Month: February 2016

fitness

Bad/good news for non-responders…

Sam B1 Comment

Some people seem to work out and work out but don’t get any fitter. And that’s true for both aerobic exercise and weight training. I suggested earlier that such people might make a rational choice not to exercise.

After all, they’re doing the work but not seeing the usual benefits. In that post, Rational couch potatoes unite I looked at a number of studies of non-responders, all of which noted a wide variation in response to exercise. There isn’t a one size fits all approach to “couch to 5 km.” It might take some people weeks and others months. Ditto for speed.

And I talked about the variability and the need for personalized exercise programs in Personalized exercise, recovery, and the unfit.

A new study though casts doubt on the existence of non-responders and suggests that they are only non-responders at low doses of exercise. The cure for non-responders might not be a more gentle approach to exercise. The best cure might be working harder, more intensely, and for longer periods of time. They’re not non-responders. Instead, they just need a higher dose.

That’s either good news or bad news depending!

See Non-responders just need to try harder in the Globe and Mail. It describes a study conducted by Dr. Robert Ross and his colleagues in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen’s University. They compared the results of three different 24-week exercise programs on 121 sedentary, obese adults.

The researchers measured aerobic fitness every four weeks, and saw the number of non-responders in all three groups decline as the study progressed. In the low-amount, low-intensity group, however, the non-response level plateaued after eight weeks, with more than one-third of the subjects still failing to see any improvements after 24 weeks.

That suggests the minimum exercise level prescribed by health guidelines isn’t sufficient for everyone: “It’s just not enough to move the needle on a number of people,” Ross says. “I mean, [a non-response rate of] 30 per cent is not a trivial number.”

Doubling the amount of low-intensity exercise reduced the non-response rate to 17.6 per cent, but the most impressive results were recorded in the high-intensity group, in which the number of non-responders was reduced to zero by the end of 24 weeks.

So maybe non-responders are people for whom the right amount of exercise is a lot and the right intensity level is high.

Sorry, non-responders.

 

Feminist Fitness Love Stories
cycling · feminism · fitness · martial arts · running · swimming · triathalon

Feminist Fitness Love Stories

catherine w4 Comments

Happy Valentine’s Day, Feminist Fitness readers! We love y’all—all 16,000 of you!

In honor of the day, I collected some stories of sports and fitness love from some of our bloggers and readers. I asked these questions:

  • How did you and your sport first meet? Was it love at first sight?
  • If it’s a long-term relationship, how has your love changed over time?
  • Are you polyamorous about your love sports/activity relationships?  How do you manage to keep those different relationships going?

Readers, we’d love it if you would share some of your own sports love stories in the comments section. If we get enough, I’ll put them together for another blog post.

Love and fitness is not a new topic for the blog. Check out previous posts here and here and here   and here.

For inspiration, here are some of their stories below (slightly edited).

J on swimming: It was an arranged marriage when I was 11. My dad decided I needed an event for the Maccabi Games (Jewish junior olympic-style event), and he was a swimmer as a kid. It was the only time he’s been successful as a yenta.
We got really serious from ages 12-21, and spent all our waking hours together in college. Then we broke up when I found cycling and didn’t see each other for more than a decade.

I’ve come back to the sport in the past year after a knee injury, and we’ve fallen in love all over again. Switching from breaststroke to freestyle is a fresh new perspective. Plus, the gear is better now – who knew goggle technology had such room for improvement?  I just have to avoid looking at those (fast!) times from our youth together.

Swimming and I are both major Dan Savage fans, so yes, we believe in ethical [infidelity]. I cheat on it with cycling, kayaking, and hike/ski/snowshoeing on the weekends. And it cheats on me with Michal Phelps (but can you blame it?) The great thing about swimming is having a workout, lane buddies, and coach to motivate me on the days when I’d rather out out with Netflix, instead.

C on running and cycling: My long term relationship is with running, but mostly it’s the lover I am cuddling with on the couch with Netflix, comfortable and familiar and a good affirmation and reassurance from someone who’s known me a long time and still loves me despite my changing body and ebbing and flowing.  The new energy comes from my embracing of cycling, where I’m living fantasies of being the hostage trapped in the hotel with the FBI agent who wants to have their alpha way with me.  I have yet to have the threesome with these two I’ve been planning for years.  Maybe a duathlon in June 😉

A on Taekwondo: I was a child bride. My father arranged it all. Now I couldn’t see my life any other way. We had some time apart in my wild undergraduate years, and things were understandably tempestuous in graduate school, but now we have a mature understanding. I brought in rock climbing as a relatively new but stable partner. It’s more of a summer thing.

K on downhill skiing: A friend of mine invited me to go skiing.  I replied, “I don’t ski.”, which surprised her. I also found it really intriguing that she just EXPECTED me to be into skiing.  I needed to know why.  Her reply intrigued me more, “It fits with your personality.”  That was it.  My skiing crush started.

The first time I went skiing I knew I was bound for a lesson, but at what level? I took one trip up the bunny hill.  I got off the chair lift in one piece, no falls.  Nice.  Then I started sliding down the gentle terrain.  So far so good.   Gradually the speed was picking up.  I don’t know how to brake on these things.  Well, I thought, I know one way to stop.  And, I plopped over.  It sure was fun.  🙂  That was January 1999.  Since then I have gone from being a novice who needs to learn control to an expert who can explore the entire mountain.

I am not a cheater!  I keep things separate by season.  For example, I used to race sailboats.  I got burnt out on that and switched to cycling.  I can only handle one major commitment at a time.  😉

J on cross-country skiing: I flirted with my sport for a few years before committing in earnest. I built a deep relationship during the long winter nights above the Arctic Circle in 2000. Daily (or really, nightly), skiing provided a mental antidote to grueling work hours away from home, and a physical antidote to the other coping method – obscene alcohol consumption.

My love – and it’s really part and parcel of why I love what I love – is a continual process of learning and loving more deeply. There’s always room for growth, and given the nature of my chosen sport this can continue even as I age.

XC skiing is not a new love, but it has retained the passion of a new love. The feeling I get from using my whole body in a coordinated way is unparalleled. I retain many casual relationships, but am faithful to my true love.

Me on cycling, scuba, kayaking, yoga: In life and sports, I’ve had several different loves. Cycling is family—I’ve known it my whole life, starting with my first bike at 4, training wheels off at 5. My real appreciation for it has been in the last 12 years, once I started road biking in earnest, as well as mountain and cross biking. Even when I commute on my beater bike, I can still feel that sense of liberation—I’m moving under my own power, going exactly where I want to! Cycling will always be there for me, and I’m grateful for that lifelong relationship.

Yoga is the friend with benefits I reconnect with from time to time who is very accepting of my busy schedule, and is there to make me feel good. It’s not romantic—never has been—but can be therapeutic when I need some TLC. We’re seeing each other on the side now, and the nice thing is no one ever gets hurt.

Scuba is my new mad crush. We met on a vacation in Australia on the Great Barrier Reef, and I was infatuated right away. I’m now getting certified here in Boston, and am going to Puerto Rico for diving in March. Will a vacation fling survive the cold New England waters of reality? We’ll see.   But I’m sort of hoping it turns into something long-term.

M on cycling: The earliest phase of my long love affair was a yellow and black Murray that I got for Christmas at age 6. My dad took me outside, all set to give me my first lesson in staying upright on two wheels, and giddy with excitement, rode off down the street, no lesson required.

After using my bike mostly as a means to get to my friends’ houses, I was given my first “real” bike – a road bike with impossibly skinny tires. I remember riding it on the wrong side of the road because I was too afraid to have the traffic at my back and I felt no joy in that saddle. It seemed so fragile to me. I quickly traded it in for a hybrid and at the same time, some of my friends started mountain biking. It was 1992 and this was cutting edge where I was from. I joined them on my hybrid and couldn’t get enough of it.

It wasn’t long after that I purchased a mountain bike and proceeded to have lots of fun on dirt for many years until I got the nerve to get back on a road bike.  It was 2007 when I heard of this thing called “cyclocross”. I tried a race and adored it. Now as the sport has expanded, and mixed terrain rides on ‘cross bikes are becoming more popular, I feel I have come full circle to the days of riding my hybrid through the woods. This is what I had been waiting for all along. Recently I was riding my ‘cross bike on some local trails with a goofy smile on my face the whole time, feeling just as I did in those early days of love.

P on cycling: I fell in love with my partner and cycling at the same time. He is a cyclist and athlete, and I knew when our love was new that cycling was going to be important in my life. I didn’t realize HOW important and central it would become. Now, after teaching cycling and riding across country, I still remember fondly the first day we rode the Minuteman Trail together and he gave me a gentle push – a push that propelled me into love with him and the sport.

L on running: My sport/first love is running. It was definitely NOT love at first sight. In fact, we didn’t like one another one bit upon being introduced. I forced myself to engage with running for a long time. Slowly, very slowly, our relationship developed and became stronger. I went from only being able to run with others, to only being able to run with music, to finally, being able to run alone and sometimes even without music. It was then that our love blossomed (though as I note below, we are no longer monogamous).

It’s definitely been a long-term relationship: almost 20 years now. Since our courtship became a solid relationship, we’ve been pretty consistently in love for the whole time.

Though I’ve dabbled with others (biking and swimming, primarily), I’m pretty loyal to running. I confess that I also met Ashtunga yoga over twenty years ago. Though we had a casual relationship for several years (I was so young!), we had a falling out. I don’t think I was mature enough for yoga. But seven years ago we met again and for the past six years, I’ve been dividing my love equally between running and yoga. Because they are complementary and not competing for my love in any way, we have a pretty nice polyamorous thing going!

K on cycling: I fell in love with my bike in the summer of 2013, on a trip to Morzine in the southern French Alps. Until then I’d just ridden a lot and thought, ya, this is fun. In Morzine I learned something more: that my bike and I, together, could climb mountains. Not super fast but faster than most, steady and solid. It felt incredible, liberating.

On that same trip a woman my age, a former racer and now coach, told me how talented she thought I was as a rider; that praise hit home like you would not believe. I’d never been talented at sports, EVER. I’d been teased as fat and inept and uncoordinated as a kid. My high school gym teacher used to call me “retard.” (No, really. Thanks, Mr Elgie.)

Since then I’ve ridden with pride, hugged the road, so grateful for my awesome strong body and my lithe, speedy bike. Her name is Ruby. (No, really. Thanks, Ruby!)

Tracy on swimming: she’s blogged about this here, which will inspire everyone to get in the water very soon.

 and Samantha, on Cycling: A Love Story in 3 Parts:

  1. I fell in love with riding a bike as a kid, as one does. I don’t know how old I was. Maybe 8. The bike had a purple banana seat and sissy bars at the back. It was the 70s. This isn’t me but it looks like my bike. We moved a lot when I was growing up, following my father’s work as a baker across Newfoundland, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. At some point the bike stopped coming with and I stopped riding but I remember that bike. I remember learning to ride a bike and I loved the freedom it gave me to come and go.
  1. After more than 10 years of not riding, a friend was riding from Ontario to Newfoundland and she gave up in Halifax. Too many hills and too much rain and bad weather. She decided to complete her trip by bus and ferry and left me her beautiful bike for the summer. It has gears that worked and you could actually get going pretty fast. I started commuting everywhere by bike and said goodbye to the bus. Shortly before she arrived home I took her bike into a bike shop and said I wanted one like it. I couldn’t afford one like hers, it turned out, but instead I bought a pink Raleigh hybrid commuter bike. It was stolen only a a few years ago after I passed it down to my mother.
  1. After steadily commuting for years, I got into running. Approaching my 40th birthday I started running 5 kms 10 kms, and then training for half marathons. A friend who’d done a half ironman suggested we train for a triathlon and we signed up for the Running Room’s triathlon clinic. I also worked with a bunch of serious cyclists who noticed the running and increasing fitness and who said maybe I was ready for a real bike. I bought my first road bike–a red Cannondale, the first in a series of Cannondales–and took it out for a spin with my triathlon training group. All of a sudden I was at the front, not the back, and chatting with people I never got to run with. My friend had to stop for a bathroom back but he told me to keep going and that he’d catch up. I ended up waiting at the car for what felt like forever. He never caught me. Whee! Zoom! I was once slow (running) but now was fast (on the bike). I’ve never looked back.

So readers, if you have love stories to share, please tell us.  And we’ll keep sharing the love…

end

fitness

And then there were 16,000!

Sam B

Thanks everyone for reading, following, sharing, liking, and commenting.

Welcome to our blog!

Here’s a little history of our ever-growing blog community:

We started the blog at the end of August, 2012.

Things were quiet in those first few months.

On May 13th, 2013 we welcomed our 500th follower.

On November 28, 2013, 1000 followers.

I think we lost track of 2000 somewhere in the middle.

On December 25, 2014, 3000 followers.

Then on January 27, 2015, 4000 followers.

Sometime in February we hit 5000 and then 6000 on March 28, 2015.

And April 29, 7000.

At the end of May, 8000.

On June 26, 9000.

And in July the big 10K.

In August, 12,000.

Halfway through September, 13,000!

Halfway through October, 14,000!

Halfway through November 15,000!

And now in February, 2016, we’re 16,000 strong.

YAY!

And thank you all very much.

Why do I care? See Why I Love Our Blog.

Oh, and you can also like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

But why do that, you ask, since you can get the blog posts here.

We post lots of other fitness content on our Facebook page and there’s a lovely community of like minded people there. Come join in, if that’s your thing. We’d love to have you. Please share and help spread the word.

thanks

fitness

Spring riding in my sights!

Sam B2 Comments

image

Yes, I know it’s VERY COLD and VERY SNOWY here right now.

But I’ve got spring riding firmly in my sights. Family commitments mean I’m not riding in Florida or Arizona during university conference week–aka spring break–and I’m not heading off to South Carolina on March break either.

I do have a date for my first big ride. On May 7th I’m riding 200 km with my friends Dave and Michel. I’ve got a duathlon booked in for July 10th. And the bike rally–660 km from Toronto to Montreal–is July 24th to the 29th.

So I’m riding on the trainer and thinking of spring. I’m looking forward to long training rides on country roads and some fast weekday evening rides as well.

Bring it on! I’m ready for spring!

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fitness · Sat with Nat

Forget fighting genetics, I’m working with them

natalieh (she/her)4 Comments

WAAAAAAY back  in 2014 when I when I first found out about my high blood pressure I was livid. You can read about it here. The doctor quipped I couldn’t fight my genetics. It hurt. It felt like that one comment wiped away all the dietary and activity choices I’ve made as an adult. GAH.

Since then I started working in the life insurance industry and I’ve found out almost everything health-wise is genetic. Yup, it’s all about the law of big numbers they say. Your folks have high blood pressure, you likely will too, ditto high cholesterol and other risk factors for disease. I don’t buy that I’m genetically determined to kick it due to a heart attack but I’d be a fool to ignore the evidence that my cardiovascular system is less than stellar.

My maternal grandparents both died of cardiovascular disease in their 60s and my folks have varying concerns with cholesterol and high blood pressure for the past 20 years. I have large, knubbly varicose veins and my blood pressure is managed with medication. Sure, my resting heart rate is around 60 beats per minute, which is respectable but not stellar. I get far more than the recommended 150 minutes of moderate activity a week. I sit between 300-700 minutes on a given week. I take the stairs. I eat mostly plants. I’ve maintained my weight loss of 40 pounds from a year ago. I drink beer or wine on the weekend. I do a 10 minute yoga routine in the morning. I’m working with my body rather than fighting against it. I tried restricting carbs, BIG MISTAKE so I strive for the Canada’s Food Guide proportion of carbs:protein:vegetables and fruit.

As I’ve been talking to Gran, my paternal grandmother, and looking more and more like Grammie, my maternal grandmother, I’ve been thinking how those two women shaped my ideas of women and fitness. Gran is turning 86 this year and teases me mercilessly that she was a grandmother at my age, a great grandmother in her 60s and may yet live to see her great-great grandchildren born.

Gran and my eldest son in 2013
Gran and my eldest son in 2013

I know that 41 socially looks different now than it did for Gran in 1971 but biologically? Not much has changed. I might add that Gran is on one medication for acid reflux, lives in her home unassisted, and does daily exercises to limber up in the morning. She only goes for 30 minute walks now instead of 2 hours. She drives. She is the model of what fit in our 80s can look like. It’s not looking like I inherited her preternaturally amazing cardio system but I’m pulling together some stories that show how she has shaped my idea of what fit women look like to share with you over the month of February.

fat · fitness · weight loss

Students struggle with why weight loss is so hard

Sam B3 Comments

As Tracy wrote in a post  a few weeks ago one of the great privileges that we have as professors in the Department of Women’s Studies and Feminist Research at Western is that we actually get opportunities to talk to smart students about fitness as a feminist issue.

Writes Tracy, “As we did last year, we got to guest tonight lecture in the Women’s Studies course, “The Body.” This time, our colleague Andrea Allen invited us.”

My half of the class was called “The Obesity Panic” and I talked about the social construction of the “obesity epidemic,” gender, the obese body, and normative thinness. The students had read an excerpt from Eric Oliver’s book Fat politics. The real story behind America’s obesity epidemic.

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Oliver is critical about the characterization of obesity as an epidemic, “Such a characterization, however, has many problems: the average American weight gain has been relatively low (eight to 12 pounds over the last 20 years), and the causal linkages between adiposity, morbidity, and mortality are unclear.”

We also looked at Kathleen LeBesco‘s characterization of moral panic, as another way of understanding the social hue and cry about obesity. She writes: “Moral panics are marked by concern about an imagined threat; hostility in the form of a moral outrage toward individuals and agencies responsible for the problem; consensus that something must be done about the serious threat; disproportionality in reports of harm; and volatility in terms of the eruption of panic. “

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One of things I talked about was the very low long term success rates of diets. Why do doctors recommend them given the likely outcome? See Well intentioned lies, doctors, and the diet industry and Doctors and unwanted weight loss advice.

Part of the answer is that no one–not even doctors–wants to believe it’s impossible. Certainly none of the students that day wanted to believe it. We all want to hold on to that dream.

Someday our Prince (or Princess will come)! Someday we’ll lose that 5/10/20/40/60/100 lbs!

I told the students that I sometimes looked at Oprah’s failures with a sigh of relief. If one of the richest women in the world can’t do it–with a full time personal trainer and her very own chef–what’s the hope for someone like me?

But my students were skeptical.

Maybe the women who want to lose weight but can’t aren’t trying hard enough?

Maybe, maybe we just don’t how to lose weight?

Some students had specific helpful food suggestions. Others thought maybe the women gained scale weight but last fat and they didn’t know that muscle is denser and heavier than fat.

It was one of the most fervent bouts of class participation I’ve ever experienced.

Of course, weight loss is hard work, they thought. But it’s not that hard. It’s not rocket science. It’s not brain surgery. I showed them the numbers. Their brows furrowed. Here’s hoping I got them thinking.

 

aging · fitness · training

On coping with setbacks in the gym (Guest post)

marthafitat555 Comments

IMG_1575By MarthaFitat55

The past couple of weeks at the gym have been quieter than usual. If all was well, I’d be getting ready to shift into a new level of training.

But all is not well. About four years ago I tripped in my kitchen and hit my knee. Hard. Though my recovery then went smoothly – I was lucky and did not break my knee cap – my doctor warned me that I might have trouble with it in the future.

In mid-January, trouble finally came knocking. Tenderness, swelling, and pain were relieved by rest, ice, and elevation. But I noticed that my knee was stiff and resistant, and my physio recommended a shift in training. Fewer squats and splits, if any, and more rows and pulls, to help aid recovery.

The new routine is helping, and I should be thrilled. To be honest, though, I was peeved and disgruntled. I was past the one-year mark with my hip injury, I had recovered from a pinched nerve in my shoulder, and I was coping well with work arounds for my arthritic fingers. Dealing with my knee was the last thing I wanted.

We don’t always get what we want, as Mick Jagger wailed all those years ago, and this month was no exception. But as the song goes, if you try, sometimes you get what you need.

What I needed was to shake up my routine and refocus. Sometimes we set goals and go after them to the exclusion of all else. We stop noticing the clues and keep on our path without adjusting for new information or needs.

I rely on my trainer to keep me on track, because one of my primary goals is to get fit without causing injury to myself. What I had forgotten was there are many ways to be active and there are many ways to train. Just because I couldn’t do squats didn’t mean I couldn’t do anything.

So I have been doing something, and that is better than doing nothing. I was only modifying my training, not ditching it completely. I was reminded again how much I enjoy my time in the gym with weights, but I also became reacquainted with smaller, gentler, more frequent moves that focused on increasing flexibility, not just strength.

It is a lesson in patience, and it’s not one I am ever eager to learn, or re-learn as the case may be. I lead a busy life, with work, family, and community commitments. Who has time to spend on recovery?

The reality is we all need to take time to recover, to re-evaluate our goals, to refocus our attention on specific objectives; in short, to spend some quality time on ourselves, so we can keep going with our fitness plans.

When I look at what I was doing in the gym, I am still pleased with the plan I have. What I needed though, was to invest some time in focusing on muscle and joint care. It’s like getting that winter tune up your car needs in the fall to make coping with the hazards and challenges of winter a little easier.

So I am engaging in some preventative maintenance. I’ve been taking time to focus on form in training, to work on shifting some sloppy work habits, and to go back to yoga to stretch and relax in between sessions at the gym.

It’s too early to tell what will come next, but I like the variety. Most importantly, I like the fact that I’m not giving up.

— Martha is a writer and consultant who accepts she may never be a pretzel on the yoga mat, but is delighting in rocking the warrior pose nonetheless.

body image · diets · fitness · weight loss

Are People Really Happy for People Who Lose Weight?

Tracy I9 Comments

This topic of weight loss has come up quite a bit lately, even though we are a blog that professes (rightly) not to be about weight loss and definitely not about dieting.

I can’t even count the number of posts we’ve written over the years that say fitness is not measured by weight loss (recent case in point: Sam’s musing yesterday).

And anyone who knows me knows well that I do not compliment people on weight loss. Pretty much never, since that time Sam and I both remember all too well when we complimented someone who, in fact, had indeed lost lots of weight — because she had cancer! Yes, that ranks up there with the times in my life I wanted to crawl into a hole and hide.  And of course, Sam’s recent weight loss has a lot to do with having her thyroid removed because she had surgery for thyroid cancer in the summer.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: “you’ve lost weight! you look great!” is not a compliment. Granted, lots of people are trying to lose weight. And, granted, those people probably like it when people notice (maybe?) because heck, they’re trying. Why isn’t it a compliment? Because it implicitly says, “and you used to look like shit, and guess what? I noticed that too!” And it implicitly assumes that everyone wants to lose weight, that losing weight is a good thing in and of itself, that being fat is not good (and looks awful), and that people are entitled to monitor the size of others’ bodies. And all of that is crap that we shouldn’t be assuming and doing.

But here’s something: I wonder whether people are actually happy when someone they know loses weight (not because of cancer, but because of effort)?  The reason I wonder is that at any given time, I would say a good 50% of the people I know are trying to lose weight or thinking about it, and more than 50% of those aren’t successful (not surprisingly, given this and this and this and this and oh so much more!).

So I’m going to go out on a limb here, and it may be a lonely limb that reveals me to be petty and small-minded: a lot of the time, people aren’t actually happy for you when you lose weight. First, there are the killjoy feminists like me who don’t really notice anymore when the people around them lose weight.  I consider the not noticing to be a personal accomplishment of mine.

But even more than that, there are those people who are battling the odds when the odds are heavily not in their favour. That would be the majority of people on a diet or weight loss program, actively trying to lose weight. I’m going to venture that a good portion of those people actually feel a little screw turn in their gut whenever someone they knows beats the odds and actually “succeeds” at that elusive goal: weight loss.

Seeing people who, for whatever reason (sometimes cancer, sometimes dieting, sometimes grief, sometimes — though not nearly as often as we’d like — exercise) drop pounds can start an internal monologue that, far from being thrilled for the person, quickly turns inward to self-flagellation and a sense of failure: If she can do it, why can’t I? What am I doing wrong? What’s wrong with me? I’m such a failure.

I’m happy for you if that’s never you. But if that’s sometimes you, join the club. Because I do go there, still today–my non-weight loss noticing-self can go there.

So I’m just going to put this out there and be totally frank. I really can’t stand it when people talk about their weight loss. I don’t care what the reasons. I don’t care if you’re trying or not trying. I don’t care if it’s for performance or for looks or just because that’s what friends, family, and strangers like to talk about.

You know, you can dress it up any way you like. But to me it’s such a personal thing that our social world has made into a public thing. And I’m always stumped about what we’re supposed to say. “Good for you!” even when someone is trying just goes against everything that feels right to me. It’s like encouraging something that I see ruin the lives of perfectly excellent people who think that weight loss will afford them something they need in order to feel good about themselves (or better about themselves). I just can’t have the conversation anymore, with anyone. [I like Carly’s suggestion of saying, “how does that feel for you?” but those don’t feel like my words]

So this brings me back to the question of whether people are really happy for people who lose weight. If you’re like me, you’ve read lots of stuff on dieting and weight loss in your time. And they always talk about the saboteurs. Those are the people who want you to eat another helping because they cooked it, or a piece of cake because it’s a special occasion, or chocolate because it’s Valentine’s Day, and therefore thwart your efforts at weight loss. Are they happy when their loved ones lose weight? Sometimes, the literature says, they feel threatened.

And then there are those people who are trying and getting nowhere. Are they happy for you? I’m not so sure. But I think it’s complicated. And that’s because successful weight loss is hard to square with the reality of how difficult it is to lose and maintain weight loss. And so when someone achieves it, we may be a little happy for them (maybe some people are super happy for them), but lots more people just use it as another reason to get down on themselves. And that’s the painful truth for many.

I don’t mean to be saying that that’s the only reason, or even the main reason, I don’t like to talk about weight loss (yours or mine). But it’s not a neutral subject, and it’s loaded with all sorts of cultural meaning that hooks into horrible attitudes that I don’t like to encourage. And even when someone’s reasons aren’t about that stuff, it’s still highly personal and that makes it at the very least an odd thing to advertise and go on about.

I can’t control what others want to talk about, but over the last little while, after a few conversations (with a few different people) that made me squirm and feel uncomfortable, I know for certain that I’m not taking part anymore. And for all of these complicated reasons, I’m going to be totally honest and say I’m happy for people about all sorts of things, but not super happy for someone simply because they’ve lost weight. I realize that makes me sound grumpy and petty, but there it is.

health · weight loss

Model of metabolic health tiara and weight loss magic wand?

Sam B7 Comments

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I recently had a complete and thorough doctor’s visit, a very detailed check up that ended up with me fretting a bit about my weight. That path led me to referral to a specialist at the metabolic health unit at a local hospital. I wanted to know if there were good medical reasons for me to lose weight or a good medical explanation for why I found losing weight so hard.

I knew already that I have a healthy living rock star profile when it comes to blood sugar, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels. (The last time I had this tested the nurses joked that they wanted to meet the person with such good cholesterol results and they spent awhile chatting with me about my diet.) You don’t have to care about health or make it a priority. No judgement here. See Healthism, fitness, and the politics of respectability.

But I do worry about health and I wanted to make sure that I was really okay.

After all, the media constantly bombards us with stories about the health implications and costs of obesity epidemic. We hear a lot about rising rates of overweight and obesity and what that means. I wanted to know, personally, what it meant for me.

The answer it turns out is nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zip.

I met with a specialist who assured me that I’m a model of metabolic health. I’m very fit and my commitment to physical activity matters far more than the number on the scale, she said. She told me that people come in lots of very different shapes and sizes and as far as she could tell there was no medical reason for me to lose weight.

She said she wished she had a weight loss magic wand to wave and help me lose weight if that’s what I wanted but she didn’t. She granted that especially with menopause approaching it’s very tough.

However, in the absence of the magic wand, I should just keep moving and enjoy my life.

The same unit of the hospital also has a scale that spits out BMI numbers and accompanying advice. Mine said, and I’m paraphrasing: Lose weight or die soon.

I showed the doctor the slip of paper and she said it was false. But why give them out then? Why scare people if it’s not true? What’s up with that? Argh. Grrr. Just stop.

I still want to lose weight and make it up hills faster. But it’s good to know there’s no health reasons at stake if I can’t.

Health Reform

 

fitness · weight loss

Feel the burn?: Sam mulls calories, exercise, and energy conservation

Sam B2 Comments

Many people ask me the same questions over and over again… What should I eat and what should I exercise like in order to look like the guys in the fitness:

So this morning, after two hours and fifteen minutes on my bike trainer in a super hard class, I looked at the information in a new light. Mostly I pay attention to average cadence and to max and avg heart rate, but today I also looked at calories–956 calories burned, it claimed–in a new light, given a study that was making the health and fitness rounds this week.

See More exercise doesn’t mean more calories burned

“Gym-goers might think that if they huff it on a treadmill for two hours every day, they will burn more calories overall than if they sneak in just 30 minutes.

But according to a study published Thursday in the journal Current Biology, as long as people are doing at least some baseline level of activity, they will expend about the same amount of energy each day no matter how much exercise they do — suggesting that exercise alone cannot be relied upon as a way to control weight at a time when the majority of American adults are overweight or obese.

For the study, a team led by Herman Pontzer sought to test whether energy expenditures increased as physical activity did, or if those expenditures plateaued no matter how much activity people were doing.

Researchers looked at 332 people in five different populations around the world: a mostly agrarian group in Ghana; people living in a township in South Africa; urban residents in Jamaica; island dwellers in the Seychelles; and suburbanites in the United States.

For about a week, they tracked physical activity using wearable devices akin to Fitbits, and measured energy expenditures through a specialized urine test.

They found that the amount of spent energy does increase with physical activity levels, but only in the low ranges of exercise overall.”

Here’s the study they’re talking about: Constrained Total Energy Expenditure and Metabolic Adaptation to Physical Activity in Adult Humans.

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What do I make of the study?

First, I hate the reporting about it which mostly takes the form of “diet not exercise the key to weight loss.” See Why Diet Matters More than Exercise For Weight Loss, In One Video Why? Because the assumption is that the reason we exercise is weight loss. If that were my motive I would have quit long ago! See Why don’t plus sized athletes lose weight? for some discussion of this. I worry that it discourages people from getting active. Suppose they’re right, and there’s no reason to support the claim that they’re not, and diet matters more than exercise when it comes to weight loss. It’s still not clear to me that there is good evidence that diet works either.

Also, it’s not new news. See Science, exercise, and weight loss: when our bodies scheme against us.

Second, there are lots of good reasons to exercise that have nothing to do with weight loss. There are performance reasons, for example. I’m staying in bike shape over the winter to be able to do fun things next summer, like the Kincardine Duathlon and the Friends for Life Bike Rally. My reasons have nothing to do with weight loss. Indeed, I want to lose weight to be faster on my bike going up hill. There are also health reasons. Weight lifting/strength training, for example, is great for bone health even if it won’t help you lose weight.

Third, the research helps make sense of a puzzle we’ve blogged about here before, the athletes who work out hard but then flop the rest of the time. See Sedentary athletes, not a contradiction in terms and Children can be sedentary athletes too.

Fourth, and practically, it means that if we’re tracking exercise and calories the maximum we ought to count is 300 calories. That’s the actual difference researchers found between those who exercised and those who didn’t, regardless of what our instruments tell us. In light of that, let’s ignore the chart above. Let’s ignore the numbers on our Garmin. Bye bye calorie counters! But that doesn’t mean working out is not worth doing. Fitness matters more from almost every perspective. See Fitness and exercise are what matters, not weight loss.

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