“You can’t be normal right now.”

I had called my wonderful nutritionist, Kristin Lander, for a pep talk, and she knew exactly what to say.

“You’re getting to represent the U.S. in a competition, so it’s OK for you not to do normal life things so you can meet your goals.”

I was struggling to keep up with my weight cut, and I wasn’t making the progress I really needed to. I needed some perspective to recenter my priorities and to think more clearly about the dynamics in my current life that were not helping me to achieve my goals.

When Sam and I were in D.C., I had not found it particularly difficult to stay on track. I worked near the Smithsonian Metro stop, an area that is a total food desert. You would never go out for lunch unless you managed to leave yours on your kitchen counter before bolting off to the 90-minute round-trip metro ride, and then your only options were a Potbelly or a couple very greasy food trucks, each about a 15 minute walk away from the office. There also wasn’t a happy-hour culture — similarly, the only option was to pay $25 for cocktails at the Mandarin Hotel (also a 15 minute walk), which was a bit rich for government salaries.

We had a really strong gym community of people we had come to know over the course of a few years that we could socialize with during workouts, and many of us were prepping for the same meets, so there was always lots of powerlifting stuff to BS about. Otherwise, between everyone’s work schedules, the fact that our homes were in three different states, and travel that routinely would add hours to even short drives, socializing with friends required significant planning in advance. It was easy to just hole up for weeks or months at a time.

Moving to Pittsburgh introduced a completely different lifestyle. Sam and I got an apartment downtown, giving me a seven-minute commute on foot. Because the city had transformed during the 25 years I was gone, instead of contemplating lengthy drives to see friends, we could walk to many, many fun options. Downtown is vibrant with activity and restaurants, and neighborhoods that had long suffered from urban decay and population decline are now populated by breweries and hipsters. We’re working to make new friends, which often means socializing over food and alcohol. Work culture is also different — there’s a bar so close that it’s practically an annex to my office.

And then there is the time spent with my parents. Their socializing centers around food, which is not so differently from other families, but my mom is also an avid and insanely good cook. She ran a catering business, and I grew up eating way healthier than lots of other kids because she was always preparing food from scratch, made up of protein, fresh vegetables, sauces to jazz up what otherwise might have been a pleasant but unremarkable main course, and cookies and cookies and cookies. She jokes — perhaps not jokingly — that she starts to get nervous when there’s only one pound of butter left in the fridge.

This was really healthy eating growing up, especially compared with the frozen, processed, and delivered meals my classmates ate, but there’s no counting calories when a routine dinner comes with homemade Béarnaise sauce and the hollandaise for your eggs Benedict is still warm from being whisked on the stove top with a just-to-your-taste level of lemon juice. Oh, and did I mention that she often has homemade ice cream to pair with the cookies?

How is that for a first-world problem?

I also have a propensity to binge. I’ve got a great appetite and can comfortably and joyfully pack away a few courses of dinner plus desert with wine to compliment it all. It’s really easy to tell myself that if I’ve counted macros all week and that because I saved 1,000 calories for that dinner with my parents I’ll be OK.

But I’m never OK. I always overdo it. Whatever caloric deficit I put myself into during the week, I can eat back in one fell scoop. I got skills, people!

Talking with Kristin helped a lot. I needed a reminder that it’s OK to be weird, to break social norms, to do my own thing and meet my goals. Also, meeting my goals may require an unbalanced life for a period of time. It might be more ideal to work, go to the gym, be social, and enjoy a dinner out in a nice, gentle, even balance, but there’s nothing gentle or balanced about trying to pick up 400lbs as a 46-year-old woman.

That reminder from Kristin that it’s OK not to be normal right now got me back on track. I negotiated with my mom to do some socializing that didn’t necessarily fall over dinner. For example, next week Sam and I are going to hang out with her and my dad at their place over happy hour, but I pre-negotiated the food options (gravlax and crudite so I can use the kitchen scale I left there to weigh the salmon).

I’m also screwing social norms at work. Last week I had an all-day meeting with a broad leadership group and a key data provider. As usual I was one of a small number of women surrounded by men in suits in an aggressively formal conference room. I sort of smiled to myself -- I’m already breaking the norms by being there, so why not unapologetically do my thing? We had a working lunch scheduled and pizza was quietly marched in while we finished a session. While the others queued up for pepperoni, I refilled my Nalgene and plunked my tupperware, overflowing with a protein-forward lunch, onto the conference table.

One of the men in suits asked, “You brought your lunch?”

In the back of my head I noticed the Empress lean agrily forward. What was that tone in his voice? Is he amused that the woman in the meeting is obviously on some sort of diet? The couple other women in the room had partaken of the salad on the buffet and one had even braved the smallest slice of pizza, which is the normal, “ladylike” approach to staying on track in situations like this. I guessed those two would not be feeling great in an hour.

“Yes. I have a big competition coming up,” I smiled. A few of the other men-in-suits glanced my way quizzically.

“Oh. So you’re, like, counting macros?”

“Exactly.”

A moment passed while everyone started on lunch. One of my colleagues was sitting next to me and chimed in, “Joah, how’s the house hunting going? Last time we talked you were starting to explore some neighborhoods.”

“Yeah, we sort of put that on hold for the time being. Right now it’s all powerlifting all the time. We have NAPF in early August. I decided to do Bench Nationals at the end of August, and then Raw Nationals is in October.” My colleague already knew about my weird little hobby, so he rolled right along with it. But I noticed that the men-in-suits had briefly stopped talking to look my way. I think they had been curious about the “competition,” but it was such an unexpected response that they weren’t sure if it was appropriate to ask.

I continued chatting with my colleague. “I hope you don’t mind if I bug you when we want to check out Stanton Heights.”  

“Oh, yeah. You might want to check out Highland Park, too . . . .”

Being unapologetic about breaking a social norm gave me confidence. Instead of trying to fit myself into the dynamics of my circumstances, I am going to do the things I need to do to stay focused on my goals, and the other things can take a back seat until I am ready for them.