The Byers Guide to Eating Dirty (Part II)

If you haven't read yesterday's Part I post yet, do that now. You really do need the background to understand where the below recommendations are coming from. If you're all caught up, let's continue with The Byers Guide to Eating Dirty.

1. Eat cheat meals or snacks throughout the week, instead of having a full cheat day. For one, it’s more practical and sustainable in real life. Opportunities for good food and socializing come up at different times. So allow yourself to have a drink on Tuesday night, a slice of cake on Friday afternoon and French toast with Nutella on Saturday morning. Think about this… if you eat/snack 4-5 times a day, and incorporate four cheat “meals” or “snacks” a week, you’re eating clean almost 90% of the time. Good lord, I’ll take that. In addition, your insulin sensitivity, GI tract and mental health and wellness will take far less of a hit if you eat clean, slip in a bowl of ice cream and then go back to eating clean… versus an entire day of Carb-a-Palooza. You’ll recover from your cheat faster, and you’ll feel better about yourself if you surround your cheat with good, clean eats.

2. Eat something because you want it, and because it's special... not just because it’s there. Say someone brings donuts in to the office. I look at the plate and think, donuts are here. I could eat a donut. But I can have donuts any time I want. So if I really want one in an hour, or a day, or next week… I’ll just go get one. The fact that it's sitting there does not make it special enough for me to go off-diet. But if my Mum (or anyone else, for that matter) shows up with freshly made snickerdoodles, I’m eating one. Or three. Those are SPECIAL, and I will really WANT one. So the next time you mindlessly pop a bagel, slice of pizza or piece of candy in your mouth just because it’s there... Pause. Think, do I really WANT this? If the answer is no, pass it up. If the answer is yes, proceed to numbers 3 and 4.

3 (to be performed in conjunction with 4). Eat only as much as you must to satisfy your craving. If you are dreaming about chips and salsa, break out the blue corn chips and get some. But now go back to #2, because you don't have to eat the whole bag just because it is there. In addition, if you are also properly working step #4, you should have plenty of notice that your mental fix has been achieved. When it has, stop eating. Maybe that's four peanut M&Ms. Or maybe that's an entire pint of Chubby Hubby. Both are okay, as long as you are mindful of the process.

4. When you do go off-diet, SAVOR IT. There’s nothing worse than filling up a bowl with Blue Bell chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream and then hoovering it mindlessly in front of the TV. That is a shameful waste of a cheat. So when you finally get that drool-inspiring forbidden food in front of you, spend some time with it. Take small bites. Enjoy the flavor. Make it last. Since we cheat as a means of providing mental satisfaction, squeeze as much satisfaction as possible out of what you are eating.

5. Finally, a more complicated recommendation - cheat smart. There are off-diet foods you can eat with little perceived negative physical effect, and there are others that will absolutely wreck you if you eat even the tiniest amount. The catch is, these things are different for everyone. For me, French toast (grains) and syrup (sugar) in reasonable amounts (one good sized piece) are 100% okay. Last weekend, I ate my Nutella French toast, and immediately hit the gym and pulled a 10# clean PR. But had I eaten just a few bites of goat cheese (dairy) in an omelette, I would have had a stomachache for hours. Mathieu Lalonde tells a similar story. “After eating strict Paleo for two months, I cheated with a pizza for dinner. I woke up the next morning with a huge headache, blurry vision, and lethargy. I wondered if the insulin spike from the white bread and cheese was the problem or if there was something else involved. The next time I cheated, I ate a banana split and a pint of ice cream. I woke up feeling a little bit fuzzy the next day, but nothing compared to the gluten hangover from the pizza.” So, cheat smart. Figure out what foods are okay, and what are not. You will eventually figure out that the not okay foods are simply never, ever going to be worth it. Stay away from those cheats, and find other foods to satisfy those cravings.

How do you figure out what foods are okay for you, and what foods are not? I’ll tell you exactly how to do that... next week. I’ll give you an easy to follow, step-by-step plan to cleaning out your dietary closet and cheating smart. But be prepared… this helpful advice comes with a healthy dose of Tough Love. You’ve been warned.

So there you have it – my official and decidedly opinionated Guide to Eating Dirty. Post questions, responses or controversies to comments. I’m off to cover something in syrup.

My Nutella-fueled 115# clean PR, at Guerrilla Fitness CrossFit Montclair. (Photo courtesy of Gregg Arsenuk.)

The Byers Guide to Eating Dirty (Part I)

This weekend, I discovered Nutella. Yes, Nutella – that chocolate hazelnut spread that the jar assures you can be a part of a balanced, healthy breakfast. Now, Nutella marketing people, come on. I’ve read the label. I know there is nothing about Nutella that is balanced OR healthy. But damn if it isn’t delicious between two pieces of French toast. (Put that on the label.) Yes, this weekend I “cheated” on my diet with grains, sugars and processed foods. And that’s the subject of the day – eating dirty.

If you’re reading this blog, we probably have one thing in common. We all try to eat well. We eat Zone proportions or Paleo quality or some other mechanism that we would call a “clean” diet. We know the difference between Real Food and Stuff You Can Eat. We eat real food, natural food, nutrient-dense food. We avoid foods that require additives to be “healthy”, high-tech fabrications designed to replace real food, and food-like products made from ingredients we cannot pronounce. And we do this, day in and day out, for the vast majority of our meals and snacks.

But most of us don’t eat like that ALL the time. A 100% strict diet is mentally taxing, socially restrictive and just plain not fun. So, we “cheat”. We go off diet, eat things that we normally wouldn’t, indulge in things that taste good and satisfy our urges. But on the Healthy/F Off Scale, we still want our diets to tip well to the Healthy side. Which means we need to think long and hard about how we cheat, what we choose to eat and drink during these cheat periods and how often we go off diet.

Let’s first define what we mean by “cheat”. I’m going out on a limb and saying 99% of the time, cheat = high carb, processed, sugary foods and drinks. What else do we cheat with? Certainly not fat. Fat is not only allowed, it’s encouraged. No, we cheat with dirty, dirty carbs. Beer and pizza, nachos and tequila, cinnamon swirl French toast slathered with Nutella. We cheat with insulin spiking, sugar rushing, energy crashing CARBS. (Can I get an "amen" from my Brooklyn boys?)

Now that that's settled, in this next section, we’ll talk about the physiological benefits of cheating. Surely, you’ve heard that cheat meals or cheat days are a necessary part of your fitness program? They “shock the body”, “keep it guessing”, “jump start your metabolism”, right? So this next section will discuss the science-y details of how going off diet and cheating with things like pizza, pasta, cake and cookies has a positive impact on your physical health, fitness and performance.

This section is short.

IT DOESN’T.

To be perfectly clear, a cheat day does not have a single significant, long-term positive effect on your metabolism, your body composition or any other internal science-y factors, despite what you read on the internet. Mathieu Lalonde can step into comments and explain all the reasons that a single cheat day negatively impacts how you look, feel and perform for the next two weeks... but I’ll shoot down some common arguments here.

First… for those of you who eat a bowl of Breyer’s every night before bed and suddenly notice you’re looking leaner… that’s not the Breyer’s. It is, however, a sure sign that you have not been eating enough. The ice cream is giving you a caloric boost, and has jump started your metabolism. Which is great, short term. But keep eating ice cream every night for months on end and tell me how that’s working out for you. Or, I’ll argue, how much better would your fat loss and performance be if you instead ate more almonds, chicken and/or sweet potatoes to get those extra fat and calories in? In short, the “cheat” may have helped short term, but it’s a bad long term solution, and you could do better. (Pay attention to that last part. You’ll hear it again.)

Second, you may pass off your cheats as preventing metabolic slow-down. Serious calorie and carb restrictions decrease the release of the hormone called leptin. Leptin is important to keeping up your body’s metabolic rate. Increasing food intake drastically, even for a short period of time (like with a cheat day), will prevent the drop in leptin that occurs when dieting. But most of us aren’t seriously “dieting”, are we? We’re CrossFitting, so we are at least eating enough to support performance. We may have a slight caloric deficit to prompt fat loss, but we are NOT in starvation mode. Not even close. Our metabolisms should be chugging away like a super-powered bullet train. So, if we are already eating for performance, do we really need to “mix it up” and “jolt our metabolisms” with chili cheese fries and an ice cream sundae? (That's rhetorical, kids.) And if for some reason you are on a seriously calorie-restricted diet... again, I'll say that you can pull off a better metabolic shock-and-awe with a higher volume of good, clean carbs than you can eating crap.

How about the idea of “loading” or “refeeding” – essentially, replenishing glycogen stores? Glycogen (the carbs stored in the muscles and liver) is the primary fuel source for intense physical work. When your glycogen stores are low, you won't be able to train as hard as when you're fully loaded. For that reason, it's a good idea to periodically give the body a shot of carbohydrates to keep glycogen stores at least somewhat full. (We do this in the form of a post workout meal.) But again, it comes back to this. You can “refuel” with ice cream and candy… or you can refuel with sweet potatoes and butternut squash. Ice cream supports the basic, fundamental requirement of replenishing glycogen stores… but also messes with a whole host of other body processes, like insulin sensitivity, fat stores and autoimmune responses. Again, you could do better.

So there you have it – a cheat meal or a cheat day does nothing for your physical health and well being that couldn’t be done better with good, clean food. But there are a whole host of reasons to cheat that I DO support - and those are all mental. Your taste buds crave things that taste good. Your brain rebels against the rigidity of “can have” and “can’t have”. Your emotions needs a break from the isolation and social pressures of being the weird eater, the difficult dinner party guest, the one who makes everyone else feel bad about the way they eat. You need a mental break, which means you need to stray from your diet. And I am more than okay with that.

So we’ve established that we want our diets to weight in on the side of Healthy, but that there are mental and emotional reasons that mean it is absolutely necessary that we go off-diet from time to time. And as you might imagine, I have a few thoughts as to how you do that. Tomorrow, I'll publish my advice for how to strike the best balance possible while still preserving your mental sanity.

Stay tuned for The Byers Guide to Eating Dirty (Part II) on Friday.

I'm sorry... artificial sweeteners WHAT?

A guy has celery sticking out of one ear, lettuce out of the other, and a zucchini up his nose. He goes to the doctor and asks him what's wrong. The doctor tells him, "Well, for one thing, you're not eating right."

The CrossFit Nutrition Cert with Robb Wolf and Matt Lalonde was eight hours of science-y diet goodness. And the best part was that I learned nothing new. Okay, that's not true at all. I learned LOTS of new stuff, like why artificial sweeteners are bad (because they cockblock fat loss - that's a quote, people), what high triglycerides indicate (insulin resistance) and how to translate Zone blocks to calories (you don't, actually, which is kind of the point). But I didn't learn any brand new concepts. Nothing jumped out at me as startling information, and there was no point where I thought, "Holy shit, I have not been doing that." Which is a very good thing, for both me and the people who pay me to tell them what to do.

I did manage to ask a few of your questions directly. The "cheat day" question actually deserves its own post - I'm drafting one up now. I am picking Matt's brain about the scientific value of incorporating "cheats" into your diet, and I'm going to lay my own theories and concepts out there to help give you a better strategy to maximize the effective of your nutritional plan while still maintaining a happy balance.

As for Karen's question: "I seem to remember in Mathieu's Science is Hot post, he recommended that some people should NOT have a post workout (PWO) meal to maximize insulin sensitivity. When would he recommend to a client to NOT have a PWO meal, and what would be the criteria for determining this?" Karen, you're right. Matt did say during our first interview that a PWO meal isn't necessarily for everyone. And I got the chance to ask him this question in the middle of his Zone lecture. I'm responding below with the information he presented to the group.

If your client is pretty dialed in with their diet - they've been eating Paleo or Paleo-Zone for a while, their quality is good and they have, for the most part, regained insulin sensitivity, then a PWO meal is a great way to put their carbs to work for them and maximize performance and recovery. But not everyone is a great candidate for shoving that many carbs into one meal. For clients with a long history of insulin resistance due to a high carbohydrate, low fat diet, restoring insulin sensitivity is priority number one. You want to focus on food quality (eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, no sugar) first, and minimize any potential for insulin spikes. For these people, you'd want to do everything possible to get their insulin response back in line... and a post workout meal (where you're sticking half your carbohydrate intake for the whole day) is not the best way to accomplish that goal. In addition, a PWO meal is designed to help you perform and recover better. These clients - overweight, undernourished, carb-addicted and unhealthy based on scientific biomarkers of health - aren't going to be able to perform at ALL until you get their metabolism running again.

So, Karen, it depends on where you or your client is in the process. If regaining insulin sensitivity is priority number one - then skip the PWO meal, for now, and focus on minimizing the insulin response with good food quality and managing proportions and quantity. Once that sensitivity has been regained and new dietary habits have been firmly established (meaning, the person could potentially eat a cup or two of sweet potato and not want to jack a Dunkin' Donuts), then you can start to introduce the concept of a PWO meal. Make sense? Feel free to post follow-up questions, if you've got them.

Penty and Sean, I was not able to ask questions on leptin or hormones (like estrogen or progesterone) that bugger up fat loss. There was so much material to cover, and I couldn't go too far off the rails with 70 people in the room all waiting to get their questions in.

Renee, as far as the acid/base balance goes... I'm not sure if my response helped, and we didn't really delve into the topic at the cert. Send me an email if you have more questions and I can try to sort out the information for you. Dallas is really good with this subject, actually, so I can tap him to help.

So there you have it - I've got a piece of paper that says all the stuff I've been doing - and telling you to do - is, in fact, pretty good stuff. Obviously, they couldn't fit all that on the certificate, of course. Which is a shame. Actually, what I wish it would say is, "Melissa Byers, CrossFit Nutrition Certified. Just do what she tells you." Maybe I'll send Kelly Moore a note about that...

I have a hot date with Robb Wolf

This Sunday, Dallas and I are headed to CrossFit Boston for Robb Wolf's CrossFit Nutrition Certification. This makes Sunday pretty much the best day of my life. It's not just that I have a crush on Robb. I mean, I do. He's smart and funny and he called me a "hot little biscuit" on his web site, which made me straight-up giggle when I read it. (If you know me, you know I do not giggle.) But our relationship goes deeper than just clever banter and mutual flattery. I like Robb for his INFORMATION.

If you've read my blog, posts on the CrossFit Message Boards or emailed me to ask if you are, in fact eating enough... you're already familiar with Robb Wolf. In summary, Robb is The Man when it comes to diet, nutrition, rest, recovery and a whole host of other health and fitness topics. His articles and advice are based on both science and practical application. Plus he's got a style not unlike my own - irreverent and cheeky - and he brings the tough love like nobody's business. (Seriously - how many people have I emailed that linked post to? Raise your hands.)

I've had the good fortune of spending time with one of Robb's protégés, Harvard chemist and CrossFitter Mathieu Lalonde. I've been getting some of Robb's good stuff by proxy, with a healthy dose of Matt's unique brand of genius thrown in. Which also means I am a very lucky girl, because between these two and Dallas (my trainer/business partner), I've received a truly fantastic education in all things diet and nutrition. I've been able to apply that education to both my OWN program, and the programs of those I've been nutritional coaching. This weekend, however, I am excited to hear Robb's information in a more structured format, and have the opportunity to ask questions and receive answers based on my specific experiences, and those of my clients.

So I promise to take good notes, and share what I learned back here on the blog next week. And if you have any questions that you'd like me to consider while I'm there, post them to comments. Let's be clear, though... I will not, and Robb will not, analyze your diet block-by-block. There are a ton of resources out there to help you do that. But if you have something big picture, something theoretical, something science-y that's above my head... post to comments. If I get the opportunity to ask, I most certainly will.

The Carrot Train to Crazytown

I was having a conversation with my new friend Melissa "Melicious" Joulwan via email last week. We were talking about post workout food, and she asked for some sample meals. I suggested a few things - salmon and sweet potato, a chicken breast and butternut squash, egg whites and a banana.

She responded with the following: "A banana?! Are you f*cking kidding? I haven't had a a banana in a year and a half. I'm, like, over the moon with the prospect of eating a banana tomorrow after my workout. I could weep, seriously. It feels like I'm doing something naughty even considering a banana. How f'ed up is that?"

Um, that is very f'ed up, Mel.

And it reminded me of my now-infamous Carrot Confrontation. I was participating in a discussion on a message board when someone asked what I eat in a typical day. I replied with a list of things I had eaten that morning - chicken, radishes, egg whites, spinach, olives... and carrots. I mentioned I had eaten almost an entire bag of baby carrots. At which point, another poster responded, "You should be careful about eating so many carrots. Carrots are pretty high in sugar."

This response made me wish I had more middle fingers.

Because the day you tell me that CARROTS AREN'T THAT GOOD FOR ME is the day I give you the finger. Maybe even both. Which brings me to the following rant - get off the Carrot Train to Crazytown and think about it for a minute. I'll start you off. They're CARROTS, people.

I could get all science-y here, and talk about glycemic index versus glycemic load. I could talk about how the all natural sugars found in fruits and vegetables are nothing like the mutated, processed sugar-like substances found in soda, Starbucks Frappuccinos and "healthy" whole bran muffins. I could also talk about how the "sugar" in carrots comes bundled with an amazing assortment of valuable vitamins and minerals.

But I'm not going to get all science-y here, because I'm trying to prove a point. Amidst the ridiculous volume of nutritional information floating around out there, the confusing statistics like glycemic index and potential renal acid load, all of the books and diet plans and recommendations and suggestions, it's easy to lose the beta-carotene forest through the trees. So I'm going to recommend one simple thing.

Take a step back and use your head.

In the big picture, carrots are not "high in sugar." Are they higher in sugar than, say, spinach? Sure. Should you eat five bags a day? Probably not. I wouldn't recommend you eat five bags of ANYTHING a day, frankly. But if you feel like something sweet, I will applaud you for your healthy choice if you grab a carrot. If you want something crunchy to mindlessly gnaw on, I'm more than okay if you plow through an entire bag of carrots. If you don't like vegetables at all, but can somehow manage to choke down a serving of carrots... I'm thrilled, because one vegetable is better than no vegetables.

If you read my stuff, you'll know I am all for reviewing, analyzing and tweaking your nutritional plan. And I understand the fact that, when both choices are good, one might be more good. For example, I might counsel someone to cut back on dried fruit and eat the real stuff instead, for two reasons. One is simply practical - you can have more of the real stuff. (For the same number of carbs, you can have 1/4 cup of dried cranberries, or three cups of fresh strawberries.) A more pressing reason relates to those people who are in that initial "getting off the crack" nutritional phase. If you are trying to right a very upended insulin sensitivity, you don't want to trick your taste buds into craving "bad" sweets with something like dried fruit (which has a higher concentration of sugar and the sweetness of candy). For those people, I may be a little more strict with fruit and vegetable choices - but only for the first few weeks, until their tastes reset a bit. But unless eating carrots are going to tempt you into a box Krispy Kremes, I am not going to worry about your intake. (And I seriously doubt a bag of carrots is going to be any kind of gateway vegetable.)

So let's not be too quick to jump on the Carrot Train to Crazytown. Take a step back and think about your food choices from a rational perspective. Eating mostly meat, nuts, seeds, vegetables, fruits? You're doing better than 99% of the general population. Want to take it further? Try to balance your fruits and vegetables on a bigger scale. Eat plenty of color, get plenty of variety, and fill every plate with leafy greens. But, like, you want a banana? Eat one. Want some peas, or a sweet potato, or some carrots? Have them. Because in the whole scheme of things, fruits and vegetables are still, as far as I know, good for you.

Except for corn, of course.

The Snatch Horse

If you've been reading for a while, you might have picked up on the fact that I am not very coordinated. I'm more coordinated than I used to be, thanks to CrossFit, but no one would ever call me "graceful". I fall down a lot, trip over stuff, hit my head and fall off things. Which is all normally kind of funny, and good fodder for the blog. But last week while Olympic lifting, I actually had a pretty serious accident.

On Monday after the Albany Qualifiers, our group decided to hit the gym for some 603/MaD cross-affiliate training. Matt was going to teach my sister Kelly to deadlift, and Dallas and I planned to work the snatch under Donna's watchful eye. It didn't take long for me to warm up and hit the platform... where (unbeknownst to me) a series of unrelated events was about to culminate into what shall henceforth be known as The Perfect Snatch Storm.

Factor One: The Bar. I'm used to warming up with my women's bar, and since I don't have training plates, my snatch pulls go from the hang at 33# to full snatches from the ground at 53#. Les than ideal, but it's all I've got. Donna, however, has both a 15# training bar AND nice wooden "plates". So I get in front of the bar, which LOOKS like my bar and is set up off the ground like my bar... but is, in fact, a full 38# lighter than what I would normally pull off the ground.

Factor Two: The Set-Up. I've been playing around with my set-up, and specifically, my head position. I know I look too far down - EC told me that during our training session. So, trying to make a good impression on Donna, I specifically dropped my hips and looked up a bit, which put me in a more advantageous pulling position. And also got me far more vertical than I am used to in my set-up. (The fact that truly WAS a better pulling position is, in fact, irrelevant.)

Factor Three: I'm New At This. This was only my third time snatching, like, ever. My mental rehearsal isn't very good yet - I still have too many cues in my head and not enough muscle/CNS memory to make them all happen. And the one thing EC kept reminding me when I first learned was "slow off the ground". She said that over and over, because that was the common error in all my lifts.

In summary, I set up on a bar that was WAY lighter than I was anticipating, in a better but unfamiliar more vertical set-up position, and failed to consider all the cues that I am supposed to when completing the lift. As a result, I ripped that snatch off the ground like it was on fire. Given the aggressiveness of my pull, the light bar and my vertical set-up, I simply could not pull my head out of the way in time. I smashed myself in the face with that barbell so hard, I almost knocked myself over. It came straight up into my bottom lip, and continued right on up past my top lip into my nose.

I was stunned. And then I was bleeding. And the garage was SILENT, waiting for me to react. I believe I said, "Oh, shit. I just totally nailed myself in the face." I sniffed, ran my tongue over my teeth, put my hand over my mouth, hesitantly touched my nose. "But I think I'm okay." And then I carefully and calmly lay down on the platform. Matt, Donna, Dallas and Kelly all took my cue and went back to their workouts, checking in with me every few minutes.

I lay there for a really long time, bleeding and taking a more thorough inventory of my facial features to make sure everything was still in order. (It was, for the most part.) And when I was done with the bleeding, I stood up, wiped my hands on my pants, nodded at Donna and said, "Let's snatch."

Now, I've had bumps and bruises before, and I've had my share of CrossFit mishaps. But I have never, ever hurt myself like this. I had a massive headache, and a hole in my bottom lip. My top lip was one giant bruise and I'm pretty sure I broke my nose. IT HURT. But more than that, an accident of that nature, of that severity, at this point in my life...

It scared me. A lot. To the point where the thought of snatching again made me want to just sit on the platform and cry. I mean, as a kid, you wreck yourself all the time. It never phased me - I remember flipping off my Big Wheel once, scraping up my face and my elbows and my knees, and impatiently pulling at my horrified mother because I wanted to get back out there and have a re-race down the big hill. As a kid, you're used to banging yourself up. But as an adult, it's totally different. I can't remember the last time I hurt myself this seriously, especially not from an activity I chose to perform. And being hurt like that... I'm not embarrassed to admit that it shook me in a serious fashion.

In those 15 minutes I spent bleeding on the garage floor, I thought about never snatching again. I didn't want to do it. I was scared to pick up that barbell. I thought, who cares if I never snatch again? I can still clean and jerk. I won't miss it. I don't HAVE to do it. But then I thought about what happened out there on the platform. I smashed myself in the face, sure... but I smashed myself in the face while OLYMPIC LIFTING. How many 35 year old women could say that? I know people my age who have thrown their back out picking up their child, or pulled a shoulder muscle while changing the water cooler bottle, or hurt their knees while kneeling in the garden. I hear plenty of those stories from friends, family and co-workers. But lying there on that platform, bleeding and hurt-y, I thought to myself, I am NOT going out like that. If I'm going to incapacitate myself, put myself through that much pain, blacken both my eyes and subject myself to an inordinate number of startled glances and stupid questions... then I WANT TO GO OUT SNATCHING. And I knew right then and there that I had to get back on the Snatch Horse.

So I did. I stood up, shook it off, and picked up the bar. Carefully, tentatively, and probably with not fantastic form. But I did it. Donna coached me through some light snatches, helping me with my pull and my drop under the bar. All in all, we probably did about five sets of doubles and triples before calling it good. And then, because I needed to do something I felt really good about, we picked some heavy stuff up off the ground a bunch of times.

My sister Kelly said it was the most bad-ass thing she's ever seen me do - hurt myself to that degree, and then get right back under that barbell. The thing is, it wasn't bad-ass. I didn't do it to be a tough girl, or to prove a point, or to be able to have a better story to tell. I did it because, for those of us who choose to ride the Snatch Horse, this is just what we do. We hurl our bodies underneath a heavy barbell because it makes us stronger. We drive ourselves past the point of comfort because it makes us tougher. We fall down, and we pick ourselves right back up, because to do anything different would mean defeat. And that would put me one step closer to having to ask for help changing the water cooler bottle at work.

And I am not going out like that.


The author, in her usual state of grace.