind-blowing.  Sports writers chalk this up to a new confidence, a stronger serve, and a better mental game.  Less frequently discussed is another intriguing factor:  before this season began, Novak Djokovic gave up carbohydrates.

A piece written in May for the Wall Street Journal (see previous link) mentioned the diet change in its title, but gave it short shrift when discussing possible reasons for Djokovic’s near-miraculous improvement.  Surely the change must have occurred because he gained confidence.  Surely the dietary contribution is nothing more than a placebo.  

The article quotes David Levinksy, a nutrition professor from Cornell: 

Levitsky said a gluten-free diet might have benefits for those with mild allergies, or even no allergy at all. "The other part of the story is, if you believe in a cause of your disorder, it becomes the cause," he said. "We see this in many different studies. If you believe it, you change your behavior in the direction of being cured."

This explanation seems odd, considering that it appears in an article entitled, “Starch Madness: Novak Djokovic’s Domination of the Sport Has Coincided with His Gluten-Free Turn”.   It’s as if the writer posed the question, but didn’t dare go after the answer.  Is it possible that, in fact, cutting out carbohydrates made Djokovic into a better athlete?  Is it possible that everything we've believed about the importance of loading our muscles with tons of starches is untrue?  Is it possible that we can play endlessly taxing endurance sports without jamming ourselves full of pasta and potatoes?  And is it possible that we might be better off for it?

It seems that world number 4 Andy Murray thought so.  He has adopted the Djokovic diet.  How much do you want to bet that others follow.  By the way, Murray just became the second person to beat Djokovic this year (although Djokovic did have a shoulder injury and was forced to withdraw after a set).  Commentators for the match remarked repeatedly about Murray’s fitness and ability to move around the court.  Coincidence?

I have held a consistent view on diet and it is a view that I believe holds up when one examines Djokovic’s transformation.  Rather than worry about individual dietary elements, we should attempt to eat foods that are most like the ones are bodies understand genetically.  Since our genes are thousands of generations old, we need to look at the foods that were prevalent in those times:  lean proteins, fats that come from natural sources (and thus have higher omega 3-6 ratios), vegetable and fruit matter, seafood, nuts and other naturally occurring plant foods.  Sugars and starches (including grain) were not a part of that original diet and are processed poorly or even cause overt harm in those of us who are more “original” genetically.  In addition, our body has certain fuel expectations.  Large amounts of carbohydrates as fuel seem to me to be inconsistent with what our body was fine-tuned to expect.  

In my own practice I treat many tennis players and runners who are significantly overweight despite many hours of intense exercise.  When they change their diet to one that is primarily Primarian, they not only lose weight but they become more efficient at their sports.  For those who are interested in pursuing very taxing endurance exercise like triathalons or marathons, I suggest reading the book Paleo Diet for Athletes by Loren Cordain and Joe Friel. This addresses the particular needs of those who require some additional carbohydrate when training for specific endurance events. 

In my own life, I attribute the ability of my 63 year old body to run a 5K, play hours of tennis, and do aerobic exercise at high capacity to the right mix of fuels.  I have no doubt in my mind that it is Primarian eating, and not placebo, that has kept me lean and strong. 

Dietary beliefs die hard and unfortunately, our unwillingness to give up the conventional wisdom leads to real death, the death of those who develop diabetes, heart disease and cancer as a result of the profligate consumption of insulin stimulating carbohydrates.

Is the Djokovic diet phenomenon real?  You bet it is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exercise and Weight Loss: The Conversation Goes On

By Barbara Berkeley

For native New Yorkers there is a certain imperative that comes along with the weekend: that would be reading the Sunday “New York Times.” When Don and I moved to Cleveland in 1987, my first question was whether I could get the “Times” delivered. Fool that I was, it seemed to me at the time that I was relocating to a vast wasteland where contact with civilization (read Manhattan) was not guaranteed.

Although we’ve become inveterate Clevelanders (Go Cavs!), certain habits die hard. The “Times” is one of those. So, for the past 23 years, our intrepid delivery guy has been tossing the paper in that perfect spot at the base of the garage door.

My first stop in the Sunday paper is the magazine section. My mother is a crossword fanatic and has always shamed the entire family by completing the Sunday “Times” puzzle with lightening speed. She still does this (and just as fast) at age 91. If you want proof of the brain-enhancing effects of mental gymnastics, look no farther than my Mom. When my sister and I entered our late 20s, we decided that we had better carry on this family tradition. All three of us do the Sunday puzzle, occasionally calling each other for consultations here or there.

This morning’s magazine section, however, diverted me from my intense pursuit of across and down. Today, the “Times” decided to devote its magazine to Wellness. I couldn’t resist dipping into the cornucopia of articles. I soon was scribbling notes all over the pages, a sure sign that I was headed toward a blog post.

You can read all of the Wellness articles in the Magazine by logging onto the “New York Times” website and scrolling down to Magazine. I may write about some of the other topics in future posts, but today I want to focus on the excellent article detailing recent research into exercise and weight loss. 

I call this article excellent, of course, because it supports my beliefs on the subject. Where exercise, diet and health are concerned, we should be honest and say that – if we look hard enough – we can find research evidence that supports almost any position. In my case, the beliefs I hold come from what I’ve observed in more than 15 years of working with dieters. Thus, I am thrilled when reasonable science confirms what I’ve seen in practice and I’m suspicious of results that say that something I have never observed clinically is bound to be true.

This is an article that confirms the belief that exercise is weak for weight loss and strong for maintenance. Since I’ve been pilloried on the Internet in the past for saying that exercise doesn’t cause weight loss, I’d like to begin by clarifying my position at bit:

1. I am an exercise fanatic and believe in the vital importance of physical activity. I would advise everyone to exercise, both during weight loss and thereafter. Nevertheless, we need to be realistic about one particular property of exercise. In and of itself, it can’t be relied upon as an effective tool for weight reduction.

2. The potency of exercise as a weight loss aid may have a lot to do with amount. It’s obviously true that someone who is running marathons will lose weight if they don’t compensate with extra calories. But how many of us are marathoners?

3. Who you are may also matter. Youngish men appear to get more loss from exercise than others.
The “Times” article had a quote that made me go into fist-pumping mode. “In general,” says Eric Ravussin, a professor at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana and an ‘expert on weight loss’, “exercise by itself is pretty useless for weight loss.” The article sums it up this way: “The newest science suggests that exercise alone will not make you thin, but it may determine whether you stay thin.”

With the understanding that there may be some exceptions to this rule, I couldn’t agree more. I often use a particular slide when I give talks about weight loss. It looks at multiple complete studies which compared weight loss via diet alone with weight loss via a combination of diet and exercise. In nearly every case, the addition of exercise did not cause additional weight loss. In some studies, those who did not exercise did better than those who did. This might reflect a phenomenon that I often see clinically, the tendency to eat more when one is exercising. In some people, this may come simply from the mistaken belief that exercise gives them a free pass. But the “Times” article suggests a more intriguing explanation. It references a study in which exercise caused increased hunger hormones in women (not in men). So we might conclude that women are sometimes made hungrier by the act of exercising itself.

Other studies have shown that young men might have their appetite blunted by working out. This data would also support what I see clinically. Most of my patients are women. In general, men lose weight faster and seem to get a greater benefit from exercise than women do. This leads me to the following recommendation: Do whatever you can exercise-wise that allows you to follow your chosen diet plan without deviation. Keeping calories low is paramount for weight loss, so if exercise is derailing you, you are likely doing too much of it. As I’ll talk about in a moment, exercise becomes much more vital in the maintenance phase. Imagine the exercise portion of your weight loss period as a lead-in, a kind of practice, for maintenance.

This brings up an interesting question. Why should exercise have a stronger impact on maintenance than on weight loss? After thinking about this all weekend, I had a Eureka! moment. We always say that weight loss and weight maintenance are two different things, but what we usually mean by this is that they take two different types of psychological focus. We’re probably not going far enough. It occurred to me this weekend that weight loss and weight maintenance REALLY ARE two completely different things. They seem to be continuums of one another because they are controlled by the same levers, diet and exercise. But they’re not.

As I’ve said before, weight loss is all about forcing your body to do something it is not genetically comfortable with: giving up stored fat. The body behaves as if it’s ignoring that fat, working with whatever you give it to eat and adjusting to those ingested calories, no matter how low. Exercise doesn’t appear to change that equation much. It is only when you consistently convince the body that the food shortage is serious enough that it must burn fat that it will open up its fat flood gates.

Maintenance, on the other hand, is about energy storage, not fat breakdown. Now we are dealing with an entirely different system, the one I’ve called the IBM (Intake Balance Mechanism) . NOWs have a smoothly oiled auto-balance or IBM. This bodily system sends food either to be burned or to be stored. In NOWs, the system makes the correct decision no matter how many calories or how much exercise is added in. POWs gained weight when their auto-balance gets stuck on “store”. For the POW, daily exercise appears to unjam this broken system, giving it a chance to run again. POWs will remain vulnerable, but will be vastly aided by exercise.

The “Times” article talks about an animal study that supports this view. After a group of rats that carried a genetic tendency to gain weight were purposely fattened, they were then dieted. Once they had lost weight, they were put on a maintenance diet and assigned to either run on a treadmill or remain sedentary. After eight weeks, they were allowed to eat at will. Sedentary rats ate heartily and regained their weight. “But the exercising rats metabolized calories differently. They tended to burn fat immediately after meals, while the sedentary rats’ bodies preferentially burned carbohydrates and sent the fat off to be stored in fat cells.” In other words, exercising animals burned rather than stored. Their auto-balance was restored, at least temporarily. We might conclude from this study that exercise oils the auto-balance enough to get us past periodic periods of diet indiscretion. I believe that’s true. But I’ve seen enough regain in 20 years to know that it takes only a moment for the levers to jam again and for fat to start accumulating. Thus, exercise, controlled intake, and proper food choice must be on the menu 80-90% of the time.

Well, I’ve gone on and on…as I always do…on this topic. There were other interesting tidbits in the “Times” this weekend. More on those in the next post.

All Or Nothing…Or Something In Between

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering

Here’s how I wake up most days: Sit up, move the neck in a circle (crack, crunch), twist the lower back side to side (crack, crunch), stretch my feet (cramp!), stretch my arms over my head (oh THAT’S where that rotator cuff tear is!), and ask, “How do I feel today?”

My workout clothes are usually laid out on the dresser – optimistic leftovers from the night before. I gather them and my Blackberry – which laid obediently on my nightstand all night – and walk downstairs to the office and turn on my computer.

I sit down at my desk and think about my workout intention for the day. I have a plan. I always have a plan. It’s carefully laid out, minute by minute, on an Excel spreadsheet. But my plan doesn’t take into account a swollen knee or tendonitis that sprouted up overnight, or the plain old restlessness of busy mind, which is the worst for my exercise plans. I can’t take Advil to relieve restlessness.

There are countless times I’ve felt some pinch of pain and decided not to do a work out, or have gotten on the elliptical only to be 10 minutes into my workout and unable to continue because my mind says, “You MUST do this or that or the other thing you planned!” Sometimes these are legitimate excuses, but I confess that many times they are not.

Sure there are days when the physical takes precedence over the need to exercise. Pain and inflammation is real and I take it seriously. But in every instance I have to honestly assess if it’s real pain or my head making excuses for not wanting to work out. Damn arthritis. It’s a double-edged sword. There are days, no doubt, when arthritis pain SHOULD prevent us from working out. But there are many more days, I would argue, when moving (within moderation) would be of more benefit than the heating pad.

Most days, when I move I feel better. Trying to convince my brain of that before a workout is 99 percent of the battle, however. So I’ve developed a new strategy: instead of doing all or nothing of what I’ve planned on my nifty spreadsheet, I do a little. I try five minutes at a slow, easy pace. If that feels good, then I up it a bit. Staying mindful, I adjust accordingly. What a change from the days of, “My schedule says I HAVE to do 30 minutes at high intensity today!” and when I couldn’t, I’d feel guilty. Now, I do whatever intensity my body says I can do on any given day, despite what the spreadsheet says.

The same is true with restlessness, only with a twist. When I’m restless, there’s no “excuse” to not do a full workout. My new strategy with restlessness is that instead of seeing it as an enemy, I try to be friendly and compassionate. I can only concentrate for 10 minutes on the cardio? No problem. After 10 minutes, I do a strength training circuit then return to the cardio for another five or 10 minutes. What I’ve found is that not only does this break up the workout, it demands more concentration, thus disrupting that restlessness, at least for an hour or so.

In many ways I’m still an all or nothing kind of person. But I realized there is middle ground between pain/restlessness and doing nothing and doing everything just because it’s part of the plan. Just one more thing that amazes me in this world of maintenance.

The Wind Beneath My Bike Pedals and Hiking Boots

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering

As you know – and why Barbara and I write this blog – it’s not easy finding people who can relate to weight maintenance. Like many of you, I’m more than familiar with reaching goal. I’ve done that dozens of times in my life! But I’ve always been a big rubber ball, bouncing back up the scale the minute I hit that magic number. “I can eat again!” was always my mantra.

Why this time at goal is different has many aspects, but one of the most important reasons is that maintenance inspiration is right here in my own house. My husband is maintaining a 22-pound loss since July 2005, and has introduced me to a way of life I never aspired to: fitness. 

Larry’s story is a familiar one. Thin – as in really thin – in high school and college, he gained more than 20 pounds when he went to graduate school. He says it was a change in metabolism, but he also had quit smoking and wasn’t as active as he’d been before. At 23, he took up running (a little known sport at the time) and Purdue had an indoor track (which saved him from freezing to death during the winter). Within a year, he was an avid runner. It was his legs that first attracted me to him in 1996. I’d known him for several years, but didn’t realize he was hiding such bodacious legs under his professor style Land’s End khakis until he ran past my apartment one afternoon. “Damn…he looks good!” I thought as I watched him until he turned the corner.

Fast forward several years.

A study in the New England Journal of Medicine  found that our risk of obesity increases 37 percent if our spouses are overweight, 57 if our friends are overweight friends and 40 percent if our siblings are overweight. I don’t know if any of my friends or siblings can “blame” me for being overweight, but Larry certainly could. As my weight increased by leaps and bounds from 1999 to 2004, his crept up, too. Much more slowly, but an increase nonetheless. By the time I began losing weight in January 2005, I’d gained more than 100 pounds and he’d gained 25.

Bending over was tough, he said, because he could feel the weight in his mid-section. He went from a 31-inch to 34-inch waist. Unbeknownst to me, he declared his gain “ridiculous” at the same time I started losing weight. We never talked about my weight and I didn’t share with him that I was losing weight until I’d lost 15 pounds (which, starting at nearly 300 pounds, wasn’t noticeable). When he “confessed” that he wanted to lose weight, too, he started eating like me.

Six months later, he was down 22 pounds and back into 31-inch jeans.

Larry and I had a few things in common, but no real uniting or consuming interest. Losing weight together brought us closer and eventually we turned into the one thing I never envisioned myself to be a partner to. We became a “fit couple.”

Before 2007 (well after I’d started this journey), if someone had told me I’d look forward to physical activity as a couple’s pastime, I’d have said, “Exercise? Together? Larry and me? Blech!” Being together meant dinner, a movie, a party. Vacation was spent with my butt firmly planted in a lawn chair. But two years ago when he got me in a canoe for the first time since summer camp in 8th grade, and especially when he bought me my first bike in 28 years when I reached goal, our relationship changed from “You go your way, I’ll go mine and we’ll meet back here in a few hours” to “Let’s hit the trail!”

Now we plan our weekends around the North Country Trail. We’re hoping our next big vacation will be a return to the Adirondacks where rather than me sitting on shore watching him fish in a boat, I’ll be in the boat with him AND accompanying him on the mountain trails instead of driving all around them.

Me capable of maintenance? Me an avid hiking and biking enthusiast? These are things I never thought myself capable of or interested in. But I have a secret weapon.

I’m glad they flashed to Larry’s smiling face during my appearance on the Today Show last week. He deserves every bit of recognition for my success. He is my hero and maintenance inspiration.

Refusing Under Stress

By Barbara Berkeley

Refusing to regain the weight you’ve lost is a big enough challenge on ordinary days, but what about on life-crisis days? Years of habit dictate that stressful times deserve food relief. Let’s call it “Food Soothing.” Drowning sorrows in a hot fudge sundae is such a cheap, accessible (and delicious) solution. Hey! You’re stressed out…no one will blame you!

There would be nothing wrong with Food Soothing if we were only in a Food-Worthy crisis once in a great while. The problem is that crisis moments are much more frequent than we realize. When my patients have a bad week and have been unable to follow a diet plan, the most common problem they point to is stress. Stress is invoked so frequently that it would seem to be an incredibly common occurrence in most lives. Here are some of the many daily stressors that patients cite as reasons they’ve soothed themselves with food:

• Worrying about a home or work project
• Having a sick relative
• Having trouble with a child
• Arguing with a friend, spouse, or colleague
• Having a marriage issue
• Going through a divorce
• Money problems
• Going through packing or moving
• Throwing a party or attending a large family event
• Traveling for work
• Fighting off a minor illness
• Dating
• Retiring
• Going through a home remodel
• Having a car breakdown
• Having a sick pet
• Worrying about a doctor or dentist appointment
• Being overscheduled

The list could go on for pages. As it turns out, there are basically very few days that don’t contain stressors strong enough to motivate Food Soothing. For this reason, I generally advise maintainers not to use the “just this once” approach when dealing with Food-Soothing urges. But what to do?

When I started running, I bought some books about how to train. I particularly like “Galloway’s Book on Running” (Shelter Press, 1984). Jeff Galloway is an Olympic runner who ran with greats like Frank Shorter and Bill Rodgers in the 70s and has currently run over 120 marathons. He is considered an expert in his field. Distance runners like Galloway know a lot about something that maintainers face every day, the struggle to continue on despite discomfort. I did not buy “Galloway’s Book on Running” to learn something about maintaining, but that’s what happened.

About halfway through my first mile of running, I had started to notice a little voice in my head telling me that I would feel a lot better if I stopped. This message would go away for a while, then come back more and more insistently. Sometimes the cue would be so strong that I would pull up and stop running altogether. After all, that is what my body was telling me to do. I was just listening to my body. While reading Galloway’s book, I was startled to come across a description of this “messaging” phenomenon. Here is what Galloway said:

The Mind is Divided: “The power of the mind to push the body to its potential is limited by an internal conflict. The logical side (left brain) does not communicate with the creative side (right brain). A primary mission of the analytical side is to steer you into comfort and away from stress. The more stress you generate from running and other areas, the more negative messages: “slow down,” “stop,” or what is even worse, “why am I doing this?” If you don’t have a mental strategy for dealing with this barrage of negativity, you’ll start losing confidence in your ability to achieve your potential…”

Galloway then goes on to describe strategies for defusing the left brain which include distracting yourself, making yourself laugh, and repeating mantras. I have found, however, that simply knowing my pesky messages are to be expected helps me ignore them. I am learning to notice the message and simply take note of it.

“Oh, that’s my silly left brain talking,” I’ll say.

I now realize that I don’t have to listen to this message. In fact, it doesn’t really mean anything. I’ve learned to take an assessment of myself when the message comes in. Am I really suffering? Am I hurting? Can I still breathe? Do I feel a whole lot different than I did five minutes before? The answer is almost always no. If that’s the case, I keep on going and take a curious attitude. When will I get the next message? Will that one be any more linked to reality? It’s kind of interesting.

This type of thought-noting shares something with meditative practice. Meditators are taught to be aware of thoughts that come into their mind but not to get involved with them. They are told to look at them, almost like balloons that float across the consciousness and then to let them float away. In other words, our thoughts and impulses don’t have to control us if we practice minimizing them. Distance athletes have learned how to do this well; how to get to goal. So why can’t we do the same? We maintainers are the distance athletes of the weight loss world.

After reading Galloway, I realized that I had been employing a similar technique for some years in maintaining my weight. When messages came into my mind that told me I’d feel really good if I bought that Snickers or ate that pie, I had learned to identify them, look at them curiously and let them go. Over time, I had learned to detach these thoughts from any urgency. They became sort of lifeless, or perhaps neutral. Without really knowing it, I had figured out that they were just news flashes from my left brain and were not much related to reality. Once I learned to get a little more zen with these incoming thoughts, I found that a sip of some drink or a handful of blueberries satisfied my soothing needs just as well as the high-calorie stuff and with a lot less consequence.

I’m wondering if any of you have discovered a similar phenomenon? If not, try examining those left brain messages and letting them fly away. You may just find that you’re a marathoner after all.

I’m Back!

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering

Happy August, everyone! But where, oh where, did July go?

I’ve been MIA from Refuse to Regain for almost a month – I’ve missed you! Also neglected were the gym, my gardens and almost every other ordinary day-to-day thing, like my own bed and my own food. (Ever notice that not even the finest restaurants can make a salad as good as the one you throw together at home?)

July was a month of family chaos – some sad, mostly good – but it’s time to get back into the old routine. “Old” with a new twist, that is. It’s time to shake up the iPod.

To kick things off, I downloaded Rare Earth’s “I Just Want to Celebrate.”

 

I chose this song for three reasons: 1) I can’t sit still when I hear it; 2) It makes me want to go out and buy a sweater vest and bell bottoms; and 3) I want to celebrate the fact that after four weeks of sporadic exercise, bouts of enormous stress, and a few off-my-food-list goodies (for my husband’s birthday, I learned to make a really smashing blackberry cobbler), I weigh the same today as I did before it all began. I’m celebrating that I didn’t slip into my old behavior – you know the one, “Well, one more week won’t matter” and then one week turns into two years and I’m back where I started. So thanks to Rare Earth, my new mantra is: “Well, I can't be bothered with sorrow; and I can't be bothered with hate, no, no; I'm using up my time by feeling fine, every day…”

Next I bought a little KC & The Sunshine Band (“Get Down Tonight), Cheap Trick’s “The Flame,” and the Ting Tings’ “That’s Not My Name.” Then I dug into the vault of downloaded CDs and added “Love Is Like A Rock” by Donnie Iris, “The Rockefeller Skank” by Fatboy Slim, “American Baby” by Dave Matthews Band, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana, “It’s Not Over” by Daughtry, “Let The Day Begin” by The Call, and “Body Movin’” by the Beastie Boys. I can’t wait to workout tomorrow!

I was a little…oh…how do I say this…perplexed? by the “recommended music” category that came up after downloading KC. It was called Power Music Workout. How did iTunes know I was downloading workout music? Anyway, I clicked on it and the CDs included a selection of Biggest Loser and Shape Magazine workout mixes. I sampled a few of the songs and decided a backbeat track added to originally slow songs was not my kind of workout music. (I’m quite sure they’d make 30 minutes feel like an hour) Then I spied a CD called Classical Cardio. What? Working out to classical music (unless it’s “The William Tell Overture”) would be like doing yoga to AC/DC. It just wouldn’t be right for me.

But oh no, dear readers. This isn’t just any classical CD. It’s remixed classical music, as in synthesizers and a backbeat added to Pachebel’s “Canon in D,” Bach’s “Air,” Chopin’s “Etude,” and Beethoven’s 9th.

As one reviewer said, “It’s not the London Philharmonic,” but it works for her and keeps her moving during her workout, so I suppose I shouldn’t knock it until I try it. However, I’m pretty sure my ears would bleed if I had to listen to this CD for any length of time. Different strokes for different folks, though. Whatever it takes to get us moving, right?

I’m back in the saddle again! (Which reminds me, I need to download that song, too. Nothing like Steve Tyler screaming in my ear to keep me motivated.) I’m back and ready to hit the routine again and it feels great.

So what’s on your MP3 player that makes you excited to work out? I’m always looking for the perfect workout playlist and open to (almost) all suggestions. Don’t be shy! Share! I promise I won’t laugh. After all, I listen to “Making Love Out Of Nothing At All” by Air Supply sometimes when I lift weights. True story.

794

By Barbara Berkeley

I must admit to sleeping poorly on Saturday night. Earlier in the day, I had dragged Don along to the Holden Arboretum where I was to pick up the registration materials for my first 5K. The informational package didn’t amount to much. A trail map, a T-shirt, a rectangle of white paper with a number and four safety pins. On Sunday morning, I was to become number 794.

I was fearful about the course. Up until now, my running had been confined to flat, black-top roads. Worse, I avoided all hills and often tended to pick a downhill stretch for my final mile. The next day’s race was to be run on dirt and gravel trails and might have uphill sections. Don and I tried in vain to follow the meandering course map but we were soon hopelessly lost. The arboretum trails crisscrossed between bogs, lakes and forests. Try as we might, we could not figure out where the race would be run. One thing was obvious. The terrain rose and fell. Some of the race would have to go uphill.

On Sunday morning I awoke a little later than I would have liked. It seemed like I’d been running all night. I had slept in short bursts, a series of sprints, and then had overslept the alarm. I ran around the house trying to make last minute decisions. Should I carry my cell phone? (An extra few ounces). Should I wear my headphones? (Better acoustics than ear buds, but heavy and a bit geeky looking). As Don and I drove to the arboretum I started to feel seriously nervous. So silly, I thought. If I can’t do it I can just stop and walk. But I found that I was frightened of other things. Really dumb things like not knowing how to check in, not being sure how to line up to start the race, not knowing whether my number went in front or in back.

Soon we were in the crowded parking lot and one of my questions was quickly answered. The number went in the front. Clumsily, I attached the 794 to my shirt.

Several hundred people were milling around. I was comforted by the fact that the serious runners were mixed with an equal number of people who seemed to be walkers. The runners were already jogging all around the starting area and were wearing mini-shorts and sleeveless shirts. The walkers were in long casual shorts and T-shirts. Everyone seemed very friendly but kind of serious. It was chilly. That wasn’t the only reason I was shivering.

Then, from over a small hill, I saw a familiar figure. Don’s junior partner, Greg, was strolling toward us. I smiled and relaxed for the first time. Greg is a serious runner so I hadn’t thought he’d be doing a 5K. Here was the perfect person to pepper with my dumb questions. Where did the run start? Did everyone start together? Were there separate groups? How would they figure out our times? I did not ask Greg if the course was hilly. It was too late for that now. I would find out soon enough.

Soon we saw all the participants heading toward the starting line. I had not stretched or even walked more than a few steps since leaving our car. As I thought about this and wondered if I should jog in place, a shrill bell sounded. This was it! I was completely unprepared. Everyone around me took off . My iPod wasn’t turned on and my headphones were still bouncing around my neck… I found myself drawn along at a much faster speed than I would normally run.

Around the first turn we went and immediately my fears were realized. A hill lay ahead. Up I went. My lungs burned and we were no more than a few tenths of a mile into the race. I fixed my eyes on a couple who were running together about 20 feet ahead of me. They seemed to be holding an easy pace and I determined to stay with them. We were soon descending through a rocky stretch which gave me time to catch my breath. It was exhilarating to imagine that I was actually running in a group. I tried to forget the fact that I was already hurting. My goal was not to walk. I could do it. The music that had accompanied me for the past nine weeks seemed to sparkle in these new surroundings. Caribbean soca, Rick James, disco. I realized I was smiling at my own discomfort.

We ran and ran for what seemed like an endless time. I tried to imagine where I would be at this point on my runs near home. Probably about mile two, I thought. I was probably headed into the home stretch. Several long minutes later, we rounded a curve and I saw a woman holding a large oaktag sign. Mile One! Another lady clicked something in her hand and shouted something at me. My time. Of course, I couldn’t hear her because I was listening to Smooth Criminal.

It was just the very start of mile two and I was feeling spent. My breathing was ragged from the hill climbing and my legs felt wobbly from the uneven surface. I tried to focus hard on my goal. No walking. Just then I started to notice something. The pack I had been running with had thinned. The fast runners were by now far ahead and the slow ones were way behind. I was running in a loose group of about 10 people and suddenly I realized that I was gaining on a number of them. A woman who I had been trailing for some minutes pulled up, put her hands on her hips and began to walk. I passed her. I also passed the couple who had been pacing me earlier. They too were walking. I saw a long downhill ahead and I tried to make the most of it. Running downhill had become easy for me during my practices. Soon I was running just behind a dark-haired woman of about 30. As we came out onto the flat, we approached the mile two marker. My goal had changed. I was going to try to go the final mile at the same pace as the woman with the black hair.

The final mile seemed endless. I had discovered during my training runs that knowing the end of the run was coming made it much harder to continue. Now I found myself checking my watch and looking for the finish line around every turn. I knew that the course ended with a short stretch on the road, but the road never appeared. At one point, it seemed that we were about to turn onto the asphalt, but we were directed to go the other way and sent on a long loop around a pond. That pond was a killer. The only time I’d ever felt my heart beating like that was the time my doctor sent me for a stress test. I decided to slow down and try to save something for the final sprint but I was already going so slowly that any less speed would have meant walking. I kind of hopped from foot to foot jogging blindly forward while sweat ran into my eyes.

But wait. The black-haired woman was walking! I lurched forward and passed her!! And just as I did, I saw the road ahead. The asphalt felt familiar and welcoming and a long downward slope headed toward the finish. I was so happy that I didn’t even care that the black-haired woman had started running again and sprinted past me a few yards from the shute. Falling through the finish, I pulled up gasping. Hands ripped off the bottom of my number, the part that would be kept to tally results. I couldn’t believe it! Just two months ago I could barely run for 60 seconds. I had wanted to be a runner and now…well, I kind of was.

Greg and Don met me at the finish line. We talked about the things runners discuss: the course, the pace. Stuff like that. Greg showed us the fancy watch he has that keeps track of his heart rate and times his runs. (He did the whole course in 22 minutes). Then there were the simple rewards for the runners: bananas, oranges, nuts, M&Ms and various drinks. We watched a few more people fall through the finish line and soon it was time to head home. Just like that. The results of the race wouldn’t be out for a day or so. And what would you do with them anyway? Just try to get better and faster according to Greg.

Still, it was beyond thrilling to pull up the race results tonight and find out that I had come in second in my age group. I had run the course in 32 minutes, which was about 5 minutes faster than my training times. That was progress! And something to build on.

And after we left the arboretum on Sunday, Don wondered whether we could stop at the New Balance store. We did and he bought a pair of running shoes. Tomorrow morning we’re going out at 6:30 am. He’s ready to move from couch to 5 K and I’m just the runner to show him how.

Automation Overload: How Long Before We Don't Have To Move At All?

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering

Weekends are really noisy in my neighborhood. Not from loud parties, but lawn care.

It’s the same all across the country. People have the weekend off and so the sunny ones are often dedicated to mowing the lawn or cutting the grass, depending on what part of the country you’re from.  Some people love it and others dread it, but mowing the lawn, at least in town, is a necessary evil if you don’t want to face the ire of your neighborhood association or town council, or have skunks and other critters take up residence in your back yard.

Watching someone mow the lawn is about as exciting as watching paint dry, but if you observe how people choose to mow their lawns, it gets a little interesting, at least from a weight-maintenance perspective.

There are the extremes and then there’s the middle in individual lawn mowing preferences. On the he-man side, my neighbor across the alley mows his postage-sized lawn with a tractor. On the tree-hugging side, my neighbor across the street mows his slightly larger postage-sized lawn with a manual lawn mower. Most people use a push power mower, including my next-door neighbor, who’s nearly as big as her mower.

Gaining in popularity on the tree-hugging side is the automatic mower. CNN has a video article called “Sit on porch, watch lawnmower go.” I watched it with some sadness, wondering how far humans will go to avoid physical activity in the future.

Last week, I bought an ’07 Jeep Liberty on Friday because my ’95 Jeep Cherokee bit the dust. The old Cherokee was all manual everything except the transmission. I rolled down my windows with a handle and leaned over the back seat to unlock the back doors. Now I have automatic everything – windows, door locks, seat adjuster…even radio controls on the steering wheel. All I have to do is move my arms a little to make a turn, and I wonder how long before car manufacturers figure out how to relieve us of that simple movement!

We don’t have to vacuum anymore, thanks to robotic vacuums. Dishwashers have been around a long time, but most of the new ones don’t even require you to scrape food off the plate before loading. Shopping malls feature valet parking, and even if you’re not physically challenged, you can use a motorized cart at most grocery stores.

I have this image in my head of our bodies evolving into nothing more than heads with fingers.

No wonder exercise has become a chore for so many people. Since the industrial revolution, our work and even our play requires less and less physical exertion. I’m beginning to understand why it is so difficult to convince people that it is in their best interest to move around before a big day at work or after a day of thinking and sitting (and using the drive-through for food, prescriptions, banking and even purchasing liquor). Being physical used to be a necessity. Now it is a luxury.

Automation certainly has its place in our lives, and it has improved the lives of many people who would otherwise not be able to drive or shop or live independently. I admit I love the keyless entry on my new Jeep. It was getting increasingly difficult to unlock the old Cherokee because of my arthritic wrists, so much so that I usually left it unlocked and hoped nothing got stolen.

Although I’m not suggesting we replace our cars with horses, I do believe it would be in our best interest to open public dialogue to address just how far we want to take this no-physical-effort-required trend we are in. There is value in mowing the lawn and running the vacuum and walking from the parking lot into a store. Physical and mental value. Gardening can be relaxing despite the sweat. Scrubbing the tub can be very Zen.

There’s a time and a place for relaxing on the porch, but I’m not sure watching a machine mow the yard is it.

Takes a Licking…..Keeps on Ticking

By Barbara Berkeley

When I was a kid and my family used to watch the antique form of television that was around in those days, there used to be a well-known ad for Timex watches. John Cameron Swayze, an authoritative announcer-type, would strap a $5 Timex onto an outboard motor. The motor would then be lowered into the water and the watch would be dragged around some lake until it was thoroughly abused. Amazingly, when Swayze unhooked the unfortunate watch it was still keeping perfect time. “Takes a licking and keeps on ticking!” Swayze would say.

The same can be said of my poor, bedraggled 61-year-old body. Week Seven of Couch to 5K and I’m still going. This morning I completed my second 25 minute run. In the interest of complete disclosure, I do have to admit one slight cheat. My run takes me into our small town and the last five minutes or so slope sharply downhill. But hey....I never would have believed I could go for 25 minutes straight whether it was uphill, downhill, or on a pogo stick. At the end of the run, I cool down by walking back into the center of town for coffee from our local Starbucks. I am too sweated up to sit inside, so I perch on one of the wooden steps next door. I find that my mind is in a pleasantly dazed state so it’s just as well that I’m sitting alone without the opportunity for conversation.

When I read other people’s blogs about running, they always say that the first mile of their run is difficult and that things become “effortless” after that. I haven’t gotten to effortless yet, but I do notice a phenomenon that occurs after about 15 minutes of running. In my own mind I call it “Tootsie Roll legs”. When I first start running, my legs feel like inflexible sticks and I’m uncomfortably aware of my joints and muscles. After a while, I suppose it’s because of blood flow into the area, my legs start to feel more like firm-bendable Tootsie Rolls. Once that happens, it’s a lot easier to let my mind wander and just keep on going.

This week, I decided to try departing from the Robert Ullrey podcasts and running with my own Ipod selection. That didn’t turn out so well. I’m finding that I like music that is continuous and not necessarily all that familiar. That kind of selection lets my mind go outside of my body. Although I really love listening to Rick James and my work -out version of “Rock the Casbah,” I get too caught up in what’s coming up next. I also find that I really miss the cues that Ullrey puts into his podcasts. He interrupts the music to tell you when you’ve gone half way or when you’ve got a few minutes to go. And then he congratulates you at the end. It’s so ridiculous, but that canned congratulations means a lot!! Do any of you runners out there have suggestions for finding good music for longer runs?

So, I’ve gotten all the way to Week Seven. For those of you who are following this saga, let me assure you that it is do-able. If you have not been very active before starting C25K though, I would suggest that you take your time advancing through the various weeks. There’s no rule that says you can’t spend three weeks on “Week One” or two weeks on “Week Five,” a strategy that I believe would lead to more people successfully getting to goal.

Apart from my new running career, the other major event in our household has been the arrival of spring chicks. Don likes to raise turkeys that he free-ranges and gives away to friends at Thanksgiving. We haven’t had chickens on the farm for several years, but we decided to bring them back in order to get those nice organic eggs. We also constructed a raised bed garden this year in the hopes of getting better produce. Our gardens tend to be destroyed by rabbits, moles, raccoons and deer. We’ re hoping that elevating the beds will make that less likely. We also put the vegetables in an area where our dog Toby can easily patrol. As you see, he is quite frightening and almost any animal would be intimidated by him.

But back to the chicks. Don orders them by mail from a hatchery. When they arrive, I will receive a panicky 7 a.m. call from our local post office.

“You have a load of chickens here!” they will say. In the background, I can hear a cacophony of peeps. “Please come get them soon!!”

Then I drive to the post office and knock on a secret door in the back. They gratefully hand over the small brown box studded with airholes. It’s making a whole lot of noise. Returning home, I remove the tiny chicks one by one from their crowded prison. Holding each firmly, I dip their beaks into water to make sure they are hydrated. Then I set each one free. We have set up a heat lamp to keep the babies warm, but for the moment, they ignore the comfort zone. They jump and flutter their tiny wings and immediately start pecking the ground for food. By the time I leave them, they have finished exploring and are huddled in a warm, furry mass under the bulb.

As spring goes on, things will grow. The adorable yellow chicks will turn into enormous, demanding turkeys and clucking, self-righteous chickens. My tiny broccoli plants will become huge, my rows of spinach will bolt. The lawn will become unmanageable. And I will run further and perhaps enter my first 5K. Chances are there will be setbacks and injuries as I grow bigger as a runner. Spring brings the opportunity to start the cycle all over again. Even though we know that life is ultimately messy, we relish the chance to start once more. So drag your projects and challenges out into the June sunlight. Hose off your dreams and give them a chance to breathe anew.

The Green House Revisited

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering
 
As Barbara and I mark our one-year blogging anniversary, and Refuse to Regain enters its second year, I want to revisit my “Green House Philosophy.”

I liken my reduced body to the green house in which I live: a 1910s Cape Ann with pale green asbestos siding, an evergreen porch “skirt” (which we’ve since painted brown), dappled moss green shingles, and Astroturf glued to the porch and front stairs. As I wrote in my first blog, my husband and I had big plans to renovate, but the costs were too high and so we spiff up the place as we can within our means.

I thought about the ways in which I could renovate my own reduced body, worn and battered by years of stretched skin, and arthritis made worse by obesity. But the medical costs were too high and so I’ve been learning to make peace with the body I have and spiff it up as I can within my means.

In the last year, part of that spiffing up process has involved finding the right balance of exercise that doesn’t cross my pain threshold. I’ve paid closer attention to my body’s aches and knots and crunches. As I wrote recently on my website Lynn’s Weigh, gone are the days when I killed myself with cardio. Two years ago, I averaged six hours a week of cardio in addition to one to two hours of strength training. No wonder in my journal I wrote time after time, “I’m sore today.”

I never paid attention to my body the way I do now. Before I lost weight this last time, if I had a stiff muscle, I laid on the couch until it went away. Now I get curious about it. Which one is it? How can I make it stronger without hurting myself?

I’ve spent several hours gardening the last few weeks. Gardening unburies muscles like a trowel. It finds the ones I haven’t used in awhile and magnifies them. One morning last week, I woke up with stiff glutes and wrists. My exercise plan was 40 minutes of cardio and 30 minutes of strength training. Rather than sucking up the pain and plowing ahead with my plans, I backed off and thought about the short-term and long-term consequences of overusing muscles that clearly were telling me they were sore. If I worked out, I not only risked further injury to my glutes and wrists, but to other muscles and body parts, too, as I subconsciously compensated for the weaker, sore muscles.

I realize this sounds simple, but it still takes deliberate, conscious thought to dislodge from my head the chatter from my fat chick, the worry wart, the tight-rope walker that tells me if I slip up even once, I’ll fall back into old habits. There are more things to consider than merely how many calories can I burn today, or rather, how many calories do I need to burn today. What I need is a body that sticks with me for the long haul, flaws and all, and it’s my job as its caretaker to listen to it.

I still believe in what I wrote last year. If I want to live in peace and enjoy its many amenities, I have to accept my body’s “greenness” and see past the skin and stretches and accept its physical limitations.  Within my body is muscle and strength but also heart and soul. Where there is sadness and longing, there is also love and joy. My body is capable of empathy. It is determined.

So….is your “house” in order? How do listen to your body? As always, leave a comment. Thank you for making Refuse To Regain such a place of support, for sharing your determination and strategies for maintenance, and your new understandings as well as your past.