Lettuce Leaves Scare Me

Be afraid; be very afraid

I don’t do diets. I would do them if they included maraschino cherries and chocolate icing. But they don’t. So I don’t.

The thing is that healthy eating never feels like something with a reward at the end; it just feels like punishment for being born with tastebuds. Anyway; apparently Eve embraced an organic, raw food lifestyle and look where it got her! If she’d skipped the apple and gone straight for the tree with the cocoa beans, theology would be telling a very different story.

So you can understand my lack of enthusiasm when Tia arrived home to tell me she’d be eating Paleo for 6 weeks, as part of a challenge at CrossFit Jozi. (That’s her CrossFit gym, CFJ, which is way across on the other side of Jo’burg to mine.) She was excited at the prospect of discovering 792 ways to prepare Brussels sprouts and I was trying to think of even just 1 way to manage 6 weeks without cupcakes. Nothing came to mind. But I had to do something. Something radical! I could threaten to go find my cake elsewhere. I could tell her she was banned from playing with the kids at CFJ. Or I could do the unthinkable and join her in her insanity.

All I can say is, Adam, I was feeling your pain brother! Before I knew it I’d turned my back on cupcakes; who knew a smelly little cabbage-thing could look so tempting when held in such a beautiful – albeit callused – hand.

Imtiaz scares me too

Tia ran through all the Paleo basics with me. No grains; no sugar; no alcohol; no chocolate; no burgers; no pies ... Just the idea of making it through a month and a half’s worth of lunches without gluten-free bread scared me. Although not as much as the idea of doing the pre- and post-challenge workouts with her coach; Imtiaz.

From everything Tia had told me it seemed like Imtiaz ran his gym with military efficiency. The man seemed neat, organised, focussed, punctual to the second; in short, nothing at all like me.

It didn’t help that that WOD was ½ pull-ups, which I knew I sucked at even when I jumped them; and ½ overhead squats, which I didn’t know if I sucked at because I’d never done them.

Hit me baby one more time

Despite Tia telling me I had nothing to be nervous about, visiting CFJ for the challenge was like meeting the in-laws for the first time. You know how it is. You’re nervous because you want to make a good impression. You don’t know where to stand or if you’re sitting in someone’s place. You feel like you don’t belong. You don’t want to embarrass your partner or puke on the floor because you’ve had too much to drink.

Needless to say I made it through the door and onto the floor without turning and running! (Tia was strategically blocking the exit.) My quest for overhead squat excellence ( … or competence … or even just balance as I fell over backwards with the bar) was going well until Imtiaz approached me and gestured towards my back with a sturdy looking stick. A stern looking man in stealth mode armed with a stick? Surprisingly bad for calming the nerves.

Turns out the stick is more for pointing (in this case at the distance I should still squat down) than poking. Who knew?

How do you say “barbell” in Assyrian?

It occurred to me, as I hovered in an impressively deeper squat, that there was something that felt vaguely familiar about CFJ. I realised that in some way Imtiaz reminded me of a Semitic languages lecturer I used to have; minus the comb-over and ability to read and write in hieroglyphics.

The lecturer in question was an aging academic genius who could converse in biblical Hebrew, classical Arabic, and several long dead languages. He was happy to give us 4 periods of lectures instead of the scheduled 2. (Yes, I was that student.) He was equally happy to mark assignments I’d set for myself after I got through the prescribed work. (Yes, yes, I was also that student.) Under the tutorage of this old staunch Afrikaans Christian the beauties of Islam unfurled; the mysteries of Judaism unfolded and the complexities of my own faith were examined.  

Practicing with my little PVC pipe I recognised something of that spirit of discovery and that intensity at CFJ. All this knowledge reigned in by discipline and commitment and underpinned by love for this incredible thing we all share. If only we were WODing in a library my life would have been close to perfect right then.

Take me underwear shopping

So here I am, more or less past the point of fear, at the end of 6 weeks that have been filled with a lot of cooking, an abnormally massive amount of eating, spectacular quantities of coconut oil and a significant loss of centimetres. My clothes are down a size, my bra is down a cup (sadly nature didn’t ask me where I wanted to lose first) and my knickers are so loose I keep thinking someone might mistake me for Sharon Stone.

It’s also been 6 weeks of finding strengths in my weaknesses. The overhead squats that were the cause of a many sleepless nights and hysterical emails to Imtiaz have turned out to be one of my stronger lifts and I’ve gone from PVC pipe to 25 kg bar. More impressively; my thumbs have stopped going numb when I do them, meaning I’m equipped to handle a cup of hot coffee without striking terror in the hearts of our pets.

Damn; this is a good feeling! It’s good to try on clothes and choose between what looks good, not what I can jam down over my hips. And it’s awesome to get dressed in the morning and want to do it in from of the mirror. It’s amazing to walk into the gym and spend an hour, feeling the weight of the world easing off my shoulders as the bar and I take on my problems kg by kg. And it’s really good to feel that sense of lightness that’s settled in my body, a lightness that has nothing to do with how much I weigh.  

That’s how we roll

Tomorrow I’m having supper with my new in-laws at CFJ to celebrate the end of the challenge.

I’m happy to say they’re the kind of in-laws who shout for me when I’m WODing, not the kind who’ll loosen the clips on the barbell hoping I’ll be their shot at winning America’s Funniest Home Videos. (Jamie, dude, you have no idea how good it was to hear someone screaming for me when I was so close to tears doing wall balls.)

I don’t know much about Tia’s family, but I know the most important thing any partner needs to know: they care for her. They cheer for her. They motivate her. Sure, they have a bizarre habit of rolling back and forth on sponge noodles in a suspiciously ADD way when you visit them, but hey, we all secretly want our in-laws to be a little quirky, right?

I can't even begin to guess at the triumphs of everyone who did the challenge. For each of us the rewards are uniquely personal. But like everything in CrossFit, even though the daily struggles were ours to deal with as individuals, a big part of our strength came from feeling we weren't doing this alone.

CrossFit Jozi; you rock;  thanks for making me part of your family over the past 6 weeks.