Hello everyone! Thanks for your patience with the delays in blog posts as of late. I signed on with my new job just at the start of the busy season and it’s been more than a little exhausting the last few weeks trying to cover all my bases AND get up to speed.

It’s a new job, learning new recipes with new challenges and trying to contribute as much as I can. No time to indulge in “FNG Status” here- I need to lean into what I know to learn and improve on what I don’t.

It’s probably that newness- the “breath of fresh air” that feels more like a storm gale pounding you in the face that made something finally click for me last week about a change I need to make in my personal life.

CW for talk about weight loss, obesity, and diet.

As I think I’ve obliquely mentioned, the last couple of years have been less than kind to my physical and mental health. A lot of the healthy habits I’d been so proud of building either faded off or were abandoned. I’m certainly not unhealthy, but I do look back at older pictures of myself and realize what I’ve lost.

I’ve gained back about 40 lbs of the 100+ I initially lost. A good chunk of it IS muscle, to be sure- but my body fat percentage (a much better gauge of health than Body Mass Index, by the way) is now around 20% when I remember it being closer to 11.

Lots of things contributed to this. Psychiatric medications can mess with your metabolism AND cause cravings. The fact that I’d previously overexercised and overworked to the point of being considered self-harm is another factor. I needed to renew and improve my relationship with fitness and not make it my only real stress relief.

The primary culprit, however, I think has been stress eating. An old foe and stress reaction I thought I’d long since beaten came back when I was at my weakest- and I just happened to be at my weakest for several years.

Getting back on the stick with eating well and healthy will be a longer road that I can start now, but this post isn’t about that. It’s about something I realized while exercising last week.

I was doing my card deck workout in the basement. I’d put it off for a while simply because my first time getting back to it after exclusively walking and weightlifting put new pressure on my joints and I injured myself. I was back though, and I was determined to go as hard as I could and as far as I could for the time limit I’d set for myself.

It was while I flipped through the cards and sweated my way between squats and chaturanga pushups that I started thinking about myself, my philosophy, and were they weren’t aligning.

“Patience and Relentlessness. That was my motto. That was my strength. My strength was never in being the Strongest or Fastest- my strength was that I kept going. That I could keep going when others needed to stop.”

“Why was I weirdly proud when I’d go to the doctor and the nurses would tell me my pulse was really low. ‘Bradycardia’ they said ‘was common in endurance athletes like runners. Your heart is so strong it doesn’t need to beat as fast to get blood to cycle all the way through your body.’ I was so healthy my heart didn’t need to work fast- it just worked hard. And I said to myself ‘Well that’s pretty much on brand for me.’”

“I always loved running too. I felt so good those times I’d meet or beat my average pace. Maybe that’s where I fell off- I need to go back to training for endurance.”

Today I went on my first run in close to a year. It was less than three miles, followed my old “short” route, and the goal wasn’t to go fast- it was to finish and stop as little as possible. It was time to get back to what I wanted, and that was the ability to simply not stop. To persist, and keep going when others couldn’t.

“Because I am Patient and Relentless, my victory isn’t a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when.’”

It sucked. I ached, and I had to stop twice to recollect myself- but I never walked. I finished with a pace of about 10:30 min/mile. The (lighter) lunch and shower afterward felt incredible… and I knew I had done something good for myself.

In Zen Buddhism and some martial arts schools, there is a saying about possessing the “Beginners Mind” and “wearing the White Belt.” In most martial arts, wearing a “white belt” means you are an absolute beginner and novice compared to the highly trained “black belt.”

The reasoning is simple- as you gain more skill and knowledge, your belt stains and darkens as you accrue more experience until it is completely blackened with age and knowledge.

This isn’t always a good thing. As a famous Zen story says, “You cannot pour from an empty pot or fill a cup that’s already full. Empty your cup so you can learn.” This is the “Beginner’s Mind.”

When we are hung up on what we know– in our careers, in our lives, and in our personal development- we cut ourselves off from possibilities. Sure, some of these “possibilities” we know from experience don’t work, or aren’t for our unique situations- but it’s one thing for that knowledge to come from experience and reasoning and quite another for it to come from pride.

I’m getting used to the fact that I need to start over agin when it comes to my health and fitness. I need to be ready to hurt again. To suck. To sweat through the things that I used to feel were easy.

Sucking at something is the first step in getting good at it (again.)

Stay Classy,