Sometimes in life, disparate threads end up being woven together in ways you don’t expect. That’s what has happened with me lately.

When we moved to Los Angeles, I was in the midst of going to school (which I’d started thinking we would move to Seattle) while also trying to figure out what I was doing next in my life.  I started life-coaching (shout out to the great Molly Hoyne at Stratejoy) our last month in Atlanta.

But no, let me back up further.

I left my job with a large, well-respected housing nonprofit in September of 2008.  At the time, I thought I would dive headfirst into writing:  writing magazine articles, writing a novel, writing my blog, writing writing writing.

Before I quit, I had worked in nonprofits ever since my sophomore year of college.  I found my work very satisfying in the sense that I was doing tangible things to help others.  I worked hard. I did a good job. I was promoted. . . .  At times, I felt creatively stifled.  I absolutely loved writing my blog posts here because they were (except for the common helping-people aspect) very unlike what I did in my day-to-day job.  And I did a bit of magazine writing while I was still employed, and I had sold a few photographs recently, and I had a commercial client ready for me to help them write copy, so I thought it would just all work out.

I quit my job and I hit an absolute wall, emotionally.  I don’t, even now, want to publicly get into all the reasons I left my job.  I convinced myself that I was jumping into something, not just away from something, and it seemed true.  But I was also jumping away from a situation that made me absolutely furious, made me so full of anger and grief that became difficult for me to be the empathetic, capable person I was there to be.  One aspect of my character is that I have an extremely strong sense of ethics—both for myself and others.  When my ethics were violated in a way I couldn’t manage, and when I found that I couldn’t ignore the situation to perform well, and when, quite frankly, my feelings were terribly hurt by mistreatment, my usually very fiscally conservative husband said, “Walk away. We’ll make it work.”

I held on about six weeks longer. There was a lot I was going to miss.  There was also a lot I was going to escape. I couldn’t take it. So I quit.

And then I hit my wall.  Apparently, despite being very sensitive to both my and other people’s emotions, I’d had a lot of emotions I wasn’t dealing with because I couldn’t. When my reason for not being able to handle them went away, I had to deal with those emotions.  Meanwhile, I also had a major sense of loss of my sense of self. (It turns out this is pretty common for women switching to self-empoyment.) I would think, “Who am I, if I’m not helping people?” I had trouble seeing beyond that.  I think it’s good to feel like being engaged in community is important.  I think it’s bad to feel unsure you have worth if you aren’t concentrated on helping others the majority of the hours in your week.

I was so wound up in what I thought I should be doing and feeling that I had an immense amount of trouble letting myself have the feelings that were emerging.  I overate. I quit exercising. I overslept (while sleeping poorly). I had trouble performing good self-care. I’ve talked about this period a bit before.

I decided, somewhere in the chaos, that I would teach my first gluten-free, allergen-free cooking class in Atlanta.  I did, and it was amazing.  I felt more alive than I had in months.

Private classes followed. I thought I would build up a life in Atlanta that involved at least some classes.  I still wasn’t sure what the big picture was. (I think I’m not the only one who has trouble wanting to be able to see the big picture.)

Then my husband finished his PhD, he was recruited for a job in LA, we came out for his interview, and we decided he would take the job.  Financially, this was great.  It meant the slow but intense drain on our savings account from the previous year would come to an end.  We would again be financially solvent, even able to get ahead a bit a a time. We could do things like take vacations again.

Knowing all of that should have freed me up to figure out what I wanted to do next.  And, over time, I suppose it did.  It’s funny, though, how I would have thought having the freedom to pursue nearly anything (within a reasonable number of miles of my home, at least) would have made me feel airy and engaged.  Instead, it often induced a sense of anxiety bordering on panic. What am I doing here? How am I wasting my time?

Molly worked with me–two steps forward, one step back.  One day I decided maybe I’d write a cookbook. I pursued that idea long enough to fill up a little notebook with notes about the idea. Then I realized I didn’t want to be alone that much.  Well, what’s the opposite of alone? I decided maybe I would open a gluten-free, allergen-free bakery in West LA.  I flew to several sites around the country to interview people who were running gluten-free bakeries. Honestly, I thought I was set on the idea. Then I did a feasibility study of opening one here . . . and I thought long and hard about my values.  I realized that, at this time, I value a sense of work/life balance too much to put in the 60+ hours/wk, for a year plus, that it would take for me to get a bakery off the ground. Then I thought about baking gluten-free, allergen-free bread and treats using shared commercial kitchen space (the only affordable way) to sell to existing coffee shops, bakeries, etc.  I researched that angle for a while, and though I initially felt good about it, I couldn’t find affordable shared space free of cross-contamination.  After looking at one commercial kitchen, my husband and I got back in our car, and I burst into tears.  I was just so ready to know what I was doing again, and I wasn’t there yet.

This whole time, I was talking about teaching more cooking classes in LA once I felt settled.  I was reading books about business, maybe 20 of them total. I was also helping a variety of people–friends, friends of friends, relatives, blog readers, friends of blog readers–figure out how to handle food restrictions they had needed to undertake.

One day I suddenly got the idea to buy a pack of notecards, write one thing I’d like to be paid to do on each notecard, and then see what themes emerged.  After a quick trip to our neighborhood grocer, I was sitting at my table, cards in hand.

After I made my cards (there were around 20), I organized them into themes I saw.  Then I scrambled them up and had my husband organize them. Then I asked a couple of friends to do the same. It was enlightening–in the typical sense and in the lightness that it gave my body.  It somehow gave me back a sense of control over and purpose about my future.

My new business arose out of that work. I am super-pumped about what I am doing and what I am building.

I’m working with people with food restrictions (gluten intolerance, casein intolerance, autism spectrum diet, food allergies, and other types of food restrictions) to provide coaching (in person and long-distance), classes, and retreats.  The point of all of this work is to bring senses of joy and sustenance back into the lives of clients with food restrictions and to get those clients feeling capable in their kitchens.  The first retreat will be in North GA this fall. (Registration is now open!)  In the next year, I plan to hold ones in Northern California, the Pacific NW, and, I hope, the Northeast (perhaps in Vermont). I cannot wait.

This work pulls together research, care for others, creativity, empathy, teaching, free time, event planning, organizing, baking, recipe creation, cooking, self-care—all sorts of things that I love.  I am so excited that the website I’ve worked on daily for the last month is now ready to share with you.  I hope that you’ll share in my excitement, and let me know you’re excited, and that you’ll even take a minute to let your friends and relatives and blog readers know what I’m doing, as well.

Here’s the link. Here’s where my life is firmly taking root in this new direction:  www.tilthforhealth.com

Please visit. Please explore. Please share.

On Twitter (and soon to be on Facebook): @tilthforhealth

I don’t imagine I would have ever reached this new place in my life if it weren’t for the readership and support of all of you.  I am so thrilled to be starting this adventure, and I look forward to sharing it with you over time.

I know the age of 20 is confusing for you, so I’m traveling back in time to give you a heads-up about what’s coming in life. Feel relieved? Good.

Right now, at 20, you’re a girl consumed with swirls of emotions about nearly everything in life.  You feel battered by some of what’s come your way. You aren’t sure what you want. You aren’t sure who you are or what your value is. You aren’t sure what family means anymore.  You’re moving forward in the ways you know how because it’s all you can do, but you’re in a state of near-panic on a regular basis.

First off, let me let you in to something you know in your gut: he’s not the right guy for you.  For some involved psychological reasons you’ll realize over time, he’s come to represent the sense of family you’ve lost.  But here’s the thing: love isn’t actually supposed to be hard, at least not 90% of the time. Mostly, it should be as easy as breathing.  You won’t be able to believe me until later, when you meet the right guy.  In the meantime, you have an enormous amount of growing to do, and you can’t do most of that while you’re trapped in this back-and-forth with him that’s tearing you apart.  In the next few days, you’ll get a sweet birthday gift from him where he’s trying to woo you back. He’ll be very angry when it doesn’t work. You’re going to stay strong.  You’re going to be lonely for a while–for a longer while than you will admit.  And then you’re going to start moving on because it’s the only thing to do.  It will get easier.

The truth is that life is going to continue to break your heart.  That’s hard to embrace (pain is so difficult!), but it’s just true. Another guy is going to break your heart. (There are more guys between, but they won’t matter. That’s a good thing.) Several friends are going to break your heart. Health problems are going to break your heart. World events are going to break your heart. Family members are going to break your heart. Work that you love is going to break your heart. Your own limitations and frustrations are going to break your heart. You have this basic idea that your goal is to get to some good point and then ride it indefinitely, but that’s not how life works.  Each low you dip into breaks your heart, but it also breaks your heart open, and as it fills back up again, you are more the person you were (and are) going to become.  And, sweetheart, the person you’re going to become is the person you’re needed to be in this world.  You’ll never be perfect, and that will stop being the goal.  Instead, you’ll embrace what is possible within imperfection, within limitations, and that will become something you are known for.

One thing you’re going to learn is that what life best needs from you is flexibility.  When you’re inflexible, you are at risk of shattering into some very depressed pieces.  It can be easy to try to hide from life when change is involved, but that is change, too–of the worst kind.  The more you accept that change is a near-constant and that life is built on shifting variables–as scary as it sounds–the more life will open up for you to create options.  You’ll still be learning that at 30 (you’ll probably be learning it forever), but you should open your mind to its possibility as well as you can. (It can feel like trying to pry open a clamshell that’s snapped shut. And that’s okay, because it will come in time.)

Your life at 30 isn’t going to be at all like you imagine it might be. You’re going to be finding your way in a new place, in a new career, in nearly a new life.  You’re going to be doing what you love in a capacity you wouldn’t expect.  You’re going to be in the best physical shape you’ve been in since you were a small child.  You’re going to be living in a city that you never pictured yourself in (at the beach, though!). You’ll feel some ambivalence (that’s as common a part of life as change), and you’ll also enjoy it. You’re going to have helped a lot of people, in various capacities, and be working on helping more.  You’re going to have a husband who currently makes more money than you . . . and it will still make you a bit uncomfortable at times, but it is one of the things you’ll learn to navigate.  In some ways, your life will be so much better than you picture it being possible at 20.   You’re going to have built amazing friendships.  You’re going to need to build more friendships in your new location.  And since I know what you’re probably struggling with the most right now, let me reiterate that being alone and, then, later, being with the right guy are really going to change your understanding of what it means to be you and what it means to be part of a couple. (I can’t give too much away, but I can tell you it involves something like holding hands while simultaneously evolving as individuals.  It’s easier than it sounds, most of the time.)

Sometimes, life is going to be hard.  Sometimes it’s going to be very hard.  Some moments are going to fill you with despair.  That’s actually okay.  You’re a really emotional person; it’s something you’ve grown up believing is a weakness.  But it’s one thing you’ll have learned to appreciate between 25 and 30. (That guy you’re going to marry? He’s a big help with that. You’ll also learn a lot about it on your own, too.) At thirty, you’ll have learned to treat yourself gently and to remind yourself to treat yourself gently when you’re struggling with feeling harsh.

More than anything, I just want to give you the understanding that you’re more resilient than you realize.  Other people will see it in you long before you see it in yourself.  You’ll see it in others–in many, many people–before you begin to appreciate it about yourself.  Resilience isn’t about handling things well; it’s simply about handling them without becoming (at least for very long) bitter, mistrustful, hateful.  You will retain your beliefs in love and possibility.  You will keep on growing. That is resilience.

Your dearest friend (who loves you and believes in you more than you can know),

Sally

Sometimes that evolution occurs naturally; it just slips into our lives over time like high tide.  Other times, though–and sometimes it’s really damn hard–we have to take a deep breath and make a leap.

I made one of those leaps soon after we arrived in Santa Monica.  I made a change that has changed my body and shifted my perception of myself. I joined Crossfit.

Are you familiar with Crossfit? It’s a fast-growing, worldwide phenomenon (with some affiliates apparently remarkably better or worse than others) wherein you, as part of a group, do hardcore, seriously ass-kicking workouts that are based on functional movement (movement you would use in real life, not movement isolating muscles).  I had a guy friend and girlfriend in Atlanta who did Crossfit; she started doing it because he coached.  He talked about it nearly constantly for a while.  I often teased my girlfriend about her involvement in Crossfit, because at times, Crossfit can come across as a bit cultish, and I have a certain level of discomfort with that.  But I also was consistently amazed by her enormous progress.  She started out as someone who had never really exercised (she’s one of those people with a crazy-high metabolism), and she was really thin.  Then she became thin and POWERFUL.  She doesn’t look very different, but holy cow, she has changed a lot in her ability to use her body.

Truth be told, in the last six months before Dan and I left Atlanta, we exercised very, very little.  Dan was finishing his Ph.D. thesis, I was trying to figure out my professional life, and I had started a program for an MBA in Sustainable Business that had me flying to Seattle one week a month.  Also, I’m an emotional sponge.  My husband was so stressed out by his thesis work (and then part-time work he took on before he finished it) that he grew sleep-deprived and snappish—not at all his usual calm self.  In photos, you can see that, for a while, Dan looked 7-10 years older than his 32 actual years. While Dan looked the part of the stressed-out person, I absorbed all of his emotions and then doubled them–and reflected them back to him.  As a Highly Sensitive Person, I try to put up emotional walls (in a healthy way) to be less of a sponge, but during the last thesis semester, the stress was great enough that I didn’t do a good job.  The result should have been that I exercised more for stress relief.  I should have applied the self-care principles I know so well and have written about amply.  But we all possess weakness as well as strength, and I retreated from exercise.  I also overate during that time period, especially starchy and sweet foods.  I could see it happening but couldn’t seem to bring myself to do any better.  I felt overwhelmed.

We arrived in Los Angeles (me about fifteen pounds fluffier than a few months earlier) for my husband to take his job here, and we swore we were going to do BETTER! We decided to go back to C25K (which I had done before successfully).  That lasted about a week.  Of course, even with the good stress of my husband’s new job (which he loves!) and being in a new city (Santa Monica’s pretty great!), the move was also negatively stressful in many ways (long-term housing, cost of living, even grocery shopping).  I don’t know if I brought it up or if Dan did: “What if we tried Crossfit?”

Now, I should say this: I don’t usually go for group workout environments, because I don’t want to feel competitive with other people working out near me.  I need to work at my own pace and level. I especially often dislike trainers telling me what to do.  Most of the trainers I’ve dealt with at gyms have not been the good ones: they have seemed to enjoy their clients not knowing what to do for exercise.  At the Georgia Tech gym we used to frequent, I had positive interactions with a couple of great trainers . . . but I also watched and listened as other trainers mocked the form of people working out.  One goal of many trainers has often seemed to me to be to keep a position of superiority over the client, and that’s just bullshit.  It’s the whole teach-a-man-to-fish thing.  I believe in getting encouraging people towards a sense of ability and accomplishment.

Also, I hate bootcamps. I have never done one, but when I lived next to Piedmont Park in Atlanta, while I was running in the mornings, I would often hear the bootcamp trainers there yelling at the participants. You want to piss me off and make me obstinate about not doing what you want? Try yelling at me, and you’ll see why my mother often compared me to a mule when I was a child.  Plus, the design of the bootcamp workouts seemed arbitrary and miserable, and I didn’t understand why the trainers weren’t doing the workouts with the participants instead of just standing and watching them. (I know people who love bootcamp. If you do, and it actually encourages you to exercise regularly–not just binge exercise before you quit again–then that is awesome. To each her own.)

So when we went to visit Crossfit, I wanted to see if it would feel like bootcamp or like the trainers (there’s a high trainer-to-participant ratio at Crossfit) were there to lord it over us.  We met with the gym owner, a former Marine who’s done insane things like 100-mile barefoot races through the jungles of Panama.  But we didn’t know all of that then.  We just knew from our conversation that Andy was obviously a nice guy.  He informed us about the philosophy and work style of Crossfit.  He told us that the point was, over time, to learn to push ourselves right to the edge of our capacity without going over. (He did show us the puke buckets for when people go over the edge, but he specifically said they wanted people to stop before they reached that point.) He told us that everyone does the same basic workout at a given class, but that people scale the workouts individually based on their own levels of fitness and strength. He had us do a sample, short (baseline) workout to see where our fitness level was (um, very poor).  He asked us about what motivated us and limited us, he told us he would suggest starting at a low level of commitment and working up from there, and he encouraged us not to make an immediate decision about whether to join.  He was obviously into Crossfit, but he obviously wasn’t an egomaniac.  And he wasn’t pushy–that was huge.  In fact, he told us we should come do a sample workout with a group before we made a decision.

We arrived early to our first class. I felt ill with anxiety; I felt entirely self-conscious and out of place.  I watched the class before ours finishing up, and I thought, I don’t know how to do any of what they’re doing. I kept wondering what the hell I was doing at a gym that included free weights, pull-up bars, kettlebells, rowing machines, and parallel bars . . . but little of the normal gym stuff.  I was so nervous that my palms sweated endlessly.  Plus, the trainer leading our class was obviously a total surfer jock–he seemed nice, but I was waiting for it to become apparent he was laughing at us–and I noticed he had on jeans. Great, he wasn’t going to do the workout with us.  A bit of nausea twirled in my stomach.

The class trainer sent us out for a warm-up mile jog.  Seeing the look on my face, one of the few women in class told me she took a shortcut to warm up by doing half a mile–and reminded me that it was all about me working with my own ability level. I did the half mile, walking a good bit of it, and, honestly, fighting off cursing myself for letting myself get into such bad shape. That’s why you’re here, I told myself. Don’t beat yourself up when you’re doing the right thing.

When we got back to the classroom, the trainer asked us how many of us were there for the first time.  A couple of other people than me and Dan raised their hands, which I found a big relief.  Then the trainer began to teach us how to do clean & jerks.  We used PVC pipe to practice the movements before switching to weights.  And it began to dawn on me that our trainer, who became Michael and not just ‘our trainer,’ was without pretense.  He was encouraging us. He wanted us to succeed.  I felt like, in an exercise capacity, he was offering the type of movement toward self-sufficiency that I try to offer clients with my gluten-free/allergen-free coaching.  I’m a pretty good caretaker, and I felt the same type of encouraging energy from Michael.

When we were done learning to do the clean & jerk, we went into our full, timed workout that included it. (To be honest, I don’t remember all the details of what we did that first night–just how it kicked my ass.)  My classmates set up their individual amounts of weight that they wanted to lift, Dan and I did the same, and when Michael flicked the timer on, we were off! As fast as we could, using as good of form as we could manage, we did the workout.  I had to stop, panting, several times, as did a variety of people around me at one point or another.  Many people grunted as they worked hard. I was startled at first to hear people cry out as they pushed themselves hard.  But I was far too busy and focused to feel self-conscious during the workout, and the same was true for Dan.  As each person finished, he or she joined up with other finishers to cheer on the people who were still working.  Everyone stayed till every person was done, some of us stretched, and then we all did minor maintenance/clean-up of the classroom.

And I thought, Hell yeah, I get this. This is awesome. I was so pumped that  I went home and ran with the dog.  I had immense energy.  I felt powerful. Dan felt really excited as well.

The immense soreness that came upon us didn’t keep us from signing up the next day.  For financial reasons (Crossfit ain’t cheap, and in LA, it really ain’t cheap), and with Andy’s encouragement not to overcommit, we signed up for two classes per week. (We’ve since noticed that that is a pretty normal commitment for beginners at our gym.) For that amount per month (Crossfit is much more expensive here than in cheaper cost-of-living cities), we could have a car payment for a pretty nice car.

But it’s worth it to us.  We started attending religiously, twice a week, and watched as we quickly had gains in strength, flexibility, coordination, speed, and agility.  For a while, every single (beginner) class, I was learning a new kind of exercise (box jumps, snatches, back squats, L-sits).  I loved it–loved the feeling of accomplishment I felt after each class–even when I had days when I wasn’t able to do an exercise correctly at first or was the last one to finish. Loved the gains in my body.  Loved the camaraderie. Loved the coaching from every coach we had–including our personal coach (for skills clinics and individual consultations), Jonesy.

Hmmm, wouldn’t it be great for the story to end there? (You know by this point that I can’t write short blog posts, right?)

In May, the Crossfit staff encouraged us to sign up for the Smoker Challenge.  Our Crossfit affiliate (maybe this is a general CF thing?) has challenge periods wherein we pay money into a pot, do a specific workout, and then do that workout again 8-10 weeks later to see how much our performance has improved.  The competitors with the greatest gains in improvement (measured by percentage of improvement in time) win some of the money we all paid in.  I debated whether to do the challenge for a long time–I really didn’t know if I could lift 40% of my body weight for front squats, much less 30 times! . . . and that was the lowest level allowed–but eventually I got swept up in the idea of doing it and kicking ass!

In fact, I came up with a plan to have AMAZING improvements, to SHOCK everyone with how well I would perform. Not only would I continue to do Crossfit twice a week, but I would also go back to running three days a week, I’d do Crossfit-like workouts in my non Crossfit days, and I’d even add in some extra Crossfit workouts! Then, in 10 weeks’ time, right before my birthday, I’d be kicking ass!  I’d go into my 30th birthday in the best shape of my life, and I’d smoke the other participants in terms of % of improvement!

The day of the initial challenge workout arrived, and we arrived early.  I had that now-familiar sensation of nausea going in. (Several advanced people have told me about Crossfit, “You’re not working out hard enough if you’re not feeling nervous going in.” I’ve got that one down.) When I realized that, with my weight gain (gained a chunk of muscle doing Crossfit), I’d be lifting 75 pounds, I felt very daunted.  Jonesy and Michael coached me up to being able to clean that much weight to set up for my 30 squats.  I was in the first round of the challenge, and I had a huge adrenalin rush surging through me as we started.  I gave the workout my all, and I felt really good about how I performed.  I had a shorter time (for 30 squats plus a 1-mi run) than many of the other beginner participants.  Of course, that would make my improvement percentage harder in the next workout, but I had given it my all, and that was the honest way to kick things off.

With my plan firmly in my head, I began running in the mornings. Then my left knee started aching.  Then I went on a trip to see a friend. I thought I would work out while I was there, but I didn’t. On the way home, I injured my neck somehow on my flight . . . and suddenly, it had been three weeks since I had done a Crossfit workout or any other kind.  Then I found myself reticent to go, and on my first day back, I felt the shyness and awkwardness I had felt on my first day there. I’d also eaten a lot of sugar earlier that day, and I had noticed before that eating sugar on my Crossfit days was a great way to crash my blood sugar mid-workout.  I had a bad workout that night. I felt downhearted.

I began making excuses about not going to Crossfit.  Some were legitimate, like a migraine, and others were not. My husband would go without me.  Then I had another trip to visit friends.  Suddenly, the challenge finale date was looming over me, and I felt very frustrated with myself for not having trained–for not even having stuck with all my Crossfit workouts, which I liked! There was no point in not going.  And I hated that I’d paid for workouts that I hadn’t done; it was like stuffing money down the garbage disposal.

The day of the challenge arrived, and I was once again nervous about having to lift 75 pounds.  Jonesy was a little less eager to help me figure it out (though he graciously did), and I couldn’t blame him: I hadn’t been showing up to give it my anything, much less my all.

Nonetheless, I was able to do the workout, and I even got confused and did two extra squats.  I took off running and found the mile very hard to do.  I finally picked up speed as I approached the finish line, other competitors cheering me on, and discovered . . . I had finished in exactly the same time as 10 weeks prior. To the second. 0% improvement.

I was so frustrated with myself, so embarrassed.  My husband, by sticking with the Crossfit workouts, had cut 2.5 minutes (15%) off his time, and I was proud of him for that.  I talked to a guy, Ross, who had done what I had meant to do: he had trained over and above to get in better shape, and he had cut his time nearly in half. And, seriously, I didn’t recognize him at first because I hadn’t been in classes with him those 10 weeks, and his body had changed that much.  But as we talked (he was very empathetic), I realized what had happened to me.  Previously, at Crossfit, I had thought, “I will show up, and I will give this my all, and I will not compare myself to anyone else.” The challenge had awakened my competitiveness, but an unhealthy version of it (that I often fall prey to): I wasn’t perfect at preparing to compete, so I gave up.

As I sat on the floor of the gym, watching other people go through their rounds, I thought a lot about Crossfit and why I felt like utter crap on a day I could have felt great about myself.  And I decided to recommit.  You can’t move back in time, only forward, right? And I love the workouts and the people–and how Crossfit teaches me to push myself beyond what I think I’m capable of, both at the gym and in my life in general. I decided, Either I go back to doing this for myself, at my own pace, and appreciate that, or this isn’t worth it. I recommitted.

The next available beginner workout time was on my 30th birthday, this past Monday night, at 7:30 p.m.  So at 7:10 or so, Dan and I arrived at the gym–still really sore from the previous Saturday’s challenge.  I watched the class before ours doing handstand push-ups and thought, “Holy crap, there is no way I can do that!” I told myself I would do the best I could. I psyched myself up big-time.

I ran my warm-up half-mile. I talked with a new woman who set up her workout station next to mine and explained to her what helped me learn how to do cleans.  Another woman told me how much I’d helped her a few weeks earlier by encouraging her to experiment with lifting heavier weights–she said I’d help change her perception of herself, which meant an enormous amount to me.  I set up my own station, and I experimented with adding weights to my bar for cleans; then I realized I had set myself up at 63 pounds of weight for my cleans.  I realized that, even with my setback, I’d come a long way.

Our assigned workout was 7 rounds of 3 power cleans plus 4 handstand push-ups.  I set up and tried out a modified version of the handstand push-ups, using boxes, that I still found incredibly tough.  But when the timer started and the music pumped, I took off like a rocket.  I felt back in the flow.  I pounded through my first three rounds of cleans and push-ups in two minutes.  I felt light-headed, so I stopped for a few seconds, and then I picked it up again.  I talked aloud to myself, encouraging myself, with no one around me even noticing.  Michael came over to coach me on my clean form, and I made the change he suggested.  I jumped back on the boxes to do the push-ups.  I heard one person call out his name to indicate he was done.  And then I was done–at 5:25, the second person in the class to finish . . . after my husband. We high-fived, and then we cheered on the other folks there until everyone was done.  I was in awe of how hard everyone worked, how committed they all were to busting their asses. And I was proud of myself, too.  It was great to come in second, but the point was to be there doing my best.

It was a powerful, meaningful way to start my 30s. I’m back in the game, and I’m loving it.  In fact, I have Crossfit starting in an hour, so I have to go get dressed now.

I made my first recipe of the sixty days on Monday, and it’s a recipe for gluten-free, egg-free, soy-free, dairy-free buns! Specifically, I made hamburger buns, though the buns are delicious and will, I feel confident, prove versatile.  (I ate half of another as the bread for my ‘cheese’ toast this morning. I plan to make them next time as sweet buns of some sort.)

So pop on over! It’s entirely possible that I’ll be posting here again during the duration of my project, but with me writing a post a day over there, I probably won’t be here often.

We–my husband and I–are at the end of Day Six of a 60-day trial of being sugar-free.  For the past six days, we haven’t had any cane sugar (table or unprocessed), honey, brown rice syrup, maple syrup, or artificial sweeteners.  When we set up the rules, we allowed ourselves one agave-sweetened treat per week, and I decided I could use blackstrap molasses in small doses in items that need a touch of sweetening. (You really can’t overdo blackstrap molasses without ruining your dish. It has quite a strong flavor. So far, I haven’t used it in anything.) Our sweet flavors are coming from fruits and vegetables—and the subtle sweet taste of whole grains, as well.

Have you noticed sugar is like crack? I mean, really.  Crackity-crack-crack.  Last February we did a trial month without cane sugar–still allowing ourselves to use honey, agave, and maple syrup during that month.  We realized we felt better emotionally and physically that month.  When the month ended, what did I do? I made a dessert that used sugar.  And we were back on the crack wagon.  Ever since then, we’ve been saying, “You know, we really felt better when we didn’t eat sugar. We should do that again.” For a YEAR we have been saying that.  Then we bake cookies or make waffles and push our resolve away.

When I posted about this on Facebook, several people asked me why we were giving up sugar.  I am not usually someone who is drawn to extremes.  Actually, that’s crap.  Naturally, I’m very drawn to extremes, but when I’m trying to live a life of balance, I always try to keep in mind that the healthy spot is usually somewhere closer to the middle.  I realized several years ago, the year I started this blog, that my extreme attempts at dieting (no carbs or no fat or whatever) didn’t work.  So why give up tasty, crunchy, baked-goods-enhancing sugar entirely?

Here’s the thing: unlike nearly every other food, sugar has virtually no nutritive value.  You can argue that honey, molasses, less processed cane sugar (such as demerara), and maybe agave have some trace vitamins and minerals in them. And it’s true—they may.  But they don’t have them in any large quantity to make sugar a worthwhile source of them compared to all the other options.

Meanwhile, sugar contributes to the body being unhealthfully acidic, it encourages illness and even cancer, it causes blood sugar instability, it creates inflammation, and in many people, it creates or worsens feelings of depression or moodiness.  And guess what? I’ve had cancer and it may come back. I’ve had two major upper respiratory infections in the last six weeks.  I can feel the instability of my blood sugar on some days. I’ve been diagnosed with at least five autoimmune disorders in the last ten years (which tend to be linked to inflammation).  And I have a tendency toward moodiness and depression.

It sounds like I shouldn’t be eating sugar, doesn’t it?

It’s sooooo tempting, though.  It’s so very, very tempting.  Baked goods are much easier to make with it. Flavors tend to sing when they are some combination of salty, sour, bitter, umami, and sweet.  I crave sweet things. Chocolate, one of my favorite flavors, really requires sugar to taste right. And really, what harm does a little sugar do?

I’m actually not sure a little does any harm.  I’m all about moderation, remember? The thing is, I find it very difficult to be moderate with sugar.  I was good at it for a while, when I was first losing weight.  But in the last year or two, sugar has crept in to make a daily appearance in my diet, and I wish I just meant as an ounce of chocolate a day, which would be fine.  Scones, cookies, cupcakes, muffins, coffee, hot chocolate, tea, salad dressing: and those are just some of them, and those are just the times I actually add sugar instead of when the package already includes it (chutney, chili sauce, ketchup, honey mustard, brown rice couscous, soup, and so on).  Sugar is everywhere, and I’ve been eating too much of it.

But really, it was two things that tipped me over: 1) I got my two respiratory infections here.  The first was over Christmas.  My killer strep throat took two rounds of antibiotics to go away.  Actually, I had had two upper respiratory infections in Atlanta in the three months prior, as well–the first of which may have been H1N1 and took six weeks to go away entirely.  After finally getting over the strep, when I got a bad cold three weeks ago (that took 17 days to go away), I wanted to scream. 2)  I started back with acupuncture and talked in depth with my new TCM practitioner about what to do for healing—for general good health and to avoid another crazy infection.  Cutting back sugar was, of course, one of her first recommendations.  Well, shit. I knew I needed to do it.

So I tried to simply will myself to cut back, and quite frankly, it didn’t work.  Sugar has a hold on me right now.  Like I said, it’s like crack.  Cold turkey became my option to try, and my husband—who saw how much better he felt without cane sugar last year, even though he’s generally obscenely healthy—was willing to get on board with me.

The first few days, I thought about sugar a lot.  I had this empty place inside me that perhaps was an illusion, but it was similar to how I felt when I gave up gluten.  At least I knew, This too shall pass. When I saw chocolate bars in our pantry or sweets at the store, I reminded myself I have that one-treat-per-week out. (That’s really how sugar should be, I think—a special treat that gets you way excited.) I have to admit, even being a careful label reader to avoid allergens and intolerances, I was shocked to find out how much of what I usually buy has evaporated cane juice as an ingredient.

Friday arrived–the first eligible day for my week’s one treat. I had planned to hold off till Sunday and make an agave-sweetened cake for Valentine’s, but instead I was jonesing hard by Friday night.  My husband and I rushed to BabyCakes NYC’s LA bakery, where I got a cupcake . . . and another cupcake top, to be honest . . . and he got two cookies with icing stuffed between them.  We ate them on the way home.  The first bite, I thought, “There’s nothing wrong with this cupcake, but it doesn’t fix everything that’s wrong in my life, either.” Of course, I already knew that technically, but it’s funny how obsessing over a food can make you feel like your life would be just right if you could have it.  As I made my way through my cupcake, I took bites more and more slowly.  The truth is, I didn’t really want to finish the cupcake, but I made the mistake of convincing myself to finish it (after my husband didn’t want the rest of it) by telling myself I had another week till I could have such a treat.  By the time we got home, I felt mildly headachey and a little light-headed.  Just not right. Ten minutes after we got inside, we looked at each other and both said, “My stomach doesn’t feel so good.” Neither of us felt food-poisoned or anything so severe; we just didn’t feel well.  The sugar? The immense fat in those desserts? Something else? I threw away the remaining cupcake top without eating it.

Whatever caused the ill feelings, that experience has been good for me.  I’m still craving sweet things—would love to make some chocolate biscotti right now.  But I am reminding myself of that basic feeling when I took the first bite of the BabyCakes cupcake: sugar doesn’t fix anything.  And then I’m reminding myself of how I felt after I ate it.  I believe wholeheartedly in good self-care.  Maybe this experiment is just about convincing myself this is actually a self-care issue.

(As a side note, if you want to follow along, I’ll be doing a daily update on the sugar-free trial on Twitter. My username is sallyjpa.)

We stopped at Whole Foods because my husband wanted to get one thing: the kind of cat food our vet recommends for our kitties. (It’s a kind that has actually been tested for cats’ health, not just theoretically formulated for it.) I said, “Okay, let’s pick up salsa and guacamole and eat our leftover tamales for dinner tonight.” That made three things on our list for the store. And if we’d bought the ingredients for the guacamole, it would have cost more than a container of guacamole. Then when we walked in, I said, “Oh, my TCM practitioner told me yesterday that she wants me to get fish oil capsules and a prenatal vitamin to take.” (Note: the prenatal has no meaning other than that I am at a particular age where, my doctor says, “it’s good to expect the unexpected.” And I know I have low vitamin levels at times due to a not entirely healed gut, so I was game for that concept.) That made five items to pick up at the store. It took a while to find a prenatal vitamin that was free of soy and gluten and didn’t cost an arm and a leg. While we were picking that up, I remembered the doctor also wanted me to try drinking kombucha. I’ve had homemade kombucha before but haven’t made it myself, so I thought I’d pick up a bottle to try before I made my own. That made six things on our list. While finding the kombucha, I came across the only vegan, soy-free, casein-free cheese that I like–and which stores here have been running out of. I grabbed a container. We were up to seven. Then I came across a display of the lifetime-guaranteed, high-quality kitchenware that we use. (We consider kitchenware to be one of those things where quality means a lower lifetime cost and reduced waste.) Our old can opener had broken the day before, so my husband checked to make sure this can opener had good reviews; then we added it to our cart.  We were up to eight items.

And we weren’t up to just any eight items.  The can opener was $35. Two months of the fish oil was $34. Three months of the prenatal vitamin was $23.  The cost of those items plus our other ones meant we ended up walking out of the grocery store having spent $129.19.

It is times like this one that make me amazed how little other people manage to spend in the grocery store.  Sure, I am not (thank God) walking in every day and purchasing kitchen appliances and vitamins.  But it seems like high-end items end up in my cart far more often than they do for others.

I’m still determined to eat well, to eat joyfully, and spend less this month. (We pulled money out of the ATM as we left the store.)  I am glad to have the vitamins and the can opener.  I just thought it was a good example of my experience of grocery shopping.

But I was amazed to find people on Gluten-Free Girl’s blog saying that they eat local/organic/grass-fed and spend far, far less on food than we do.  And sometimes, I must say, I feel like we should be spending a bit less on food so that we have money for stuff like, well, helping stock the food pantry near us.

We limit our meat consumption as it is, but I’m looking at buying a quarter or half of a pastured cow, now, to cut some of our costs.  The grass-fed meat from the farmer’s market here is muy expensive; it’s local, but I might order some online from elsewhere if it will save us a chunk of money.  I’m wondering what else I should be doing that I’m not. And I’m going to dig out some grocery receipts to see where my money really is going. . . .

What do you spend on a week’s (or month’s) groceries? How much do you spend to eat out in a week? What kinds of meals do you have? What food restrictions are you dealing with? And how do you keep your costs down, if you’re good at doing so?

Lily is because that’s the name that stuck when we tried it out.  It was the name confirmed by everyone in PetCo. when we were picking up her basic supplies.

Louise is for my recently deceased grandmother, whom I miss heartily, and who dearly loved dogs.

Lilliputian is because at 14 pounds, she’s a far smaller dog than I ever imagined getting.  Yet when we met her, I simply melted, and then my husband did, too.  She’s a rescue pup two days out of one of LA’s highest-kill-rate shelters–a stray whose long Cavalier King Charles fur was so dreadlocked that the rescue group had to cut her down to not much fur at all.  But it’ll grow, and with a good diet, her fur should be healthy and shiny, too.

She’s hard to photograph by herself because if you’re looking at her with the camera, she wants to be closer to you.  So she’s in motion, or she’s too close to photograph well. But that’s okay. I’d rather have her curled up with me than anywhere else.

Well, and wandering with me–we walked about four miles together today.  We’ll try out running when she’s fully healed from her recent spaying.

Do any of you make your own pet food? I’m thinking about doing it for Lily and our cats since Cavs tend to have medical issues that I think could be mitigated by the best food.

Last year was a hard year. My husband finished his Ph.D. We looked at a million options of where to live. Seriously, we considered everywhere from Berlin to Adelaide (South Australia) to Seattle. We also spent a good bit of our savings while I wasn’t bringing home the (relative) bacon like I used to, and while I found my first year of self-employment hard (emotionally). In the ‘end,’ it seemed we were destined to stay in Atlanta a while. Dan took a job there. I started grad school in Seattle and flew out for it about a week a month, doing the rest long-distance. I spent the whole year feeling unsettled and, quite frankly, anxious. And it showed—in my difficulty to remember good self-care tenets, among other things. I tried. But I didn’t feel like I had much to say. I panicked when I felt like I did have something to say, and I found much of what I believe deeply hard to do. Much of what I want my life to be about, much of what I consider Truths we should all know, I struggled with. Self-acceptance. (We are all enough. We may need to grow, but we also need to appreciate ourselves.) Acceptance of the unknown. Acceptance of change. Etc. I gained between ten and fifteen pounds over the course of 2009, but that was the least of it.

I still worked hard at taking care of myself. But my exercise routine suffered. A knee injury in August didn’t help. I would have to say of the last 3-4 years, this past year was the most difficult for figuring out, and achieving, what I needed. If I were going to paint the year 2009, it would be swirls of color—a few strands bright (cooking classes I taught, the births of friends’ babies), many dark. Very swirly. Very uncertain. Very anxious.

Despite having great co-workers, my husband didn’t love his job in Atlanta. If you spend a chunk of your life getting a Ph.D., you should love the job you get using it. But the work wasn’t a good fit for him, and because I am an emotional sponge, I soaked up his feelings and felt them myself. Empathy is good. No emotional boundaries between yourself and your spouse is not good. It didn’t help that he took the job–for my sake, for the sake of my grad school tuition–while he was still finishing his thesis. I didn’t see very much of him for several months, when I did see him he was a ball of stress, and that whole situation was hard on both of us.

I knew I could get back to good, that I could achieve a different and new good. The question has been how, and the answer has been a struggle within myself–a mighty, internal wrestle between Jacob and Gabriel. Living in limbo is very uncomfortable.

In November, Dan was recruited for a new job in Santa Monica, California—a job with a very respected research firm. We flew out for the interview even though I had always told Dan I wouldn’t live in California. The most logical reason is the cost of living in much of the state, but California had also just never held for me the appeal it holds for some people. Nonetheless, when Dan left his interview, he told me it seemed like the perfect job for him right now. When the money worked out where we could manage to afford it, I gave Dan my blessing to take the job. Due to internal regulations, the company had to have him on payroll by a certain date, so we rearranged our lives to arrive just before Christmas.

I know that it’s a fallacy to think that a change of location fixes everything. I’m not sure that, by itself, a change of location fixes anything for very long. But I do think you can let a new location be a catalyst for change. What do I want out of life? Who am I at my core? Who do I want to be? How can I express myself as that person starting now? What plans should I make to make life here what I want for it to be? Those are the kinds of thoughts that have been running through my head.

So what am I doing about it now that we’re here?

I’m utilizing a life coach. Molly and I talked before I moved, but I decided to wait till I was settled here to officially start working with her. We just started last week, and I’m working on a plan for my year. I’m really pumped about coming up with my goals and the steps to reach them.

I’m running, and I’m doing it first thing in the morning to get my emotions settled, as exercise does, at the start of the day.  I’ve been out of running for a while.  Since my knee still gets unhappy sometimes, I am easing back into it by redoing Couch to 5k. With low humidity and weather in the 60s-70s year-round, Santa Monica is great for running. I’m planning on joining the (cheap!) YWCA this week, as well, for access to their weight room. I’m also contemplating yoga and belly-dancing classes. Santa Monica basically has classes in anything you can think of. I’m also halfway considering using a personal trainer for a while, though the cost is off-putting.

I joined a weekday hiking group. My first hike is on Wednesday. I’m excited to go take photographs on the hike, and, I hope, also meet people. My hiking boots are on our big shipment of belongings that haven’t arrived yet, but I stopped by REI’s scratch-and-dent sale this weekend and found a pair I might like better than my original ones.

I (and Dan, to a degree) joined a variety of social and volunteer groups: a book club, a wine outing group, a YWCA event-planning board, an urban adventures group, a Westside women’s social group. I may, in time, create a gluten intolerance and/or food allergy group here, but I’m going to let myself settle in more before I think about that in much detail.

I am reaching out to friends of friends and friends of friends of friends. Know someone wonderful on the Westside of LA? Connect me–I’d love it. (I’m not a snob about locations, but traffic in LA is insane, so I’m accepting that most of my friends are going to need to be near me.)

I’m getting a bicycle, a beach cruisier, so I can skip using my car as much as possible. I’m leaning toward the Electra Townie 3i, though I welcome suggestions of other kinds. (I want the option of foot brakes, I want an internal shifter, and I want to be able to put my feet down at stop lights.) I discovered when I went to test-ride a couple of them that I have developed a fear of bike-riding. It has been about twenty years since I’ve ridden a bike, so I’m not chastising myself for that. But I’m also not letting it hold me back. I’m going to practice with my bike in an empty parking lot before I join the world on it.

My husband and I chose an apartment that’s well within what we can afford. It’s still a hell of a lot of money, but it’s not a stretch for us with his new salary. We ended up feeling like the great little house with the gourmet kitchen that we rented in Atlanta stretched us too thin financially there. We aren’t doing that to ourselves here, even though it means we’ll be in a small place for at least the first year.

We are putting money directly into savings from each paycheck to rebuild our savings account.

We are getting a dog. I have wanted a dog for ever so many years. We weren’t ready for one till now. The dog will be my jogging buddy in the mornings and then my companion (along with the two cats) while I work at home during the day. We have been approved for a rescued English Springer Spaniel and are just waiting to be matched with the right puppy!

I’m writing, as you can see. I’m putting the pen to the paper (or the fingers to the keyboard) to keep it real, and honest, and mostly positive. I can do this. I know I can.

Um, Happy Thanksgiving.
Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukah. Festive Eid. Etc.
Happy New Year.

This afternoon, I was sitting at the farmer’s market relishing a chicken and poblano tamale from a nearby stand when I overheard the two girls at the table beside me talk about how “definitely, yes, tomorrow” they were starting on new, extreme dietary regimens. They debated the reward versus difficulty of the Beyonce lemon-and-cayenne plan. One of the girls was determined, it sounded like, to start a new eating plan tomorrow that involved only greens, fruit juice, chicken, and beef. All organic, which was the only part of the diet that sounded reasonable. I mean, really? Can you maintain that diet the rest of your life? Would you want to? No? Then I suggest that you not take that route for weight loss, either.

What I want for myself this year, what I suggest for you as well, is more. Yes, more. How do you and I figure out how to maximize health and pleasure? How do we figure out how to include accomplishment and rest? How do we throw ourselves out there and also replenish ourselves?

I want more:

more exercise that I love, afterward if not while I’m doing it
more vegetables in each meal
more adventures in hiking, travel, cuisine
more cuddling with my husband
more heartfelt moments with friends

We can whittle life down to its meanest components. We can survive, for a time, on orange juice, kale, and broiled chicken. But there’s so much more to be had: nourishment, fulfillment, exploration. Let’s set goals and take paths that offer us more. Not a life of hedonism, but an attempt at balance with only occasional overkill. Aprovechando.