"If you knew what you know now....
... what would you tell yourself right at the beginning of your journey?"
This question showed up in my Facebook feed today from Fitocracy, and it has totally derailed my thinking. (Presumably they mean one's fitness journey, given that it's from Fito.) This post is definitely not the next post I had planned to write. Ah, the blog muse. (Who would that be, Calliope? Or maybe some new muse, like Bloggepere?)
Anyway, I've actually thought off & on about this question for several years, and I have what I suspect is a somewhat novel response. What would I tell myself?
Nothing.
Look, I can get really worked up about the BS we are fed about diet & exercise these days. One of my first posts here was all about the nonsense us women are taught about lifting, and I've got a sweet little rant rolling around in my head about places like Planet Fitness. I've bought so much nonsense over my life I should've taken out some stock in it to recoup my losses. And if I'd known then what I do now, it's possible I could've been much fitter and healthier much earlier in my life.
But I probably wouldn't be me, and I like me.
The simple truth is, everything that has happened in my life, good or bad, is part of the price I've paid to becoming the person I am now. It's all come together in this weird amalgam-mashup of gamer-girl nerd / deep green environmentalist / relocalist / vaguely hipster mama / happy wife / cooking fiend / fiber junkie / now-fitness-fanatic / who knows what else. Maybe it would've happened anyway, but that's a little too Calvinist/predestiny-ish for my taste.
I've let this question percolate for awhile, and at pretty much any "scale" of my journey you want to pick, I don't think I would've wanted to screw around with me too much.
The past year (when my "whoa, fitness!" kick started)
What good would it have done to try and brain dump what I've learned this year into me-last-year? Even if I could've absorbed it appropriately, it would've shortcut my standard "Robyn mania" of diving into a new subject and learning all I can. That's the fun part!
The past decade
Yeah, after having kids, maybe it would've been nice to understand what a healthy exercise & eating plan could look like. But we were pretty much always broke & exhausted (new babies, yo), and learning this probably would've just coded as "Oh good, one more thing I'm not doing right." I'm just not sure we were in a good place for these lessons. Besides, this was the time period that I gained almost all of my adult obsessions that I so enjoy now, like fiberwork, and cooking, and green living, and blogging, and so forth. A fitness mania might've derailed any one of those, possibly with disastrous consequences (fwiw, I work on a ministry-run organic farm that specializes in fiber and veggies, so derailing any one of those could've derailed my dream job).
Grad school
Now here is the one place that it would've been tempting to go back and say something about the value of weightlifting and a few words about diet to myself, seeing as how I spent so much of my life on the elliptical trainer during this period. Still, changing your physique genuinely changes the way people relate to you (whether or not it should notwithstanding, it does). Many of the most central relationships of my life were formed or solidified during this period. It may be a point of curiosity to think about how being thinner and more fit would've changed that, but again, not something I really want to monkey around with.
High school & college
Wow, now here is a place I could've gone straight off the rails. When I was in high school and college, I was fat. Not huge-fat, but obviously fat. I am confident that much of my personality--which I fancy as being someone who is empathetic to others, who can think clearly through problems and see complexities in situations, who is kind and as non-judgmental as possible to others--yeah, that person would've probably been killed. I had the opportunity in high school and college, had I been thin & pretty, to have become a shallow, anti-intellectual, straight-up bitch. And probably pregnant by 16, which wouldn't have helped (not that being pregnant at 16 means one becomes a bitch, I just suspect those two things would've coincided in me). Nope, no good would've come from that. In retrospect, I am actually glad I spent most of my formative years fat. By grace and good genetics, I have no big medical issues as a result. And again, maybe I could've resisted, maybe I could've become a good person through that environment. Maybe. But being fat sure gave me some insulation from it.
Prior to HS
Oh hell, who knows? I can't even evaluate what it would mean to change my behavior this far back, and I probably would've just rolled my eyes and asked my parents who the weird lady is trying to tell me what to do in the gym.
So, nope, keep the time machine, I'm good. Ready to kick some more fitness ass in 2015, and be grateful for everything that's led me to that place up till now.
Happy new year!
This question showed up in my Facebook feed today from Fitocracy, and it has totally derailed my thinking. (Presumably they mean one's fitness journey, given that it's from Fito.) This post is definitely not the next post I had planned to write. Ah, the blog muse. (Who would that be, Calliope? Or maybe some new muse, like Bloggepere?)
Anyway, I've actually thought off & on about this question for several years, and I have what I suspect is a somewhat novel response. What would I tell myself?
Nothing.
Look, I can get really worked up about the BS we are fed about diet & exercise these days. One of my first posts here was all about the nonsense us women are taught about lifting, and I've got a sweet little rant rolling around in my head about places like Planet Fitness. I've bought so much nonsense over my life I should've taken out some stock in it to recoup my losses. And if I'd known then what I do now, it's possible I could've been much fitter and healthier much earlier in my life.
But I probably wouldn't be me, and I like me.
The simple truth is, everything that has happened in my life, good or bad, is part of the price I've paid to becoming the person I am now. It's all come together in this weird amalgam-mashup of gamer-girl nerd / deep green environmentalist / relocalist / vaguely hipster mama / happy wife / cooking fiend / fiber junkie / now-fitness-fanatic / who knows what else. Maybe it would've happened anyway, but that's a little too Calvinist/predestiny-ish for my taste.
I've let this question percolate for awhile, and at pretty much any "scale" of my journey you want to pick, I don't think I would've wanted to screw around with me too much.
The past year (when my "whoa, fitness!" kick started)
What good would it have done to try and brain dump what I've learned this year into me-last-year? Even if I could've absorbed it appropriately, it would've shortcut my standard "Robyn mania" of diving into a new subject and learning all I can. That's the fun part!
The past decade
Yeah, after having kids, maybe it would've been nice to understand what a healthy exercise & eating plan could look like. But we were pretty much always broke & exhausted (new babies, yo), and learning this probably would've just coded as "Oh good, one more thing I'm not doing right." I'm just not sure we were in a good place for these lessons. Besides, this was the time period that I gained almost all of my adult obsessions that I so enjoy now, like fiberwork, and cooking, and green living, and blogging, and so forth. A fitness mania might've derailed any one of those, possibly with disastrous consequences (fwiw, I work on a ministry-run organic farm that specializes in fiber and veggies, so derailing any one of those could've derailed my dream job).
Grad school
Now here is the one place that it would've been tempting to go back and say something about the value of weightlifting and a few words about diet to myself, seeing as how I spent so much of my life on the elliptical trainer during this period. Still, changing your physique genuinely changes the way people relate to you (whether or not it should notwithstanding, it does). Many of the most central relationships of my life were formed or solidified during this period. It may be a point of curiosity to think about how being thinner and more fit would've changed that, but again, not something I really want to monkey around with.
High school & college
Wow, now here is a place I could've gone straight off the rails. When I was in high school and college, I was fat. Not huge-fat, but obviously fat. I am confident that much of my personality--which I fancy as being someone who is empathetic to others, who can think clearly through problems and see complexities in situations, who is kind and as non-judgmental as possible to others--yeah, that person would've probably been killed. I had the opportunity in high school and college, had I been thin & pretty, to have become a shallow, anti-intellectual, straight-up bitch. And probably pregnant by 16, which wouldn't have helped (not that being pregnant at 16 means one becomes a bitch, I just suspect those two things would've coincided in me). Nope, no good would've come from that. In retrospect, I am actually glad I spent most of my formative years fat. By grace and good genetics, I have no big medical issues as a result. And again, maybe I could've resisted, maybe I could've become a good person through that environment. Maybe. But being fat sure gave me some insulation from it.
Prior to HS
Oh hell, who knows? I can't even evaluate what it would mean to change my behavior this far back, and I probably would've just rolled my eyes and asked my parents who the weird lady is trying to tell me what to do in the gym.
So, nope, keep the time machine, I'm good. Ready to kick some more fitness ass in 2015, and be grateful for everything that's led me to that place up till now.
Happy new year!
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