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Episode 17 — “Getting Healthy”
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Leslie
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Laura
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Leslie
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Laura
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Leslie
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Laura
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Leslie
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Laura
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Leslie
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Laura
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Leslie
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Welcome to the Marriage Startup Podcast, Episode 17, “Getting Healthy,
Part One” — Fighting Fear of Food and Fat.
In today’s episode, we’re talking about our plans to get our family
healthier.
We explore our personal health histories, expose our pain points, and make
two important requests from you, our beloved listeners.
Of course, we end the show with what we’re going to do for each other this
week.
I’m Leslie Camacho, founder of Glimmering, and agency dedicated to
helping web agencies through painful growth transitions. That’s right, it’s
an agency for agencies, because that’s how nerdy I am when it comes to
web [agencies]. I’m the Chief Espresso Officer of the Camacho household.
I’m Laura. I’m the cofounder of the Camacho household and the Marriage
Startup Podcast.
We are both very thankful to be home.
Yes.
We’ve been away for a week. We went down to Chico where our in-laws
are. We spent a week down there. I took a detour down to San Francisco to
meet some friends, do a little business, and go to a workshop. It’s been a
long, long week. I’m really glad we came home yesterday, so we have this
day off, this rest here.
You know, even with a week of travel, we’re still less tired than some other
times we record.
I know. Well, the kids went to bed super-early.
Yeah, that’s true.
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© 2014 Marriage Startup Podcast — http://marriagestartup.com
Laura
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Leslie
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Laura
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Leslie
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Laura
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Leslie
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Laura
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Leslie
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Laura
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Leslie
I started putting Ethan down at like 5:30, which does not bode well for the
time change next week.
No, no, but we’re very thankful they survived the car trip very well, which
made the whole thing bearable.
Yeah.
How are you feeling?
I’m all right. I would like to have more sleep.
More sleep? Yeah. I feel like we always talk about that initially. That’s
boring. Let’s not talk about sleep anymore. We’ll just celebrate when it
start’s happening. We’ll do the whole show. We’ll just be … I don’t know
what we’ll do? Set off fireworks on the podcast or something.
All right. We’d better start this thing. We have some news in community
updates to get through. There are two requests that we have for you guys.
The first is that we’re starting to get some really fantastic, and quite
personal email and feedback about the, ‘How to Change your Life’ series.
The requests that are coming in there have all been private so far, which we
really respect. We’re going through understanding them, getting permission
to use parts of those on the show. The feedback’s so important that we were
actually going to start planning out a second listener… what do we call
that? Marriage Moment Show?
Yeah. Marriage Startup Moment.
Anyway, it’s an entire show dedicated to answering your questions, and any
of the feedback you have. We’re going to probably mostly concentrate on
the, ‘How to Change your Life’ series, but hey, any question that you have
for us, we’re happy to tackle it on the show.
Any question.
It’ll be probably two or three shows out still, I would guess. Somewhere
we’ll take a break in the health series, but we want to start asking … send
those questions in early because some of these are going to require some
research on our part, and we’re taking it very seriously. So if you have a
question, or something you’d like for us to address on the listener show,
you can send it to [email protected] or you can just go to http://
marriagestartup.com/contact, and send it to us that way. Or if you don’t
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© 2014 Marriage Startup Podcast — http://marriagestartup.com
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Laura
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Leslie
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Laura
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Leslie
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Laura
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Leslie
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Leslie
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mind your question being public, just post it on Facebook. http://
facebook.com/marriagestartup, or on any of the blog posts. Basically, if
there’s a way to get a hold of us, just say, “Hey, I have a question I want
you to answer on the show,” and we will put that into the vast customer
support machine that we have on this site.
And you think I’m joking, but I have a minimum of four email addresses
going to a customer support inbox because that’s how I roll.
Yeah.
Anything else you want to say about the upcoming listener show?
Listener shows are my favorite actually
Oh, mm
We’ve only done one but it was really fun. I just really liked that interaction
that we get, and we’ve gotten such neat feedback, and great questions so far
that have been really like food for thought. I’m excited to answer those.
Yeah me too, me too. The second request that we have for you guys is that
with this episode we’re starting a series on health, and we’re going to be
talking about exercise routines, and food, and diets, and even mental
exercise. We’re looking for resources to do live reviews on, so just like for
how to change your life we used essentialism as a catalyst for that, and
before that we did marriage mentoring, we are also going to be following
either a book, or a plan, or something that you can also get your hands on.
So if any of you have had a success with any particular type of exercise
program, or health regimen, mostly cooking, or eating, or anything like that
that you want to share with us. Or something that you think we should steer
away from, because you’ve had a terrible experience with it, please let us
know. I’m not going to rehash all the ways to let us know. You know how
to get a hold of us. Laura, what else do you want chime in about that?
Nothing, really. If anyone wants to sponsor a personal trainer for us, that
would be awesome, because that’s how I like to roll.
Yeah, we’ll get to that in the show. So if you’re looking for more about
what we’re looking for, just keep listening because we’re going to dive into
that here.
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© 2014 Marriage Startup Podcast — http://marriagestartup.com
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Laura
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Leslie
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Laura
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Leslie
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The other thing too, is that if you look at Marriage Startup, and our logo in
iTunes, in basically all the show artwork it says that we’re in Beta. I think it
says, “Beta launch we love you.” And so the question has been asked of me
… I don’t know if anyone has asked you yet Laura, but I’ve been asked a
couple of times, “Hey, when are you guys out of Beta?” My answer is
January of 2015.
Why?
Well, we’re pretty serious about learning what this show’s actually about,
and learning what it’s about is us being able to do the show on a weekly
basis. What is the action that we take to actually produce this show, keep it
consistent, keep it valuable to us, and just in general get better at the
production side of things all around.
I wanted to make sure that the only initial commitment we had when we
put this out there was just to do that. Just get better at podcasting just
generally speaking.
I think it was also important for us to give enough time to get sort of a
vision for the podcast about what it can be when it grows up in more than
what it is now. And you and I have started to have those conversations
about what it could look like, and how it’s shaping up. I just get the feeling
like we need to put a stake in the ground to get some of those things out
there. So January is obviously a renowned month for new things, and so it
just seems like a good time to launch would be in January.
Is that when we have to start actually sending out a newsletter to you. Is it?
Well, I’m going to get the sign-up form back over this week, but we’ll do
the newsletter before January because people on the newsletter are going to
be able to help shape the show even more so than the general audience. I’m
a big, big believer in an insider community, and really doing extra
communication with the people that want that. I’m also a believer that it
should have a really low barrier to enter in. Subscribing into a newsletter
seems like a pretty low barrier to entry. And the $5,000 membership fee!
(I’m just joking about that.)
All right. I feel like I’m avoiding the topic, and we need to get into it. It’s
because we’re going to have to talk about things that make us
uncomfortable after the nice rest that was last week’s show. I’m kind of
psyching myself to get back into it, but are you ready to talk about health?
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© 2014 Marriage Startup Podcast — http://marriagestartup.com
Laura
Sure.
Leslie
All right. Well let’s do that then. Because it’s uncomfortable for me to talk
about it because I’m really unhappy with my health right now. The state of
our health we’ve talked about both of us being unhappy with it now for a
while. Earlier this year we tried some stuff. We didn’t have a podcast at the
time, but it went badly. Like we tried this 90-day challenge thing that
required some really strict eating and exercise stuff, and about four weeks
into it, I just felt terrible. Then life got complicated with sleep, and starting
businesses. Excuse, excuse, excuse, fear, fear, fear, and so I really wanted
to start this conversation about why we want to change our health.
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Laura
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Leslie
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Laura
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Leslie
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Laura
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Leslie
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Laura
I think in terms of timing, it makes perfect sense. We’ve change our lives
dramatically in terms of our career goals, the personal way we’re doing
things in our family, and so it seemed like the next logical thing for us just
to make a commitment to would be our health.
When we started planning this out, you pretty much immediately, at least in
terms of the outline, brought up two issues that you wanted to start with.
Those are pain points, and stuck places regarding our health.
Could you explain to me what those are?
Sure. The way I see it is, pain points are the things that you’re unhappy
with currently, whether it be the way your body feels, the way you feel in
your skin, how you’re eating, how much you’re eating, how you look, the
way your clothes fit, stuff like that. And the stuck places are the things
you’re having a hard time doing or not doing to change or improve those
pain points.
The things that we avoid.
Right. Yeah.
Sometimes for solely reasons, and sometimes for deep seated
psychological.
Yeah, exactly.
Legitimate reasons.
So hopefully like being able to articulate those will help us actually address
them, and change them.
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© 2014 Marriage Startup Podcast — http://marriagestartup.com
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Leslie
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Laura
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Leslie
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Laura
I think I get what you mean, so I’ve listed some of mine out. I’m just going
to go through mine, and then I want you get your feedback on what I said,
and then you can share yours from there.
My pain point, I’ll start there, is I’ve been slowly gaining weight over the
summer, and even before then. At the beginning of this year I was about
161 … I mean my weight’s always fluctuating anywhere from 2-4 pounds
which is quite normal. So I was right in 162, 163 on a fairly regular basis,
and now I’m up to 167-168, and I have a psychological fear of going over
170 again. It really weighs on me, literally, when I think about my weight
going up because I have a history with that that I think we’re going to talk a
little bit about later.
But that’s always like a monkey on my back. Even though I do my best not
to use weight as a measure of my health, it’s very much there for me, and
it’s a pain point. My belt’s tighter, I’ve noticed that. I did do workouts with
a former Navy SEALS but then had to stop that because of trips and family
stuff, and wanting to take Saturdays for family, and that ended up being a
three-hour diversion. And I’m not doing Kung Fu anymore, so right now
I’m not doing any health routine at all, and that’s different. For the last at
least six years I’ve always been doing a health routine. I don’t think I’ve
gone longer than two months without any sort of health routine, and it’s
been almost five months since I’ve been in a regular routine, or that I’ve
stuck with a routine. That’s really concerning to me. I don’t like how I feel
about that.
I can tell. I have less energy throughout the day, and it’s easy to blame that
on sleep, but it’s not just lack of sleep. I know from past experience that
when I exercise I have more energy, and along with that physical energy,
there’s also a mental clarity I get when I’m exercising on a regular basis,
and I haven’t had that.
So those are my pain points. Do you have any questions for me, or
feedback on those? Like any reaction when you hear me talk about those?
No, I mean … that sounds about right, that that’s the sort of thing that
you’ve been talking about all along. That’s really consistent. The things
where you expressed dissatisfaction are right there.
Then for stuck places I have three.
Okay.
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© 2014 Marriage Startup Podcast — http://marriagestartup.com
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Leslie
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Laura
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Leslie
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One I always feel fat. This was true when I’ve been at the peak of health. I
just have a distorted self-image that I actively have to fight. Like a common
thing that I say to you is, “Am I fat?” or, “Do you think I’m fat?” or, “Am I
too fat for you?” And I’m asking it from a very serious hurt, wounded place
that … again, even when I was in stellar health, I still had that issue, and
that is very much looming again in a way that’s not healthy. Even if I was
healthy, it’s still not healthy.
The second one is that … I mean directly related, it impacts my selfconfidence both here at home, and at work. At work, I know that it impacts
my self-confidence, even though no one sees me, simply because I see me.
Like I’ll sit down about to get on a call of some sort, and I’ll notice the
extra roll of fat on my sides, and then I’ll start thinking negative things
about myself. That’s the exact opposite of the feeling I want to have when
I’m about to go and help someone, or answer a sales call, or work through
some … you know most of the calls I have deal with some complicated
issue, whether it’s a technical one, or a project management one, or dealing
with an agency’s most pressing problems. If my mindset going into that is,
“Man, I’m fat because lazy,” it’s not a good starting place for myself.
The last one is I have a bad relationship with food, specifically preparing it
for myself and others. Over the years I’ve gotten to know what healthy
food is, which I’m very thankful for, but I have this agreement with myself
that I’m not capable of making it. That I need someone to prepare healthy
food for me, or I have to spend stupid amounts of money to get healthy
food, and that’s difficult for me, and it’s not true. I want to be capable of
making a healthy meal for myself and my family, so that’s definitely an
area where I feel stuck.
Okay. Cool.
What about you? What are your pain points, and stuck places?
My pain point is, well I have a few. My biggest one I think is that I’ve
never really lost the baby weight. It’s sort of accumulated over the last
eight years, and three children. I feel like it’s time. Within that … and we’ll
probably talk about this in the history, like within that my weight has
fluctuated wildly, but here I am nine years after the first pregnancy, and I
on paper I’ve just gained essentially, and that doesn’t feel good, I don’t like
that. I don’t like the way I feel in my skin right now.
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© 2014 Marriage Startup Podcast — http://marriagestartup.com
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Leslie
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Laura
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I know I’m quite strong, but I don’t really care for that extra layer of fat
over those muscles that hold babies all day, and I don’t really like the way
my clothes fit right now, and I don’t want to buy new clothes in a bigger
size. I’m too frugal for that.
No, I know exactly what you mean, like I have this set of exercise shirts,
that if I have to replace these T-shirts there’s going to be a level of selfhatred that - healthy or not - is going to be there.
Yeah. Another pain point is I have a really hard time actually even losing
weight when I’m nursing, and I’m still nursing. And I’ve been either
pregnant or nursing for the last eight … well nine years really. Closing in
on nine years. There has to be a level of grace that I extend to myself, and
realistic expectations, but then I also have to not use that as an excuse for
not doing anything, and I find a lot of excuses for not doing anything.
That’s another pain point for me, is just I’m really tired, and I feel like all
of my energy is going to all the other things I do, and it’s overwhelming to
think of trying to add an exercise routine to expend more energy in my day.
Even though I know that exercise eventually, after a while, starts giving
you more energy, like that, getting over that threshold for me is very hard.
That’s a serious pain point for me.
I also have a hard time actually getting away from the kids, and I hate
exercising when there’s kids around. It’s annoying. I like to just zone out,
and do my thing, and you can’t zone out and do your thing when there’s
kids around.
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Leslie
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Yeah, that is pretty difficult.
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Leslie
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Yeah, I have a love/hate relationship with it.
Laura
So those are my pain points. I guess the getting away thing may be a stuck
place too. Another stuck place is I think I’m just sort of a naturally more
sedentary person. I don’t mind incidental exercise like it’s great if I have to
walk to my errands, and I try to build in a lot of walking. Thankfully we
live in a place where I can walk to, you know when we go up to the
butcher, we go to the farmers’ market, and we go to the library. And many
of our appointments I can build walking into that, and I like that, but
exercising for the sake of exercise I just really … it’s not all that great for
me.
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© 2014 Marriage Startup Podcast — http://marriagestartup.com
Laura
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Leslie
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Laura
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Laura
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Leslie:
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Laura
Yeah, you seem to like it a lot more than I do. I don’t know if you’ve just
had to like train your mind to accept it.
For me it’s not that I particularly love the exercise, I just love
accomplishing things.
Oh right. Yeah, and I don’t. We have a very different drive when it comes
to challenges.
I like difficult challenging things in my life in general. I like it in the games
I play, I like it in the work I take on, I like it … I don’t really like it in
relationships. That’s about the only …
Thankfully.
… place I don’t like it. In professional relationships if I’m solving a
problem that’s different from the relationship itself, I like easy
relationships, but I love complex problems.
Yeah.
So yeah. That is a big difference between us, as I don’t mind a challenge,
and so if there’s an achievement or a goal system behind it, it’s even better
for me.
Yeah. Not my thing. My other stuck place is that I have been Fear Cooking
for years now I realize, and …
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Leslie
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What is Fear Cooking?
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Leslie
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Starch for everybody.
Laura
Laura
Okay. Fear Cooking is the trap that many parents fall into when they have
kids who are becoming increasingly picky about what they eat, and you
find yourself straddling between cooking what you want, and then having
everyone complain about it, and not eat it. Or, cooking a different meal for
four or five different people, and then maybe they will or won’t eat it. Or
just cooking one boring, beige meal that the kids will probably eat, and that
you’ll hate, but eat anyway, and that’s Fear Cooking.
Right. You know the day in and day out of, “Oh, they have to eat again,” is
really wearing me down, and I’ve noticed that I’m not very creative in the
kitchen, and I’m just kind of throwing things together, or I’m just getting
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© 2014 Marriage Startup Podcast — http://marriagestartup.com
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Leslie
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lazier about the actual healthfulness of our food that I make because if I’m
not going to have fun making it, I might as well have fun eating something
unhealthy until … You know the creativity goes out the window.
That’s a huge stuck point for me, and that’s a place where you’re going to
really help.
Oh I am? Okay, all right. Well I will, I’m not sure how yet, but yes, yes I
will. I’ll figure it out. See a challenging problem, I’ll take it on.
Awesome.
I just do that. I think it’s important at the start of this journey to just
acknowledge our history with health, you know where we’re coming from
a little bit. I really don’t know how much time to spend here, but I want to
give some context to the fears in the history we have there, just for our own
sake. I know that we’ve talked about it with each other over the years
we’ve been married, but I don’t know that we’ve put it together in sort of a
narrative format for ourselves as a way to both understand and motivate us
in what’s happening.
I’ll start with that. I was the fat kid for as long as I can remember, you
know even going back to elementary school I distinctly remember being
bigger than my peers, and I really began to notice it about sixth grade. Part
of that was because my best friend, his name is Kevin, is a small Hawaiian
guy, and compared to me no matter what size I was he was going to be
smaller. He wasn’t mean to me about it or anything, but I noticed that there
was a stark difference between him and me.
It was about the time where that friendship really took off that I really
began to just feel bad about who I was physically, and I had no method of
correcting it. Food in my house, you know healthy food growing up for a
long time was simply considered being a vegetarian. The act of not eating
meat was equated to being healthy, and yet if you eat three grilled cheese
sandwiches with cream of potato soup, finished off with cornbread full of
butter and syrup for dessert, that’s not a healthy meal, it’s not even close.
Even though my mum tried … not only tried, she, especially the older I got,
she cooked healthy for us, there was never really the understanding of what
healthy eating meant. But there was the shame of being fat.
I remember that there was a very unhealthy time in my parents’ marriage,
and they eventually got divorced, but there was a very unhealthy time
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© 2014 Marriage Startup Podcast — http://marriagestartup.com
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Laura
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Leslie
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Leslie
where my dad actually accused my mom of trying to make him fat so he
would be unattractive to other women.
Wow!
I already had low self-esteem, but hearing my parents fighting openly in the
kitchen about how my mom was actively trying to make my dad
unattractive. I never thought that she was trying to make me unattractive,
but I did equate then, “Oh, I’m not attractive.”
Right.
I already thought I wasn’t attractive. I didn’t really have any girlfriends in
high school, and I had trouble with girls anyway, being literally a huge
nerd. Going from high school to … you know I just remember my
graduating class looking at my high school graduation pictures, and just
noticing how fat I was. It had gotten significant so that about half way
through my freshman year of college, I was just shy of 240 pounds, and
I’m five foot seven. Seven and a half because that half inch still … when
you’re five seven, that half inch counts. If you’re six foot six, no one cares
if you’re six foot six and a half, right? But when you’re five foot seven,
you’ve got to fight for that extra half inch.
So that’s significantly overweight. I don’t remember exactly when it was,
but I remember being in my dorm room, and I’d just gotten out of the dorm
showers, and I was drying off, and I remember looking down and not being
able to see my toes, and I just sat down and cried. I cried on the bed. My
room-mate wasn’t around, but there was just so much shame, so much
shame.
That day a switch flipped off in my head, and I decided I was going to lose
weight, even though I don’t know anything about losing weight. I just did a
few simple things that helped me lose weight immediately. The first one
was I stopped eating peanut butter. I didn’t eat any peanut butter, or any
cheese. I cut those two things out of my diet, and I walked the track twice a
week. Being consistent about those two things, I lost 40 pounds. I went
from 240 pounds to 200 pounds.
In what kind of a time line?
That took about five months to do that. So by the end of my freshman year
I had lost about 40 pounds just doing those two things. It was remarkably
easy at the time. Now the discipline wasn’t easy, but there was a group of
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© 2014 Marriage Startup Podcast — http://marriagestartup.com
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Leslie
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Leslie
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us that once I started doing it, other people started doing it, and then once
other people started noticing me lose the weight, they were very
encouraging to me. They would say, “Hey Les, I’m going down to the gym,
do you want to walk the track with me?”
In the act of losing weight I also found my foot in the door with being able
to talk to women about something that we could both relate to.
Yeah.
You know the difficulty with body images, the challenge of losing weight,
the not wanting to eat fatty foods, and so suddenly there was this small
group of women at the dorm that wanted to walk the track with me every
week. That didn’t turn into any sort of girlfriend material yet, but it was
new, it was different. I had real friendships with the opposite sex for the
first time in my life.
Going from 200 to 180 was incredibly difficult. It was infinitely harder to
lose those 20 pounds than it was losing the initial 40, because just doing the
bare minimum didn’t lose the weight. So this is when I started running, I
started going to the gym, and it was somewhere in here where I met you.
This was a year’s long effort to get rid of those extra 20 pounds. Then
going from 180 to 170 that was actually the hardest. Those 10 pounds were
really, really difficult. Then 170 to 160 wasn’t actually that difficult. My
body got into a rhythm, and I think my body likes being around 160. I’ve
been lower than that, but it’s not fun for me to stay lower than that, not
even a little bit.
In those years to get rid of those 30 hard pounds, I mean we talk … I got
married. I think probably the most hard core thing I did was the personal
trainer that you got me for was it Christmas, or my birthday, or both?
Yeah
And I did something equivalent to cross-fit for a couple of years, and I
learned just a ton about all this stuff. It started me on this really hard core
exercise that I’ve been in now for a good six years at least. I was actually in
my mid-30s, and in the best shape of my life, until my legs started going
bad on me, which is a different story.
I’ve had this intense relationship with exercise that has been both a blessing
and a curse, because now I equate the act of losing weight with the hardest
exercise possible. Now that I’m almost 40, and my body doesn’t recover as
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© 2014 Marriage Startup Podcast — http://marriagestartup.com
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Laura
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Leslie
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Leslie
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quickly anymore, that’s actually an impediment for me getting back into
exercise, because I just don’t want to push my body in the same ways that
I’ve pushed it before. I think I still can, but I don’t want to. There’s got to
be a way where exercise is just incorporated into the way I live that doesn’t
feel like a I have to haul empty trash cans above my head, up and down
bleacher steps, which I’ve done, in a very manly fashion. It was quite
awesome.
But yeah, I don’t want those extreme physical challenges to define how I
exercise anymore. Then I’ve always had a terrible relationship with food
throughout the whole time. It’s been a couple of years now since Tim
Ferriss wrote, “The 4-Hour Chef,” and I was going to buy that, which I did,
and then read it, and learn to cook, and I never did. I chickened out.
So that’s my story. I’d lost over 70 pounds. I got into hard core exercise,
and over the past six months it’s slacked off, and it’s really been a burden to
me, and I feel like I have this opportunity to get into something much more
low key and healthy. And so what I want my next steps to be are something
this is much more easy to integrate. I think that’s what I’m getting at.
That’s kind of my story. That’s the short version of my story with health.
What’s yours?
Well I was also the chubby kid, though looking back I don’t think I was
ever very seriously overweight, but in my mind I was, because I had been
told that I was by key people in my life. Not my parents. My parents were
really scrupulous about how they talked about weight, and food, and the
relationship with that. I really appreciate that, but of course they couldn’t
keep me in a bubble, and so it happened, and I sort of internalized it, and so
I in my head have always been the fat kid, the chubby girl.
What was interesting was that my parents wanting to avoid talking about
dieting, and calories, and all of that, well I never really caught on like how
the food that you eat actually affects your body and your weight. There’s
still a huge disconnect in my brain about how when I eat this, it equals a
certain amount of energy that my body will store unless I use it.
Right.
And it’s accumulative.
Yeah.
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I still don’t really think in those terms. It’s sort of like in my head you kind
of start over at every meal, which is not real healthy.
Right, and it’s also not true.
It’s definitely not true. I never really saw my parents exercise. My mom
goes on daily walks, but that was always sort of more of a mental health
thing for her. Well I know that for her it was physical health also, but the
way I always perceived it was like that was her escape time. When she
would go to exercise classes when we were really little, she used to do
aerobics classes, and that was her escape time, because she would leave the
house as soon as my dad got home from work, and he would take over for
supper, and she would go to her class.
So always in my mind it wasn’t like exercise for like physical health, and
for strength training or anything, it was like fun, or incidental. Like where I
grew up we walked everywhere. I walked to school for what all the way
from fourth grade through the end of college. So we lived basically in the
same place. You know walking up and down a hill about half a mile each
way, and that was just sort of the incidental exercise, so I never really
thought about having exercise. I really didn’t until I moved down with you,
and we had desk jobs all day long, and didn’t walk anywhere. That was
when I suddenly realized like, “Oh, something has to change. Either my
eating has to change, or my exercising has to change.”
Well we did walk to the car.
Right. But that was a huge transition for me, when we got married, and we
were working together. Like I had never been so sedentary in my life,
because I had always had exercise just sort of implemented into my day by
nature of where we lived, and where we went to school, or worked or
whatever.
The only weight loss that I’ve really ever experienced has always been
unintentional. I remember noticing in my sophomore year of high school,
we did a week of camping trip, and then immediately a week of like a
history tour, and we walked all over New York City and Boston. And I
remember realizing, “Uh, my pants are getting baggier. Why on earth is
that?” I really had no clue why it was that my body was like getting
smaller, and it was because we had been walking around more than my
body was used to. But I didn’t put that together until many years later. I
realized, I mean it’s serious, like there’s a serious mental block that I have
to work to overcome. Then the most severe weight loss that I’ve
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experienced was when I was nursing Sophia, and I had to eliminate
practically everything from my diet in order to keep her healthy. Because
she had really severe food intolerances, and we couldn’t afford the formula
that she got have gone onto, not react, so I just basically had to make my
milk clean by taking out every possible allergen. And it wasn’t every
possible allergen, because she was pretty much allergic to everything, but it
was some of the lowest allergenic stuff.
Well yeah, I mean I think it’s really important that as we go into this, we
tell that story a little bit, because we’ve mentioned it on previous episodes.
But there was a period of close to six months that for Sophia’s health we
had the choice of paying like $150 a week minimum for this formula that
… and there was no guarantee that the formula itself was actually going to
work.
And it wasn’t covered by insurance.
Right, and it wasn’t covered by insurance because basically the doctors
didn’t even believe that there was food intolerance going on, and that’s a
whole other story. I want to punch those doctors. Anyway, so what you had
to do was you eliminated basically everything but five or six foods from
your diet, and then slowly added stuff back in.
So there was a month where quite literally all you ate was ground turkey,
avocado, and like some weird form of grain. It wasn’t rice.
No, there was no grains at first. There was sweet potato, pears, avocado,
ground turkey, and olive oil or olives.
Right, and that was it. Just the food you just mentioned.
And potatoes.
Yeah, sweet potatoes, and potatoes. So those foods were it.
Six foods. Literally.
And there was no deviation from that.
And no spices other than salt.
I still have vivid memories of our house just smelling like ground turkey,
and it made us both want to vomit.
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Right, and we had been really predominantly vegetarian up until that point,
and I was choking down turkey like it was the worst medicine in the world.
My body like really loved it, and my taste buds hated, and it’s kind of
ruined Thanksgiving for me at this point. Like I really cannot stand the
smell of turkey.
But I mean that was excruciating. I was for three weeks I did six foods, and
then at that point I had to start trying to add things back in because I think I
lost 30 pounds.
Yeah, I mean most women gain weight after giving birth, and you lost it
dramatically. You dropped down to like 135 pounds at one point.
Yeah, 45. 145. And I’m five ten.
Right, and so you were like …
I was skin and bones. It’s sad to look back at pictures.
Yeah.
It was very unhealthy. But again that was not because I was trying to be
healthy. I wasn’t trying to lose weight, I was just trying to keep my baby
from screaming all day long, and all night long. And it worked, but then I
was miserable, and she was still … I didn’t add any more foods. I think I
got up to like 14 foods in the next six months. Maybe up to 20. But I mean
like, “Oh, you can eat blueberries now.” You know it’s not like cheese or, I
couldn’t eat beef. It made her scream. It was terrible.
It was a long painful journey.
It was a long painful journey. But I lost all that weight, like that was the
first time I actually changed my eating habits, and lost weight for whatever
intentionality - that was the first time. But of course it screwed up my
metabolism, and I gained it all back over the years. And I feel like it kind of
made my body like really scared of losing weight when I’m nursing. And I
know that many women don’t lose weight, and some women gain weight
while they’re nursing. I don’t know what I would have been had I not done
that, but I’m pretty sure that it really messed me up.
Yeah, I would agree with that. I don’t know, I think we both fight a lot of, I
don’t know if neurosis is the right word or not, but we have a lot of fear.
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There’s a lot of just fear and shame about body image. I know for sure it’s
impacted our sex life, and not because we don’t find each other attractive.
You know the irony is that I find you very attractive, whether you weigh
less than you did when I married you, or whether it was more. You know in
terms of my being attracted to you, sex has never been an issue. It’s been
how I feel about myself, my own self-image.
Yeah, same here.
And so it’s definitely been a detriment to our sex life because of our own
self-image, and I definitely don’t want to get back into that, and I can feel
that happening now. For myself it’s like I’m less likely to initiate if I’m
feeling depressed about how I look, because then, “Oh, no one finds me
attractive. Laura won’t find me attractive, and it’ll just by pity sex, and then
that’s not fun.”
Right, and when you’re feeling that way, I start feeling, like when you’re
down on yourself about your looks, I start feeling down on myself because
I think you’re holding back because you don’t find me attractive, it’s not,
it’s because you don’t find yourself attractive. Then you’re like withholding
…
Yeah, and I feel the same way. When you are not carrying yourself with
confidence, and you’re not initiating either for the same reason, then it’s
dumb because we both talk about it, but then it’s so hard to fix because we
have these things. So yeah, it’s been painful, and we’re stuck.
One thing I want to say that I love is that you are totally my ally in body
image issues.
Yes.
And I think that’s rare. I don’t think it’s rare that men have body image
issues. I think it’s rampant in both genders, but I don’t think guys are
socialized to talk about it the way women are, and it’s slightly different in
the way it manifests. But yours have manifested in a way that we really
connect on, and I really value that.
Guys, it’s been my experience that we self-select. So Jocks talk about it.
Like if you are on the football team, or any athletics team you helped each
other stay in shape, and it was a very... In that context it was talked about a
lot among my friends who were like that, but in my sub-nerd culture it was
almost embraced to be out of shape. We were all out of shape. Whether we
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were super thin, or super fat, it was pretty rare at that time to have sort of
what you see now, the super-fit nerd who is just the beauty in disguise, the
diamond in the rough. Whether it’s a male or a female on TV, there’s now a
nerd image that’s kind of romanticized.
Back when I was a true high school nerd, such a thing did not exist in
popular culture, or an unpopular culture. So yeah, like I say, in college I
really learnt to talk to women through our shared empathy about having our
body images.
So let’s talk about what we’re actually going to do in this series.
Okay.
This week we’re going to start off by doing research, and we’re going to
come out with concrete goals that we want to accomplish, and we’re going
to commit to establishing those goals on next week’s show. We’re going to
find a system to follow for exercise, for food, and one that I’ve never
attempted before for mental exercise. I’ve always been pro-mental health,
but never have actually tried any mental health exercise regimes that exist
now. And some of it’s pretty intriguing with some of the research I’ve read
on it, and articles I’ve read on it, especially relates to your ability to think
clearly in a professional capacity, or in a critical thinking capacity. I really
want to give that a shot for us, and see what that looks like.
I think in sort of saying mental health, it will be better to say brain health.
Yeah.
Because mental health goes into the like, my mental health regime right
now is taking Zoloft and it’s doing great, but you’re talking about
something totally different. I think brain health, and like brain flexibility or
whatever.
Well let’s call it mental exercise. So it is brain exercise. Brain exercise
might be the way to do it.
Yeah, say brain.
Next week’s show we’ll have done the research, and we’ll …
Oh we’ll know.
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…we’ll update you on what it is. But the idea would be… there are web
applications, or software applications, dedicated to giving you these brain
teasers that are supposed to increase your memory capacity, or your mental
clarity. So if you practice these on a regular basis it’s supposed to not
necessarily increase your intelligence, so much as reduce your fatigue just
like regular exercise does. I want to explore that a little bit, and see what
they might look like.
I can send you a bunch of links because I did a lot of research on that for
Sophia because of her working memory deficits.
Right.
I actually have a fair number of resources.
Well good. Yeah, send them over. We’ll look into that because I want to
find something for that too. So we have those three things that we’re going
to tackle as part of this series, and as part of our commitment to really
taking this health thing more seriously, to address these pain points, and
getting unstuck here.
That’s where you, dear audience, come in — If you have specific
suggestions in this, again please let us know, and send those into us. If you
want to comment directly on this episode, you can do that at http://
marriagestartup.com/17, and we’d love to hear about those things for you.
We’re going to have specific measurable goals because I feel like I’m
pretty close to an expert when it comes to the exercise part, and the weight
loss part. I definitely still have a lot of challenges, and a lot of things to
learn, but I’ve been there, and done that in a lot of ways, and so there are
some things I do know I want to repeat that were very successful. And so
having goals in mind I know that’s something that we want to do, and so
we’re going to establish those this week as well.
But, we want to give ourselves some constraints, and this is something that
you and I want to be very intentional about, because it’s not just you and I.
Like you and I have both talked about how our parents handled health, and
food, and the relationship to those things. How it impacted us negatively,
and while I certainly don’t blame my parents for my health now, and I don’t
think that you do either.
No, no.
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I mean that’s not … we’re functional adults, right? So whatever blame they
had ended it when we were 18. Mom if you’re listening, yeah I don’t blame
you for where I’m at right now.
I want to talk about some constraints about the things that we’re looking for
here, and let’s start with the most important ones because the moment we
started talking about this as a series that we wanted to do, especially
publicly on a podcast, you brought up kids, specifically our kids. So why
don’t you start? What are the things you want to make sure of as we go
through this, as it relates to our children?
The most important thing to me is that we are on the same page about how
we’re talking about this process, how we’re talking about our bodies, and
our health, and the changes that we’re going to be making. Because there’s
plenty of research out there that says, “The way that you talk about
yourself, and your body image in front of your kids, and the way that you
talk to your kids about their bodies, deeply impacts their future health, and
their body image.” And obviously we’ve seen that in our own story, and I
want to make sure that we give them the best foundation possible, and that
we try to not make the same mistakes that our parents have made, and
hopefully not make any mistakes, but at least make different mistakes.
Right.
And avoid making the mistakes that there’s research pointing out, and one
of the most important ones is that we can’t focus on weight and size when
we’re talking about changing our habits. The way we need to talk about it
is being healthy, being strong, but not “avoiding being fat.”
Right, right. And I’m sure as we get into the exercise stuff, and tell a bit
about our stories, that I’m in definite agreement with that. That’s been my
experience too. I obviously still have problems with it, but it’s not nearly as
bad as it used to be, and that’s because one of the things one of my trainers
told me in the past was simply, “Your goal can’t be to lose weight. You
have to have something to work towards.” So she led me through a series
of questions, and then she came, “Oh yes, Leslie, you’re training to be an
athlete. You just want to be an athlete. And here’s what being an athlete
would mean for you if you wanted to participate in these things like an
athlete would.” So suddenly my focus wasn’t to lose weight, even though
weight loss goals were part of it. My focus was, “Oh, I’m going to be an
athlete. I’m going to do that.” And I did it, and it was awesome. I don’t
know that that’s going to be my goal this time, but yeah I really appreciate
that.
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When you first mentioned that in preparing for the show, the image that
came to mind immediately was that of a tree. I love the idea of using trees
as sort of the visual symbol for this whole journey. Trees come in all sorts
of different shapes and sizes. Some are strong, and some are super-flexible,
some are fat, some are thin, some are super-complicated in the way they
twist all around, and some are just really straight forward, elegant things,
but you always know when a tree is healthy regardless of its shape,
regardless of its size. You can look at a tree and say, “Oh yeah, that’s a
healthy tree, and is beautiful because of it.” Its beauty comes from its
embracing of its health, not because an oak’s trying to look like a willow, or
vice-versa. You know, you never see a tree trying to be a different tree, it’s
always being itself and growing, becoming stronger.
Well that’s really beautiful.
Yeah, so trees. We’re going to go visuals on tree for this whole thing.
Another constraint is that we need to do this together. That’s kind of the
theme of the show, but on this particular constraint this is something that’s
very much about you and I. It’s not that we recommend all couples have to
get healthy together. I think that could be a disaster for some people. I just
know that for you and I specifically it’s going to be important to do this
together. That we find a way to be each other’s champions, and coparticipants in doing this, because that’s how we enjoy life the best with
these things.
Then, at least the last one for me, is that we can’t spend a lot of money on
it. Like a personal trainer’s nice, but we’re not going to ask for it.
No.
Sponsors. I mean I’ve done that. It was really beneficial. We’ve spent
thousands, and thousands of dollars. I feel like at this point we have what
we need to do this on our own, and kind of figure that out. So even though I
want to follow an exercise guide, or system, I don’t want to do like cross fit
where we’re each paying a large fee to go to a gym, and do a superintensive, however many times cross-fit people do it. Then I know for me
personally the exercise portion has to be less intense, which I’ve already
mentioned, so I’m not going to rehash that.
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Then finally, I’m going to make a …
Oh, this is not on our notes!
I’m going to make a commitment to learning how to cook.
Yes!
I know, we’ve talked about it, and you’ve strongly hinted that should do it,
and so I’m just going to say it out loud here, going in, even though our
goals aren’t till next week. If I don’t set the commitment now I might
chicken out, so now it’s on, now it’s on the podcast. So I’m going to learn
how to cook.
I’m so excited for you. Good for you. I know that’s really huge. That’s
facing a big fear.
It is. Yeah, I’m really afraid of it. I really honestly am. I’m kind of laughing
it off because I don’t know how else to handle it.
I would love to help you, if it would be helpful for me to help you, I would
love to help you.
You know, I don’t know. I’m sure that we’ll get to this but you are so
inexact in your cooking that it’s hard to learn from you.
I know. Sorry.
You’d be like, “Hey, do this and that, and the other thing,” it’s like, “Well
that’s not what the recipe says,” and you’d be like, “Yeah, I know. Just
wing it.” And I don’t learn that way. I like exactness to start with until I’m
comfortable with things.
But I would like your encouragement.
Okay. Oh I’m very encouraging.
Well I should say this. Yes, I will accept your help. I’m going to have to
figure out the mechanics of cooking, but you have a lot of wisdom when it
comes from cooking, so I will rely heavily on you for the wisdom of
cooking, and I’m going to have to find a system to teach me the mechanics.
Awesome.
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What about for you? Aside from the things I’ve mentioned, are there any
other constraints around how we want to approach this?
It has to be fun.
Talk about that a little bit.
Well, one of the things that kind of concerns me about wanting to do it
together, and also not wanting to have a third party involved, is that that has
in the past not been fun for me. Because you have gone into the like
personal trainer role, and I have felt like the unfit minion, and we have a
weird competition dynamic sometimes, and it really comes out when we’re
exercising together, and I always feel like I’m losing, and then I want to
cry.
I didn’t know this.
Oh yeah.
Well maybe we don’t have to do it together?
Maybe we’re in a different place with it.
Yeah, could be.
I don’t know, we can try it. I think it would be really cool to do it together
as a family.
Even though that would mean kids?
Yes.
Which you didn’t want to do.
But if you’re there it would be a lot better.
Because then you’re competing with the girls, and you can beat them?
No. No, because I like doing stuff together as a team, and we’re talking
about like teamwork.
This is going to be an interesting week of research. I’m really curious to see
where we end up on the next show. I’m up to all of it. So together we’re
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going to put that in quotes, because I think that it’s important we do it
together, but just based on what you said, maybe that does not mean what I
think it means, but I’m really looking forward to finding out what it means
for us as a couple, us individually, and then us as a family. So we’ll see
where we end up next week with that.
I think we’re going to be over an hour total already, and I thought this was
going to be a shorter show just getting started.
You always think it’s going to be a shorter show.
Yeah, I know, I know. Anything else you want to say about the main topic,
because I feel like we just came to the end of it?
No, I’m really excited about this one. I think it’s going to be a really good
change from kind of the heavy topics before. I mean, there’s going to be
stuff … it’s going to dig up stuff that might be heavy, but it’s really exciting
because we’re actually going to be losing the heaviness.
That’s right.
Literally.
You know on last week’s show when I was thinking about this new series, I
actually thought it was going to be a really hard thing to address, but after
talking about it, yeah I’d lost over 80 pounds and kept it off for more than a
decade.
You’re amazing.
So yeah, I’ve kind of done this before. I just gave myself a lot of
confidence back over the last hour that I did not have going into it. Yeah,
I’m excited about this. Let’s do this.
I’m ready to take our break, and then come back with what we’re going to
do for each other this week.
Okay.
All right. Let’s do that.
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All right, and we’re back with what we’re going to do for each other this
week. This is the part of the show where we’re proactive in how we’re
going to love each other. I’m going to go first.
Okay.
Last week during my business trip we haven’t had a chance to catch up
really. It was three really intense days. I had three meetings in particular
that were really affirming, renewed some friendships. That was really
important to me. Then the workshop just kind of blew my mind in terms of
what we want to do for Glimmering. I want to make sure that I just don’t
start working on it running ahead actively like I would have in the past.
I don’t have a fear that I wouldn’t tell you, or bring you up to speed, but I
need to do that before I make any major decisions, and head down a path
because you are my partner this time around. You’re my partner in the
sense that you should have a say in the decisions plural, and how the
implementation works, and being able to listen to what I’ve learnt, have me
run through ideas, directions for Glimmering, and help shape that. I think
that’s really important. It’s been really tempting just to start doing it.
There was one conversation I had on Friday in particular that I’ve got four
people waiting on me, that they’ll be, ”Hey Les, how did it go? How did it
go? How did it go?” And it just struck me that I haven’t told them because I
haven’t told you, and you need to know first. Like I can’t talk to them,
because as soon as I talk to them, I’ll be planning, I’ll be making decisions,
I’ll be … it’ll be off to the races. So we need to talk first.
Yeah.
I need to make sure that you’re my partner in that, and I want to do that
first thing tomorrow morning.
Okay.
I want to start my day that way. Maybe … I don’t know how yet, but
tomorrow morning, Monday morning we need to do that, and make sure
that happens before I’m at work so to speak. Because as soon as I’m at
work I’ll be burning. So yeah, that’s what I want to do for you this week.
Yay. I love it when you talk to me. This week for you I’m going to do
something really practical. I’m going to call the mechanic and take the car
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in to see why the gas cap thingy flip-out is not flipping out, and to get the
tire fixed that keeps losing air.
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Yes. Those are two exciting things in our journey.
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Yeah, they did not treat you in a professional manner.
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And just to, I mean, I don’t know. Does that sound like no big deal? It’s a
big deal when you have three kids that you have to take with you, and last
time I was there they were so rude to me.
No, they were unprofessional. So it’s going to be an opportunity to test
their professionalism again, and this time I have a script in case they call
me honey. I’m going to do that, and take care of the car so you don’t have
to worry about it.
That is a big deal, and I’m really thankful that you’re doing that. I don’t
want to take that for granted. So yeah, thank you for doing that. I will
gladly accept that.
All right.
Okay. I know for sure we’re over an hour. Thank you guys so much for
listening, for joining us on this health journey. In addition for resources for
us, man we want to know what health issues you’re dealing with. Like if
you’re going to try these things with us, if you’re already doing these
things. Tell us kind of where you’re at in your journey, however you want
to. Again you can reach us on Facebook which is http://facebook.com/
marriagestartup. You can find us on the web at marriagestartup.com. You
can find us on Twitter: @marriagestartup. And if you want to talk
specifically about this episode, you can find it at http://
marriagestartup.com/17. And as always we love iTunes reviews, iTunes
reviews helps promote the show. It’s one of the best ways to say, “Yes,
we’re with you, and we want other people to know about it.” Because when
people see the review, and they see the honest feedback, then they are more
likely to listen, and tell their friends, and get the message and the word out,
and invite other people on the journey just to improve their marriage, and
their business, and to make the marriage first and that conversation.
So yeah, thank you guys for that, and we will see you next week, and as
always be kind to each other.
!
© 2014 Marriage Startup Podcast — http://marriagestartup.com