Last Friday night, a crazy little man approached me from behind, grabbed me around my waist, pulled my backside towards him, and pushed me down, further to the ground, so that I was practically facing the floor.
From that position, he wanted me to dance. I knew this, because he screamed at me to do so. In Spanish.
I'm not Spanish. But with long dark hair and an olive complexion, and being prone to hang out in flamenco dance classes, visiting teachers from Spain naturally mistake me as being Spanish, too. When I lived in New York City, teachers would be especially confused when, upon asking where I was from, I would answer, "Australia". I would let them be puzzled for a few seconds before adding, "But my family is from Greece". They would nod their head, understand, and for about five minutes, communicate with me in their broken English. But after a while, they forgot and reverted to Spanish, and so rather than fight it, I've learned to speak their language, if only just enough so that I can understand when I am being insulted.
I would like to think that Manuel Betanzos was not directing his tirade solely against me when he screamed, "Es muy feo!!!!" (It's very ugly! - as in, this scene before me, it is very ugly), but it would be unwise to assume that he was cutting me up with the daggers in his eyes by sheer coincidence.
My reward for being a good 12wbt'er for a month was to attend the Manuel Betanzos workshops in Adelaide last weekend. That meant 10 hours of serious dancing with a very serious (but wonderful!) flamenco maestro, over the course of 4 days.
Practically, this meant 10 long hours of staring at myself very hard in the mirror as I tried to bring out my inner flamenco. Or flamenca. You get my drift. The point is, that was more time than healthy individuals should spend examining every lump and bump on their body, even if it is because they are trying to coax it into flamenco dance mode.
Truth be told, while I was practically electrified with inspiration from Manuel, I was left completely and utterly depressed at how unskilled a dancer I am, and at the state of my body.
Crazy as it might seem coming from a 39 year old, I really can get better. I can get good, even. And all of this running around the neighbourhood at ridiculous hours of the morning and turning into the Mother Teresa of holy eating is the catalyst to a new flamenco me. It's only going to get better from hereon.
Hell, by December - when the next flamenco workshops on my calendar are scheduled for - I'll have my flamenco body back. Then there will be just the small matter of my technique.
I can hear Manuel shouting, "Practica, practica, practica!!!!!".
Ok. I will.
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Paramotivation
When watching the Mish Vid on the "Motivation Myth", I really did exercise my little brain cells, and I had something of an epiphany.
Yes, it is bad to use motivation as a reason for exercising. It's bad, because being motivated is something that we need to add to our normal state of being in order to do something. And so if we don't adopt that thing, it implies that we won't do what we should be motivated to do. It actually gives us an 'out', too: put on your best whiny voice, and say, "But I'm not mooooootivated to go outside in the freezing cold and run today".
Oh, but of course. You're not motivated, and so how could you do it?
So, if we want to ensure that we run up those hills and sweat our little guts out, we need to lose motivation as a reason for doing something,
And that is where JFDI comes in. I can say it here. Just Fucking Do It.
You know that's what she says to her clients in real life.
That is, we just do. We do it. No particular reason. Kind of like we breathe. It just happens, all on its own, without us being motivated to do it.
If we are really attached to the concept of motivation, perhaps we should forever definite it in its opposite, negative (the but-I-don't-want-to) sense . It's paramotivation: it's that thing that stops you from doing something.
Thus (and I'm really sorry that I'm beginning to sound like my Logic 101 lecturer; oh God, please don't let me grow a long white beard and start shopping for plaid shirts), our default should be that we JFDI. That's what we do. If you don't wan't to do it, then you are paramotivated.
That is, we don't need an excuse to exercise. It's because it's something that we just do. It's our normal state of being. The abnormal state of being is when we don't exercise; that's when we're suffering from paramotivation.
Sounds like a yucky disease; thank goodness I'm cured.
Sunday, June 2, 2013
No. I would not like a side of duck fat with that.
And no, Dad, I don't need you to drown that innocent slab of feta cheese with olive oil. It has no fewer calories because it's full of first press goodness and from the olive tree farm of that guy from your village.
Just like any good 12 stepper who has successfully completed steps 1 and 2 on the program, I appreciate that I'll probably always be suffering a food addiction of sorts, but right now, the delinquent voices in my head that urge me to eat a lovely soft and delicately iced fingerbun have quietened down.
And so the battle of the moment is not within. It is with my father.
When I was 16, my mother took off overseas for a few months. Upon her return home, her first words - wailed even before she had given us a hug and kiss hello - were, "What have you dooooone to her?!".
It was my father, my brother and me at the airport, and so there was no mistaking who she was talking about.
And I knew what she was talking about. I broke down right there and then, and revealed all.
"Mum, he kept on cooking this stuff - mountains of it, so many dishes - and when I said that I couldn't eat it anymore, he said that he had cooked it especially for me, and so I had to."
My mother nodded in sympathy. She understood. Her size 6 frame of the 1970s had ballooned to a size 12, and she knew that succumbing to the pressure to eat from the man who demonstrated how much he loved you by cooking several delicacies (enormous pot of chicken hearts, decorated in olive oil, fresh herbs, lemon and garlic, anyone? Followed by an enormous bowl of fish soup at the bottom of which you will find a gluggy gelatinous fish eye, if you've been a good girl) just as a way of saying, "Good morning, darling" on a rainy Sunday.
Thankfully, with my mother back home, my father's holiday leave finished and he went back to cooking his extraordinary culinary creations only on the weekends, rather than every day. I lost weight, and didn't turn into a porker of considerable concern until a few years ago.
Ordinarily, at my age, and married with two children, my (now retired, with way too much time to cook) father's pathological need to cook several banquets a day fit for the most carnivorous of kings would not be a concern, even if I wanted to lose weight. However, we're living with my parents while our house is being renovated, and so we're constantly being slammed with culinary crimes against all manner of beasts and face further threats of the same every day (this morning, my father literally said to my husband, "I bought a goat to cook for you". Not a side of goat. A whole freaking animal.).
We are talking about a man who, last year, commissioned (in the way that one might commission a piece of artwork) several different tradespeople in Adelaide to make him a custom-made spit.
Anyway, you can see where this is going. My beef stroganoff or vegetable pitas don't cut it. And further, my father is positively offended by the very idea that someone else might cook at home. But I've just had to be very firm, and explain that I really do still love him and that I really do appreciate his cooking, but that turkey legs don't conform to the rules of my program if they are drowning in olive oil, and that given the holy eating practices I've now adopted, duck a l'orange as he makes it will make me ill, not to mention the vegetables so sweetly drenched in duck fat.
His brain gets it, but his heart is heavy. By rejecting his lamb, I'm rejecting him. I am however choosing to be healthy for my own family, and right now, that is more important. And I believe that as I look more and more like that healthy person, my father might just ask me to cook for him one day soon.
Just like any good 12 stepper who has successfully completed steps 1 and 2 on the program, I appreciate that I'll probably always be suffering a food addiction of sorts, but right now, the delinquent voices in my head that urge me to eat a lovely soft and delicately iced fingerbun have quietened down.
And so the battle of the moment is not within. It is with my father.
When I was 16, my mother took off overseas for a few months. Upon her return home, her first words - wailed even before she had given us a hug and kiss hello - were, "What have you dooooone to her?!".
It was my father, my brother and me at the airport, and so there was no mistaking who she was talking about.
And I knew what she was talking about. I broke down right there and then, and revealed all.
"Mum, he kept on cooking this stuff - mountains of it, so many dishes - and when I said that I couldn't eat it anymore, he said that he had cooked it especially for me, and so I had to."
My mother nodded in sympathy. She understood. Her size 6 frame of the 1970s had ballooned to a size 12, and she knew that succumbing to the pressure to eat from the man who demonstrated how much he loved you by cooking several delicacies (enormous pot of chicken hearts, decorated in olive oil, fresh herbs, lemon and garlic, anyone? Followed by an enormous bowl of fish soup at the bottom of which you will find a gluggy gelatinous fish eye, if you've been a good girl) just as a way of saying, "Good morning, darling" on a rainy Sunday.
Thankfully, with my mother back home, my father's holiday leave finished and he went back to cooking his extraordinary culinary creations only on the weekends, rather than every day. I lost weight, and didn't turn into a porker of considerable concern until a few years ago.
Ordinarily, at my age, and married with two children, my (now retired, with way too much time to cook) father's pathological need to cook several banquets a day fit for the most carnivorous of kings would not be a concern, even if I wanted to lose weight. However, we're living with my parents while our house is being renovated, and so we're constantly being slammed with culinary crimes against all manner of beasts and face further threats of the same every day (this morning, my father literally said to my husband, "I bought a goat to cook for you". Not a side of goat. A whole freaking animal.).
We are talking about a man who, last year, commissioned (in the way that one might commission a piece of artwork) several different tradespeople in Adelaide to make him a custom-made spit.
Anyway, you can see where this is going. My beef stroganoff or vegetable pitas don't cut it. And further, my father is positively offended by the very idea that someone else might cook at home. But I've just had to be very firm, and explain that I really do still love him and that I really do appreciate his cooking, but that turkey legs don't conform to the rules of my program if they are drowning in olive oil, and that given the holy eating practices I've now adopted, duck a l'orange as he makes it will make me ill, not to mention the vegetables so sweetly drenched in duck fat.
His brain gets it, but his heart is heavy. By rejecting his lamb, I'm rejecting him. I am however choosing to be healthy for my own family, and right now, that is more important. And I believe that as I look more and more like that healthy person, my father might just ask me to cook for him one day soon.
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