Setbacks

By mid-October I was down to 180lbs and still going strong. I decided if I was serious about keeping the weight off this time, I really needed to deal with the underlying issues that were causing me to put on weight all these years. You don’t get to 227lbs because you just really like lasagna.

With that in mind, I decided I should go to Overeaters Anonymous meetings. I have done therapy, and I didn’t think a one-on-one “tell me about your childhood” thing was going to be useful this time. I needed camaraderie and I didn’t want to have to pay a lot for it. I also thought the 12 step process might result in some much needed self reflection.

[Side note: I downloaded an AA Big Book app onto my phone and dip into it regularly. Every section has useful things to say about addiction and recovery which apply just as well to food addicts as drinkers. I also use other apps to track my weight, keep a brief journal of my foods and moods, and track my exercise. Apps are awesome.]

I had been to an OA meeting the year before, during the time when I was busy putting on the weight I had lost over that summer. It was held in a church basement and was attended by five heavily obese women aged 65 and up. Though they were sweet to me, their stories were not exactly inspiring. Not one of them was “on the wagon” and all shared accounts of their feelings of defeat. I had been afraid to go back.

Finally, on October 18, I decided to slip out of work to get to a noon-time OA meeting at a church near where I work. I had attended a few services at the church and liked the place, so it felt safe and familiar. It hadn’t been a great day up to that point and I was craving a giant sized Dairy Queen flurry, or a pair of those pink snowball snack cakes, things so vile and bad for your body that it was clear I had self sabotage in mind. Feeling myself teetering on a serious mistake, I got in my car and drove to the church. It was 11:55 when I arrived, a nice sunny day, but as I went around the church I found all the doors locked tight, even the one to the sanctuary.

I had come for help, and the doors were Closed, capital C. God was not home, and neither were the former fat people. I decided the only thing to do was text my unofficial “sponsor” and tell Diane what a crap day I was having. Just as I was hitting send, I stepped off the edge of a curb the wrong way and felt my right ankle snapping under me. There was a dull popping sound and then it felt like someone ripping my ankle in half like a piece of paper. I fell to the ground, clutching at my ankle and letting out the kind of barking groan of a dog being hit by a car.

I couldn’t get up and even attempt to put weight on it for a few minutes. When I finally tried it was excruciating. And Diane hadn’t texted me back, so I knew she was busy. There was no one to come get me and it was my driving foot that was affected. The only way home was to drive and just cope with the pain. Moments like these you realize you are a grown up, you are responsible for yourself and no one is coming to fix things for you.

I limped to my car, climbed in, tried calling Diane a few times. Cried for a few minutes. And then backed my car out of its spot. The drive was awful, but there was no way around it.

RICE - Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation. But it still hurt.

When I got home I iced the ankle. Since I couldn’t get ahold of her by phone (and knew I’d need her to pick up Valentine) I emailed her instead. I even sent along pictures. I needed her to know it was serious, that it wasn’t just me having a bad day.

As soon as she knew what was going on Diane sent words of comfort, agreed to pick up the kiddo and got home as soon as she could to make sure I was okay and help me decide if I needed to go to the hospital.

A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

I fought through the pain for a night, but by morning I still couldn’t put pressure on it and I was worried my ankle might be broken. Diane drove, we dropped V at school and then headed on to the new hospital, Princeton-Plainsboro (yes, just like the one in the TV show House, but not as cool) and went into the ER to get it X-rayed.

Unexpected outcomes

The unexpected highlight of my month came when the nurse took my blood pressure and heart rate and said “Oh, you have a nice low heart rate. You must be an athlete.” Bear in mind, I was still, 180lbs, still more than 10lbs away from the very edge of “normal” weight according to a Body Mass Index scale. Diane chimed in with “Oh, yeah, she’s a runner. She did the Philly half marathon last month and is training for another one in November.” I wanted to kiss her right then. The idea of her bragging about me as an athlete and the lady nodding appreciatively took my mind off the pain for a few minutes. It was a moment I relived regularly on days when I felt like a lazy slob.

Here’s a pic of Diane waiting for me to be taken for X-rays at the hospital (note, her weekend stack of papers to grade in hand). She has such a kind, gentle face:

Support crew.

The doctor, a young Indo-American woman who was a runner herself, was please to tell me that the ankle wasn’t broken. But when I asked about getting back to training with less than a month to go to the Trenton half marathon, she was reserved. She said I could do what I felt up for, but that a muscle tear of this intensity would take a long time to heal thoroughly, at least six weeks. I might be able to do the half marathon, she told me, but I should consider strength training and cross training and try to avoid further injury by laying off the ankle a bit. It was good advice, but it hurt to hear it. I had been on such a roll and now I feared Diane and I wouldn’t be crossing that finish line together at the Trenton half. I might be there cheering her on from the sidelines. It was too awful to contemplate.

But this disaster actually lead to something really positive. At the doctor’s advice, I decided I could try to swim in the pool at work for some cross training, since it wouldn’t put too much weight on the ankle. I also got a monthly membership at the aquatic center at Peddie School, a boarding school ten minutes away from my house. I began swimming.

I wasn’t exactly happy to be in a swimsuit, but it wasn’t as humiliating as it would have been at 227lbs. The clientele at both pools was elderly and non-judgmental. The lifeguards were teenagers, but too self absorbed to care about my doughy shape. I resolved to swim one mile, 30 laps (down and back). I had been a swimmer in my freshman and sophomore years of high school, never won anything or did much for the team, but enjoyed it. My own first job had been as a lifeguard, and I felt happy and comfortable in the water. It brought to mind years of happy childhood swimming in the lakes and ocean off New Hampshire and Maine.

Though I was in reasonable cardio health from the running, I had no swimming muscles and it was slow going at the beginning.

Me at the pool. Ignore doughy armpits.

Amazingly, the ankle bounced back relatively quickly. I’m not sure if the swimming helped, but I suspect it did. I found a video on a Sports Med YouTube channel that discussed the power of cross-training; the doctor in the video off-handedly mentioned a study (which really exists, because I went and looked it up) showing that triathletes, even though they usually train more hours per week than people who solely train for distance running (marathoners) have 70% fewer sports related injuries per year. He said this simply as additional evidence of cross training’s benefits.

But something went off in the back of my head. Triathletes. Triathlon. Swim, bike, run... I was starting to swim. I was already running. Theoretically, if I could get on a bike, I might actually be able to complete one. It seemed like a sport undertaken only by Olympian gods, but the thought, once it crossed my mind, didn’t go away.

Ten days after my ankle accident, I was running three and four miles with twinges of pain, but without having to slow to a total crawl. I was getting ready for a business trip to Chicago, and planning out a few running routes from my hotel down the edge of Lake Michigan. [Side note: I’ve found the best way to avoid a running desert --i.e. a period of time where I just don’t run at all-- while on vacation, is to pack all the running stuff and plan out fun routes in advance; they don’t have to be long routes, just enough to keep the muscles moving.]