Where's my day of rest?

It was a busy day. It's gonna be a busy day tomorrow. Oy.

The dogs woke me up at 6:30 (on a Saturday!! Need to get those girls a calendar) by dive-bombing me. So I finally agreed and got up, Mags and I went to Starbucks (Maxine got to stay home in Maggie's crate, which she just loved. It was adorable. She thought she was queen of the world), and then I came home and worked on a knitting project that's due next Saturday. I spent two hours at the gym. I picked up my bridesmaid's dress - which, blissfully, is the right length and doesn't need to be altered - and my shoes, and a new skin for my phone (the old one fell apart today). I went to work for three or four hours and moved most of my stuff to my new desk in our new office (the Pink Office is going prime time, folks. We're a little worried, given the nature of the conversations that go on in there on a daily basis). I also cleared out all my files and my big stack of papers and my drawer of, as Ruthie calls it, Nuclear Holocaust food (I had a lot of microwave-in-the-pouch rice stuff in there). The dogs are fed and walked...and I'm really, really tired.

I met my new trainer at 9. She's nice. She's a she. That's a little weird. Gomer she ain't, but, maybe the change is good. We're going to call her Kelly. She's blonde and thin (she has a very athletic build, though, she's not a twig) and younger than me, but easy to talk to and, as she says, "probably a little more gentle and sensitive that your last trainer." So far I like her, which is more than I could say for Gomer after our first session. He grew on me, though, obviously.

But one thing she definitely has on him was that she seemed to take me seriously today. We did our little assessment, which was way more involved than the one Gomer and I did (his was all weights and measures. She tested my balance, my heart rate recovery, my lifting endurance), and she was consistently just like, alright, here it is. And she seemed reasonably impressed (I maxed out on the 40lb chest press at 40 reps. Our new goal is 50 reps of 55 lbs in the next 8 months. I don't know why 8 months, but, okay). Now, she also has the benefit of getting me after six months of Gomer, which Gomer obviously did not. But he was sort of like, "Yeah, whatever" in the beginning, until I actually did what he told me to between sessions and didn't drop out and was like, "bring it on." She also did a really good job of being like, "Okay, you're a doctor, I don't need to explain things like BMI to you or why it's useless." She also was like, "great," when I said I didn't want weight to be a goal. Gomer, our first day, was like, "Let's try to get you to lose 10 lbs this month." I said, "Well, let's just do what we do and see where I end up." He didn't seem to know what to do with that answer. He got over it. Gomer really did do an awesome job of "getting over it," in a lot of different ways.

I had to pick a goal for our training work, either "lean," "healthy," or "strong." Now, as she pointed out, you head for one, the others will follow, but, they have different schemas depending on what you pick. I thought about it for a minute, and picked lean.

This was kind of huge for me (no pun intended). Because I'm never going to be skinny. Ever. My calculated lean body mass alone (so, none of the fat, just muscle and bone and organs and whatnot) rests right at the lower cusp of "obese" on the BMI range (because BMI is USELESS. Ahem). And I don't intend to stop building lean body mass just yet. But my frame is too big, and my genes too curvy, for me to ever be skinny. So I spend so much time trying to accept that fact that it feels a little like I might be setting myself up for failure by making this choice. But, the goal, really, isn't "skinny." It's "change my body" - not, primarily, my cardiovascular health or my endurance or my muscle strength - which is more reasonable, and more healthy, but also just a huge-huge-hugely-huge step out of the "safe" zone for me. "Fat" is an easy thing to blame when things go wrong. "Fat" is a useful device for internalizing my anger and self-deprecation and all those other things that go along with a history like mine. "Fat" is also protective against having to relive that history. It gives me a wall to put up when I need one ("He'd never be interested. I'm too fat. Good reason not to take the risk"). I don't know what I'd look like any other way, what I'd feel like, what it would be like to be me. This is frustrating and annoying (and, in a lot of ways - mostly influenced by my underactive thyroid and my polycystic ovaries - not as within my control as I might like to think), but it's also....safe.

So it's really interesting, this (we're going to go with "interesting"). Most of that minute I was thinking about it, I was thinking, is this something I'm ready to do? To focus on? To say, I accept this, but I want something different? To let go of all that it means, symbolizes, and provides?

I think I am.

And, you know, my real goal is still to accept who I am, whatever size, whatever else it means, no matter what. To feel better in my body and in my skin, to live here and live fully. So it fits that I'm not really working towards a weight goal (although I have a safe body fat percentage as a target) and not really working in a rigid time frame. It just is what it is, it comes as it comes, it moves forward and backward as it needs to. And we'll see where it goes.

Look, y'all, no one said it was normal inside my head...