Month: November 2016

Guest Post

The pain of losing can fuel a more satisfying win (Guest post)

Krysse3 Comments

So last night I lost. I lost big. I thought I would breeze past my competition, head swelling with pride, and would walk away with the joy of winning. But it didn’t go as planned. I stood on stage after months of fitness competition prep, watching my rivals get called up before me. The reality of the fact I was losing the contest slowly and bitterly sunk in.

I tried to be a good sport, tried to remind myself it was just for fun, that I had come a long way, and that making it to the stage was good enough. But it wasn’t enough.

It didn’t take long for me to compare this feeling to the US election results. It has been a crummy week to say the least. I was surprised how sick and nauseous I felt about an election in a country I don’t even live in. I had really hoped that competing in the fitness event this weekend would bring me that winning I had been hoping for earlier in the week. After all, the last time competed I won first place. I assumed it was mine for the taking again.

Clearly neither elections nor fitness competition results can be easily predicted. The desire to win is natural in all of us. We all crave that feeling of validation. That all we believe in, all we’ve worked for, all we are and all we represent will be recognized and rewarded. But sometimes that doesn’t happen and it sucks, no matter how much we try to be good sports about it.

As I drove home that night, my husband asked how I felt and my coach texted to see if I was ok. I felt the need to let everyone on social media know I lost. Not just lost but got thumped to a rather humbling extent. In short: this was not what I wanted to happen.

But the next day, something in me started to feel different. Six months ago I competed in my first fitness competition and won first place. At 38 years old and having lost 40 pounds, winning was the biggest high imaginable. I floated for days afterwards, basking in it all. I reveled and luxuriated in the feelings of superiority. I won. I had been validated. What followed was months of enjoying my achievements, getting cocky almost. I ate. My once sculpted abs began to soften. Still, it didn’t matter. I had won a gold medal and, at least in my own mind, was basically a fitness superstar. It didn’t matter that the competition was small, that I essentially got lucky. I won and had the medal to prove it. That was all that mattered. But soon the winning physique I had been so proud of slowly started to fade away. I still had the bauble as a testament to my success hanging in my closet–gathering dust–but the body that did the work was becoming a thing of the past. Winning feels great. But it doesn’t always lead to greatness.

So I realized I needed to get that feeling back and compete again. I had done this before and won, so of course I would easily win again, I told myself, now knowing the tricks of the trade. The connections. The experience. A medal was mine to take. I just had to do my training as I did before, walk on stage and claim my prize. But I lost, and oh man, did I ever lose badly. I felt disappointed, angry, frustrated, determined. I started to make a plan. I started to see what I needed to do to not just win on luck but win because I am a powerhouse. Because I’m battle scarred and stronger. I didn’t even think I would do another competition but now I’ve already started my strategies for the next one.

What’s even better? Losing has made me want the win more. I now see that my first prize was just luck but I know I have it in me to be a real competitor.  Perhaps what I was lacking in my last prep was the fuel that can only come from a painful loss.

It has made me think about the very nature of progress. President Obama won his first election with high expectations. I remember tears of joy on the news, the feeling that maybe the bad years were behind us. While the victory seemed like progress at the time, during his tenure the ultra right –wing conservatives have mobilized. There’s still anger,  counter-anger, and tension. Obama was two steps forward but the number of steps backwards has perhaps yet to be counted. Clinton may have represented another step forward for women and for progress, and not seeing her rise to that position leaves a bitter feeling of an opportunity squandered. Instead we are left disappointed, angry, frustrated and more determined. This is a powerful fuel that can only be created through a staggering defeat.

In this loss we can become stronger, more united, more focused. We can really feel it now. Now we know what we need to do. Let’s start planning for the next competition.

Christina Friend-Johnston is a freelance writer and communications consultant who spends equal time writing and sweating it out in the gym. She blogs at http://www.gofigure.fit.

fitness

Exercise guilt. Let’s lose it.

Tracy I10 Comments

Raise your hand if you feel guilty when you miss a workout. I blog a lot about missing workouts, scaling back, taking rest days, lowering our expectations, doing less, etc. This is a recurring theme of mine.

If someone “explored” my psychological commitment to that theme, they might uncover something like guilt-avoidance at its root. I want to reassure myself on a regular basis that it is perfectly okay to miss workouts because….drum roll please….I happen to miss a lot of workouts.

For me, finding a balance between rigid adherence to a plan and being totally off my game is a tricky business. Like lately I haven’t been making it to the pool for my 2x a week 6 a.m. swims. It’s so darn early. So. Early.

I used to be good at leaping out of bed and not giving it any thought. Last week I was even thinking maybe I should just quit swimming to alleviate that sense of guilt I experience every time I roll over in the morning and say “I’m going back to sleep for another 90 minutes.” 90 minutes! That’s a lot of sleep. But it’s also a lot of swimming.

If I stopped swimming and let go of my Y membership, I would alleviate the additional guilt of (1) spending money on a membership I hardly use and (2) never making it to spin class.

Dr. Anita Harman (who also contributed an article about guilt and exercise/fitness discourses to our special issue of the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics) did a study about exercise guilt. She found that:

the grip of exercise-related guilt is not a feature exclusively of those who health promoters and fitness advocates might deem “slackers.” Whatever the activity level or fitness gains my participants had achieved, they felt they should be doing more. There was always some aspect of their health or fitness or body they could point to as not good enough.

I like that I do my best, even if it means repeating myself, to let go of exercise guilt because it doesn’t serve me well. It’s not a great motivator. I mean, it does sometimes get us moving. But it’s not a healthy motivator. In an article about her study, Harman writes:

Although guilt might bring some women to exercise, and thus seem potentially beneficial, psychotherapist Maud Purcell (2012) suggests instead that guilt is a “destroyer of emotional energy,” which “leaves you feeling immobilized in the present by something that has already occurred.” For example, a recurring perception of constantly falling short requires significant amounts of emotional energy that renowned feminist scholar Adrienne Rich (1976) describes as “an undramatic, undramatized suffering” (in Ehrenrich & English, 2005, p. 251).

Yes. That.

I’ve had a few conversations with different women friends lately about how they feel they’re falling short in the exercise department. The language they use is about “should” and “need to” and so forth. There’s lots of eye-rolling directed pejoratively towards their self-perception as falling short. Often the guilt actually tilts into shame–a sense not just that they are doing something wrong in not sticking with a plan, but that there is something wrong with them for their inability to stick to a plan or start a plan. They wonder about their will power. Their self control. Harman found a huge correlation between feelings of guilt and the sense that a regular plan of activity requires discipline.

Often, friends will start this conversation with me because they think that if I’m co-founder of a fitness blog I must be super committed all the time. Okay yes, I get stuff done much of the time. But my level of dedication waxes and wanes. And for the most part, I can roll with that.

But I do need to keep reminding myself that this is okay. And I like to remind others. In fact, I literally said to a friend the other day, during one of these conversations: “You’ve done nothing wrong. You are not a bad person.” That is my expert opinion (as a fitness blogger, right?).

Those were pre-election conversations of course. Post-election it’s all been about shock, weeping, fear, violence, and safety pins.

Anyway, the message: let’s lose the guilt. There are no “shoulds” about it and there is nothing wrong with not sticking 100% to a plan. It is perfectly fine to start, commit, falter, quit, get back to it, get to something else, decide sleep is more important, do something less ambitious and more fulfilling. Yep. That’s all okay.

[Correction: An earlier version of this post wrongly attributed the research in question to Dr. Pirkko Markula. The article under discussion in this post is from Markula’s column, but it was written by guest columnist, Dr. Anita Harman, University of Otago, New Zealand, about her PhD research on guilt and exercise.]

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Who’s taking the dogs out? Woof, woof

Sam B1 Comment

In times of stress, it seems we all are. I’ve been dog hiking a lot lately. Cate explored the kinds of things we do to find meaning in the world in the face of despair in her recent post on sadness and moments of grace . For me, it’s always walking with dogs in the woods. It’s a time and a place of calm and joy. And while I could experience the woods on my own there is just something very special about spending time on a trail through the woods in the company of a dog.

It’s guaranteed to lift my mood. I think it’s because you can’t help but see the world from the dog’s eye point of view. Mud! Puddles! Squirrels! Sticks! Ponds!

Susan visited last Monday we walked Shelby (left) and Cheddar (right) through the Westminster Ponds. Shelby and Cheddar are very good friends. Susan and me, too.

Sarah visited Sunday and we planned to revisit that route with Cheddar, below. (Thanks Google for the prettified image.)

But my mum hurt her back that day and sent us a message, “Could you take the little guy too?” The “little guy” is Charlie, her new rescue dog. We were a bit concerned about how’d he’d be a long walk through the woods. Turns out he was just fine. Charlie hopped over logs and frolicked through the leaves. He drew the line at swimming in the ponds. Too cold.

Here’s Cheddar and Charlie:

Turns out it’s not just us hiking with dogs in the woods. It’s also Hillary and Bill Clinton.

I’ve been feeling so heartbroken since yesterday’s election and decided what better way to relax than take my girls hiking. So I decided to take them to one of favorite places in Chappaqua. We were the only ones there and it was so beautiful and relaxing. As we were leaving, I heard a bit of rustling coming towards me and as I stepped into the clearing there she was, Hillary Clinton and Bill with their dogs doing exactly the same thing as I was. I got to hug her and talk to her and tell her that one of my most proudest moments as a mother was taking Phoebe with me to vote for her. She hugged me and thanked me and we exchanged some sweet pleasantries and then I let them continue their walk. Now, I’m not one for signs but I think ill definitely take this one. So proud. #iamstillwithher #lovetrumpshate#keepfighting #lightfollowsdarkness

See the story here.

 

Mirna Valerio running down a trail. We will keep running, cycling, walking and swimming. But alone?
equality · fitness

We will keep running, cycling, walking and swimming. But alone?

catherine w9 Comments

This week has been one of upheaval and dramatic change in the US in ways that will affect the global community in short and long-term ways. We members of the Fit is a Feminist Issue community come from many regions and countries, and I love how we can connect and support each other around fitness, feminism and well-being in our varied and similar lives all over the world.

About 60 million people voted for Donald Trump, which may include some readers of this blog.  It is, however, widely reported that the immediate effects of the election have included attacks on women, people of color, Muslims and LGBTQ people.  Many people in the US are rightly afraid– concerned for their safety and uncertain about how to conduct their daily lives.

For blog readers (and women in general), these feelings and this reality are what we navigate on a daily basis.  In an August 2016 article in Runner’s World, Meghan Kita wrote about women running alone in an environment of sexism and sexual harassment and violence:

You can run, but you can’t escape sexism. Women’s running has come a long way from the days of doctors saying, “You can’t do that; your uterus will fall out of your body.” Women now make up 57 percent of race finishers annually, per the latest Running USA statistics. More than half of our readers are women.

And yet people still suggest that women simply shouldn’t run alone. I once took a self-defense class for women at a local martial arts academy. The (male) instructor spent approximately half the class stressing the importance of one simple safety rule: Women should never do anything or go anywhere alone.

If you think women don’t know that it’s safer to run with other people than to run alone, think again. Every kid grew up using the buddy system. Everyone has heard the trope, “There’s safety in numbers.”

But suggesting that a woman coordinate a group for every single run she does is ridiculous, especially when you’d never give such advice to a man. Some women—just like some men—simply enjoy running alone.

That was then.  But this is now.

Events of this week made me think about long-distance runner Mirna Valerio, who writes the Fat Girl Running blog and also for other media.  In Runner’s World there was a long profile about her, including how she encounters people who are surprised and sometimes suspicious of an African-American woman trail-running in rural Georgia.  She tells this story:

“I’m running along and a police cruiser pulls up beside me,” she continues. “The deputy looks at me, but he doesn’t say anything. We go on like that for maybe a minute, but it felt like an hour. Finally, he just eased away.”

She also tells stories about diffusing suspicion and building communication with local residents.  It’s clear that Valierio enjoys being outdoors, alone, running and enjoying life.  She hasn’t written about any changes in her habits after the election, but then again, she’s not a political blogger.  Her views and concerns are her own.

Which leads me to ask the question:  readers, how are you feeling about engaging in physical activity outside, alone?  Has this week changed your views about safety and comfort?  We’d like to hear from you.

 

 

body image · eating · feminism · fitness · health · weight lifting

Finding my fitness spirit animal (Guest post)

tracywaideboer3 Comments

I have figured out my fitness spirit animal.

My desire to get in better shape has been a long time coming. I’ve always dreamed of being the kind of person who truly enjoys physical activity, who opts for a salad instead of something crunchy and deep-fried. One of my good friends is one of these people. It seems to come to her naturally—she runs marathons for fun and honestly enjoys vegetables. She often says that her spirit animal is a hamster because she can relate to the need to run on a wheel that doesn’t go anywhere—just to burn the energy.

I envy these people. And I cannot relate to them at all.

In the past I’ve related most closely to lazy housecats. Or maybe to a blubbery seal sunbathing on a rock with half-eaten fishtail dangling from its mouth.

 

 

This is how I spent much of the last two years: sprawled out on my couch with Netflix and a family-size bag of chips balanced expertly on my chest. (For you non-snackers, a family-size bag is much bigger than a regular size bag.) I was going through some intense stuff in my personal life and so hibernation seemed the most sensible option for a time when I was feeling so emotionally raw. And don’t get me wrong…I do have some fond memories of nights alone surrounded by blankets and snacks, like any happy seal would. I don’t regret this perhaps necessarily indulgent time in my life. But the problem was that it became a fairly regular habit. From “What the heck, just this once!” to “Oh, maybe I’ll only indulge on weekends,” to “Well, Thursday and Friday are basically the weekend,” and so forth. You get it – it got out of hand.

I think part of the problem was also that I viewed myself as a very physically awkward person, so anxiety around my own physical awkwardness prevented me from taking action sooner. I just never thought of myself as an “athletic person.” And this would always be reinforced when, in the past, I’d be working out and feeling strong and graceful, only to catch my reflection in an ill-placed mirror and suddenly think, Oh God! Is that what I look like right now?? (Have you ever seen a seal try to get around on land? It ain’t pretty.)

 I mean, I probably suffer from an average degree of female-related self-consciousness about my body, but the combination of athletic anxiety and my perceived physical awkwardness didn’t help.

Who knows, maybe it’s that “fitness clothes” (bright and skin-tight) just aren’t that flattering on bodies like mine (soft and curvy with doughy bits). Don’t get me wrong, I do love my body and have admired myself in many a reflection on a good day—I even considered entering a burlesque show once—but by today’s standards of “fitness,” or what it means “to be fit,” I often see myself as too round, soft, and flat out awkward to be an “in shape” person. And it doesn’t help to see people with gazelle-like grace running past me on the street while I get sweaty just from walking around with a backpack on. My idea of what it meant to be active had become too dichotomous.

However, during my time of hibernation, another friend of mine had completely transformed herself from a hard partyer to heavy weight lifter. It was inspiring to see her journey and what appealed to me most about her story was that she had done so with no previous experience or even inclination to make such a change. When I asked her about her experience, she told me that she too had been initially intimidated by fitness culture and by gyms, never daring to try more than the elliptical or treadmill. But the real clincher for me was when she told me she still indulges in homemade desserts and other delicious treats every night. She still has nights sprawled out on her couch with Netflix.

It was a revelation.

Never before had I meant a healthy and fit person with the same lazy, snack-fueled inclinations as myself.

Image result for hamster on a treadmill

I used to think there were two kinds of people: the gazelles and the hamsters of the world who love to run and don’t eat junk food, and the housecats and blubbery seals like me, doomed to lie about on our rocks and couches indefinitely. And while I know that different people have different inclinations (health- and activity-wise), it took me a while to realize that “fitness” is a wide-ranging sliding scale.

I used to think that being healthy and fit meant pretty much never eating fun stuff again, never lazing about guilt-free again. And this would mean that becoming healthier would be changing who I am and giving up some of the things I truly enjoy. It hadn’t occurred to me that incorporating fitness into my life would be about harmonizing my internal athlete and couch potato, my inner hamster and housecat.

While so much of the culture around “being fit” can seem impenetrable, exclusive, and intimidating—especially for someone who has never known quite how to go about it—finding someone who had found a way to take control of her health and wellness in her own way was eye-opening for me. I just had to find my own way that worked for me.

Strangely, I had been afraid that becoming healthier and more active would mean losing a part of myself. But what I learned was that I had it in me the whole time. My fitness spirit animal is still 100% a blubbery seal. But here’s the thing about blubbery seals, they know how to relax on land, but they get down to business under water. They are my fitness spirit animal: the perfect combination of awkward and graceful, blubbery and strong, lazy and active.

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Tracy de Boer is a real adult lady currently living in Toronto and completing her PhD in political philosophy at Western University. She is passionate about the ways philosophy enables people to think critically about everyday life. She is also very sad about the results of the U.S. election. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram, @tracyrwdeboer.

 

fitness

On Sadness and Moments of Grace

fieldpoppy8 Comments

Sam, on Wednesday, when the shock of the election was just starting to sink in: “It’s your Friday this week.”
Me: “What the hell am I going to write about? I feel like I’m flayed — I don’t have anything thoughtful to say about being fit and whole.”
Sam: “Write about what to do when you’re sad.”

There are lots of people talking this week about how important it is to “lose and win gracefully.” I think most people who call themselves feminists – or progressives or whatever term you want — know that this sadness isn’t about winning or losing.  It’s about the way this particular contest has created fear, has unleashed permission for bigotry. Tracy captured one way of approaching this in her post on intersectionality.

What I focus on is a bit different — it’s what’s sometimes called “the communication perspective,” and it means looking as much at how you interact as what you say. The way Trump talks and interacts gives permission for for people to talk about women as having no value except as sexual objects, to blame “outsiders” for everything that is wrong, to airily curtail reproductive, gender and sexual orientation rights that we’ve all fought for, to completely dismiss globalization, science and knowledge.

When Trump — and his defenders — dismiss outright misogyny as boys being boys, it opens up the possibility that it’s okay — maybe a little vulgar, but not WRONG — to talk like that. When the leader thinks name-calling (Crooked Hillary, nasty woman, Mexicans are rapists and criminals) is just a normal part of interacting, it sets up name-calling as something that’s a-ok in everyday discourse.  And combine that with a stack of racist and xenophobic claims, and you get college students yelling “cotton picker” at an African American student, people yelling at a Muslim man to “go home Apu” and people leaving notes on gay couples’ cars to burn in hell.   Did Trump “tell them” to do that? Of course not.  Did his discourse make it permissible?  Absolutely.

The talk about graceful losers misses the key point:  it’s hard to find grace from inside fear.

My mentor, Barnett Pearce, died five years ago last Saturday.  He could have predicted the way this election has unfolded — he was writing about and trying to change the polarization of the discourse on the”moral majority” 30 years ago. He could have predicted this, but he still would have been shaken by it, hated it. But he also taught me something very important about looking for “moments of grace,” those tiny episodes that create connection, shared understanding. We can’t resolve deep complexities, can’t fix this fear and sadness, but we can share moments of grace, pause, dwell in the mystery of being human.

Earlier this week, I did a focus group that included a woman — a newcomer to Canada — wearing a hijab, with a daughter who has physical conditions that make communication and movement profoundly difficult. This mother talked about her plan to take her daughter to cut a Christmas tree, creating a new kind of experience of what it means to be a Canadian. A moment of grace.

I got a coffee in a hospital I work in early this morning, and someone had printed out two paragraphs from Hillary’s concession speech, the part about “let us not lose heart,” and taped up several copies down a hallway near a main entrance.  A moment of grace.

On Monday night, I got to cuddle my good friend’s premature twins for the first time. Felix fell asleep in my neck. A moment of grace.

For the past two days, I’ve been looking more deeply into people’s eyes, searching their faces, looking past what I usually see and finding vulnerability, rawness.  Moments of grace.

My incredibly strong, usually resilient friend in Chicago, completely shaken by this election result, spoke out in a very vulnerable way to her Republican relatives about the harm and pain she’d faced as a lesbian growing up in the midwest, asking them to think about the consequences of their choice.  Honest, generously vulnerable, open.  A moment of grace.

I was at a huge fundraising lunch today for women’s health. Singer Jully Black brought her 80 year old mother up on stage, thanked her talked about the realities of feeding her 9 children on $1.65/hr as an immigrant, led all 800 of us in singing something about traveling forward together.  A moment of grace.

Hillary’s speech, her unbelievable strength and resilience, her encouragement to young girls to keep going.  My tears.  A moment of grace.

As I was writing this, I heard that Leonard Cohen had died — “my” artist, the one who first taught me about the sublime pain of longing for spiritual connection, for soul-shattering love, for mystery. Being reminded of that.  A moment of grace.

Hillary went for a long walk today.  Last night I booked a spontaneous trip to California to spend the weekend with my best friend, who is also shattered this week. She also learned from Barnett.  We’ll walk on the beach and breathe the sea and remember that love and connection and strength will see us all through.

This week, it’s hard to be human.

But it’s also glorious.

 

Fieldpoppy is Cate Creede, who works as a consultant and educator in the space of strategic system change in academic healthcare in Toronto, focusing on creating sustainable, socially accountable healthcare communities. She also co-leads an all-volunteer learning and development project for orphaned and vulnerable youth in Uganda called Nikibasika.  Her other blog is fieldpoppy.wordpress.com.

fitness

We’ve come a long way but we’re not there yet #intersectionalanalysisneeded

Tracy I11 Comments

Like Sam said yesterday, we’re not American. This was not our election. But we are feminists. And we couldn’t escape the news on social and regular media through the long US election campaign. And the U.S. is the sleeping elephant that we live beside — when it rolls over, we feel it. I know this is a fitness blog (and a feminist blog), and tomorrow we’ll return to our regular content. But may we request your indulgence to allow us to sit with this astonishing election result for one more day?

Because it wasn’t my election, I didn’t post much about it at all on social media until election day. But on election day I realized I was feeling quite emotional in the morning at the very prospect that a woman would have a chance at the White House. And at that point, things were looking fairly good for Hillary Clinton, if the polls were to be believed (we know how that went).

But there were a few things about all of this that didn’t quite resonate, and that’s partly because I was also interacting with women of color in a closed group I belong to on social media. Many of the women weren’t quite as enthusiastic about the whole pantsuit thing, for example. They also struggled with the racist history of the suffragettes, who are known to have advocated almost entirely for white women only. And there were others in my circles, not just that circle, who despite their unwillingness to vote for Trump, experienced a great deal of ambivalence towards Hillary Clinton for a variety of reasons, some more politically relevant than others.

All that holds true and yet, and yet, and yet. The news of a Trump presidency came to me as a devastating blow. I felt it as an endorsement of racism, misogyny, sexual assault, ableism, xenophobia, hatred towards LGBTQ community members, immigrants, refugees, Muslims.

Most of all, I felt it as a kick in the gut, experienced as a feeling of being “put in our place.” Whatever reservations any of my friends and acquaintances had, none had wanted this result. Despite it not being my election, it feels deeply personal in some ways that I don’t yet quite understand. I feel as if the bottom line is that there are people in America who have been so appalled to have an African American man as President, his family living in the White House, and those same people thought, “I’ll be damned if I’m going to let a woman follow after him.” It was a message not just to Clinton, but equally to Obama and to anyone who was brazen enough to think that there was real change afoot.

The most emotionally compelling commentary I’ve heard so far (I confess I’ve not been able to expose myself to much) was from Van Jones on CNN, who talked about what we tell kids and about racism as a driving force behind this outcome. If you missed his remarks, please check them out here.

But the piece of news that caused me the most despair was the headline, “More white women voted for Donald Trump than for Hillary Clinton.“

Between this news and Jones’ commentary, it confirmed for me what has become abundantly clear over the past while: feminism cannot move forward without an intersectional analysis. When more white women vote for Trump than for Clinton, that says to me that white women can somehow overlook the misogyny (I don’t quite get it) but don’t need to concern themselves with his racism. This is why a simple gender analysis is never going to be good enough.

African American women did not let down Hillary’s team — 94% voted for her. 56% of  white women who voted went for Trump. What was it? Complacency?

I don’t delude myself that this type of thing cannot happen here in Canada. Right now many of us are happy with our young and energetic white male Prime Minister. But nationalist movements gain momentum as they excite the popular imagination of people who feel as if they’re losing their grasp on what’s “rightfully theirs.” Canada isn’t immune.

As Clinton said in her speech to her supporters the day after the election, this defeat hurts. The glass ceiling has not yet been shattered. And it seemed so attainable. But if the day is going to come, white voters especially need a deeper appreciation of the stakes.

fitness

Put that pantsuit back on (reblogged from Feminist Philosophers)

Sam B3 Comments

Here’s me yesterday in my version of a white pantsuit:

white

 

I know this is a fitness blog but it’s also a feminist blog and Tracy and I are both too shocked and sad to write much today. Yes, we’re Canadians but the US election had us in its grips on us too. Here’s some strong words from Kate over the Feminist Philosophers blog.

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Comfort eating and the US election: What’s cooking at your house?

Sam B5 Comments

I’m just back from the grocery store, wearing a pantsuit, and thinking hopeful thoughts about the US election, though I’m a Canadian and I can’t vote #ImWithHer.

I’m an optimist at heart, mostly relentlessly cheery, though I confess I get more nervous as I age about the long dark days of fall (without much outdoor riding to keep me going!)

Lots of friends are sharing recipes for elaborate election night cocktails but I’m not a drinker. There are no plans at my house for Hilary specific boozy drinks. (I’m not contemplating the alternative.) But I thinking about dinner plans and what kinds of food will make me feel good. That was my first shopping challenge. The second was that I’m shopping for fewer people these days with just one kid left at home, in his last year of high school, and I need to keep better track of the things I buy so I don’t end up throwing food away. That wasn’t such a big problem with three kids and their friends eating here on a regular basis.

I opted for cauliflower stuffed pasta and bruschetta. Also salted caramel ice cream for dessert.

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Oh, and before I get comments telling me that comfort eating is a bad thing, let me just say I disagree. Some of you will call it “emotional eating” or “eating your feelings” and I wouldn’t mind that language except it usually comes with judgement, as if that were a bad thing. Food serves many different roles in our lives. We use food to mark special occasions and to bond with family. We also eat some foods because they make us feel better. That’s okay sometimes too.

Actually there’s lots to hate about the whole “emotional eating” language. It assumes again you can know something about someone from their size. It assumes that if you take care of your mental and emotional health your weight will fix itself. And that you can tell that people–and here pretty much we mean women–are emotionally unstable, because they’re fat. Just no.

Here’s two pieces in defense of emotional eating:

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What’s for dinner at your house tonight? Any comfort foods on the menu? I vote for creme brulee. I confess this image amused me (is this the bad stuff in her email, really?) and made me just a bit sad (wow, even such a powerful politician isn’t safe from moralizing language about food.)

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Why I like “falling back”

Tracy I10 Comments

I’ve heard a bunch of complaints from friends this week about our clocks “falling back” on the weekend. Mostly, people are grumpy about the earlier darkness setting in. Sam blogged about that last week.  I understand that people get seasonal depression (sometimes called SAD) and that the end of daylight savings time brings it on more intensely.

But the alternative is not to have DST at all. It’s DST that’s the aberration, creating those wonderful long summer evenings. Don’t get me wrong. I love the long summer evenings. But if we didn’t bother with DST, we wouldn’t have to “fall back” and the long summer evenings would have been an hour shorter all along.

Once the weather changes I’m not as inclined to go out for an evening stroll. I lean more to cocooning at home on cold winter nights. An earlier nightfall somehow seems to give permission for earlier to bed. And that bodes well for me on the nights before my 6 a.m. swim.

What I’ve found almost unbearable lately, until the weekend that just passed, is the dark in the early mornings. Last week was the worst, when the sun didn’t come up until almost 8 a.m. and there was not even a sliver of light until almost 7:30 a.m. It just makes the morning so depressing.

Sam mentioned that we were at the Canadian Society for Women in Philosophy conference in Sackville, New Brunswick over the weekend. I have a nicely outlined plan for my Key West Half Marathon training (worked out with Anita a few weeks ago). If I wanted to stick to it on the weekend, I had to get out the door of my hotel room for 14K by 7 or so on Sunday morning.

Well, here’s where my short term “woot woot!” thinking really kicked into high gear.  Because of the end of DST, Sunday morning at 7 a.m. was not dark the way it was on Saturday. I managed to get up before 7, pull on my running gear, and wander out into the morning light. Yes, it was a dreary, drizzly morning. But it wasn’t dark and I had had enough sleep. I can promise you that I would be a week behind my long run schedule if it was not for the end of daylight savings time on Sunday morning. There is just no way I’d have made it out the door to go running.

I have always loved that “extra hour” on a fall weekend when we change the clocks. And I’ve always resented the stolen hour that we lose when we “spring forward.” But other than that, I just kind of settle into whatever “time” we’re in, whether it be DST or not. I’m sure this makes me fortunate. And I’m not trying to be insensitive to my friends who suffer when the dark comes an hour earlier. But I do like the earlier light in the morning once the seasons change.

No, it’s not going to be light yet when I get up for my 6 a.m. swim. But by the time I’m on my way to work by 8 a.m., we’ll be well into the light of day. And I like that.

What about you? Do you like, detest, or feel indifferent to Daylight Savings Time and its end each fall?