15 to Fit Pilates, Barre and Fitness- Mooresville, NC

Funny Friday

noreply@blogger.com (Patrea Aeschliman) — Fri, 02 Jun 2017 16:57:00 +0000

Overheard at 15 to Fit today...we got on the subject of Botox somehow. Somehow?! Whaddya mean somehow? I was training duet partners and everyone in the private room was a woman over 40, of course we were talking about Botox. It's a subject that comes up more frequently than I care to admit. I was bursting with laughter and had to tell them about my friend....hmmm...let's call her Linda.

Two years after I moved from Indianapolis one of my very close friends from there texted me in desperation. "Patrea, please help me. I went to the dentist today." (It's actually her dentist that gives her Botox). "Now I can't lie down." (For those that don't know, providers of Botox suggest that you don't lie down for a few hours after it's injected so it doesn't move around to places it's not supposed to go). "My husband, (even though she's been getting Botox for 10 years, he still has no idea) is coming home early before the kids get home from school and he's going to want to have sex. What do I do?!!!" Desperation, sad face emoji.

My response? I text while shaking my head:

"Linda, Linda, Linda...1. This is the very definition of a first world problem. 2. This is such an easy solution: HAVE SEX STANDING UP!"

I shared this with my awesome, smart-alec client today and she states completely deadpanned, "There goes our Patrea, First World Problem Solver." I like my new title.

Comedic Great Joan Rivers Was a Bada$$

noreply@blogger.com (Patrea Aeschliman) — Wed, 31 May 2017 16:52:00 +0000

She sat on the bed, the gun in her lap. Everything seemed hopeless. "What's the point?" she thought. She couldn't think of one.

Only a few months earlier, Joan Rivers had everything she ever wanted: fame and fortune, the job of her dreams, a loyal husband, a loving child, a lavish estate-and a future that beckoned with enticing possibilities. After years of struggle, she had not only succeeded as a comedienne but had made history as television's first and only female late-night talk show host.

And now she'd lost it all. The First Lady of comedy was fired from her job and publicity humiliated. Her husband-unable to bear his own failure as her manager and producer- killed himself. Their daughter blamed her mother for his death.

Reeling with grief and rage, Rivers then discovered she was broke. She had earned millions of dollars and lived a life of baroque luxury, but here husband had squandered her wealth on bad investments. She was $37 million in debt, and her opportunities for making more money had vanished. "

These are the words of the great author Leslie Bennetts in her biography about Joan Rivers entitled, "Last Girl Before Freeway". I had the great fortune of attending an event hosted by 'Her Wealth' of Bridewater Wealth and Financial Management at Congressional Country Club in Washington, DC a couple of weeks ago. My friend and fellow 15 to Fit Pilates instructor Karen Palacios-Jansen is on the board of Her Wealth. The mission of Her Wealth is empowering women with the financial confidence and resources they need to take control of their money and their wealth.

Eye-opening, alarming, inspiring and motivating are just a few words to describe the night.

Some eye opening facts:

In matters of divorce a typical woman endures a 73% reduction in her standard of living. Her typical ex-husband enjoys a 42% increased standard of living.

90% of women will be solely responsible for their financial matters due to divorce or death of a spouse.

Alarming facts:

One in four women over the age of 65 are in poverty or "near poor". Near poor is defined as 150% of the poverty threshold or $15,400 annually.

Women are 80% more likely than men to be impoverished in old age.

Inspiration.

The story of the rise and fall and rise again of Joan Rivers is beyond imagination. At the age of 55, after working incredibly hard and rising up in the 1960s through the grueling ranks of an industry completely dominated by men, Joan Rivers found herself with a dead husband and 37 million dollars in debt.

Joan Rivers didn't kill herself. She lived. She lived to keep her little dog Spike alive whom she credited with saving her life in that moment because he jumped on the gun. She was worried about who would take care of him. She lived to triumph in 17 different industries and in the process built a billion dollar empire in her 60s and 70s. Pause and really think about that statement. She built a billion dollar empire as a senior citizen, in Hollywood of all places.

As Leslie Bennettts states, "I don't think people quite realize that. They know she designed and sold jewelry and clothing on QVC, but building a billion-dollar company when you used to think you couldn't be trusted to read a contract is remarkable. The other thing she did in her later years was she essentially invented the red carpet phenomenon as a television entertainment genre. That has become a multi-billion-dollar industry. She invented the formula: the commentary, the jokes, who are you wearing?"

Motivating:

Leslie said that throughout her career Joan's mantra which she often wrote down was "Never quit. Never give up. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER!" NEVER- written in large block letters eighteen times.

Joan Rivers died on September 4, 2014. Her estate was estimated at $150 million. She lived a very extravagant, opulent life and enjoyed spending the money she so deservingly earned.

Leslie told a story about an article she herself had written just before the contentious Presidential election of 2016. It was a controversial article. She sent it to six major news outlets. All of them rejected it. Leslie got up, closed her computer and started walking away. She then had a haunting thought, "Joan Rivers would be very disappointed in you right now. Never quit. Never give up. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER." She then sent it out to a contact that had a woman-owned media company. Leslie got her answer later that night. The woman responded, "This piece is brilliant. I'm running it tonight." Leslie thought, "Hmmm... Joan Rivers' mantra is something I need to adopt for my life too."

Listening to Ms. Bennetts speak I had a burning question about Joan Rivers. At the end of the evening, Ms. Bennetts had a book signing. When she signed my book I asked her, "What drove Joan Rivers to be that motivated at 55 to come back from such personal and financial devastation?" Leslie's honest-to-God answer said with all conviction "Anger. I think she was angry. I think she thought FUCK THIS! I can beat this stupid system." I have to readily admit that I am a fan of the F-word. Hearing this world-renowned author that's in her 70s exclaim it so definitively motivated me to my core.

Don't all of us have some kind of system we are trying to beat? Overcome some obstacle, competition, race within our selves, a behavior change, a hatred of something we know we need to adopt, (exercise anyone?)

Remember Joan Rivers' remarkable life and example. Never quit. Never give up. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER.

Drink Too Much and Still Lose Weight!

noreply@blogger.com (Patrea Aeschliman) — Thu, 11 May 2017 14:08:00 +0000

Uh... there’s not so much truth in this statement. It's very difficult to lose body fat while drinking beyond moderation. This is not only due to the calories consumed but also the food choices one makes when they're drinking. Let's face it, they put restaurants like, La Bamba- Burritos as Big as Your Head, Insomina Cookies and Papa John's Pizza next to bars for a reason. That’s because when you're drunk, you ain't eating salad. Salads as Big as Your Head restaurants next to bars just isn't a thing.

Compounding the excess calories of drinking and the subsequent drunk-eating is the problem with the next day. Being hungover doesn't exactly make you feel like getting up and seizing the day. Waking up late, or worse, having to get up early due to kids' schedules, lethargically schlepping through the day and being unable to complete anything close to exercising leads to your clothes becoming too small fairly quickly.

Alcohol has been shown to decrease fat metabolism immediately and dramatically.

In one study, eight men were given two drinks of vodka and lemonade separated by 30 minutes. Each drink contained just under 90 calories. Fat metabolism was measured before and after consumption of the drink. For several hours after drinking the vodka, whole body lipid oxidation (a measure of how much fat your body is burning) dropped by 73%. That's immediately. It's also been shown to decrease strength for up to 48 hours after blood alcohol content is at .08% or higher.

As registered wellness consultant and nutritional counselor Haylie Pomroy states, "In short, alcohol is an enormous pain in the metabolism. It's a huge tax on your liver- the organ that's supposed to be burning fat for you. Your liver also has a second job: ridding your body of chemicals (like alcohol). Every time you swallow a drink, your liver has to take time off from its fat-burning job while it evicts the chemical intruder."

I did a consult one day and a potential client said to me, "I don't drink at all...". During this long pause I excitedly picked up my pen and began writing her statement down on our 15 to Fit Consultation Form. My eyes wide with enthusiasm and shock, I knew I'd be able to help her quickly with her goal of toning up and losing weight if she didn't drink at all. Then she added, "...Monday through Thursday. After Thursday, I don't have any rules and drink as much as I want." Uh...things just got more complicated for her weight loss goals. Another way of saying what she said, "I drink as much as I want and don't limit it at all almost half the days of my life." People are very adept at lying to themselves. She was not ready to change. I joke about it, but it's really not funny. My earlier post chronicles the rise of excess alcohol consumption and its deadly effects, particularly for white women. The Lake Norman area is smack dab in the middle of this demographic.

If you're trying to boost your metabolism, lose weight and improve your health consider the possibility of giving up alcohol for a short time. Start with two weeks and see if it makes a difference in how it impacts your life. Don't jump on the scale after two weeks and say "I haven't lost any weight this isn't working." Focus on how you feel and if you have more energy and your health is going the right direction.

Look, I'm a person too. I live at Lake Norman where many people's normal life is to live on vacation. My husband often quotes the line from the movie 'Animal House' when Dean Warmer says to Dorfman "Overweight, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life." Well, thin, sober and smart may just not be as much fun all of the time. Ha! There's a lot of social drinking that goes on here but it's not too difficult to be social and still be healthy. If all or most of your friends drink and you'll be a social pariah if you don't imbibe, you can still drink less and not have anyone really notice, especially if they start getting drunk. They're not watching your alcohol consumption all night, just in the beginning.

Some examples of how to appear like you're drinking as much as your friends:

Consume drinks with less alcohol in them. Go for very light beers like Michelob Ultra or Miller Draft 64.

Drink soda water with a lime (they don't know if you're drinking, they just think you are.)

Give up or reduce wine. It's a bottomless glass. I personally did this about a year and a half ago. In situations where I would normally have had a glass of wine, I switched to Michelob Ultra. There's a bottom to a bottle of beer. Wine, not so much. Yes, it appears that wine is more sophisticated and "healthy". It's not. That is a delusion or the CDC would be suggesting people start this habit. They don't. If you haven't developed a drinking habit, don't start is their stance. Nobody says this about exercise. Drinking wine is not that good for you.

What about the argument that Europeans do it and it's good for you? I recently began working with a client from Belgium. She stated that when she moved to the Lake Norman area three years ago she gained weight. She was amazed at the amount of drinking that happens here. She said in Europe she drank wine but the glass was 2 1/2 ounces and was sipped over dinner. Here the glasses are three to four times that size and it's guzzled. That's not the healthy Mediterranean diet moderate drinking prescription. We like excess here in the U.S. We're Americans after all!

If these suggestions seem preposterous to you and there's no way you're giving up alcohol it doesn't mean you can't lose weight, just know it makes it harder. You can always download the app "Get Drunk Not Fat" for additional tips. Calories in, calories out is what ultimately works for weight loss. Caveat: This app is not based upon improving your health. Its only intent is to help you cut calories when you do drink.

So What is "Moderation"?

noreply@blogger.com (Patrea Aeschliman) — Tue, 09 May 2017 15:18:00 +0000

"All things in moderation... even moderation." -Oscar Wilde and Erika Jagger.

Erika Jagger is my college friend, twenties party buddy, international traveler and former personal trainer cohort. She's the first person I remembering hearing say that and I thought it was hilarious. It's funny and cute, just like her. I take it to mean that sometimes you just have to throw your hands up and say what Tom Cruise said in Risky Business.

"Sometime you just have to say what the F-heck." Eat that brownie. Skip your early morning exercise class to lie in bed with your husband. Drink an extra glass of wine with an exceptionally delicious meal. Except sometimes not drinking moderately is neither funny nor cute. We can't say "Sometimes you just have to say 'What the F-heck?!' " all the time.

So what is moderation? Is there a specific definition or is it different for everyone?

The CDC defines moderate drinking as having up to one drink per day for women and up to 2 drinks per day for men. This definition is referring to the amount consumed on any single day and is not intended as an average over several days. However, (tellingly, I add) the Dietary Guidelines DO NOT recommend that individuals who do not drink alcohol should start drinking for any reason.

Take home message, if you don't drink, don't start.

Well, what's a drink?

A standard drink is equal to 14.0 grams (0.6 ounces of pure alcohol. Generally, this amount of pure alcohol is found in:

* 12-ounces of beer (5% alcohol content).

* 8- ounces of malt liquor (7% alcohol content).

* 5-ounces of wine (12% alcohol content).

* 1.5 ounces or a "shot" of 80-proof (40% alcohol content distilled spirits or liquor (gin, rum, vodka, whiskey).

The following information comes from the website www.moderatedrinking.com.

So if you drink more than 9 drinks per week for a woman or 12-14 drinks for a man, that means you are not a moderate drinker, but does that make you an alcoholic? No. Some heavy drinkers who've experienced problems from their drinking can learn how to moderate their drinking. They can maintain moderate drinking for years at a time. Others cannot. So who's more likely to be successful at moderation? Drinkers with a shorter history of problems and less severe problems tend to be more successful with cutting back and maintaining it.

They also have another resource called the Drinker's Check-up that can help you take a good look at your drinking and get objective feedback. Then you can decide whether or not to change.

For Women Heavy Drinking Has Been Normalized. That's Dangerous.

noreply@blogger.com (Patrea Aeschliman) — Mon, 08 May 2017 15:12:00 +0000

After I was mistakenly punched in the face by a football player at Ball State I was forced to spend some time reflecting on my choices. Of course, I was 20 years old but I remember being very offended when my dad suggested that I increased the likelihood of bad things happening by the company I was keeping. I offered up, "You don't understand. It was mistake. He wasn't trying to hit me."

I think my dad's point was that I had put myself in an unsafe position by surrounding myself with a bunch of large, drunk people at that party and many others in the preceding years. Eventually these risks caught up to me. He wasn't blaming the victim per se, just wanting me to realize that if I had chosen not to attend that wild, drunk-fest, things would've been different. Rarely would he ever discuss his drinking and how it impacted his life but this was an eventful discussion and he admitted that he had made bad decisions due to drinking. This probably would have had more of an effect on me if I had been drinking. I wasn't drinking at all that night, so I couldn't understand the concept of being around people that were drinking solely for the point of getting drunk increased the likelihood that bad things could happen to me even if I wasn't drunk myself. Being 20 years old also didn't help me see my responsibility in the matter.

I'm certain being raised by an alcoholic greatly influenced me in the positive as it relates to my own drinking as an adult. This is especially true after I had children. I drink very occasionally. I'll often have one Michelob Ultra with dinner about one or two times per week. I rarely drink more than three beers on a week.

My limited drinking also has to do with owning a fitness business. I feel it is hypocritical of me to be imbibing consistently. That's not to say I've never had one too many since my kids were born. When you drink as little as I do, it doesn't take much. If I have four drinks on one night, that's definitely binge drinking for me. Two is my limit.

Whether you have pondered how your drinking habits have impacted your life or not, there's no denying that women are drinking in greater numbers than ever before. This is no accident. I've summarized an article written by Kimberly Kindy and Dan Keating and published in The Washington Post. It is titled "For women, heavy drinking has been normalized. That's dangerous."

The ads started popping up about a decade ago on social media. Instead of selling alcohol with sex and romance, these ads had an edgier theme: Harried mothers chugging wine to cope with everyday stress. Women embracing quart-sized bottles of whiskey, and bellying up to bars to knock back vodka shots with men. For women, heavy drinking has been normalized. That's dangerous. Instead of being embarrassing, women being drunk is portrayed as funny in marketing, movies and television.

In this new strain of advertising, women's liberation equaled heavy drinking, and alcohol researchers say it both heralded and promoted a profound cultural shift: women in America are drinking far more, and far more frequently, than their mothers or grandmother did, and alcohol consumption is killing them in record numbers.

The percentage of women who binge drink increased 40% among white women from 1997 to 2013, 10% for Hispanic women and -10% for black women. Since 1999, this increase has caused a 130% change in alcohol-related deaths for white women and 27% for Hispanic women. On a positive note, alcohol related deaths for black women have decreased 12%.

The alcohol industry and some government agencies continue to promote the idea that moderate drinking provides some health benefits. But new research is beginning to call even that long-standing claim into question.

Drinking an excess of alcohol among other things is linked with…cancer.

What?! I guess I just thought the risks of drinking to excess "occasionally" were getting hurt falling down or being embarrassed. I thought liver disease was for people that "were really bad alcoholics." I never considered that binge drinking increases ones risk for cancer.

There is "strong evidence" that alcohol causes seven cancers, and other evidence indicated that it "probably" causes more, according to a literature review published online in Addiction.

Epidemiological evidence supports a causal association of alcohol consumption and cancers of the oropharynx, larynx, esophagus, liver, colon, rectum, and female breast.

As a silly, college student, my drinking had consequences then. As a grown woman in the fitness and wellness field, I do my best to limit drinking to excess. Sometimes I have to admit that I fail. Not wanting to be hypocritical, my only wish is that my clients, friends and family ponder the impact that drinking is having on their health, life and happiness.

Radishes and Cookies

noreply@blogger.com (Patrea Aeschliman) — Tue, 28 Mar 2017 15:50:00 +0000

You're NOT LAZY, You’re EXHAUSTED!

Your brain isn’t of one mind. It is made up of two parts: the emotional & the rational. The emotional part of the mind is instinctive, the side that feels. The rational part of the mind is reflective, the side that thinks.

One analogy, among many, which portrays these two varying parts of the mind is Jonathan Haidt’s “the Rider & the Elephant”. The “Elephant” is representative of the emotional side of the mind and the “Rider”, the rational side of the mind. In short, this analogy works to portray how the two sides of the mind interact with one another, with the Elephant consistently moving in the direction it so pleases, while the Rider works to keep the Elephant on track.

The Elephant (the emotional side) more often than not can be described as the side of the mind that wants quick pay-off with only short-term sacrifice. It wants instant gratification, and in a lot of cases it can be mistakenly characterized as lazy (Heath 7 & 8).

Consider the following study as an example of this mistake in characterization.

A group of college students some time ago were asked to participate in a study. It was a “food perception” study, unbenounced to them. One request was made of them: Fast for AT LEAST 3 hours to ensure you come to the lab with an appetite. Upon arrival, the students were then split into two groups. One group was asked to eat a plate of cookies, and the other group a bowl of radishes. The groups were not allowed to eat the latter. The group who was asked to eat ONLY the radishes, despite their temptation, triumphed the challenging task. All of the participators, in fact, displayed perfect self-control and followed the directions given to them, eating only what they were told they could indulge in. Next, the students were presented with various puzzles to solve. Little did they know, the puzzles were impossible to solve. The researchers wanted to see how long the two groups of students would persist in a difficult task before they finally gave up. Here’s what they found. Interestingly enough, the group of college students who ate the radishes were less persistent. They gave up on the puzzles in half the time as the group who ate the cookies (Heath, 9).

Why? Were the radish-eaters lazier than the cookie-eaters? No, they were just more tired out!

The radish-eaters ran out of self-control more quickly than the cookie-eaters because their task in resisting the cookies, minutes earlier, proved much more challenging than resisting the radishes! (Super surprising right, because radishes are irresistible? Yeah right!)

“Self-control is an EXHAUSTIBLE resource. The radish-eaters had drained their self-control by resisting the cookies, so when their Elephants (their emotions), inevitably started complaining about the puzzle task, their Riders (their minds) didn’t have enough strength to yank the reins to continue on in the puzzle. The cookie-eaters, on the other hand, had a fresh, untaxed Rider, who fought off the Elephant for double the time (Heath, 10).”

Often times, the perception of failure in change is often attributed to laziness. However, the purpose of the case study above is to show, more often than not, your shortcoming isn’t due to laziness. In reality, your Elephant is actually EXHAUSTED.

Exercising self-control requires working mental muscles. The bigger the change, the more one tires out. Believe it or not, self-control in all aspects of the word, takes a toll on a person. Practicing self-control creates fatigue and eventually people run out of gas. Self-control is bigger than just the “willpower to fight off vices”. Self-control is any part of the day in which you must “supervise” yourself, even if it’s as simple as eating radishes instead of cookies. Supervising yourself could be when you have to watch what you say, or complete a task that you don’t understand (Heath, 10). Regardless of what it’s pertaining to, every type of self-control is draining. Luckily for us, a lot of our daily life is “unsupervised activity”. We live a majority of our days on automatic (Heath, 11).

We create habits throughout the course of life and those habits become the norm and eventually, when we decide to make a change, it is incredibly challenging, because we no longer can put on cruise when we get up in the morning. No, instead we have to start supervising ourselves.

“So the next time you hear someone say change is hard because people are lazy or resistant, remind them that actually change is hard because people wear themselves out. In many cases, laziness is actually exhaustion (Heath, 12).”

Watermelon Bust

noreply@blogger.com (Patrea Aeschliman) — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 00:40:00 +0000

I don’t know if Ball State still has this, but back when I was a college student, we had something called, “Watermelon Bust Weekend.” Every college has their big party weekend and Watermelon Bust was ours. The origin of the tradition is lost in the haze of a decades-long ritual of inebriated frenzy, so I never knew what it meant other than a lot of drinking. Essentially, you gather a bunch of 18 to 21 year olds, get them drunk, then give them watermelons, and see what happens. They would lay out these giant pallets of watermelons and you were meant to do relay races with them. One of those races you carried the watermelon between your knees. Then there was the watermelon toss, so the watermelons would fall to the ground and bust open all over you. You would wrestle watermelons out of people’s hands and end up wrestling in the ground, which was muddy more often than not. Finally, there was a tug of war. It was such a big deal that kids from Indiana University and Purdue came up to Muncie to partake in Watermelon Bust. One year, I went with my friend Phil and his friend Jason, who came up from Indiana University. We pre-gamed and got completely filthy during the day’s events. My teammates and I entered the tug-of-war, thinking we were so strong that we could beat the field. Boy, did we learn the hard way right into a pile of mud. Yes, pound for pound we were strong but just having weight matters in an event like Tug-of-war and my 110 pound or less teammates didn't qualify. We were very overconfident, uh...until we weren't.

I lived in the honors dorms because I was attending Ball State on both an athletic and an academic scholarship. The academic scholarship was actually greater than my athletic scholarship and paid for all of my out-of-state tuition. That year, my roommate was one of those people that was never around. She was a nice enough girl, but she was gone every weekend to visit her boyfriend back home, who she was dead set on marrying. She was from John Cougar Mellencamp’s home town of Seymour, Indiana. I think her sister even dated John Mellencamp. Most weekends, my dorm was empty. I lived in the Nerd dorm. It was quiet and a good place to study but definitely not party central. It had been a chilly and drizzly fall day, so Phil, Jason, and I were covered in mud and watermelon. We went to my dorm with the intended purpose to shower and get cleaned up. We went to the women’s communal bathroom and got into the showers. It wasn’t salacious at all, we kept our dirty clothes on, but it seemed perfectly logical in our inebriated state to shower fully clothed in order to get clean. The moment the water spurted out of the shower head, the mud and watermelon bits flung all over the bathroom. We were giggling and trying to wash off when one of the girls on my floor walked in wearing her fluffy blue terrycloth bathrobe, carrying her shower bucket with a smile on her face and then she saw us. Her smile vanished, she gave us a dirty look, rolled her eyes and harrumphed away as if she were Princess Diana. She immediately walked out of there and reported us. Sure enough, my RA came in and yelled, "What do you think you are doing?" That was a fair question. There was mud everywhere! She was super mad but of course we thought it was hysterical. She yelled at me to get rid of Phil and Jason then clean up the bathroom. The guys left me there as I was trying to wipe up the mess soaking wet. One of my friends from the honors dorm was there and decided she would try to help me out. She got some mops and we mopped up the whole mess up as best we could.

Phil had this gigantic station wagon, like Clark Griswold-style, and it even had wood grain on the side. He used to say that he could fit 16 people and six kegs in it. It was so outdated it must have been from the 70’s. I used to ride on the hood of the car. I would do this completely sober, just something to do to get some fun going. I would grab onto the hood of some car and hold on. My sister and I used to do it all the time in Iowa because what else are you going to do there? We started out on the little compact cars that we had. We went to parking lots and tried to hold on while the other would try and spin you off. So I did that on Phil’s big station wagon, the Family Truckster, as he called it. If we were cruising around and there was nothing else to do, my friends would shout out, “Hey Patty! Go on and get on the front!” It didn’t take much to get me to do it. So we would drive down the main drag at Ball State, coming back from the library, and I’d climb on the hood of the Family Truckster just for the hell of it.

The gymnastics team mainly partied with the football players when we weren’t hopping fences to get into bars. Each sports team had their own house at Ball State, and we often went to the football house to party. They were fun, but they were always out of control. Without fail, a fight would break out at each party. On the last night of the school year my junior year, there was a particularly raucous party going on at the football house. A lot of people were already gone, but the rest of us were whooping it up. My friend Robin and I were planning on driving to Kentucky the following morning to see the Kentucky Derby and stay at her parent's house outside of Louisville for the night. I was so excited to get out town and go to the Derby that I didn’t even drink that night. It wasn’t like I spent the entire four years of college drunk. Since high school, I knew when I could go out and party and when I needed sleep and study. In theory, Ball State was supposed to be a dry campus, but no one stuck to that. My teammates and I would mostly party in the fall before gymnastics season started and once winter rolled around, we would straighten up. There was a pact between us that we would not drink from January through March. We went to the same number of partiers, but we just wouldn’t drink. However, we would make up for it the rest of the year.

So, it was the last night of school that year and I was standing on the porch of the football house and I wanted to go into the house and use the bathroom. The guys on the inside of the house had locked the door and Paul, the 6’ 4,” 250 pound football player was standing directly behind it. I started pounding on the door to get Paul to let me in. There was a small, decorative window that I stuck my face up to see who was inside. I saw Paul tapping on the glass, taunting me. Then, his fist came through the glass into my face, and with it, a million shards of glass. I felt the pieces near my eye and shut it in case glass had gotten in. In the middle of the night before the Kentucky Derby, my teammate and best friend Robin drove me down to Ball Memorial Hospital to get my eye checked out. Robin loved listening to music from the 1960s. Her speakers were blaring and I was splayed in the passenger seat with my hand over my eye trying to keep it closed, begging her to change the station, at least this once for my sake. If I was going to be blind in one at least she'd let me listen to the dance music I loved on the way to the hospital. I didn’t have glass in my eye, but I did have a black eye for a few weeks. We didn’t end up going to the Kentucky Derby.

After that, we curtailed it with those guys. They were just wild. They were drunk and many of them had problems with it. I remember I was taunting one of the players for his hair being long, messing around with them like I would my brother, and he warned me that if I kept at it, he was going to slam me against a wall. So of course, I kept making fun of him and sure enough, the next moment, I was against the wall with a finger in my face. I think he was getting ready to punch me when my friend John peeled him off of me. It probably wasn't the best move on my part taunting a drunken, giant football player. His move was still inexcusable.

A few months later, I saw John, the guy that rescued me, holding my tiny 5'2" 100 pound friend Wendy up against a fence and another guy had to pull him off of her the same way. Some of those guys were just violent and bad news. I had a few friends on the team, like our friends Zork and Mike, but it wasn’t worth the risk of hanging out with the rest of the team. We decided we needed a safer environment.

A College Bar Called "The Chug"... What Could Go Wrong?

noreply@blogger.com (Patrea Aeschliman) — Fri, 17 Feb 2017 15:34:00 +0000

College was great, and I think it was greater for me for one specific reason. I'd really never been anywhere else. I grew up pretty sheltered and other than a trip to Florida once, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana once to visit Ball State’s campus, that was it. I often say, if you grow up in Iowa, anywhere you go after that is fun. So, for me, Ball State was the most exciting and diverse place I had ever been. There were people from all over the country there. I was friends with people from New Jersey and Wisconsin and California. It’s hard to make a college experience unique because, for the most part, it’s teenagers doing dumb stuff while drunk. And while I talk about partying a lot, I remember getting very offended when people acted surprised to see me in the library. I was in the library all the time, but I hid out on the top floor because they’d make a party even in the library. It was just as social of a place as the dining hall. There used to be these solid wood cubicles that were meant to divide the desks for a greater sense of privacy. We'd take some breaks from studying, and we'd get up and do flips while holding onto the sides. I could do a pretty good gainer layout step out holding onto these cubicles. My best friend Robin and our football playing giant friend Steve used to do the moves from Dirty Dancing. Robin would run into his arms and jump while he held onto her hips and it was a vision straight from the movie poster. And this was when we were supposed to be studying in the library.

Needless to say, we were pretty crazy. I was probably not unlike every other college student, except that I was an athlete, and more specifically, a gymnast, which came in handy when I was trying to get into bars before I turned 21. Butterfields was one of the bars in town and on Thursday nights in the spring, everyone flocked to Butterfields and danced all night long. There were other bars closer to campus, like the Chug, but Butterfields was somewhat nicer and drew in the juniors and seniors. The Chug was basically a glorified dungeon. The floor was just concrete and the toilets were always flooding. There was always a layer of fluid on the floor that was either wet or in the stages of drying, so it was sticky. We just assumed it was a whole lot of spilled beer. Years later, when my friend Zork, the football player, got married, we were all together again reminiscing and I found out that that layer of fluid I thought was beer was actually pee. The football players used to bet each other who could pee under the bar next without getting caught. The entire time, I mean for four years, we thought we were sloshing around in spilled beer and liquor, but we were wading in spilled beer, liquor and the football players’ urine.

Rather than get trapped in the Chug, we went to Butterfields. We couldn’t get in the legitimate way, however, for our first few years of school, but we wanted to go dancing. Butterfields had a patio in the back that was open during the spring time and it had a large wooden fence around the perimeter. Since I didn’t have a fake ID and I seldom borrowed one from an older friend or a friend’s older sister, we scaled the fences. Butterfields was further from campus, so we’d drive there together, all dolled up with our 80’s hair and miniskirts, and walk to the back of the bar. Since I was much taller than all of my gymnastics teammates, I didn’t have much trouble grabbing on to the top of the fence and hoisting myself up. That was perhaps one of the immediate and useful real world applications for gymnastics. Getting over in my miniskirt was more challenging, but because I could hold up my own body weight, I could keep my knees together as I brought one leg onto the fence at a time. I sat there, perched like a supermodel, until someone came over and readied themselves to catch me on my descent. I never got in trouble.

The fun would commence with the scaling of the fence. From there, it was on! We would dance, dance and dance. Yes, we partied a lot and drank to excess often but that's not what made the fun. Partying to us was if there was a lot of dancing happening and people getting crazy. We didn't always drink to make this happen. Sometimes we would justify that we had to drink because our bodies were in so much pain from gymnastics we'd only be able to dance all night if we were a little numb from drinking. However, during season we stayed completely sober. People just thought we were drunk because we were so uninhibited. In general, gymnasts can really dance. It's a huge component of the sport. When we could go out and get an amazing cardio workout all the while, having a raucous time, we were in! It wasn’t like Butterfields was the greatest club in the world, not by a long shot. But at the time, we didn't really know any better. All we needed to have a good time was a DJ that would play the music we loved, a few fun people in the crowd and each other.

In those days, at least at Ball State it wasn't like getting caught underage drinking resulted in severe discipline. That’s the main reason I never tried pot. We didn’t get tested in gymnastics, but I never felt that pot would be worth losing my scholarships over if I ever got caught. So I just drank.

I recently attended a presentation on alcohol at the National Strength and Conditioning Association's Strength Coaches conference. Interestingly, all the data points to the fact that college athletes drink more than non-athletes. It is just considered part of the culture. Add to the fact that those that binge drink in college are more likely to have problems with alcohol later in life as well, drinking to excess isn't a great idea no matter your age. More on that next week...

Texas, Waffle House and a Navy Seal

noreply@blogger.com (Patrea Aeschliman) — Mon, 02 Jan 2017 21:55:00 +0000

(This post picks up after our October 21 blog post.)

During my sophomore year at Ball State, I became friends with a Navy Seal when he was an assistant volunteer coach. I was 19 and he was 32. We had been good friends throughout the year and I fell in love with him that spring. He was graduating and had an internship in Dallas, Texas. I wanted to travel with him and try to make this relationship work out. Fortuitously, I had a friend from high school who was living in Fort Worth, Texas and he invited me to stay with him for a few weeks. I left Indiana with $30.00 in cash and a $42.00 check from the Waffle House where I worked. I quit my job there, but I was too embarrassed to go back, so I had the Navy Seal return my uniform for me. Many years later, I relayed this story to one of my Pilates instructors. I'll never forget her dead panned face as she sarcastically said, "So you were scared and it took the Navy Seals for you to return your Waffle House uniform?" She then fell to her knees on the floor with laughter.

Ahh, the Waffle House.

I rocked that uniform.

None of the patrons at my Waffle House looked like this...

At the time though, I ultimately wanted to keep tabs on my Navy Seal, who had just broken up with his girlfriend. I didn’t want them to get back together. However, this was the logic I used at the time to rationalize the trip to myself: I was 19, and in Indiana, you had to be 21 to serve alcohol, so I couldn’t work in any of the upscale restaurants like Chi-Chi’s. Yes, upscale restaurants like Chi-Chi's. Since I didn’t want to go back to Clinton, I figured that I could work in Texas, where I could legally serve alcohol and therefore make more money as a waitress at a good restaurant. That was the excuse I used while I followed the Navy Seal to Texas. Within two days of arriving, I got a job at Red Lobster. But in addition to all that, I had never lived anywhere else and I was just excited to get out and go somewhere. There was no planning, clearly, as I only had $72.00 in my pocket when I left. I never told my parents that I went, though. I knew that if I told them, they would have flipped out and forbidden me to go. I decided it was better to ask for forgiveness after the fact than it was to ask for permission. I was down in Texas for about six of the ten week total. My high school friend that rented the apartment went back to Clinton for the Fourth of July, and I believe he told a few people I was staying with him. It’s a small town, so I’m sure my mother heard of the rumor. Shortly after he came back from Iowa, my mom and I had an interesting conversation. I could tell by what she was saying she knew I wasn't in Muncie anymore. I finally confessed, because I was obviously caught. She didn't completely flip out but they no longer gave me any spending money the rest of my college career.

The friend I was staying with didn’t really have a place for me to sleep. There was the bedroom that he and his girlfriend shared and then there was a bunk bed that was just the bed frame and springs. So I slept on the floor or on the couch for the entire time I was there. The Navy Seal and his friend Herman had made fun of me for leaving Indiana with only 72 bucks, but the apartment they were meant to be staying in turned out to be a real dump. There were feral cats everywhere as well as roaches. It was in such disrepair that he had to leave and for a time, he had no place to stay. I felt bad for them but a little vindicated for myself. Navy Seal and Herman hassled and teased me relentlessly the entire trip from Indiana to Texas that I'd be sleeping in a slum and be homeless. Although I slept between a couch and a floor, I was staying in an otherwise very nice apartment with a pool and a beach volleyball court. They told me then that I was staying in the Taj Mahal compared to what they had. Eventually, my Navy Seal moved back in with his girlfriend without saying anything. He came over once to my place by himself and the second time he visited me, he brought his ex-girlfriend and Herman and a bunch of his other friends with him. That’s when he told me things were over between us and that he was going back to his ex. What was worse, he came to the apartment with her in tow and she didn’t know that we had been together.

I was upset of course, but I don’t remember sitting around and moping over him. I’m sure he cared for me, but I suspect his plan was to spend time with me and if things worked out with his ex in Dallas, then he could just go back to her. If things had not worked out, he still had me. I was there for 10 weeks and it was over by the third. You have to laugh about it or otherwise you’d cry.

Having grown up in Clinton, Iowa and gone to college in Muncie, Indiana, being in Fort Worth was a big city for me. I’m sure I was devastated at the time, but I sprang back with a 19 year- old's desire to have fun. The people that worked at that Red Lobster with me were from all over the place. There was a Mormon from Utah, a guy from Kansas and a Muslim from Egypt. It sounds like a bad joke, but we all hung out and had a great time. So I might have lost the Navy Seal, but I wasn’t too heartbroken about it. I got to live in Texas for ten weeks. Living successfully in Texas, in other words, getting a job within two days, making friends and having a good time was a wonderful confidence booster. It was a very risky proposition and it all worked out for me. It reduced my fear of the unknown and helped me to realize that I was capable of pulling off things many people, especially my parents, would deem dangerous and crazy. Plus I got to stay in a Taj Mahal apartment. Ha!

Kimberly Sheheen- January Star of the Month

noreply@blogger.com (Patrea Aeschliman) — Sat, 17 Dec 2016 17:01:00 +0000

How long have you been taking Pilates?

I was familiar with Pilates and had taken classes in the past. I started with 15 to Fit in March 2015.

What do you like about 15 to Fit?

I like that 15 to Fit offers a variety of levels, classes and incorporates new exercises into the routine on a regular basis.

Has your body changed since beginning Pilates?

My body has definitely changed since beginning Pilates.

What have you done to achieve these results?

To achieve my results, I have committed to going consistently. It has just become a part of my schedule.

What has 15 to Fit done to help you?

I play tennis as much as possible which can be very hard on your body. When I started at 15 to Fit, I had planter fasciitis in both of my feet. Since staring, I no longer have plantar fasciitis and I feel much stronger and more balanced.

What would you say to someone who has a hard time sticking to an exercise routine?

I would tell anyone that is having a difficult time sticking to an exercise routine that it's important to make time for yourself. It's as easy to schedule a work out as it is any other appointments. When you start seeing results and make working out a part of your lifestyle, you won't want to miss it.

Sadie Roberts- Doughten- February Star of the Month

noreply@blogger.com (Patrea Aeschliman) — Sat, 17 Dec 2016 17:01:00 +0000

How long have you been taking Pilates?

I have been at 15 to Fit since August, and I did some Pilates about six or seven years ago.

What do you like about 15 to Fit?

I like that the exercises change and it’s not the same thing over and over. I also like the instructors.

Has your body changed since beginning Pilates?

Yes, my strength and flexibility have definitely improved. That is very important to me since I teach dance. When I started Pilates, I had planter fasciitis. However, since I began doing Pilates, that went away. I also sleep much better!

What have you done to achieve these results?

I consistently take class three to four times per week. I also do some Pilates at home, and I’m being much more conscious of my diet.

What has 15 to Fit done to help you?

The instructors at 15 to Fit help me stay motivated and have encouraged me when I’m struggling. The instructors also make it fun, and that makes getting to class much easier.

What would you say to someone who has a hard time sticking to an exercise routine?

I would tell them to try Pilates. I’ve found that the reason many people find it hard to stick to an exercise routine is because they get bored. At 15 to Fit, it isn’t boring, and they make it easy to modify exercises. I’d also say pace yourself, and just stick with it. You’ll begin to see change within a month.

T.J. Singla- April Star of the Month

noreply@blogger.com (Patrea Aeschliman) — Fri, 16 Dec 2016 16:57:00 +0000

How long have you been taking Pilates?

I began taking Pilates in October of last year, but I became more consistent after the first of this year.

What do you like about 15 to Fit?

I feel like I really connect to Pilates. I love the instructors at 15 to Fit and feel like part of the community. It is different every time, and I feel like I get a full body workout. Honestly, though, I really just really enjoy the exercise itself.

How has your body changed since beginning Pilates?

I see and feel strength improvements. I have muscle tone where I’ve never had muscle tone before. I’m stronger in my core and just stronger overall. I can tell that I’ve lost some inches, but to me that is less exciting than feeling stronger.

What have you done to achieve these results?

First, I took privates to make sure I liked it and understood the machines. Now, I make sure I come to class 2-3 times per week. I also met another classmate and now I feel like I have an accountability partner. I’m committed now, and my body feels bad when I don’t go!

What has 15 to Fit done to help you?

The instructors have helped me feel more confident. I like that it is a small studio and it’s easy to get to know other clients.

You went through a period where you stopped coming for a few months, but now you are back with a vengeance! What motivated you to come back?

I think I just realized that I will always be a busy working mom with four kids, so I could make a decision to either take control or just be lazy. I made the decision to take a personal interest in taking care of myself so I can also take care of my family. I’ve become personally invested in my own fitness. I physically feel bad when I don’t go to Pilates, so now I’m committed.

What would you say to someone who has a hard time sticking to an exercise routine?

I would share my specific results with them like the muscle tone in my arms. Even my kids are noticing it! I’d also encourage them to stick with it long enough to feel confident. Give it at least a month and see how your body reacts. Realize that you may be uncomfortable for a while, but you will see results!

Jennifer McGraw- May Star of the Month

noreply@blogger.com (Patrea Aeschliman) — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 16:56:00 +0000

How long have you been taking Pilates?

I started one year ago. I only did three months at first then I stopped. Then in December, I started back consistently.

What do you like about 15 to Fit?

I like that I get individualized attention while still in a class environment.

How has your body changed since beginning Pilates?

I’ve become really strong overall, but especially in my core. I feel like if your core isn’t strong, then the rest of your body doesn’t seem to follow. At this point in my life, it’s not simply appearance that is important to me. I want to be happy and healthy.

What have you done to achieve these results?

I come to class without fail at least three times per week.

What has 15 to Fit done to help you?

I am now 34, and I had been exercising in a big box gym since I was about 16 or 17 years old. When I decided to branch out and try Pilates to mix things up, that was a big change for me. Once I went away from the big gym and came to the smaller studio at 15 to Fit, I found that I was able to get a better quality full-body workout. The instructors have also been able to modify exercises for me, as needed.

You went through a period where you stopped coming for a few months, but now you are back with a vengeance! What motivated you to come back?

I realized that as you get older, it’s not as easy to change your body. I had been working hard initially and nothing was happening. Then I realized that I wasn’t making the necessary changes at home with food and in my daily lifestyle. Back in December, I met with a nutritionist who showed me what I was eating versus what I should be eating. This made me reevaluate my eating habits, and I began telling myself “NO” when it came to certain foods. It took about two months to get on the right path with my eating habits, and then I was able to reengage with Pilates.

What would you say to someone who has a hard time sticking to an exercise routine?

I’d tell them that I’ve been there myself. I wasn’t seeing changes in those first few months, and I got discouraged. You just have to stick with it. We live in a world of instant gratification, and body changes don’t happen overnight. If you’re doing all the right things and being consistent, just be patient and your hard work will pay off!

Tina Grella- June Star of the Month

noreply@blogger.com (Patrea Aeschliman) — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 16:53:00 +0000

How long have you been taking Pilates?

I started back in January of this year.

What do you like about 15 to Fit?

I love the instructors! The classes are small, so you can get one-on-one instruction. The instructors focus on proper form so you don’t get injured. I also love that it is a close-knit community.

You were already fit and active when you began coming to 15 to Fit. So what made you choose Pilates?

I was having knee issues and wanted to do a full-body workout that was low impact. I have a friend that has a reformer, and she said I had to try it.

How has your body changed since beginning Pilates?

I’ve definitely become stronger and leaner. I have more core strength. Also, I don’t wake up feeling sore in the mornings. However, I do also believe that diet plays a huge part in that, too.

What have you done to achieve these results?

I come to class quite often- typically five days a week. At first, I was only coming about two times per week, but I decided I wanted to do even more.

What has 15 to Fit done to help you?

They help me get in a great workout routine and really hold me accountable.

What would you say to someone who has a hard time sticking to an exercise routine?

I’d say if you’re really serious about your goals, put your all into it and make it happen. Stop wasting your time and money. Find a way to get over your obstacles and do it!

Alice Carpenter- July Star of the Month

noreply@blogger.com (Patrea Aeschliman) — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 16:52:00 +0000

How long have you been taking Pilates?

I have been at 15 to Fit for six months. Before that, I did Pilates for five years.

What do you like about 15 to Fit?

I love the atmosphere. It’s very comfortable and friendly. It feels like I’m going to visit my neighbor rather than going to a gym.

How has your body changed since beginning Pilates?

I’m much more flexible and don’t have the stiffness with aches and pains like I used to.

What have you done to achieve these results?

I come to classes and I do private sessions. I also do some of the exercises at home.

What has 15 to Fit done to help you?

I am able to move better and much more fluidly.

What would you say to someone who has a hard time sticking to an exercise routine?

I’d say that this is the only exercise that I have done for more than a year. With Pilates, you can do cardio, stretching, toning and even heal your body through the exercises. It’s just the greatest exercise without the pounding and abuse to your body.

Kelvin Montague- August Star of the Month

noreply@blogger.com (Patrea Aeschliman) — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 16:50:00 +0000

How long have you been taking Pilates?

I have been doing Pilates for almost a year.

What do you like about 15 to Fit?

I like the people and the instructors. The instructors are very encouraging and are always trying to get you to the next level.

How has your body changed since beginning Pilates?

When I started, I wanted to increase my flexibility and decrease some pains I was having. I have accomplished both.

What have you done to achieve these results?

I come to classes and consistently and enjoy the variety of classes.

What has 15 to Fit done to help you?

It has given me a place where I can work hard in a non-traditional environment, particularly since I’m a guy. I appreciate not having to be in a traditional gym. 15 to Fit has given me a place where I can challenge my body in different ways and focus on small, controlled movements.

Being that you live in Huntersville and work in Charlotte, why do you choose to drive to Mooresville to workout with us at 15 to Fit?

I did my research and was impressed with Patrea’s background and experience. I thought she could help me look at my workouts from a different perspective.

What would you say to someone who has a hard time sticking to an exercise routine?

Make it a priority. Get into class and be persistent.

Karen Tynan- September Star of the Month

noreply@blogger.com (Patrea Aeschliman) — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 16:48:00 +0000

How long have you been taking Pilates?

I have been taking Pilates for 10 months. I take one private and 1-2 classes a week.

What do you like about 15 to Fit?

I love the atmosphere of the 15TOFIT studio. Kimmy and Patrea are so friendly and fun to workout with. They are fantastic trainers and highly qualified at what they do. They challenge me in every class!

How has your body changed since beginning Pilates?

My body has become so much stronger all over and much more toned. The workouts target all areas, it's amazing to do this in just 50 minutes!'

What have you done to achieve these results?

Fitness is a priority to me. I thought I was in very good shape and very strong, 15TOFIT has challenged me, bringing me to higher level of fitness.

What has 15 to Fit done to help you?

I was also getting hurt in many of my exercise classes before starting at 15TOFIT. I started at a beginning level and Kimmy increased the difficulty and still continues to do so as I get stronger.

What would you say to someone who has a hard time sticking to an exercise routine?

I tell many people who are trying to stick to a exercise routine to give 15TOFIT a try. They have many classes at many different times and can cater to all fitness levels!!

Sheri Singsaas- October Star of the Month

noreply@blogger.com (Patrea Aeschliman) — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 16:46:00 +0000

How long have you been taking Pilates?

I have been taking Pilates for 1.5 years.

What do you like about 15 to Fit?

I love the instructors and the classes.

How has your body changed since beginning Pilates?

I had hip and back issues, and I don’t have that anymore. I make Pilates a priority. I’m a flight attendant and fly over 100 hours each month, but I make sure to work my schedule around my Pilates classes!

What have you done to achieve these results?

I come to Pilates 2-3 times each week.

What has 15 to Fit done to help you?

It has increased my core strength and overall strength.

What would you say to someone who has a hard time sticking to an exercise routine?

I’d say the benefits far outweigh not sticking to an exercise routine! As you get older, it is so important to be strong and flexible. Your body is the only vehicle you have to get you through life, so it is important to stay healthy!

Amy Gay- March Star of the Month

noreply@blogger.com (Patrea Aeschliman) — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 16:59:00 +0000

How long have you been taking Pilates?

I have been at 15 to Fit for about a year. I did try it several years ago at a different location, but I was never consistent.

What do you like about 15 to Fit?

Everything. I love the studio and the instructors.

Has your body changed since beginning Pilates?

Yes! I’ve become stronger, have better muscle definition and feel leaner. I also fit into my clothes better!

What have you done to achieve these results?

I come consistently. Patrea made it fun, so it’s easy to come to my classes and private sessions.

What has 15 to Fit done to help you?

It has given me better discipline about managing my time and making fitness a priority. Previously, I had been getting injured from tennis and needed something to work out. They have helped me make goals and keep them. I’ve also gained confidence!

What would you say to someone who has a hard time sticking to an exercise routine?

I would say to find something you enjoy doing that keeps you engaged or you won’t stick to it!

Garrett Reese- November 2016 Star of the Month

noreply@blogger.com (Patrea Aeschliman) — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 16:44:00 +0000

How long have you been taking Pilates?

I have been taking Pilates since July 18.

What do you like about 15 to Fit?

I like the trainers and the personalized attention. They also focus on attention to detail and are very particular on form. I enjoy them being picky because I know I’m getting a better workout.

How has your body changed since beginning Pilates?

My posture is better, my shoulder injury has been rehabilitated, my whole body is stronger and I am more flexible.

What have you done to achieve these results?

I have been consistently working out two times per week. I actually haven’t missed coming two times per week since I began. I also use the My Fitness Pal app and track my food. I’d honestly say my results are 75% nutrition related and 25% exercise. The nutrition piece is so important!

What has 15 to Fit done to help you?

Well, first they had me download the My Fitness Pal app. I had never heard of it before. In addition, they give me a full body workout and now I am in much better overall health with a strong core.

What would you say to someone who has a hard time sticking to an exercise routine?

Get over it! You just have to do it. I’m not going to sugar coat it!

What makes you exercise when you don’t feel like it or make healthy food choices when you don’t want to?

Goal setting. I just have a vision of where I want to be and I want to meet my goals.

Kara Payton- December 2016 Star of the Month

noreply@blogger.com (Patrea Aeschliman) — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 16:41:00 +0000

How long have you been taking Pilates?

I have been taking Pilates for about six months.

What do you like about 15 to Fit?

The exercise feels good and the people are nice.

How has your body changed since beginning Pilates?

We did my measurements recently, and I had lost a few inches everywhere! I have also lost eight pounds and I can tell I have a flatter stomach.

What have you done to achieve these results?

I come to class twice a week, and I do one private each month. I have also been logging my food and have reduced my calorie intake since September, and that has really helped.

What has 15 to Fit done to help you?

Besides the weight and inches lost, it has given me more flexibility and mobility. I felt like I was becoming really stiff.

What would you say to someone who has a hard time sticking to an exercise routine?

Stick to it, and be consistent. It may take a few months, but you will see results if you just stay the course.

Overcoming Emotional Eating

noreply@blogger.com (Patrea Aeschliman) — Mon, 05 Dec 2016 18:36:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Patrea Aeschliman) — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 14:15:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Patrea Aeschliman) — Fri, 21 Oct 2016 11:32:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Patrea Aeschliman) — Tue, 04 Oct 2016 16:16:00 +0000

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.