2012: Eat Something

One of my goals for 2012 was 'Eat Something', which I felt I had to delve into a little deeper as it's something that has changed dramatically over the last couple of years.

It was shortly after I threw in the towel with dieting that I began to pursue group fitness instructing. I'm so glad that I did it that way, and not before, as trying to follow a diet, or trying to calorie count while learning how to instruct would have been seriously detrimental.

Firstly, it would have been far too much for me to take on mentally. When I was dieting, consumption and/or non-consumption of food was constantly on my mind. When I first began instructing, choreography and all of the other components that make up the Les Mills assessment criteria was constantly on my mind. There just would simply have not been enough room in my head for both.

Secondly, you might recall in my dieting days, my training schedule would look something like this.

Monday	BODYPUMP Lunchtime Run/Swim RPM
Tuesday	RPM x 1 RPM x 2 RPM x 3 BODYJAM
Wednesday	BODYPUMP Lunchtime Run/Swim RPM Enduro
Thursday	PT Session Evening Run Weights program
Friday	BODYPUMP RPM BODYBALANCE
Saturday	RPM BODYJAM Long Swim
Sunday	BODYCOMBAT BODYPUMP Long Swim RPM Enduro

It would leave me feeling a bit tired, especially as I considered Friday to be my 'rest' day simply because it had BODYBALANCE in there.

However! Even that amount of training would not have me prepared for how much teaching exhausted me.

The first time I taught one track.... ONE track, I was truly smashed. I staggered home to bed and did not wake up till the next morning. I didn't ever think that 4 minutes of training would cause that much exhaustion. I can't begin to explain how much teaching takes out of me - there is a period of time where I am pretty much useless after teaching because I've given so much in my class.

Now, my week typically looks like this:

Monday	Teaching RPM x 1 Teaching RPM x 2
Tuesday	BODYJAM or Teaching BODYJAM
Wednesday	RPM Teaching RPM
Thursday	BODYATTACK BODYJAM
Friday	RPM
Saturday	Teaching RPM Teaching BODYJAM
Sunday	Teaching BODYJAM

So on the face of it, it looks way less than what I was doing previously. I cannot begin to tell you how much more tired, and hungry, and useless I get with the latest training. My weekends in particular, rolling through to Monday, are particularly draining. There are sometimes when I'm also teaching RPM on Sunday morning and on Tuesday morning.

Before I was instructing, I would do all of my training on 1,200 calories or less per day.

Now I have a confession to make. When I first signed up for SparkPeople, I entered in the amount of activity I did every day - so the schedule you see above. The recommended calorie count was well over 2,000 - I think it might have been the 2,500-2,800 range. However, I tried to eat that many calories and struggled with it and subsequently, I manually set my calorie limit to 1,200. Coming off Herbalife and Weight Watchers and Whatever The Hell Diet I Was On, consuming 2,500 - 2,800 calories simply sounded like a recipe for weight gain. It was twice, maybe even thrice the amount of calories I had just been consuming.

To think, if I'd started instructing whilst I was still eating that little, I probably would be fainting and passing out on a regular basis.

As it is, I'm eating more because I'm hungrier. But, I'm still not eating enough. I'm unproductive at work for a good half hour to an hour because my I'm taking too long to feed myself.

I went through a period of time where I was teaching on Monday mornings, Monday nights, Tuesday mornings, Tuesday nights, Wednesday nights, Thursday mornings, Saturday mornings, Saturday mid-morning, Sunday morning, and Sunday afternoon. Some of these classes were RPM, some of them were BODYJAM. I need more practice for the Jam classes than I do the RPM ones, so add a few hours on top of that for the Jam practice.

Most of the time, I ate enough to ensure that I got through the classes. I struggled through the times in between classes, but I got through the classes.

During 2011, something happened. I've always hung around with people I know in the gym, and a lot of them are instructors themselves. I didn't feel they judged me or looked down on me for being a participant. Yet, now that I'm instructing, I *do* feel that judgement and I *do* feel them looking down on me. There has been heated discussion in the community in general about how someone who looks like me shouldn't be teaching at all as there's no way I could possibly inspire anyone in a results based program.

95% of the time, it doesn't bother me. However, there is about 5% of the time when it does bother me. All in all, I don't think that's a big deal. How *often* it affects me is not the problem. How *much* it affects me is.

When I found out that people I am quite good friends with were analysing what I was eating behind my back and discussing my eating habits and making assumptions about my daily nutrition based on the infrequent moments I spent with them, it was a shock to me. Getting judged by strangers? No big deal. Getting judged by your friends? A deal.

I reacted the wrong way. The wrong was was trying to train more, and trying to eat less. The results were disastrous as after about a week of this, I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and collapsed. I had a class to teach and had to call the gym manager in the middle of the night to tell him about what had happened. I was incredibly embarrassed, and also angry with myself for listening to these so called friends of mine.

I thought about cutting them out of my life. But you know what? I'm now working in an incredibly superficial industry. The majority of people that come to my classes are trying to lose weight moreso for how they look than how they feel. I was talking to someone who is paying for a gym membership but hasn't been once and I tried to convince her to come and try a workout with me. Another person in the conversation interrupts me and says, "She doesn't need to workout, just look at her!" My response was "Everyone has a heart, and it craps out if you don't look after it, what about your cardiovascular health?" They said, "Who the hell cares about cardiovascular whatever?!"

The reality is that the industry is vain, and I'm going to be surrounded by vain people. I simply can't hate them all. But I *can* choose not to follow their same vain tendencies.

So for the sake of NOT being vain, I need to eat. I do not want to be fainting again, and I do not want to be in the position of calling the manager again to cancel a class. I also want to be more productive in my job, and minimise the time in between classes where I am in a state of 'uselessness'.

That my friends, is why I am going to be making an effort to eat something. If someone wants to analyse my eating habits? This is my response to them.

Bon apetit.