Confessions of a Cardioholic [My Life as a Cautionary Tale, Part 625]

This image was titled "What Not to do in an Earthquake." Good advice.

What do I live for if not to be the poster girl for What Not To Do? In March, I was Fitness Magazine's freakshow of the month in an article by Jessica Girdwain titled "Confessions of a Cardioholic." You'd think after being on ABC's 20/20, Fox's Morning Show with Mike & Juliette and in publications to numerous to count talking about my various permutations of eating disorders that I'd be used to the public scrutiny. I'm not.

(Tangent: A friend new to the area told my husband that he had heard I was some sort of local celebrity causing me to exclaim, "People do know the difference between notoriety and celebrity, right??")

The reason that I keep doing these interviews - despite being horribly misquoted on at least two occasions (my fave was the writer who entirely fabricated an interview with me from start to finish, saying that I "always hugged the back wall of fitness classes or used the last elliptical because [I] was too afraid of people staring at [my] huge butt." First, I am always annoyingly front and center in any fitness activity and second, for all my insecurities, my butt really isn't one of them. It's cute and perky and despite being minorly dimpled I love it. Truly, I have enough crazy for 10 articles, you don't need to go making stuff up!) - is because I am hoping to help other women not make the same mistakes I did. Or, if they already have, know they aren't alone. Lots of other people have done just that for me and it has made a huge difference in my life! It's not a desperate bid for attention (and, for the record, I have never ever been paid to do an interview so it's not a money thing) - I just want to keep the good mojo going.

And I do think I'm helping some people. At least, after every media appearance, I always - without fail - get quite a few e-mails/phone calls/comments telling me how I helped them or a family member. I'm still getting e-mails from that 20/20 segment and it's been two years since I filmed it! No joke: Someone even wrote their graduate dissertation on it. (To all of you who have taken the time to write or otherwise contact me, I want to thank you with all my heart - you have no idea how much it means to me.)

But I still feel weird when I actually see the interviews on screen (confession: I watched my 20/20 interview exactly once and still cringe any time someone mentions it) or on paper. They always parse it so that all my lovable nuttiness gets smooshed together in one big block of crazy. I swear I'm not that insane in real life. Or maybe I'm deluded? Anyhow, with no further ado, I present to you the scanned version of my Fitness mag interview (click pictures to enlarge):



Now that you've read it, you will inevitably ask - people usually do - "But you're better now, right?" I am. I'm better than I used to be. But I'm not cured. I think I'll always trend towards the disordered side of things; I'm compulsive and perfectionistic by nature. That doesn't mean I won't stop working on it but don't expect me to be perfect either. Exercise addiction is as insidious a disorder as any eating disorder. If you, or someone you know, (yeah, I just broke out the after-school special trope!), suffers from exercise addiction or exercise bulimia or compulsive over-exercise or cardioholism or whatever you want to call it, here are some additional resources:

From me:
The cost of excessive cardio
How to recognize exercise addiction
Bad things happen when you exercise too much
How over exercising made me gain weight and fat
Confessions of a compulsive over exerciser
Building in rests to your workout
Confessions of a pregnant compulsive exerciser, Part I
Compulsive over-exercise in pregnancy, Part II

From others:
Heather Eats Almond Butter recently blogged about breaking her addiction to cardio

Mark Sisson of Mark's Daily Apple is a former elite triathlete who had a cardio addiction epiphany and now educates the masses about the physical toll of too much exercise.

Quix at Adjusted Reality recently wrote about how running a lot led to weight gain and overall frustration.

NY magazine has an article about the effects of prolonged exercise.

What about you - have you ever been addicted to exercise in an unhealthy way? How did you conquer it? What's your view on cardio: cardio queen, everything in moderation or hate it?

My Life is a Cautionary Tale

Item the first: I am miserably sick. I did not one, but two workouts today. (Note: Not deathly sick. And I don't think I'm contagious - it's a sinus-y thing where my ears pop every time I swallow and my head spins thereby making me chronically off balance. I'm sure I was a treat to watch doing P90X yoga and Hip Hop Hustle.)

Item the second: I am in this month's Fitness Magazine in an article about how I conquered (AHEM) my exercise dependency. (Note: the article wasn't up on their site last I checked and they forbade me from scanning it in and posting it here. I'll let you know when it goes live though.)

I will now leave you to contemplate my idiocy while I crawl back to bed.

PS. You know what I crave when I'm sick? A TALL COLD MUG OF MILK. Universe, 1. Charlotte, 0.

My Disordered Eating Past

Polly is dead. She committed suicide on February 8, 2008, a likely result of her lifelong struggle with anorexia. I don't know Polly but for some reason the news of her death went through me like a cold shiver, the same way it does any time I hear about a eating disordered woman who loses the battle.

So I did what any intelligent stalker-type does these days: I googled her. I discovered that her death made headlines because she was one of three eating-disordered women profiled in the HBO documentary "Thin" that aired back in 2006. Not watching TV, it has taken me this long to hear about it I suppose. Someone posted the entire documentary (in 11-minute segments) to You Tube. I watched it two nights ago and have been torn up ever since.

I've been mulling it over and trying to think of a way I could post about it - to let you know what an interesting, amazing, inspiring, and yet completely horrifying & depressing show it is - but I couldn't think of an appropriate angle. It just hits too close to home for me. I see myself in every one of the girls profiled.

The Start
I've never been officially diagnosed with an eating disorder [edited to add: I have now! Compulsive over-exerciser, that's me!] but there are times in my life where I think I definitely would have qualified for ED-NOS (eating disorder - not otherwise specified). As did far too many of my friends, I flirted with anorexia in high school & college, always managing to keep my weight just on the safe side of things. Always able to pull back when I really really needed to. I never cognizantly thought of the times where I would subsist on a single "fun size" package of candy for an entire day, several days in a row, as "restricting." I just thought it was what girls did to stay thin.

Lots of girls I knew did it or things similar to it. Other waitresses at the restaurant I worked at taught me which foods had the least calories and tricks to make all the decadent food we were surrounded by look unappealing so we wouldn't be tempted to eat it. Our dinner breaks were actually competitions to see who could eat the least actual food. Girls in my gymnastics classes taught me about not eating before a competition (the lower your weight, the higher you fly!) and then using massive doses of caffeine pills to mask the hunger & keep your energy up. Roommates taught me about "saving calories" by restricting all week so you could eat on a date and the guy would think you are one the cool girls who is thin but can eat whatever she wants.

This type of behavior also runs in my family - my grandmother, whom I still adore and think about almost daily despite her being dead for 20 years, was an active bulimic all her adult life. Two cousins were bulimic. Two more spent time in eating disorder clinics. And then of course there was the media - thin movie stars, even thinner fashion models. Even my health teacher encouraged disordered eating by requiring only the girls in class to keep a food journal, a practice I kept up for over ten years after her class ended. (The boys had carte blanche to eat whatever they "needed" to keep up their strength for sports and because they were still growing. Never mind that many of us girls were also in sports and also, duh, still growing.) I was surrounded, almost from birth, by our culture of thin. Every girl I knew was tainted by it.

The Decline
And yet my bouts of bad eating were interspersed with longer ones of health because my body's will to survive and thrive was stronger than my willpower to starve. That is, until I met G. in college. He was my partner on a swing-dance team. He was an amazing dancer and, simultaneously, a sociopath. I saw something good in him and he, likewise, saw something in me: vulnerability. We began to date. The entire time we went out (if you can call it that), he abused me in every way possible. It started out small with little comments about how I was harder to lift than some of the other girls on our team - natural waifs, every last one of them. Then it progressed to screaming vitriol, that I cannot even now bring myself to repeat.

To cope, I did what came naturally - I stopped eating. I pulled out all the tricks I'd ever been taught over the years and combined them with hours of intensely athletic dancing. It worked. G. complimented me on my protruding hipbones. He liked that his hands could almost span my waist. He was happy. I was nearly destroyed. I fainted after a dance performance. I suffered heart palpitations, dizzy spells, nausea & insomnia. He finished the job by sexaully assaulting me. That was the end of my relationship with him, thanks to good friends and family, but the beginning of a kind of self-loathing I had never experienced before.

The Worst of It
After G., my weight went up a bit and stabilized. I met a great man who cared about my mind and my soul and honestly thought I was beautiful regardless of a few pounds up or down. I married him and for a few short years, managed to not think about food or weight at all. The hole in me wasn't gone but at least it was covered up.

That came to an end when G. popped back into my life in the most horrific way possible. At the time, I had assumed that I was the only girl he had abused. Turns out he was a serial molester and had only gotten worse during the intervening years. I was contacted by the police and decided to press charges.

My only experience with our legal system being Law & Order reruns, I was wholly unprepared for the physical and mental nightmare of a sexual assault case. I was also pregnant with my third child. The interstate court case dragged on nine long months, exactly the length of my pregnancy. The longer it went on, the more I deteriorated. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. Despite being pregnant, I quickly reached the lowest weight I'd ever been. I thought about suicide every single day. The baby inside me was the only thing that stopped me from actually doing it. G. finally plea-bargained and got a year in prison, with time served. The very next day my son was born. Hale and hearty at ten pounds, he was beautiful child. I was broken.

The court case ended, everyone assumed I would feel empowered and vindicated and quickly ease back into my old perfect life as wife, teacher & mother. I think they assumed that because that is what they so desperately wanted for me. What did I want for me? I wanted desperately to finally heal. I thought being healthy physically would help me mentally. But this time my disordered eating snuck up on me as my quest for ultimate health devolved into Orthorexia, a newly coined term for people who restrict their food based on health reasons as opposed to wanting to be thin. In fact, I'm told it's the new "in" eating disorder in the Hollywood set. Yay, me.

I saw a therapist (who was tainted for me by the fact that G. was court-ordered to pay for her services) who was pretty good at helping me work through my damage from the abusive relationship. But when it came to my disordered eating, she was worse than unhelpful. She wanted tips. Every week as I shrunk before her very eyes she would ask in awe how I did it. Somewhat overweight herself, she pressed until I actually gave her a how-to, which she then promised to implement. At last we both realized that she had problems with her self image & eating and that our relationship had moved far from therapeutic. So I stopped seeing her. But I still hurt.

The End
I wish I could say that there was some huge life-changing moment that made me leave my disordered behaviors behind. But let's face it, you read my blog, you know I still straddle that line at times. Although these days I trend more towards orthorexia than anorexia [edited to add: actually these days it's crazy amounts of exercise]. Which is why "Thin" was such a powerful documentary for me. I'm at a healthy weight. I'm healthier mentally than I've been in years. And yet I still see myself in so many of their mannerisms. The way Alisa obsessively tried on outfit after outfit, sometimes for hours a day, looking for one that didn't make her look fat (not realizing that the fat was all in her head and not in her clothes). The way that Shelly (the girl pictured above in the Thin promo) talked about what her control over food meant to her and how it played out in her family. The way that Polly went to the ED clinic to heal and instead just found something else to rebel against.

I'm not saying that I have an eating disorder now. I am saying that the potential for one lives inside me. Which is why I suppose I am telling you all this. It's my was of staying accountable.

Because Polly is dead.

This post sound familiar? Fridays are greatest hits day here at GFE. This post originally ran 2/2008. I chose this one to repost today mostly because I think I need to hear it again right now.

Do These Pants Make My Butt Look Big? A Day in Pictures [Giveaway!]

Props to Ice-T's wife for answering that question with confidence! But what up with the shoes, Coco?

I learned a long time ago to never ask my husband the infamous "Do I look fat in these pants?" question as the mere utterance makes him fake a heart attack. Which would be good entertainment, especially in restaurants, except that it scares the children. The problem, however, is that sometimes a girl just needs a straight answer to that question. I keep telling him that a simple, "Yes. Those pants are not flattering." will not send me running to my closet in tears but he doesn't believe me. It might have something to do with the crazed glint in my eye. Or the fact that he has found me crying in our closet before. Anyhow, that's what I've got girlfriends for. And a seven-year-old son apparently.

Let me back up.

Last Saturday, thanks to my sweet friend D (she of personal training fame) who watched my lil' Jelly Bean, I finally got to return to my beloved TurboKick! Be still my anxious heart!

That's me - the teeny little head in the back row (standing on my tip toes), 4th from the left in the Santa hat.

I'm baaaaack! And... shoeless! (Wha?)

See me literally jumping for joy? The cardio has returned to my life and it is sweet.

But after months of wearing the same two pairs of super stretchy and now stretched-out exercise pants, I was ready for some new gym togs. The universe heard my plea and answered in the form of new pants from Ivee Style. (That noise you just heard? all the Gym Buddies heaving a sigh of relief that they won't have to stare at my threadbare butt anymore.) The universe apparently does not approve of me running all my errands in my sweaty gym duds because Ivee specializes in performance gear that you can also hit the street in. Their gym clothes are more stylish than any of my Going Out clothes! That is if I still Went Out. Which I don't. But that's a problem for another day.

Which brings us to the following photo shoot, done by the aforementioned brutally honest 7-year-old. Are you ready? 'Cause I sure wasn't.

The pants, made out of soft bamboo, are as comfy as mac-n-cheese. Plus the piping made my legs look longer and my butt curvier, just as promised. Not so bad, right? Especially considering I'd been up all night with this:

She has a touch of the colic. And by "touch" I mean she cries as often as reality shows have spinoffs. Still, isn't she adorable even then?? (PS. You know you are a mom of 4 when instead of picking your baby up when she cries, you stop to take a picture first!)

But hopefully you didn't eat much of that mac-n-cheese because then there is the front view. While I can't speak for the entire Ivee line - modeled by catwalk models I now notice - these pants are not forgiving.


"How's it look? Did the picture turn out?" I asked my son. I mean he's a decent paparazzo but he is only 7 after all. He answered, "The picture looks great! But you look fat in those pants." And I said I wanted honesty. I shudder to think what he would have said had I picked the white ones.

As a point of comparison, here's the same shot of what I ended up actually wearing to the gym today:

Same body but minus the thigh bulge spotlights and the peanut gallery. So perhaps this is less of a criticism of Ivee and more of an indication that I don't know how to pick clothes that look good on me!

But enough about me - let's get YOU some new clothes! Ivee Style is offering one reader a 30$ gift code to spend on anything on their site. And no worries, if you don't have model perfect thighs either they've got darling tanks, sweaters, jackets and even tunics! To enter, head on over to their site and pick out your two favorite items then come back here and tell me what they are! Winner will be announced Monday Dec. 21!

So - anyone else actually expect a real answer to the "Do I look fat in these pants" question? How do you answer it - are you truthful? Anyone else as amazed by Coco's butt as I am?!

Update: Apparently Ivee's site is down. I e-mailed them so hopefully it will come back online soon but in the meantime, just leave me any comment and I'll count that as your entry for the contest!

Exercise and Your Immune System: Better health one dead rodent at a time

Exercise boosts your immunity. It's one of the most touted reasons for getting a good sweat on and in this season where the H1N1 virus has become more popular among school kids than Miley Cyrus, this factoid is getting more play than Jude Law. But is it true? Does exercise really boost your immune system? Two new studies just out examine this connection and the results are not as clear cut as everyone would like to believe.

When I first fell in love with regular exercise and healthy (or healthier, anyhow) eating in my early 20's, one of the first things I noticed was rather than the 6 or so colds I'd been getting every year I was now only getting one or two. This was especially exciting as I'd watch my non-gym buddies drop like flies all around me while I remained hale and hearty because there's nothing I love more than some nice schadenfreude on a cool fall day. In all seriousness, people began to ask me why I never got the bugs going around and I was more than pleased to tell them "healthy living."

A few years later down the road of hubris and kids in that germ-incubator we call school had me singing a different tune. Suddenly I was getting more of the sickies although I was still proud to note that most of the time the case was pretty mild. This was also the time when I started to really ramp up my exercise (see GFE supreme failure double cardio). But I thought nothing of it because I knew - fallacy alert! - that the more I exercised the healthier I was. Still, I never quite made the connection.

Mice are smarter than I am. Well, research mice anyhow. This past week two studies were reported in the New York Times examining the effects of no exercise, moderate exercise and high intensity exercise. Both experiments involved little mice running on twee treadmills (adorbs!) and then being exposed to a lethal-to-mice flu virus. Researchers found:

“'A J-shaped curve' involving exercise and immunity. In this model, the risk both of catching a cold or the flu and of having a particularly severe form of the infection 'drop if you exercise moderately,' says Mary P. Miles, PhD, an associate professor of exercise sciences at Montana State University and the author of an editorial about exercise and immunity published in the most recent edition of the journal Exercise and Sport Sciences Review. But the risk both of catching an illness and of becoming especially sick when you do “jump right back up” if you exercise intensely or for a prolonged period of time, surpassing the risks among the sedentary."

This whole moderation thing makes sense to me - in theory of course, you know how I am - but it is that last sentence that really tweaked my interest. Could intense exercise - defined as "a workout or race of an hour or more during which your heart rate and respiration soar and you feel as if you are working hard" - really be worse for your immune system than being sedentary? I would think that of all three groups, the lazy mice would have fared the worst.

Not true say hundreds of ghostly rodents. The second study found, "more than half of the sedentary mice died [after being exposed to the flu virus]. But only 12 percent of the gently jogging mice passed away. Meanwhile, an eye-popping 70 percent of the mice in the group that had run for hours died, and even those that survived were more debilitated and sick than the control group." Lest mice aren't convincing enough, researchers also tested the level of immunoglobulins, substances that fight off infection, in the saliva of professional athletes. These researchers concurred with the rodents saying, “the longer the duration and the more intense the exercise, the longer the temporary period of immunosuppression lasts — anything from a few hours to a few days."

So what's a sweat-lovin' guy or gal to do? Especially if you are signed up for a marathon or other long immunosuppressing race this season? Some suggestions to prevent illness (also known as the OCD Christmas list):

- Wash your hands often
- Carry hand sanitizer (and use it)
- Don't touch your face
- Wipe down equipment at the gym both before and after using it
- Make sure your diet includes plenty of fresh fruits and veggies
- Get adequate sleep
- Get a flu shot, if you're into that kind of thing
- Stay home and rest if you have a fever, sore throat, body aches or sprout a curly tail
- Take it easy on the exercise if you just have a cold
(You've heard the rule: if it's above the neck, you're okay to work out gently; if it goes below the neck then stay the heck away from the rest of us you psycho.)

There. I'll stop being your mom now. Anyone else surprised by these studies? What are your tips for staying healthy this season? What has been your experience with your exercise and immune system?

Sleep Vs. Exercise: Which is More Important?

Sleep is great. Not only does it feel awesome but it helps you burn fat better, strengthens your immune system, makes you smarter, lessens depression and helps avoid unfortunate decision making. (I may or may not have eaten about 20 mini candy bars pilfered from my childrens' Halloween stashes after a recent sleepless night, ahem). Exercise is also fantastic. It ups your metabolism, gives you greater energy, helps your mood, and ameliorates the stress incurred from any unfortunate decisions you have recently made. (The Almond Joys might have been really really good. Not that I'm admitting anything - that's between me and the calorie counter on the treadmill.) A lack of either sleep or exercise brings down a host of evils upon your head that I won't detail as we all know it is magazines' jobs to scare us silly but suffice it to say it all comes back to You Could Die. Consequently, one of the questions you hear the most bandied about in fitness circles - and one I think is answered the worst - is about how to balance sleeping and exercise in a time-crunched world.

Generally the person asking the question says something along the lines of, "I have one hour in the morning during which I can either sleep or workout. I can't do both. Which is a better health investment for my time?"

The advice-giver invariably answers, "You have to do both."

Over the sound of foreheads smacking desks, the asker mutters, "I just told you I can't do both."

Advice giver: "You must make time for both."

Asker: "Ideally, yes. But my life is not ideal, there are only 24 hours in the day and I have to sacrifice something. My wife ruled out offering up one of our children, my job is kind of important to life and so I've narrowed it down to either sleep or exercise."

Advice giver: "Exactly. Do both."

Not that I'm fond of trotting out my vast knowledge of Disney movies but the Sea Witch makes a good point to little perky-breasted (talk about a water bra!) Ariel when she croons, "Life's full of tough choices in it." Of course that was right before she pulled a Chase Bank credit card (yeah, you suck Chase!) maneuver and stole Ariel's twee voice after making her sign an incomprehensible contract but I digress. The point is that there are times when you will have to choose between exercise and sleep. And it isn't always as simple as advice columnists make it out to be.

For myself, I think you all know which one I choose. Confession time: when my current youngest (i.e. the one not still tenaciously occupying my womb) was in the hospital a couple of years ago with an unknown infection, I stayed by his side 24/7. He was so scared and so sick that the only way he would sleep was if I held him upright in the rocking chair. I didn't sleep for two days straight (also a measure of how scared I was). When my husband, who had been at home with our older two, came to spell me for a few hours so I could get some sleep and shower, you know what I did? I went straight to the gym and did kickboxing for an hour. I say this not as a point of pride - I am the girl who was diagnosed with compulsive exercise - but rather as a point of reference. Exercise: it's how I deal.

For many others however, it's the opposite situation. It's much easier to curl up in bed, hit snooze and ditch the morning jog. Sleep is how they deal.

The answer of course is the one thing I'm really not good at: balance. Don't worry, I'm not going to tell you that you must do both at the same time - although N8's comic above is wicked funny - but you do need to find that place of balance for yourself, weighing the pros and cons of each activity. For me that means forcing myself to not exercise sometimes. As I'm rapidly approaching that fabled sleeplessness that is life with an infant, I need to remind myself that lack of sleep makes me grouchy, depressed, and have mad sugar cravings. In short - cortisol city. It may be in my best interest to skip the gym in favor of a nap. For others that may mean forcing yourself out of bed three mornings a week to get in 30-60 minutes of exercise, even though you may not have had quite enough sleep.

In the end I think it is that concept of "enough" that we are all trying so hard to define. Most of us don't get enough of sleep or of exercise. Because life isn't perfectly calibrated. But that doesn't mean it's a loss! Just do the best you can do to fit both into your life over time and understand that on a daily basis you'll be probably be lacking in one area or the other. Here are some of my tips on how to do that:

- Make your workouts shorter. Crossfit, The Monkey Bar Gym and other interval or circuit style workouts offer a huge metabolic reward for a very short investment of time. You absolutely can get a quality workout in 30 minutes or less. You just have to work very very hard during those 30 minutes.

- Cut out TV. I know, I know, Glee is hysterical but if you are so time-crunched that you are forced to choose between sleep and exercise and TV I hope you realize which one of those three should go first. Trust me, its easier to do than you think it is!

- Take a nap. If it's one thing I learned from my time in Spain it is that every country should have a mandatory midday siesta. Remarkably restorative.

- Break up your workout into chunks. Yeah you probably won't change into workout clothes every time (although mad props if you rip off your suit and tie in a phone booth to reveal your Under Armor) but you can still work in lots of incidental exercise into your day.

- This may be my most important suggestion: Stop worrying about what you're not doing and focus on the benefits of what you are doing. Being a chronic worrier myself, I know how tempting it is to bemoan all that you are lacking but worrying only drives up those stress hormones. Every little bit - whether sleep or exercise - helps! So give yourself kudos for what you are getting right.

Certainly you all can do better than my wishy-washy answer though! Which do you think is the better investment: sleep or exercise? What tips do you have for finding that balance? Also, do they even have phone booths anymore? No wonder Superman died.

Fit Pregnancy Q&A: One Month to Go!

Me, 35 weeks.

Disclaimer: If you are at all squeamish, you might want to just skip this post. I might as well have titled it "All my freaky medical conditions." Consider yourself warned.

Q: How much longer 'till Baby Day?
A: Officially: one month. Unofficially, in a little over 1 week I'll be 37 weeks which is considered full term and the baby can come any time after that. With my sons, the first two were early by 12 days and 9 days and the last one was 9 days overdue. Obviously I'm hoping she doesn't take after her last brother.

Q: You've been exercising.
A: That was not a question. But yes, after the bleeding debacle two weeks ago, I've been walking and lifting some weights for my upper body. The anxiety from not exercising at all was my ticket to crazy town so my doctor and I compromised. No more kick boxing or anything else with the potential for high impact and no lower-body weights. That left me with walking and cycling and seeing as my knees hit my belly now when I ride a bike, I pretty much just walk. Thank heavens for those new TVs on the treadmills! There has been no more bleeding and my cervix (what - you don't want to be apprised of the state of my cervix?!) is not dilated one bit so all is well.

Q: How are you managing without your normal exercise?
A: Um, ok. While I miss my endorphin highs, really the hardest part has been feeling isolated. While I do see some of the Gym Buddies on occasion, I feel like I've lost about half of my social circle. I need people darnnit. (Cue Barbara Streisand and then smack her because I do not feel lucky.) But my need for socializing definitely takes a back seat to my baby's health so I'm being a good girl. I promise.

Q: Are you going to breast feed?
A: Absolutely! But not because I love it. Nursing was ridiculously hard for me to get the hang of with my first kid but now that he's broken me in like an old mare (cow?), I want to get my money's worth. Mostly I nurse because I'm practical. Formula is crazy expensive, y'all. The afterpains make it painful for the first few weeks but after that it's not a big deal. Although it does introduce an element of difficulty into workouts. (PS> For those of you who wanted to hear the rest of the story after I accidentally squirted a man in the back of the head with breastmilk on an airplane: the answer is not much. He reached up and kinda wiped it off with his hand but didn't even turn around. I think he could hear my squalling baby and decided he did not want to know. The worst part though was he had a sizable bald spot and my aim was too good. Sorry, sir!)

And no, I'm not going to take Adderall. Especially not while I'm breast feeding. Heck, I won't even take cold medicine when I'm nursing so you don't have to worry about that. (Although yesterday's discussion was fascinating and I thank EVERYONE who contributed.)

Q: What is your birth plan?
A: Panic. I'm not kidding. In case you missed the memo, labor is horribly horribly painful and contrary to the popular maxim, you do not forget. I am a girl who does not like pain. However, I am lucky in that my labors are very short - my last child weighed 10 pounds and yet was born in under an hour - so I try to avoid medication. The anesthesiologist would have to be one quick dude to get an epidural in me. In the past I have (no joke) completely lost it and was convinced I was dying. So to avoid the hysterics this time around I'm using a doula. She might have to smack me.

But barring any unforeseen circumstances I should be able to do a normal vaginal delivery as I have in the past. My smallest baby was just under 9 lbs and the biggest was nearly 11 lbs and they haven't broken me yet so I figure I can handle whatever this one dishes out. Although she is a girl so maybe she'll be smaller! Please??

Q: I meant, what is your birth plan in relation to blogging?
A: Right. Didn't mean to gloss over the important part. To answer your question, I really don't know. I can tell you one thing for sure: I will not be liveblogging the birth. Nor will I be posting video. Yeah, yeah, I'm a killjoy. I will certainly let you know how everything turns out though! And there will be a hiatus on here - how long I'm not sure. I'm going to see how I feel and play it by ear. Since I discovered with my last baby that I can nurse and work on the computer at the same time (hello, boppy!) I may feel the need to knock out some incoherent ramblings during the 2 a.m. feeding. Then again, I may not.

Q: So what about that ovarian tumor with a tooth you mentioned earlier?
A: Thanks to unfortunate genetics or too much soy formula or an overt fondness for Tupperware, I've had 3 surgeries to remove cysts off my right ovary. The last one we found during a routine ultrasound because - true story - they saw a tooth. It's called a dermoid cyst or tumor and is not cancerous. In fact they are pretty common for those of us prone to cyst-iness. Dermoid tumors are a random collection of undifferentiated tissue. So in addition to teeth, they can contain hair, bone, fat and skin tissue among other things. Delightful, I know. No, I didn't keep it. I did not want to see it. Yes, there is a 50% chance it will recur and the bummer about pregnancy is that the pregnancy hormones make the little buggers grow faster. Now you have your dinner conversation for the night: run with it, friends.

Q: Anything else?
A: Yes. I'm going to get all sappy on you for a moment. I want to tell all of you thank you so much for sticking with me through this whole adventure! I was nervous to tell you about my pregnancy at first because I knew it would mean the end to my Experiments for the duration and I didn't know how you'd take the estrogen overload in the blogging. Now I realize I should never have worried. You guys have been a huge support to me and I am intensely grateful for all the kind comments, e-mails and even a baby blanket (Bag Lady, you are SO talented!) that you have sent me. I love you guys. And if I ever meet you, I am going to give you a big sweaty hug.

Confessions of a Pregnant Compulsive Exerciser

Yeah, this poster has a typo. Several actually. Kids these days.

I have the feeling that eventually this will be one of those Turning Points in my life that I'll talk about later with great insight. But living it thus far has felt anything but profound. Unless you mean profoundly depressing.

Backstory: Wednesday morning I did Turbokick, per my usual. Halfway through the class, the little girls' room called and I headed out. There was blood, people. A lot of blood. Which is never a good thing when you are pregnant, much less eight months pregnant. Trying not to panic, I raced back into the studio, grabbed my stuff and headed for the nearest stairwell to call my doctor. (The stairwell because the Y has a no-cell-phone policy and I was not having this conversation in the lobby.)

I was on the phone with the nurse and the receptionist for about 5 minutes and on hold for 15 minutes listening to their delightful conver-adver-tisements. (What ever happened to muzak? At least then I can get my James Taylor fix without the embarrassment of having him show up on my iPod. Come on, everyone needs to go "to Carolina in their mind" sometimes!) At first they said they couldn't see me that day. Um, whaaa? Did I sound too calm or something? But then I told them I was coming in anyhow. Right now. And camping out until somebody saw me. Which is exactly what I did, right after grabbing my kids and bribing them with an entirely scandalous amount of sugar to walk fast and stop asking questions.

Condensed for the squeamish: The baby is fine. I am fine. The doctor concluded that the blood was from either an infection of some sort or "trauma" brought on by my, um, exercise routine. Unfortunately, there was too much blood (!) to test for an infection without sending it out for a culture. So to be safe my doctor decided to treat it as both. I'm on a one-week course of antibiotics. I'm also forbidden to exercise - at all - until the baby is born. When I started quizzing my doctor on what exactly that entailed ("Can I lift weights?" "No." "Yoga?" "No." "Walking??" "Not if it involves a track or a treadmill.") I received a very stern lecture. While she was treating the possible infection she said given my history - she was the one who diagnosed my suppressed thyroid from compulsively over exercising, after all - and what I'd been doing that morning and the fact that I had no pain, she rather thought the bleeding was brought on by... too much strenuous exercise.

I know. I did it again. I can't believe it either.

My first reaction was total denial. (Okay, my firstfirst reaction was a lot of mental cursing and not of "the little green apples" variety.) I indignantly told her that it's not like my body isn't used to this level of exercise and I exercised through my last pregnancy with no problems and I was trying to keep the intensity low and and and... And then I realized: blood is blood. First it was pneumonia and now this. I think my body might be trying to tell me something. Yes, other women run marathons up until their due date. But they are not me. And for whatever reason, my body needs me to slow down.

My next reaction was to get really depressed alternating with self-flagellation. How selfish/silly/insane am I to possibly jeopardize my baby (who is fine by all accounts - they checked) just because I'm too stubborn to listen to my own body? How many times do I have to butt my head against this wall? Where are my priorities??

Today I'm trying to be practical. What this means is that with 6 remaining weeks of pregnancy + a couple of weeks recovery, I have at least a good two months off of exercise. Yes I'm going to miss the first Turbo Jam that my YMCA finally gets to host. Yes I'm going to miss the new releases in my favorite classes. Yes I'm going to gain fat and lose muscle and yes that totally freaks me out. And yes I'm really really going to miss all my friends at the gym.

What I realized today is that I don't know who I am anymore without exercise to define me. And maybe it's about time I figure that out. For my daughter's sake.

PS> Prayers are always appreciated, if you are the praying sort:)