Month: April 2013

fitness

Healthism, fitness, and the politics of respectability

Sam B17 Comments

This blog is about the fitness journey of two feminist philosophers as we approach fifty. We’re aiming to be the fittest we’ve ever been in our lives at the age of fifty. Along the way Tracy and I are critically engaging with issues about physical fitness as feminists and as philosophers.

Early on we distinguished between thinness and fitness and made it clear that our goals were about athletic, not aesthetic, achievement (see here) and about staying healthy, not about getting thin.

We recognize that not everybody shares our goals or sets their sights on achieving and maintaining physical fitness. But we hope enough of you are engaged with our goals and our project and want to follow us along and read about what we’re up to.

We’re about health and fitness, not about visible abs and hitting target weights on the scale. (Tracy has stepped off the scale in fact and you can read about that here.)

Health seems like a perfectly reasonable goal to have, to the extent that it’s in one’s control. We’re both leading happy, productive, active lives and want to stay healthy insofar as we can control that. However, recently I got in a discussion with a friend about the language of health and whether or not that language was coercive.

Philosophers’ ears perk up when we say something we think is uncontroversial and others say they disagree. We thought talk of health being a good thing was trivially true. What’s this? Disagreement? How interesting. Let’s have a closer look. That’s how philosophers roll.

Here’s an example of the controversy over health. Lots of fat activists lay claim to the language of ‘health’ and ‘healthy.’ Indeed I refer to my own health in this post here, though I’m also ambivalent about the label ‘fat’ and I have plans to get leaner, if I can.

We’re constantly trying to make the point that fat people can be healthy. I describe myself this way on the blog. I wrote: “I’m a bit of a healthy living rock star. Yes, I’m significantly overweight but I have excellent blood pressure and heart rate, excellent good-bad cholesterol ratios, and excellent blood sugar levels. I’m also an over-achiever in the bone density department but that’s from years of living large and lifting heavy weights.”

But here’s a worry. In claiming the language of health for larger women are we assuming that there are respectable healthy fatties and others who aren’t, drawing a line between the good girls and the bad girls, rescuing some, while throwing others to the anti-fat wolves as it were?

This is the worry raised in Virgie Tovar’s post Interrogating the language of health in the fat movement.

In short, Tovar is accusing the fat positive movement of ‘healthism.’ This is really interesting because I think that claiming health for fat people, claiming that fat people can be healthy in spite of our size, is one of the goals of the fat positive movement.

‘Healthism’ is sometimes used to refer to a government’s preoccupation with the behavior of its citizens (eating well, not smoking etc) and sometimes it’s used to refer to an individual’s preoccupation with these behaviors and outcomes. These two senses of ‘healthism’ are discussed here. At the heart of both senses is the idea of an ideology of health.

I first heard the term ‘healthism’ at the Canadian society for women in philosophy conference in Calgary last year. The conference theme was embodiment and there was one paper that criticized health as a value that’s forced upon women. The paper was by Talia Welsh (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga) and was called  “Violating the Good Health Imperative: The Ethics of Altering Bodies by Modifying Bad Health Habits.” You can read her paper “Healthism and the Bodies of Women: Pleasure and Discipline in the War against Obesity” available for download here. In that paper Welsh writes, “I posit that a feminist position on the war against obesity clearly argues against a focus on weight, but that the larger issue of behavior modification for health remains much more difficult to solve.”

On first hearing these ideas, I confess that I felt sort of perplexed. Of course, healthy is better than unhealthy, I naively thought. Given a choice, who wouldn’t opt for good health? That isn’t an ‘ism’ and it’s just rational, I thought.

But of course like many subjects that are the topics of papers at philosophy conference, things aren’t quite that simple. Health seems, at first glance, to be a primary or basic good, the sort of good that you want or need no matter what what you want or need. Indeed, at first blush it seems you need health to pursue all the other goods. And so an appeal to health ought to speak to all of us. It’s a good candidate for a liberal value, something the state can promote because we all care about it.

And yet…

Most of us routinely make trade offs between health and other goods. I’m not just thinking here of those of us who choose to smoke, drink, or do other forms of drugs.

Consider athletes who make trade offs between the pursuit of excellence in competition and their overall health and well being. It’s not just retired football and hockey players who are damaged.

But we don’t even need to go there. Think of musicians who suffer overuse injuries. It’s not healthy to do what they do either.

Among my academic friends and colleagues, there are many of us with worn eyes, strained tendons, voices suffering over use. And yet would we read and write less to save our bodies?

And then there are those of us who like risky sports.

Why privilege the health conscious?

In a country with publicly funded heath care there’s an economic argument of course, but we ought to admit it’s an economic argument. But don’t dress it up in the language of rational choice and caring about what’s good for persons. Persons want different things and weight concern for health differently.

I’m looking forward to reading the book pictured here. I bought it after the CSWIP conference last year. In the meantime, I’m still mulling over the importance of health.

Although Tracy and I might seem like health living cheerleaders, you are free not to care about your health and fitness. If you do, we hope you enjoy reading about our adventures and reading our reflections on fitness. But if you don’t care as much about health and fitness as we do that’s fine too.

body image · fat

How equating being fat with being out of shape hurts thin people too

Sam B14 Comments

I’ve been trying to write a post for awhile now about the dangers of conflating fitness and thinness. I started out wanting to address the concern a few people have raised about why there aren’t more fat fit people since clearly it’s possible to be both fat and fit.

My draft post on fatness and fitness begins by asking everyone to reconsider the claim that there aren’t lots and lots of fit and fat people. Recall my post Fit, Fat, and What’s Wrong with BMI in which I talked about the number of Olympic athletes who are overweight or obese using BMI as a measure.

Another important part of my answer is that gyms are hostile environments for lots of people, including fat people. Tracy and I have both written about our negative locker room experiences–A Tale of Two Locker Rooms and Why I left Goodlife Fitness some years ago–and we are relatively privileged gym goers.

Of course, it’s not like things improve once you leave the locker room. My main complaint is that everyone assumes I’m new to exercise and that once I get into the groove the pounds will just drop off. Um, here let me pick up that very heavy weight for you and no, no they won’t. For more on this theme read Myths and Stereotypes Are Ruining My Zumba Class!, Five Things Every Gym Should Already Be Doing, and Working Out While Fat.

But I also want to make a more complicated suggestion that when you think you’re only exercising to lose weight, and you don’t lose weight, then you might just quit. The reason not to quit is of course is that exercise has enormous health benefits, far beyond weight loss. And the connection between health and obesity is complicated. It’s not even clear that it’s in everyone’s health interest to lose weight. See Obesity, health, and fitness: some odd connections.

So, as I mentioned at the start I’ve been having difficulty writing this post. Something felt wrong about it. What? What’s missing? How about this: What about the thin people? The original post leaves them out and thin people are hurt too by the myth that thinness equals fitness. Probably they lose out, for example, on not having their doctors remind them of the benefits of regular exercise. I don’t know, it’s never happened to me, but I imagine they just step off the scales and get told, “you’re fine.”

If you think the main, or only, reason to exercise is weight loss and you’re a naturally thin person, you have little reason to get or stay physically active. And society will treat you as if you’re fit since we’re seem to be big on the problem I mentioned at the outset, conflating thinness and fitness.

An older male relative of mine once said it was odd that the only women he saw exercising outside in the morning are those that don’t need to. But of course that’s just wrong. Our bodies were made for lots and lots of movement throughout the day and that’s true for all of us, whatever our size. Thin people might stay home because they think they didn’t need to exercise. They’re already thin after all. Everyone assumes they’re working out. Fat people might choose not to exercise beside we’re ashamed or because it’s not “working.” We must be doing it wrong. Because we’re not losing weight.

Thin people are hurt by the myth that thinness equals fitness because they don’t think they need to exercise and they do. Thin people are a high risk group. They die at an earlier than fat people. I blogged about this: Lower death risk for the overweight, go us!

From the New York Times: “The report on nearly three million people found that those whose B.M.I. ranked them as overweight had less risk of dying than people of normal weight. And while obese people had a greater mortality risk over all, those at the lowest obesity level (B.M.I. of 30 to 34.9) were not more likely to die than normal-weight people. The report, although not the first to suggest this relationship between B.M.I. and mortality, is by far the largest and most carefully done, analyzing nearly 100 studies, experts said.”

So get out there thin people. Get moving! 🙂

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Of course saying that ‘thin people are hurt too’ sounds a bit like saying ‘but what about the men?’ in the context of feminism.

There is an important difference between harm and oppression and the structures of our society are set to to privilege the thin. Saying that thin privilege exists doesn’t mean denying thin people can be hurt too. The language we use matters. Some people prefer the language of ‘fat acceptance,’ while others think we need to talk about ‘body diversity’ to be properly inclusive. The worry is that the latter makes it sound as if thin people and fat people suffer equally from our norms about bodies and size. They don’t.

But here I just wanted to point out one way that thin people are harmed by the mistaken connection between thinness and fitness.

Here are some great posts on skinny bashing, body diversity, and thin privilege:

!. Miss Mary Max argues that “Skinnybashing” claims are fundamentally a display of thin privilege.

“The truth is, the pain skinnybashing causes individual people with thin privilege does not hurt less (or matter less) than the pain caused by fatphobia.  But it does occur in a different context, and it has not been institutionalized to the extent that fat oppression has.  And no matter how genuinely pained thin people are — and no matter how much we should be doing about that — skinnybashing claims re-direct discussions of fat oppression into terms of “body diversity,” erasing the power dynamics between body types and the continued prevelance of fat oppression.  In other words, while body diversity is a laudable goal, to demand that fat-acceptance activists redirect toward “diversity” requires that they quit fighting fat oppression and embrace the false notion that thin and fat bodies are — on a societal level — policed equally.  It’s the more pallatable alternative, which we use to opt out of the challenging admission that our pain and our privilege exist simultaneously.”

Read more here.

2. Thin Privilege Checklist

3. What’s This Thin Privilege Thing?

aging · body image · gender policing

On yummy mummies, post baby bodies, and life getting better with age

Sam B7 Comments

What’s the quest for a better post baby body got to do with fitness?

Partly, I’m not sure. We all talk about getting into shape but that word ‘shape’ means different things to different people. Physical fitness is one thing, looking good another. Clearly many women who’ve given birth want to look better and want to look more like they did pre-baby but I’m skeptical that’s got much to do with fitness. This blog has talked about the distinction between aesthetic and athletic values here.

I confess that there is incredible pressure going on now to look good after childbirth that I didn’t ever experience. And my children weren’t born that long ago. They’re teenagers now. No one ever asked or expected to me to be back in shape weeks or months after each of them was born. Frankly, many of us new mothers then thought we’d get all of the pregnancy and childbirth stuff out of the way before returning seriously to fitness activities. Getting in shape between pregnancies seemed kind of like making a bed when you have an afternoon nap planned.

It’s true I wanted to lose one lot of baby weight gain before adding more but that seems to be to be a rather low bar compared to the mommy-beautiful standards of today. Now new mothers are told that they are letting themselves go if they aren’t back to their pre-pregnancy weight within six weeks.

What’s changed?

1. Celebrity culture: From baby bump to the first torso pics after birth, we follow the lives of celebrity mothers. Some of us watch in awe at the transformations they undergo. They hire chefs, nannies and personal trainers and we want the same effect for ourselves.

2. Cosmetic surgery packages post baby: There is a local radio station my kids listen to in the car on the way to school. One of the frequently played ads is clearly aimed at the “driving your children to school” set.  It’s for a cosmetic surgery clinic in my city that offers a special package for women who’ve had kids, the mommy makeover. It’s not just bellies and tummy tucks, now there’s vaginal rejuvenation and labiaplasty as well. See this post if you want to know why I find the trend to ‘neat and tidy’ labia problematic.

3. Baby boot camps: I confess to mixed feelings about the Mommy and baby boot camps mobbing our parks on spring and summer mornings. They didn’t exist when I had kids and I think I would have loved it. Babies, outside exercise, company, and sunshine and fresh air are all things that I love. (I’ve blogged about the benefits of green exercise here.) I would have loved exercising in the park with other new mothers and their babies. But talking to friends who’ve done this, they felt whipped into shape. They didn’t like it at all. They were miserable. I mean, I like Cross Fit (see here) and other kinds of painful workouts (see here). But many of these women are not regular exercisers. They are there solely out of the desire to lose weight and look good again. Put that way it starts sounding pretty joyless to me.

4. There’s also a sexiness to new mothers that wasn’t around in the mainstream when I was pregnant. I hadn’t heard of talk of MILFs. The upside, I guess, is that mommies can be sexy too. But the pressure to be sexy? Not so much fun. There is also the assumption that Tracy noted that all women older than 25 are mothers. The MILF language can be playful and fun and insofar as women who are also mothers get counted as sexy, it’s a step forward. But what if you don’t want be a yummy mommy? Is there room in our world to do that without pressure?

So that’s why it’s worse now than then.

What can I say that might help?

1. It gets better with age. In my mid-thirties there was a huge difference between me and the women who had never given birth. Nearing fifty, not so much. I have stretch marks and wrinkles. They have stretch marks and wrinkles. None of us have perfect teenager bodies because we’re not teenagers and that’s okay.

2. Comfort in one’s skin comes with age, too. Go read Roz Warren’s At Ease with a Body Fighting Gravity. Go read my piece on not growing old gracefully.

3. Other people will have their own scars. You may trace your imperfections to childbirth but other people have their own bodily traumas such as surgeries, broken bones, stitches, or scar tissues from burn injuries. No one is perfect.

4. I’m still in total awe of what my body can do. Pregnancy and childbirth are part of the story of how I came to be comfortable with my body and able to celebrate its achievements. I admit I’m a bit of an outlier. I loved being pregnant and thought childbirth felt like an athletic achievement. So quit focusing on what your post baby body looks like and focus instead on what it just did. That’s the miraculous bit, not that the superstar of the day managed to film in a bikini three months after giving birth.

5. Parenting is a radically transformative experience. Read about this idea here. This might help, I’m not sure, but the physical changes of pregnancy and childbirth are the very least of it. I’m not even sure how to describe the strength of the love I feel for my children and the connection I feel to them. Life will never be the same. It’s time to grow, adapt, and adjust.

6. People will tell you you won’t have time for fitness as a new parent. That’s not true. Read about my experiences in my blog post Families and Fitness where I talk about how to combine the two in ways that are good for both.

body image · diets · family · motivation · weight loss

“You’ve Lost Weight! You Look Great!” Isn’t a Compliment

Tracy I41 Comments

Last week, a friend reported how horrible she felt when someone in her workplace whom she didn’t know very well complimented her on her recent weight loss. As it happens, my friend is losing weight to prepare for a figure competition. But this remark made her question her “before” look.  In her case, her “before” body is the one she has whenever she’s not prepping for a competition because the competition body isn’t sustainable.  (see here for why that’s the case)

Implicit in the so-called compliment about weight loss is the assumption that you really didn’t look so great before.  But now!  Wowza!  Looking good!

There are lots of reasons to think that you’re not doing anyone any favors by trying to give them the “look at you! You’ve lost weight!” compliment.

1. When we think of it in that way, it’s not such a great compliment. It’s a set-up for self-consciousness and negative self-judgment of our past selves. When remarking on weight loss is offered as a compliment, the speaker clearly thinks that there’s been a noticeable and notable improvement in how the person looks.  Without the normative standard of “thinner is better,” the comment would have no value as a compliment at all.

2. It’s also a set-up for our future selves because, for the most part, diets don’t work in the long run. Much of the research out there shows that those who lose weight by dieting now have a pretty good chance of gaining it all back and more within 2-5 years (if not sooner).  Diets and weight loss programs have very poor results over time.  See Regan’s post, “The Thing about Weight Watchers” and this report from UCLA.

3. It reinforces the notion that it’s okay to monitor other people’s bodies.  When the blog first began, I talked about “the panopticon” in relation to tracking.  The panopticon is a prison design (from 18th C philosopher Jeremy Bentham). Its key feature is that the prisoners cannot tell when they are being watched and when they are not.  The uncertainty about when they are under surveillance means that prisoners begin to regulate themselves. Philosopher Michel Foucault, and later, feminist philosopher Sandra Bartky, offered the panopticon as a metaphor for contemporary society.  Bartky uses it to explain how women fall into line with the standards of normative femininity.  If we condone comments on people’s weight loss (or gain, but we are loathe to do that since it’s thought to be an insult), we are promoting a panopticon-like scenario where people the expectation of random surveillance becomes the norm.

4. It reinforces the idea that it’s okay to let people know that we are monitoring and judging their bodies. One thing that shocked my friend in the story I opened with was that she really didn’t even know the person who commented on her weight.  And yet the person felt completely entitled to say something. What kind of a twisted world do we live in where the state of our bodies is fair game for comments from whoever feels like making them?

5. It assumes that we are trying to lose weight and that, therefore, our weight loss is an accomplishment worth congratulating us for.  I know, I know. For lots of people this is actually the case. When I attended Weight Watchers, we would literally applaud people for losing weight.  I’m sure I read somewhere in WW literature that receiving compliments from family and friends was a good motivator to keep us on track in “our weight loss journey.”  But hello!  Not everyone, everywhere is always trying to lose weight.  It’s offensive to make that assumption.

Almost 20 years ago, Sam and I learned our lesson about casually offering, “You’ve lost weight; you look great!” as a “compliment.”  If that’s the compliment you’re looking for, you won’t get it from us.  We ran into someone who used to work in our office but had moved to another unit.  We complimented her heartily on her lost weight.  Her response, “I have cancer.”

Awkward moment ensued.

Lesson learned.

If I could push rewind, I would approach it differently. I would say, “It’s so great to see you.  How have you been?”  At that point, she could choose either to tell us of her health issues or not tell us.  We could have a conversation about what we’ve been up to lately that focused on things that really matter instead of how her body looked to us.  Thankfully, our friend has since recovered from her illness. But we re-live the mortification of that major faux pas on a regular basis, pretty much any time we catch wind of anyone saying to anyone else, “You’ve lost weight. You look great.”

I do know that lots of people are in fact trying to lose weight and change their body composition.  They are putting in an active effort. They are not hiding it from anyone.  They themselves regard their progress on these fronts as accomplishments.  That’s all good. I myself would like to gain more muscle and I do have another trip to the bod pod scheduled to see how that’s going (for the sake of research, I swear!).

Nonetheless, I still urge everyone to re-think the weight loss comment as compliment for the reasons outlined above.

It’s nobody’s business whether someone has lost weight or not.  Friends, family, co-workers, and strangers do not have a right to monitor our bodies closely enough that they notice changes in our weight.  Even less do they have the right to talk about it, among themselves or to us.

You might want to say that it’s okay if we ourselves initiate the conversation. Still, I feel wary (and weary) of embarking on conversations in which the main topic is somebody’s weight.

And despite the good intentions that most have when they offer this compliment, it often comes across as a covert way of telling someone that they really didn’t look so good before.  We live in a society obsessed with “before and after” shots (it’s through those that WW “leaders” gain their credibility with the clients).  “Before” is always unacceptable. “After,” the “new you!” is to be congratulated and praised.

This whole approach comes perilously close to casting thinness and those who “achieve” it as virtuous.   The occupants of our “before” pictures are seen in a negative moral light.  Not only were we not so attractive with our unwieldy bodies that everyone noticed but kept silent about until we changed them, but also we were not so virtuous, were we?  It may be subtle and covert, but it’s shaming nonetheless.

Please join me in the boycott.

Read more about body image, body shaming, and the assumption that thin is better:

On Comparing

The Day I Discovered the Dreaded Camel Toe

Why the “Thigh Gap” Make Me Sad

Loving the Body You’ve Got

cycling · racing · stereotypes

Bike races and podium girls: Time to kiss goodbye?

Sam B12 Comments

1. The story of the pinch

After the Tour of Flanders at the end of March, Cannondale rider Peter Sagan caused controversy in the cycling world and beyond  by pinching the bottom/behind/butt (choose your country’s preferred slang as our readers are from all over the world) of one of the podium girls who was occupied planting a kiss on the cheeks of the winner. For those unfamiliar with the ways of professional cycling, that’s what podium girls do.

Jane Aubrey, in Cycling News, writes:

“The move by the 23-year-old was crass to say the least, but it was just another example of disrespect being shown against women in cycling. Ask yourself, on a day where the great Marianne Vos ticked off one of the few major races she had yet to add to her extensive palmares, why instead of celebrating another achievement by one of the most prolific athletes in the sport regardless of gender, we were again left to consider ways in which cycling sets women back and an industry that – at times – perpetuates a misogynistic attitude.”

Aubrey does a terrific job listing and tearing apart the excuses offered up in Sagan’s defense. He’s 23. So? A talented rider? Non sequitur. It was a joke? Of course. And the most pernicious, she was asking for it. Because podium girls, hired for their good looks for the job of kissing winning male cyclists, agreed to have their bottoms pinched? I don’t think so. It’s sexual harassment. Aubrey notes that we can clearly see the woman in question trying to move the rider in question’s hand. Receiving pinches isn’t in her job description.

You can read the rest of Aubrey’s piece here, The bottom line on Sagan’s Flanders podium pinch.

You can also get a flavour of the comments chucked about here where critics of Sagan’s pinch are called, “Humourless Puritans – ignorant knee-jerks since the 15th Century.” It’s not pretty. Some of the commentators claim that she was his girlfriend. She isn’t.

Here’s her side, from a story that focuses on her reaction, Podium girl Maja Leye says she fought to keep calm as Peter Sagan pinched her behind: 25-year-old says she was “frozen to the spot” and only the thought of millions watching helped her keep her composure.

“Maja Leye, aged 25, who was planting the traditional kiss on the cheek of winner Fabian Cancellara when Sagan touched her, told Het Nieuwsblad: “Suddenly, I felt this hand. I hadn’t seen it coming because I had my back to him. I understood quickly what had happened. I was frozen to the spot.”Leye admitted that she fleetingly considered slapping the Cannondale rider, but believes that had she reacted, the situation would have gone from bad to worse.”

The defenders of Sagan would do well to study up on fallacies of reasoning. Information is Beautiful has a lovely info-graphic guide to fallacies here.

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2. An excellent question: Why are there podium girls anyway?

In a column in the Guardian Matt Seaton writes,

“But perhaps the controversy lifts the lid on an issue cycling needs to look at anew: is the use of models as some kind of uncomfortable hybrid of hostess and shamelessly exploitative “eye candy” now outmoded and inappropriate to the modern sport?

In amateur races, it’s not unusual for a woman to award the trophies to winners in men’s races, but she will often be a local dignitary of the host town. The clue is in the word “dignitary”. So does professional cycling really need to award winners kisses from “trophy” females?

The whole spectacle is unbecoming – not just tacky and embarrassing, but retrograde and demeaning. It’s hard not to draw the conclusion that the institutionalized sexism of the “podium girls” convention is of a piece with entrenched attitudes that relegate women’s racing to “poor relation” status. Cycling is a sport that loves to celebrate its traditions, but this is one it ought to leave by the roadside.”

Yes, it’s time to to say goodbye to the tradition of podium girls. Even as eye candy, it assumes that all the male professional cyclists are straight. They aren’t.

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3. My one time experience with something like podium girls

I was at an academic conference once with the equivalent of podium girls. It was a very odd experience. It was a meeting of The International Association for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy (IVR)  in Granada, Spain. That conference was also notable for the most impressive piece of coloured parchment I’ve ever received. I needed to show my passport to pick it up. It was  signed by the mayor of the city and it seriously looks more official than either of my university degrees. So I got a sense that it was an old-fashioned, bureaucratic event right from the day of my arrival when I was presented with my scroll. (I’d tell you what it says but it’s in Spanish.)

Granada struck me as an old-fashioned place. My hotel concierge told me the internet shut down in Spain for two hours after lunch for a siesta. I felt like a workaholic North American trying to argue about the difference between the internet being closed and turning off one’s hotel wireless.

It was also the only academic conference I’ve ever attended with an excess of conference staff. The women were young, thin, and beautiful and wore tight fashionable tailored suits with heels and mini skirts. They sort of looked like I imagine flight attendants looked back when they were called “stewardesses” or maybe even “air hostesses.” These women–I mentally thought of them as the doo wop girls, or our back up singers–accompanied us on sight seeing trips organized by the conference and for key note addresses they stood on stage flanking the speaker lest a pen be dropped or, shudder, a glass of water run dry. It looked like an easy job, except for the heels.

Philosophers are a naive lot. One American man said to me what a shock it was that all the women looked alike. They were all so thin, so beautiful. What a coincidence. Did all the women in Granada look this? (He also obviously hadn’t left the conference hotel.) Clearly it hadn’t occurred to him that it might be a job criteria, a ground on which they were hired.

Ditto the podium girls in cycling. They are another fine European tradition. There are no bad looking podium girls since being good looking is basically the whole job. That and smiling. And cheek kissing.

But not being pinched.

The IVR conference staff made me feel uncomfortable in the same way that I imagine women riders feel about the podium girls. They emphasize old fashioned and outmoded ways of being in the world, where men do (give academic talks and race bicycles) and women respond (kiss, applaud, refill glasses of water.)

That world is over, thank God, and it’s time to say goodbye to podium girls.

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4. Where women belong in cycling, on bikes and in races

5. Past posts on women’s cycling

Do Cupcake Rides and Heels on Wheels help or hurt the cause of women’s cycling?

Bike seats, speed, and sexual depravity

Bicycles: Making good women go bad since the 1800s

Thanks AB for sending me the links.

body image · fashion · stereotypes

Bikini Body the “Easy Way”

Tracy I9 Comments
beach body

When I saw this “How to get a beach body” instructional flyer on facebook, I smiled.  Yes, of course, take yourself to the beach and you’ve got a beach body.

It’s exactly the right way to think about the beach and the body needed to enjoy. And yet, sigh! If only it were so simple.

This is the time of year in the northern hemisphere when lots of women, young and not-so-young, start to panic about being “beach ready” or “bikini ready.” The media comes at us from all directions, with countless articles (none of which I will link to here) about how to get that bikini body.

The assumption, of course, is that the vast majority of us do not have it already. More than that, implicit in this rhetoric lurks normative femininity and the imperative that, if you plan to wear a bikini, you had better have the body for it.

Last week, Jezebel reprinted an article from the Lingerie Lesbian, entitled, “The Concept of a ‘Bikini Body’ Is Infuriating Bullshit.” She says,

Because bikinis are primarily worn in public, unlike lingerie, the idea of judgment is even more real and frightening. In a society that faults fat, cellulite, stretchmarks, pimples or hair anywhere but on our heads, it’s a miracle any of us can pick up the courage to step outside in such a revealing piece of clothing.

She hits it pretty well right on the head.  It’s one thing to say, “go ahead and wear a bikini even if you don’t have the stereotypical bikini body. You’ve got every right.”  I believe that.  I really do.  But it takes a lot of courage to don that skimpy little swimsuit.  Courage and self-confidence. And we are socialized not to have courage and confidence in the bodies we have. I don’t think it’s an underestimate to say that a good 90% of the women I know (and I know lots of feminists!) are either wishing or actively seeking to change their bodies.

A couple of years ago, Jezebel posted “If I Hear One More Word about Beach Bodies I’m Gonna Strangle Someone with a Tankini.” Sam has posted on swimsuit anxiety already, right on this very blog, wondering why it’s so severe. Her guess is that we tend to compare ourselves to the models in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, and also that beauty pageants have cemented the association between swimsuits and sexy.

So if you’re not sexy, you shouldn’t really be in a swimsuit, especially a bikini.

My concern isn’t so much why we have the anxiety in the first place, but rather why, even if we reject the idea of normative femininity as an imperative for ourselves, and even if we agree that the whole idea of a bikini body is infuriating bullshit, it’s still hard for many of us to wear a bikini and feel good in it. I myself wear bikinis through the summer, though as I have said here before, I prefer to be nude.  But I really need to talk to myself at the beginning of the season to convince myself that it’s okay to wear the bikini.  I’m never going to look anything like the swimsuit models in Sports Illustrated.

I can also say in all honesty that I have had the bikini body at different times in my life. I can only say this in hindsight because at the time I didn’t feel good in my bikini. The standards I set for myself were so impossibly high that probably the swimsuit models don’t even attain them without photoshop.

What does that tell me?  It tells me that it’s more about self-acceptance than about anything else.  In “If I Hear One More Word about Beach Bodies…,” Lesley, the author says,

Where I live, beach season comprises roughly one-sixth of the entire year, and if you think I am going to waste one second of that precious span worrying about whether the colorblocking on my suit is going to trick people into believing I’m shaped like Gisele Bundchen, then think again.

She gives a few tips for how to get over the anxiety, including “Your body is fine” and “Body-policing is never okay.”  I think she’s totally right. She’s probably also right that mostly people aren’t looking at me anyway.  We much more need to tell ourselves that our bodies are fine than to defiantly shout it out to other people. And it’s the body policing that we impose on ourselves that’s the most crushing.

It’s not all that easy to become immune to the cultural messages we receive about who gets to wear “sexy” clothing and who doesn’t.  But there is something incredibly attractive about women who are comfortable in their skins. And yet, sadly, that level of self-acceptance is so elusive for so many of us, even those who, on an intellectual level, reject the notion that we need to conform to a narrow standard in order to be acceptable.

I had the privilege of attending the Feminist Porn Awards on the weekend. I have never in my life seen such an inclusive range of representations of people claiming their right to enjoy the bodies they have, not the bodies that mainstream society tells us you’re supposed to have.  The films represented them and their sexuality and sensuality beautifully, as sexual agents taking pleasure in their bodies. It was truly eye-opening and inspiring on many levels.

I had been thinking about this post that day, not yet sure what I wanted to say exactly. But what I want to say is this: my ideal beach would be a beach full of the actors and filmmakers who are producing feminist porn.  They do not judge or make assumptions about what we are supposed to look like to be worthy of embracing our physical selves.  They actively seek out bodies of all genders, shapes, sizes, and abilities, representing them equally without fetishizing those that depart from normative standards of the mainstream. They seek to empower, not to shame.

And I am certain that their beach body is no more or less than the one they take to the beach.

As Sam pointed out some time ago in her post about body positivity and the queer community, there actually is a diversity of desire out there. Even among straight men there is a range of body types that they find attractive.  Sam references John Devore’s article about the types of women that “really turn men on” on this point.

I’m not saying that we need to be a part of or even watch feminist porn to accept that the bodies we have today are beach ready no matter what they look like and what they can do. Rather, we can think of it as one model, among many, that’s strikingly more body positive, both in terms of size and disability, than the usual norms about beauty and the beach.

diets · eating

Hunger is not an emergency, neither is it cause for celebration

Sam B7 Comments

What does it mean to say that hunger is not an emergency? You can read about this idea here, here, and here. The slogan is associated with certain approaches to dieting and while I’m not a fan of dieting, there’s something this phrase gets right, I think.

The basic idea is to regard hunger neutrally. You realize that nothing awful happens when you get hungry. There’s no need to feel anxious or panicky. You also don’t celebrate hunger. ‘Oh good, I’m really hungry. That means I’m losing weight.’ (That’s why I amended the slogan in my title of the blog post, to include the second thing that hunger isn’t.)

Most of my life I’ve been in the first camp, hunger makes me nervous, but I know lots of chronic dieters who are in the second.

Hunger is just a physiological condition. I’m in no danger of starving.

I’ve been trying to make peace with hunger and not get frantic when I get hungry. This doesn’t mean that hunger is to be ignored but hunger doesn’t mean that I need to eat whatever is nearby and fast to make it go away. It’s okay to be hungry sometimes.

I think of this as recognizing and making peace with hunger.

Is the idea that hunger can be okay completely opposed to Tracy’s intuitive eating approach? I don’t think so.

You recognize hunger and then what happens? Ideally, you have healthy snacks nearby and carry them with you. Alternatively, you note that you’re hungry and wait. Either way nothing disastrous happens.

In our society of constant snacking very few people of economic means have to experience hunger. Some people don’t even recognize it. At the slightest twinge of hunger, we eat.

Some of the recent interest in intermittent fasting comes from an interest in making peace with hunger.

John Berardi at Precision Nutrition recommends fasting as a way of learning to manage hunger: “To experience hunger intentionally in order to get accustomed to the feeling, and, well… not freak out. The ability to manage hunger is essential to fitness and good health, and this is a great way to get better at it.”

“The better you can manage hunger, the less likely you are to react compulsively to it. To get fit — and stay fit — you need that skill….So you missed a meal. Who cares? Might even be good for you. Just keep going.”

This is very different from the counsel which says ‘never ever skip a meal.’ I don’t plan on skipping meals, except possibly on travel days, but I don’t plan to freak out any more when I get hungry.

Read more here:

1. Precision Nutrition’s Introduction to Intermittent Fasting

2. Hunger and Nutrition

3. Airports, travel, and fitness

cycling · fashion · sex

Bike seats, speed, and sexual depravity

Sam B30 Comments

duplex
I’m a philosopher, a feminist, and a cyclist. And I’m fascinated by the history of women’s cycling and its connection to the early feminist movement.

One of the most striking things in the history of women’s cycling is the terror of female masturbation associated with the shape and position of the bicycle seat. It’s worse than the dreaded bicycle face and worse than the fear that bicycling would make women prone to infidelity and prostitution.

Here’s a passage from  Women on Wheels: The Bicycle and the Women’s Movement of the 1890s  that presents the general problem quite clearly.

“That bike riding might be sexually stimulating for women was also a real concern to many in the 1890s. It was thought that straddling a saddle combined with the motion required to propel a bicycle would lead to arousal. So-called “hygienic” saddles began to appear, saddles with little or no padding where a woman’s genitalia would ordinarily make contact with the seat. High stems and upright handlebars, as opposed to the more aggressively positioned “drop” handlebars, also were thought to reduce the risk of female sexual stimulation by reducing the angle at which a woman would be forced to ride.”

In “Reframing the Bicycle: Advertising-Supported Magazines and Scorching Women” Ellen Gruber Garvey (American Quarterly) writes that both advocates and critics of women’s cycling used medical arguments related to women’s sexuality and reproduction. Anti-bicyclists claimed that riding would ruin women’s sexual health by promoting masturbation while pro-bicyclers asserted that bicycling would strengthen women’s bodies and make them more fit for motherhood.

Heaven forbid that we argue for cycling on the grounds that women enjoy it. Isn’t it enough that bike riding makes women happy, and provides a way for us to get around?

Garvey is struck, like me, with the amount of ink that was spilt on this particular problem and the amount of detail regarding masturbation and evidence of masturbation that the doctors describe.

In an outpouring of numerous articles in medical journals, physicians went into extensive and virtually prurient detail about ways the bicycle saddle might produce sexual stimulation: The saddle can be tilted in every bicycle as desired…. In this way a girl… could, by carrying the front peak or pommel high, or by relaxing the stretched leather in order to let it form a deep, hammock-like concavity which would fit itself snugly over the entire vulva and reach up in front, bring about constant friction over the clitoris and labia. This pressure would be much increased by stooping forward, and the warmth generated from vigorous exercise might further increase the feeling. This physician reported the case of an “overwrought, emaciated girl of fifteen whose saddle was arranged so that the front pommel rode upward at an angle of about 35 degrees, who stooped forward noticeably in riding, and whose actions … strongly suggested … the indulgence of masturbation.”23 Although the patient is evidently worn to a frazzle by her fevered indulgence, the imagery of this physician’s first passage seems to reflect concern that female masturbation is a kind of indolence or relinquishment of vigilance: the leather is “relaxed”; the vulva rests in that signal article of Victorian leisure furniture, a hammock.

It’s not just the seat itself that’s at issue. Doctors were also obsessively concerned with rider position. The same position that with men was associated with going fast and racing, was seen with women as an obvious aid to masturbation. Men who like going fast ride stooped over to dodge the wind but when women adopt the same position, doctors assumed it was a means of getting more pressure on the clitoris from the bike seat.

Writes Garvey:

The tell-tale riding stoop of the second passage, however, raises a different issue: the “scorching” position-that is, the bent-over- the-handlebars posture adopted by speeders. In male riders, it might be criticized or mocked. But for women, fast riding was condemned; deviations from upright decorousness and graceful riding are more serious, and bicycle-riding posture could be a significant measure of propriety and sexual innocence. Another physician complained that “except when one rides slowly and erect” the “whole body’s weight … rests on the anterior half of the saddle.” Here, not only the saddle and its adjustment but also speed is at fault, and the punishment for stepping out of line is pain and pathology: The moment speed is desired the body is bent forward in a characteristic curve and the body’s weight is transmitted to the narrow anterior half of the saddle, with all the weight pressing on the perineal region…. If a saddle is properly adjusted for slow riding and in an unusual effort at speed or hill climbing, the body is thrown forward, causing the clothing to press against the clitoris, thereby eliciting and arousing feelings hitherto unknown and unrealized by the young maiden and painful and debilitating “granular erosion” or “polypoid growth” will result…..Similarly, medical books had warned for years that the signs that girls “are addicted to such a vice . . . [are] only too plain to the physician” and that the “habit” of masturbation left “its mark upon the face so that those who are wise may know what the girl is doing.”

So we can see two problems here with bike seats, the first is their shape and position, but the other concerns the posture of the rider. Sitting upright makes women go more slowly and is apparently less likely to provoke sexual excitement.

Did anyone consider that the flushed face and the obvious excitement of sitting in an aerodynamic racing position came from the thrill of speed? Probably not.

One of the things I’m interested in seeing is whether the attitudes to women on bikes in the 1800s have entirely gone away.  What I argue, in the course of a longer paper on the subject, is that they haven’t. In fact, I think some of the same attitudes pose an obstacle to getting more women on bikes now.

But surely the fear of bike orgasms has gone way? Right?

Sort of. I’d say it’s still a topic that gets more interest going than seems merited by the phenomena. Every few years a version of the “Women have orgasms while exercising” story goes around. Here’s this year’s version from Live Science: No Sex Required: Women Have Orgasms at the Gym,

“Of the women who had orgasms during exercise, about 45 percent said their first experience was linked to abdominal exercises; 19 percent linked to biking/spinning; 9.3 percent linked to climbing poles or ropes; 7 percent reported a connection with weight lifting; 7 percent running;  the rest of the experiences included various exercises, such as yoga, swimming, elliptical machines, aerobics and others. Exercise-induced sexual pleasure was linked with more types of exercises than the orgasm phenomenon.”

The triple threat of sexual pleasure, women, and bike seats is still a source of humour among cyclists. I was once on a ride where we encountered a section of what locals call ‘corduroy road,’ kind of halfway paved so still bumpy. It wasn’t quite cobblestones or dirt and it was easily doable on our skinny tired road bikes. It was a time when you noticed a difference between aluminum and carbon frames (aluminum vibrates more). After we got to the end of that section of road, one of the men at the front yelled back, “Do you girls want to ride over that section of road again?” Nervous laughter ensued.

The issue of contact with bike seats hasn’t gone away altogether either. Contrary to what most people think the best seat for fast riding is not a big wide, comfy sofa of a thing. Instead it’s a narrow, racing-style seat, see Live Strong on choosing a bike seat. Ideally for comfort you want as little contact between your body’s soft parts and the seat of a bicycle.

The cut away styles of the 1800s are making a bit of a resurgence, and comfort, not fear of orgasm is behind their sales. But sometimes I look at the cut out seats and think back to the 1890s and wonder if the doctors of the day would have smiled approvingly.

 

body image · fitness

How Critical Are You about Your Fitness Info?

Tracy I3 Comments

We’ve got a few common themes that run through many of our blog posts.  One stand-out springs from Sam and my shared disposition to take a critical view of a lot of what we see, read, and hear about fitness. It’s that disposition that led us to become professional philosophers in the first place.

Our feminism adds a particular social/political spin to the types of critiques that are salient to us.  Add to that our enthusiasm for fitness and a pending milestone birthday (less than 18 months to go!), and the result is this blog and the “fittest by fifty” project that fuels it.

As a graduate student, my housemate and I subscribed to Shape magazine.  We were philosophy students, but we didn’t ask many questions about what we read in the pages of Shape.  Even though from month to month there might even be contradictory claims, we just sloughed it off and moved on, taking in everything we thought we could use and modifying our workouts and diets to respond to “new research findings.” I even gave up swimming back then because of something I read in the magazine about how swimmers have more trouble losing fat. It wasn’t even based on a full article — just one of those little snippets that they put in capsule form at the beginning of the magazine. Sad.

I’ve posted before about the fallacy of the appeal to authority. But there are other good reasons to ask questions about both the received view and any new research.

Over time, science does yield different and we hope better information about what we need. For example, where BMI used to be seen as a better health indicator than body weight alone,  it’s now routine to question the merits of BMI. Where restrictive dieting coupled with exercise used to be (and perhaps still is) the main recommendation for people who are thought to be overweight or out of shape, now we hear more about the importance of metabolic health.  In essence, we now know that severely restricting calories can damage the metabolism so that it almost grinds to a halt.

Since not everyone is a scientist, we do need to rely on the findings of science. The mistake I made back when I dropped swimming after reading one article was to base my decision on the very latest scientific findings, culled by a Shape reporter from (I’m guessing) one peer review article, condensed into sound byte form on the pages of a glossy magazine.  That’s really not enough on which to draw a solid conclusion about swimming.

Feminist philosophers and critics of science have launched compelling critiques of scientific methods and experiments on which much of our health data has been based. In her post about Intermittent Fasting, Sam notes her shock at discovering that

“for all I’d heard IF touted as good for people, most of the research supporting IF had been done on men. Surprise, surprise. For the effects of fasting specifically on women you need to read about studies with rats and mice, and the news isn’t good. Women, it seems (well at least female rats and mice) don’t get the same benefits from fasting and they suffer some additional ill effects.”

Her interjection of “surprise, surprise” comes as no surprise to those who have studied the history of health research in even the most rudimentary way.  Historically, the vast majority of important health research was conducted on male subjects alone. Then, based on those studies, researchers drew conclusions that were supposed to apply gender-neutrally to all people.

But that’s not such a great idea, given that men and women have quite different bodies. As in the case of intermittent fasting research and dieting more generally, some practices might have different affects on men than they do on women.

Feminist critics have also pointed out that, historically, far fewer women have been engaged in the practice of science (as scientists). The exclusion of women as subjects skews the findings, making them inappropriate bases on which to draw conclusions about women. But how does the exclusion of women as practitioners make a difference?

One kind of difference it might make is in the questions that get asked.  If we assume that our gendered existence has an impact on the way we experience the world, having mostly men do the research on health and fitness (even on women’s health and fitness) may not yield the same sorts of questions that having women doing the research might yield.

Moreover, since scientific research is an empirical undertaking, any evidence drawn from trials and experiments must be interpreted. Though objectivity is of course a goal, it’s easy for the scientists’ biases to enter into their interpretations of the data. Just as our experience of the world might nudge us in the direction of different questions, so might our experience of the world nudge us in the direction of different answers.

The feminist critics of science also challenge the epistemological hierarchy that privileges the opinions of experts and gives them an exalted authority on which the rest of us, in our ignorance, must rely.  When we defer in this way to the authority of the experts, we give them a lot of power.  Again, I think of Dr. Oz and the disproportionate influence his opinions have on the health practices of so many North Americans.

Back in the seventies, a collective of women in Boston recognized the gap in expertise between what they wanted and needed to know about women’s health and sexuality and what the medical establishment had to offer.  Their critical approach to their own health gave rise to the first edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves. It’s been through many updates and revisions, including a new edition in 2011.

I seek out blogs that are critical of the received views of women’s health and fitness for similar reasons as the original group who put together Our Bodies, Ourselves. Not all blogs are alike, and there are some that do offer interesting approaches that challenge some basic assumptions. Three of these are: Go Kaleo, Fit and Feminist, and Dances with Fat.

The majority of fitness blogs I see recommended on different lists of fitness blogs to read do not question basic assumptions. Rather than challenging weight loss is a major goal, or that achieving a certain “fit” aesthetic is what most people want, and that these two factors are major motivators for people, the vast majority of fitness blogs run with those very assumptions.

I want good information, but I want it from the perspective of others who seek to challenge the received views and the established authorities. This is not to say that I will accept any old thing I hear, or that I have no respect for good science.

But I think there are good reasons to reserve judgment on new research findings until there is a lot of solid evidence in its favour and we know it has proven to be the case for a range of test subjects. I think too that we should care whether some of the scientists doing the research are women, not just because women are smart and capable, but also because they might ask different questions that resonate more strongly with other women, and they might interpret the evidence differently than their male colleagues in ways that are significant, not just for science, but for me as woman who cares about my health and my level of fitness.

[image credit: Telling Secrets blog]

tilt shift lens photography of stone Intermittent fasting and why it might not work as well for women
diets · eating

Intermittent fasting and why it might not work as well for women

Sam B31 Comments

You’d have to be living under a rock not have noticed the latest diet trend, intermittent fasting.

It’s gone from making the rounds in the Paleo community (see Intermittent Fasting And The Paleo Diet) to mainstream with the 5-2 diet. See British 5:2 diet craze heads to the US. See also When you eat key to intermittent fasting (CBC).

The basic idea of the 5-2 version is that you “fast” for two days and then eat whatever you want for the remaining five. It’s not strictly speaking an actual fast because you do eat about 500 calories on the “fast” days.

There are many versions of intermittent fasting (or IF as many fans call it) from some that sound just like skipping breakfast, to others that have a more complicated structure throughout the week, to some that are geared to a very specific purpose such as avoiding jet lag.

The evolutionary basis of this approach to eating seems obvious. Humans have evolved to do well in feast and famine conditions. The problem with the contemporary North American diet is that it’s all feast, all the time. Many cultures around the world practice fasting and seem to suffer no ill effects from periods of fasting, followed by periods of feasting.

It’s striking how much IF deviates from the regular feeding, three meals + two snacks, of most other nutritional plans for athletes, including fitness competitors and body builders. On those plans you eat regular small meals, not going more than three hours without food.

But arguably the fasting habit isn’t for athletes. As you might imagine there’s been controversy over this. For the argument against IF for athletes, see here. The argument against relies on the large amount of data we have on the performance of Muslim athletes during Ramadan. Short version: athletic performance suffers. Also athletes need fuel to train. See that argument against here.

And of course, some athletes and coaches think it’s terrific, if done right, read more here if you’re interested.

Regardless most advocates and fans of intermittent fasting don’t have athletes in mind. The 5-2 diet is described as being perfect for the average person, no big changes in what you eat required, except of course on the two fasting days.

Is this just the latest fad diet? You should read what Tracy thinks about fad diets and the meaning of success here.  Does it work? Again, as Tracy says that depends on what you mean by work. She’d likely tell you to try intuitive eating instead. Intermittent fasting is kind of the opposite of intuitive eating. Rather than noticing and hunger and eating when you’re hungry, on a fasting diet you follow the clock, not your stomach. You learn to notice hunger and then ignore it.

There are lots of versions of IF out there.  Anthony Mychall does the Warrior Diet–one meal a day. He writes about it in this blog post, How to Start Intermittent Fasting and Kick Hunger Aside. How to cope with hunger? “The best way to forget about hunger is to literally put yourself in a position to forget about hunger. Keep active during your fasting window and put yourself in a situation where you can’t eat. Hell, sleep in if you have to.”

What about more extreme versions? In Inhuman Experiment: An experimenter in search of prolonged youth we read about another IF propocol. This one requires 24 hours of fasting as it’s based on alternate day feeding, called ADF, of course. See the blog post, Intermittent Fasting: Understanding the Hunger Cycle for more about hunger: “The feelings of hunger during intermittent (24 hour) fasting vary with time. The one thing to keep in mind is that, in my experience, the most difficult part is near the 20th hour into the fast. That’s when the hunger is replaced by a general lack of energy and focus. This feeling will, however, pass in an hour or so, after which fasting becomes much easier again.”

I’ve often thought of intermittent fasting as one tool in the careful eater’s bag of tricks. I do a version of IF I suppose (though I’ve never called it that) when I decide to not eat after dinner, thus lengthening the period in the day when I go without food. I do this on days when I’m not working out in the evening. I go to bed a little bit hungry but since I always wake up hungry no matter what there doesn’t seem to be any other change in my desire for food.

A few years ago on the advice of a personal trainer I experimented with morning workouts on an empty stomach but that was a bit of a disaster. See comments above on waking up hungry! Halfway through my morning run I was prepared to go knock on doors in search of breakfast.

I’ve had more some success with eating lots less when I travel. It’s a good time to experiment since the food options are crappy and expensive. I haven’t tried IF as a way of combating jet lag though I might the next time I head to England or British Columbia.

On jet lag and fasting. read more here:

But one thing seems clear about these various eating schemes, your mileage may vary: what works for some doesn’t work for others. If regular  intermittent fasting is successful for you, great, but there are concerns it doesn’t work as well for everyone and very specific concerns that it doesn’t work as a nutritional strategy for women.

I read Shattering the Myth of Fasting for Women: A Review of Female-Specific Responses to Fasting in the Literature and was shocked that for all I’d heard IF touted as good for people, most of the research supporting IF had been done on men. Surprise, surprise. For the effects of fasting specifically on women you need to read about studies with rats and mice, and the news isn’t good. Women, it seems (well at least female rats and mice) don’t get the same benefits from fasting and they suffer some additional ill effects.

Yet, I’ve had intermittent fasting recommended to me by several young men, heavily involved in fitness and nutrition.  In light of these experiences, I was thrilled to read a terrific rant (she gives the best rant) by Krista Scott Dixon, at Stumptuous.

In “The First Rule of Fast Club” she  rants about and aims fury and righteous rage in the direction of lots of things including the following: why intermittent fasting may not be the cure all for women’s weight woes, why in general what works for young men won’t work for women, and why women shouldn’t listen to young, thin, male personal trainers.

 

“The first rule of fast club is: Don’t talk about fast club.

The second rule of fast club is that skinny guys no longer get to tell me what to do. (Although I love you guys. You look so cute with your pants falling down!)

 

I come not to bury young male ectomorphs, but to praise them. In fact, I married one. They are a fascinating species. I have observed my own specimen for years, like Jane Goodall amongst the chimps.

Here are some interesting facts about these wonderful creatures.

1. Many of them can live on fumes. Craving neither food nor drink, these hominid hummingbirds apparently draw nourishment from the air. They sup on dew and dine on dust.

2. When they are stressed out, they don’t eat. Actually, when they aren’t starving, they don’t eat. Which is to say, most of the time. Can you believe not eating when you’re stressed? I know! Ha ha! Crazy! I keep trying to explain to my specimen that giving a loaf of bread a butter enema then dipping the whole thing in chocolate and rubbing it all over your esophagus will always make you feel better. Thus far I have failed to convince him.

3. When they do eat, it doesn’t seem to matter. Have you seen the food these guys can put down? It’s like they encode for some MAKE_ABS1 gene. In their bodies, somehow cookies turn into tummy bumps.

4. To lose weight, they do crazy shit like give up drinking so much beer. I hear women from all over the globe gnashing their teeth at their partners’ superhuman abilities to get riptshizzled with no effort. I’ve been busting my ass and I lost 1 lb in a month! That jerk’s doing my nutrition plan along with me and he’s lost 40 lb in the same time, just by eating one less strand of spaghetti a day! I hate him!

I hear ya. My home dinner table conversation sometimes goes like this.

Me: Ugh, I feel the estrogen demons again. I feel like an inflated wet sponge. The only thing that fits me is the Snuggie my grandma gave me last Christmas.

Him: I don’t feel so good myself. I had a whiff of anxiety today and dropped 5 lbs. Then my shirt tore itself on my abs.

Eeyup.

There there ladies. Cry it out.

And here is point #5, which may be the most obvious:

5. They are not us.”

Go read the whole thing here.

Here’s a very useful resource if you’re thinking about giving intermittent fasting a try: Precision Nutrition, Experiments in Intermittent Fasting.

Have you tried Intermittent Fasting? What do you think? How did it make you feel?