exercise – Josephine Moon

Many people have been commenting on and asking me about my weight loss. People in town in the shops I regularly visit. People who haven’t seen me for a while. Friends who’ve noticed things changing in the photos that I post to Instagram or Facebook. And they have a lot of questions. The funny thing is that I have been losing weight steadily for 7 years now but people have only recently begun to get whiplash when they see me.

Essentially, they want to know how I lost the weight. So, I’ve written a comprehensive answer, because it’s not been an easy question to respond to in one line while standing in the checkout queue at IGA.

For me, it’s not terribly interesting that I have shed weight; the far more interesting question is about how the extra weight got there in the first place. I think people probably have a narrow judgement about that, presuming it was from too much food, lack of exercise and a sedentary job. The more interesting answer, though, is that at no time have I consciously changed my diet (either while gaining weight or while losing it), nor have I ever embarked on a new exercise routine to lose weight. Nope, none of that.

I am someone who experienced two miserable, painful, crushing years of disordered eating and, once through it and out the other side, I have never once allowed myself to manipulate food or exercise for any specific weight-related purpose. I cannot do it. I will not do it. It’s like being a recovered addict, I guess. I simply cannot ever go back to anything that resembles food/exercise control, portion sizes, calorie counting, weigh-ins, tape measures or anything like that. For me, diet culture and weight fixation is triggering and deeply uncomfortable. I am always interested in a loved one’s health, of course, but not the perseveration over ‘weight’.

Okay, back to me. What has actually happened? (You can scroll to the bottom for the TLDR section if you don’t like details.)

Well, this goes back a long way (more than thirty years), back to when I was fifteen. That was the year my autoimmune disease began. It’s called ankylosing spondylitis. Like all autoimmune conditions, it’s rather nasty. Its aim is to “remodel” my spine, which means: damage it, break it down, inflame it, fuse it where it shouldn’t be fused, grow bits where there shouldn’t be bits, cause terrible sciatica, fuse the sacroiliac joints… and for kicks and giggles it expands its territory to include other joints and soft tissues as well. Because medical ‘experts’ used to believe that women didn’t get ankylosing spondylitis (gosh… that gender prejudice is an exhausting and repetitive tale of medical woe), I was dismissed. I was gaslighted by doctors for years, told I must simply be depressed, signed up for thousands of dollars of ‘essential wellness’ tools, or told by new age healers that I had chosen this for myself and only I could make the choice to be well.

Sigh…

Then, at forty years of age, a good (female) GP referred me to a different (female) rheumatologist who quickly realised what was going on. Scans were ordered and by now, the damage to my spine from a quarter of a century of this rampantly unchecked autoimmune disease was so irrefutable that I finally received a correct diagnosis and, importantly, the correct medication.

You see, because I had never been diagnosed correctly, over the decades, I had been given all manner of pain modulating medication which, you guessed it, made me put on loads of weight. One of those medications took me four months to wean myself from due to the horrendous withdrawal side effects. It was a nightmare.

Now, The Too-Long-Don’t-Read (TLDR) Summary of My 30kg Weight Loss Story

I had a serious auto-immune condition that started when I was 15 but I was misdiagnosed for 25 years.
In those 25 years, I required more and more pain medication to control the damage that was being done to my spine and body. These medications made me put on weight, made me dopey and sleepy and messed with my brain.
At 40 years of age, I finally got the correct diagnosis and importantly the correct medication. This (practically magical) fortnightly injection does not make me put on weight and it improves my spine function and mobility so I can be naturally more active.
When I stopped taking the wrong medication, I began to lose weight, with no specific intention (because I refuse to ever again be controlled by thoughts of weight and weight loss). I lost roughly a 1kg a month consistently for over a year.
Interestingly, for a while after discovering I am neurodivergent, I lost more weight (again, at about 1kg a month) for some time. I have no explanation for this but (half) jokingly refer to it as my ‘Autistic weight loss’, perhaps the result of shedding decades of pain and shame from not knowing my true self. You never know…
Things got twisty again last year when, for several months, I lost my appetite and couldn’t look at food and felt like I had morning sickness all the time and generally just felt I couldn’t cope. I was also hysterically thirsty (I literally couldn’t sleep because I couldn’t swallow!) and exhausted and I was dropping weight. I had tests to rule out diabetes, iron deficiency and liver function, which were all normal. Both myself and and the GP put it down to the side effects from having started ADHD medication. But we were wrong.
When I saw a different GP about these symptoms (as I was worried no one was taking them seriously enough), she suggested trialling low-dose hormone therapy… and just like magic, all those symptoms went away.
I have been eating as usual now since December last year (I no longer feel sick and am not ridiculously thirsty) and my weight has been stable for months now.

That’s it in a nutshell.

You asked… I’ve answered.

Jo X

(P.S. I have deliberately not provided before and after pics because, as stated, that kind of culture makes me feel queasy and triggers parts of me I’d rather not invoke.)

Written on my fridge right now. Remind yourself--you are an athlete! — Written on my fridge right now. Remind yourself–you are an athlete!

I have often been heard to say that I feel like I’m running a marathon every day. And I hear a lot of other mothers say it too. What can we do? Here are some thoughts.

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I am an unashamed ‘Swiftie’ (that is, a fan of Taylor Swift), and I once heard her say how much time she spent at the gym. Now, I’ve been to a Taylor Swift concert and trust me that entire performance is more than any gym work out could be. Why on earth did she need to go to the gym as well? I asked this of my husband, who is a physiotherapist.

‘It’s a huge misconception,’ he said. ‘I see it a lot in guys who work in labouring jobs. They think that because they’re active all day that they don’t need to do any more exercise. But what they don’t understand it that to work continuously at their optimum performance, they actually need to be fitter and stronger than what they are required to do.’

Big. Lightbulb. Moment.

To get through everything in my life I need to think of myself as an endurance athlete.

A green smoothie I made with a stick blender - banana, flaxseeds, spinach leaves, fresh mint, parsley — A green smoothie I made with a stick blender – banana, flaxseeds, spinach leaves, fresh mint, parsley

It’s not okay to be just fit enough to do our jobs. We have to be MORE fit so we can do it easily AND have energy left over to play with our kids and have quality time with our spouses and make awesome food and maybe even play and have fun.

‘Writer’ and ‘athlete’ don’t normally conjure up similarities. In fact, most writers I know complain about how sedentary their job is and how much weight they’ve gained and how unfit they’ve become. It’s not even just that we’re sitting at a computer for many hours a day, as many people do who work in an office. It’s also that we don’t have to leave the house, so there’s a serious decrease in all the incidental exercise you get if you have to walk to and from a bus or a train, or escape outside the building for a walk during your lunch hour, or have to walk from one side of the building to the other to talk to a co-worker. I noticed this dramatically when I gave up work that required me to leave the house. My weight bloomed, almost overnight.

After writing for thirteen years through full-time jobs, part-time jobs, and even unemployment, I finally got my agent just five weeks after my son was born, and three book contracts very soon after. Suddenly, I had to juggle first-time new motherhood with serious contractual requirements, severe sleep deprivation, renovating a house and moving, and living in the country and driving obscene hours in the car with a newborn. I coped, but only just. And with a lot of coffee and chocolate.

I’ve come to understand that if I’m going to have longevity in the game of being an author, and be energetically and emotionally present for my child, husband, family and so on, AND look after my self, my animals, house, friends and all of that, then I have to think of myself as an athlete. I need to train regularly — and yes, I do mean with physical activity. I need to fuel my body with the best resources possible: protein, vitamins, juices, power smoothies, organics, fresh produce. I need to put energy IN in order to get energy OUT.

It’s so simple, isn’t it? And yet it’s so easy to overlook. And the more tired we are, the easier it is to reach for coffee and a bowl of cereal for dinner rather than juicing vegetables and cooking energy-enhancing foods. It becomes a vicious cycle, one that’s very hard to break.

This is still a work in progress for me, but I’ve been steadily improving for the past couple of months. And here are my Top Ten Tips for what’s worked for me. Maybe some of them will help you too.

Design a daily checklist of everything you feel you need to (or want to) do to help your body. Most of the time, I get so lost in the work I’m doing that I truly and simply forget to take my vitamins, get on the cross trainer, do my physiotherapy exercises, make a fresh juice, defrost something from the freezer. Checklist. Get one. Leave it on the bench in the kitchen and tick it off over the course of the day. Write down everything you eat. You’ll start to see patterns and it helps keep you on track.
You don’t need an expensive juicer! You can do almost anything with a stick blender. I was feeling blocked about juicing because we didn’t have a juicer (cheap or expensive) and have no cupboard space or bench space to have one. Then I worked out that you can do almost anything with a stick a blender. Throw ingredients in and whiz. Simple. The only things it will struggle with are really hard vegetables, like beetroot or carrot. BUT, if you want them, grate them first and throw them in. Simple.
Protein for breakfast. Salmon, eggs, protein smoothies (as supplements, not as replacements), steak, baked beans, mushrooms. Get your high quality protein in early in the day (rather than at the end). It reduces sugar cravings and keeps you going longer.
Grow some leafy greens. Seriously, spinach, kale and chard are SO simple to grow (I’m growing them in styrofoam boxes), so cheap and quick to sow from seed, and so fabulous to pick fresh and throw into a juice or smoothie for some LIVING food that is packed full of vitamins and energy boosting goodness.
Start the day with a fruit bowl. In our house, as I know is true of many others, we have resistance to eating fruit unless it is chopped up. So we now start the day with a fruit bowl of freshly chopped fruit. We take turns at making it in the morning while the other person is generally tending to our toddler. Your fruit is done for the day and it is yum yum yummy. (We also like to top the fruit with extras like chia seeds, flaxseeds or goji berries — you can buy in advance and store in jars or paper bags and throw them on).
Exercise. 20 minutes. Any time, any where. Every day. There is always something you can do. Personally, I am challenged with multiple (and complicated) rheumatic conditions, I’m always carrying at least one severe injury at any given time (which usually lasts a good six months or more) and have to be so careful about how I exercise. But I married a physio. And what I discovered was that it is a (good) physiotherapist’s job (and calling in life) to find a way for you to move. And they will. Example, if I lift even 1kg weights, I sprain my wrists. So, my husband bought me strap on ankle weights and strapped them around my forearms so no load goes through the joint. Presto. Problem solved. Find yourself a GOOD physio (because, like all things, they aren’t all created equal).
Stop drinking coffee. Oh boy, this can be hard. I never really drank coffee until I had a baby. (True story: My husband had never had a coffee in his life until we walked into the hospital to have our baby and he decided that it was going to take a while so perhaps he should start. It took him the next two years to give up.) After I had Flynn, I was shattered, in every way. Coffee became the only thing that would keep me safe on the roads and even vaguely able to do my job. But by the time Flynn was two years old, I realised that I couldn’t keep drinking coffee. It stimulated my adrenals and gave me a false sense of energy when really it was just draining me even more. Now, my rule is that if I think I need coffee, I will make a chai. And if I still feel like having coffee after the chai, then I’m allowed to have one. But I never do.
Spirulina / Power Greens. When all else fails, throw a teaspoon of high-density greens in powdered form into a juice. You’d be amazed.
Vitamin B. You burn lots of vitamin B when you’re stressed. Make sure you’ve got enough, are getting enough, or supplement with enough. Iron. Same goes there. I’d fallen into a false sense of safety with iron. I used to have to take it all the time but I thought things had changed. Wrong. I didn’t even have a clue until a GP randomly tested for it and phoned to tell me it was below the line. Wow. What a difference to your life iron will make.
Dark chocolate! Oh yes indeed! Dark chocolate is good, good, good for you. It’s a power food, people. Eat it. (But it has to be dark! I can eat up to 85% cocoa quite comfortably, but if you’re just beginning, try something around 40 or 50% and build up.)