Health Revolution

After a while I became CEO of the organisation in London. The world was my field of work, and I gained many insights into life and fates far beyond what I could have imagined. It gave me completely new perspectives, a completely new sense of humility.

During this time, I learned a vast amount about our complex world. I was able to do hard things, big things, and work with exceptional people from all backgrounds.

I met poor and vulnerable women in India, South Africa and Kenya and got to see the female power that helped give them the energy to start businesses to earn money for food and clothing . . . similar women, although with different skin colours, all over the world.

One day in Swaziland, the little mountain kingdom that lies in the blue haze of the southeastern corner of South Africa, I stood in front of a self-help women’s group where all – yes, all – of the women showed traces of abuse. It was so common in the village that no one reacted to a black eye, or even a broken arm. The women came with bowed heads to the self-help group that we supported, and they left with backs that were a little straighter than before. I didn’t even have words in my vocabulary to describe the struggle in their lives, the sorrow for those who became infected with HIV when their men had returned from working in the mines of South Africa.

It was huge and mind-opening to see all this. One day I was talking to donors at the world’s largest banks, and the next day I would meet with the world’s most vulnerable people. I got to see everything – all the great and wonderful things, all the fighting spirit but also the vulnerability and awfulness. All in the same week. I learned an incredible amount and gained perspective, and things fell into place.

But it took a hard toll on my body – all these constant long trips that were often taken in the middle of the night, on a plane to or from Asia or Africa, as the only woman and sometimes the only European. I visited airports in cities that I barely knew existed just a few years before.

On a midnight flight between Chennai and Doha, I met Indian guest workers who were on their way to Qatar to build roads and football stadiums. One man told me that they were treated almost like cattle and worked under extremely hard conditions. Several of his comrades had died in workplace accidents. Their eyes were desperate, their bodies sunken. I will never forget that night.

In this context it felt a little shameful to think about my own body, so I stopped thinking about it. I didn’t have time to think about it either, and with irregular meals and sporadic exercise, life began to wear me down. But just like with those oxygen masks – if you don’t take care of yourself, you can’t help anyone else either.

My first back strain came just like that, after three weeks of travel. I couldn’t get out of bed for three days. A few years later, I had constant back pain. I walked around with little pillows to tuck behind my back when I sat and wrote. There were little wedge-shaped pillows in my bag, a manifestation of my new old-lady life. Not that I had anything against old ladies – just the opposite. But I was only fifty-two, after all. What would the rest of my life be like?

And exercise? It had dissipated, turned into an unengaged, unconstructed kind of activity.

‘What was I going to do here?’ I might ask myself when I arrived at the gym and drifted around randomly among the machines. A little cycling here, some weights there. It wasn’t a catastrophe by any means. It just wasn’t me anymore.

It was simply as if a grey fog had draped itself over my life. The children were getting older, and a couple of them had already moved away from home. It was empty. Who was I now, without children at home?

Sometimes the thought came to me that life would never be really sunny again. Was it menopause? Or was it that I couldn’t move the way I used to anymore, now that my back had begun giving me trouble? The kids? I looked for explanations and had a hard time expressing what was missing. I just had a general feeling of malaise and depression.

That’s how my life was starting to go.

And now we’ve arrived at New Year’s, 2013. The moment of truth.

After the long trip home from Kenya, I can barely walk up the steep stairs in our house in London. I hoist the suitcase upstairs by swinging it, and my legs, in front of me step by step. This is the last straw. I lie down on the floor and put my legs up against the wall. Something has to be done. I send an emergency signal up to the higher powers and ask them to show me the way. It doesn’t take long for the answer to come, in my own head.

‘Why don’t you get in touch with that woman named Rita, who trained the blogger Tosca Reno?’

I Google Rita Catolino and find a number of pictures. Rita is, let me just say it, a blonde beauty with wonderful blue eyes, an open smile and an incredibly well-trained body. What strikes me most of all is that she’s glowing with health and strength. She has thousands of followers on social media. I myself have neither Facebook nor Instagram. It feels like a stretch for me to contact her.

A few years earlier, I had heard a good metaphor for inner dialogues – that inside every person is a struggle between two completely different beings. Or more specifically, it is the same being but different parts of the brain that are activated. One is the ape inside us, or the old parts, from an evolutionary standpoint, that lie in the centre of the brain. The ape is governed by basic reflexes. We react to threats, stay with the flock and take care of our offspring. We act on instinct, and catastrophe is always nearby. The other being, who acts inside us at the same time, is the human being, our higher self, which is guided by the frontal lobes, or outer parts of the brain. That’s where those skills are located that human beings acquired later in their evolution. That’s where we can use our good sense and plan ahead, but also interpret feelings in an empathetic way and withstand impulses that we know are confused or even dangerous for us.

My ape and my human being are now having a pretty heated inner dialogue.

‘She’s not going to want to take you on,’ says the ape.

‘Why not?’ says the human being.

‘Because you aren’t sharp enough. A hardworking career woman and mother with cellulite, fifty-two years old, doesn’t belong in her fitness world.’

‘That’s exactly why you need her,’ the human answers inside me. ‘She knows new things that you don’t know yet.’

‘But it’s expensive.’

‘What’s the cost of having a ruined back?’

‘What if she says no?’

‘What if she says yes?’

Finally, I send my email. And I get an incredibly friendly answer. I have to complete a long questionnaire, and Rita also tells me to keep a journal of everything I eat for three days.

It’s interesting to see what slips into my mouth during these days, especially one day when I have an early flight followed by a hard workday, and finish with a plane trip back in the evening. Hmm, let’s see . . . olives, nuts, rye crackers, a piece of chocolate, a little bottle of wine . . . When I read through the food diary later I wonder if the airline had a single piece of food left on the plane when I got off.

But that’s my life. I dutifully account for the three days, just as they were, and send off the answers to a number of other questions about old aches, exercise habits, energy and sleep. I also have to indicate if I’m pregnant.

Um, I don’t think so . . .

Then Rita’s training packet arrives by email.

A new programme for a new me.

It sounds promising and contains almost twenty different files that I open one by one, along with a message in which Rita promises to answer all my questions and asks me to communicate if I don’t understand anything.

Let’s see . . . Training . . . Hmm . . . It seems to be mostly about food. Is this a mistake?

I know about food already, and I eat well – I think. Except for certain exceptions, like that late night on the plane, but I had been working incredibly hard then, after all. I glance through the packet.

Eat homemade food. Less junk. More vegetables. Fewer trans fats. I know all this. Old news. Then we get to the order of the meals. Now there’s some biochemistry. Certain meals should consist of protein, fruit and fat. Other meals should only have protein and fat. A third type of meal should have proteins and complex carbohydrates. There are five to six meals every day with pure nutritional science. I understand the content, but what’s the logic behind it?

Then it seems like there are certain foods you should eat. There are long lists of vegetables and allowable fruits. I see that bananas aren’t included, a food I eat every day. The only complex carbohydrates on the list are quinoa, sweet potatoes and brown rice. And oats, ‘if you don’t swell up.’

I observe that there are foods that I already eat, more or less, but also foods that are new to me, like quinoa and chia seeds. And protein powder, which I don’t know anything about. Most importantly, things that I really like are missing: crusty bread with butter and cheese; pasta; the occasional piece of cinnamon-topped apple pie, with creamy vanilla sauce; pickled herring . . . just to give a few examples.

So, I compose an email.

Dear Rita,

Thank you for your tips. The exercise programme sounds amazing. I’ll do it. But the rest of it feels a little odd to me. I already have good eating habits and I like both bread and desserts. Why should I eat quinoa, but not pasta, for example? So, I’m following some of your advice but plan to do exactly as I like for the rest of it.

Best regards,

Maria

No, that message doesn’t get sent. And not the next one either, where I ask the questions I have about how everything fits together.

I can’t quite explain why, except that I’ve simply decided to take care of myself. Partly I don’t want to bother Rita, for some reason; partly I want to have space to do things my own way, which has been a small speciality of mine ever since my childhood.

I’ll confess that at the beginning, I’m not completely on board. I decide to try a few little things now and then.

My first challenge is breakfast. How are you supposed to eat? For the past thirty years, ever since I cured my disastrous binge-eating lifestyle, I’ve eaten whole-grain bread, cheese and eggs in the morning. Now I’m supposed to have warm water with lemon juice, pills and a powder with a name that starts with ‘I’. After that I have a few different breakfasts to choose from: protein powder with fruit, something called a ‘seed bowl’, and pancakes made with coconut flour.

People are probably at their most habit-bound when it comes to breakfast, in particular, and these breakfast suggestions feel very foreign to me. On the other hand, I dive in to the vegetables, fish, garlic and olive oil with a feeling of both familiarity and happy expectation.