Month: March 2015

Guest Post · health · injury

Exercise and coping with extreme stress (Guest post)

Kim Solga10 Comments
image
Me and my mom, in my less active youth!

Members of the Fit is a Feminist Issue non-virtual community (that is, those of us who live and ride and row and lift and run here in little London, Ontario) know that I’ve been having a very hard winter. My mother is ill with dementia (you can read about that on my own blog, here). Today she moves into a long-term care facility after 30 very difficult days in hospital, during which my father and I took turns visiting daily, helping her keep her spirits from sinking too low. Meanwhile, I’m trying to adjust to life in Canada after more than two years living and working in the UK (where I learned to love riding my road bike – see here for more), and I’m trying to adjust as well to life without my partner, who stayed behind. The winter in the great lakes region was hard as nails this year, too, and the spring flood has brought water flowing into my basement… so, basically, I’m a stressed-out wreck.

In my younger life, I probably would have thought that doing regular exercise – and in particular scheduled fitness classes, boot camps, and the like, plus committing to riding with friends – would have been way, way too much on top of all this trauma. I grew up a chubby kid, teased for my size and my wacky hair and my weird, bookish ways; I was not what you would call active, and my diet was not what you would call healthy. I pretended not to care. (Hey: I was the “smart” kid, not the “sporty” kid. Right?) I grew up, went to university, to grad school, got married…

Then, when my husband and I split up for a while in the early 2000s – just before I wrote my qualifying exams for my doctoral degree – I realised that I weighed almost 200 pounds and was really unhappy. At that point – possibly my first encounter with a really extreme, concentrated period of stress – I decided to try going to the gym and swimming in the pool at my apartment building as a way of coping with my feelings of isolation and distress. What the gym gave me at that moment in my life was a community of people doing something together that they all wanted to do; I mostly worked out on my own, but it was comforting having others around who were into the same things I was and sometimes had really useful insights and stories to share. After about three months of going regularly to the pool and the gym I lost 25 pounds and gained some confidence; I felt better in my clothes and in my heart. I found the energy to look for a new apartment, one that was all mine and in a neighbourhood I really liked; that neighbourhood had a pool I wanted to join, and I quickly found an amazing community of endurance athletes there to swim with. Through a modest commitment to exercise, I’d found people, fresh interests, new community spirit, and a stronger sense of myself at a time when I needed reassurance that I was going to survive the troubles littering my life. I realised I felt pretty good!

(I should note here that, like Sam and Tracy and Nat and the others at FFI, I do not believe weight loss should be sought in and of itself, simply because society wants us all to believe thin is beautiful. The weight I lost in the early 2000s was part of an initiative to get myself healthy, one that included seeing a superb therapist, changing my diet to include more green veg and less meat, and shifting my outlook beyond the narrow confines of my apartment and my doctoral dissertation. Losing weight was part of a life-changing, life-saving series of events for me. I’m proud of my fit, healthy body now, but I’m a completely average-sized woman – which means 158lb, not 130lb, by the way  –and I’m not interested in becoming smaller. I only want to get stronger for my summer of time trial races!)

So here we are, in winter 2015, and I’m experiencing once more the kinds of mini body crises that come with consistent, high-level stress. I’ve been getting nosebleeds. My chronic hip problem has been acting up. Headaches. Shoulder tension. Frequent crying, and feelings of depression. I recognise all of these as physiological responses to what’s happening for me emotionally as I cope with the painful changes and losses in my life: bodies and minds are a unit and share their burdens equally. But I also know from my own past experiences that moving my body, being active and whenever possible active with others, is not an added stressor but an antidote for me. While superficially requiring me to expend precious energy, heading for the park to ride or walk with friends, or getting to the gym for a class, or just getting out on my bike by myself, all ultimately raise my endorphin levels and leave me feeling better in my limbs, lungs, and heart. I was reminded of this recently by my friend and coach Jo McRae, who encouraged me to sign up for a late-winter cycling boot camp as a coping strategy that also allowed me to continue my training – as long, she insisted, as I gave myself permission to miss a session or two if I just wasn’t feeling up to it.

And that’s the other piece of this puzzle, of course; if you’re an active person, exercise offers a wonderful way to help with stress. (And if you’re not an active person, I should add, trying out some modest exercise, with supportive friends, can be really freeing – as I learned in 2001!) But even active people need to be kind to themselves; we are not bionic men and women, and in times of severe stress there will be days when it’s just not possible to get on the rollers, or out for a run, or whatever. On those days we need to remind ourselves that there are lots of different ways to cope with stress; exercise is part of a package, not a cure-all. On those days, a chocolate bar, cup of tea, and a movie might be what’s needed – and that is really, really ok.

As for me, here’s a brief list of what I’ve been up to since things really hit the fan for me in late February. This isn’t meant as a model for coping; it’s just an example, in case you’re curious or looking to create a coping plan for yourself. (And if you are: I wish you the very best of luck!)

  • First, I sent an SOS to my friends and colleagues. I told them what I was going through, and asked them for love, support, and all the invites they cared to send for walks, rides, swims, yoga, etc, anticipating that things might get worse and that I might not have the energy to reach out later. (Read more about that strategy here.)
  • Next, I signed up for a fantastic cycling bootcamp with my friend and fellow road rider Rachel Skinner; we ride twice a week, two hours at a time, on the spin bikes at a local gym. Rachel cues the rides like an outdoor course, including a lot of flat roads and aerobic (mid-zone) work, as well as some hills and drills. It’s totally manageable, including plenty of recovery riding as well as good challenges, and a heap of fun.
  • I committed to getting on my rollers once a week. So far, it’s more like once every 10-12 days, but I’m ok with that. (I’m still working on relaxing my upper body, and not falling off all the time!)
  • I’m trying to do yoga once a week – chilled yoga, not hard core stuff. Stretching, yin, Iyengar. This week, Jess invited me to an acro-yoga workshop (eek!).
  • I’m getting as many massages as my health plan will pay for. (And I told my massage therapist what’s going on in my life; since I need to be fully relaxed in order to take best advantage of his good work, I figured he needs to know. And he’s a health care professional, so I was not worried about oversharing; it’s his job to listen!)
  • I’m walking my dog with my dog-loving friends, in the woods, as often as possible.
    • image
    Even Emma the Dog thinks it’s been a hard winter.
  • I’m seeing my psychotherapist (the same one I started seeing many years ago – he’s still with me!) as often as possible, too. I’m really lucky to have a therapist whose services are covered by our provincial health care plan, and I want to remind all our Ontario readers that these people DO exist – and many of them are excellent. (Just ask your family doctor for the current list of OHIP-covered therapists, and a hand in finding a good one.)

In other words, I’m coping. Yes, I’m still crying a bit more than I’d like. And I’m aching a bit more than I’d like. But I’m not drinking too much (a risk for me), I’m not overeating (also a risk), and I’m feeling increasingly ok when I wake up in the morning. So far, so good. I’m so grateful to have a healthy body that lets me do the exercise I love and need right now, and I’m ever so thankful for my community of supportive, active friends. Here’s to you, gang.

Kim

Cleaning is NOT the new cardio: Women, housework and not working out
advertising · Guest Post · Weekends with Womack

Cleaning is NOT the new cardio: Women, housework and not working out

catherine w24 Comments

Tammy Wynette had it right: Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman. Especially when it comes to domestic labor. Tons has been written about how women, after coming home from paid work outside the home, commence “the second shift” in which they cook, clean, do childcare, and manage household needs. And despite the fact that the women’s movement is easily more than 40 years old, this situation is still pervasive. In the New Republic, Jessica Grose tells her own rather typical story:

“When it comes to housecleaning, my basically modern, egalitarian marriage starts looking more like the backdrop to an Updike short story. My husband and I both work. We split midnight baby feedings. My husband would tell you that he does his fair share of the housework, but if pressed, he will admit that he’s never cleaned the bathroom, that I do the dishes nine times out of ten, and that he barely knows how the washer and dryer work in the apartment we’ve lived in for over eight months. Sure, he changes the light bulbs and assembles the Ikea furniture, but he’s never scrubbed a toilet in the six years we’ve lived together.”

This story illustrates how gendered domestic labor often is. The above-mentioned husband assembles Ikea furniture, which is a one-off enterprise. But doing dishes and laundry, both ongoing enterprises, fall to his wife. And the data show that this is a common phenomenon:

Fathers do slightly more lawn care than moms—11 percent of working dads are out mowing the lawn on an average day compared to 6.4 percent of working moms. So that means dads are out clipping the hedges on sunny Saturdays, while moms are the ones doing the drudgery of vacuuming day in and day out. And this isn’t solely an American phenomenon. Even in the famously gender-neutral Sweden, women do 45 minutes more housework a day than their male partners.

So what’s a pressed-for-time 21st century woman to do if she wants to:

  1. work at a job for money;
  2. cook nice food for meals;
  3. wear clean clothing;
  4. live in a clean house;
  5. hang out with her clean and fed children;
  6. get some exercise?

Well, I can’t speak for all of 1–6  but there are some ingenious websites out there dedicated to helping women combine house cleaning and exercise. One of them urges women to “turn spring cleaning into spring training”, and offers 7 ways to “put the lean in clean”. Among the techniques promoted are:

  • Eschew vacuuming in favor of taking rugs outside to beat them; it will burn more calories.
  • Take multiple trips running up and down stairs to retrieve and put away laundry.
  • If you insist on using the vacuum cleaner, combine vacuuming with lunges.

Another site combines weight-loss and house cleaning advice:

Forget the gym! If women are really spending almost 2½ hours cleaning and tidying up every day, there’s plenty of opportunity to get a sufficient workout without even leaving home!

Housework is a great way to burn calories. But as is the case with any workout, the more effort you put in, the greater the benefit. In particular, polishing, dusting, mopping and sweeping are great for keeping arms shapely. Bending and stretching, for example, when you make the bed, wash windows or do the laundry are good for toning thighs and improving flexibility. And constantly running up and down the stairs as you tidy is a good aerobic workout.

A woman calling herself “Clean Momma” offers dozens of videos that purport to combine exercise with cleaning tasks; one of them promises “great arms and countertops” at the same time.

It’s obvious that these websites are trading on gender and class stereotypes in domestic labor as well as pushing a weight-loss-is-always-good-always-necessary message that we all know is wrong-headed, bad for our health, and bad for our self-esteem. Not to mention ridiculously time-consuming, taking time away from pursuing real projects and goals for ourselves. So, launching into a long criticism of them would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

But, I’d like to suggest that there’s a more subtle form of this cleaning-as-women’s-primary-activity at work in hipper and more modern women’s media.  Apartment therapy, a home decorating/improvement/DIY website, features the January Cure, a month of cleaning, organizing and home improvement tasks. They are motivational and upbeat:

Do you want 2015 to be your best year yet? We believe that when your home is under control, fresh, clean and organized, good things happen throughout your life. If you are ready to get your place back in shape, the very best way is one manageable step at a time, during our once-a-year-only January Cure. By the end of the month, you’ll be sitting pretty in a clean, fresh, organized home. We can do this – together!

Every few days they publish another home-organization task. One of them—a better kitchen by Sunday evening—involves this as a weekend project:

  • clean fridge
  • clean cabinets, inside and out
  • inspect all contents of cabinets and get rid of stained, chipped, extra, unused items
  • clean all surfaces (using earth-friendly cleaners, of course)

This is really impressive, but just reading this list makes me want to retire to the couch for the day.

All of the mainstream women’s magazines (like Better Homes and Gardens, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, Real Simple) emphasize the importance of very detailed attention to every part of one’s house. Maybe I’ve arranged my furniture incorrectly. Or perhaps I need to build my own laundry hamper, which is supposed to make laundry so much easier (hmmmm…)

Now, of course it’s nice to have a lovely clean house, complete with sparkling fridge, uncluttered cabinets, and maybe even a groovy new wire laundry hamper on wheels. But it’s worth noting that women are the ones targeted for these sorts of tasks. And what’s worse, we are at risk of reducing or eliminating physical activity from our daily routines because of the pressures to be responsible for creating an ideal domestic environment.

One recent study, analyzing factors influencing amount of regular exercise in middle-aged women, cited “disruptions in daily structure, competing demands, and self-sacrifice” as barriers to regular exercise. Two factors that were NOT listed as barriers were lack of time and menopausal symptoms. This is good news; despite changes in our bodies and time-crunched lives, women still want to exercise to feel good and be active with others. But we still have to deal with competing demands and self-sacrifice, and these pressures arrive at our doorstep in many forms.

So I say: step away from the vacuum cleaner, march past the cluttered desk, and avert your eyes while passing the laundry room—at least for long enough to get out there for a walk, run, swim, ride, yoga class, unicycle lesson, game of catch with your dog. The mess will keep until you get back home.

Screen Shot 2015-03-21 at 10.09.20 AM

cycling · Guest Post · Sat with Nat

Cycling Outside on Ethel

natalieh (she/her)9 Comments

I’ve been invited to post on Saturdays when I can on a feature Sam dubbed “Sat with Nat”. So here’s the deal, I’ll post as long as I have something to contribute and you find it relevant, deal? Deal!

Back in December I introduced you all to my new bicycle Ethel and I clipped her into a trainer and spun off and on through the winter. I even got shoes that clip in, I was feeling mighty ready to go outside. Last Saturday it was colder and wetter than expected but I just couldn’t stand being inside one more day so out we went on the Belmont 60km loop I did last November on my old bike.

First things first, I could not get myself on with my clip in shoes. I clipped in my left leg and my knees locked from what I can best describe as abject panic. It was though my lizard brain decided I was caught in a trap. It was too much change, new configuration, new bike, braking and shifting were different, the new shoes and pedals were just one challenge too far. I looked at my partner with the taste of bile in my mouth and said “I think I’ll just go back inside and hide in bed all day.” I cried a bit then I remembered we had flat pedals from another bike. Randonneur Dave had shown me over the winter how to swap pedals out so I scrambled to get that done and put running shoes on. This made me way late, that’s terrible cycling etiquette.

It turned out my companions were Randonneur Dave and my partner Michel. I was struck by two things almost immediately as we zoomed out of town, the first was effort and the second was cadence.

Effortless

It felt like no effort at all as I pedalled. In part there was a mass difference of 40 lbs. I weighed Ethel and she is just under 20 lbs, my old bike was double that. I weigh about 20 lbs less than I did in November, so 40 less pounds to move is a significant change when you read about folks spending big bucks to shave a hundred grams off. I’m sure the fit of my bike and more aggressive posture helped with making my effortless ride. I know the gear ratio was better. The new bike has radically changed my riding experience.

Cadence

I noticed that spinning on the trainer over the winter drastically improved my cadence, I was pedalling much faster. I noticed I wasn’t coasting very often at all, an old habit from my childhood that I was having a hard time breaking. Part of what helped my cadence was advice Bike Rally David gave me last fall, to stay in the lowest gear possible. That was a big shift in my thinking as before that conversation I’d always hurried to get into as high a gear as possible and push really hard. That is not the way of the distance rider.

I felt faster and it was easier, this was a dream return to outdoor cycling. Randonneur Dave had our old gps data and updated me on my speed with snippets like “through here last time you were at 11 km/hr, we just did 16 km/hr” or “Hey, we hit 28 km/hr there, how’d that feel?” It all felt GREAT. Zoom. Zoom. Zoom.

My favourite part of the Belmont trip is eating at the Belmont Town Restaurant, a little place that has a buffet on the weekends filled with lots of yummy food. We of course had to take a picture in front:

We made it!
We made it!

So my average for the ride was 16 km/hr in November on my old bike, this trip 19.5 km/hr and we even stopped for Michel to repair a flat. Sure, it was a grey day, it was damp, there was a stretch, the same as in the fall, where we we dead into the wind.

So great, in fact, I went with a group of friends around Springbank Park the next day. We did the loop that last September had been my longest distance ever. What a different perspective I have going around the day after a long ride. It flushed out my muscles but my groin was feeling the pain, I got a blister on Saturday and it burst on Sunday. Ouch. What made Sunday amazing was my oldest son joined me as well as two friends I’d never ridden with before. This middle aged cycling thing is a great way to meet people. We went for coffee and sweets.

It was a great weekend of cycling outside on Ethel!

blogging

Welcome to “Sat with Nat” and “Weekends with Womack”

Sam B8 Comments

Tracy and I started this blog in  August 2012 to document our “fittest by fifty” challenge.

Back in 2012, we thought of the blog as a time-limited thing that we’d stop at 50. That would have been last August and September. But a strange thing happened over the course of the challenge: the blog got stronger right along with us. We’re both keen to keep carrying on. We love our community of readers, followers, commentators, and contributors. How fortunate we are to have such a strong group of feminists engaged with our ongoing dialogue about fitness and feminism.

We’re thrilled by our book contract, by our communities here and on Twitter and Facebook. We’ve also been lucky to have an incredible community of guest bloggers.

Some guests are more regular than others. And we’re about to entrench that tradition with the announcement that our two most regular guest bloggers are getting their own special slots.

If you’ve been following the blog for any length of time, you can probably guess who: Natalie Hebert and Catherine Womack. Natalie will be tagging her posts “Sat with Nat.” Catherine’s will be tagged “Weekends with Womack.” Here’s a bit of info about them:

Nat Hebert

I’m a self described fat feminist 40 year old mother of two teenage minions who loves her high energy life partner of 19 years. I love moving my body and sometimes do yoga, triathlons and dance like a fool. My next measure of success will be being more fierce and less fearful as I roll through my 40s.

You can find all of Natalie’s past posts here.

Here’s Happy Nat at the Kincardine triathlon:

nat

Catherine Womack

I’m an analytic philosopher, retooled as a public health ethicist. I’m interested in heath behavior change, particularly around eating and activity, and how things other than knowledge affect our health decisions.I’m also a cyclist (road, off-road, commuter), squash player, x skier, occasional yoga-doer, hiker, swimmer and leisurely walker.

You can read all of Catherine’s past posts here.

Here’s Catherine and me mid-ride at Niagara Falls:

samandcatherine

Here’s the plan (not set in stone): Natalie will blog every Saturday and Catherine on Sundays.

Usually I blog Mondays and Wednesdays, Tracy blogs Tuesday and Thursdays and our other wonderful guests post on Fridays

So that’s the new routine. Sometimes too we do Throwback Thursdays, featuring older posts. And sometimes I just have to say stuff cause it’s timely and then I just post away.

But the blog is meant to be fun and part of that fun is being flexible. We’re growing and changing and enjoying the ride. Hope you are too.

[This is the blog equivalent of a photo-bomb…a blog-bomb, maybe?–I’m thrilled to welcome Nat and Catherine, too!  You’re both awesome and I love what you bring! Thanks for joining us and here’s to Sat with Nat and Weekends with Womack. –Tracy]

cycling · training · Uncategorized

When the Rubber Hits the Road: Leaving the Cocoon of Indoor Biking

Tracy I14 Comments

sketch of fast cyclingI may have grumbled a little bit about my winter of basement biking on the trainer. I’m not a huge fan of loud music. And one of the reasons I avoid fitness classes is that I get irritated when instructors holler out commands and tell us to work hard.  It motivates some, but it’s not my cup of tea. The other day I had the dreaded spot right beside the instructor. Cheryl is great, but please don’t put me right beside her with the speaker two feet behind me ever again.

But given a choice between slogging it out by myself on a trainer, even while watching some gripping TV series on Netflix as Sam does, or doing one of those indoor bike classes with the music blasting and the instructor hollering, I’ll take the class every time. I need the group to get me into the saddle at all.

Confession: I paid Coach Chris to give me workouts, to be done solo, for the in-between days and I skipped pretty much every single one.

Once I get to class, I’m good. I show up and do the workout as instructed.  I will push myself hard even if you don’t shout at me (thank you Chris and Gabbi, neither of whom have the shout-at-you approach. I like Gabbi’s reasoning: there are no drill sergeants in your face on race day, roaring at you to squeeze out that last kilometre).

And for all that, I feel strangely comfortable with the indoor training. It’s not the best scenery and you don’t feel the wind in your hair (the sad little wisps as the fan turns my way don’t count), but it’s safe. There’s no gravel to slide out on. No traffic to live in fear of. No headwind to battle. No actual hills threatening to stall me to the point of one of those slow, inevitable topples.

In the indoor classes, I’m never left behind or struggling to keep up. No one can miscalculate the timing or the distance. None of this kind of thing: “Oh, we thought it was 40K but it turns out to be 60K. Oops, sorry.” (See my post on Suffering for that story). Or this: “Come ride with us to Port Stanley and back,” they said. “It’ll be fun,” they said. (See my post “Epic Ride and Some Reflections on Learning to Like the Bike” for that story).

I’m loving the thaw for my outdoor runs, but unlike Sam (see her post about getting back to outdoor biking), I haven’t taken to the road yet on either of my bikes.

Besides my fear of the road’s unpredictability, there’s more. The results (or not) of my training will show themselves in my performance on the road. Did I actually get stronger over the winter with the two classes per week instead of the three sessions that were recommended to me?  It’s got to be better than the nothing I did on the bike last year.

I spent a lot of last triathlon season watching people flash by me on their bikes. In training, in races, riding with friends…I was always, always the person at the back.  I don’t need to be at the front of the pack. But at least in my races, I would welcome a season where my bike time doesn’t erase all the gains I might make in a strong swim.

One thing I know for sure: I’ve successfully increased my ability to suffer. That counts for something.  But did the watts training and the trainer classes increase my power?  That remains to be seen.

I’m not interested in riding while it’s still cold. I want to start on a positive note, you know, happy riding on warm spring days. Maybe April. Pretty certainly not March.

Not that I want to get too comfortable. Last year I think I was too attached to the association of cycling with leisure.  That made me resent having to work so hard on the road bike.

But a winter of indoor training has thoroughly disassociated cycling from leisure. I can push myself hard on the bike when it’s not going anywhere.

Despite my fears, I’m also curious to see how that translates to the road.  April isn’t all that far away.  Before long, the truth will out, as they say.

body image · diets · fitness

50,000 Hits and Counting: Why Is “She May Look Healthy But” So Popular?

Tracy I3 Comments

suits-fitness-figure

A couple of years ago, just before I left for a sailing trip in the British Virgin Islands, I whipped up a quick post questioning the health of fitness models. A few days later, when I managed to find a wifi connection on shore (at Foxy’s Beach Bar), the stats blew my mind. The post was racking up hits as if we’d hit the jackpot on a slot machine. Never before had we posted anything that attracted readers to the blog by the thousands.

“She May Look Heathy But.. Why Fitness Models Aren’t Models of Health” is still sailing strong, by far our most read post. Surpassing 50,000 hits over the weekend, it’s had more than double the exposure of the other two old stand-bys, “The Shape of an Athlete” and “Why the Thigh Gap Makes Me Sad,” each standing now at around 24,000. Close behind them: “Crotch Shots, Upskirts, Sports Reporting, and the Objectification of Female Athletes” and “Padded Sports Bras and Nipple Phobia.”

Some weeks, these and a few other of our stalwart reliables get more traffic than any of the new content. But “She May Look Healthy But..” takes first prize. And we’re kind of baffled as to why.

It’s not the tags. We have lots of posts tagged or categorized with some combination of “body image, diets, fitness, health.”

And it’s not as if it’s one of the most indepth or well-written posts on our blog. I cribbed most of it (with credit to the original, of course) from this interview with a fitness instructor who decided to prep for a women’s figure competition. And I got the rest from our friend, colleague, and figure competitor, Shay Welch.

My post made a point that I think is worth repeating: that the healthy and fit look so many aspire to, the well-defined and sculpted body we see in magazines and competitions, is attained usually through not-so-healthy, temporary routines. The routines’ primary purpose is to produce a body that looks like that, not to promote health or fitness. And the look is not sustainable even for the people who achieve it.  It’s how you appear on game day, but not on most other days.

The disconnect between looking fit and healthy, on the one hand, and being fit and healthy, on the other hand, shines through like bright sunlight on a clear day when we read her story and also the experience of Shay, fellow-philosopher, friend, and fitness figure competitor, who told me this:

I usually am at 1200-1400 calories during off season just to maintain (which is about 25 lbs over what I should be on stage) and then at about 800 calories in the final stretch, working out twice a day for around 4 hours.  everyday.  I do a lot of crying and very little sleeping.  Off season is relatively healthy but your body will change weight super easy because the metabolism crashes to nothing.  But the final stretch is super duper uper unhealthy.  But I can’t do any other sports and I love being athletically competitive so I deal.  Most people I know who do this cannot maintain a real job.  They are almost always fitness trainers because they’re the only ones who can really endure this.  I’ve known more than a few people who had to quit their regular job because they became obsessed with dieting and being on stage.  I throw all my trophies away because I am always trying to remember that this is just a hobby.  And no one maintains except professional fitness people and they get paid to starve year round.

The post generated tons of comments. Lots of people agreed with the key idea.

But we also heard from competitors who said that the tone of my post was unduly discouraging.  They defended these competitions and the possibility of prepping in a way that isn’t as difficult, or at least isn’t any more demanding than prepping for any other physically demanding undertaking.

Competitors expressed gratitude for the support of friends and family, talking about how rewarding an experience it’s been for them. Trainers took issue with some of the claims about how restrictive the plans were.

The fact is, you’re not going to convince me that the central point is wrong. Fitness figure competitors, like any other competitors, train for specific competitions. In their case, the goal is to look a certain way for their events, or, if they’re models, for their photo shoots.

They’re the first to admit that they don’t look this way all the time. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m not ready to run a marathon all the time either. No one, not wrestlers or power-lifters or rowers, “makes weight” every day.

Where things go wrong is that in the popular imaginary, we have come to associate the way the fitness models and figure competitors look with what it means to be/look healthy and fit.

It’s not just ironic. It’s downright harmful. So no. You are not going to convince me that equating health and fitness with looking like a fitness model ready for competition is a good thing. It’s not a fair or accurate representation of fitness or health.

If that’s the main message people pick up from reading our post, then I couldn’t be happier that so many read it every week. We have a good range of views represented in the comments on the original post, which is why they’re now closed.

We haven’t solved the mystery of why the spotlight lands on that post every day. But we’re grateful that it attracts a steady audience, and we hope that at least some of those readers click through to the other good content on the blog.

Thanks for reading!

For two years I was beautiful (Guest post)
body image · Guest Post

For two years I was beautiful (Guest post)

Sam B9 Comments

by Eleanor Brown

For two years I was skinny. And for two years, I was beautiful.

I knew I was beautiful because of the way everything would stop when I entered a room. It was something that had never happened to me before.

At one point in my life, I was positively roly poly. Then, as I began putting on the years, I started to do some simple exercise, and cut out the junk food. My weight stabilized – I was still a happy plump lady, but a healthy one.

And then I got skinny. Really skinny. A commute that involved bicycling or walking, much less of an appetite (induced by stress), and almost zero alcohol. Women I had considered out of my league suddenly paid attention to me. (Men too, but you’re not my thing; sorry guys.) People sought me out when they had never before. The lighter I became, the more weight my opinions were given.

It was a different world. And it was overwhelming. It was hard to cope with so much attention after a lifetime of being able to choose to sit quietly and eavesdrop on the world from the sidelines. (This is a particularly useful thing for a journalist like me.)

When my life circumstances changed, so did my commute. I began walking from the bedroom to the dining room to work, plopping the laptop daily onto the table for the ole nine to five. Stress went down, exercise went down, and menopause hit.

I slowly turned back into the pleasantly plump, far more average-looking gal that I had been. The gal that I was used to being.

When I returned to that home workspace, I started walking an hour, daily, on a conveyor belt. But that was too boring, and too time consuming. So now I’m on an exercise bike for a half-hour a day, staying healthy, but eating pie and ice cream whenever I want. No one notices me when I enter a room.

I think I like it that way. Although every so often, I miss the attention.

Eleanor Brown is a freelance writer living in Sherbrooke, Quebec. She’s a former managing editor of Pink Triangle Press’ flagship publication, Xtra, in Toronto, and the former editor of a daily newspaper, the Sherbrooke Record. She can be reached at ebjourno at gmail.com.

We say goodbye, we say hello: out with winter activities, in with spring
Guest Post · meditation · nature · Uncategorized

We say goodbye, we say hello: out with winter activities, in with spring

catherine w6 Comments

Let’s take a walk

Into the world

Where if our shoes get white

With snow, is it snow, Marina,

Is it snow or light?

Let’s take a walk

excerpt from the poem To Marina, by Kenneth Koch.

Finally, after an unbelievably fierce winter here in the northeast, change is in the air—daylight savings time has returned, giving us more time after work to be outside. And temperatures are edging up, most welcome in Boston where we got pounded with 105 inches of snow this year.  A month ago, streets in Boston looked like this:

parkton-snow

But now they look like this:

parkton-nosnow

Not exactly pretty, but at least the driving is a bit easier.

One notable benefit of all this snow has been the instant access to great winter sports, even in urban areas. I’ve blogged about urban cross country skiing and also trying out new variations on skiing. In Ottawa, the Rideau Canal Skateway had a record-breaking 59-day season, which lots of people took advantage of.

rideau canal

rideau-night

My friend Teri, on a work trip to Ottawa, took the night picture, and even partook of some after-work curling—another northern winter activity (although here you can find out about the curling season, which in fact extends to May).

curling-work

But all good things come to an end. The snow is melting, the late-day sun is beckoning, and it’s time to think about putting away skis, skates, snowshoes, fat bikes and cold-weather running wear. Time to bring out the road and mountain bikes, running shoes, and other springtime equipment. Samantha has gotten the jump on many of us already, restarting bike commuting.

You would think this would be deliriously wonderful news; it’s been a frigid and difficult winter, and I’ve not been on a bike in months. And I love to ride. But change can be hard—even positive change. It requires consciously shifting from one set of habits, one set of gear, one set of exercise partners and locations and muscle groups, to a whole different set. This happens for me on at least 3 levels:

Level one: logistical

Finding places to put the winter stuff while remembering where I stored the warmer weather stuff and deciding when to retrieve it is always a production. The cross-country skis, which lived in the back of the car all winter, are now in their transitional space (the hallway) awaiting being put away in the basement; repeat for lots of other gear and clothing. I also need to take my road bike for a tune-up before the season really gets going, etc. For those of us who are active and profligate about gear, keeping everything in its appropriate place in the seasonal rotation is a job.

Level two: physical

Changing sports or activities means also reminding oneself about the existence of muscle groups that may have been ignored for a while. This winter I skied and played squash, both of which use my legs, but in ways very different than cycling uses them. Lots of websites offer practical advice for ways to transition into spring cycling or spring running.  The message seems to be this: start slow and focus on the basics. This is no news, but sometimes tough to stick with, especially on that first spring day when you are bursting with enthusiasm.

Level three: metaphysical

Change is unsettling.  We’re used to our habits and the pleasures, associations, and even burdens that come with them.  This winter offered up a host of burdens– endless shoveling, treacherous driving, super-long commutes to work, and high heat bills.  But it also provided some opportunities and experiences that I’ll miss.

I now know the neighbors on my street much better through shared shoveling  and snow-driving woes.  To get one car unstuck on my street took representatives from Turkey, Japan, France, South Carolina, and New England; since then we’ve all waved and smiled when we see each other.

I also know some of my colleagues much better through carpooling to work.  The MBTA commuter rail in Boston experienced massive failure, and we had to scramble to find rides for people to be able to teach their classes.  I drove folks to and from school (usually a 50-minute one-way ride, turned into more than 1.5 hours) 3 days a week for several weeks.  It was time-consuming, but we spent time talking and joking and complaining and enjoying each others’ company.

When public transportation was running, I used it (there was no parking anywhere– trust me).  It was sometimes uncertain and often lengthy, but walking around town and taking two buses to get home felt like an accomplishment– moving through the city under my own power (there was lots of walking in sturdy boots this winter) and catching the bus reminded me of younger student days.

As for sports, with several of my women’s league squash matches were canceled due to storms and no biking possible, I had to improvise, often on skis, with friends.  So we skied all over the place– in my neighborhood, at nearby parks, urban woods, conservation lands, groomed ski places– wherever there was snow cover.  I renewed acquaintances with people I ran into who skate ski and bike race.  All of this felt novel, improvised, exhilarating, a little scary sometimes (it tested and stretched my skills) and really fun.

But for now that phase of active life is done.  I hope to hang onto some of the new habits– doing more regular carpooling and tooling around town on public transportation are good plans.  For sports, it’s time to turn to spring activities, which I love.  But it seemed fitting to note the passing of this extraordinary winter, in all its inconvenient and thrilling splendor.  I’ll miss you.  Except for the shoveling.

Screen Shot 2015-03-15 at 10.40.38 AM

Guest Post · Sat with Nat · weight loss

Self-identifying as a “bad feminist”

natalieh (she/her)6 Comments

 

I’ve been thinking a lot about the term “bad feminist” after I wondered if I was, indeed, being a bad feminist by talking about my ongoing weight loss when I wrote 40 years & 40 pounds . This is a blog about fitness and a feminist perspective and I felt more than a twinge of self-censoring. I certainly got riled up at the thought that people were thinking discussion about my weight loss made this a “bad feminist” blog. So much so Tracy thought we should do a series of posts about that term being bandied about. She did some great ground clearing in Does Feeling Good about Weight Loss Make Me a “Bad Feminist?”

I’m not an academic. I came to feminism in my late twenties as the realization dawned on me that the world was, in fact, highly sexist. I started to see how this gender game  had negatively impacted me. I took courses in women’s studies and try to apply what I’ve learned in my personal life and in my public life to end the oppression of women.

I think healthy debate is phenomenal, I love learning new things. The most surprising things in my life have come from changing my mind on something when I get new evidence. I remember the first time I watched Taylor Mali’s spoken word “Like Lilly Like Wilson” and thought, wow, I was, like, totally, like Lilly Like Wilson and it drove my feminist high school biology teacher around the bend.

She would try to get my friends and I to understand that in 1990 wearing dog collars as fashion statements was degrading, that we should go to Take Back the Night. We’d have none of it. I’ve changed my mind about dog collars and Take Back the Night so please hear what I am about to say.

No one gets to call me a “bad feminist” but myself and let me explain why. I think that term is slung around when we mean other things like sloppy thinking or forgetting privilege or perpetuating harmful and hurtful ideas about body image and weight. I don’t think it’s intended to shame or silence but that is the impact. How dare I write about losing weight when there are so many bad arguments about weight loss! Bad Feminist! Uh, no thank you. I do self identify as a “bad feminist” when:

-I try to make my experiences universal, I can only speak for myself

-I forget my middle class, cysgender, able, white privilege

-I forget the gift of a non-violet partner who is a feminist

-I self-censor for fear of reprisal from other feminists

-I tell another woman what to do instead of supporting her choices

-I tear people down instead of building them up

So, yes, when I catch myself doing these things I self-identify as a “bad feminist”. Honestly sharing my experiences to provide more stories about fitness and health instead of feeding women lies that there’s something wrong with us is something I’m actually quite proud of, so I don’t feel like a “bad feminist” at all.

Let’s all write great stories, about our health and wellness, our bodies, that celebrate our achievements measured by things we find meaningful for ourselves. My idea of health and fitness is largely keeping up with my family, eating great food and sharing  many laughs with my friends. What’s yours?

I also appreciate that many schools of thought teach us to critique and point out the problems in arguments, to debate the points, question assumptions. These are great things and I learn from feedback and questions. I have changed my mind about so many big things but I find I can’t be open to change if I’m feeling on the defensive from being called a “bad feminist” from other people. Although, I’d rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all.

picture of a poster that reads "I'd rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all"
picture of a poster that reads “I’d rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all”
diets · eating

What’s natural? And why do we care?

Sam B10 Comments
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/5f/91/d7/5f91d7eb9ddc7230c3a8d85b77fc15d8.jpg
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/85779567877556239/

From Amber of Go Kaleo:  “I watch a lot of nature videos, and it struck me a while ago: no matter what native tribe you look at, the women are never exactly thin, despite their healthy lifestyle. I mean, those people live in harsh conditions and work their asses off to survive a hostile environment, be it the Amazon jungle or the African steppes. And yet look! They have belly fat! And thick thighs! Oh noes! And the best part? THEY DON’T CARE! A thin tree is as beautiful as a thick tree, so why not a human being? Indeed.”

I like the point very much. Not all natural bodies are super lean. Nice to be reminded of that.

Why does it matter to us so much though? Why are we so fussed about what’s natural? I get that lots of people are critical of North American diets with overly processed food and North American lifestyles with not enough walking and lifting and way too much driving and sitting. But it doesn’t follow from the rejection of that diet and that lifestyle that we ought to seek out exactly what’s natural.

With Paleo diets, for example, you see a kind of romantic attitude about our natural bodies.

Now there’s lots to say about the Paleo diet. As an academic I’m interested in what anthropologists have to say about the way our ancestors really ate.

Here’s Archaeologists Officially Declare Collective Sigh Over “Paleo Diet”

In a rare display of professional consensus, an international consortium of anthropologists, archaeologists, and molecular biologists have formally released an exasperated sigh over the popularity of the so-called “Paleo Diet” during a two-day conference dedicated to the topic.

The Paleo Diet is a nutritional framework based on the assumption that the human species has not yet adapted to the dietary changes engendered by the development of agriculture over the past ten thousand years. Proponents of the diet emphasize in particular the negative effects of eating large quantities of grain and its numerous by-products, which can lead to hypertension, obesity, and various other health problems. Instead, the Paleo Diet posits that a reliance on lean meats, fresh fruits, and vegetables while minimizing processed food is the key to health and longevity.

The nutritional benefits of the diet are not what the grievance is about, said Dr. Britta Hoyes, who organized the event. She agreed that a high-carbohydrate diet can have a detrimental effect on long-term health, as many studies have demonstrated. Instead, the group’s protest is a reaction to the biological and historical pediments of the diet, in particular the contention that pre-agricultural societies were only adapted to eat those foods existing before the Neolithic Revolution.

Hoyes, a paleoethnobotanist who specializes in reconstructing prehistoric subsistence, stated that only thing unifying the myriad diets that she’s studied has been their diversity. “You simply do not see specific, trans-regional trends in human subsistence in the archaeological record. People can live off everything from whale blubber to seeds and grasses. You want to know what the ideal human diet consists of? Everything. Humans can and will eat everything, and we are remarkably successful not in spite of this fact, but because of it. Our adaptability is the hallmark of the human species. We’re not called omnivores for nothing.”

As for the idea that agricultural products are somehow maladaptive to the human species, researchers at a seminar entitled “It’s When You Mate, Not What You Ate,”  pointed out that evolutionary fitness is measured by reproductive success, not by the health or longevity of an individual.

Richard Wenkel, a biostatistician who chaired the panel, explained: “As long as the diet of an individual keeps them alive long enough to successfully mate, then that diet has conferred an evolutionary advantage. By that metric, the agricultural revolution has proven to be the most effective dietary system in the history of our species. We are the most prolific higher-order vertebrate on the planet.” It is a point that he feels is overlooked by Paleo Diet enthusiasts.

See also  How to Really Eat Like a Hunter-Gatherer: Why the Paleo Diet Is Half-Baked [Interactive & Infographic]

I also want to read Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live.

But let’s suppose we did have a handle on our natural diet. Two things rub me the wrong way about this.

First, what’s natural versus what’s cultural is often very hard to tell. Here’s one example. People say it’s natural for men to have a more muscular physique than women and that women are naturally smaller and thinner than men. Okay. But why then, if it’s natural, do we work so hard to achieve those differences?

Read Are You Working Hard Enough to Achieve Your Natural Body?

We commonly hear claims that men are naturally more muscular and physically intimidating than women.  “It’s a biological fact,” someone might say.  If that were true, though, we wouldn’t have to work so incredibly hard to make it so.

@IllMakeItMyself sent in this great example of the way in which we are pushed to force our bodies into a gender binary that we pretend is natural.  On the upper right part of the Men’s Health cover, it reads: “Add 15lb of muscle” and, right next door on the Women’s Health cover, it reads “5 ways to lose 15 lbs.”

If we have to try this hard to make it true, maybe we’re not as different as we think we are.

This point is true for all sorts of so called natural differences between men and women. Men and women are fed differently and treated differently from birth (maybe even earlier as more people choose to know the sex of the child they’re carrying). How we turn out is a result of both social and biological forces. It’s hard to weed out the social and talk about how men and women would be if we were treated the same. What’s nature? What’s nurture? We just don’t know.

Second, that something is natural is neither here nor there in terms of goodness. Not everything natural is worth wanting. That’s something that authors of the Natural News ought to consider.

What’s Natural News? It’s the worst of the anti-science health sites on the internet, according to Skeptoid.

When Natural News began, it was basically the blog and sales portal of anti-pharmaceutical activist Mike Adams. His basic premise has always been the Big Pharma conspiracy, the idea that the medical industry secretly wants to keep everyone sick, and conspires with the food industry to make people unhealthy, all driven by a massive plot of greed to sell poisonous medicines. Adams appears to have become a protégé of Alex Jones, for he now writes on Natural News at least as many police state conspiracy articles as he does anti-science based medicine articles. They carry ads for each other on their sites as well.

The Natural Society is also opposed to Google’s new evidence based news ranking.

But I wouldn’t wave the banner of “natural” quite so proudly. Cancer is perfectly natural. Nature isn’t all sunshine and rainbows.

Philosophers call the fallacy of assuming what’s natural is good the fallacy of the appeal to nature.

…[C]onsider the…argument that what is natural is somehow good and what is unnatural bad. …[T]he principle is rarely stated so explicitly, but if we look at what people actually do, this does seem to be an assumption that underlies people’s behaviour. Consider, for example, the popularity of “natural” remedies. A great many people would always prefer to take a “natural” remedy over an “artificial” one. Similarly, people prefer foods that have “all natural” ingredients.
One obvious point to make here is that this very characterization of certain things as “natural” is problematic. What always strikes me about health food shops are the rows and rows of bottles and tablets. A greengrocer seems to be a much better source of natural products than such collections of distilled essences and the like. …
However, let us set aside such doubts about the category of “the natural” for the moment and just ask, even if we can agree that some things are natural and some are not, what follows from this? The answer is: nothing. There is no factual reason to suppose that what is natural is good (or at least better) and what is unnatural is bad (or at least worse)

Source: Julian Baggini, Making Sense, Oxford, 2002, pp. 181-182.

Here’s an excerpt from Tim Minchin’s heroine in the story Storm:

Pharmaceutical companies are the enemy
They promote drug dependency
At the cost of the natural remedies
That are all our bodies need
They are immoral and driven by greed.
Why take drugs
When herbs can solve it?
Why use chemicals
When homeopathic solvents
Can resolve it?
It’s time we all return-to-live
With natural medical alternatives.”