Well Meaning People Can Be Evil

I got a call from my Mother yesterday. She means well but has a personality that can be as abrasive as sandpaper... the coarse kind. Good Ol' Mom starts by asking if I have time and I tell her I'm about to go get the girls from daycare and head to SWIM practice. And she tells me,
"I'm worried."
"About what, Mom?"
"You."
"Me? Why?"
"Because you're too heavy. You're doing all this exercise and you look heavy and you weigh too much."
And she continues. "Your butt looks bigger and your stomach sometimes looks like you're pregnant from the side."

She eventually tells me that she thinks I have a metabolic problem and that she kept gaining and gaining weight no matter what she did and she was always told that she just didn't know how to push back from the table. And that she will always be honest with me. To which I tell her, there is something to be said for tempering what you say. The problem is, I haven't gained any weight. I gained weight right around our move when I stopped working out with my personal trainer and we were eating out alot. But since I started training for triathlons in September I have lost 6 1/2 pounds and am wearing a 6/8 instead of a 10/12. Granted that is not alot, but I also had no muscle mass and now I have some. I'm not perfectly proportioned. I'm still not my ideal weight, but I have an endocrine system problem. The doctor has told me that there are studies that show that women with what I have who have children often cannot get the last 15-20 lbs off after having children. I am exactly 2o lbs heavier than before I got pregant with twins. It's not rocket science. Mr. Darcy says it's an excuse and I should stop making excuses.

Well, I workout and I eat healthy. Then Mr. Darcy tells me "maybe you're just eating too many calories... it's really a simple formula - burn more than you take in and you lose weight." While I realize that my Mother is concerned and means well, and that Mr. Darcy probably does too, there are proper ways to discuss these things that are not akin to running into someone with a mac truck at a high speed. I had to force myself to eat dinner last night because I couldn't even look at food after these conversations. I'm hungry now and don't want to walk into the kitchen to eat, but I know I have to or I will cause my metabolism to slow down even more.

I've done calculations with formulas from sports nutritionists and books and they say I should be eating 2500 calories but I'm eating 2000 calories. Mr. Darcy says this is proof that I'm eating too much because I should have lost more weight. Maybe so or maybe just maybe, I'm gaining muscle mass. Mr. Darcy says I can't just continuously be gaining muscle mass, but at the same time I think I still am. Who knows.

All I really know is that I don't need to be having these conversations (especially not an abrasive manner) 2 1/2 weeks before the biggest race and the most physically strenuous thing I have done in MY ENTIRE LIFE. It's all I could think about during my swim practice yesterday. I did hit one point where I wasn't thinking about anything during the swim and that was great. But right out of the pool, I was thinking about it again.

And then this morning on my run... I was supposed to do 7 miles but due to a miscalculation I ended up only doing 6.7 miles (oh well, it's close enough for today)... I had to stop and walk (albeit for only about 1/2 a mile total). Not because I couldn't run or was in pain, but because I was crying. It's really hard to run and cry and same time. It screws up your breathing and causes a lot of snot production. All I could hear was what they were saying over and over in my head and nothing I told myself could get it out. So I finally told myself to just get it all out, to get out all of the hurt feelings, all of the feelings of not being good enough for the people who love me, the idea that people won't see me as a good person but just a lazy @ss because they see me as "heavy," the feeling that no matter what I do there is always something that I am a complete and utter failure at (in this case getting myself skinny enough). I told myself that I needed to get it out so that I wasn't carrying this stuff with me for my race. I told myself that I needed to get it out because while I was letting myself walk right then, it wasn't going to happen on race day. So meltdown now instead of later. And then I made myself run the rest of the way and kept telling myself that even if I was fat, I could run (what I thought was) 7 miles. Not to mention be projected to do a 34 minute 1500 (just under 1 mile) swim, and bike 25 miles... and sometimes I've even done more than that... Like a 45 minute swim followed by a 20 mile bike. Or a 25 mile bike followed by a 6 mile run. I may not look pretty doing it but I can do it.

So I've decided that there will be no more discussions of how much I weigh, how much I eat, how I look, whether I am "heavy," whether I do or do not have a metabolic problem between now and the race. I don't need to hear it. I don't want to hear it. I want to hear that I am awesome. I want to hear that I CAN SWIM, BIKE, RUN. I want to hear that I am a good mother and a good wife. I want to hear that I am a good friend. I want to hear that I am good at my job. And that's about all I want to hear between now and 2 days after my race. I want to race, race well, and celebrate the fact that I will have swum, biked, and ran over 30 miles (31.93 miles to be exact) in one day and that I finished in an upright position with a smile on my face. And then people can be as well meaning as they like. And I'll still be able to say "yes, but can you do almost 32 miles in one day?"

Afterwards, maybe I'll go see an endocrinologist to see if I have metabolic problems and maybe I'll see a sports nutritionist to get an expert to tell me the number of calories and the distribution among what foods I should eat. But unless you're an endocrinologist or a sports nutritionist, step off because I'm not looking for amateur hour. I'll be too busy training for my next race and if I'm "heavy" then oh well.