I heard a sports psychologist speak recently about knowing your strengths and training your weaknesses.
On training weaknesses: We all love the things we’re good at….sprinting, yes, more sprinting drills please. And we are not so keen on the things we’re not good at. Hills, ugh, make it rain please so I don’t have to climb hills.
But really, I ought to be training on hills some of the time. That’s the area where I have the biggest gains to make.
Reminding yourself of your strengths: The second part of her message matters too. She advised that you know your strengths and remind yourself of them in competition. Race day is when you forget your weaknesses and dwell upon your strengths.
What are three strengths you bring to this competition?
The suggestion was not that you should just know them but also that you should remind yourself of them as part of your race prep and while you’re out there competing.
“I’m ________, ________, and _________”
You fill in the blanks.
I haven’t been feeling great lately. Despite lots of physio my knee is still injured and I might not even get to take part in the Kincardine Women’s Triathlon the way things are going. While there may not be racing in my immediate future, I figure it can’t hurt to remind myself of my strengths.
1. I’m outrageously stubborn. It took me six years to learn to roll in Aikido. But I stuck it out, kept trying, and eventually did it.
2. I’m tough and I’m okay with suffering. I don’t mind working hard. On good days, I even really like it.
3. I’m powerful. For an adult-onset athlete nearing 50, that is. I’ve got a good combination of aerobic fitness and muscle strength that surprises even me sometimes.
How about you?
Blogging from the plane. Here’s the view out my window.
I talk to so many women who struggle with getting a good night’s sleep. From getting to bed too late and having to get up early, to not being able to fall asleep, to tossing and turning in the middle of the night, to waking up in a puddle of sweat, to a stream of thoughts that just won’t shut down, all sorts of things keep us up at night.
I’ve never had kids, but I remember my mother saying at some point that every kid needs a structured bedtime ritual. As a child, I had that. Bath time preceded bedtime, then we brushed our teeth, got into our jammies, and curled up in bed for a bedtime story that one of my parents or, more often, my grandfather, read aloud to us. I never had difficulty falling asleep. Never woke up in the middle of the night. Never lay awake for hours tossing and turning.
The one the Precision Nutrition habit that has so far surprised me the most is: create and use a sleep ritual. This surprised me because I never thought of it as part of a nutritional plan to get a good night’s sleep. And I also haven’t given a lot of thought in recent years to the idea of bedtime as involving more than just brushing my teeth and turning out the light.
But it’s a good thing for me to reflect upon lately because my days of being a “good sleeper” (I was sucha good sleeper) are over. Much of this has to do with hormones I guess. It’s hard to sleep through night sweats.
What I’ve learned and what this New York Times article confirms, is that a good night’s sleep starts way before the light goes out. Like almost anything else that you want to go well, it requires a plan. In PN terms, that would be the sleep ritual. As part of the sleep ritual, PN recommends a few things: Start at least half an hour if not a full hour before lights out; at the appointed time, turn off all electronics; do a “brain dump” where you spill everything that might keep you awake out onto a piece of paper; do something relaxing (like have a bath, do a meditation, read some fiction). Of course, the ritual can include the usual things like brushing your teeth and flossing, changing into your sleep wear (or getting naked). They also recommend dimming the lights well before it’s time to shut them off for the night.
These things are all with a view to slowing us down and calming the brain. From the New York Timespiece:
Beauty is sleep; sleep, beauty. But in our harried multitasking worlds, sleep, like truth, can sometimes be compromised.
Dr. Wechsler, the author of “The Mind-Beauty Connection,” said that there’s no quick fix to getting enough sleep, only a slow, mindful one.
“There has to be a plan, you have to slow down,” she said. For those who are on the fast track and desperate to look rested, Botox between the eyebrows can help fake it in the short term, she said, but it does not address the root of the problem.
If the root of the problem is a mind that won’t stop, what can we do to slow things down? The article makes a bunch of suggestions:
Enter the lavender pillows, nap pods and masseuses. The sleep-wellness industry is on an upswing as shut-eye becomes an increasingly sought-after beauty experience.
The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health, has a section on its website dedicated to treating sleep disorders with herbals and meditative practices like tai chi. Canyon Ranch is on track to double the number of all-night sleep studies it has conducted in 2013 and 2014. The number of guests choosing rest and relaxation programs at Omega, a holistic center in upstate New York, has increased by over a third since 2006. Other resort offerings include power napping classes, pillow menus and yogic sleep programs.
Another possibility:
cognitive behavioral therapy techniques like “worry journals.” On one page a problem is written out, and on an opposite page a solution, right before bed. Even if the solution is “I’ll figure it out tomorrow,” said Dr. Breus, the act of writing out what’s keeping their brains awake helps his patients “close their minds to their lists of anxieties.” For those who wake up in the middle of the night, he offers an MP3 of a progressive muscle relaxation meditation, similar to what Ms. Harris practices.
Rubin Naiman, a sleep and dream specialist who conducts workshops at ashrams and spas nationwide, emphasized that people should avoid trying too hard to fall asleep and that they need to learn how to “fall in love with sleep again,” adding that it must be invoked “through ritual and pleasure.”
There are even fragrances that are thought to induce calm:
ath and Body Works has an aromatherapy collection called Sleep, which includes a pillow mist, sugar scrub and massage oil. And Hope Gillerman’s essential oil line, which works with acupressure points to ease mind-body stresses, includes a product called Natural Rest Sleep Remedy.
Herbals with calming qualities include valerian and magnolia bark, according to Dr. Breus. As for the soothing elements of lavender, he is supportive of it for setting the mood and causing a relaxation response but not for putting you to sleep.
I find it challenging to implement a solid sleep ritual for all sorts of reasons. Though I’ve stopped watching Orange is the New Black on my iPad in bed as the last thing I do before I turn out the light, I find reading isn’t always a better option for me. I have been known to get so drawn into a book that I can’t put it down. Sharing the bed with a partner who brings his laptop with him because his bedtime ritual includes watching YouTube videos of sailboats poses another challenge. I might want a sleep ritual that involves no electronics, but it’s not my right to impose that on someone else.
I also have difficulty starting to wind down much before I’m in urgent need of getting to bed. But I’m about to be traveling for a week, and I am going to try the 30-60 minute unwind thing while I’m gone: electronics off (this is a tough one for me), dim lights, brush and floss, wash face, change, read, and sleep.
And I’m open to other suggestions, especially about how to implement a sleep ritual that is different from that of your bedmate.
The impossibility of long term weight loss success was in the news again last week and it made its way into this blog despite our view that body weight and fitness aren’t connected in the way many people think. Certainly I’ve been fat and fit and thin and woefully out of shape. In my life they’ve been different things, thinness and fitness.
I thought I was a fat kid. Looking back, I think I was a pretty normal-sized kid who thought she was fat. I joined Weight Watchers in grade six, read about that here, and began a period of getting skinny and looking good all the while living on coffee and cigarettes. I was in horrible shape but I was a teenager and I looked great. It was the 70s. What can I say?
Enter feminism and university, the 80s, punk aesthetic, and an avowed rejection of mainstream beauty standards. I got a sort of gentle mohawk and dyed my hair pink and purple. I wore a lot of black. I also gained weight. By the start of grad school I weighed 235 lbs. When I stepped on the scale and saw that number, I was shocked. I was having a hard time finding clothes that fit. No wonder, I thought. I was a solid size 16 but clothes that size were in regular stores. The next stop would have been plus-size fashion and it felt like enough was enough. I took up weight lifting, added some cardio, quit smoking, pretty much quit eating, and in the course of an academic year lost 80 lbs. I was twenty-four.
I haven’t kept clothes from either high school or skinny me grad school with two exceptions. Can you guess? Probably you can. I kept my prom dress and my wedding dress, neither which even fit my kids as Halloween costumes. They looked impossibly tiny. Finally, a couple of years ago, I send both to a thrift store/charity shop. Enjoy some other/not me skinny person!
By the time I was 34, I had a PhD, three children, an academic job, tenure and had regained all weight I’d lost in grad school. It was the late 90s.
Coming up to 40, I became department chair, took up running, hired a personal trainer and made it back to 165 lbs. Lower than that never tempted me. I was a size 10. Though technically still overweight, I could feel my ribs and my hip bones and I felt skinny. Certainly I had skinny face!
Now with the fittest by 50 challenge coming to a close, I’m thinking again about weight. I’m not back to my highest weight but I wasn’t able maintain 165 either. I’m about halfway in between these days.
As a very active but larger person (or fat, whatever) with a pretty good health and fitness profile I wonder lots about weight, size, destiny and biology and here are some questions that I’d like to ask an obesity researcher if we had a long flight together to chat. (I’m thinking about that because I’m writing this on a flight between Toronto and Los Angeles.)
My weight loss questions:
1. What’s better in terms of losing weight and keeping it off, slow weight loss or fast weight loss? The common sense view is that it’s better do it slowly, that too restrictive a diet sends your body into starvation mode. But commonsense isn’t always right and though I like the common-sense view, recent research casts some doubt on it.
Losing weight is simple: Ingest fewer calories than your body burns. But how best to do that is unclear. Most experts advise small reductions in calories or increases in exercise to remove weight slowly and sensibly, but many people quit that type of program in the face of glacial progress. A new study, published in March in The Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, suggests that minimal calories and maximal exercise can significantly reduce body fat in just four days — and the loss lasts for months. The catch, of course, is that those four days are pretty grueling.
In a study, on men, of course, a group of test subjects worked out a lot (8 hours a day) and ate next to nothing (just 360 calories a day) but 4 days. Of course, they lost a lot of weight but what got the researchers attention was that it stayed away.
More surprising, the men did not immediately put the weight back on after the study ended. “We thought they would overeat and regain the weight lost,” Dr. Calbet says. Instead, when the volunteers returned a month later, most had lost another two pounds of fat. And a year after the experiment, they were still down five pounds, mostly in lost body fat.
“There’s no reason to think that slow, gradual weight loss is better over the long-term compared to losing lots of weight fast. A pooled analysis of randomized clinical trials that compared rapid weight loss and slow weight loss (or, to be more precise, extreme diets and less grueling ones) found that though the extreme diets resulted in the loss of 66% more weight (16% of body weight versus 10% for the regular diets), there was no difference at the end of a year.”
That’s reporting on research in “Myths, Presumptions, and Facts about Obesity,” by Krista Casazza et al, New Engl J Med 2013; 368:446-454, January 31, 2013.
2. The commonsense view also says it’s really bad to regain weight. So bad that you ought never have lost in first place. You’re setting yourself up for a lifetime of yoyo dieting and ruining your metabolism. But how true is that? How bad is regaining weight if it happens slowly, over time? Yes, it’s depressing and demoralizing but is it bad from a health point of view?
This question has bothered me so much that I’ve set out to find out answers. I’ve looked through Google scholar and started reading way outside my field of research expertise. No clear answers emerged. If you’re reading and you’re an obesity researcher and you know the answer, please email me.
My experience is that of regaining weight over the course of years, not months. Did my health benefit from those years at a lower weight? The weight crept back on for sure but kind of the rate of a pound a month, or less.
Suppose I only do the complete up down cycle three times my life, would i really ir have been better off at a consistent but high weight? That doesn’t seem obviously true to me.
Suppose too that my low weight keeps changing, getting higher, first 155, then 165, and maybe next time 175. And my high weight on the up cycle gets lower. First 235, then 225, now 200. Maybe eventually it’ll settle somewhere in the middle as the ball’s bounce diminishes.
I think that on my optimistic days!
3. What counts as success? Suppose I only ever regain half the weight I lost. Is that success or failure?
Yoni Freedhoff commented on the blog saying there were lots of unicorns in a study he’d written about.
I trundled off to look at it and saw was measuring something different. Writing about the study on his blog Freedhoff says, “It’s quite heartening to see that after 8 years, for 35% of the DSE control group, 3 1-hour group talks a year were sufficient to help fuel a sustained weight loss of 5 percent or more of their presenting weight, and for 17% of them, enough to fuel and sustain a greater than 10 percent loss. “
There are at least two different ways to measure long term weight loss success. We can focus on those who maintain a goal weight or on those who maintain a weight loss of just five or ten percent of their starting weight. By that more easygoing measure, I’m in, I’m a success story. Lots more people are in even if we don’t typically think of only losing 5-10 percent of your body weight, a weight loss success story.
Call the people who meet standard 1, getting to goal and staying there, the unicorns. They are rare. Far more common are people who meet standard 2, exotic but not unfamiliar. Call them the weight loss alpacas. I’m a weight loss alpaca! (I’ve got a soft spot for alpacas.)
Animals and mythical creatures aside, the point here is a serious one. Let’s think about success a bit differently. There are tremendous health benefits that come with some pretty small weight losses. Even bariatric surgeons are starting to think in terms of small differences in weight instead of unsustainable weight loss miracles.
Rethinking success is part of Freedhoff’s pitch too. He writes, “What I’m getting at is that I think what makes maintaining weight loss seem “almost impossible” are the goal posts society has generally set to measure success. No doubt, if the goal set is losing every last ounce of weight that some stupid chart says you’re supposed to lose then the descriptor “almost impossible” may well be fair. On the other hand, if the goal is to cultivate the healthiest life that you can honestly enjoy, subtotal losses, often with significant concomitant health improvements, are definitely within your reach. “
4. Is all obesity alike? Catherine Womack and I have chatted about whether there are medically significant different kinds of obesity (her suggestion). You know that there’s conceptual cleaning up to be done, of the sorts philosophers love, when medical researchers start talking about “thin fat” people and metabolically healthy obese people. It seems clear that these weight categories aren’t doing the work we need them to do. “Thin fat person?” What the heck is that? Oh you mean a metabolically unhealthy thin person. Then why not say so and leave weight out of the picture?
There’s far too much running together of various health problems with various numbers on the scale, with seemingly little awareness about the ways in which the two might be linked (or not).
So, lots of questions. I’ll keep reading and thinking. But for now, back to fitness!
Tracy in her wetsuit and bathing cap, all ready for the swim portion of the Cambridge Triathlon. Happy and relaxed! Photo credit: Renald Guindon
I did my first triathlon of the season on Sunday in Cambridge, Ontario. It was technically a sprint, but it was a longer sprint than many — 750 metre in the open water followed by 30 kilometres on the bike and a 6 kilometre trail run through the woods. It was more than double the distance of the longest triathlon I’ve done so far. I trained super well for the swim, reasonably well for the run, and pretty much not at all for the bike. And it all showed. Here’s my race report.
Shade Mills Conservation Area is in Cambridge, about an hour and 20 minutes from London, Ontario. Check-in began at 7:30 and I like to be early, so Renald and I left London at 6 a.m. on a perfectly clear, sunny morning. Not hot or humid. Just right. I got all organized the night before, with my bag neatly packed for each leg of the race. The pre-race report said the water was 67 degrees F, and I was excited to check out my new wetsuit for real.
I had two bikes in the car — mine and our friend and colleague, Chris’s. She was doing the duathlon (run-bike-run) and wanted to make space in her car for her cheering squad — partner, Emma, who has blogged here about her treadmill desk, and their kids Finn and Una.
The days leading up to the event I felt tired. If I wasn’t already officially menopausal, I would have sworn I had PMS. From the 400 times or so I’ve had it over the course of my life, I know the PMS symptoms well: tired, legs that feel as if someone filled them with lead, emotional, and a particular sort of lower back pain that I only ever got right before my period. But I am menopausal, right? Haven’t menstruated since January 2012, right?
Well wrong. It felt like PMS because, surprise! It was! Perfect timing that the crimson tide should make a guest appearance just in time for my first triathlon of the season. I’d also been nursing a sore throat for a few days, gargling with warm salt water whenever the chance arose.
This is all by way of saying that physically, I was not at my strongest on Sunday. And still, I felt excited and even kind of relaxed when we arrived at the site.
Earlier in the week I had met with Gabbi, the coach from Balance Point Triathlon, who I’ve been swim training with since September. She had urged me to arrive early, give my bike a quick ride to make sure it was all in working order after being transported, get all set up, familiarize myself with the location of my stuff in the transition area, the various entry and exit points, and to get down to the water in time to do a warm-up swim in my wetsuit, and get a visual, from the water, of what the swim finish looked like.
This was the first year for the Cambridge event, so it was a nice manageable size, with only 219 participants (159 men, 60 women, and only 6 women in my age-group category of 50-54). The transition area was mercifully small, and my rack was especially roomy, which is not always the case. I racked my bike and had plenty of space to lay down my towel and arrange my stuff all out for smooth transitions. I mentally reviewed how each transition would go.
Renald was waiting for me down at the beach. I applied body glide to my arms and legs (I should have put some around the bottom of my neck at the back too, which is where the wetsuit rubbed the worst). I pulled the suit on, grabbed my bathing caps (double layer for warmth), and made my way down to the water for my warm-up swim. The water felt just fine. The wetsuit kept my body toasty warm, and unlike the frigid dip in Lake Erie that I had the weekend before, my hands and face and feet could handle it without any trouble. As you can see from the top photo, I felt pretty good after the warm-up, ready for the starting horn for my wave (wave 4).
The Swim (750m)
I had a bit of a rough start, struggling to find a position where I could swim comfortably, stay on course, and strike a good rhythm. It took me the first third or so of the swim to do that. In the pool when I’m training I have no difficulty breathing every third stroke. But at the beginning of the race, I lost my breath and had to breath every two strokes for quite awhile. I’m good at sighting, which is a necessary skill for open water swimming when you can’t follow the blue line on the bottom of the pool. But instead of rolling into my breathing after a sighting the orange markers (which we were to keep on our left), my stroke and rhythm got all messed up.
But as we rounded the first corner to the far side of the island that we were swimming around, I started to relax into the swim. My breathing got more steady and I felt strong and confident. By that time, I’d started passing people from the previous wave, recognizable to me from their blue caps. This bolstered my confidence even more and made it possible for me to stay calm even though there were lots of weeds that were getting all caught on my face and in my hands–that would normally prompt minor hysterics because sea life in general, be it weeds or fish, throws me into a panic.
But I kept my focus and made it out of the water in 17:48. Not the fastest but also by no means the slowest time. I was definitely in the top third of swim times. Yay for that! It shows me that my training has paid off big time.
T1 (2:50)
I bolted out of the water and ran across the grass (quite a distance) to the transition area. I peeled off the wetsuit the way Gabbi had told me to do–down to the waist on the way to the transition area, then to the knees, then step on one side while I pulled the foot out of the other and vice versa. It was a bit chilly, which I hadn’t prepped for, so I pulled my new race t-shirt on over my wet clothing. I put on the helmet and clipped the chin strap, put the sunglasses on, then shoes and socks. Unracked the bike and ran out the other side of the transition to the mount line. Samantha and Jeff had arrived by then and were cheering me on at the sidelines as I hopped on the bike, clipped in, and rode off.
The Bike Leg (30K)
Here’s what went well on the bike leg. I wasn’t nervous because I had done it a couple of weeks before with Sam and Chris. I had a good supply of Clif Block Shots in a little pouch that I attached to my handlebars, as well as my water bottle which I am now able to drink from without stopping. So I was able to keep myself nourished and hydrated. It was also perfect riding weather — clear and dry, not hot but not cold either — and the course was well-marked and well-monitored, with OPP (Ontario Provincial Police) at major intersections so we could ride through safely. They also had clear markers at 5K intervals.
But I lost a ton of time on the bike. It started with a climb that didn’t bother me at all on our test run, but left me completely winded and gasping this time around. The descent that immediately followed kind of scared me, and I felt myself reaching for the brakes a couple of times instead of just letting fly. I did pass a few people at the beginning. But for the most part people blasted past me. Psychologically, I admit that this kind of demoralized me when it happened. It’s not just that I got passed. It’s that people were maintaining speeds that I can only dream about at this point. So the negative tape in my head started to play about how slow I am, and then I just stopped really pushing myself. I kicked into gear on hills, telling myself that they were meditations. That got me to the top of the only really challenging climb of the course back.
I had estimated I could do it in about an hour 20 minutes. I came close, at 1:23:58, one of the slowest bike times of the race.
When I came back in Sam, Jeff, and Renald were all at the bike dismount, yelling “Go, Tracy!” I unclipped and dismounted without incident. Grabbed the bike and ran to the transition area.
T2 (1:54)
Someone had racked her bike where mine was supposed to go and that threw me for a brief few seconds. I racked my bike over a bit, removed my helmet and my extra shirt, kicked off the bike shoes, donned the hat, grabbed the shoe horn to slip on my running shoes (I had the laces set exactly where I like them already), grabbed my fuel belt (I hate being reliant on the water stations) and ran to the transition exit. On the way out, as I tried to turn my race bib number to the front, I ripped one of the holes and it was hanging askew. I tried tucking it in without much luck as I ran to the run course.
The Run
I ran without any gadgets at all — no Garmin, no watch, no music. This meant that I had no idea what kind of time I was making, but I knew it was slow. I had to lose 30 seconds to re-pin my number to the belt (a makeshift belt — I want a real one). By now the sun had risen quite a bit in the sky. Thankfully, the run wound through a beautiful, cool wooded trail. I saw a few people at the beginning of the run, but other than a couple of women whom I passed (and who were younger than me by 20 and 30 years!), I ran alone. It was so shady in the woods that I had to take off my sunglasses. The marker for the first kilometre came up quickly. That felt like a good sign but my energy started to wane.
I felt like I was shuffling along by now, hardly picking up my feet. I did a mix of running and walking. By now, I knew there was no question of not finishing. In fact, that hadn’t entered my mind at any point. One of the women I passed earlier passed me on one of my walk breaks as we approached the 5K marker. I wanted to run the last kilometre. I probably could have but my mind kept telling me to walk. Anyway, my run pace was dreadful — at 7:56 per kilometer it was well over a minute slower than the pace that I train at! Run time: 47:36When I got the finish chute and approached the finish line, Renald, Sam, Jeff, Chris, Emma, Finn, and Una were all at the side cheering me on! I felt like I had nothing much left but I think most of that was in my mind. I kind of breezed to the finish line. Smiling. All in all, it was a fun race.
Debrief
The race felt long. And for me, it was–the longest I’ve done so far. Just a little bit shorter than the Olympic Distance coming up in August.
Renald commented that most of the athletes, by the look on their faces, didn’t look like they were enjoying themselves. For me, there is no point if it’s not fun. I have to confess, though, to feeling somewhat disappointed with my result. It’s not that I feel 2:34 is a terrible time. I was actually pleased enough with that. It’s that in comparative terms, it feels kind of shitty to be 6/6 in my age group and almost last in the race (yes, only 5 people came in after me and 2 more didn’t finish at all).
Sam made me feel better in a couple of ways. She suggested that this year I complete, next year I compete. She’s also quite sure I can improve my bike speed with some effort. I can tell you this: I will not be taking another full winter off of cycling. I’m getting a trainer and I also plan to do spin classes.
And finally, I need to work on my running stamina. The walk breaks are fine, but I want to run faster when I’m running. And if I’m going to take walk breaks, I want them to be at regular intervals, not just when I feel like it. Why? Because the more tired I get, the more I feel like it. And much of that is just in my head. A few times during the run I just took stock of what was going on with me. The answer that came back was revealing — there was really no good reason for me to slow down to a walk. That kept me going through the last K.
Next up is the Kincardine Women’s Triathlon on July 13. I’m now signed up to train with the Balance Point Triathlon Club for the rest of the season, and will continue with them through the winter. My summer is a bit broken up with travel, and I’m not sure how much regular training I’m going to get in between now and the week before Kincardine. But as Sam said, this summer I’m completing, next year I’m competing.
And I am enjoying myself quite a bit. Here’s the picture to prove it:
Tracy crosses the finish line at Cambridge. Photo credit: Renald Guindon
Next time I’d just like to cross the finish line before all the food is gone.
My daughter Mallory is almost done the Otesha Project’s East Coast Tour. And I’m very proud of her. We’ve been riding together since not long after she was born. (Thanks Burley bike trailer.) We’ve done lots of mother-daughter bike tourism together, the rail trails of Quebec and of New Zealand’s south island (see Cycling holidays, Part 1: Rail trails) but I love that this summer she’s off riding her bike with a group of like minded young people and has discovered her own love of cycling.
This summer she also moved to clipless pedals and I might even have talked her into a touring road bike for future mother-daughter cycling adventures!
What’s the Otesha Project?
“The Otesha Project is a national youth-led charitable organization that uses experiential learning, theatre and bicycle tours to engage and empower Canadians of all ages to take action for a more equitable and sustainable world.”
Riding the Tides of Change Fredericton to Halifax May 3 – June 24 2014 Performing and Cycling Tour
Here’s their description of the East Coast Tour: “Let the cliffs, culture, and concentration of sea life in Canada’s majestic Maritimes fuel your passion for sustainability and social justice . A 9 day training in bicycle skills, interactive theatre, community engagement, and facilitation techniques prepares your team to spark dialogue with thousands of students using Otesha’s play “Cycling Through Change” and “Action Addict” workshop. Wind your way around the Bay of Fundy and through the Annapolis Valley, learning from the Mi’kmaq, anglophone, and Acadian communities that welcome you.”
And if you’re in, or near, Halifax you can meet them on Thursday, June 19th!
“The Otesha Project is rolling into Halifax after our 2 month East Coast Cycling and Performing Tour talking with schools and communities about environmental and social justice! Come join us in Victoria Park at 5 pm for a public performance of our play (rapping and singing included) and a critical mass ride around the city at 6pm!!” See details here.
Here’s some of child Mallory in her early days as a cyclist!
A number of blog readers sent this our way. Looks like a great program and it might be fun to do with friends. Enjoy!
“The truth is your body is utterly awesome and I know it. It doesn’t matter what your body’s like. If you have a body and you’re interested in having less body-related doubt, worry, and self-loathing and a whole lot more happy confident self-accepting badassery, 52 Weeks to Your Best Body Ever is for you.
What is 52 Weeks to Your Best Body Ever?
52 Weeks to Your Best Body Ever is the latest body-acceptance project from Hanne Blank, author of Big Big Love: A Sex and Relationships Guide for People of Size and Those Who Love Them and The Unapologetic Fat Girl’s Guide to Exercise and Other Incendiary Acts. It is 52 weekly chapters, each on a different subject having to do with bodies, radical acceptance, and an abundance of gleeful shenanigans. Readers get a book delivered in weekly doses, each one bringing a dose of body-loving perspective, insight, strategy, experiments, Zen, and badassery to help you revel in the amazing skin you’re in.
Who is 52 Weeks to Your Best Body Ever for?
Do you have a body? Then 52 Weeks to Your Best Body Ever is for you!
Body-image and self-esteem books are often marketed as if they were only of interest to women, and as if the only body-related issues anyone ever had were about weight and size. 52 Weeks to Your Best Body Ever was created because we know better.
All kinds of people have body issues, and they have issues about all kinds of bodies. Some have to do with weight or size… and some of them aren’t! 52 Weeks is about things like the stuff people say and the ways people act about bodies… how we move our bodies through the world… feeling sexy and happy in your body… how we care for ourselves, dress ourselves, feed ourselves… how gender shapes how we feel about our bodies… how our body histories shape our lives today… how to respond to body critics… what to do when you’re having a crappy self-esteem day… and a whole lot more.
Is 52 Weeks to Your Best Body Ever a diet?
Nope. 52 Weeks to Your Best Body Ever is not a diet. Yeah, there’ll be some stuff about food. Mostly about figuring out how to eat in the ways that make your pelt glossy and keep you purring. But no, no diet business.
Is 52 Weeks to Your Best Body Ever an exercise program?
No, although you will be warmly encouraged to experiment with moving your body in any and all ways that intrigue, delight, or amuse you. But I’m not about to blow smoke up your gym shorts about exercise being some kind of magic wand that will cure everything that you don’t like about your life. This isn’t that kind of party.
So just how is 52 Weeks to Your Best Body Ever going to change my life, then?
It’s not. (It’s just a book.) But it might just help you change your life.
52 Weeks to Your Best Body Ever is all about what happens if you start thinking about your body with the assumption that being a fierce fabulous force of nature is your birthright. It’s a little bit Zen, a lot pragmatic, and full of all kinds of radically self-accepting and body-respecting juju. It knows you do not suffer fools gladly and wants you to have to suffer them as little as possible. 52 Weeks to Your Best Body Ever is a full year of kick-ass personal body positivity, no matter what your body is like.”
Charity bike rides can be a barrel of fun. You are raising money for some cause (presumably a good one). You don’t have to think about the route—there are marshals, cue sheets, arrows on the road, etc. At the finish line you’ll find ample food, drink, and entertainment—often in the form of amateur drumming groups, jugglers, incidental guitar playing, and of course frolicking dogs and babies. And, you feel great because you have ridden with a large group of high-minded charity-oriented cycling folks.
I got to partake of these pleasures on Sunday June 8, participating in the Bikes Not Bombs ride in Boston, MA. Bikes Not Bombs (https://bikesnotbombs.org/) is the perfect grassroots organization—operating on a shoestring budget, they “use the bicycle as a vehicle for social change”. They collect bike donations, ship them to needy places in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, teach bike riding and bike repair to urban kids in the Boston area, and above all, teach better citizenship through their educational programs.
I had previously been a bit leery of big charity rides for a few reasons. But having done this one for 3 years now, I am a real proponent of them. Here are a few things that I used to worry about, and how I stopped worrying.
Worry #1: Raising Money
The point of a charity ride is to raise money for a cause. Most rides have a minimum amount, so you’re on the hook if you don’t make your fundraising goal. The biggest athletic charity event in the US—the Pan-Mass Challenge (http://www.pmc.org/) requires a minimum of $5000 for those doing the two-day ride of 180 miles. Whoa.
However, when I started doing the Bikes Not Bombs ride (which has only a minimum of $150 of fundraising), I discovered something: many people are happy to donate to my ride. I was overwhelmed by the generosity of people who gave money, and it makes me more likely to donate to others’ events. This is undoubtedly a good thing.
Worry #2: Riding Alone
I do lots of group rides, and also don’t mind riding by myself. But for this ride, I didn’t have a buddy to do my 50-mile route. My partner Dan was doing the 80-mile route with his friends, and I wasn’t up to either that distance or their average speed. However, even before we rolled out I had met folks, discovering common connections (someone knew my bike mechanic or friend of a friend who races for blah-blah team) and making new ones. People tend to be perky and happy at the start of a charity ride, so it’s easy to make conversation.
When we rolled out, we quickly clumped into groups, and also played leap-frog with other groups going up and down hills. I ended up riding with a guy from London, Ontario (yes, Tracy and Sam, it’s true!) to the first rest stop, about 18 miles in. For the next 16 miles, I traded places with a pair of riders, and then was largely on my own for an hour. Sooner than I expected, though, I found myself at the second rest stop, and caught up with many of the folks I had been riding near and with. It was like a party—people chatting, eating, and one person was even interviewing riders for the Bikes Not Bombs website. Dan’s group rolled in, and I rode the last 16 miles with him, catching up to more of the 50-mile folks I hadn’t seen since we started more than 3 hours before. We also caught up with some of the 30-mile riders, and were encouraging and leading them through the more densely trafficked end of the ride. It was truly an experience of cycling solidarity.
Worry #3: Sketchy/Inexperienced Riders
There were 746 riders this year, which is actually pretty small for a charity ride (the Pan-Mass Challenge Ride had 5,500 riders last year). However, many of these folks are not so experienced, either with road riding or with group riding etiquette. Especially early in the ride, it’s important to be vigilant and prepare for people swerving, braking suddenly, slowing down or even stopping on the road (all of these have happened around me).
There were also people riding who were clearly unprepared for a 50-mile ride: they had no tools or tubes for changing a flat (and probably didn’t know how, either), and didn’t carry bars, goo, or even enough water or sports drink. Several people I passed or rode with for a bit had no bottle cages on their bikes, so they didn’t have a way to drink regularly. And it was hot and sunny—a high of 86 (30C), which means you need to drink a lot and often. The good news is that the more experienced people checked on the less-prepared people, and made sure no one was stuck on the side of the road without help. This meant that most people (including me) didn’t break any speed records, but this is not what a charity ride is about. It’s about spreading bike love throughout the route…
Worry #4: Getting in Shape
The Bikes Not Bombs ride is in early June, and when we have a late spring I’m not always in the best shape by then. Luckily, this year I got some help from my fit and feminist blogger friends Samantha, Tracy, and Christine, when we did some riding in southern Ontario during a conference (we blogged about this a few weeks ago here and here). The ride served as a good motivator to get out and put down some miles and log some saddle time, which I did, so all went well. But even if I hadn’t been so prepared, there were options. Charity rides usually offer multiple distances, and this one had 10, 30, 50 and 80-mile options. Also, the routes tend to start out together, with the different length rides splitting off later on, so you can decide at the last minute (but no swerving, please!) to take a shorter route.
I’m also pleased to say that I met my fundraising goal of $750 and then some, but if you are feeling inclined, my fundraising page is still open for a while:
I’d love to hear what other people’s experiences have been with charity rides—what are your favorite ones? Any other worries I missed? Any other benefits?
Suppose again that the premise of my post earlier this week (Well intentioned lies, doctors, and the diet industry) is right that very few people who lose weight keep it off. Most regain it, some regain more and only a teeny tiny few manage to maintain the new low weight.
You might well ask, why can’t I be one of the few? Why can’t I be one of those rare, mythical creatures, the weight loss unicorns?
In my case, I’m a classic type A personality, a lover of plans, structure, and schedules. I’m an analytic sort, a researcher and problem solver by temperament, and I’m highly motivated to achieve my goals.
So maybe I should just find out what those who’ve succeeded in the past have done and try be like them.
Members of this group all have some traits in common and because they’re rare, have been studied closely. First, constant vigilance. They remain as focused and determined as they were when losing weight and they log and track just as carefully as when they started. Second, they exercise a lot. Third, they also don’t eat very much. Yikes. One of the women profiled in Caulfield’s book hasn’t eaten a full size entree since she began losing weight. She eats appetizers only and shuns all desserts and alcohol.
The Center for Disease Control which maintains the weight loss registry for people who’ve kept weight off long term also describes the traits that people who maintain a weight loss, long term, have in common. They exercise 60-90 minutes most days, they eat breakfast, they weigh themselves regularly, they track food intake, and they plan meals.
In an Atlantic article from a couple of years ago, What do we really know about losing weight? you can read a profile of one person who maintained a new lower weight. I’ll excerpt a bit here but it’s worth going to read the entire thing.
During the first years after her weight loss, Bridge tried to test the limits of how much she could eat. She used exercise to justify eating more. The death of her mother in 2009 consumed her attention; she lost focus and slowly regained 30 pounds. She has decided to try to maintain this higher weight of 195, which is still 135 pounds fewer than her heaviest weight.
“It doesn’t take a lot of variance from my current maintenance for me to pop on another two or three pounds,” she says. “It’s been a real struggle to stay at this weight, but it’s worth it, it’s good for me, it makes me feel better. But my body would put on weight almost instantaneously if I ever let up.”
So she never lets up. Since October 2006 she has weighed herself every morning and recorded the result in a weight diary. She even carries a scale with her when she travels. In the past six years, she made only one exception to this routine: a two-week, no-weigh vacation in Hawaii.
She also weighs everything in the kitchen. She knows that lettuce is about 5 calories a cup, while flour is about 400. If she goes out to dinner, she conducts a Web search first to look at the menu and calculate calories to help her decide what to order. She avoids anything with sugar or white flour, which she calls her “gateway drugs” for cravings and overeating. She has also found that drinking copious amounts of water seems to help; she carries a 20-ounce water bottle and fills it five times a day. She writes down everything she eats. At night, she transfers all the information to an electronic record. Adam also keeps track but prefers to keep his record with pencil and paper
Now some of you might find this horrifying. You might read about it and want to scream, “These are not my people” and run fast in the opposite direction.
But my reaction isn’t that extreme. I’m a fan of planning and tracking. I weigh myself regularly. I always eat breakfast and as readers of this blog well know, I get lots of exercise.
In responding to the same piece that prompted this blog post, he suggests that we might be able to rebrand “constant vigilance” as “mindfulness” and think more positively about it.
Says Freedhoff, paying attention to every calorie, spending an hour a day on exercise, and never not thinking about weight does sound like not much fun.
“That does indeed sound rather severe, and she definitely writes about it with the spin of negativity. What do I think? I think negative depends on approach and attitude. For instance where Tara might use the word vigilance, I’d use the word thoughtfulness and that being aware of every calorie doesn’t mean you’re not eating indulgent ones.”
Okay, whatever we call it, vigilance, awareness, thoughtfulness, it seems required for keeping off weight. So is a commitment to lifelong mindfulness about food enough to stave off weigh regain? But my suspicion is that it’s not enough. My experience is that I’ve sometimes started to regain weight through practising the exact same habits that earlier resulted in weight loss. I’ve tracked food and exercise very carefully through periods of gaining pounds.
The problem is that these traits, mindfulness, tracking, weighing and on, might be necessary but not sufficient for keeping weight off, once you’ve lost it. That is, everyone who keeps weight off lives this way but not everyone who lives this way keeps the weight off. Tracy in her blog post yesterday about weight loss wondered how much weight regain can attributed to changing habits and how much to biology. I think there’s a significant biological component and that even vigilant people face further obstacles. Here are just four of them.
For years, studies of obesity have found that soon after fat people lost weight, their metabolism slowed and they experienced hormonal changes that increased their appetites. Scientists hypothesized that these biological changes could explain why most obese dieters quickly gained back much of what they had so painfully lost.
2. Smaller bodies use fewer calories: This is one of the tougher things to get used to. At my largest I’ve weighed 235 lbs and at my smallest 155 lbs (all adult weights). The thing is that my 235 lb body uses a lot more calories just getting about in the world than its lighter cousin does. (Using a standard base metabolic rate calculator and plugging in my age and activity level, I see I need just under 3000 calories a day to sustain my weight at 250 lbs and just over 2300 calories a day if I weighed 150 lbs.) Thus, I need to eat less and less as I lose weight. That’s not easy.
3. Fitter bodies use fewer calories too: When I first ran 5 km at 235 lbs, that was really tough going, not just because of my weight. I was also not used to running. As I got fitter, running 5 km got easier and easier. I burned fewer and fewer calories running 5 km.
“One study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology determined that well-trained runners burn five to seven percent fewer calories than their nonathletic counterparts. A run you did as a newbie athlete that burned 500 calories, for example, might burn 465 to 475 calories when you’re better trained, assuming you’ve stayed the same weight.”
And there’s the rub. If you’re getting both fitter and smaller (both the goal of many people) you’re also now using fewer calories for an equivalent workout.
Yes, in theory you could making it equally hard. You could run more distance or run faster or add intervals. The reality is that few of us push ourselves as hard as we did when we started. Getting more efficient just is what getting fit is all about. And that’s great but it terms of calories, efficiency isn’t our friend.”
For runners, you need to run further and faster each year to burn the same number of calories. Getting fitter just means it takes less effort, hence fewer calories, to do the same thing. That’s just what fitness is. Ignore the calorie counters on exercise equipment at the gym.
And no matter what else you do, you’re aging and your metabolism is slowing down. And truth be told, few people run more or run harder as they age. Why that’s so was the subject of an earlier blog post, Is Aging a Lifestyle Choice?
So getting fitter and thinner and older means eating less and less, and working out more and more, to stay the same weight. Behavior and habits that at one point in one’s weight loss journey led to a loss on the scale, can, at a later point on the journey, lead to weight gain. Not exactly inspirational!
Caulfield’s book, like Gretchen Reynolds’ book The First Twenty Seconds, makes it clear that the truth doesn’t provide much fodder for catchy motivational slogans: Exercise intensely for long periods of time and you might just stay the same! Both cite the same study showing women who exercise a lot, and regularly, still gain weight as they age. They just gain less. That’s good health news but won’t exactly make for a very good poster at the gym.
I’ve got one more post on this subject left to go–it’s in the draft folder and is called “Impossible Weight Loss: Questions and Quibbles”–and after that I promise I’ll return to fitness, which I don’t actually think is connected to fatness at all.
Should we care about looking cute while working out? This week’s posts on monitoring fitness fashion, and past posts debating running skirts, show that this question evokes strong responses. Style, on and off the court, has become part of the branding process for professional athletes like Williams’ sisters. But for everyday women fitness style may have different meanings. I’m ruminating on these questions as, for the first time in many years, I’ve decided to take a group fitness class. Looking at my five-year-old faded, black Lululemon work-out top, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, it is undeniably in great shape after regular wear (good buy!) and on the other hand it is greying and looks/feels kind of depressing. The prospect of shopping for something new isn’t terribly appealing, but I like the idea of having something bright and kind of…fun, so I’ll probably go shopping.
My thinking on fitness and fashion changed after I interviewed 47 women about their bodies for an academic project on being fat. Prior to this time I thought of fitness clothing as frivolous, and felt special disdain for spandex, sports-bras-as-tops, and short-shorts, because they seemed to trivialize women’s athletic endeavors. But the women I interviewed, who, in the early 1980s, established fitness classes “for fat women only,” felt frustrated by fitness clothing for different reasons. In the 1980s it wasn’t easy to find fitness clothing over size 14, let alone cute fitness clothing in those sizes. Even today, MEC, Lululemon and Lolë, for example, top out at size 12 and “XL.” Athleta, owned by the Gap, goes to a size 2X, and Old Navy’s to a 4X. Size diversity, it seems, continues to elude most of the mainstream fashion industry.
In any case, Large as Life (LAL), a fat activist group based in Vancouver, started the first fitness class for fat women in Canada when they hired a “fitness instructor from the YMCA, a little skinny thing,” in fall 1981. Initially, only a handful of women joined the class. After a few weeks, LAL hit upon the idea of training fat women to teach the courses. Members of the group took a certification course through the YWCA. Once large instructors began to teach, the program grew considerably. New classes were formed as demands in particular areas of the city warranted. By the end of 1984 LAL was operating fitness classes from ten different community centres across the Lower Mainland. Different iterations of the class, run by the group, and later as a business by a former LAL member, lasted into the 1990s.
When the classes began, finding fitness clothing in plus sizes was a major quandary. Some of the women I talked to crafted their own clothing. One woman I talked to modified yoga pants by sewing an elastic at the ankles. Another hired a seamstress to make her custom leotards. Others worked out in sweats and men’s t-shirts women were happy to work out in sweats and homemade clothing because they were not interested in leotards. Fitness clothing had a negative association for some participants in LAL’s classes, including one woman who described aerobics leotards as “little chu-chu spandex things” and another who explained, succinctly, “I didn’t wear spandex.”
Those who were interested compared notes on the availability of fitness clothing in fitness stores, as well as which stores across the border might sell Danksin’s “outsize” line of leotards. Noting the dearth of options in the Vancouver area a LAL member, Suzanne Bell, decided to start her own plus-size fitness clothing line. Bell took great pleasure in displaying, and flaunting, her big, beautiful body. As she told Radiance magazine in 1992, “…people notice me when I walk into a room. They can feel it: I really like me.” Bell wanted other women to feel how she felt, and to profit from it. Photographs of the era show women wearing coordinated leotards and tights. There is a wide range of styles in colourful fabrics. Bell’s customer’s recalled her fondly and explained that it helped them to “get into” exercise in a bigger way. One woman recalled a particularly treasured pink leotard set: “I had gotten to a stage where I was exploring my body and being bolder.” Fitness and fashion facilitated pleasure for the women I talked to. Having felt their femininity devalued and excluded from the fashion industry, it was exciting to find clothing that fit and allowed one to express their personal style.
For me, these conversations with self-identified fat women led to a reconsideration of the meaning of consumption. Where in the past I read consumption as a sign of a frivolous approach to fitness, aerobics for fat women only pointed to the ways that it could also be empowering. Women in sport are often sexualized, and even everyday women (i.e. readers of this blog) may feel unfairly monitored at the gym and on the streets. Buying cute fitness clothes isn’t an end in itself, but the fact that someone chooses to wear an outrageous outfit shouldn’t be taken as a sign of her lack of commitment to fitness. If we buy into the narrative that clothing tells us something fundamental (i.e. bad) about the gender identity or sexuality of the wearer, than we’re buying into the idea that external appearance matters. Consumption can offer a meaningful outlet for self-expression, a sense of security and a way to express community membership (I’m looking at you armies of cyclists-in-tunics). The meaning of fitness clothing for individual participants is not determined by popular culture images of femininity. I think fitness clothing can be feminist not because of what it looks like but because of the way we use these products.
Jenny Ellison is a Research Associate at Trent University. Her academic research analyzes visual and discursive constructions of the body, and the ways that diverse groups of women have responded to these messages. More posts on fatness, feminism, fitness and the 1980s can be found at her website. Or, follow her on Twitter @thejennye.
