Reminders from Emazon

Who and what is Emazon? Good question and funnily enough, she can't answer that either. She is the red-headed feisty chick from the first Australian season of The Biggest Loser. Ring any bells? She put contestants in a cage, and stirred them on to fight! Anyway, around 20 Adelaide 12WBTers attended the 'Stand Your Ground' workshop one fine Saturday morning in early August, just before round 2 was due to come to an end. Having no idea what to expect, I rocked up, alone and wondering what the hell I was in for. On the flip side, I was also totally excited to see face to face some of my fellow 12WBTers I'd only interacted with through Facebook.

Emazon got us straight into it. This now blonde, fiesty yet calm, Italian, ultra slim, toned, muscley and someone you knew not to mess with lady, got us thinking, punching, elbowing, reminiscing, until both our bodies and our brains hurt. I think it's fair to say many of the participants got emotional for one reason or another. Emazon stirred us to think about what's happened in our past, who's interfered with our plan in life, I guess in a way, what's gone wrong, why haven't we stood our ground? For me, lots of memories of a special someone who's no longer here, and someone I probably still haven't grieved for properly even though it's been nearly five years. Yep, awesome, 15 minutes into the workshop and I've already got a lump in my throat, on the verge of tears, and sitting right next to my Bootcamp instructor (he's seen me cry plenty of times though!).
 
Lessons learnt, and as Emazon put's it, reminders (and I am recollecting this a few weeks later, so I guess these are the important points that have stuck):

• I know how to defend myself, it's in me already.
• No one I don't want in my personal space should be there. Get out of my face!
• I can choose who's in my life, if there's anyone here who's going to sabbotage me, I can remove them (from my life that is).
• Feather, rock, truck. Feathers being the subtle, gentle hints that somethings going astray. The rocks hit a bit harder, but you still might not get the point. Then the truck hits, and there's no avoiding what's going on. Guess the point is to be so in-tune with your mind, your body, your relationships, to be able to notice the feathers and see what's going on before the truck hits.
• The art of yes and no. For every yes, there's always an equal and opposite no, and vice versa. This one was explained best in dieters terms. Ask yourself 'do I want to eat this?' Is it in line with my goals, who I am, and where I want to be? If you decide to eat that donut, then then your saying no to your weight loss goals. But this question can be asked in so many different ways. Another example direct from Emazon's blog is Saying YES to a day of shopping, cooking and packaging says NO to a week of last minute 'on the run' fuel choices where i may or may not be able to govern its contents. I don't want someone else making my food choices for me. Nice one.
• Heart rate monitors off. Your body doesn't work in numbers, it doesn't know the calories are ticking over, it just know's it's getting fitter, it's getting easier to exercise, and your heart, amongst other things, is getting stronger.
• Try defending yourself with your eyes shut. You can do it. You can feel it. So now try training with your eyes shut. Feel your body.
• Rules are meant to be broken. Thats why a lot of 'diets' don't work. Don't tell someone they can't have it, because that is the one thing they will want, focus on, and waste all their energy thinking about.
• Emazon recommended the doco Food Inc. Of course I went out and brought the dvd that afternoon and watched it. Terrifyingly in your face consumerisim, mass food production on a monstrous scale, treating animals just like any other mass produced product and processing them just like any other manufacturing production line, shocking animal treament, and that's just to summarise. Think cows standing udder deep in their own shit shoulder to shoulder eating mass produced corn, far from a lovely green pasture in the sunshine. Same goes with the chickens in a shed with no light, nothing natural in fact, so pumped full of hormones their own skeleton cannot support their super-sized breasts and drumsticks. And it's just not the animals. Corn, sugar, and soy being genetically modified to produce massive quantities, grow during all seasons, under all sorts of conditions, far from nature. And then to top it off - being genetically modified, and patented by certain companies (i.e. Monsanto) so farmers can't even keep their own seed stock for next year. Go organic. Choose local. Just avoid processed foods for fuck sake.