I just tried on all my summer clothes. Nothing fits. Again.
I have not worked out in any meaningful, sustained way in at least 8 months, and yet I’m shocked (SHOCKED!) to discover that I am facing yet another warm season with a wardrobe that consists of one pair of jeans and a single billowy blouse.
This, my friends, is what I’ve come to call The Full Weight of Adoption. Because another thing no one tells you when you enter this process is that it will make your body absolutely bananas in ways you never thought possible.
When Princess Peach lived with us, we were under JUST A LITTLE BIT of stress. There was learning the basics of toddler care & maintenance, of course. But beyond that, the sweet child only slept through the night twice. Total. In the whole year. Every other night she woke up in the midst of a night terror that had her screaming and kicking for anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours. She kicked holes in the drywall by her bed. She screamed herself hoarse. Then, when she’d finally wake up (around month 9 we finally discovered the secret sauce was singing 492 verses of “the Holy Spirit Song” while walking up and down the hall holding her, followed by a calming episode of Peep and the Big Wide World ) she’d have no recollection of what had happened. But she’d be extremely overtired, as were we. I remember being insanely desperate for sleep. I was virtually incoherent. I read an article about the brain disorganization kids experience as the result of trauma and thought, That sounds like me… Add to that the stress of that one DCF office, where the worker and her supervisors kept accusing us of various things so they could stop the attention we were bringing to the their mismanagement of her case, and my body was burning something like 10 million calories a day. It wasn’t pretty.
Want to see? If you have the newest edition of my book, look at the author photo.
We took that one rare night when I felt like I kind of looked pretty good. I sat on the couch and smiled in a friendly way. Steve snapped about 19 pictures before he said gently, “Um Honey? Maybe you shouldn’t smile…authors aren’t really smiling in pictures these days, right?” I looked at the shots he’d taken. My face was so gaunt that my teeth looked like they were jumping out of my head. What felt to me like a relaxed look was actually incredibly tense, and you could see it all over my face. It was like, This is your face on foster care…
That year I learned that being thin, on it’s own, is not much of a life goal.
Our experience with The Cherubs has been very different. Enormously different, one might say. I was in great shape that first summer because we went to the Y every day to swim, I played basketball with #1 Cherub (I’d forgotten how much fun that is), and we spent a lot of time at the beach. But the sheer amount of carbs required to keep them minimally happy got to me. I don’t have much willpower around chips, pasta, rice, or bread. I’m what Gretchen Rubin calls an abstainer, which means that if I don’t want to eat something I avoid it altogether; there’s no such thing has having “just one chip,” for me. So pre-Cherub, I just didn’t buy that stuff. But suddenly, I had to.
Then #1 decided he was too cool for the pool, and #2 took off for independent rides on her bike, and I was caught in this weird position of being stuck at home – I had to be there, even if they were off in the neighborhood – Not doing anything. I wasn’t like I could fire up a pilates video while they were out. (NO ONE wants to walk in on their new mom doing pilates.) And so I sat on the couch and grew into a lump of bread.
I blame part of my stupor on how my clothes cut off blood flow to my brain.
And the other part on how, at some point, exercise just required so much more planning than before. I actually like exercising. But the planning aspect – the clothes, the driving somewhere, or the weather if I’m walking/running here, the shower afterwards, the not having anything else I need to do for two hours…it’s kind of obnoxious. I know I’ll like the results. It’s just so hard for me to want it enough to put down everything else.
(For example, right this minute, I am writing this in my workout clothes instead of going for a run. Which would have been a walk, lets be honest. Which may or may not happen now because it’s lunchtime and there’s bread and chips waiting for me downstairs, and it looks like it might rain and I’m not dressed for that, and my Fitbit isn’t charged so none of it will count anyway. Pray for me…)
This past winter, I was jolted from my lethargy by the book Eat, Move, Sleep. It’s by a guy recovering from a rare form of cancer. His approach to staying healthy is to optimize the things he controls. He does not control whether or not the cancer comes back, but he does control what he consumes, how much he moves, and how much he rests. He’s funny, and so this is not nearly as grim as it sounds.
My absolute favorite thing he mentioned was this study that showed that people who eat more fruits & vegetables are happier. I’d been feeling pretty glum for awhile, so I gave it a try; I liked that it was so tangible. I went from eating a only few veggies & no fruit, to eating 5-8 different produce items a day. The results were AMAZING. I was so very much happier, for no obvious reason, it felt like a miracle. I wanted to stand out in the street and pass out oranges.
By way of full disclosure not all the tips were so applicable. I blew right past his recommendation that we order steamed vegetables in a restaurant in lieu of french fries. Steamed vegetables are gross no matter where you have them, but I can’t even imagine what lands on your plate when the busy kitchen staff has to stop their rhythm and custom steam your kale.
Still though. I cut out the bread & chips and ate more apples & almonds. It was good.
I also tried sleeping 8 hours every night. THAT was unreal. It was life changing in all the ways you hear about when people testify obnoxiously about how they’ll never be the same: I awoke refreshed, tripled my productivity, felt love in my heart for my fellow man… It was marvelous.
Truth be told, I never did get a handle on exercise. I walked some. A lot, actually. But then the weather got bad.
After awhile, the novelty wore off and the fruit selection didn’t seem quite as exciting. And going to bed early is really hard when that’s the only time I have to talk to Steve, watch TV, and pretend I’m thinking deep thoughts when I’m really just drinking wine and zoning out.
Now, Eat, Move, Sleep taunts me from the bookshelf. And yet unless I want to spend my whole summer hiding under a beach blanket, I need to pull it back out and spend some more quality time with the author. I need to put down my laptop, get up off of the couch, get out of my head and into my body. I need to work a whole lot harder at these three basics so I can have the energy I need to embarrass my kids ;)
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Related: Since my post about the awesome fashion statements I’ve been making around Boston lately, some of you have asked if I really like Stitchfix. In a word, yes. They sent the one pair of jeans & flowy top that fits, so I’m a fan. I’m not sure how I’ll rock that look every day all summer, but I have a new box coming tomorrow & I’ll let you know how it goes. I’m hoping this company will be a moderate cost, low time investment help in keeping me dressed over the next few months while I pull myself out of my zone and onto the treadmill.
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