Out of proportion

The other night I took out my dinner after coming home from teaching an RPM class. Normally I'd have dinner closer to the gym where I taught, but I had to be back home earlier on this particular night, so I instead made the drive home hungry as hell and came home scrounging around for food.

My Mum had cooked plenty of food and invited me to load up. She'd cooked some chicken, sliced some cucumber and tomatoes, and was toasting some bread sprinkled with garlic granules to dunk in some veggie soup. It all sounds pretty good, yes? I took one chicken drumstick, the cucmber & tomato, and a small bowl of soup and one piece of bread - because it smelt so damn good - to dunk therein.

In my home, it is an insult to not eat much. Whenever I've gone through insanely depressing patches where eating has been a struggle, I've loaded up my plate, said 'I'm going to eat in my bedroom', and then just found a way to throw the food out. It's like you're saying to your family, 'I don't think your food is good enough to eat a large portion of it.' So she *immediately* picked up on the fact that I wasn't eating much.

She said, in a very sour tone, "You sick?"

I replied no, that I was trying something new and cutting back my portion size.

I've been doing it for a couple of weeks because for months I've been completely exhausted and *something* had to change for me to function at a basic level.

Here are the measures that I've taken:

• Increasing protein intake immediately after cardiovascular and strength training
  
  
• Use of muscle recovery amino-acids such as L-Glutamine, Taurine, etc.
  
  
• Halving portion sizes
  
  
• Increasing hydration levels
  
  
• Increasing flexibility training
  
  
• Decreasing evening carbohydrate intake (unless I am teaching the following morning, then carbohydrate intake is increased)
  
  
• Increasing duration of sleep

The other problem is my quads are *incredibly* tight. About a month ago it got to the point where they were so tight that it was painful. One week, I even struggled to walk because of how tight they were.

My personal trainer gave me the hard word that I had to take some drastic action otherwise I was going to seriously injure myself. My immediate term action was to remove all weighted lower body strength training, then add back in squats, then weighted squats. I've yet to add lunges back in though - that is the next step. Where I would ordinarily do lunges in my training, I instead do stretching (and believe me... stretching is harder!)

Cutting back the food was an interesting one. I feel like I get more out of my training and am sharper and less sluggish. It's like my body knows how to utilise what I put into it - rather than giving it too much and it thinking "... well... what do you want me to do with all of this?" Performance wise, I'm feeling great.

So when I told my Mum I was cutting back my portion size, she said, "Oh good, that way you can finally lose some weight."

*facepalm*

Oh well. I just know that I'm feeling great, and continuing to deliver an epic workout to the participants who come to my class. Any changes I am making to my lifestyle are solely so that I can continue to do that, and be more of a role model to them - to show them that it doesn't matter what your size, you can be fit and strong.

This is something that my mother will never understand. Neither will the majority of my family - both immediate and extended. In fact, this is a point of ridicule.

I've realised something though. While I've improved my physical strength, my emotional strength has also had a working over too. A year ago, it really was hard for me to deal with the fact that being a group fitness instructor was such a shameful thing for my family. Now, I don't care what they think. It amazes me that week after week, people get out of their beds early on a Saturday morning and line up outside the gym before it is open to have me yell at them for an hour.

If having that impact on people requires me to deal with a bit of snark from my family? I'd say that's a fair price to pay.