Muscle Matters: Why Having Strong Muscles Might Just Save Your Life

Body Shop Guy: "This is your car?"
Me: "Well, it... was."
Body Shop Guy: "And you were driving it?"
Me: "I was."
Body Shop Guy: "You're one lucky girl.  I wouldn't have expected you to be walking around like you are.  That was a bad accident.  But you look like you're o.k...?"

I was getting my things out of my car two days after the accident-- suspecting, accurately as it turns out, that my car would be totaled. I'd been T-boned on the driver's side of the car and spun out across a busy road.  My back tire was caved in about 20 degrees, the airbags had deployed, and the frame of the car had shifted enough that 2 doors were not able to function properly. As far as wrecks go, it wasn't that bad comparatively.  But it wasn't a fender bender either.

The body shop guy's comment creeped me out more than a little, especially since that was the first time I'd really looked at the interior of the car.  It was littered with bajillions of unidentifiable metal pieces, the leather had numerous rips, and my plastic tupperware boxes in the trunk were destroyed.

I, however, am fine.  I had some seatbelt burn, and a sore shoulder from the impact of the airbag.  Nothing some ice and advil couldn't help.

Trust me, there have been more than a few prayers of gratitude that have gone up.   I do feel lucky, and the thought of how much worse it could have been still makes me a little queasy. I'm glad I was in a car that was well designed for side impact.  Silly though it sounds, I'm also grateful to my body.

I frequently tell people that being strong matters.  Which is usually when women put up their hands and say "I don't want to be one of those body builder women." I resist the urge to roll my eyes and give my schpiel about women not having enough testosterone to do that...nevermind that I was talking about strength not muscle size.  I guess I'm really talking about functional strength, which is being strong enough to do what you need to do.  It's being able to carry a heavy purse without your shoulder coming out of socket.  It's being able to hold a cast iron skillet, or to get the thing off the shelf without having to call your husband.

It's also being strong enough to withstand an impact if you ever need to.

A big part of a  muscle's job is to keep a joint in place. My trainer uses the analogy of a corn dog.  (But he calls it a "Corny" dog.  I've tried to explain to him that he sounds silly.  He says that's what people say in Texas.) Imagine that the corn meal covering represents your skin, the hot dog itself represents your muscles, and the stick represents your joints. Now imagine that you could somehow take bits out of the hotdog, leaving the covering and the stick.  Of course, that'd be a mess--and the stick would be anything but stable.

If you don't take care of your muscles, they won't be prepared to do what you ask of them.   It means feeding them properly, with enough protein and variety of amino acids so that the body can do it's work of repairing wear and tear on body parts.  (If you aren't getting enough, your body will actually eat it's own muscle to get the amino acids it needs.  No joke.  More on that later!)  Taking care of your muscles also means using them.  "Use it or lose it" is about the truest statement there is when it comes to muscles.  Sitting around on an ever expanding butt is not only causing weight gain and a host of other problems, it's destroying the quality of your muscles.

I'm not exaggerating when I say having strong muscles can save your life.  (Literally, man!) My trainer tells a story of being young and dumb, and being thrown from a motorcycle into a tree at 40 mph.  The doctor looked at him and said "The ONLY reason you are alive is because you have so much muscle."  But I saw it happen with my parents too, when they rolled their car three times across a busy interestate. Dad got an earful of dirt because the caved in sunroof acted like a shovel.  Mom had a cut on her toe that required seven stitches.  And that was it.  Were all these people lucky? Absolutely.  (And divinely protected?  Oh yeah.) But it was also that their muscles were ready to do their job.

Think it doesn't matter?  Go watch the "Help, I've fallen and I can't get up" commercial.   That doesn't just happen to octogenarians.  It happens to people who don't take care of their bodies.

Sit. Stay.

My "fall" table

You wouldn't believe how often I hear it: "I don't have time to eat." Which is even more silly than "I don't have time to cook." (Post on that coming, later!)  Really? You don't have time to eat? Do you have time to brush your teeth?  Shower? I mean, I feel like these things are pretty basic life skills.

I was a fat girl.  Nobody who was as big as I was says "I don't have time to eat." But I told myself for years that I didn't have time to eat well. 

I was already well into this healthy life when I became a single girl after 6 years of marriage.  The idea of coming home and cooking for myself seemed like a lot of trouble.  The idea of sitting down to a meal by myself was even worse.  Trust me, I know why people eat out or eat their meals in front of the television.  It's just somehow easier.

But now I'm in a different place, and I realize I wasn't doing myself any favors. Of course, you've probably heard by now that Eating in Front of the TV Can Make You Fat-- nutso, I know. Turns out that when your brain is distracted, it can't process the feeling of the satisfaction.  Translation: come 9 o'clock, it's open season on your refrigerator. Your body didn't realize it ate a great meal just a short time before.   Couple that with all the advertisements for uhem... $*%#food, and you're fighting a losing battle.

Besides, most of us are so stressed out that we're already primed to eat things we don't need, because that's what elevated cortisol (your stress hormone) does.  But the simple act of having an evening ritual that helps you unwind can help negate the effects of a stressful day.  A chance to sit and reflect and "let it go" to quote the chirpy Disney princess, is a chance to not take the day to bed with you.  Which means you sleep more.  Which in turn helps you reduce cortisol.  Which helps keep your weight in check. See where I'm going with this?

Maybe, though, it's more than all that.  Maybe the simple act of sitting down to a meal reminds you what you're doing, and what it is that you want from all of this. Maybe the act of eating off a nice dinner plate reminds you that you're worth it.

These days, I look forward to meals, but not really because of the food. When I can, I come home to eat-- and eat off a pretty table that I keep set.  When I can't get home, I do the best I can to at least go eat in a park.  I day dream, or just sit in the silence.  Occasionally, I put on some Norah Jones or Ella Fitzgerald.  In the evenings, I light a candle and enjoy the glow.  I make a conscious effort to set down my day.

I know, I know... most of you don't have the luxury of singleness that allows you to sit and have a quiet dinner. Fair enough, but even if not, you can still make at least dinner an event.  Use good dishes, even if you have kids. Do as many of the dishes as you can before you eat, and try not to eat in a cluttered space.  Try not to talk "shop"-- who has to pick up which child, and how you're going to purchase the new water heater. Instead, use meal times to talk about things that excite you, or good things that happened in your day.  One of the best things you can do for your family is model a healthy lifestyle for them-- and slowing down and enjoying a meal is a huge part of that.

It seems like such a small thing, this sitting down for a meal.  It seems like something that couldn't really make much difference in anything really.  But try it for a week or a month. This one thing may start a chain reaction.  This one thing may be enough to change your mindset and shift it into a pattern of healthy living, which may be one of the things you need to finally start losing the weight, and getting healthy.

(Don't) Finish What You Start

One of the painful realizations I made about myself during my quest to not look like the Michelin Man's girlfriend was that I was addicted to food.  When I started working with my trainer, one of the first things he said was "If something is a trigger food, don't eat it.  Don't even keep it in your house." He told me that a trigger food was anything that you couldn't control the amount you ate, or anything that made you want to eat other food.

What he couldn't tell me was that anything sweet was a trigger food for me.  It didn't much matter what it was.  Once I tasted sugar, that's all I wanted.  Sometimes I felt like if my entire town was made into a gingerbread house, I could eat all of it.  I think I tried a few times.

But since stating what I now call "My Life: 2.0", I've started paying attention to why I eat (which as a trainer, is really why people eat). I've realized that most of us have at least a small addiction to food, and with good reason.  If you want to know more about how the food industry spends bajillions (technical term for a helluva lot) on making you powerless to say no to certain foods, read The End of Overeating, by David Kessler. But that aside, our addiction to food isn't always about the food itself.  Sometimes it's about the way food makes us feel (hello, eating our emotions!) or the way it invokes memories of happy times.  Some of us, like my father (who is actually trim, so I can say this), were raised to be members of the clean plate club-- and taught that you don't let perfectly good food go to waste. Turns out, though, perfectly good food usually goes to waist.  

But given the fact that 100 extra calories per day over what your body needs can cause you to be 10!!! pounds heavier at the end of a year... I'll pause while that sinks in and you get really mad and assume I'm making that up...  this is more problematic than we realize. It's not just a harmless habit, especially when modern portion sizes are really designed for a small army.

So how does anyone start to get the upper hand on this? I learned something by watching my trainer/best friend eat.  No matter how good something is, he never finishes it.  I've never once seen him completely clean his plate. This annoyed me at first, especially since he is 60 and still looks like he could be a competition body builder without much work. Don't misunderstand.  The man likes cheat meals!  But I finally realized this was a coping skill he had taught himself.  If he leaves food on his plate, he is in control, not the food.  It's a small act of daily willpower that when done repeatedly teaches his brain how to handle being around really great food. Even when he has a cheat meal, leaving a few bites uneaten on his plate signals to him that while he had a "food vacation", he's had enough.

Try it. Yes, there are starving people in China (and here!)  But you cleaning your plate isn't helping them... or probably you!  Go against the grain.  Don't finish what you start.

Sesame Street, Heroes, and Getting There

 

It's a magic carpet ride

Every door will open wide

To happy people like you--

Happy people like

What a beautiful

Sunny Day

Sweepin' the clouds away

On my way to where the air is sweet

Can you tell me how to get,

How to get to Sesame Street?

One of the worst things about being a fat girl (you know, aside from the constant exhaustion of carrying around the weight equivalent to an extra person, and aside from the screaming knees and asthma and back problems) was feeling like everyone knew a secret I didn’t know.  I’d see all these skinny, smiling spandex-clad girls on treadmills, and wish with everything I had to be one of them.   I’d cry because I wasn’t.

It’s like the Sesame Street song was my life’s soundtrack.  I knew where I wanted to go, but I couldn’t figure out how to get there.  Nobody could tell me how to get to the place where I was one of the smiling people for whom doors opened wide.

Once I started working with a trainer, and learned how to eat, and quit doing things that I thought were healthy, but were actually hurting my body and sabotaging my success, my life is different. 100 pounds later, I’m on the other side of the fence.  I don’t have the perfect body yet, but as a personal trainer, I’m helping people learn how to change their own story.

Sometimes people see the gigantic picture of gigantic me that’s up at the gym, and after they say “That’s you?!?”, there’s a heavy pause.  Then I know what’s coming.  “I could never do that.”

I heard an interview on NPR with singer/songwriter David LaMotte last week.  LaMotte is based in the mountains of North Carolina, and there’s a largeness to his songs that I love.  Lately he’s spent a lot of time doing what I call “Justice Work”, and has started offering seminars called “Change Your World.” One of the things he said in the interview was that people have a “hero complex”, where they think a hero is someone who does these huge, amazing things.  It’s nice, but of course, not many people believe themselves to be heroes.  Which mean that no one believes themselves capable of changing the world.  He made the point that the world is really changed by ordinary people doing lots of small things.

This notion has been nagging at me all week, because maybe that’s how it is with losing weight too.  Maybe most of us watch shows like The Biggest Loser and think “that’s great for you, but I can’t give up my whole life to lose weight.” Or you think, secretly, that you’re not disciplined enough or determined enough or whatever else enough.  Or that  you’re too busy, or too old, or too broke, or too whatever else.  But what happens is that, at least secretly, you don’t actually believe you can change enough to lose the weight.  As much as you’d like to get to “Sesame Street”, you don’t think anyone can actually tell you how to get there.

But maybe the notion of having to be “hero”, who does big, amazing things is stopping you from being healthy and happy. Looking back, I did make some big changes.  But through the process, it never felt that way.  It felt more like one small step here, and one small step there.  It was my trainer telling me to give him just one more rep, and weakly saying, “I can do that.” It was filling my body with good things to the point I didn’t miss what I wasn’t eating.  It was all the small things. 

If I could give people one piece of encouragement, I’d say “You can do this.  Start where you are.  Get someone who knows what they are doing to help you. (Seriously, there’s nothing worse than floundering around in the gym, wasting your time, and not seeing results.)  And then put your head down, give it your best effort.  Choose food your body needs instead of just what tastes good.

Then do it again tomorrow.”

Turns out, there’s no secret road to “Sesame Street.” It’s just a lot of small steps.