My back is hurting to the point where I woke up last night in pain.  Lance was snoring and elbowing in my back which didn’t help.  The imitation Ibuprofen didn’t help.  And because it didn’t help, I didn’t take any more.  What did help oddly enough was finding the right humming frequency.  Doing this has worked on headaches, migraines, and now back pain.

When I say migraines, I mean the ones where you feel like you’re about to vomit, or you are almost in tears because you just want the pain to go away for 5 seconds but it is only 9am, so you still have to function (98% of the time I do), because I have had migraines since elementary school with no relieve.

Rather than sit in front of the television and not do anything, I decided to shower and re-dread(lock) my hair.  I started doing my hair in January 2014 because we moved to a new place, too far from my novice natural hairdresser.  Last month I bought all of the utensils I would need: blower dryer, hair clips, shea butter, all-in-one hair oil.  The total cost was $30, but having spent 2-3 hrs doing my hair (this time too) saves about $60 every time I do my hair myself…

I still hurt…

I wasn’t going to walk today, because the left side of my back hurts still.  I didn’t do anything yesterday and for those of you that don’t know me well enough, that usually means, that I was more laid back as to what-ever I did.  Yesterday however, I laid on the couch, ate oatmeal, and after developing a migraine, slept for over 2 hours, washed dishes, made dinner, and proceeded to watch as much as the Westminster Kennel Show I could tolerate before going to lay down.  Anyway, I watched at much as I can before I let the migraine win and went to bed.  (I also didn’t have any water all day and going from 1.5 cisterns to 0 is not smart.

My foot pain was back for a few days, but I think that it was due to walking 6 days a week or not doing the foot exercises Abui gave m.  In short, my foot pain can be attributed to me not following through.

Here is where I am via Abui’s Metamorphose App:

You worked out for 11 days in 6 weeks
Your bodyweight increased by 4.50 Lbs
Your bodyfat has not changed  (I have no clue how to measure this)

My weight is obviously fluctuating even though I have dropped a pants size, from a 12/14 to a snug 10.  I am also ravenous and exhausted which means that I am not eating enough overall and unless I have go to meals (usually a bag of vegetables, this area have dramatic health effects.  I am off to eat.  Hungry Beast (Puff, Facebook reference) out!

Just ate 2 servings of vegetables and am thinking of drinking more water.  Skinny girl water enhancers are tasty and a little goes a very long way.

I was supposed to have worked out yesterday but I had some house cleaning that took over the day, so by the time I went to pick Lance up, I was tired.  We also picked up some milk, creamer, and cookies yesterday.  Yes, Nutty Butter cookies, to which we both had 4 the entire night.  I also noticed that I am up to drinking 60+oz or 2 Nalgene 32 oz containers of water daily.  My body seems to like it; thus, making me a peeing machine.

It’s 9am and I have yet to eat breakfast, besides the two cookies I had.  I will remedy that, and start having water for which I am been craving since yesterday, ½ a gallon of tea apparently didn’t do it.

(No session today)

I did my goal of three workouts this week!!!  It is a lot harder than it seems regardless of one’s schedule. Lance and I went to Publix and got some great food.  I really like Publix, I wish my budget could afford it. 

A favorite shirt of mine, is fitting like 2 inches looser around the waist.  Also, we went shoe shopping I picked up 2 pairs of Sketches, Go Walk, on “sale” (buy on get one FREE is a sale, anything else is a scam but I didn’t pay full price).  Anyway, the old shoes are scheduled to be thrown out and I found out that I am down a clothing size from a 12/14 to a snug 10! 

Lance also took me to Guitar Center, we like to hang out there, and for the first time I wasn’t self-conscious as to if anyone was paying attention.  Lance noticed it as well.  He is so proud of me.  (I am painfully shy and pretend to be an extrovert).  So excited!!!

We are making progress.  I am always concentrating on my form when I used to workout, so I am enjoying this slower paced workout routine; it’s personalized for what I need and my goals and I think my chest muscles are becoming firmer and L said that my big and stomach are tightening.  Scary. 

Because I am committed in a new way to my health I am scared that I will start to sabotage myself as I have done in the past.  Embarrassingly, I brought this up to Abui and she has me write down what, where, and how I sabotage myself.  I see them and what solutions I can make:

1.)   I need more healthy (there is that word again) snacks that I don’t have to worry about enjoying (There isn’t a great deal of junk food in our house to begin with usually)

2.)  She wants another Summation, (last time I was supposed to do it, I was not be precise enough)  My precision is now like Cyclops at pool (X-men comic reference)

3.)  Looking up a Caribbean diet and redefining it for myself (It’s what I know)

4.)  Reference Food Chart (Lance, commented on something called the Food Chemical Chart

5.)  Food Chemical Chart

These weeks have seemingly flown by homework wise, because Abui makes the bar so slow that it is achievable and doable.  I do fail periodically, but usually I don’t because I do the easier stuff either the same day of our meetings, after the phone call or hours before, if I forget.

I am still unemployed and so my main tasks are about 1-2hrs cleaning the house (every other day), laundry by hand (if need be to save money), job hunting, working out, meal preparations music practice, songwriting, music (flute, mandolin, guitar, orcarina: think Zelda) playing and repeat.  I am used to using my time wisely because of summer boredom.  I loathe being home everyday and walking helps.  I am certain that if I had a job this would be a great harder because it’s not as easy as I am making it seem now.  Or maybe not, because I don’t like to waste time.

This week is about working out 3 time a week, walking twice a week and the hardest parts yet; leaving space in between my food.  (And she said that Mio was okay even with the nasty Aspartame in it).

People make It seem as though working out is an easy thing, but after years of struggling, I can honestly say, that is about talking one’s self into it and fighting for that time as is it is about the motivation. 

This thing about leveling the mountains on my plate has been easier than I thought.  However, creating some space on the plate has been challenging because after eating I am hungry and so I am dragging around my water.  Every time I feel hungry I drink which is helping with water intake. This is a battle.

The application for the cell phone is working well enough, even though it isn’t perfect, but it’s about a 90% suitable for my needs.  Meanwhile Abui has me using her Metamophose application, which I am still trying wrap my brain around, because she KNOWS if I did the workout or not.  I know that I could lie about it and all but… yeah I can’t… or can I?  I could be then that would make a mockery of her time and mine, next thing you know the streets are paved with jam and only children and animals are happy.  We all lose.

The major question she asked me for next week: what does it mean to be a Black female in the (rural) South…

Happy belated New Year!  Nothing was done on that day either due to no gas money to go into town.  We have an incredibly boring life.  (Most of my friends down here have the same life.  We make enough money to barely pay bills, put gas in the car and stay home.  This is why the military, drugs, sports, and churches are so prevalent; no one leaves otherwise).

Today’s session with Abui was about how I am to get a better job in this new small town that is closer to Tallahassee, with limited resources and a different demographic from San Jose.  Good times.  Scholar to scholar discussions, hypotheticals, rephrasing: cerebellum-fun at its finest.  Don’t get me wrong, I do this with Lance too, but this, with Abui, is cultural-vernacular with a great deal of code, subtly, and plainspoken literalness and it’s… home.

Abui and I have me working on a great deal of things this already:  I am finalizing my workout time schedule (giving myself enough time to procrastinate on it and then to finally do it).  And lot more brainstorming and prioritizing in order for other goals to work.  Furthermore, she wanted me to find a way of tracking all that I am doing.  Yes my phone has a calendar, but why use it when dates aren’t important?  I don’t like those Calorie Counter applications because those are better when one is eating out, and it takes a lot of work.  They get on my nerves.

I found an application I like and it gets the job done with colorful pictures that appeal to me and that is easy to use.

I am currently walking twice a week and working out twice a week.  The goal for workouts are 3 times weekly.  I am a binge water drinker so the application I use help with that too.

I don’t know how many of you have noticed, but as I have said previously, Abui was an old friend.  How I have been talking about her is more in a business-supervisor role.  So far we haven’t had time for no more than 1 or 2 social visits.  I’ll take what I can get.  Haha.

By the way, WE HAVE TELEVISION!!!!!!!!! A friend gave us her 85 pound, flat screen but it works.  We can now watch, Archer, the cartoon series, whom Archer, my dog, is named after!!!

I am excited these days!

Finally! I get to get back to me!  Most of the boxes are emptied, and organized.  I just need to work on office area, and get some storage.  (Still poor and jobless, because the lady I thought that I was going to work for, couldn’t afford to pay me).

I talk to Abui about everything, talking the way I do at a fifteen-miles a minute” Caribbean-California-Kami pace.  Abui listens, occasionally reminding me to slow down because I for some reason these days skip words, reverse phrases.  I’m a mess.  Again she handles it all.  After about 20 minutes of my detox-vent, we get down to business.  How to get me looking fitness model awesome…

We are closing in on the New Year, for this life-coaching thing and me it means a completely different location, job, house, outlook, and approach.

She emails me foot strengthening exercises that I am to do because I still hobble a great deal, but I function better than I did before the 30 Day Leg Challenge.  In addition she has me do this weird thing called a Summation, I personal summary of what personal definition for words mean.  For example, Health has many different meanings, depending on the industry and person.  Abui wanted to know my personal definitions for the above word and more.

From I wish we could to "GO!!"

We have to move!

Being mentally and physically isolated for 4 days because of my schedule is one thing but then to be mentally isolated, due to lack of funds (which my friends agree is a huge issue in the rural South) for another 4 days is all a person can take.  Praying all the time for a miracle, for months, may have led to an answer.  Lance and I are going crazy…

I have only 2 weeks before the Holidays arrive, and even less time to move.  I texted Abui and we agree to hold off meetings so that I can move.  I endured my rotating schedule of four days of work and four days off.  Those off days I spent trying to pack up a 2 bedroom, 2 bath our trailer.  (Please note:  in the South trailers can be the dumps seen on tv for the stereotype poor or gorgeous pre-fabricated mansions.  We lived in the first one; with a roach infestation that the landlord never told us about or fixed.  No amount of bombing and pest control helped).

Long story short, found a new job (need to move up there, before we can set up  work date), I gave my 2 weeks-notice, did the mail-forwarding, and  few days later we moved our things to the new house.  I spent my last 6 days on my friend’s floor, because I needed a place to sleep after work and motels are expensive when you don’t have any money.  

My friend’s empty room didn’t have heat, so that even with a small portable room heater (blankets were at the house and no creature comforts were offered), I would wake up with the temperature being 22 degrees at midnight and doze in and out of sleep until it was time for work.  IT WAS HORRIBLE!  (Still thanking God all the way because sleeping in the car would have been harder).

These three weeks were so stressful for me that I basically stopped talking, and went into auto-pilot to save energy.

We have set up short term and long term goals.  This is nothing new to me.  I have spent countless hours in the Self Help (now known as the Self-Improvement) section.  Better to spend 1-2 hours scanning and buying books than to spend hundreds on one-on-one-PhD. therapy.

Long and short term goals are nothing new.  I am no longer excited, and almost deflated with the idea.  Abui hears this and asks, “Why isn’t this something you are interested in doing?”  I tell her that I am very familiar with short/long term goals.  If they worked for me, I wouldn’t need the assistance now.  She says some stuff, as usually my brain starts to daydream and I say okay, because that is what people like to hear.  (I sound like a jerk, I know.  But… eh… no one’s perfect).  Yet something about this feels different.  Through all of these sessions, nothing has seemed to change and yet some iota of me has.

What changes may come…  Another assignment…GREAT! (sarcasm) but if I do it, I get to talk to my friend and cousin... so I do.

For those of you still with me, Abui and I meet every Friday.  It’s the only thing I look forward to in a week.  Having moved from Silicon Valley, to the deep rural South, hasn’t been easy.  It’s like the 1950’s but it has the technology of the present.  Some people have the mindsets of the 1800’s, 1970’s, and the present.  (Lance and I don’t match age or color-wise and the looks we get are the full spectrum we received in CA from others, regardless of other factors).

The only thing that reminds me that I am not lying are a few people with great hearts, and minds who constantly help the assimilation process by nicely saying, “This be da Souf darlin’. An right her’ is what’s called, The Trap. Good luck getting out.”  Others have been so sweet I am astonished that haven’t left.  They stay for a plethora of other reasons.

 

Every day I thank my mother for ingraining into me what others thought was dead.  Especially when twice in one week, I was stopped by one old “redneck” and later in the week a “country boy” who asked me if I needed a lift somewhere.  This is actually code for let’s have sex, because any (black) lady walking down the road with her dog has to be a prostitute.  (Welcome to the rural South).  Later, a friend told me of one lady that is a prostitute that walks over 5 miles daily.  She too is black.  I know. I know.  One case doesn’t mean every, but this is the rural South.

 

So it’s time for another meeting and the name of the “game” is what I need to do in order to do all that I want and oh joy, another list.

 

We officially decide that I am going to have to move.  Jobs are very scarce out here.  Job security is based on whether or not you are working with your family (extended family, and people who have known you your entire life).  Even with my degree and two minors, the best job I could find only wanted to pay me minimum wage and I took it: thank God for the people I have met and the benefits (tons of down time) and other benefits (401K etc.)!

It’s a strange thing when a person asks a question.  Regardless of how easy it may seem to answer the answer can be the resonating point to so much else 

This is my second session and I still don’t know what to make of life coaching.  As of now it still seems to be a great deal of question and answers, in order to clear out the brush: clear, distinct goals, ideas, and agendas.  We asked me a question about how I am feeling?  I am not Bruce Lee, I don’t feel every minutia of a sentence.

The scholar in is me is distracted from what the true message is.  Abui, rephrases and I have to sit, register the sentence as color (I love colors), and then match that color to what I think the correct response is.  BLAH!!!

Abui is good at this.  There are so many banner words and phrases, words that have meanings that are hard to define but cannot be argued, that I use and she nicely peels back to layers of each word or phrase that she may question in order to better understand what I/we are addressing.  As we talk, so many of my goals over-lap and are so inter-twined that there is a ton of unraveling to do.

Once more thoughts, childhood dreams, and all of those unfinished projects are coming to mind.  By this time the session is over and I am off the Feel-Train.  Once more, I realize that I have and continue to have so much that I want to do in life and that I only started it in 2012: enter panic attack 498,527,356.01.

I knock the feelings of overwhelming anxiety away because I have more homework. 

Baby Steps of an introduction:

I have been told numerous times by bosses that I am one of the most unlucky people ever seen.  A former supervisor once told me, “Kamilah, I wish I had three more people like you, and I would be a success.”   So why am I NOT a success?

I have some idea as to why I am not a success: I am not mentally lazy, but physically… I need help.  I excel in academics because Geek-dom is where I am most comfortable and it runs in my family.  Physically speaking…  I have a tendency to run out of motivation after maybe about a month.  So that’s me in a nutshell.  I am a self- proclaimed nerd trying and failing year after year to be something else.  That something else you ask is to be a fitness model!

Yes, beneath my neurotic, over-achieving nonchalance exterior is a fitness model trying, waiting and begging God for help, and after whining and complaining and praying, the Universe saw it fit to say, “Here you big baby!  Now what?!”  And this is where you find me; on the brink of a new world and a new life…  Now what?

It started with a phone call:

 

The Call

From out of the blue, is a phone call from an old friend and my cousin, or at least I thought she was a friend, until she never called and after years of grappling with the why, I realized, she was just a quiet person.  Anyway, we hadn’t spoken in dude-man-dog-years, which is code for, “several lifetimes” or fifteen years, give or take.  We all have friend like that: people in whom time and space are meaningless because their heart and loyalty have been forged from methril, anumantium, vibranium, love, and compassion.  As the conversation progressed we that she would offer me her services as a personal trainer and life coach, and I would blog it for the world.

Okay…  I have a heard about blogging from the television, when I saw the movie, Julie and Julia, but what I am going to say?  Who wants to read about my crazy, journey into fitness?  Talking this over with my boyfriend of eight years, Lance, he said, “Who wanted to read, about a lady learning to cook from a cookbook?  Everyone!  So, because you like to write all the time, and you already working on songwriting, why not give this a try as well?  I dare you!”  I responded like any sane person would, “WHAT! You don’t know me son! What!? What?! I got you!  It’s on!”  (Yes, we are that kind of couple: awesome!) 

So there you have it, my long story as short and un-jumbled as I could unravel it.  All of this is what I consider to be my past, now I am heading toward my future: fitness model glory with my Metamorphose Trainer, Abui Beckley by my side!  Onward!!