Like many Americans, my good friend recently resolved to drop some weight after the first of the year. She committed to eating better and working out no less than four times each week. She bought a treadmill and some sweet new kicks. And, this morning, she stood on the scale for the first time since December 31st:

 

 

I've only lost a pound?! No way! Sad panda.

 

She was disappointed, but not wholly dejected. She's got at least 50 pounds to lose before reaching the threshold of a normal BMI, and had hoped for better results after nearly two weeks of dedication. At the same time, she's a realist. She gets this will be a process.

 

I took a quick inventory of her efforts. Her plan is sound, and her nutritional habits are good. She's tracking calories and logging food intake. True to her resolution, she is working out four or five days each and every week. Here, however, is where things take a turn. Her "workout" consists of walking one mile on the treadmill, and then doing a lot of sit-ups, push-ups and light weights.

 

This is, of course, better than nothing at all. It's more activity than she is used to performing and, in time, it will pay some dividends. If she really wants to get some traction on weight loss, though, and see an improvement in her fitness, she is going to need to depart from the comfort zone of mild resistance training and a stroll on the treadmill. She's going to have to embrace being uncomfortable.

 

This is why people don't workout. It actually kind of drives me crazy when I hear people talk about "working out" in the context of "sipping Gatorade on a brisk walk." (It's locomotion. Not exercise.) Most people can exert themselves beyond the point they realize, even with a poor base level of fitness. Worse still is when the same group of individuals lament about weight loss or lack thereof. It's tough to tell someone that they are not working hard enough. But my friend? She's just not putting in the hard work.

 

The sensations of breathlessness and burning muscles, for example, correlate with the intensity of the effort. When you're out of shape, numerous receptors all over your body beg your brain to slow down. Your brain is trying to tell your body that you cannot maintain this kind of activity. As you work each system, however, fewer receptors holler for mercy because your body is no longer working so close to its maximum capacity. Eventually, the number of receptors screaming at your brain will level off, and more pleasant sensations will be able to rise to a conscious level. The signal that was once an emergency siren will become just a familiar signpost: I've pushed this hard before. I can handle it. It'll be OK.

 

But most people bail before they get to the happy place. They feel exhausted. They can't catch their breath. The sensation of true work produces anxiety, and it's simply more comfortable to hang out in the lower zones. This is actually the theory behind gyms like Curves, where women push to about 60% of their MAX. The idea is that a little activity will produce results for the more sedentary client, while not being so challenging as to make the client miserable, unhappy, fearful and unwilling to return.

 

This is also the reason that I squarely told my friend to get a trainer. She's not going to push her body toward fitness without one. Instead, she will continue to do what comes easier at the expense of her goals.

 

 

I have a power test in a week. Before I go in, I will have that same type of anxiety. I'll be nervous about how much it will hurt - about how much suffering I can take. I feel like that before races, too. But I also get the pleasure of athletics now in a way my friend cannot because, having attained a good fitness base, I can sample a number of sports and experience the various pleasures each has to offer.

It's winter. That means I'm indoors, riding a bike to nowhere. Sad trombone.

 

After a couple of seasons slumming it on crappy trainer in my kitchen, I decided to hit the rollers for a change of pace. Then, sometime around October, I hit a wall. A really big, hard, ugly wall.

 

It's normal to loathe the bike trainer. Anyone who doesn't is certifiable. And it's fine to spend eight minutes laying in bed, talking yourself in to facing another day of Sufferfest videos. It's perfectly okay to want to spend the "off season" sipping Hot Toddy's and watching the snow fall around you.

 

But there came this day in October when I could hardly muster the will to even look at the bike. Instead of being my outlet, my peace in the world and the place I most wanted to be, the saddle had become my nemesis. I suddenly found myself saying things like, Maybe I don't want to do this anymore.

 

I've always been a bit compulsive about exercise, anyway. I am downright pathological when it comes to reviewing my workout data, tracking my efforts, making sure I am getting in enough time at the gym, setting goals and slowly hacking away at each measure of my performance. My husband and kids long ago learned that few things come between me and a planned workout, lest everyone in the home be subject to my wrath. My mother, as she lay dying, told me she "knew it was bad" when I missed my morning cycling session to visit her, instead.

 

But this time, it was different. I wasn't just obsessive, I was miserable. Truly unhappy. My bike was a chore, and I was almost ready to walk away. Almost.

 

Then, I called Mari.

 

If you don't know Mari Ruddy, you should. For starters, she is another vegan-buddhist-diabetic-cyclist, and we area hard lot to find! More importantly, Mari was the brains behind the ADA Tour de Cure Red Rider program that celebrates cyclists with diabetes, and she is the founder of TeamWILD, a sports organization that teaches diabetic athletes of all abilities how to manage their blood sugar while optimizing performance in their respective sport. (http://teamwildathletics.com/)

Mari is also the most compassionate, enthusiastic cheerleader one could hope to find. And I needed a bit of cheering.

 

At some point in our conversation, the ever-gracious Mari tactfully suggested I speak to a sports psychologist or, at the very least, avail myself of a TeamWILD resource in the form of a talk by Carrie Cheadle, who specializes in Mental Skills Training for athletes.

 

I'm a bit of a tough sell. It's not that I oppose the idea of "mental skills training," it's just that it seems...for lack of better terms kind of namby-pamby. I'm not big on "talking things out." But Mari has a talent for making something seem like a good idea even when you have some deeply-seeded reservations, so I decided to stream Carrie's talk whilst finishing some work at the office.

 

This is the part where I might have to dig in to that plate of crow, feathers and all.

 

I'll spare you the details, but the essential question posed went something like this:

 

What is your source of anxiety before a race?

 

And, of course, we all have the same generic answers: Fear of failure, Fear of looking like an idiot, Fear of getting dropped and lapped, Fear of embarrassment or humiliation or not meeting personal expectations or mockery or insert whatever shame you'd least like to endure.

 

So far, not impressed. Fast forward to the next question: Why do you fear those things?

 

So this is where I start to see the Namby-Pamby train pull into the station, and I'm all set to disembark...but things don't go where I expect. I thought it was going to be destination Tell Me About Your Childhood Pain or Rejection so We Can Work Through Those Issues. But no! Carrie provided actual, useful, functional insight.

 

If you ask ten of your friends this same question, and really dive in to the root anxiety of athletic performance, people end up in one of two camps: A) I really don't think I have the capability to run a marathon/ride a century/win a race, and B) I don't trust my training. And the solution for both groups is pretty much the same.

 

Let me take a quick diversion here, while we delve in to the reasons I don't sing. Just work with me. When I was six, I was in music class, and we were rehearsing holiday songs for a little school performance. My music teacher, Mrs. Bow (but we can just call her "witch," because that's fitting, too) suggested to me that I should only pretend to sing because I pretty much sucked. I told my dad this heartbreaking story, and he laughed and then confirmed that I do, in fact, suck at all things musical. So, for the rest of my life, I have just known that I am a terrible, awful, horrendous singer. Of course, at six, no one is exactly Sinatra...so maybe I could have been a singer if I had ever really been trained or tried....but I always had this track in my head that said You are not a singer.

 

The people in Group A have the same track: You are not an athlete. Changing that track is all about finding the right training and resources, and setting realistic and attainable goals, and then knocking them out one at a time.

 

The good news? I am not in Group A. At least, not on the bike. And I could give a crap about singing now.

 

But I was firmly planted in Group B.

 

I have always been compulsive about my training because I've never been sure it's the right direction, or the right intensity, or that I am focusing on the right things at the right time. I had different trainers and coaches over the years, but I only ceded so much control to them because I never felt confident in their abilities. Basically, I doubted the process. Sometimes, that was legit. I wasn't training with the right people or using the right resources. Other times, I screwed myself by refusing to comply with their plans because I couldn't let go and trust. I told myself that I knew better.

 

All of the sudden, the problem became clear. I was making myself miserable and stressing over performance because I simply had not found the right resources and then let go.

 

That's probably true of most things in life. But back to the bike.

 

So, sometime in November, I settled on a group of trainers and coaches at Breakaway Cycle & Strength. They have been amazingly supportive of my goals, and have the expertise and focus to help me make steady improvements. They have also taken a dedicated interest in helping me to manage my blood sugar while on the bike, which is certainly outside the scope of my expectations and their job description, but I won't complain. In return, I have relinquished control. When they tell me to do a tempo ride, I don't ignore the direction and push myself to higher zones because it seems "useless" or "easy." When I'm told to push my cadence over 110, I don't tell myself that 90 is "good enough in a race." I do as directed, and I trust in the process. My functional power has increased but, more importantly, I am back to a place of balance. I love my bike. I can't wait for the snow to melt.

 

The key to success is really in finding the right people, accessing the right tools and resources, and getting the pieces to fall in place. I am so fortunate for Mari's guidance, and glad to have someone like her in my diabetic-athletic life. (And, of course, for those who need their own set of tools, check the TeamWILD website for your own stewardship courtesy of Mari and Carrie: http://teamwildathletics.com/)

I don't make New Year's Resolutions. I used to, but then I realized that they don't feel authentic to me.

Don't get me wrong, intention is a critical piece of living well and being mindful...but resolutions by their very nature are goal-driven. Goals are easily forgotten precisely because they ignore the intent behind attaining any given objective. 

 

Without intention, we wouldn’t do much of anything. In fact, all of our actions rely on some kind of intent, whether we are aware of that or not. For intention to work, you also have develop mindfulness, and to develop mindfulness you have to develop intention. In other words, they work hand in hand and you can’t do one without the other.

 

Resolutions fail because they don't originate from mindfulness or breakthrough. They are driven by a calender, a change of the season, the perception of rebirth or renewal and not by intention. There's no mindfulness is saying, "I wish to lose weight." The key, of course, is to be aware of the process of change without getting lost in the mental ball of string.  You have to know how the tape you play in your head influences action, and by examining the desires beneath the need for change, see what is driving intention in the first place.

 

I already work on those things most important to me. I keep myself in good health, I eat well and I exercise often. I am gentle with my children, and I meet their needs without losing myself.

 

So, I'm resolution-less. And that's a good thing.

 

But that's not to say that I have no ambition.

 

I've been working really hard these last couple of months to improve my functional power on the bike. It's going well. My Power/Weight ratio in October was a pathetic 2.72. As of last week, I was hovering around a Power/Weight ratio of 3.31. I've been training on pedal efficiency, too, which has been a real challenge for inefficient me. I've been busy doing a lot of high-cadence drills, and that has improved my stats on that end, as well.

 

Of course, the easiest way to raise your Power/Weight ratio is to drop some excess weight. This is where I get frustrated. The better my overall diabetes control, the more insulin I require, and the more weight I gain. I'm still in a plenty healthy BMI range (20.2)...but, like most women, I would love to lose about ten pounds. It's such a source of irritation to me. I realize that the blood sugar control trumps any cosmetic issue I might have, and that my performance on the bike would suffer far more if I had uncontrolled blood sugar, so I am dealing with it and trying to manage down a pound at a time.
 



Midori and I, splitting a low BG treat.

And, on the diabetes front, things are well. I have found this space where my blood sugar is where I want it most of the time. I still get robbed of the occasional good day, which in fact happened just yesterday - on New Year's Day. I was skiing with my kids, having a good time, enjoying the weather and a break from the bike...and then realized I was low. I checked: 44. Super low. I spent the next two hours trying to get myself back to golden, so I could keep skiing and playing with my kids. Those are the days when I get angry.

 

At the same time, I looked up and saw my son - the boy who we were once told would never run or play sports or even talk to us - ski triumphantly down the hill, without the aid of his parents and without the slightest inhibition. I am reminded every day that life is as much about overcoming as it is about enjoying the process and the intent behind our actions.

 

I want to learn to take in the suffering of the world, and still enjoy a cookie.

That was the answer provided by a student of Buddhism when he was asked why he would travel to France and study with Thich Nhat Hanh at the Plum Village Monastery, giving up the comfort of his quarters for a rustic space where he was made to wash dishes and chop wood.

With so much suffering in the news, I wonder how we do that. How do we look on the faces of broken parents, children in pain, families forever changed, and still enjoy a cookie?

We are all woven together in interconnectedness. This life and imminent death are strands of a web in which we all exist, together, with a single breath. If we wish to make the journey in peace, we must radiate peace to our children. We must hold them close, and open our hearts to those left behind.

Peace is not an empty platitude. It's not an ideal or an objective, or a political agenda. It is a practice of everyday life. We must walk peace in our choices - the words we speak, the things we choose to bring in to our home and the way in which we listen to one another.

The national media is consumed with the task of blaming. Is it a question of gun access? Cultural violence? Masculinity's representation in society? Insidious references that stigmatize the mentally ill and improperly correlate autism with violence, aloofness with insanity, an inability to read social cues with a lack of empathy. And while the pointing of fingers may or may not be important, may or may not elude to the questions needing answered for the sake of creating good public policy, blame is rarely much more than cathartic. At the end of the day, we are left to wonder  how any of us (meaning the murderer) could get so far removed from love, from sympathy, from compassion, from basic common sense and decency that they could coldly and mechanically take life from other people in such a callous, unconscious and destructive way.

In moving forward, we must be both realists and optimists. Suffering has a place in the world. It is inevitable. At the same time, we must recognize the possibility of alleviating that suffering and see the opportunities to create peace in our own lives and in our home. The intentions to be kind, compassionate, helpful, happy, and liberated are among the most beautiful qualities we have as humans. Our thoughts, words, and deeds of empathy, love and caring are the needed counter-forces to hatred, violence, and despair. Our own efforts to find inner peace, our example to our children, can be an important force of wholesome change for people who don’t know of that possibility.

If there is light in the soul,
There will be beauty in the person.
If there is beauty in the person,
There will be harmony in the house.
If there is harmony in the house,
There will be order in the nation.
If there is order in the nation,
There will be peace in the world.

The day my mother died I wrote in my journal, A serious misfortune of my life has arrived. I suffered for more than one year after the passing away of my mother. But one night, in the highlands of Vietnam, I was sleeping in the hut in my hermitage. I dreamed of my mother. I saw myself sitting with her and we were having a wonderful talk. She looked young and beautiful, her hair flowing down. It was so pleasant to sit there and talk to her as if she had never died.

My mother.

When I woke up it was about two in the morning and I felt very strongly as though I had never lost my mother. The impression that my mother was still with me was very clear. I understood then that the idea of having lost my mother was just an idea. It was obvious in that moment that my mother was just an idea. It was obvious in that moment that my mother is always alive in me. ~Thich Nhat Hanh

When someone dies, you realize how many of your memories are history revised. I remember so many things about my mother and, as I have grown, the context of those memories has changed. My mother was kind and gentle. She was awkward in public, but I liked that about her. She loved her children deeply, and she was wrapped in the possibility of the people she was raising.

She was also lonely and sad. Somewhere in her history or her mind, there was a pull so strong that she was always a little bit apart from the rest of the world. She could never grab hold of that thing, discard it, push it aside and rise anew. As she aged, she was buried under the weight of that burden until, at last, she was bathed in hopelessness.

It will be two years tomorrow since my mother officially died. But she was gone long before then...

I don't know when my mother was diagnosed with diabetes. Like so much of her history, her health was a tightly guarded secret and, like all things hidden, the mystery of it served her. For years, she alleged that she was dying of congestive heart failure. Her body was swollen, and fluid would literally seep from under her skin, through her pores, puncturing the taught flesh of her legs and stomach. Her feet were cracked. Her breathing labored. She kept us all waiting in suspense, believing that any measure to help her would be undertaken in vain. The end was always just around the corner, because she was hopelessly dying.

That's me, in my father's arms.

But so are we all.

She sat in the living room, waiting for finality, for more than 15 years.

All that time, I had no idea that the actual source of her ailments was, simply, uncontrolled blood sugar. My mother had been obese her whole life over. She was often embarrassed and ashamed of her weight, like so many women. And, at times, she tried desperately to lose that weight....only to gain it back, and acquire a bit more shame along the journey. She gave up. She proclaimed that she would "rather eat well than be thin," and settled on a diet high in refined carbohydrates, fast food, processed food. She abandon the exercise bike in the kitchen, quit taking her afternoon walks, and slowed to an existence so sedentary that, one year, she stopped even walking up the stairs. Instead, the living room became the sum total of her world.

She checked her blood sugar sporadically at best, and administered insulin irregularly and infrequently until, one afternoon, I called to check on her. She'd been battling a harmless virus for weeks, and was sinking further into illness. That afternoon, she was barely lucid. I called my sister in a panic and, together, we tore the moulding from the doorways of my parents home as we wheeled her body to an ambulance. Moments later, her body in septic shock and her mind deluded, she became combative an irate. She punched and hit, kicked and shouted. My sister and I held her down as doctors inserted a picc line in to her unanesthetized neck as my father waited behind the curtain, hearing her scream.

I spent the next 30 days watching her liver and kidneys fail, holding her hands to keep the doctors from putting her in restraints, and waiting as she had waited all those years...

For her to die.

It turns out that every failed organ in her body had been the victim of uncontrolled diabetes. Her heart failure was due to Diabetic Cardiomyopathy. So, too, her chronic kidney disease. She could have, at any moment, chosen a different end...yet, it wasn't until those last days that she found a desire to live on. The tragedy of her life and death was perhaps that bit: That her will to survive, to get better, came only in the moments preceding her inevitable passing.

Checking my blood sugar
at 4:00am before heading
to the gym

My children remember her. They miss her. They ask about her...wonder if she remembers them. Her life here goes on, she just isn't available to see it.



When I speak about diabetes, I don't often tell the story of my mother. After all, those of us with diabetes hear her story all the time. Every time I disclose my diabetes diagnosis, I hear of the uncle who went blind or the grandfather who lost his toes, or the aunt in renal failure. Of course, that is part of the diabetes story...
 

But I'd rather tell the other side of the tale - the side marked by possibility, by good health, by limitless opportunity. I'd rather race my bike and eat good food and laugh with my kids. When I am asked if my mother would be proud of my advocacy from the seat of my bike, I answer an honest "no." She wouldn't understand it in the least. In fact, she bitterly babysat my children once while I was at a race, only to remind me that she "never did that sort of thing" when we were young.

But I also know that she was proud of me, the person I became and the mother I am to Henry and Midori. I know she loved me all too much, and I trust she knew that her love was multiplied and returned. There are people here who miss her deeply, who wish sadly for her, who think of her often. My mother's life and her death have made me more compassionate to the struggles of those with Type 2 diabetes, who try and try again, and who never quite make it work. We all have our failings. We all die in every moment.

 I also know that the story of her life and death has its place in the context of my own disease and my management of it. I promised my husband, as I watched her gasp for breath and pound her fists in the air, that I would never do that to him...to our son and daughter. It's not really about fear or inspiration. It's about finding your way in the darkness of diagnosis, to a spot where you can live fully without the weight of disruption from disease. I wish, often, that we'd found that space together.

 

That's my daughter...and two dead fish.

 

You see, I was shopping the Thai Basil at Whole Foods when I looked to my right, and saw my daughter walk to the fish counter, stare at the selection, and then courageously order two whole trout. The guy behind the counter advised her to ask her mother. She was adamant.

 

I don't need to ask her. She's good with it. All good here. Now, please wrap my fish in that paper, and I will cook them.

 

I frowned, and walked over to her.

 

What are you ordering? I asked, a bit exasperated.

 

She looked sternly in my direction, placed her hands on her hips, and replied, I'm getting some fish. That kind. She points to the glass case, and two shiny fish, awash in ice, glistening under the lights. Oh, please, mama! Please. I just want to have fish. Can't we? Yes, yes we can. They are lovely and right here. Right here. He'll put them in paper, and we can bake them!

 

Honestly, I haven't any notion of how she came to this. I'm not entirely certain my daughter has ever eaten fish, and certainly she's never prepared one. Still, her beaming face...the stare of the man holding the brown butcher paper behind the counter...and the fish with their glassy looking eyes...

 

I relented. Okay. Okay. But I've not cooked a fish in more than ten years. I'm not even sure I'd know how any longer...

 

She clasped her hands together, and gleefully ordered the man to get her fish. Those two, right there! We'll take them. And don't worry, mama, I will know what to do.

 

I was not reassured. Nor was I assuaged to hear the man behind the counter affirm that she'd made a good choice. They are well priced and quite fresh. She knows her fish.

My delighted daughter took her two wrapped fish, and walked through Whole Foods with them nestled in her arms. She told every person she met that she was having fish for supper. I'm making fish tonight. I'm going to eat these two beautiful fish for my dinner!

 

The thing I perhaps love best about my daughter is that brand of confidence. She is fearless, determined. She knows what she wants, and she isn't afraid to assert herself to get it. That is why I, a dedicated vegan who isn't even wholly convinced that a person should eat fish for any reason at all, is massaging garlic and olive oil into the flesh of a dead trout. It wasn't her enthusiasm to try something new, or her sales job to obtain it. It was that the decision was made without me. I was merely a passenger to her adventure.

 

The balance of parenting can be found in embracing the moment, even in the context of the mundane: dinner, shopping. My daughter knows that her voice matters, and had I pushed forward with my preference, I would have squashed some part of that independence.

 

So, here I am. A vegan. Baking fish. I hope she likes it. 

 

Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.
- Andre Gide

The other day, my daughter and I went for a walk before picking up her brother from school. It was an unusually warm day, so I figured we'd stroll down to a small lake nearby.

Along the way, my daughter found some sand beneath an oak tree, and she promptly sat down. I kept trying to cajole her to keep walking, just a bit further, so she could see the water in the distance. She wasn't having it.

I like it here. I don't want to keep walking. I like this sand. I'm not moving!

I knew she'd have a better time near the lake. I could see what she couldn't. I knew that the mountains and the water and the colors of the trees were more than she could even imagine, sitting in a small patch of sand under the oak. If only she were willing to walk a bit further...

And here we are, all of us, sitting under that metaphorical tree. We can only see this small patch of life and the world. We can't always know what is up ahead, if we persist just a little bit longer, go just a little bit further.

I've been so frustrated lately with my training. I never feel like I am where I want to be, and then I've had weeks of light efforts, thanks to injury.

I find myself sitting under the oak tree, thinking maybe I should just stay in this spot. It would be so much easier. 

Then, I remind myself that, perhaps, if I walk just a little further, things will be greater than I can imagine, and that someone might just have a bigger, better vision up ahead.

Looking forward to 2013 with Team Novo Nordisk.