From Jessica got fat to Baby got Banff...

Jessica got Fat

That probably reads as a really inflammatory title, right? Jessica got fat kind of flies in the face of what a lot of people perceive to be the message in the body acceptance movements- that fat and weight are irrelevant. Please know that I love everyone regardless of their size, there are many women who live abundantly with a fuller figure than I have presently. But for me, being fat was actually the greatest disservice I could do to a society that wants to celebrate body love because my body was not the product of love and acceptance. My body was the product of emotional eating, coping with a then undiagnosed mental illness and trying desperately to disappear into the background of my life. I was killing myself with food rather than dealing with the hard in my life. But before I go into how I went from Jessica got fat to Baby got Banff I want to take you back a few years more.



I met my husband in early 2009- he was hot, I was 18 and 140lbs, life was easy and comfortable. Comfortable turned into moving into our first apartment in Midnapore which turned into 15 or 20lbs pretty fast. I didn't think much of it at the time because of the social script we are fed that 'happy relationship = weight gain' and as a university student most of my friends had put on a bit anyway. But then university gave way to a corporate job (and corporate stress) and the scale swung up again. Ben's brother Ed tragically took his own life- upswing. By the time we got married in 2011 I was firmly into the obese category. I remember receiving the photos from our photographer after the fact and being mortified by 90% of them. To this day the majority of them haven't been seen by anyone but me.



Ten months to the day of our wedding we had our first daughter Emma, then our middle girl Kate fifteen months after that and our third and final tornado child Mia eighteen months after Kate. Between the sheer dietary abuse I had wrought on my body and three babies in three years I was at a top weight somewhere in the 250's (I couldn't face the scale at that point so I don't have an exact number), I was hypertensive in my 20's and my OCD, which had gone untreated my entire life, was at new heights. My life was the sea and I was drowning in it- the saddest part of this is that at the time I couldn't even see it.



But in December of 2015 I couldn't avoid seeing it anymore. Being postpartum had some of my OCD behaviours more pronounced than they would usually be and I was noticing all manner of strangeness in myself, not the least of which being that I couldn't bring myself to put linen away in my hall closet. If you're thinking to yourself, Does this woman have an aversion to closets? Or sheets? No, my neuroses was not to those heights. One day I realized the reason I couldn't do it was because my closets are mirrored. I hated myself so entirely that the thought that I could catch a glimpse of myself opening the closet door had rendered me non-functional in my life. I had allowed my weight to rob me of my self-worth. And that's when I woke up.

Will the Well Formulated Ketogenic Dieters Please Stand Up?

My entire life to this point had just been steadily gaining out of control with no active attempt to stop it. So in February of 2016, after having done about a month of research on ketogenic lifestyles, I decided to dive into the very first diet I had ever attempted. Let me assure you out the gate that I was not an immediate success. In all my research I had eye rolled my way past electrolytic supplementation, which is necessary as ketosis has a diuretic effect and your kidneys flush sodium and magnesium in droves, and regretted this massively a few days in when I came into what is known in the community as "keto flu" or in my memory as "I'm really an idiot sometimes". I was not amazing at weighing and tracking accurately at first. I did a ridiculously high load of HIIT exercise videos for someone who had lived a sedentary lifestyle up until that point. Basically any dieting mistake you have possibly ever made, I made it. But I kept going because I was seeing results and learning from some fantastic Facebook communities as I went along; Ketogenic Dieters and LCHF- Low Carb, High Fat. [Note: These and KETOGAINS are the only two Facebook groups I would personally recommend for anyone seeking ketogenic resources. For anyone seeking ketogenic diet help as an endurance athlete I currently serve as a moderator at Ketogenic Dieters and would be happy to assist you.]

Shortly beforehand, in May of that year, I decided to attempt running as a way to escape the constant HIIT work I had been doing to that point. To start I was awful; zero base, no cardio endurance whatsoever despite all the HIIT and a strange gait from a life of ortho issues. Thankfully I have very little quit in me when I have my head in the game and I ground on.Within seven months of following my macro spread religiously and exercising I had lost all the weight I set out to and was 130lbs. It was at this point I decided to get serious about running as I transitioned from weight loss goals to fitness goals as I had read something somewhere (MyFitnessPal? Women's Running? My imagination?) that suggested that those with fitness goals had a better shot at maintaining weight loss than those who didn't and I was desperate to fight regaining the weight and becoming a statistic. And while weight loss enabled me to function, running would ultimately be what would inspire me to live.



Run For Your Life!

To say that I was not an effortless runner is a massive, enormous, insane understatement- I was a disaster. My initial pace was over 13 minute miles, I couldn't sustain it for longer than a quarter mile and the gasping...oh my word the gasping. Were it not for the thought process I'll be goddamned if I'll let running beat me! I probably would've quit then- thank God my mom raised me to be hard-headed!

In the beginning I followed a hacked version of the popular C25K but with persistence (complete inability to yield???) had surpassed that and was running continuous half marathon distance by July. The question loomed large in my mind, Will I race? but I left racing alone for the summer, choosing to work on training up to bigger distances. In true to Jessica fashion, as anyone who has known me since childhood will confirm, I had no desire to start at the 5K as people would expect- I wanted to race debut as a marathoner. And the more I trained the more I found that I had an inclination toward speed never before realized. I ran my first 42.2 training run in 3:42 and change and decided that now was the time to take risks. And that is when I registered for the Red Deer Marathon:


Then Banff Marathon:


Eddie's Half Marathon (the first race I placed at!)


And Edmonton Marathon (my lack of photos from this event are for your protection I promise, haha!). But still I wanted more out of my running; more distance, more speedwork, more life- because isn't that what we chase on the run, more and more life? So I registered for my first ultramarathon the Whistler 50, which was the location of my second race placement. I have detailed my experience at Whistler previously for Women's Running Magazine, for those interested in reading about it the article can be found here.

But after Whistler my restless heart still wanted more from my legs and my mind, which is without question the most important part of any ultramarathon you will ever run. So I ran my first unsupported 100k in the trail system just outside of our town and managed a sub 11. But why stop there? So I attempted a 100 mile unsupported training run; my first attempt stopped short at 130k due to wildlife issues, but my second marked 100 miles in 16:28:02. And that's when I knew the ultra had my heart forever- when walking away from 16 hours on my legs didn't leave me whinging and miserable but ready to take on more. To take on colder. To take on life...

Since I have continued to tackle my home-brewed training program that evolved from the work of Hal Koerner (though no, I am not blaming Koerner for the level of insanity that is inherent in how I train haha!) and log 300-400+ mile months with an ultra distance generally every weekend for long run. I have a race season full of ultra challenges ahead and am primarily sponsored for the 2018 season by Salming Running North America. I am so limitlessly grateful to Salming for seeing something in me that they feel is worth supporting- the caliber of athletes on team Salming 2018 is unreal to me and I am forever astonished that I am a part of it.



And Then There Was You ❤

To summarize, inside of two years I have managed to go from a completely sedentary, morbidly obese mom to a sponsored ultramarathon runner who is able to be active in her childrens' lives in the way they deserve. What I want you to know about this is that what I have done is not unattainable, I am just like you. I am not special, I don't have extraordinary genetics, an athletic past nor can I boast having always been the picture of health. I am fragile and flawed like everyone else, but I have built my mind up and will continue to build it up for life for with mental fortitude all things are possible.

One of my great passions now is trying to motivate others to recognize their infinite potential because, with the right mental conditioning, you are limitless. I firmly believe that you should 100% trust in that knowledge and in yourself. You are powerful beyond measure.

In working on sharing my feelings on the function of the mind in endurance sports and in weight loss I have been asked by a great many people if I would start a blog to further detail my running, my theories for self improvement and for better understanding of fueling as a ketogenic athlete. And here we are, this blog is for you. I will be working to update regularly with running/racing updates, ketogenic nutrition posts both for the everyday person and the ketogenic athlete and on thinking differently to live differently. 

Prince EA, a spoken word artist and self-described futurologist in the YouTube community, suggested in his work that "You cannot go back and make a brand new beginning but you can start now and make a brand new ending.". So come along with me friend, our stories aren't over. Not even close.






Comments

  1. Hello! Just found your blog! I'm a runner also and have always carried some extra weight. I've played around with Keto off and on for the last few years but am serious about it now. I'm down 10 with about 10-15 to go. I'm running my first 50K in June. I've made the transition from road racing and triathlons (including an Ironman) to trail racing and I love every second of it! I'll look forward to following you! You've accomplished so much in so little time!

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