You Never Have To Do That Again

This is not an "update on the Embree family" blog post.  This isn't even a "life in Kentucky" or a "life in seminary" blog post.  I'm hijacking my own blog for a "I had an epiphany and want to share it with you" blog post.  It's a pretty personal post and one that I am both excited and hesitant to write.  It's a "bare your soul, share your heart" post but one that I genuinely feel bears writing and sharing so.. if you're still around, here we go.

All my life I have struggled with my weight.  I have never been "skinny" nor have I ever been small (I was 9 lbs, 12 oz at birth - feel sorry for my mom).  Even as a child, my legs dwarfed the other girls I played with.  In middle school I developed asthma that was cold-air and exercise induced.  After one particularly scary asthma attack, I decided I would rather sit in my room, read books, drink hot tea and eat popcorn than ever go through that again.  I hated gym class, especially if we had to do things like run the mile or take the Presidential fitness test.  By college, I had pretty much resigned myself to being "fat" and just gave in to my size.

I've had ups and downs since that time.  Different stages of life where I could pay more attention to my weight and got thinner and then times where being a new mom or starting a new job where I couldn't and I got fatter.  I've tried so many diets.  Low-fat, low-carb, low-calorie, high-protein, dairy-free, gluten-free, and even chain diets (and I know these work for many people and I know there a ton more I haven't tried but that's not really the point of this particular blog).  I lost, gained, lost, gained; you know the routine I'm sure.  The number on the scale had the power to bring great joy or great sadness.  Defeat was so defeating and wins were few and far between.

Luke, my husband and my friend, and me

Beside me stood my husband.  With each new diet or old diet redone or no diet or lots of exercise or no exercise, with every joy-filled pound lost and every tear-filled "I don't have anything that fits" moments, he stayed beside me.  He supported me.  He loved me.  And this Christmas season, he gave me an incredible and scary gift.  I had read him a blog post that was traveling around facebook at the time about what we are passing on to our daughters about body image and when I finished (having shed more than a few tears in the reading) he held my hand and said something like, "Honey, I've been married to you for almost 13 years.  You've been thinner, you've been fatter.  I've never loved you differently.  But I hate the way you hurt yourself with these diets and weigh-ins.  I'm tired of seeing you feeling defeated and hating yourself.  I want to ask you to consider next year NOT dieting and NOT weighing yourself.  For one year, just don't do it.  You can be healthy, be active and fit, but no diets, no calorie-counting, no weigh ins.  Just be you."

When he said it, I will be honest, my chest tightened and I genuinely thought I would have an asthma attack right then.  The thought of not dieting, of not logging every bite I ate, of not knowing what I weigh?!?  It scared me, so very much.  I would blow up!!  I would be huge.  It would be like throwing in the towel and saying, "I give in.  I'm fat.  I'm huge.  It's over."  I cried, I really struggled with this opportunity he had laid before me.  I thought about it for a long time before I finally agreed.  One year.  No diet.  No tracking food or calories.  No weigh ins.  Holy cow... that's a long time.

January was so hard!  Like really hard.  Maybe some of you understand.  I'd been doing it for so long it was a part of me.  I would find myself at dinner adding up calories on my plate or pulling out the scale and thinking, "I wonder how much I've gained."  Part of the deal was that I could pursue a healthy and active lifestyle so I started doing the same thing I'd always done - tried running and doing dvds.  I was so over it.  I was just done.  

Then I went to my first spin class.  I can only imagine what the instructor thought the first time I came in the room.  I really did think during that first class that I would as Jillian Michaels puts it, "Faint, Puke or Die."  But amazingly, I did none of those.  And I felt empowered.  The next class we decided to make a little facebook group called "Spinning Divas" of which I was a member.  Me, in a fitness group, with two ATS personal trainers.  Then the big step.  I asked one of the trainers, who I was very scared of, to take me on.  I told her about the whole no diet, no weigh-in thing and asked if I could just set fitness goals.  She said, "Absolutely!" and off we went.  Again with the whole "Faint, Puke or Die" routine and I didn't. And this all leads to yesterday.

Yesterday the seminary's fitness center offered a "One Rep Max Challenge" where you pushed yourself to find your one rep max (something you could only physically do once) in things like the bench press, leg press, deadlift, curl ups, push ups and pull ups.  A trainer worked with you to warm up and then to find your max.  During one exercise the trainer working with me said, "For this machine we need to input your weight in order for it to calibrate correctly" and then she looked at me expectantly.  I couldn't help it.  I laughed.  I have no idea what I weigh!

I cannot tell you the freedom I experienced in that moment.  I have NO IDEA what I weigh!  And, believe it or not, I'm okay.  In fact, I'm better than okay.  In fact, if you look at the numbers I put in yesterday at the challenge, I'm mostly in the good to superior categories for fitness.  In fact, all those years of "trying to be good" and dieting and weighing in had actually held me back and convinced me that I was not good enough to be as strong as I am.  After deadlifting 200 lbs (seriously peeps, ME!) another trainer heard me say, "That's just crazy.  I can't believe I did that" to which he responded, "Do you know what's really crazy?  You've always been that strong and you never knew it."  

So, yeah, I was feeling pretty good when I got home but God wasn't done yet.  He still had more to show me about what it is to walk in this newfound freedom.  That night my dear friend Nicole came over and we chatted about life and I told her about my day.  When I told her about not knowing what I weigh, I said something like, "I got 6 more months before I'll know I guess."  And she looked at me and said, "You know, you never have to do that again, right?  You don't have to go back to dieting and weighing in and calorie counting just because a year is up.  You never have to know what you weigh."

WHAT?!?  For real?  I don't have to know that number.  I don't have to meticulously determine each morsel that enters my mouth and stress about every guilty bite I take and cry over ever pound gained.  Oh my goodness! You are absolutely right!  I don't ever have to do that again.  This may sound like a "duh" moment to some of you but for me, it was absolute total freedom.  Look at me.  After 5 months of not weighing in and not dieting, I have not suddenly ballooned five sizes.  I also have not lost weight either, I don't think.  I think I'm pretty much the same, in terms of size.  But in terms of strength, both physical and emotional, I am way stronger.  And in terms of freedom, well let's just say, I have never in my adult life felt the way I did this morning when I could honestly say, "It truly does not matter."

I ate a doughnut this morning.  Because it was the last morning with my dear small group and a good friend who will be moving away and I brought doughnuts to eat with my girls and we shared coffee and yeasty deliciousness and tears and prayers and IT DID NOT MATTER.  

The Bible says, "It was for freedom Christ has set you free.  Do not be enslaved again in a yoke of slavery."  This verse is talking specifically about putting yourself under the law of religion and looking for it to be what makes you good.  And that's not exactly what I was doing.  But what I was doing was imprisoning myself by a number and an image that barred me in on every side and kept me from living the life of joy and freedom I was meant to as a child of God made in His image.  And while I kinda knew it, I didn't get it, not truly until yesterday when I said, "I have no idea what I weigh."  

Being loved by my beautiful daughters

No idea and yet... there I was, working out, having fun, being healthy and active, loved by God, loved by friends, loved by my family, loved by my dear sweet husband, loved by my kids, loved.  And for the first time, I was free enough to see it.  And I had to share because I just know some of you get this.  I know I am not the only woman who lives in guilt and shame over numbers on a scale and numbers on our tags and numbers of our calories.  I know that I am not the only one who has wept on her bed with clothes around her that don't fit and swimsuits that don't cover and pants that won't zip up anymore.  I cannot be the only one afraid to eat a dessert in front of thinner people or swearing off certain foods because they make you fat or not going to certain events because of what will be served.  

I've seen so much on facebook lately about embracing our bodies as they are and not being so critical of ourselves and while that is good and true, that's not exactly what I'm saying.  I recognize that I have a need to be healthier and more active and I'm not just embracing the parts of me that can honestly use some work.  I am however not going to allow my very soul and emotions to be trapped again by a scale, a number or a food.  It's just not worth the chains.  One day, I'll go to a doctor's office and I'll see what I weigh.  I can't say now how I will respond to that, be it higher or lower than what I think.  But by God's grace, I hope I will walk away just as free as I feel today.

And sore, I feel sore today.  Getting stronger hurts sometimes.  But it's worth it.