I’ve started a Liver Cleanse using this PaleoCleanse powder. Instructed by my Natural Path (I’m as hip as someone in California with a shrink and a personal yoga teacher ten years ago) I’m only eating veggies and having two of these here smoothies a day.

Smoothie is a stretch, actually. Thick, pasty goo with a hint of grainy sand is more like it.

MmMMMM Sand.

I sat there, in my doctor’s office, after a week of drinking and carousing with men who can hold their liquor sixteen times better than I can, nodding in agreement when she suggested this liver cleanse. “Your cholesterol is a concern” she reminded me. I nodded again. “It will be intense but it’s really good for your body.” I nodded again. “If you get stuck you can email me, I have another patient on it right now and she just emailed me, on her Day #2, saying she was DYING.” We both laugh. HAHAHA.

HAHAHAHA….

The joke is TOTALLY ON ME.

It’s Day #2 and Internet: I AM DYING.

My liver, my body, it is rebelling. MUST. HAVE. COFFEE. My brain is fuzzy. My synapsis forgot how to work. If it wasn’t so pathetic, I’d email my doctor telling her I’m hungry. I AM HUNGRY.

Hangon, I’ll go grab another tantalizing dish of greens, tomatoes and cucumber.

AGAIN.

Out of love and respect and a little bit pressure and threats, Mr. Flinger is also doing this cleanse with me. It is somewhat comforting to look in his eyes and see his pupils dilating in to a turkey. Sort of like the cartoons when Elmer Fudd looks at the “Wabbit” and sees his dinner cooked and ready? Like that. Complete with the chasing of food in my dreams.

We walked around last night, together, in a state of haze. We went to bed with the children. We gobbled up our morning protein shake and laughed at our own ridiculousness. “It’s Day #2” we chortle.

Day #2 and I have to say, this headache is a bitch. I really think my liver will be just fine without all this effort. Someone pass me a cappuccino.

No, don’t, I’m stronger than that.

No I’m not, get me some coffee.

I know some of you have done this whole Paleo Diet thing. HOW THE HELL, PEOPLE. All of you who are strong, athletic, lean people that I look at and say, “I’d do ANYTHING to look like her.” Well, I’m lying.

Clearly.

A few weeks ago, I attended an amazing panel about our girls being “sexy too soon” by Parent Map. I was asked to tweet about the event during the discussion and received a ton of great feedback via twitter regarding the content of the session. It was well done and truly full of wonderful ideas to reach out to our girls.

However.

As I grabbed the courage to stand and ask a question, an Asian lady stood up before me to ask hers. “It’s taken us two hours and we haven’t talked about race,” she said. The room fell silent. The all white panel stammered. “Um, yea…” The question-asker went on, “You know where my husband has to go find porn that looks like me? The FETISH section. That’s because we over-romanticize and sexualize our blonde-hair, blue-eyed women.”

Everyone sort of smacked their gum and pushed their collection jaws shut.

I honestly can’t remember exactly what this ladies point was. Was it about how we don’t treat all races equal? Or was it that I, a two-time-c-section recipient with abs that jiggle when I walk am not overly sexualized in porn films, too? I mean, let’s face it, if MY husband wanted to find a film with someone who looks like me in it, he’d have to hit up the “your mama has two babies and you wanna do her hot ladiez” section.

I’m pretty sure it would start a mom running with her uterus flopping around madly yelling at her kids in her sweats.

RAUR.

How many times have I blogged about my weight and my body? You’ve lost count, you say? So have I. It’s a struggle I’ve had long before I was ever a mom. I struggled as a pre-teen, as a teen, as an early 20’s and now as a mom. It’s hard to stay at my “happy weight” and I’m clearly miles from it now. (Literally MILES people. As in “run/bike/walk a shit-ton of miles and maybe you MIGHT be at your goal weight as long as there is not a brewery at the end of the rainbow.)

I like beer. I like Wine. And I love Chocolate.

I hate my body right now.

In a fit of disgust, I did a facebook search for Body-for-LIFE and found Formerly Fat Matt. My husband and I have both been successful on Body-for-LIFE so I thought perhaps we can do it as a team again. I was inspired.

So inspired, in fact, that I ate smores, three (and a half) beers and full-fat-stuffed-salmon and mayonnaise with salad on it for dinner on Saturday.

yum

I talked to Mr. Flinger about it this morning. “You know who always talks about diets?” I said. “Fat People.” He agreed. Skinny people just DO it. Fat people talk about doing it.

Man, I talk a lot about losing weight, don’t I.

So here I am. Almost thirty-five, frustrated, laid off, not having sex enough and trying to find some sort of balance between being a mom and being me. I’m the perfect “before” for Body-for-LIFE. Give me 12 weeks. I’d like to prove that I’m the perfect “after” too.

Starting the challenge for round 3 in 2010. If you join, let me know. I’d like to know who’s ass I’m kicking. heh

About a week ago, I decided to join Weight Watchers. I’ve posted a lot of my weight loss struggle here, and as it turns out, I’m still at the exact.same.weight I was after having losing the Man Child’s pregnancy weight.

That very same Man Child, the apple of his Mother’s Eye, announced something last week:

Dude. Harsh.

It’s a good thing I started counting my “points” and started watching what I eat. “Watching” is the optimal word here. I haven’t actually made any changes this week, I just sort of called this week “Learning What Goes In To My Body” week.

Holymotherofperl people. I eat a lot of points.

And apparently, like golf, you want less points in this game.

Oof.

In an odd way it’s comforting to realize my working out really might pay off. It’s nice to know when I’m doing suicide runs in the gym and huffing until my kidney rolls out my mouth and then NOT LOSING WEIGHT, it’s something I can control.

The time.. it is now.

So starting today I get to pay a little more attention to how I choose to nourish my body. I get to say “no” more often. I get to choose smaller portions and I get to see the scale finally, ohpleasegod finally, move.

Or else you will see a lot of “hangry” posting. (That’s Angry Hungry.)

I suppose this is all good timing now that the Man Child is almost too old to carry. I won’t be needing my stomach shelf for much longer.

Funny thing about Teh Interwebz: You just might find out someone lives 1.1 miles from your new home. And that someone just might be like SO SUPAH AWESOME that you trade emails and find out you’re eight thousand shades of the same. Maybe you even share the same tummy issues and love of wine and eating clean and working out.

So maybe you start hanging out.

Funny thing about hanging out with someone sorta like you: It freaks people out. You mean there are TWO OF YOU?! Yes! YES THERE IS. And that somone maybe happens to attend the same boot-camp class you do at the YMCA and probably has seen you there before but now you know to look for each other. And maybe you sort of wish you didn’t, but not until after the fact.

Last week I went to bootcamp with my new friend Ashley. We’ve exchanged tweets, emails, IMs and a few games of Facebook Scrabble, and a beer. Then, suddenly, I find myself knee deep in sweat and cussing at my new friend. Swearing, actually. To her face.

It’s a little surreal to have your ass kicked by a former twitter stranger. And by surreal I mean painful. But comparing sore muscles the next day and realizing what a great workout it was. The girl? She kicks my ass. In a good way.

There is an accountability when someone is willing to not let you lie to yourself. When someone is willing to see that you NEED to go harder, faster, longer. When they realize you can do it, you just .... don’t. She pushed me in a way I haven’t been pushed in years. To find a new level of expletives I’ve never yelled in .. years. To be so physically exhausted I could not push another jumpy out of my ass if I tried.

And oh, how I tried.

A week later I find myself planning to return. Call me crazy, and you will, but apparently I’m a sucker for pain. I’m in a battle with the bulge and right now the bulge is winning. That bulge has no hope against my new friend Ashley. Not a chance.

I’m just hoping I live long enough to tell you about it.

You probably don’t know the “northwest profile” commercials from Pemco, unless you live here. Or you listen to Seattle Internet Radio in an effort to step up your coolness. Or you’re a seattle northwest wannabe. (Or, rather, soon-to-be Seattle-ites.)

However, if you’re from the Northwest, these profiles sort of hit home.

Really close to home, actually.

As in: Me.

Here she is, ladies and gentlemen, Northwest Profile #39: Runs Barefoot In The Rain Gal.

You can find her on a weekday morning or early on the weekend running along the Burk Gilman or Samamish Trails. She’s got her orange REI rain-repelling super-wicking fast-drying hoodie. She’s listening to acoustic angst folk music counting her miles with her Nike+. It’s fifty and pouring. And? She’s barefoot.

Runs Barefoot (In Vibrams) In The Rain Gal, you’re one of us: A little different.

What’s that expression? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Think I’m pregnant three times I might as well jump off something very very high.

Is that right?

If you’re not following me on twitter (which, why not?*) you may have missed the part where my daughter’s teacher congratulated me on being pregnant yesterday. I replied, as I have before, “Oh, no, not pregnant” and she stumbled and said, “Oh, I probably look pregnant, too, uh…” and it was awkward, as it always is, and then I went home and cried, like I always do.

Because she’s not in the wrong to think it simply based on appearance.

Here’s the thing: I recently described my body to the doctor as one of those puzzles where you match the head, torso and legs only my torso completely doesn’t match. It’s all round and flabby while the arms are strong and my legs are lean.

I’m a broken puzzle, y’all.

I work out. I cut back on sugar. I endulge sometimes because I believe in having a life-style, not a diet, but I try to drink lots of water, eat lots of veggies and pick the right thing more times than not.

And yet, these abs, y’all. THESE ABS. They are stretched in ways they hang like last year’s coat in my childrens’ closet.

Blech.

I see it at Yoga. I am strong and powerful. I’ve been told I have a “beautiful practice” and yet I look like no yogi in the room. Instead, I lay over my flabby abs in Pigon and stare at disdain for the stomach that used to hold a shape. I tell myself not to hate it because it grew the children I adore and love and who love me regardless of how I feel about my abs.

My abs stretched and created life and why I hate them for it is simply because of this one fact:

THERE IS NO MORE LIFE IN IT.

Now it is painful ovulation and one big hazard to anyone wanting to wish me well.

Like my friend’s Mother in Law.

Like the Pioneer Woman, Ree.

Like my daughter’s teacher.

I took a picture of my shirt realizing it’ll be the last time I wear it. I can understand why she thought I was pregnant. I don’t hate her for it. I don’t think she was rude. I think she made a mistake, one I’d probably make myself if I wasn’t all too aware of the hurt it caused.

It’s not her fault I look pregnant. It’s mine.

There is an amazingly powerful denial that happens each morning in the mirror. A denial not strong enough to ignore three separate instances (actually, four, but that’s another story) of false congratulations. Denial I can’t allow to shield me from this one fact: My belly, it is soft. It is soft and round and nothing like the rest of my body.

Now, the choice is mine to decide: What am I going to do about it?**

What would you?

*If you are following me on twitter and I’m not following you back, it’s because SPAM bots have forced me to ignore most everything and all you gotta do is send a lovely “@mrsflinger I AM FOLLOWING YOU AND I AM REAL” and I’ll be sure to follow back.

** Yes yes, not wearing empire waisted shirts/dresses/anything is my first place to start. :: facepalm ::

Here’s something. You remember those horrific questions on the SAT and GRE? Those “This is to That as That is to _____” and then you have to pick from a list that matches NOTHING and OMG my fourteenth #2 pencil just broke and I need a smoke and I don’t even smoke.

I’m a living proof those standardize tests do two things:
1. Prove nothing. I was told, after each test, to just go live barefoot in the kitchen because you stupid whore, you can’t even do a multiple choice test well and mygod what will society do with a creative thinker? and
b) traumatize me forever.

Which is obvious with the start of this post.

In other traumatic, although not unexpected news, I’ve gained weight. That’s right, laugh all you want. EATING CLEAN IS MAKING ME FAT. Yes. You read it here. DO NOT EAT CLEAN. Go! Eat your High Fructose Corn Syrup and your Corn-based by products and corn-fed chicken and turn in to a giant stalk of corn because at least you’ll be tall and thin and not round like an apple.

I say this for your health. Go eat a candy bar. Pronto.

I could probably blame a lot of things. I can blame my mid-thirty estrogen-imbalance. I could blame my new full time desk job. I could blame my love of a good dark stout or the fact that I am now making homemade meals nightly that rock our worlds and OMNOMNOM.

I COULD.

But I’m not.

I’m sitting here, on my spreading ass, in total awe. SHOCK and AWE if you will.

And so? Enters Hot Yoga.

If you haven’t done it, it’s like a sauna with other half-naked people sweating but bending over in front of you so as to reveal things about them that you will wish you could forget. But it will be branded in your mind forever.

FOREVER I TELL YOU.

The man who wore the tiny speedo-ish shorts? With the belly? And the tattoos? And the, OMG the, loudest breathing ever? And the slap-slap of your thighs? You are a hero to someone. I think maybe yourself.

The lady with the bra and shorts that twisted in ways I envision people pretending to know how in inappropriate chat rooms, just.. wow.

I have no room to judge, though. This is why I think Hot Yoga is the great equalizer. I left there as red as a ricotta, wet as rain. My pores were shiny. My legs shook. The heavy-tattoed-speedo wearing bearded man? Suddenly looked smart. A SPEEDO! DUH!

As painful as it was, as reminiscent of a Galveston Gulf Coast Mid-Afternoon in August, I ache to return. Ache being the optimal word. It’s oddly addicting, oddly rewarding and simply odd. Which fits me just fine. Unlike my pants right now.

Remember the time I said I was going to quit drinking? Yea, that didn’t work out so great. In fact, that lasted roughly a week, maybe.

So I googled, “ALCOHOLISM” because I like to be all dramatic and diagnose myself with things from Dr. Google. It validates every ache and pain and makes me appreciate the fact that I do, indeed, have roughly 4.23 months to live according to some scientific study based on rats in England.

Apparently, though, I’m only a half-assed alcoholic.

Can’t a girl get some pity around here? Jeeze.

This is an approximation of what Google taught me:

Symptom #1: If you googled this because you think you have a problem, you do not have a problem. The sucker with the problem is currently passed out on the couch with no idea he/she may be drinking too much.

Symptom #2: If you forget to pay bills on a monthly basis but it has nothing to do with drinking, just the fact that you are awful at being a grown-up, you can not count that as Failure to fulfill major obligations at work, school, or home. Just grow up.

Symptom #3: You work at a computer, therefor you are not using in recurrent situations where it is hazardous (such as operating machinery). If you got pulled over and totally freaked your shit because you had half the legal limit and that is the last time you ever drove after drinking, you’re just a guilt-ridden recovering Catholic. Take a number.

Symptom #4: If you can’t go to a work conference without being a total blabbermouth, this MAY constitute continued use of alcohol despite having social, family, or interpersonal problems caused by or worsened by drinking but really you’re just a putz.

I looked over the rest of the possible symptoms. Again, on a scale of “Holy crap you drunk” and “You drink wine for communion only” I’m about a “Meh”

Exhibit a:

So, here I am, left with the usual issue I have in life: I’m good enough not to be a drinktard but not so invested to need help.

Well, swell.

In the mean time, I’m spending just a touch too much on booze, getting just a touch too many calories from it and, when surveying the last 6 years of my life, have neither gained, nor lost, a single damn pound since the birth of my first child.

I am to alcohol as Mandy Moore is to music.

One day, in my middle age, I will find something to excel at. Even if it kills me.

Let’s take this a little further. I believe I’ve stumbled on to one of the basic tenants of the “WHY” portion of my weight-loss dilemma.

I like food.

Here’s where I get stubborn: French Women? Don’t get fat. They eat, the French eat, the Dutch eat, the Germans, mygod do they eat. But they don’t struggle with the same medical issues that we in the US do. I do believe on one hand it’s a simple solution: Calories in vs Calories out. But there is more than just math involved. There’s an entire culture involved. There’s history. There’s the agri-business. There’s an entire western culture built on more, bigger, better, and corn*.

Ultimately I think I should be able to ENJOY food. To truly love food. To savor the community it provides, the atmosphere of joy. Eating should be fun. Hell, drinking IS fun. I cross my arms and pout like a four year old that I should be ABLE to drink and IT’S NOT FAIR because a whole nation of people enjoy the love of red wine and alcohol and nobody things a bloody thing about it; and don’t you watch Mad Men where people drink whisky all afternoon?

So lies the struggle, the internal justification. Why should *I* not be able to have those same things others enjoy?

I guess because it really isn’t working for me.

Because I have a desk job.

Because I have two small children.

Because I work full time and have to choose wisely the things I do otherwise: Run or Drink? Bike, Walk or Ride?

I’m starting to make some better decisions; meeting with a friend to walk instead of have drinks, take the kids to the park and play with them instead of a play area where I sit. Those kind of baby steps toward moving more, eating less.

And yet I struggle. At night. For social parties. Because I love a good beer.

I know it can be done. A good friend of mine stopped drinking to watch her weight and found out, BEHOLD! it worked. I’ve talked with Karen about this topic a million times. It’s a choice. It’s calories. On every diet everywhere it says “no room for alcohol.”

But.

But.

But.

I’ve seen women kick the alcohol habit and live to tell about it. I wonder if I can do the same. Do I need regulations? Do I need regimented calorie counting to prove there’s no room for empty calories? Or do I tell myself it’s a substance like any other type of food, like chocolate, like popcorn (my downfall), and that moderation is key.

None of that has worked thus far.

And so lies the quandary. There it is- the problem without a solution.  If you have one, I’ll take it. If you gave up drinking to better your body and soul, I’d like to know. If you battle the buldge and win, I want to know how. Ultimately, though, as I said before, it’s not in the knowing, it’s in the doing.

I’m ready to be the doing.

*After reading In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, I felt empowered to change our eating in to a more natural food source and am making home-made bread, home-cooked meals and the like. Now, reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals I realize the WHY I am changing my diet and, for the first time in my life, am ready to eat “responsibly grown” meat sources and local fresh foods. Only. It’s true- I’ve finally gonen hippie on our food.

I started this post a while back, before Christmas, when I was beginning to analyze the correlation to my heavier times and having the “winter blues”. I wanted to have a nice sit-down with myself and really talk about how and why my body isn’t changing and why I’m unable to do the things I used to or look the way I think I do. All of this occurred before these ladies started discussing things like being plus-size vs working hard at fitness.  It’s ironic, in a very real ten-thousand-spoons sort of way, a touch serendipitous, and more than a bit refreshing to realize while I was here having a smack-down, drag-out discussion with myself, the internet was discussing it, too.

I’ve struggled with body image issues since I was old enough to realize I should. In sixth grade my best friend went on her first diet. I soon followed eating frozen grapes and doing Jane Fonda “No Pain No Gain” type workouts. I idolized Mary Lou Retton and her Saturday morning fitness show.

While other girls went different directions with their eating and exercise, I stayed focused. I dieted, read nutrition books, even planned on being a dietitian to the point I got my undergraduate degree in Exercise and Sport Science. But knowing about what to do and doing it are two very different things.

Never having a small frame, I was always the largest girl in gymnastics, the heaviest runner, the round girl that lifts weights. I described myself as “thick” because much of it was muscle. I grew muscles quickly, big guns, strong calves. I still have this ability when I utilize it.

What I do not have, is a petite self, a body that can weigh less than about 140 without looking ill, or lovely pale skin and eyes that offset each other in a perfect symmetric circle. Starving myself, working out, every diet in the world will not change that fact.

And yet, I tried.

And then I stopped trying.

Somewhere along the way I gave up. I still work out. I still eat fairly healthy. But I stopped giving it my best. In my head, I was still working out like a younger version of me, but the truth is, I’ve been in denial for a very long time. Pictures. Mirrors. My own image that stares back is colored with a vision that isn’t real.

I want to be real.

For as long as I remember, I’ve been on a path to perfecting my health. A path where I obsess too much, count too little, workout with mediocracy and end up in the same place, a circle of self loathing and denial.

The buck stops here, sister.

I’ve said this before, and I will say it again, and again, and again, I will train for my 5K, I will go to the gym, I will maintain what I’ve worked for but I will do so much more. It’s not a resolution so much as it is a promise to myself: Before I turn 35, I will, abso-fucking-lutely will, be in the best shape of my life.

I know what to do. Now it’s time to start doing it.

I promise to bore the hell out of you with details along the way. And maybe even a before photo or two. If there’s enough whisky in me first.

*These series of images have nothing to do with this post to you, but serve as a reminder to me about the day my children went to the park and let me chase them up the hill and down. I never want to miss out on these opportunities. Ever.