It’s been around six weeks since I started CrossFit, and it’s been… great.
I look forward to my M/W/F midday workouts like I’ve never looked forward to movement in my life. It’s not a heat-seeking missile feeling – like the anxious anticipation leading up to the first glass of wine at the end of the day; it’s more like looking forward to a massage. It feels like a break from busy-ness and life. It’s a sacred, set-aside time to _not think_ and just be in my body for a little while.
I’m starting to get what people mean about mind-body connection.
I’m not actively, consciously working on getting out of my head, per se, but the focus needed to do the various CrossFit routines just requires my narrative, analytical mind to go offline so my brain can focus on telling my right leg to go here, and my left leg to go there.
I love it.
In between CrossFit workouts I feel pretty sore in the body parts that did something new the day before. I feel physically tired at the end of the day (even — maybe especially? – on non-CrossFit days), so it’s a little easier to fall asleep. I also think it’s a better, deeper sleep because I definitely feel more sharp and awake the next day.
My appetite hasn’t shifted much. I expected to be much more hungry, more often, since I always experienced a kind of panicked hunger whenever I started working out in the past. I assumed that was due to my metabolism coming back online, so eventually I would avoid exercise when I was trying to lose weight. Looking back, that must have felt so acute because I was restricting my food intake in addition to exercising. The combo of restricting (dieting) and moving more must have just had a layered impact on my appetite, speeding up the onset of reactive binge urges. In any event, I have not had major appetite increases.
I have noticed that my hunger and fullness signals seem to be clearer, in a neutral way. The signals aren’t the scary, low-blood-sugar precipitous things like feeling faint, grouchy or starving all of a sudden. It’s more like I got prescription glasses for my appetite – it’s just a simple (likely earlier?) ping that I’m hungry or that I’m full. I am guessing this is because I’m just a little more in tune with my body, but maybe there’s some physiological effect of exercise that turns up the volume of hunger and fullness hormones. Who knows? These are the times when I wish I were a trained scientist who could validate these hypotheses! Sigh. If you’re reading this and you are in medical research or public health, research this please.
My body feels stronger, for sure, but it hasn’t visibly changed in terms of tone or size. Guess I was worried over nothing, lol.
I went to the doctor recently and learned that my cholesterol, blood pressure and A1C numbers are all improved from my last battery of blood tests, which is really remarkable. I immediately assumed it was because of CrossFit (despite only doing it for six weeks), but now I’m wondering if it has more to do with finally quitting nicotine a couple of years ago. I was chewing Nicorette gum for nearly seven years after quitting smoking, and nicotine apparently really impacts cholesterol and blood pressure (and probably blood sugar processing, too).
After quitting nicotine gum my body got larger – despite no change in appetite or food volume. I know the articles about quitting smoking (in my case, just nicotine) all say that it’s appetite related, and that you “should manage it by being careful with what you eat” (barf), but I don’t buy it. Something happened to my metabolism that changed how my body absorbed and used calories, full stop. And two years later the weight is still here on my body. I am also a middle aged woman, so I’m sure my body was already primed to grow bigger anyway. It doesn’t bother me except that all the quit-smoking marketing materials put out by various health organizations always frame the inevitable weight gain as your own individual fault (so you can hope it won’t affect YOU, just everybody else – all those people who can’t control themselves). You just have to be more conscious of what you eat when you quit smoking and you too can avoid any weight gain from quitting. I call bullshit.
What they should say in the quit-smoking/nicotine articles is that if you quit smoking all of your health markers will dramatically improve AND you will most likely gain weight and it’s not your fault at all and it doesn’t matter because you are worthy and lovable and deserve respect no matter what size you are. And actually, who cares about your health markers anyway? “Good health” is a slippery, ill-defined target, un-achievable by most people under 50, and utterly not achievable in old age (because: old age). The truth is, you are worthy of a life free of dependence on a chemical that makes you feel like shit and controls your life. You are worthy of a life 100% divested from big tobacco and big pharma (nicotine gum, in my case.) SCREW THEM.
Ahem. OK, back to CrossFit:
It’s good so far! I’ll keep you all posted if that changes, or any new good things come from it.
Love,
Fatty
Total Fatty 