The Next Hundred Pounds

SPRING CLEANING

Depending on who you talk to, cleanses are either a cure-all that make you feel all svelte and alive and spiritual,  or a ridiculous waste of time and money. People who do them regularly rave about how energetic and radiant they feel (well, after getting through the second-day grumps). And it's quite a fad in places like New York City, where an array of companies are lined up to offer you very expensive juices and supplements designed to cleanse you of unspecificed toxins, give your gut a rest from digesting solids, and other "benefits" which many nutritionists and doctors dismiss as bogus. The main benefit to be derived from detox cleanses or fasts is quick weight loss, and if you use it correctly, it can be a sort of jump start to healthier eating. Or you might just yo-yo, if you're not careful.

I did a sort of cleanse --- though it wasn't called that --- before starting Tony Horton's 10 Minute Trainer. It's a part of the nutrition program that comes with the workouts, and it's called the  Two-Day Jumpstart. It's basically a semi-fast; the hardest part is giving up coffee for a couple of days. You have smoothies, green tea, low GI veggie and fruit snacks, and one solid meal a day (a salad with some lean protein, basically).  It's super lowcal and you know, for two days, it's completely doable. I did feel better after having done it, but I also think the effects were mainly psychological. Sure, you're going to lose weight doing it because it's so low-cal, and what you're losing is mainly water weight. But it helps you transition.

I'm thinking about doing one again, before I set off for my next big trip. It'd be nice to feel just a little lighter, a litte more "on my way", so to speak. The inspiration this time is Groupon. An offer came for a juice cleanse, and out of curiosity I checked it out. A three-day supply of fresh juices (six 16 ounce bottles a day) costs $140 normally and was on sale for $69.

Hmm. Well, I have a Vitamix, and I know how to use it. I'm willing to bet that I could stock up on two or three days' worth of cucumbers, celery, parsley, spinach, beets, carrots, lemons, ginger, pears, apples, and cashews for a lot less than $140; and since the Vitamix emulsifies, you don't lose the fiber content and other goodies that you do with juicing.  I'll probably throw in some protein powder, too; and have at least one salad-and-lean protein meal a day. I'll let you know how it goes.

In other news, it looks like Tulsa (my next long-term stop, to sing Marie in The Most Happy Fella) has great cycling trails and is, in general a bike-friendly city; so since I'm driving, I can take the bike! I don't yet know where I'm staying in relationship to where our rehearsals and performances will be , but hopefully I'll be able to get some good rides in. As much as I hate the stationary bike, I do love to ride when I'm actually going somewhere and seeing things.  My goal will be to have lost enough weight that, when I get back in March, I'm in no danger of being over the BMI limit and can have my knee surgery at the surgery center, before my next gig starts in April. With any luck, by then the worker's comp stuff will be ironed out as well; at least, that's what I'm crossing my fingers for.  While my knee is finally doing better (after about two and a half months staying off it, plus a painful cortisone shot), I can really tell that it's not right when I (carefully) work out, stand or walk too much, or go up or down stairs. I have plans to continue being active up until the day I die, so this will not do. Especially with hiking in Montana to look forward to.

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THE KINDNESS OF FRIENDS (AND STRANGERS)

After the publication of yesterday's post, many friends have written, both publicly and privately, and some of you have posted here as well, in a loving outpouring of sympathy, empathy, and support. There has been much friendly encouragement and advice. Many people are expressing anger and frustration with the wretched state of our healthcare and insurance systems, and many have expressed disdain for the use of BMI to determine whether someone is healthy enough for surgery under a certain set of circumstances.

( I confess I find the latter puzzling as well, and perhaps one of my readers who is better educated medically than I can explain it. I understand the concern about respiratory issues, especially sleep apnea, while under anesthesia, although I do not now nor have I ever suffered from it; but I don't quite get the concern about the health and safety of the medical personnel who would be working on me. There are certainly people who weigh the same as I do, who due to their height fall within the allowable BMI range. How is it easier or safer to lift or roll one of them than it is me? I also want to make it clear that I was treated with professional courtesy, real compassion and caring by the lovely people at Texas Orthopedics. They went out of their way to help me --- one even checked with the hospital's own surgery center to see whether they might have a higher BMI limit, and whether my doctor was or could be credentialed there. )

Many people wrote to say they are undergoing the same battle --- most of them people I personally never think of as being in any way overweight, and so a humbling reminder that challenges with food and fitness are not restricted to those of us with unsuitable BMIs (yeah, I'm going to keep ragging on that for a while, bear with me). Many of those folks, like me, have fought it all their lives. We are not alone.

The healing and inspiration to be found in these sharings is tremendous, and each and every one is tremendously appreciated. But one, from a colleague who I had the privilege of working with not too long ago, made me cry. This colleague wrote:

"Anybody that knows you also knows that you will accomplish anything you put your mind to. But if I can just say, you ran your ass off during our show just as hard as everyone else in the cast, and you weren't any more winded or any weaker or any more anything than anyone else in the cast... and that kind of activity is not possible for someone who is too fat to have a knee surgery. You are a healthy person, regardless of how much weight you feel you need to lose. We have seen those people who are too fat for a surgery, and you are not one of them. Anybody who went through two rounds of P90X is not one of those people."

OK, I'm going to cry again just re-reading it.

I am a healthy person, still.

I didn't realize, until I read that, that part of what is making this so hard is that deep down, I felt I might have ruined what I worked so hard to gain, which was better fitness and health. It's embarrassing enough to have regained so much weight, but I've also deeply feared that my diabetes might come back. Most of all, I've felt like the Wizard of Oz, a big humbug. Here I am with this weight loss blog I've had for four years now, writing fairly openly about my experiences (except for the last few months, and yes, I've been feeling really guilty about that and trying to put a good face on it), and so determined to keep going, to get a grip, not to slide all the way into the abyss. And to be fair, I haven't ... but it's very scary.

Several people have pointed out that weight loss programs have a dismal success rate. It's true; I actually knew that from the outset and tried to factor it in; but I did hope to find a way to get around it. I really wanted to be one of the minority who manage NOT to gain it all back and thought I stood a pretty good chance of doing so. The deck is really stacked against us there, my friends; research bears it out. But this is in no way a reason not to try. Yo-yoing isn't good for you, but neither is the extra burden, and the bottom line is that everyone has to figure out what is best for them. You'll forgive the pun, but weight loss/management is not a one-size-fits-all proposition.

But nevertheless ... I am a healthy person, still. Up until my injury, which happened on opening night of Falstaff, October 27, I was running, walking, or stepping on the elliptical machine for hours almost every day, with a few P90X sessions thrown in for good measure. Before that, I completed a four-week round of 10 Minute Trainer, a Tony Horton (aka P90X guy) workout --- I did three sessions back to back every day. I spent June cycling all over Princeton, including to and from rehearsals; in April and May I did Zumba, kickboxing, barre toning classes, and TRX suspension band resistance training every day at  Ironflower Fitness (usually two classes a day); and February and March I was biking all over Sarasota and doing Power 90 (a P90X precursor) daily in my living room. It's not like I've been sitting on my ass eating bon-bons. And yet the whole time --- the whole, entire time --- I have battled an underlying guilt and shame that somehow I was not doing enough.

So maybe that's the real problem. I mean, I've tried to go the "focus on the fitness" route, tried not to worry about my weight, but it doesn't really work for me because no matter how much I'd like it to be otherwise, I don't like being fat. And when I was at my lowest weight, I STILL had an unsuitable BMI and lots of jiggly parts, and frankly, at my age, that's never going to change without a whole lot of plastic surgery. (The jigglies, that is). But I felt better then, I liked my clothes, I felt younger, and yes, strangers treated me differently. I want to get back there, and to do that, I have to figure out how to let go of the guilt and shame.

My mom said to me, earlier today, "I was really worried about how upset you were about the surgery, but I knew you'd figure something out. You always do."

Well, I have figured out the immediate plan; having rejoined my basic community gym today, I am going to get myself up there every day between now and January 24, when I head out on my next trip, and do Pilates, yoga, or the elliptical. I'm not doing anything fancy with food, just yet, other than doing actual meal planning and trying to make good choices. This morning at the farmer's market, I picked up fresh grouper and scallops, so this week's menu includes garam masala scallops with shredded brussels sprouts and lemon dill grouper with herbed zucchini. French onion soup, too, and leftover vegetarian noodle-less lasagna which I made so nobody would have to cook during my non-existent recovery.

Today, I feel better armed to face the challenge, especially with the healing truths that so many friends have taken the time to remind me of: that being fat does not necessarily negate being healthy. (There's proof that active fat people are actually healthier than skinny couch potatoes). That what so many of us are trying to do is really, really hard, and society as a whole does not support it in a meaningful or useful way. That weight regain happens. That the struggle to stay fit and manage food and weight is not limited to fat people. That those who struggle need to hear about the setbacks as well as the successes.

And I do feel better, thanks to the many people like my friend quoted above, who wrote words of support and told me I inspired them, who shared my frustration and anger at the healthcare system and at the stupidity of using BMI as a measure of health, who simply wished me well. Thank you. It may be a cliche, but it really does mean a lot to me. I also feel better for having some sort of plan --- not all-inclusive, but enough to get started, and getting started is the most important part, because it's usually the hardest. Keeping going is the second most important. And giving yourself permission to start over, as many times as it takes?

Well. As they say, priceless.

NEW BEGINNINGS

I am living with pain, both physical and psychological. If that sounds dramatic, you'll have to forgive me --- I am a bona fide diva, you know, even if under normal circumstances a rather low key one (or so I flatter myself). It's a torn meniscus, and plenty of people just live with such an injury, never bothering to have it fixed. It's not cancer, it's not neuralgia, it's not even rhumatoid arthritis. It's not any one of a million horrific injuries, diseases, or painful conditions that millions of people have to endure every day. But the knee hurts. Not so much that I can't do my job. Not so much that I need to regularly take medication for it, but daily and enough. It's weak enough to concern me that I could reinjure it if I'm not careful. Weak enough that, as a precaution, I've gone nearly two months without doing any significant exercise, the longest period of inertia since 2008, and the most costly.

The psychological pain is, as you might imagine, harder to deal with.

Here's the gist: my knee surgery did not happen as scheduled on Friday, and it's unlikely to be scheduled for some time.  To say that it is disappointing is an understatement, but there's more to it than that.

It's humiliating.

This is a hard post to write. Parts of it have been thoroughly mulled over for  months, as I struggled with how much to say and how and what and when. Things came to a head a few days ago when a mystery call came from the hospital. It was a mystery because my surgery was scheduled for the surgery center at my orthopedist's office --- the same place I had wrist surgery after breaking it in 2008. Suddenly, it was moved to the hospital, and after a chain of phone calls, I finally found out why. That was the first hit. The second came on Thursday morning, hours before my pre-op meeting was scheduled. The hospital called again, with an estimate this time.

They wanted $23,000 for a 15-minute, minimally invasive outpatient procedure, and that price tag does not include the cost of the surgeon or anethesiologist. That price, my dears, is well over six times what it would have cost me were it to happen in the surgery center.

I did some very quick, dirty research and figured out that I could actually fly to New Delhi, stay for two weeks in a moderately priced hotel, and have the surgery for a little over a quarter of what it would cost me to have it at the hospital ten miles from my house.

Now, I am insured, but my insurance would have covered less than half of those costs. I have also applied for worker's comp, since this injury happened on stage during the opening night of a performance. But that claim is still being processed, andI have no idea how much of this will be covered or when, and I was really, really hoping to get this matter taken care of before my next gig. It is terribly upsetting to have to wait, especially since I have to wait for a stupid reason.

You see, I could have had my surgery on Friday as scheduled in the surgery center, and paid less than one sixth of what the hospital would like to charge, and even if I'd had to pay for every cent of it out of my own pocket I could have managed that. But I am not eligible for surgery at the surgery center, as I was in 2008, because my BMI is now too damned high.  They have a limit, and I am over it.

There it is. After all my struggles, my work, my research and education, my hours of sweat, and yes, my pontificating, I have gained back enough weight that I am too fat to have surgery at the surgery center. And that, my friends, is humiliating beyond words.

I realize that it probably does not come as a surprise to anyone who's been following this blog, either; but I've been reluctant to come right out and say it in plain terms, for reasons you can certainly imagine and some you probably can't. But I've always tried to be open here. So it's time to come clean.

I do not, by the way, regret having made the big effort to lose weight and to become healthier. I don't regret a single minute of exercise or a single cookie skipped. I would do it all again and in fact, I plan to. (The" how" part of the plan still needs work; after all, I've been fighting this for some time now without the amount of success I want).

I do not count my past accomplishments as now somehow being invalidated, either. I did what I did, and I'm proud of it. I hope I can do it again.

I don't believe my methods were flawed. They worked. I lost 130 pounds, reversed my Type II diabetes, got off all meds, and got into the best shape of my life. I started running. I did two rounds of P90X. And I'm still at a lower weight than when I started.

So why have I, despite fighting hard, despite being well-educated about nutrition and weight management and general fitness, regained so much weight? There isn't a pat, easy answer. Some people are going to raise the usual refrain, "You have no willpower! No discipline!" and I shall pre-emptively call bullshit on that. I have plenty of both, and I've proved it. Weight loss and weight management and food relationships are complicated.

I thought, at one time, I had mine under control. Maybe I did, at one time. I know that I got so far off base a little, tiny, bit at a time and I think I can trace the start of it back to a specific time, place, and set of behaviors. That's a start.

What happens next? Well, now that I've got this off my chest, the plan is to go back to where I started. Tomorrow I'm rejoining the little neighborhood gym where I spent an hour a day on the elliptical, for about two years straight. They have a great Pilates class, and they have yoga, both of which will help a lot with strength and flexibility and will be good for my knee. They have my elliptical machine and they have stationary bikes, which I dislike intensely but are probably better for my knee than the elliptical.

Two days ago, when I still thought I'd be recovering over the weekend, I planned healthy meals. I made split pea soup and vegetarian noodle-less lasagna so nobody would have to cook and we wouldn't be tempted to go out or order in. I made sure we had plenty of salad fixins' in the house. I'll be planning ahead more, something I'd let slide in recent months.

While I wait for my claim to be processed, I plan on losing some weight. While I was writing this, I popped over to a BMI calculator and checked to see how much I'd have to lose to qualify for surgery at the center.

Ten pounds. Ten lousy pounds. When you're as heavy as I am, that's nothing.I'm not sure whether to be more embarrassed by that, or pissed off that the nurse didn't tell me that's all I'd have to lose. It would have saved me a lot of grief. Hell, armed with this information, I may just go on a smoothie and salad "fast" for a week and then try again. Crash dieting is not, of course, a solution to longterm weight loss, but in this one case, it just might be worthwhile.

But slow and steady is, of course, best, and ultimately that is what I'll return to. I'll give all my old tools another try, a really good try. And I'll look for new solutions, too.

It's a journey, not a destination, and as with all journeys, sometimes you get off track. Sometimes way off track. Sometimes you have to make a U-turn.

Consider this my turn signal.

KNEED TO KNOW

I can't believe it's been nearly a month since I posted --- this has got to be the longest "time off" I've ever taken for this blog. However, things have been INSANE. A quick catch-up:

Immediately after Thanksgiving, I traveled the short distance to San Antonio to rehearse and give three performances of Messiah with the San Antonio Symphony --- such fun! We stayed in the gorgeous and historic Gunter Hotel, and performed in three different churches around the city.

 

With the cast outside Augie's Smokehouse. R-L: Baritone John Buffet, Soprano Kathryn Mueller, Maestro Patrick Dupre Quigley, and me!

 

The day after I got home, I flew to New York for several auditions. I got home around midnight on December 7 and on December 9, made a quickie trip to Madison, Wisconsin for another audition. I was barely there, but the little bit I saw was beautiful. It snowed just enough to be pretty, and I was staying on the square, right across from the lovely Capital Building.

 

Wisconsin State Capital in the snow.

 

This was a very brief trip --- I wasn't even there 24 hours! And I barely had time to kiss my husband and cuddle my puppies before I was on the way back to New York for more auditions.  At least I got to hang out with some friends and enjoy cooking fabulous (though not really healthy ... umm, not healthy AT ALL) dinners. And of course, New York is beautiful at Christmas.

 

Love the changing lights at Columbus Circle!

I got home on Saturday afternoon, and that evening my Spotlight on Opera troupe had their Christmas performance, A Rose in Winter. I was exhausted, but there wasn't that much setup, and I thought I could relax and enjoy the show. NOT. A lady in the audience, who turned out to be the mother of one of my singers, had a medical emergency. She's fine, thank goodness, but I spent the entire second half  helping her and the paramedics. I needed my own blood pressure checked after that episode! We had another show the next day, which fortunately went off with no greater hitch than a traffic accident that made half the cast a little late.

And this morning, Monday, I had an MRI.

In my previous post, I discussed the rather painful cortisone shot I had for my knee. Long story short, it didn't help that much, so an MRI was the next step, and I'll get results on Thursday. I may need surgery, but the good news is it will most likely be arthoscopic, with relatively little pain and a short recovery. In the meantime, to make things even happier, I suspect I broke my left little toe whilst running around New York.  Having broken the right one a couple of years ago, I now have a matched pair. Hurrah.

What all this means in terms of health and fitness is that November and the better part of December have been DISMAL. I have been so busy, exhausted, and frankly not feeling all that well that any attempts at working out have been minimal and quite honestly, I haven't done all that well with eating, either. I feel fat, sluggish, and unhappy about all of that. But I also feel overwhelmed. So, one day at a time. I need to resolve this knee issue and get some rest, so I can marshal my forces and get back to the work of getting and staying fit.

The coming year is a good one, gig-wise. Currently, my engagements will keep me busy from the end of January through May, and there are some very exciting things on for the summer that I can't talk about yet. (Keep your fingers crossed). But all of this means I need to work out, watch what I eat, and get as healthy and fit as I can. And I will.  :)

A (PRE-T-DAY) TURKEY

So, this is not how I planned to be spending the week of Thanksgiving, especially today. I have a long list of things to cook! But yesterday, I went to the doctor to see about my knee. Long story short, I got a cortisone shot, and am enjoying the backlash. ((That's the turkey referenced in the title).

My sprain happened four weeks ago, and I've never stopped limping or fearing re-injury; haven't been able to do much in the way of working out. So, I made an appointment to see cute Dr.  Hurt, the same doctor who operated on my wrist back in 2008. Diagnosis: arthritis in both knees, but not necessarily what caused my sprain; something may be torn but we won't know without an MRI. Given several options, I opted for a cortisone shot for the present; after about a week we'll see if that's helped significantly and if it hasn't, well, MRI.

A couple of years ago, when I dislocated my seisamoid bones, I got a cortisone shot for them and it really helped. It hurt more than anything that's ever happened to me except breaking my wrist, but when it was over, it was over, and I felt better almost immediately. There was some swelling, but it was over pretty quickly and I enjoyed a normal-feeling foot for many months after that.

Well. THIS has been a different experience. The shot in the knee didn't hurt nearly as much as the one in my foot, but when that needle goes through the capsule, IT HURTS. My head came off the table and I did make some sound, fortunately none of it cursing directed at the adorable Dr. Hurt (who is, by the way, like twelve. And brilliant). It was a shorter ordeal, and when the shot was over it was over and the pain didn't continue.

But about an hour and a half later, it was a different story. My knee swelled up, I couldn't get comfortable no matter how I lay or sat, and that sucker just HURT.  We had to get out my great aunt's old walker that for some reason I kept (SEE, WE NEEDED THAT!) and one of my grandpa's old canes I use as a prop for Spotlight on Opera, just for me to hobble into the house and get from the bed to the ... well, the necessary places.  It took me a long time to get to sleep.

Today it's still somewhat swollen and very stiff, though thankfully I no longer need a cane to get around. But it's going to make doing all the cooking hard. I'm just taking it easy, doing a little bit at a time, and letting my poor sweet husband play fetch and carry. A friend is coming over later this afternoon to help cook, so it'll all get done. I just hate being incapacitated! However, the whole point of having a cortisone shot is that it's supposed to make things radically better, so here's hoping that by tomorrow my knee will feel like a normal knee again.

I still have to wait awhile before doing any kind of impact exercise, and I may not be able to run anymore. That's the worst part. But we'll just see what happens. Hey, yesterday a friend of mine,  who is still recovering from a near-fatal car accident, had a biopsy and is spending HER Thanksgiving hoping the tumor is benign. I really have nothing to complain about.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

 

NO TEARS FOR TWINKIES

You may have no choice but to put down the Twinkie.

The whole world probably knows by now that Hostess Cupcakes,makers of snacks such as Twinkies, Ding-Dongs, Ho-Hos, and Wonder Bread, is going out of business. The 82-year-old company is based in Irving, TX (not too far from Dallas), and has 33 plants, all of which have been closed. 18,500 employees are losing their jobs (why do these things always seem to happen right before the holidays)?

One of the reasons the company is closing is because, according to Reuters,  striking bakery workers refused to agree to an 8% paycut, a 20% increase in healthcare costs, closure of a number of plants, and other changes to benefits. For those 18,500 employees, I feel bad. I hope they find new, better-paying work soon.

But for the death of the Twinkie and the other nutritionally disasatrous junk food Hostess sells, I can't be sorry. Sure, a lot of people have nostalgia associated with the brand name junk that brightened up their school lunch boxes. I certainly ate my share of Twinkies, Ding-Dongs, and Little Debbie snack cakes (which were cheaper than Hostess, as I recall) as a kid. But now, more educated about nutrition, I'm happy to see a junk food brand bite the dust.

Amid all the political arguments about health care, insurance, the economy, and America going to hell in a handbasket, we should rejoice to see the end of sugar and chemical laden crap food. We should continue to press for more education about nutrition, and better availability of real food, especially in schools.

As I sit here and plan my decadent Thanksgiving menu, I think back to the holidays of my childhood, when quite a lot of our food came out of cans and packages. No wonder I didn't like veggies much. They were nasty. Gray, limp asparagus and peas boiled to mush and poured out of a watery can bear no resemblance to their crisp, green, flavorful origins. Sure, I liked green beans, as long as they were drenched in Cream of Mushroom soup topped with a breaded, fried onion concoction or thousands of calories' worth of crumbled up Ritz crackers. Naturally sweet yams, soaked in syrup in their can and topped with more sugar in the form of marshmallows. Nobody really liked the jellied cranberry sauce, squeezed from its can and still bearing the ridges of its container, but we had it anyway, because it was traditional. I never liked mincemeat pie, either, until I made it from scratch and realized that, far from a black cube of unrecognizable stuff which might or might not have contained actual meat, REAL mincemeat is a delicious combination of fruit and spices, and reasonably healthy, too, especially if you cut all but a tiny bit of the sugar the recipes call for.

If I --- a child who grew up on the SAD diet, eating grilled sandwiches made of the cheapest white bread and hunks of Velveeta cheese, who thought Spam was a treat, with a Maryland Club coffee can full of bacon grease on the stove which was used to cook whenever we didn't use Crisco --- if I can re-educate my palate to despise the taste of artificial ingredients and find food that is as close to the way Mother Nature made it the most delicious, anybody can, really. And the more I learn, the more I believe it's not only the healthiest thing, but also the most economically sound and best for the environment and our country sort of thing to do.

So as I plan that decadent Thanksgiving menu, except for a few choice items, I'm taking out extra sugar and substituting lower or no fat products (like yogurt or almond milk for dairy, and apples or bananas for fat in baked goods). I'm experimenting with gluten-free alternatives, since my mom has recently decided to try gluten-free eating and gluten is the latest, greatest nutritional demon. All my decadences will be made from scratch, using high quality ingredients -- no preservatives, artificial colors, or things I can't pronounce. And even if I didn't enjoy cooking gourmet meals from scratch, even if I wanted a much quicker, easier, less messy celebration, it could be easily done without involving chemical shortcuts. Roasting veggies and a turkey, throwing together a great fall salad, whipping up some biscuits ... easy peasy. Even a simple pumpkin pie is actually a pretty healthy and extremely easy dessert!

No plant-manufactured assembly-line snack cakes have passed my threshold or my lips for more years than I can remember, nor shall they. But  if you're a diehard Twinkie fan, don't despair. Someone is sure to buy up the best-selling brands and continue making them. And even if the brand does become extinct, what with all the chemicals and preservatives in Twinkies, you can hoard whatever you can find on the shelves now --- they'll last you the rest of your life, easy. Heck, if you buy enough, your grandkids will be able to eat them.

Of course, I'm hoping your grandkids will have better taste. ;)

HOMEY HEALING

I am so lucky to have supportive friends and colleagues! Last week, a colleague literally saved my performance by opening her PT clinic and arranging a therapist to work on my knee. This week, as I start my Healthy Holiday Challenge, a colleague has gone to the trouble to record a video to show me some exercises I can do, seated, and still burn some calories. It's five sets of exercises that you do for 2 minutes each, with 30 seconds of rest in between; you repeat the whole thing three times. I am going to alternate this with the dreaded stationary bike until my knee is better.

I tried the workout yesterday and it was good. Like anything else, if you do it with intensity, you're going to burn calories. I also came in a little below my calorie goal for the day. Booyah.

But now fate has thrown another little obstacle in my path: I'm getting sick. It's already throwing a wrench in my plans, foodwise --- the last thing you want to do when you're not feeling well is count calories --- but I'm determined to stick to my plan.

Getting sick, even with a cold, is a big deal for a working singer. Most of the time we're play-for-pay, meaning we get paid to PERFORM, not REHEARSE; so a singer could be on the road for four weeks, rehearsing a show and spending money on food, etc., get sick, not be able to sing a performance, and not get paid for that performance.  Or, we might have to cancel an audition when we've already bought an expensive plane ticket. You can see how that might be a problem. You can also see how this leads to paranoia on the part of singers, when it comes to being around other people's cooties.

Singers are big on home remedies, anyway. Homeopathy tends to work a bit slower, but it also has fewer potential side effects that can affect your singing and vocal health. For example, many singers avoid products like Advil because it's a blood thinner and can contribute to vocal hemorrage (bleeding of the vocal cords --- not very conducive to singing). So most of us have a bag of tricks when we start to feel poorly.

For instance: sore throat, my current woe. Now, you can sing over a sore throat as long as you're not hoarse; and there are things you can do to help avoid or combat inflammation (which is what makes you hoarse).Of course, there's gargling with salt water ("As hot as you can stand it!" my mom used to insist). But a much more pleasant alternative is pineapple and ginger. Both contain bromelaine, a natural anti-inflammatory which not only soothes on contact, but also aids digestion. So fresh pineapple, pineapple juice, and ginger tea are all great for sore throats. Coconut is especially hydrating, so the combination of pineapple and coconut juice is a delicious (but alas! high calorie) remedy. A lot of singers also swear by slippery elm throat lozenges, syrup, and tea. I'm not a fan of the taste, which is sort of sickly-sweet. I prefer elderberry syrup, a traditional medicine used to treat a variety of respiratory ailments, and said to boost immunity. I like Sambucol Brand (especially when I can find the sugarfree version) which I find instantly relieving.

As soon as I start feeling icky, I go into my routine. Extra Vitamin C, as much extra water as I can stand, as much extra rest as I can get. Water is especially good if you have any kind of mucous-producing ailment, such as a cold or bad allergies. Mucous dripping on the vocal cords helps cause inflammation, which makes you hoarse. So anything  you can do to thin it out --- i.e. pour liquids down your throat til they seem to be going straight through and out the pipes on the other end  --- helps, and it also helps flush out the cooties. Dairy products make mucous thicker, so they're to be avoided during this time of trial (milk substitutes should be fine, though, so no one has to miss out on the healing properties of a good latte or ice cream). A lot of singers use neti pots to flush out their sinuses, but I am not a fan. For one thing, it sounds really uncomfortable, and they've also been linked to infection, so you have to be very careful. I prefer to use one of those little steamers you can buy for your face. They're cheap and available at most drug stores. The steam is soothing and opens up your clogs.

Chicken soup has long been used as a homemade curative for illness, and there's even science to back it up. When I was sick as a kid, Mom used to crack open a can of Campbell's Chicken Noodle or, better yet, Chicken and Stars (the same thing, but the noodles were tiny stars! What's not to love?). But these days, I gravitate towards my favorite Thai soup, tom kha khai, extra spicy. I have no idea if it actually helps but it always makes me feel better. Plus the spices make your nose run (which is good, if you're trying to unclog). Sadly, my very favorite place for tom kha khai closed last year, and I am still searching for the good stuff. Hot and sour soup is a decent substitute, if I can't find tom kha khai that makes me happy. (Both have those cute little straw mushrooms, which I love).

Anyway, soup shall be the answer to my calorie dilemma --- both tom kha khai and hot and sour are pretty decent nutritionally and not over the top on calories (especially if you make them yourself). Heck, even chicken noodle isn't so bad, though I'd rather have avgolemono (aka Greek lemon chicken soup. Do yourself a favor and get some, if you've never had this. It's the bomb). I'd get some right now if it weren't 5 a.m. Instead, I'm going to try to go back to bed and indulge in another highly successful homeopathic remedy: puppy cuddle therapy.

BREAK A LEG

Tomorrow, a new challenge begins --- the Healthy Holiday Challenge, sponsored by a FaceBook group I'm part of, Larry Brownlee's Fit Club. This is a group of singers and friends who encourage and challenge each other, and exchange information. It's a great idea to help us all get through the holidays enjoying ourselves without guilt!

The challenge is this: set a daily calorie intake for the entire 61 days from November 1 - January 31. During this time, you get five "free days" during which you can exceed your daily limit, essentially taking a "day off". You also select five days to come in lower than your daily limit. And you plan to increase your activity level during entire 61 day period.

 

Opening night of Falstaff in Boise, Idaho. I am in the storage/locker room in the basement of the historic Egyptian Theater. Built in 1927 as a cinema, it has no dressing rooms to speak of!

That last part is going to be a bit of a challenge for me, thanks to an adventure I had on opening night of Falstaff.  Falstaff is a very physically active comedy, with a great deal of running around (especially for my character, Dame Quickly, who is a sort of go-between). In my very first scene, going up a flight of stairs, I felt a wrench that went from below my knee all the way up to my hip. The next step was excruciating. It's a very good thing I wasn't singing when it happened, because it would have come out as a yelp! As it was, I was able to take a deep breath and make my next vocal entrance as if nothing had happened, and limped through the rest of the scene (literally), but the moment I got offstage I had to call for a chair, ice, Advil, and a bandage. Within minutes my knee was so swollen I could no longer bend it. And naturally, this happened on a Friday night.

 

 

Close-up of the makeup and the back of the costume. My jaunty little hat got rave reviews.

I got through the rest of the performance, limping and modifying my staging somewhat, but I did not sleep well that night. It hurt to lift or move the leg laterally, and it was badly swollen. On Saturday, I went to Urgent Care, which proved fairly useless. The doctor said I either had a bad sprain or a torn ligament, and offered X-rays "to rule out anything else", an Ace bandage which was not wrapped sufficiently to give any support whatsoever, and a type of pain medication I'd never heard of and wasn't willing to try, given that I had another performance on Sunday. Other than that, she had no advice other than to continue what I was doing --- RICE, aka Rest-Ice-Compression-Elevation --- and to get an MRI.

 

Luckily, one of my colleagues and her husband are locals who own a chain of physical therapy centers called Rehab Authority. She arranged for one of their best therapists, Heather Henderson, to meet with me on Saturday evening. And Heather was a miracle worker. She worked on me for two hours and got the inflammation down, the knee to bend, and me to be able to walk, carefully, without pain. On Sunday, with care and a good brace, I was able to do the show much more comfortably.

 

Getting shockingly good treatment (here, electric stimulation) at Rehab Authority in Meridian, ID.

 

On Monday it was a long and frustrating day of travel, beginning with our flight being canceled due to fog. We were rebooked on a later flight which was delayed three or four times, and when we finally got out, the "premium" seats I paid for ended up being bulkhead window seats without enough leg room to full extend my leg. This was a problem. Luckily, I was seated next to an extremely kind  (and tall) young man who offered to switch places with me. I'd already experienced another very painful wrench earlier in the day, when I moved too quickly to catch something that was falling, a good reminder that even with improved mobility and less pain I need to be careful.

So, I have set my calorie intake goal and dedicated myself to this challenge, but I am not sure how much cardio I'm going to be able to do! Elliptical would work but I'm not currently a member of a gym. I may be stuck with the stationary bike, which I don't really care for. However, I am determined to heal my leg and get back into fighting form so I CAN really step it up. In the meantime, the Healthy Holiday Challenge is the perfect way to really enjoy the holidays and rev up for a happy, healthy new year.

But please --- don't anybody suggest I break a leg!

 

PS - HAPPY HALLOWEEN! (This is my Act III costume).

 

LET'S BE GORGEOUS

The other night,some colleagues and I were sitting around enjoying a post-rehearsal glass of wine.  This is a pretty fit bunch, over all. Several of the guys do P90X, and I'm constantly running into the tenor at the gym.

The soprano is a tall, willowy sort with a very athletic figure (despite three kids!); the type of body many women strive for and envy. She has a figure that can still handle the type of jeans teenage girls wear. I forget how we got on the subject, but we were talking about eating healthy and our various struggles with weight. I once again found myself surprised that slender, athletic people struggle with food and weight, too! Intellectually I know this, of course, but it always manages to surprise me anyway.

I continue to struggle with my feelings about my own body, weight, and what is truly healthy for me at this particular point in my life. Where is the balance between physical health and emotional health? If I work out regularly and watch what I eat, is that good enough even if I don't like the number on the scale or the tag on my clothes? Is relaxing my regimen from time to time cheating, or is it doing what I have to do to keep from stressing and obsessing?

 

My costume for Dame Quickly in Falstaff at Opera Idaho. This photo was taken in the basement storage/locker room of the Egyptian Theater where we're performing. A former silent movie house, it has no dressing rooms to speak of!

These types of thoughts run like a ticker tape in the back of my mind whenever health and fitness talk comes up, and this time was no exception. And then something happened that, for the moment at least, completely stopped it.

 

My colleague leaned across the table and said, "You  know, you have the cutest figure!"

I was, needless to say, very pleasantly startled and flattered; no one has ever accused me of such a thing before. I thanked her and told her a bit about my weight loss and ongoing struggles. She very kindly said, "You look great now. When you were singing that Dalila aria the other night at the aria auction, you were so sensual! And you just looked great."

Well, this was just balm to my soul. Why is it that we are so susceptible to the compliments and criticisms of others? Nevertheless, these kind words did give me encouragement. I feel encouraged to keep up with my workouts (been going to the gym, hiking, or jogging on the greenbelt trail nearly every day). It gives me encouragement to continue to eat healthy most of the time, and not to worry too much if I slack off or take a WHOLE DAY OFF like I did earlier this week. It gives me encouragement to allow myself to be more comfortable in my own skin.

 

.. and back, with a close-up of the makeup. They used my own hair instead of wigging, too. om b

 

That's a powerful gift, from a few little words.

Let me leave you with this. Today, and every day, let's just be gorgeous and not worry about it. Deal?

EASIER TO SEE

Women's magazines are not usually a source of inspiration for me, considering how most of them exist for the sole purpose of encouraging women to buy really expensive stuff by making them feel too old, too fat, too ugly, too imperfect, too-too-too and yet somehow never enough. Sure, they're full of articles about empowerment, which are sandwiched in between ads for $100 anti-aging face creams modelled by airbrushed fourteen-year-olds and spreads of designer clothing on teenaged girls who collectively weigh less than one of my thighs. Not to mention that I cannot imagine a situation in my life, real or fantasized, where a $1000 handbag would be considered a "must have".  Especially if I had to be put on a waiting list to get it. In fact, the only designer item I can truly admit to lusting after is a pair of classic black, red-soled Christian Louboutain pumps. Now those, I would go to some lengths to get. Assuming I could find a pair that fit my giant feet.

Like these. These would be good.

But I digress. Women's magazines are by and large the enemy of self-esteem, which sadly doesn't prevent me from reading them from time to time. After a lifetime of being too big and too poor for most of their sartorial offerings, I've learned to breeze right past most of the so-called fashion advice and actually --- gasp --- read the articles. And there are a few magazines I actually really like, such as More, which is after all not targeted to teeny boppers with more disposable income than I make in a year (although I continue, perhaps unfairly, to scoff at their "This is what 47 looks like" feature. This is what 47 looks like ... with a facelift, I frequently snort).  But it was in More than I discovered something that actually was empowering, in an article entitled "Look Better With Age: 20 Real Women's Secrets". It doesn't credit the real women who are quoted, but maybe that's because these are SECRETS, y'all. Nevertheless, several of them spoke to me.

"At about 40, I stopped comparing myself to other women, worrying about whether they were cuter, dressed better, whatever."

"When I was 25, I was always copying some other physical ideal. Now I realize it's better to be a first edition of myself."

"I actually appreciate the little 'extra' me I have now; I have more curves."

"I take much better care of myself now than I did in my twenties."

And perhaps the corker:

"I've decided that I'm no longer fat --- just easier to see."

This is all the kind of reinforcement I --- and most women --- need to hear. These quotes inspired me, and hooked in with some amorphous thoughts that had been floating around in the back of my head for some time, never quite forming up into something recognizable as an idea. In my ongoing struggle with food, weight, health, and --- let's face it --- identity in this phase of life, perhaps it's time to put some serious effort into not worrying so much.  Like this weekend, when I am scheduled to sing a sexy duet on a concert. I  want to do it and own it, but there is always a part of me that whispers, "You'll look ridiculous." I usually ignore this nasty little voice and do it anyway, but it's always there, all the same.

A couple of friends, who read this blog, posted more positive reinforcement on my FaceBook page in response to my previous post about fitness over fatness.  Jessica wrote (thank you, Jessica!) "I've seen you at a variety of weights, and for more than a year now, when I look at you, I don't see a fat person. I see a shapely, healthy woman, with great curves, a full life and a go get'em attitude. I think you need to strike 'fat' from your set of personal definitions."

God, I wish I could. I wish I could be more like Balpreet Kaur, a young Sikh woman who happens to have facial hair. This is a pretty incredible story --- someone snapped a photo of her and posted it on Reddit with the intention of making fun of her. But friends of Balpreet pointed the post out to her. She wrote an wonderful response that every one of us can learn from, especially we Western women with all our obsessions about our looks. " ... baptized Sikhs believe in the sacredness of this body - it is a gift that has been given to us by the Divine Being [which is genderless, actually] and, must keep it intact as a submission to the divine will," wrote Balpreet. " Just as a child doesn't reject the gift of his/her parents, Sikhs do not reject the body that has been given to us. By crying 'mine, mine' and changing this body-tool, we are essentially living in ego and creating a seperateness between ourselves and the divinity within us. By transcending societal views of beauty, I believe that I can focus more on my actions. My attitude and thoughts and actions have more value in them than my body because I recognize that this body is just going to become ash in the end, so why fuss about it?"

(By the way, the person who posted Balpreet's photo wrote a very heartfelt apology).

I don't know if it's possible, given the standard American upbringing, the constant pressures of society,  and the nature of my job as a performer, to completely release my attachment to looks. But I am inspired this week to at least try to own who I am right now, at this stage of life, to be the best I can be in every capacity, and to seek to be at peace with my body. Obsession isn't healthy. Beating oneself up isn't healthy. And, in the end, seeking true health is the very best thing you can possibly do for yourself, because it will affect every aspect of your life.

So. Here's to self-acceptance, love, and health. Cheers, everyone!