Overcoming Emotional Eating

As I stated in my last post, there is so much hope as it pertains to overcoming emotional eating.  Just as my eating disorder didn't start in an instant, it wasn't over with one single choice either.  However, the end did have a beginning.  During my freshmen year at Ball State I had a crazy-fun, wild roommate.  Cassie was tall, thin, blond and gorgeous.  She was a Heather Locklear look-a-like.  I wanted to hate her but she was so dang funny I couldn't help but want to hang out with her.  She also struggled with eating issues.  I'd say she was more on the anorexic side but she also dabbled with binging and purging.  She had a rough time growing up.  Her mom died when she was about 12.  We would talk about our problems, but I was in such denial I never discussed my Dad's drinking and the difficulties it cause in my life with her.

One day while talking to Cassie I was flipping through some magazine.  I started reading an article on anorexia and bulimia.  There was a summary of sort of the article in a little box off to the side.  It stated the effects of bulimia.  One was death.  I was stunned.  I knew one could die from anorexia but never knew anyone could die of bulimia.  I was scared.  I realized I could actually die a number of ways from bulimia.  One way is that my electrolyte balance becomes so off that my heart stops beating.  Another, even more horrific, is that the acid from the constant vomiting can erode the lining of my esophagus.  My esophagus could explode instantly right in the middle of a purge.  I vividly pictured me dying, lying with my head right by the floor of the toilet in the dormitory bathroom.  It was a horrible image.  I cut the article out right away and hung it up on my mirror.  Cassie already knew I was bulimic and a few of my teammates did too but for some reason I didn't care if anyone that was just visiting our room would see that article.   I needed that up on my mirror.  I would draw on that vivid image when I felt like binging and vomiting.  It just wasn't worth giving my life to continue living like I was.  My reasoning was if I die young, I want it to be doing something cool.  Haha! You know, cool, like sky diving or bungee jumping or scuba diving.  No way am I going out with my head next to a toilet. I just wouldn't let that be a possibility. 

Hanging that article up on the mirror and proclaiming I was done was a huge leap in the right direction.  I still struggled, though.  It's not like I never, ever willingly caused myself to throw up again but the frequency and its hold on me was greatly diminished.  I remember riding to a gymnastics meet with my college teammates and one of them talking about bulimia.  She didn't know I had it.  She was discussing Jane Fonda and her struggle and gave a completely demoralizing summary of it.  Stating, as if she were some kind of authority, people struggle with that their whole lives and never get over it.  I remember thinking if Jane Fonda couldn't kick it with all of her money and power, I was doomed.  Simultaneously though, and innately I suppose, I also had a little bit of I'll show you, too.  I guess that was my survival mechanism kicking in.  I said to myself I'll get over it.  I lived before and didn't have it.  It's not a life sentence. 

I still struggled with eating for the rest of the season and that following summer when I went back to Iowa.  I definitely still had an all-or-nothing mentality in my approach to eating.  If I allowed myself one piece of pizza I had to just blow it and eat a ton of it.  I'd tell myself, "It would be the last time I would eat pizza.  I was going to clean up my eating for good after this one last binge."   Making up my mind not to vomit reduced my overeating quite a bit though.  If I knew I was keeping my food I wouldn't eat to the point of pain.  It lessened the amount of food I could eat. 

My coach Mary knew I was bulimic.  Another huge motivation for me to overcome bulimia came from her.  We were talking in her office one day before practice.  She lovingly, or not so lovingly told me that my scholarship was in jeopardy if I didn't overcome it.  WAIT! What?! No way am I going to live in Clinton, Iowa, as a failed gymnast and college drop out.  I said with pride to myself, "I live in Muncie now!"  Muncie was a sprawling metropolis of fun compared to where I grew up, plus my dysfunctional parents weren't in Muncie.  Mary set me up with a nutritionist to help. 

I met with the Ball State nutritionist.  She offered nutrition advice on how to eat healthy and fuel my body properly.  She also offered me encouragement.  I remember her telling me that I was a beautiful girl.  She used a little bit of scare tactics too.  She stated, "You have gorgeous teeth and a beautiful smile.  If you continue with bulimia your teeth will be ruined.  It rots your teeth and causes them to turn brown. You can't reverse it. Is that what you want for yourself?" I think this tough love approach really helped me. I was angry when she said it, even though it was what I needed to hear.  Although the purging was getting under control the over-eating wasn't.  Her calorie prescription was detrimental to me.  I was an extremely active 18 year old.  We practiced gymnastics four hours per day.  I also probably walked the equivalent of three to five miles per day just walking to class.  I was 5'9" and weighed about 150-155.  She told me to eat 1200 calories per day.  I did my best to stick to this allotment.  I would leave lunch incredibly hungry but figured if this is what she told me to do, I needed to follow her advice.

To put this woefully minimal calorie prescription in perspective, I'll fast forward about 8 years.  When I was 25 years old I worked at the National Institute for Fitness and Health in Indianapolis.  This wasn't your average fitness facility.  N.I.F.S did exercise and metabolic testing.  I had a basal metabolic rate test, or BMR.  Your BMR determines how many calories you can eat per day at rest.  That’s not sleeping, but how many calories per day you use to maintain your body weight lying on the couch.  At that time, this test involved lying down completely still with your head in what can only be described as a clear helmet the The Jetson's characters wore.  The tester measures your CO2 output and from the results of that measurement gives you a very accurate assessment of your Basal Metabolic Rate.  The test stated that I used 1650 calories everyday AT REST.  The Ball State nutritionist recommended me to eat 1200 calories!  No wonder I couldn't stick to it long term.  Not only did it not account for my activity level, if wasn't even high enough to maintain my muscles mass if I were lying on the couch all day.  The nutritionist was a tiny woman, probably about 5'2".  She had also been a high level figure skater.  I'm still grateful for her advice and encouragement.  I only wish she would've had me tested then or given me a more reasonable calorie goal. 

For the next year I did my best to stick to this calorie restriction but of course would fail because I would get too hungry to function.  Then I would binge.  I was still letting my obsession with food and my feelings of inferiority to my diminutive teammates.  I hated being tall and big.  I wanted to be tiny and petite like most of my friends.  This was not how I was built. 

The single biggest piece for me ending my food obsession began when I picked up the book Guide to Overcoming Emotional Eating.  I had a brief stint in my life in Texas.  I was working but had more free time to myself than I had ever created before. The book was by Geneen Roth and it was as if she were speaking directly to me.  She had been overweight as a child, obese as a teenager, anorexic as a teenager and obese as an adult.  After years of struggle and torment, dieting and binging, being thin and being overweight she had a moment of clarity and developed the Cardinal food rule to live by,  eat when you are physically hungry. 

I read through the book voraciously.  I had also purchased the workbook.  The workbook went in depth about how you felt about food.  There were questions in the workbook such as:

What does your fat life look like?

What does your life look like if you are perfectly thin and in your version on your "ideal body"?

What are you gaining by being miserable and compulsively eating?

Geneen Roth chronicled her story.  That yes, she had been very overweight, then very thin, achieving her "perfect" life.  Except it wasn't perfect, even when she was very thin.  This non-perfect thin life only caused her more despair than before and she became overweight again.  Being thin doesn't magically cure all of your problems.  Thin people still have problems.  Start behaving like the "thin" life you want.  Go after your goals, go after a boyfriend, go after the job you want.  You don't have to wait for your life to start until you're thin enough.  Stop procrastinating.

It was a beautiful, heartfelt message that I needed to hear.  I completed the book and over time, the workbook.  Of course I didn't want to always think about all of those crappy feelings.  I did realize that I really needed to in order to help myself change.  I dramatically changed my attitude about my body.  I purposely started mental training and disciplined myself in the following ways:

I changed my mind about being tall and big.  I decided that because there was nothing I could do to change it, I might as well learn to like it.  I've kind of flipped the other way now.  I love being tall and strong.  It's actually a lot of fun.  I took for granted all the things I had gained about being tall.  I challenged that whole mentality that small is better on a daily basis.  Small is better for some things, like sitting in an airplane or a car.  Tall is better for a lot of things too, like reaching for something, walking into a room and having a presence, not having to wear completely ridiculously high heels just to fit in with the crowd and picking stuff up.   Even for gymnastics height was in advantage with long lines and the presentation I had.  A leap for someone with long legs looks even more beautiful than someone small and more compact.  Of course, my small and compact teammates could flip easier, but I was good too.  I was good enough to earn a scholarship.  I could be just as good as them, just in a different way. 

I went on a media diet.  To me a media diet was lessening the amount of time I spent reading magazines and coveting the perfect people and their appearances.  It wasn't until later when I did some fitness modeling how much I realized the images created in magazines are truly art.  Even in those days before ubiquitous Photo Shop, no one on a daily basis looks like the images created in glossy photos. 

I quit ripping on my image in the mirror.  It may sound trite but I purposely quit saying mean things to myself.  If I was "feeling fat" on any given day, I'd find something nice to say to myself.  "Well, at least my legs work."  "My complexion is clear today."  If I would consider it mean if someone else said it to me, I wouldn't allow myself to say it either.  I certainly wouldn't say any of that to my friends either.  Besides, I was more than what I looked like.  Geneen Roth said it best when she said, "Do you want your epithet to say, 'She was a great dieter?"

You can't run away from yourself.  In other words, I had to start feeling my feelings.  I could  stuff them away, but I was the one paying the price.  Me shoveling food in my mouth because I was furious that my Dad was an alcoholic jerk, didn't hurt him one single bit.  To live the "thin life" version I wanted, I had to work through my emotional garbage.  This didn't happen in one day.  It took years but the decision to quit abusing food happened in one day. The application of that decision took discipline and effort.  Now it's such an ingrained habit that it's pretty effortless most of the time.

I can eat whatever I want, whenever I want, as long as I'm physically hungry.  Embracing this idea was the single most critical point to my success.  I've followed it for the past thirty years, really ever since I read that book.  Do I still have days where I eat when I'm not hungry or eat too much?  Uh....HELLO!  I'm a person.  I know about Thanksgiving Day!  These days are the exception, not the rule.  There are times when I continue to eat when I know I'm not hungry, I stop and say to myself, "You can eat this food whenever you want.  There's not going to be an international shortage of chocolate or pizza or anything else really.  We live in America!  The land of plenty.  Eat these amazing, chocolate truffles when you are hungry again and thoroughly enjoy them then.  They will even taste better when you're hungry.”

This is my story.  Some people get really furious when I bring this up.  They want to believe being fit and healthy is just easier for some people or that I live like a monk and never eat good tasting food.  I love food now more than ever, certainly more than when I tried to control every morsel that entered my mouth.  I even eat processed food sometimes.  Gasp!  Pop tarts are delicious! I eat them as a treat- maybe a box or two per year.  I read a story about a 92 year old barefoot water skier that has eaten a Twinkie every, single day for the past 50 years.  Do the Twinkies keep him barefoot water skiing?  I doubt it.  I'm sure healthy living and eating nutritiously the vast majority of the time have.  Eating a treat he greatly enjoys and loving his life has helped him more than the Twinkies.  I aspire to be like him when I'm 92. However, just slalom skiing when I'm 92 would be enough-- bare footing is just straight up crazy! 

Succumbing to Emotional Eating

I have to admit I'm not very excited about this particular chapter, both this chapter of the book and this chapter in my life.  The only reason I'm sharing the details of it is because I think it will help other people overcome their own battles with emotional eating.  I've referenced my past issue with an eating disorder previously, but up to this point I've refrained from the painful, gory details of it all. 

I had bulimia for four years, off and on from the time I was 15 years old until 19.  I began having dalliances with bulimia towards the end of my freshmen year of high school.  I got some "advice" from an older teammate about how to make myself throw up if I ever over ate by swallowing ketchup.  Her theory was that if you take a couple of spoonfuls of ketchup, it's easier for your body to throw that up before it gets to the actual food in your stomach.  It was an easy way to teach your body to regurgitate food, and easy to throw up ketchup.  This sounds completing disgusting, because, well; it is.  As I would be eating delicious food, I knew that I would have to pay for it by eating a couple of spoonfuls of straight ketchup to begin throwing up all that food so I wouldn't get fat.  Being fat would be terrible for gymnastics.  Never mind that binging and purging wasn't terrible for my health and therefore my gymnastics too. 

This behavior was completely opposite of my true physical appearance.  I was 5'8" and 140 lbs of lean muscle.  I was so lean that I didn't have enough body fat to even start my period until I was 14.  Even then, I only had it twice and then didn't have it for another 6 months.  This was before I ever started messing around with bulimia.  The fact that I didn't start my period until later wasn't because of an eating disorder, it was just my natural state at the time.  Before this disordered eating took root, I had complete freedom as it pertained to food.  I ate whatever I wanted and basically never over ate on anything.  I did what is now known as intuitive eating, which in a nutshell is eating when you're physically hungry and stopping when you're satisfied.  It's not genius.  It's completely innate.  The number on the scale did freak me out because I was a good 30 pounds heavier than my teammates, never mind that I was 6"-8" taller than them.  I never thought I was fat then. 

I think disordered eating became solidified for me when I attended gymnastics camp the summer after my freshmen year at what was then my dream university.  This was the university I wanted to attend by earning a gymnastics scholarship.  It was my number one choice at the time. I was eating lunch with that university's assistant coach and we were discussing weight.  As I was eating a bowl of ice cream he asked me what I weighed.  I told him 145.  He had a look of utter shock on his face! He then flippantly uttered these haunting words, "Oh.  That's too much.  I mean, you look good, but that number on the scale is way too high.  The head coach isn't going to like that."  I am repeating this incongruous statement now again for clarity.    He said, "I mean, you look good, but that number on the scale is way too high."

Looking at that statement as an adult I would've fought back and with an incredulous look on my face said something such as, "Those stupid words that just came out of your mouth couldn't make less sense.  You just said there's nothing wrong with the way I look but the number on the scale is too high.  It's high because I have muscle and a lot of it.  Muscle helps me do gymnastics.  You're an idiot."   Even better I may have truthfully added, "You're also a dick." Of course that's not how I responded.  I was fearful and was willing to do anything to earn his, and especially the head coach's, approval of me.  I wanted to attend that school and earn a scholarship.  My eating immediately changed.  I started to go hungry and enact all of these insanely restrictive rules.  None of which worked long term because I was growing and I was also doing 3-4 hours of physically strenuous activity four to six days per week.  I would be too hungry to follow the rules.  When I would cave into the natural, physical hunger it was no holds barred.

My struggle with body image didn't have one starting point, rather it was a series of events over a year or two that culminated into what would become a Herculean problem that ruled my life.   That statement from that coach at that particular time in my life was certainly one of the big events that not only planted a bad seed but allowed it to take root.

A binge was terrible.  It was something I felt as if I couldn't control and had a life of it's own.  It was disgusting.  Shoveling food in my mouth, not even tasting it, let alone enjoying it.  All the while a binge would go on I was completed filled with self-loathing.  Every cell of my body was filled with self-loathing.  I would say to myself,  "You're a slob.  You're fat.  Look at you! You can't even control yourself at all.  How do you ever think you can make it in gymnastics.  You're not good enough.  You're fat.  Look at all of that food you just gorged yourself on.  What is wrong with you?!"  Then the shame would set in.  The shame and embarrassment consumed me.  "What if everyone or even anyone ever knew what you are doing?   You're going to get found out."  The shame was immense.  Then the fear would set in. The fear of getting "even fatter" would then drive me to the toilet to vomit it all up. 

It hurt.  Throwing up food violently hurt.  My throat would hurt from jamming my finger down it.  It would hurt from the food chunks that were ejected.  It would hurt from the acid which was certainly consuming my insides. Bulimia is such an embarrassing disease.  People, and almost no one knew I was bulimic,  would just casually talk about vomiting from naturally being sick for instance and say things like,  "I couldn't imagine that people actually make themselves throw up on purpose. Even when I'm really sick with the flu I do anything to avoid throwing up."  This only enhanced my shame.  Just like everyone else,  I of course thought throwing up was awful and completely nasty.  I hated it.  I just didn't know what to do with all of my feelings and didn't know how to eat nutritiously to control my weight.  Food wasn't something to be enjoyed, that was for others.  The skinny, naturally tiny people like my teammates could enjoy food.  They deserved it.  I wasn't like them.  For me, food was to be controlled.  It was to be manipulated so I could achieve the body of my dreams and therefore the life of my dreams.  Everything in my life would be perfect if I could be skinny and tiny.

My brother knew.  One day he heard me making myself throw up.  I didn't know he was home and went to the bathroom in the basement to hide and go throw up after I ate too much carmel  corn.  Too much then was classified in my mind as any.  I wouldn't allow myself to eat any treat type of food.  I felt like I blew my diet if I'd eat any of the forbidden food so today would be the last day of eating caramel corn and I would just eat the whole bag.  My brother told my mom in front of me that he heard me throwing up.  She asked me if it were true.  I told her yes but I'd never do it again.  She didn't press for more. That was the last we spoke of it. Ever.  I never got any help when I lived under their roof. 

My mom was a denial expert.  She was raised by an alcoholic father and an enabling mother.  She married an alcoholic and became an enabler just like her mother that modeled that behavior. I don't think she maliciously didn't get me help.  I think she just had so many problems to deal with, she couldn't bother with helping me.  She couldn't face that it was even a problem.  After all, if her star athlete, model student had problems, it would mean that she had problems, and that just wasn't allowed.  At this time my Dad's drinking had escalated.  He wasn't home very much and when he was you didn't want to be around him anyway.  He was scary.  He was mean and the only way to survive was to get out of the house as much as possible.  My parents lost their business and our sole source of income.  We had no money.  The only way I could continue to do gymnastics was the gym where I trained cut us a break and I taught classes to pay for my team fees.

I had an excess of negative feelings.  I was certainly not allowed to discuss it with my family.  I felt very alone.  Food was always there but I had a tumultuous, abusive relationship with it.

It wasn't like every single day I binged and purged constantly for four years.  It ebbed and flowed.  I was busy.  I didn't always have a lot of time to feed my addiction.  Some days were better than others.  If I was happy and having fun, I wouldn't binge.  Although, there were certainly days when I didn't eat all day.

One particular week of my junior year, I didn't consume any food for four days except two plain tortillas and one 2 liter of this product called Diet Squirt per day.  This particular soft drink had vitamins in it.  I reasoned it would make up for the vitamins I was losing by not eating.  This was smack dab in the beginning of state qualifying time for gymnastics.  Of course I lost weight and thus I considered it completely successful.  However, the dramatic weight loss that far too many people complimented me on, thereby encouraging it, was followed up by a total collapse of my system.  I got very sick with the flu and had a terrible fever.  I missed an entire week of school and 10 days of practice and forced myself to the first qualifier.  I would have periods of time like this, not eating all day all the while going to school all day and practicing gymnastics for three to four hours. 

Looking back at all of this and it's a wonder I didn't die.  I don't mean that casually.  How I survived is a miracle.  I wasn't just starving and binge/purging and going to school and being sedentary.  I was in this compromised health state and doing GYMNASTICS! You know, those death defying stunts you see in the Olympics.  Although I was never at that level, I was still doing some amazing stuff.  Flipping off of the high bar 9 feet in the air, doing aerial cartwheels on a four inch wide balance beam four feet in the air, flipping and twisting off of the beam, let alone floor routines.  Completing a full floor routine with tumbling is like sprinting at your absolutely quickest rate while you're flipping and twisting upwards of eight feet in the air.  And...oh yeah...you have to land, preferably on your feet.  It requires an enormous amount of energy and focus.  Gymnastics is an extremely dangerous sport and I was routinely doing something (binging, purging and alternately starving myself) that by itself was extremely dangerous to my health. 

It's terrifying to think about how much I endured back in high school and early college.  Mostly though,  it makes me very sad.  Sad that I suffered so utterly.  Sad that there are so many people all over the world suffering from emotional eating and it's effects.  I work with people everyday that struggle, not with bulimia per se, but definitely emotional eating.  I'm here to say that there is so much hope.  The past life I just described is so far removed from my daily thought processes now that it seems incomprehensible that I used to live like this.  Just as bulimia didn't start for me in an instant, it didn't end for me in an instant either.  Rather it was a series of epiphanies, good influences from some great people around me and ultimately, decisions on my part that ended it for good.  For good indeed.

Sophomore Year

I was so hyped up to be back at Ball State.  I had set in my mind that this was the year I would make my mark.  I wanted to make a difference on my gymnastics team and do the best I could in school, while having as much fun as possible.  Instead of looking at gymnastics as something I had to do to put myself through college, I started to approach it as something I was lucky enough to be able to do for the next three years.  College gymnastics was my reward for all those years of hard work.  We still worked hard but it wasn't difficult because by that point, it was such an ingrained habit in most of us, it was just taken for granted that is how you approached practice, and life for that matter.

            My college gymnastics team was where the real fun was. We could be doing rotten, tough conditioning and although it wasn't even close to anything resembling fun, we could make it a good time even if was by nothing more than commiserating together.  I had this teammate named Jill that was this tiny, adorable girl at four feet ten inches and maybe 95 pounds.  By all appearances Jill was super sweet, and she was also one of those people muttering under her breath complete smart ass comments in the back of the room.   She was majoring in counseling psychology and went on to become the graduate of the decade at Ball State when she earned her PhD. She was a good resource for us and she always was very easy to talk with. She would often be doing serious, active listening (I think she was practicing on us) and all I could think was "I know you are doing the best you can not to crack a sarcastic comment and cause us both to laugh hysterically."  At first, we nicknamed her J.D because her last name started with a D.  We then collectively, and lovingly I might add, changed it to L.D for Loser Dork. 

            One day, when we were practicing, our teammate Wendy was doing a leap on the beam when she slipped and split the beam. When that usually happens, you just scrape your leg. But she crushed the beam so hard that she hit her leg and bruised it so badly that it is bruised to this day. Wendy was lying on the ground underneath the beam and a trainer ran up to her to see what was wrong. She turned to Jill and I and asked us what happened. Jill/L.D. didn’t miss a beat and said, “I didn’t see what happened either, but I think she’s choking on her tampon.” As in, she hit the beam so hard that the force launched the tampon into her windpipe.

            Gymnastics was tough for sure, though. Your hands would bleed from doing bars. You had blisters inside blisters on your hands. You had bruises and scrapes all over the place. But we were one big family with our coach, Mary Roth, as this mother hen to us all. When Mary’s son passed away in February of my sophomore year, it felt as though she channeled some of that love and that loss into us. She went the extra mile for us all not only in gymnastics, but in the rest of our lives as well. 

            Mary was always a little tough on me, but I loved her regardless. She knew I was bulimic and yet, she nagged me about my body fat being too high. We had a somewhat complex dynamic. She complimented me on my figure and encouraged me to start modeling. At the same time, she was always harping on me to lose weight for gymnastics.  I guess I had a good figure for regular people but for gymnastics she must've considered me positively fat.  I definitely considered myself positively fat.  I remember we went to the fast food place Wendy's once as a team after a meet.  There were three of us she considered to be overweight. She pointed us out in front of the team and the people in the restaurant and said, "You three can't order fries."  I took it personally, mostly because I was so acutely aware of my body and I felt so bad about it already.  We were also the three that were required to come in before practice or after practice and do thirty extra minutes of cardio in addition to whatever training we were already doing in our four hour practices.

            These messages were probably conflated by my own insecurities, but at the time, they really stung. Years after I graduated, I asked her about why she was always riding me about my body fat when I never gained more than five pounds from the weight at which she recruited me. First, she apologized.  Then she explained that she had been given stringent rules to abide and in the 1980s, body fat was measured with these unreliable and inaccurate instruments. The standards were in place largely for the smaller girls because for a girl like Jill, who was merely 4’10,” to weigh as much as I did at the time, she’d lose her capacity to be a gymnast: her agility, her flexibility; most, if not all, of it would go. As my height dictated a higher weight, I was held on a much shorter leash than the rest of the girls. That being said, through the years, I saw some of the girls gain as much as thirty pounds, but their scholarships were never taken away.

            Regardless, Mary’s influence on me was incalculable. Her greatest reach was in the form of traveling. Before going to Ball State, I had hardly traveled anywhere. Before I was 19, I had only visited Kentucky and Florida, and even then, we only traveled by car. I had never flown in an airplane before college. Growing up, travel was out of the question. It was not just that we did not have any money to travel, because we didn’t, but we couldn’t because my mother was far too afraid.  My mother was born and raised in Clinton, Iowa. The people there are mostly people that grew up there and never lived anywhere else. They would say they couldn’t travel because money was tight, but they of course they always had money for cigarettes. So for her, even the prospect of driving to Chicago, a mere two-and-a-half hours away, was inconceivable. She was utterly terrified when it came to going anywhere outside Iowa. Both of my parents did not want to leave Clinton for any reason if they could help it. I remember we went to Chicago once, and they were both just afraid of everything: the traffic, getting lost, the crime, all of it was paralyzing. My parents’ travel anxiety was my only example of what it was like to travel. Naturally, I observed my parents and their behavior whenever we went anywhere, so traveling became my fear as well.

            Mary completely turned that around for me. No matter what mishap occurred on the road, she was able to figure something out. In college, we were traveling as an entire team, so screw ups were bound to happen. Ultimately, the fear dissipated because traveling with her was so much fun. But more importantly, I was able to see that even when things seemed to go wrong, they were never as bad as I imagined they could have been. And things often went wrong when we traveled together.

            The greatest difference between now and then is the cell phone. Phones, especially smart phones with GPS, completely altered how we understand traveling anywhere. My mother was afraid of traffic and getting lost in a city she didn’t know. That has all changed now. It was much easier to get lost in those days. Once, the gymnastics team went to Michigan. We were walking around a mall and all in a music store.  I put the headphones on to listen to “I got my Orange Crush” by R.E.M. at full volume. I looked up and everyone had vanished. I guess I was really into that song. I walked outside the mall to where the van had been parked and it was gone. I sat on a bench outside the mall. I knew they weren’t going to leave me there and never come back.  When they eventually did come back for me, my teammates told me that once they noticed I wasn’t on the van, they started screaming, “Patty’s not here!” up to Mary, but she wouldn’t believe them. She just thought they were kidding around. Finally, they convinced her that I wasn’t in the van and that they had to turn around. They were back within fifteen minutes.

            Cell phones have ruined adventure.  There were many instances in which we would get lost or in trouble, but the best one was when we were going to Pittsburg through a snowstorm in two vehicles, a Ball State van and a Ball State car.  We got lost the itinerary and all we could remember was that our hotel started with the letter “R.” We stopped off at a gas station to try to contact Mary's husband John, back in Indiana. There were five of us in the Ball State car.  We had 13 cents between the five of us.  That is a completely true statement, not an exaggeration.  We decided to buy a Tootsie pop with it.  I had a phone card and that's the only way we could pay for the long distance call on the pay phone outside.  It was February, we were just outside of Pittsburg and it was nasty cold. I called John after dialing what seemed like 52 numbers with my gloveless, frozen fingers.  You had to call the phone card number, enter in your phone credit card numbers, then finally enter the phone number of the person you were calling.  John answered! Yes! We had success.  "John, it's Patty."  I blurt out excitedly, then spastically add, "We got separated from Mary and the rest of the team.  There's five of us in the Ball State car.  We don't have any money.  We just spent our only 13 cents on a Tootsie pop. There's a huge snowstorm and we don't know which hotel we are staying at in Pittsburgh. We know it's starts with an R."  His casual, slow, measured response, "Huh?..that's where she is."  Yes, that's right.  He didn't even know what city or state she was going to, let alone which hotel.  "Thanks." I said quickly and hung up promptly not to use up a greater proportion of what was at the time my entire $15.30 life savings on a phone call.  I mean, it was already going to be $2.40 just to set up the call.  We drove into the city and found a Radisson. We pulled in, walked into the lobby and saw a crystal chandelier.  We longingly asked the guy at the concierge desk if they had a reservation for Mary Roth. We saw the chandelier.  We knew our budget.  We knew we weren't staying there but we at least had to try.  When he, of course, said no there was no reservation for a Mary Roth, he at least let us use their phone.  Of course, that was a life saver because it was free.  We were a pretty pathetic lot.  No wallets, credit cards or money and no clue where we were going.  We called 3 other "R" hotels before we reached the desk manager at the Red Roof Inn.  He said "Yes, we have a Mary Roth here.  I'll connect you."  Then Don, our college-aged assistant volunteer coach, threw the phone at me and said, "Here, you tell her Patty.  At least you can make her laugh."  The conversation went as such: 

Me:  "Hey, Mary it's Patty we're..." 

Mary interrupts through clenched teeth and grits out,  "WHERE THE F$%^ ARE YOU?!" 

Nope, didn't make her laugh, not then anyway.  Re-telling this story at her retirement party I felt like a comedian on open mike night.  I still remember her rearing her head back in raucous laughter.  That night in Pittsburg?  Not so much.  We connected, decided to blame everything on Andrea, she was our best gymnast and wouldn't really get in that much trouble, and there you have it, everything turned out just fine.

            Mary was one of my biggest role models in life, still is. Even when she was completely lost in the middle of Michigan during a snowstorm with 15 college girls, it all managed to work out. I have a saying that I often use: I am just Forest-Gumping my way through life. Mary was my first real example of what it means to do that and do it successfully. By her example, I was able to develop trust in this world. You realize that people will hook you up when you’re in need: they’ll get you some pizza.  They might even buy you a beer. You eventually understand that things are going to be okay somehow.

You CAN Do Anything

After an amazing freshmen year academically and socially, I was very disappointed athletically.  I spent the entire year trying to rehabilitate my ankle and in my mind, failed.  I was in the training room three or four hours every day in the beginning of the year.  By the end of the year, my treatment time was down to one hour but I was still in pain.  The Achilles tendinitis was unrelenting.  By the time summer rolled around, I was burned out. I didn’t want to do gymnastics anymore. I loved Ball State and my teammates but competing in gymnastics scared me.  I had lost the joy.  Everyone got hurt. I was in pain all of the time. Nevertheless, I went back to Clinton for the summer and got a job coaching kids with Mr. Douglas.

I started work at seven for in the morning and we would train these little girls, who are now 35 years old, sadly. It was so refreshing to watch Mr. Douglas train. He was happy to be teaching them stuff they had never known before, bringing them up and making them strong. I would coach in the mornings with him and then I would do some conditioning training for myself.  I would have a break midday and coach at night. I was just around gymnastics all the time and around Mr. Douglas motivating these children all day. It made all the difference. His happiness just wore off on me. I coached alongside him that whole summer and he rejuvenated my whole love for gymnastics. Even if he was tough, he was still pretty moderate. He’s obviously stayed healthy his whole life without ever being extreme.

I remember I was trying to train a four year old to do a cartwheel that summer. I kept telling her to kick up her legs and throw them over at an angle and then over your head and we just weren’t getting anywhere. When I told this to my college teammate Kris, she erupted in laughter.  "Patty, man.  That four year-old has no idea what you’re talking about when you say angles. She's  four. You need to tell her that her toes are crayons and  to draw rainbows on the ceiling."

The next day I imparted this wise advice from my teammate and it was like a miracle.  All the kids were doing cartwheels really well.  I lost that fun amidst the tedium of training and the constant injuries my teammates and me would sustain. Sure, Mr. Douglas was tough and he wanted to win, but he was also into the joy of it.

I think and I will always call him my coach primarily because he made the largest impact on me. The fact that he let me train in his gym and devote extra hours, often unsupervised throughout my entire middle school years is what helped me achieve what I did.  He was always very encouraging to me.  I've applied much of what Mr. Douglas taught me to all aspects of my life. I try to model myself on him and his passion for athletics. Much like him, I didn’t get into Pilates because I expected to become a millionaire (although that would be nice). I do it because I think it is fun. I know I am going to teach Pilates until I’m 80 at least. I will never quit. In that sense, I try to be the Mr. Douglas for Pilates.

    Even still, I will always default to him as my example for motivation. One year, my family and I vacationed in the Dominican Republic where I was able to train in the mornings and cover the expenses of our trip by working with a fitness travel agency. That year, we were determined to try surfing. We hired a photographer to document the day. My daughter, Brooke (seven years old at the time) got up on the surfboard on her first try.  And then, in some of the pictures, you can see my son brooding in the background behind the rest of us. He is sitting on a piece of dogwood in the same position as The Thinker. In other pictures where we are drinking from coconuts, my husband and I are kissing, you can see Seth’s morose face looming in the background. For the most of that morning, he was pouting on this piece of dogwood. Eventually, I tried to coax him from his perch and ask him to come and take a few photos with us. He exploded and started shouting, “No! I don’t care! I hate this! When are we leaving?! I want to go back!” I decided to let him cool off, but returned within ten minutes to try again. He continued to argue and beg to go back in. I crouched down to him and said, “Listen up. We came to the Dominican this year just so that we can do what we’re doing right now. This is why we didn’t go to Jamaica or anywhere else. We came to the Dominican Republic because we wanted to surf. We pulled you out of school. Your classmates are sitting in school and there’s 10 inches of snow on the ground outside. You're sitting at the beach and crying about it. We are not leaving this beach until the end of the day.”

“But I can’t do it!” he whined. “Surfing sucks and it’s not fun.”

“We’re here because a 68 year-old client learned how to surf five years ago and he was sedentary for thirty years before that. I’m not asking you to do something you physically can’t do,” I said. “Before I leave, I’m just going to tell you one more thing. Your sister is out there surfing, (long dramatic pause) and what are you going to tell your best friend Cole when you go back home? Brooke got up on her first try and you sat and cried on a tree all day?” and I walked away. Sure enough, Seth got up from the dogwood about ten minutes later, got onto a surf board and was riding waves for the rest of the day. For the next two days, he managed to surpass us all in skill, even moving on to intermediate waves further down the beach. It was a real Mr. Douglas moment.

I have repeated that story to some parents who reproached me, saying that what I told my son was mean. But it would have been meaner to let him mope all day than to try and get him to give surfing another shot. Sure enough, he was up on that board and having fun. My inner Mr. Douglas was coming out when I said, “I’m just going to say this one thing and then I’m not saying anything else. You can do what you want. It’s your choice….” And it worked. The pictures we got of Seth are just incredible. He’s there on his surf board, surrounded by bubbles of water, with these striking cliffs in the background. Ultimately, I got lucky that it didn’t all backfire and that he didn’t get hit in the face with his surfboard.

So Mr. Douglas and his motivational attitude and skills are effective even today and during that particular summer, he dramatically improved my drive just by being himself.  I don't mean that he was perfect.  Sometimes he yelled too much, he was a hyped up guy.  He was strict in every since of the word. He was still joyful.  These are not mutually exclusive.  When one of his gymnasts learned a new skill, and had their little kid smile and bright eyes light up, he loved it just as much as them.  It really was a marvel.  I don't think anyone could pay him to quit coaching gymnastics.  Due to this example, I was rejuvenated and ready to do gymnastics again. However, my Achilles was not. I still had a constant ache in it and hadn't even really done any impact activities all summer.  It was getting to be do or die time as I was going back to Ball State in a couple of weeks.  I read a couple of articles and parts of books about psychosomatic injuries and illnesses.  I recognized some of my teammates in it, but not really myself.  I gave a lot of thought to what I was gaining by staying injured.

One week before school started back up, I went to the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics again to get checked out before going back to Muncie. It had been three months and I still wasn’t feeling much better even though I did what I was told. I iced it and I only did exercises that didn’t affect my ankle. The doctor took a look and finally said that he didn’t think it was Achilles tendinitis after all. I sat there motionless with a quizzical look on my face.  I was somewhat in shock. After eight months of hearing I had Achilles tendinitis, the trainers and doctors at Ball State telling me it was Achilles tendinitis, the doctors at the University of Iowa telling me it was Achilles tendinitis, me acting like and feeling like it was Achilles tendinitis, now hearing they're not sure.   He clearly said, "Well, you have something.  We're not sure what it is, but I don't think it's Achilles tendinitis." I sat there silently for an entire minute.  My mind raced to my tennis player friend and how he didn't have pain from an injury much worse than mine, it raced to my high school teammate Julie who swore her arm just didn't hurt, it raced to Jennifer Sey and her broken femur, then it raced to my mom's voice in my head say, even though she didn't practice it herself, "Mind over matter.  You can do anything in life you want to do as long as you want it badly enough." Internally, I lost my temper a little bit, I didn't yell at him or anything but I decided right then and there that I had had enough. I said something to him rather haughtily that changed my life, "They've been telling me for months I had Achilles tendinitis. I believed them.  If you don't think I have Achilles tendinitis and I don't think I have Achilles tendinitis, then I no longer have Achilles tendinitis.  I'm done with it."

I got up off the table and left his office.  My sister was with me and I walked out into the parking garage with her.  I was irate that I had spent so much time with an injury that may not have even been real.  It was definitely real in my mind and I definitely felt pain in my foot.  I was cussing up a storm, venting to my sister and stomping around.  My Achilles started to hurt.  I started to think about something else.  Anything else to think about, it didn't matter.  I started counting cars, distracting myself as much as possible.  It quit hurting.  I walked to my car, got in and drove away.

I went back to Ball State for my sophomore year about a week later.  After that appointment, whenever my Achilles hurt, I would focus my attention on something else entirely. If I were walking to class and felt pain I would start counting the bricks on a building. Or if I was passing a tree, I would start thinking about the tree’s biology and how each and every leaf is made up of these little cells that had infinitely small, porous boxes with their nuclei and chloroplasts and mitochondria. I ran into the tennis guy again, he was back at Ball State for his Master's Degree.  We discussed his leg and he said, "You know, it just never really hurts."  I adopted his philosophy.  Within a few short weeks, the pain went away and my achilles never hurt again. I just psyched the pain away. I refused to talk about it. I took care of it, I iced it, and I continued to do my therapy for it, but I stopped making an issue out of it. I started practicing at full strength without any restrictions from the trainers.  It was a great start to my sophomore year.

Metal and Mettle

After a successful season of high school and club gymnastics, I was recruited by a couple of different universities.  Ball State University was my best option financially and academically.  I was recruited by their head coach, Mary Roth.  Even though I was pretty much gigantic for a gymnast at 5'9", Mary loved my lines, my toe point, my work ethic and most of all my fun-loving, positive attitude.  I signed for an academic and athletic scholarship.  It should have been the best day of my life, but I was still plagued with the feeling that it wasn't good enough.  My dream had been to go to the University of Missouri.  Never mind that I had heard their coach was a zealot when it came to the weight of his gymnasts.  It didn't take me long to realize Ball State was a great fit for me.

            However, I started college off on the wrong foot, literally. I had been a gymnast since I was nine years old.  I was 18 at the time and had done gymnastics for half of my life.  I'd been injured but never seriously.  One Sunday morning, two weeks before the start of my freshman year of college, I was late for work.  If I'm confessing here, and I am, if it was Sunday morning and I was supposed to work, I was going to be running late for work.   This wasn't just a rare Sunday. I was a waitress at a place called Reynold’s Restaurant. It was totally old school with diner counters and the spinning stools and speckled tile on the floor. The owners were extremely kind to me, and they had a daughter who was also a gymnast. The whole truth is that I was partying the night before. I was too drunk to drive home, so I called my sister to come pick me up instead. That morning, the keys to my car were in her purse, which was in her car, which was in the church parking lot. So while my family was at church, I was running around in my little green waitress uniform, fussing with the little beret, trying to get ready for work with a hangover. I’ve always been late and I know I used to thrive on the adrenaline rush of making it somewhere successfully when I was running late. I didn’t realize I didn’t have my car keys until I ran up to my car door. I rushed over to my neighbor’s house and knocked on the door. Eric, one of the sons, answered and I hurriedly explained that I had slept in, that my sister had my car keys and that I needed a ride to work. He agreed to take me and I asked him to hold on while I got something from home before we left.

            Between our houses, there was a small embankment that sloped downwards from their driveway to ours. As I was sprinting back to my house in my Army green, ugly mini-dress of a uniform, I slipped on the grass and fell. I was sliding down towards our driveway, tugging at my uniform to keep my butt from completely falling out of it. I finally hit the cement of my driveway, which stopped me from sliding, but the momentum grated my ankle against the ground. I heard this awful crack and started to scream for my neighbor to call an ambulance. I remember lying there thinking, “Oh my god, if it isn’t broken and I go into the ambulance, my parents are going to kill me.” So I started shouting that he should un-call the ambulance. I then went to take off my shoe and the bone moved in my sock. There was no mistaking it, it was broken. So I had surgery three or four hours later for a compound fracture, having ripped the outside of my bone and tearing a deltoid ligament, the largest ligament in the human body. They implanted five screws and placed me in a cast.

            Two days later I had a follow up appointment. The surgeon examined his handiwork and told me he was putting me in a hip cast for the next 8 weeks.  Even though I had just turned 18 one month earlier and was basically lying in a self-pity pile I looked straight into the eyes of this prominent surgeon in our town yelled "YOU ARE NOT PUTTING ME IN A HIP CAST!  I WILL NOT DO IT!  FIND SOMETHING ELSE.  YOU'RE NOT DOING THAT TO ME!"  I explained that if he put me in a hip cast I'd be ruined.  I would have to rehab both my ankle and my knee because he was immobilizing that too.  It would be too much to overcome and I had to do gymnastics.  It was paying for my school.  I remember not liking him very much at all even though he did a great job on my surgery.  Surprisingly, he agreed to put me in a removable brace that had both an ankle and a knee hinge.  I liked him a little better after that. I could remove the brace and keep my leg as strong and flexible as possible.  That was one of the first lessons I had in being your own advocate for your health.  Yes, doctors are amazing.  They are very intelligent.  However, they are still people and don't know everything. This made all the difference in the world.  I was able to take off the brace and do rehab.

            A couple of days after my surgery when I was off most of my pain medicine, I had to call Mary Roth and explain to her what happened.  She told me that my scholarship was in jeopardy and she didn't know if I'd be able to keep it and start Ball State at all.  I said good-bye, hung up the phone and I went ape-shit crazy. I started to cry hysterically, visions of Clinton Community College and more years at my parents house were popping in my head.  "Why is God doing this to me?!"  How melodramatic I was!  When I pulled it together about 20 minutes later, I made a call to my high school coach, who told me that it was impossible for Ball State to take my scholarship away for an injury. I calmed down a bit and Mary called me back to tell me she was going to honor my scholarship.

            My parents dropped me off in Muncie, Indiana, exactly two weeks from the date of my injury and surgery.  They spent a couple of days decorating my room, helping me unpack and get settled.  I remember them saying good bye and my Dad crying and choking up through tears, "Take care of that leg."  After they left, I shut the door to my dorm room and felt a little guilty.  I cried a little when they left, but all in all I was overjoyed that I was finally at college.  I had a surge of energy and was completely excited to be there even if I was on crutches.  I couldn't stop smiling.

            I attended classes like any other incoming freshmen but was luckily carted around by the campus police.  The Ball State policy was for the campus police to take injured students to class if they were too hurt to walk.  I went to class and practice.  I couldn’t do anything in gymnastics specifically, but I worked with the Ball State Physical Therapist, Neal Hazen, in the training room as much as I could. I did whatever he told me to do. He really worked on me a lot. He would rub my ankle until I would almost throw up from agony. He was trying to get rid of the scar tissue so that I would retain mobility in that ankle.  Neal was the main reason I was able to get back into gymnastics. I’m always surprised when I work with clients for physical therapy because it’s always just a few short sessions, maybe eight at most. I was in rehabilitating every day and training for four whole hours for months. I would get on this Airdyne bike and they would hoist one foot on a chair while I pedaled with the other. I rode that thing for forty five minutes straight.

The training room was just four concrete walls painted white. I was pretty bored, but I hated going into the gymnastics gym. I’d be stuck watching my teammates learn new awesome skills like double full twists and double backs and I would just be sitting around longing to join them. I hated it that they were getting better while I was not improving in gymnastics at all.  My ankle did get better every day and I was getting stronger.

            I have to admit that the training room was actually a blast.  I don't mean the torturous rehab of it all but definitely the camaraderie of the injured athletes.  It didn't hurt that there were many good looking, athletic men that were injured either.  I was already very social but the training room made me even more so.  I met hundreds of male and female athletes that year.  One thing all athletes have in common is that we all get hurt at one point or another. Even the upperclassmen would come to me to find out where the parties were that weekend.  I always knew what was going on and what was going on was fun.  I still hold the opinion that the best place to grow up is not the best place to live your life.  I mean, I started in Clinton, Iowa.  When it comes to things to do, you couldn't get much worse.  There we learned how to make our own fun.  Now that I was in the big city of Muncie, Indiana, and I swear to God I thought it was a big city then, I felt like I was in the Mecca of activity! 

            I was sequestered to the packed house training room. I guess that was another example of making the best of it.  I had to be in the training room anyway so I might as well make it fun.  When I got more mobility, I moved to the weight room and worked out in there up to two hours per day. I loved the weight room too.  By today's standards that place was a complete dump.  It was in an enclosed basement, concrete room that was humid and sweaty.  The athletes didn't have their own separate weight room then so I was in there with everyday fitness enthusiasts and regular students.  One day, some goofy guy with a "Let's Get Physical" headband on brought in a boom box.  He played the entire Rocky cassette soundtrack.  My smart-alec  bodybuilder friends were shouting, "Go Adrienne!" before their sets of bench and chin-ups.  We pulled off a lot of buffoonery in that sweat box.

Even though I was working hard in the training room, and then in the weight room, (albeit having fun and laughing a lot too) Mary would sometimes hassle me that I would never be at practice.  She wanted me to sit around and support my teammates.  She would say, "I never know where you are all practice."  We would practice every day from two to six and I was trying to spend those four hours training. I figured rehabilitating my ankle was ultimately the best way to support my teammates.  I had to all but beg her not to make me sit and watch the practices. That would have been torture.

After eight weeks, I had my second surgery and they removed the longest pin that went though both my tibia and fibula bones. I was on crutches for another ten days after the surgery before I could start really working out again. After the pin was taken out, I could do pull ups on bars. In gymnastics, if your leg is broken, you’re still expected to use everything else that works. This mentality has stayed with me throughout my years as a personal trainer and Pilates instructor. If my clients ever complain that their wrist is in pain, I say, “Well, your legs work just fine, so you’re going to work those out today.” But it helped me to maintain the condition of my body. If I hadn’t kept exercising, I would not have been able to jump right back into the swing of things.

When I came back from Christmas break and our season began in January, I was ready to compete.  I was still having pain, however. I had been doing gymnastics since that November and the doctor told me I had Achilles tendinitis in my ankle. Even though I was competing, I was really sticking to beam and definitely staying away from vaulting, or anything that required me to run and slam down on my feet. Since I was never very good at bars, I competed in beam as a freshman for Ball State. But even after the season was over, I was still in pain. I remember that was around the same time Jennifer Sey broke her femur in half doing a reverse Hecht

on bars. Six months later, she came back and won the national championship. I had a teammate tell me that if Jennifer could recover after only six months, then so could I. In Jennifer’s 2008 book, she explained that despite breaking her femur, her doctors released her prematurely. She may have won the championship, but she was still very much injured. At the time, however, I got down on myself for not regaining my strength. After eight months, I was still struggling with my ankle and the thought of Jennifer winning a national championship after a much more serious injury was demoralizing. 

In the spring of my freshman year, I was also dating this good looking Senior who was a really accomplished tennis player. He had blond hair, pretty blue eyes and had skin so tan he looked like the quintessential California boy even though he was from Illinois- Normal, Illinois, in fact.  He endured a moped accident when he was 16 and completely crushed his leg. It was still indented and scarred in places where his shin had been bashed in. He had a scar that snaked from his knee all the way down to his ankle. It only happened two years earlier, but he was still able to get an athletic scholarship for tennis to Ball State. He was a MAC champion a few times over in doubles. I hung out with him and he told me that his leg never hurt him. But I’ve often attributed that to the fact that he was kind of a space cadet. He was always happy, which I’m sure had to do with the fact that he was completely gorgeous and had girls falling for him all over the place. He was just one of those people that could derive joy from just looking at the birds, or basking in the sunshine. He was just a really sweet and happy person. But it was still discouraging to me when he told me his leg never hurt and my Achilles wouldn’t stop hurting.

I competed and I finished out the season, but the main issue was that I had difficulty walking, so it obviously would hurt to run, jump and land on my ankle.  I went back to Iowa that summer and made an appointment at the University of Iowa hospital to get it checked out. They confirmed that I had Achilles tendinitis and told me to ice it, rest it and don't do any impact activities.  I wasn't even allowed to jog lightly, let alone do explosive gymnastics moves.  I continued to exercise, but I was really burnt out from gymnastics. Most of my teammates had gotten hurt that year and, overall, our team didn’t do very well. Everyone complained about their injuries incessantly, so being hurt was always on my mind. Because I needed the exercise, but was limited in what I could do, I decided I would finally learn how to swim laps. Up until then, I never knew how to swim a single lap in a regulation sized pool. I could swim to save my own life and knew how to tread water, but I could never swim a single lap straight without taking a break. I went to the four-foot deep lap pool at the Clinton Municipal Pool and began one day, swimming a half a lap, then walking the rest.  Then, I would begin the next lap.  I would swim and walk as much as I needed to fill up 30 minutes.  A couple weeks later I would swim 3/4 of a lap, then walk the rest.  After a few weeks of that I was able to swim an entire lap and just continued like that until I could swim for up to an hour straight.  I would ask anyone around that looked like they knew what they were doing if I was doing a certain stroke right, or I’d ask them to see how I was breathing, and I’d pick up pointers from the random people at the pool. I'm sure my technique was terrible but swimming made me strong.  I really loved being in the water and the ability to work hard without pounding my body.  It also taught me that one can always exercise no matter what injuries they've sustained.  Having Achilles tendinitis was no excuse to be lazy and de-conditioned. 

The Zone

My teammate, Julie, had shattered her arm the year before.  The doctors weren't even sure if her arm would function normally again, let alone be strong enough to compete in gymnastics again.  Her injury wasn't very common and the procedure needed to straighten it out wasn't that prevalent in 1986.  She went to three different surgeons in our little town of Clinton, Iowa, before her mom decided she needed a more experienced surgeon that could be found in the larger community of the Quad Cities.  Julie had a metal plate and four screws implanted in her arm.  She was in a cast for about 10 weeks.  Once she got out of the cast her elbow wouldn't straighten very much.  She used soup cans to help ease her elbow into the range of motion she needed. 

Before our senior year, I didn't really think Julie was very tough.  I have to say when she hurt herself I was outwardly encouraging her to come back.  Inwardly, I doubted she could.  It was a lot to overcome.  She only had one year left and didn't want to do college gymnastics.  Most of my opinion about her toughness was shaped due to jealousy on my part.  Julie was super tiny.  She was strong, light, and incredibly naturally flexible. She had the body a gymnast was supposed to have.  Plus, she had this gorgeous family and they all looked alike.  As an adopted kid, that was what I was most jealous about.  Her dad was educated, had a good job and her petite, fit mom had three beautiful daughters.  They were like the quintessential J. Crew family you'd see in an ad.  From my teenage perspective I formed the opinion that Julie had it easy and wasn't tough enough to make it back.

Julie had other ideas.  It seemed like she just showed up at practice the first day and picked up where she left off.  In that entire year I only remember her complaining about her arm one time.  The whole entire season, six months of it, she complained one time.  It was a legitimate complaint at that.  We were doing some kind of bounding push-up drills for vault and tumbling explosion.  Basically, you're in a push up and you jump off your hands, in gymnastics terminology, blocking off of your hands from your shoulders, then jumping your hands up to the board.  You "block" or push off of your hands explosively and move from the board, to the floor, the floor to the board, over and over.   It was a lot of impact on her arm.  She winced casually said, "This hurts" and stopped doing the non-essential drill.

I remember her saying repeatedly, "It just doesn't hurt.  I don't have any problems."  Even when teammates and other people at school pressed her, she would just tell them, "Nope. Doesn't hurt."  I'm sure it had to hurt a little, her arm had been shattered.  I love it that she either talked herself out of it hurting or made up her mind that she was going to do gymnastics and her arm would be fine.  Either way, she was another bad ass teammate living the example of how you're supposed to work, live and train. 

We were heavily favored to win the State meet.  We had all of us, the seniors, Julie, Tracy, Andrea and I, plus Danielle, a junior that really grew up with us because she was in our group at Mr. Douglas' gym.  We had an excellent group of incoming freshmen that were very talented, worked hard and were well trained.  We breezed through all of our duel meets, conference, sectionals and regionals and won decisively. 

The state meet was upon us.  It was pay back time.  We had lost to Linn-Mar, a suburb of Cedar Rapids where most of their gymnasts were from the C.R.A.I.G. Cedar Rapids Academy In Gymnastics and also where I trained briefly the burn out summer between my Sophomore and Junior years, a.k.a. the knife in the ribs soreness incident. 

We drew the best order for state, Olympic order starting on Vault.  Everyone hit their vaults.  In those days, we did two vaults.  I was doing a vault that won me the state title the year before.  My next vault was a more difficult rendition of that where I added another twist.  Except for the exceptionally high flipping Tsukahara vaults, my Full Twist On-Full Twist Off was what a majority of college coaches were recruiting.   Flipping vaults were too difficult for me for two reasons:  my height and my slow, non-bounding, white legs.  My legs look strong and they are, but I'm as slow and white as they come.  I had a friend that played college football that would harass me and say, "GIRL...you have them big 'ol regress calves. I can walk backwards faster than you can run forwards."  I hated that only because it was true.  (I'd jokingly punch him right in the arm if I saw him today, but it would be a hard punch dammit.) 

I completely stuck the first, easier vault.  My coach got the score and told me to go for the more difficult vault.  I stuck it.  I jumped up and down and went crazy.  I anxiously awaited the score and it was an 8.95.  What?! I scored a 9.5 the year before on the easier vault.  I'd been easily scoring in the mid-nines all year.  What happened?  My coach overheard a judge more from the central region of Iowa complain that both of my hands weren't hitting at the same time which was an automatic .5 deduction.  Whether they were or weren't wasn't a concern at that point.  I vaulted the same way I had all year, now a different judge has a different opinion and all the other judges aligned with her.  I was out for the all-around title before I even really got a start.  When my score was flashed I can't believe I handled it this well but I made up my mind not to give it another thought.  There was nothing I could do about it.

Next up was Uneven Bars.  The past two years we had a history of basically falling apart on bars.  Our new coach, Miss Chris assured us from the beginning of the year that wouldn't happen this time. We trained so many routines on bars we didn't have the opportunity to fail. All year we did far more routines per practice than we ever had before.  What a great life lesson.  If you're nervous, over prepare. If you're scared, over prepare. If you have head trash from the past, over prepare. Work so hard that your only option is to succeed. We didn't want to do all of the routines at every single practice.  Bars makes your hands bleed. I don't mean this in a metaphorical sense. The skin rips off of your hands from the friction on the bars. Your hands bleed from blisters. Sometimes blisters inside of blisters.  Growing up you think rips suck.  Then you get rips inside of rips (blisters on top of blisters) and you start to think, "Hmm...just a regular old rip really isn't that bad."  You want to do gymnastics and be super human? Guess what? Sometimes it sucks and your hands bleed. That's not a reason to stop training.  

The night before the state meet, Miss Chris set us up to go to a gym near where we competed outside of Des Moines to get our bar settings.  These were the same brand that we were going to use at the state meet and she wanted us to be comfortable.  She really listened to our fears and issues from the year before and was proactive about it.  We all hit every routine.  Bars was Julie's best event before her broken arm and it remained her best event after too.  She completed a flawless routine and got our best bar score.  We had our best score as a team total on bars and our worst event was over.  On to our best two, balance beam and floor exercise.

Throughout my career, I was almost always the last performer for beam and I was for this meet as well. I had a whole system, and it looked like a system of goofing off.  I did this by design.  I could never watch my teammates on beam because if they did well I felt relieved. If they messed up, I didn't want more pressure on myself.  I didn't want my performance affected by whatever they did or didn't do so I just couldn't watch.  They'd let me know after the meet.   I would walk around and believe it or not, even talk to people I knew in the stands.  I would completely distract myself.  Two routines up from me competing I'd start to pay attention to my preparation. I would stretch out.  I would warm up and do my skills on a line when the person before me was competing.  I would either mark or do every skill that was feasible in whatever warm-up area we would have.  Immediately before I would get on the beam, I did three big breaths reaching my arms all the way up, and on the exhale relaxing my arms and head down.  I swear it looked just like a Richard Simmons warm-up. After those were completed, I knew I was ready. 

A lot of gymnasts get completely freaked out when they compete on the beam.  Calm excitement is how I'd describe it. I learned to love the butterflies of competing. It always gave me more energy and made me feel fully alive.  Ever since that State competition way back when I was 12 years old and nailed that routine as the last competitor of that meet on beam, I loved competing.  I felt like I had an ace in the hole with all of that mental training I did.  I was confident on beam.  I loved practicing it which helped me loved competing it. By this time of my senior year of high school I'm sure I would've had scores and scores of sheets of paper of affirmations over the years if I hadn't have thrown them out.  Statements like "I will make it to Regionals.  I will make my beam routine. I will make it to Regionals.  I will make my aerial cartwheel" were written repeatedly.  If I hadn't have thrown out the evidence, it would've looked like the manuscript written by Jack Nicholson's  completely insane character in The Shining.  "HEEERRREE'S Johnny! All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."

I was defending my state title in beam but didn't think about that at all.  I was so intensely prepared and just happy.  I competed that beam routine with utmost certainty and confidence. I was solid on every skill and stuck my dismount to boot.  I really didn't care about the score because I knew after all of us hit our beam routines we were going to win the team title.  It was a great score though and I won my second beam title.

Our last event together as a team culminating our lifetimes in gymnastics was upon us. Time to shine on floor and have fun.  Only, I wasn't having fun and was completely stressed out.  I'd been falling on my first tumbling pass in warm-ups and was seriously considering changing my tumbling so I could at least not fall on my butt. Warm ups were over and I'd been falling all over the place.  Under rotating, over rotating and just having bad timing on that first pass. 

Our first three teammates competed very well.  Julie, who competed fourth in the line up, completed a spectacular routine to The Bangle's song "Walk Like an Egyptian".  She even successfully completed the whip backs she shattered her arm on they year before. 

My teammate Danielle was up next. She and I had the same tumbling passes that year, including the first one that I was falling all over with in warm-ups.  Like all of us, Danielle and I had grown up together. She was adopted like me but was an only child.  We spent a lot of time together as kids not only at practice but at her house.  I remember she had a poodle dog that she would "spot" in back flips and even double back flips!  She swore the dog loved it. She made her little brown curly haired dog do double backs! PETA people back off, we were 11.  Today, here she was getting ready to do what would be her last floor routine in competition.  She went up fifth right before me. 

Danielle did an amazing routine to a Banana-Rama compilation.  (No, she didn't wear a bandana. But yes, she did have bad 80s hair just like the rest of us). She choreographed it and we all added in some dance moves for her. It was a fun routine.  She tumbled sky high on all of her first tumbling pass and hit all the rest of them too. A huge, great routine.  That was it for me. I knew I would compete my planned tumbling passes and take my chances.

I began my routine with my favorite song at the time, this cool 80s dance electronica hit, "Let the Music Play" by Shannon. The music had this whip sound in it. I stood right in the corner of the floor mat at attention with my arms straight down at my sides and my head straight down.  The music builds to a whip sound as I simultaneously flicked my hand and arm around in snap.  I took off tumbling and nailed the pass that Danielle just completed and I'd been falling on for the past week. I did it completely and perfectly.  I knew from the time my feet hit the mat while I landed the first pass that this routine was going to be perfect.  Then it happened...the zone.

The zone. It's only happened to me twice in my entire competitive life.  This was the first time.   Years later I had a particularly deep conversation about the zone with a professional football player.  It's a strange and other worldly phenomenon.  I could tell he was a little hesitant to open up about it as I was too.  Neither one of us wanted to appear too much like a drugged up hippy.   He said, "It's surreal, it's like I could see the plays before they happened.  I don't know if it's a metaphysical thing or what but it's like this was written before it even happened to you."

I haven't read about the zone because I don't want the academic side to take away from my experience of it.  It's a spiritual, wild, indescribable experience.  I was in a double handstand pirouette before I really even had consciousness of what was happening.  I had awareness in that moment that everything went exactly as I had rehearsed it.  I still remember my thoughts, emotions and feelings around it vividly.  I did a forward roll out of the handstand double pirouette, spun around on my back (a la break dancing), then flicked my head into the final pose.  Euphoria.  I jumped up, saluted the judges and all of us as a team just went crazy.  It had been a long three years getting to this point.  I could've gotten a 6.0 and we still would have won. 

If memory serves me correctly, I scored a 9.65, Danielle got a 9.6.  It was some incredible score.  We finished one-two.  I never would have done it without her. We won the team title by four points.  We blew them out of the water!   Our coach was recently inducted into our high school's Athletic Hall of Fame.  They mentioned that our team total that year was the highest team score ever.  The record still stands as they got rid of high school gymnastics in Iowa two years later.  

Application

Even though we lost the state championship and at the time it seemed like all of that work was all in vain, we were learning all kinds of valuable lessons.  We were learning how to win even if we didn't actually win.  The winning habit was being developed by our training and practice. We learned to keep going.  We learned that sometimes no matter how much you don't want to do something, that it's going to be uncomfortable, it's going to require effort, it's going to even suck, you sometimes have to do it anyway.  Do it for yourself.  Do it for your teammates.  Do it because you don't know what else to do.  Get up! 

For me the mental training was invaluable.  I also used it to help me in other aspects of life, like driving for instance.  I wasn't naturally a good driver.  I was pretty hyper and afraid I was going to hurt myself or others. This couldn't make less sense considering my complete lack of fear (or judgement) as it pertained to physically dangerous habits like jumping off of roofs into pools. When it came to driving, I was afraid.  I went through Driver's Ed and one of my teammates, Andrea, was in my car.  I was never good.  For some weird reason, that entire semester of practice driving, I would always get too close to parked cars.  Andrea's eyes would bug out and she would usually just roll them really slowly and look out the window.  She was probably praying for all of our safety.

The big day of the driving test I was ready to go.  I thought today, is going to be different.  I can do this!  I got in the driver's seat.  The instructor, who was also a track coach,  was next to me. Andrea and the other student were in the back seat.  I backed out of the parking spot in downtown Clinton and by the look on Andrea's face, I knew something was wrong.  I could tell she was trying to help me by giving me a look that said, "You're forgetting something, remember this..." I had no idea what she was trying to tell me so I just flat out asked her, "What?! What am I doing wrong?"  She couldn't say anything of course because that would be like cheating on a test.  I was completely flustered now.  Then the instructor said, "Patty, you need to take off the parking brake."  He scribbled on his clipboard.  I completely lost my cool.  I thought that mistake was insurmountable and my score was going to be too low to pass.  It wasn't.  He encouraged me and said I would be ok if everything else went right.  I took off the parking brake, proceeded forward and then SLAM!  Our track coach instructor had to slam on his brake because I almost hit the parked car right in front of us.  My test was over.  I'd driven 3 feet. I had to get out and sit in the back. 

Crap!  I flunked.  This was really bad.  I was incredibly mad at myself and felt like an idiot.  I hadn't really flunked many tests in my entire life and this was a big one! I had one more chance.  When you flunk your first driving test, you get one more chance to prove yourself.  If I flunked that second test I would have to start Driver's Ed all over for another semester and not get my license for another six months.  By this time, the gym in Moline, Illinois, had found another coach.  I wanted to start training at Moline Turners that summer and I needed to be able to drive myself there.  None of my former Moline teammates were still doing gymnastics.  There was no car pool in place.  If I wanted to do gymnastics again and make a push to get a scholarship I had to do club gymnastics.  To get to that club, I had to drive myself.  My parents didn't have the time or money.  There was a lot riding on passing this next test.  Then, I had an epiphany.  I told myself, "If I could do aerial cartwheels, that's no handed cartwheels, on a four-inch balance beam, 4 feet up, I can drive a damn car.  Millions of complete idiots can drive and I can join them."   I know I can do this.  For the entire next two weeks before the my second exam, I did mental training at night before I would fall asleep.  I calmed myself down, repeated mantras such as: I will pass this test.  I will stay calm.  I will pay attention and drive safely. 

The day of my second test came.  I was calm and ready.  It was uneventful.  I took it and passed- no instructor brake necessary.  It probably didn't hurt that our instructor was a track coach.  Andrea and I ran track for him our freshmen year.  He liked us and thought we were good kids.  I know he wanted us to succeed and I'm pretty sure I mentioned to him my predicament about the gym.  Regardless, he passed me and I was on my way to Moline.

My parents bought my sister and I an economy car that was was a complete beater.  It was an old, blue Plymouth Colt with a replacement door that was gold from a Dodge Champ.  I used to call it my Champion Colt. It was two-toned baby! It got me where I needed to go, which was the gym in Moline. 

This was another game changer for me.  The gymnasts I trained with in Moline were at a higher level.  At least five of the 12 girls or so I trained with had better, more difficult skills than I did.  It constantly pushed me every practice to do more.  The new girls coach they hired was Dave.  I knew him from my earlier time training in Moline my sophomore year of high school.  He was the boys coach then.  Dave was in his early 20s.  I was 17.  Not a big age difference but a huge life experience difference.  He was married already and had a kid on the way. 

He was a good technician and a lot of fun, probably too fun.  He let us goof around and get away with a lot more than Mr. Douglas would've ever let us pull off.  He didn't think his job was to motivate me or really any of the older girls.   He would say, "If you're 17 years old and can't motivate yourself by this time, it's not my job to do it." I agree with this to some degree but also think Dave was misguided.  One must be intrinsically motivated but it doesn't magically get there. You must either feed or be fed your motivation everyday.  Ask any athlete in any sport that has been coached by one of the greats and they all say,  "She was a great motivator.  He led by example.  He motivated us to be our best together." 

I was the oldest gymnast that Dave had ever coached.  I was definitely the tallest.  I was bigger than the other girls but I was still lean.  I weighed much more than them due to my height, muscle and size.  Dave would make inappropriate comments to me .  He never physically came on to me but would say things like,  "Good God, you have an amazing body.  You must go up in that work out room and drive those men crazy."  (There was a Nautilus gym on the second floor of Moline Turner's that was open to the public.) I was only 17.  I had no capacity to deal with what he was saying and was confused by it.  As a teenager the thought of being attractive to grown men was disgusting and to put it in 80s lingo, downright grody -to-the-max. One day when he started in on this line of "compliments", I countered back with,  "What?  You tell me I'm fat.  You wrote 'Fat Pat' on the beam in chalk right in front of me and the entire team.  Which one is it?! Do I have a great body or am I fat?"  I did have an ally in the owner of the gym, a woman named Janet.  I was too afraid to tell her of the inappropriate stuff he said but I disclosed to her that I was bulimic.  She made sure there was no more of this Fat Pat business.  I was never close enough to my mom to tell her any of this.  I'm not sure she would've understood it anyway.  I  definitely didn't want to jeopardize going to Moline to train.  It was too important to my success.  Even though Dave knew I was bulimic and struggled with my body image, months later he still pointed out my "gut" in front of the entire team of younger girls one day after practice when we were eating lunch.  He said,  "I mean, I know you've had problems with eating, but that (my gut) is just ridiculous."  I was 17.  5'9" and weighed about 150.  If they did body fat measurements then I was probably 18%. 

Even though Dave said those inappropriate and often mean comments I still gained a considerable amount of benefit by training at Moline Turners.  I was fortunate to be able to be gone and out of my house so much.  I would leave by 6 am.  I would train from 7 am to 10 am, lift weights at the Nautilus gym on the second level of the Moline Turner's building, eat lunch and then teach classes.  I taught classes to pay for my lessons.  I would drive home and work at my waitressing job or have fun hanging out with my friends for the rest of the day.  Being busy was my saving grace.

My dad's drinking was getting worse.  He had a job at this point selling cars for a fairly successful dealership so he was no longer unemployed. He was almost always just a terrible person to be around- except when he wasn't.  When he was in a good mood and whistling, he was super funny and sarcastic.  Like Forrest Gump and his box of chocolates, when it came to my Dad you never knew what you were going to get.  The rest of the time, I avoided him as much as possible. 

My brother graduated from high school and worked a lot at the Clinton Car Wash or messed around in a body shop working on cars with his friends and his best friend, my cousin David.  He didn't really have a clear idea of what he was going to do with his life.  He hated school so college wasn't really an option.  He joined the Army and left for basic training in the fall of my Senior year.  Our protector was leaving.  It was pretty nerve wracking.  My mom sold furniture at a shop in downtown Clinton. My sister worked as a waitress too.  We were better off financially and off of welfare but we certainly weren't financially stable.  There was absolutely no money for me to go to college, even Clinton Community College.  Being at home was subjecting yourself to negativity, despair, self-pity and fear.  Being in the gym represented positivity, accomplishment, fun and striving for a good future.  I wanted to be in the gym as much as possible. 

I had a difficult life then but somehow it all worked.  My teammates in both Moline and our high school team were always a source of support and ultimately love.  They helped me not only make the best of it, but make it fun. The discipline alone was an escape. By the fall of my senior year, I had everything streamlined. I would leave school at 2:00 when everyone had study hall at the end of the day. I arrived in Moline by 4:00, where I would give lessons for two hours so that I could pay for my own lessons. After coaching, I practiced for three hours and drove back to Clinton. I was gone from two in the afternoon to ten at night. My school work took a hit, but never enough to get me in trouble.  All of my hard work in the gym was really paying off.  My skills, strength and confidence in gymnastics was improving.  I was having a great gymnastics season in both high school and club and getting ready to peak at the State Championship.