We interrupt your Saturday for the MizFit Commenter of the Month (drumroll please):

I give you FabKate.

A blogger I admire (even though she wont wanna hear that) & adore.

She’s like that friend you treasure because you know not only will she always be honest with you—but that the honestly comes from a place of love.

What made you start your blog? whens the big 50?

I actually got my blogging foundation from a famous quote by Franklin P. Jones:

“Nothing makes it easier to resist temptation than a proper bringing-up, asound set of values – and witnesses.”

One thing that’s missing in a lot of dieter’s lives, and one thing I think a lot of us get out of blogging, is accountability.  We want people to call bullshit on us when we’re goofing up, and we need some of that feeling of embarrassment when we do wrong.

I don’t think there’s an obese person out there who doesn’t know how to loose weight.  We all do, but we’re just really bad at doing it.  It helps me to know that as a matter of discipline I’ve got to fess up on my blog when I don’t get any exercise and when I eat junk food.

The big 5-0 is June 30th of this year. It’s about two years from the start of my blog and my conscious effort to lose weight.  It’s been the motivation for the 200 lb goal, and is now the motivation for going through with a RNY (gastric bypass)  I don’t know for sure that I’ll hit my 200 lb goal before my birthday, but in realizing that, I also have come to realize that I am making a change not just for one day, but for the rest of my life.

I love that you use the moniker FabKate. Love. Too many people accidentally self-bash or worse yet make it a self-fulfilled prophesy by using a negative moniker like 2fat2moveoffmycouch.  Huh.  I guess this isnt a question, Oh FabKate, more a remark.

You’d love a lot less my previous moniker:  Minke369.   Minke is a small species of whale.   369 was my weight the last time anyone was able to measure it.  I’m really into marine sciences as a hobby, and I really love whales, but the use of this little whale as my own name was definitely self depreciating, and I eventually made the change to “Kate”   I only became FabKate when I saw there were so many other Kates in the Blogsphere, and I wanted to distinguish myself, so I added part of my blog name (Fabulous@50)  It was only later that I started thinking to myself  “Self, you ARE fab at any weight”.

As a footnote, I’ll add that my blog was originally on WordPress and was called Weight 1 Day.  The concept for the blog was a simple behavior modification tool:  I would NEVER say “I can’t have_____”  but I would put off buying whatever it was I was craving for 24 hours.  If I still wanted that same thing the next day, I’d eat it.  Since I never really wanted the same thing after 24 hours, or the stress/ boredom/ whatever had me wanting to eat was gone after that time, I was preventing eating unhealthy snacks pretty much perpetually.

If you had to give new readers a few sentence introduction to you/your family/your life/your blog—what would they be?

LOL that’s tough, because there’s a lot of chaos in my life.  I guess I’d just have to say for all three:  Woman with more than her share of challenges in life putting on her big girl panties and dealing with it.

See? I could do it in only one sentence.

What’s your current workout routine? how do you work around your limitations?

Right now I’m between routines. My biggest limitation isn’t my Lupus or arthritis or fibro… it’s finances.  I’ve quit my old gym and pool where the monthly fees were about $100, and joined a senior/ multigenerational center where the fee is $13/month.   I also take additional classes at additional cost, including Belly Dancing, which I’ve just started.  One of the great things about Belly Dancing for me isn’t just that it’s a good workout, but that it’s my night out with one of my daughters.   I have access to a small gym which I don’t use as often as I should, except for my daily turn on the treadmill, which is my new favorite thing to do.

I’m learning now that exercise doesn’t have to intrude in my life.  My dumbbells and bands are in the side table near the sofa.  While I watch TV I’m working out.  I’d love to have a treadmill in my house, and watch a movie every night while on the treadmill.    As it stands now, I’m probably averaging 2-3 hours a day working out, split between cardio and weight training.

I know a lot of people think in terms of limitations.  “You have Lupus, how do you do that?”  and “How do you manage that at your weight?”  Everyone has limitations.  Don’t believe me?  Try to fly without mechanical assistance.   I don’t think in terms of what I can’t do.  What I try to do is challenge myself on a daily basis.  I start with “I wonder if I can…”  and then just do it.

I look forward to your comments tremendously because I love your no bullsh*t approach to life.  Are you that way in all facets of your world?

Yes.

Being told you have kidney cancer and thinking you’re not going to make it really makes a change in your life…. well, if you let it.  I decided back then that I was just going to live life, and I reaffirmed that I really didn’t want to go through life pretending, making excuses, or being someone I’m not .   Maybe at times I’m a little too blunt, and I have very little patience with people who don’t at least try to get beyond the excuses and comfort levels in their lives, not just in fitness, but intellectually as well.  My feeling is that if I can do it with lupus and handicapped kids and poverty and a broken family, just about anyone can do it (whatever it is).

When I became too physically disabled to work as an engineer, that same year both my son and my eldest daughter were hospitalized.  I was making $475/month on unemployment waiting for social security.  Two years later I owned my own home, had had the twins (who were severely disabled at birth) and was going to school for my teaching degree.  I really don’t like to hear “I can’t”   There are times I’m down, and I know there are times other people are down, but there’s really no excuse to stay that way.  I expect life to throw me for a loop now and then.  I expect to have periods of self doubt, self loathing, self depreciation, fear, hopelessness and even despair.  But I really feel strongly that even when you can’t make something RIGHT you can at least make it BETTER, and that nothing ever got better from sitting around feeling sorry for yourself.  There are times I actually check the clock and give myself 24 hours “wallow time”  after which I require myself to take action.

I’ve survived childhood abuse, abusive husbands, chronic illness, attempted murder (several times), blizzards, homelessness, hurricanes, and a plethora of other things, and there’s really nothing special about me that other individuals don’t have.  I think the really important thing is self honesty and an unwillingness to lie down and play dead when life comes at you in ways you’d prefer it didn’t.

You knew it was coming: when they make the made for TV movie of your life, Kate, who’s playing YOU?

I’d love it to be Emma Thompson.  She has a certain grace and beauty that really doesn’t have anything to do with age.   I don’t know if I have that sense of grace, usually I feel more like a Janeane Garofalo character. I guess it would depend on how honest a portrayal it would be, or what aspects of my life are being focused on in the film.   I have a tendency to come off as cynical.   I really think it’s because I don’t think that sugar coated poop is anything other than what it is.  Sprinkling some candy coating on life doesn’t really make it any easier to swallow (or at least any more desirable to swallow), and I think that Janeane Garofalo is good at playing those blunt, in your face, honest skeptical kinds of characters.  I kinda like that.

I say it everytime, People, because I mean it every time: if youre not already a reader you’re missing out.

Get thee to Kate’s blog, bookmark it and, I think even she’d agree, get outside and take some time this weekend to PLAY!