The Angry Typist

Every book has its function and requires a certain mindset to read them … at least for me. As part of my newly developed body recomposition nightly routine, I wind down by reading but I can’t just read any book. No. It must be the perfect before-I-go-sleep sort of book, entertaining but not requiring too much brain power to follow along.

It can’t be a book that would rile me up like Heather Cox Richardson’s Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America. That is strictly a waiting room sort of read with a pen and highlighter in hand for making notes, highlighting particularly analysis, facts, and nodding in agreement.

It also can’t be Roxane Gay’s The Portable Feminist Reader filled with essays that needs to be absorbed, processed, and honored. Essays like “The Yellow Wall-Paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “The Laugh of the Medusa” by Hélène Cixous cannot simply be skimmed through, it requires a brain running on all cylinders to pay the words proper respect.

And it certainly can’t be Tania Branigan’s Red Memory: The Afterlives of China’s Cultural Revolution offering vivid insights into the impact of China’s civil war which was keystone to the birth of Mao’s version of communist extremism. The political and social turmoil are not stories to read for a restful night’s sleep.

No, none of these will do. I have found myself gravitating towards non-fiction – memoirs or autobiographies specifically. They just tend to be just good reads, not overwhelmingly emotionally or intellectually taxing, interesting but not obsessively demanding my attention. Titles like Eddie Ndopu’s  Sipping Dom Pérignon Through a Straw, or Patrick Stewart’s Making It So: A Memoir, or Sam Briggs’ Start Your Engines: My Unstoppable CrossFit Journey.

I recently finished Casey Johnston’s A Physical Education: How I Escaped Diet Culture and Gained the Power of Lifting and what truly caught my attention was the title of the first chapter – “Twelve Hundred Calories a Day” Instantly I felt like, ‘yes gurl, she understands’, almost as if its one of those personal secrets that many people share but no one dares to say it aloud, much less put it in writing.

Twelve hundred calories a day was a special number to me because it was what I had condemned myself to consume which resulted in 40 lbs. weight loss all those years ago. But once I lost weight, I never bothered learning about maintenance and just stayed at twelve hundred calories a day for the next 10+ years. My Nutrition Coach, despite her best efforts, was unable to convince me to increase my daily caloric intake. As a matter of fact, it was probably one of the biggest hurdles that we had to overcome, and it took months! Months of regular check-ins, months of her sharing how many calories she’s intaking, months of her sharing science & data in correlation to my current physical activities, and months of patience on her part.

Like Jonston, I was petrified of regaining weight and like many dieters, my primary mechanism of control was to restrict calorie intake. I felt an instant connection to Johnston’s words because I understood the source from which they came. This astronomical desire, no – obsession to conform to the $90 billion U.S. diet industry’s narrow definition of a woman, a beautiful woman, a successful woman … to be painfully thin. The diet industry’s marketing message towards men and woman are so obnoxiously myogenetic, that I’m not even going to validate by citing sources.

MEN: Focus on muscle & strength. Eat more protein. Lift weights to get ‘shredded’, increase muscles, get stronger.

WOMEN: Focus on thinness & appearance. Eat more salads. Do more cardio, do all cardio, maybe some HIIT to be lean (aka to be desirable, to be beautiful).

It’s the exposure to years of this social programming which has lead Johnston and me to faithfully follow their narrative … until we both discovered lifting. Lifting – whether its power lifting or CrossFit lifting, both required us to fuel our bodies much differently than what we have grown accustomed to.

After months of back & forth with my Nutrition Coach, I recanted because what I was doing wasn’t working either so there was really nothing to lose. My daily caloric intake was increased from 1200 to 1800 with an emphasis on macros of 125g of protein. I begrudgingly complied.

It took me a few weeks to find a happy medium on my daily calories and 125g of protein a day seemed impossible at first. To be perfectly honest, I had fully expected to gain 10 lbs. and zero expectations of any impact all the extra calories was going to have on my workouts.

I can’t recall what day it was, but it may have been late March, I remember rolling my eyes when my p.m. snack alarm went off on my phone. I snoozed the alarm several times and finally gave into the nagging to eat my snack before class. It was deadlift day for the strength portion of the WOD. My brain did its thing and got in the way as the number of plates were increasing on the 35# barbell. So, I stopped doing barbell math and just added plates, lift, then added plates on repeat. I had angst yes, but I also felt incredibly strong. It is perhaps the oddest sensation – to be anxious and confident at the same time. I am always a little anxious looking at a barbell with a lot of plates on them, but I have never felt that I could lift them.

I ended up PR with a DL of 175# and upon later reflection I could have lifted 180#. And this may not seem to be a big number, but I never thought I – me – at 4’10” tall – at 55 years old – who has never been involved in any sports growing up – would deadlift 175# – EVER!

And the only thing that has really changed in my routine was how I was fueling my body. That was the day that I reread all the science and the data that my Nutrition Coach provided and really honed in my nutrition. Because being able to lift more than my own body weight is one of the most empowering things I have ever done and that’s saying something for someone who has jumped out of airplanes with a parachute and repelled out of helicopters for the U.S. Army.

P.S. I did not gain more than ½ – 1 pound with my daily calories increased from 1200 to 1800.