The Green Mountain Diaries – Day 2

Hey guys!

Day #2 at Green Mountain at Fox Run (linked) was a blast and I’m cuddled in my warm bed after a hot shower and typing out this dear-diary moment before I hit the hay. [note: I fell asleep right after I wrote that introductory line lmao, so it's now Day #3! Good morning, guys!]

Those of us who chose to participate started the morning with “morning move” at 7 a.m. led by Barbara, whom I introduced in my day #1 post. I mistakenly assumed this would be basic stretching and had asked myself “how the hell do you stretch for an hour?” The class ended up being much more than that as it incorporated movements from tai chi and nia. One of the things I love about how they’ve designed fitness classes here at GMAFR is that you can modify all the exercises to fit your needs & desires. Since I wanted more of a work-out, I made sure to exaggerate my movements and push myself. What a great way to start the day — fully connected to your body!

Next was breakfast (by the way you can see photos of all my meals, as well as photos of Green Mountain at Fox Run here) and then was a class called “Becoming a Competent Eater,” which was lead by Robyn Priebe, GMAFR’s nutrition director. Robyn did teach us some of the basics of energy consumption and usage, including resting metabolic rate, activity & the thermal effect of food, but the focus was on a non-dieting approach to food consumption aka mindful eating. How many times have you said you’ll start a diet on Monday and then the weekend before – with the “Last Supper mentality – you eat everything in sight? The deprivation inherent in dieting leads you to fight back both both mentally and physiologically. Many diets are based on the 1200 calorie per day model which puts many below their resting metabolic rate (how many calories they burn just to maintain a functioning body if you were sitting in bed all day), which equals starvation! We also learned that the basic eating plan at GMAFR gives you a base of 1500-1600 per day, not including snacks (you are given the option of two snacks per day). I’d say, with the two snacks, you’re looking at an average of 1800 calories per day, though some participants will be at more or less depending, too, if they eat fruit from the “Hunger Hutch” when they are hungry outside of meal times. This is a very healthy amount of calories per day because a) the food is coming from healthful sources – mostly plant-based (for me all plant-based since they accommodate vegan eaters) and b) considering how much activity is planned throughout the day. Also keep in mind that your resting metabolic rate is dependent on a number of factors including your weight, height and genetics.

Later, LynnAnn Covell, Green Mountain at Fox Run‘s Senior Fitness Specialist (she’s been with GMAFR for 22 years!), led a class called “Fitness Soul Search.” When I first arrived and was chatting with some of my fellow participants, one of them mentioned she was a return participant. I asked her what drew her back and she mentioned LynnAnn: “She’s amazing. You will love her.” She is and I do. LynnAnn has such a humorous and warm demeanor that allowed us in the class to both laugh and reflect. One of the things she focused on in this class is the idea of intrinsic exercise. Think back to when you were a kid, say 4-9 years old, and you moved because you wanted to and because you enjoyed it. I could think of all the time my twin and I spent playing hide-and-go-seek and night tag, rollerblading, bike-riding, and swimming. We weren’t aware that we were being “active,” it was simply first nature.

Another couple of golden nuggets of info:

• Balance financial investments with physical ones. You save up for your retirement, right? What do you want to do when you retire? Most people in the class wanted to do something other than sit on their ass and wait for death to arrive, which means movement! Your body is like a car and its battery needs to be used. You want to be able to enjoy your life with freedom and mobility – don’t focus on just the financial aspect of life-planning!
• Losing weight is not the only sign of success. Why do so many women start treating themselves well – they start eating more mindfully, cooking more, going for daily walks, and then they look in the mirror or step on the scale and think the level of weight loss they’ve had since the lifestyle shift is insignificant? What does this do? It usually de-motivates them. Don’t use weight loss as a measure of success! Consider other things like flexibility, sleeping better, decreasing negative self-talk, honoring your feelings, getting less winded by cardio, etc.

LynAnn herself has an incredible story. She was in a horrible accident and lost mobility for some time and had to go through intense physical therapy. She can no longer taste or smell. But you would not know this by looking at her or speaking with her – she radiates positive energy and happiness and I’m convinced she’d be an amazing comic. Imagine how funny her stand up routine on dieting could be?

Later, I took “Principles of Mindful Eating” (and keep in mind that since I’m only here a week, and also trying to share my experience with you guys, that I’m taking more classes a day than most people would who were staying for longer) taught by Robyn. We learned about gauging our hunger (used a scale 1-10) and some techniques to help us “check in” with ourselves to see when we’re really hungry for food and when we’re hungry for something else. We also learned something we all know by virtue of experience – waiting until we’re starving usually results in us overeating, so it’s best not to let ourselves get to that point.

“Eating Forbidden Foods” – another class taught by Robyn – was a bit uncomfortable for me. There ended up only being two of us in the class (women at GMAFR are on different “tracks” depending on how far into their stay and program they are, so we often take different classes) and the topic was one I’m a bit conflicted on. This is where I learned about mindful binges. The thought process is that if you keep foods out of your house for fear of binging on them and then something novel or forbidden shows up, it’s kind of like a self-fulfilling prophesy. This has happened to me a LOT! If you tell yourself, “When I get ___, I binge,” it’s likely that when that forbidden food shows up, you will. And then the guilt you feel after binging will only reinforce that association between that food and binging as well as your feelings of self-hatred. Mindful binging is an approach where you give yourself permission to eat the forbidden food and however much of it you like. This is based on the idea that if you, for example, have an entire cake in your house and you want to eat it, you don’t avoid it or lock yourself in your room, you acknowledge the feeling and allow yourself to indulge. If you’re indulging mindfully, you taste the food and enjoy it (these things certainly do not occur in mindless binging). You may end up eating a quarter of the cake, feeling full and moving on. If you were binging mindlessly, that would never occur. And sure you can also mindfully binge and eat the whole damn cake. It happens. You move on. Guilt & restriction will only further the binge cycle (&/or binge-purge cycle). This was and is a difficult perspective for me to wrap my head around. In one breath – I get it. I know from experience that guilt is counterproductive and that if I would just let myself indulge once in a while I wouldn’t have quite so many binges. But I would have to work really hard at giving myself permission to binge in a mindful way.

Part of the class included an experiment with forbidden foods. We were given options to choose from of foods we’d generally call “bad” like chocolates and chips. I opted for the dark chocolate Hershey’s Kisses, assuming dark chocolate meant they were vegan (I later researched them to find out they were not. Clearly I’m learning how to balance veganism with self-love, flexibility & compassion (self & for the environment/animals outside of me)). It’s not easy, but it’s also not hard. I took three pieces and practiced giving myself permission to eat each one. This is the exact experiment my boyfriend gave me about a year ago. He handed me a chocolate Kiss and told me to learn to savor it and taste it (he knows that I will chew through anything like a wild woman, even candy canes and hard candy). I remember laughing at him and being like, “seriously?!” I’ve made sure to apologize last night on the phone It was definitely a different experience savoring the candy versus eating it how I would normally (which I did for comparison’s sake). When letting it rest in my mouth a bit, I could taste the chocolate and feel the smoothness. When I chowed down on it, I got a chalky sensation and the candy was gone before I even tasted it. Lame.

So, I took a few classes, started the day off with stretching and also fit in an hour of “upper body strength 101,” which was a good work out because we got to choose the amount of weight that would challenge us. I was clearly exhausted last night because I wrote one sentence for this post and then knocked out.

Before I leave to start a new day, I wanted to clarify that while I originally referred to this place as a “spa” - it really isn’t, which, frankly, only adds to its credibility in my book. Sure, there are some spa amenities you can choose to partake in such as getting a massage, but the vibe is more like a college campus. No one is “frou frou” here – everyone wears work-out clothes and sweats all day and is focused on holistic self-improvement, not some skin-tightening facial. I love that.

Have a wonderful day, guys!

<3, The Cranky One

Tags: green mountain at fox run, intrinsic exercise, mindful binging, mindful eating