Month: September 2017

fitness

I’m fat but I’m not super-fat: On labels, power, and identity

Sam B4 Comments

So readers of this blog know that I’m on the fence about identifying as fat. See Fat or big: What’s in a name?

When I think of my body, it’s not the first adjective to come to mind. I don’t feel fat, usually, whatever that even means, given that Tracy, who is by my standards tiny, can feel fat. (What are my standards for small? Your clothes size is a single digit. Arbitrary, I know, but there it is.)

The words I like, the words that feel right to me, when it comes to describing my body are big, brawny, husky, large, substantial, and curvy. That I don’t just see myself as fat is the result of years of effort. I’ve come to see my body through the eyes of those who appreciate it as it is, not as a potential fixer-up-er.

And readers of the blog know the reasons for my preferences. I’m muscular. I’m big and strong. But also I don’t wear plus sized clothing. I wear clothes in the standard range of sizes. Yes, the upper end of that range but still it’s true that almost all stores will have clothes that fit me. They might say XL but they’ll fit. Even skinny striving yoga stores–here’s looking at you Lululemon–have clothes that fit my body. That’s privilege.

This article, Living In Between Fat and Thin, with its description of the good kind of bigger woman really hit home with me. It’s my self-description pretty much to a tee.

“The good kind of bigger woman has her body under control; she may have generous hips, thighs and breasts, but a small waist; she is a strong, strapping, and hearty example of what your grandfather would have wanted in a woman. If I am following the same diet-and-exercise practices thinner people follow, yielding a result they would be disappointed in displaying themselves, I must somehow be doing something else wrong. I try not to fall into familiar stereotypes when I am with slim people who show their fear of fat, but it is hard. Their discomfort is exhausting. Sometimes I let myself be their milk-fed, big-boned girl. As long as I don’t break the toadstool, I am considered OK.”

That said, sometimes I want in on the fat label because I want people to know that the war on obesity includes a war on me. Whatever obesity means, I’m obese. By all definitions of obesity, I’m in. Often people, when they are talking about the need for people to lose weight for heath reasons, they’ll say things like, “we don’t mean you.” But why not?

See above! I’m the good kind of bigger of woman. I want to resist this but I also want not to crowd out the voices of the people who are no one’s idea of the good kind of fat person. Lately I’ve been thinking about my my privilege in this conversation about fat bodies and politics.

See Super Fat Erasure: 4 Ways Smaller Fat Bodies Crowd the Conversation.

“A product of the fat acceptance movement is a bigger and more diverse group of people embracing their bodies and claiming fat identity. There are so many reasons to claim fatness and so many ways to be fat. It’s an embodiment that is contextual depending on other variations like race, gender and ability especially. I don’t think that the destigmatizing and expanding the boundaries of fatness is necessarily a bad thing, but it can become complicated for me when the vast majority of these people are on the smaller end of the spectrum of fatness.”

What’s wrong with having smaller fat bodies, like mine, in on the conversation? One of the worries, discussed in the article above, is that it obscures the thin privilege that smaller fat people have access to.

Complicated stuff.

Bottom line: I think carefully about the political impact of how I identify. It’s partly what feels right to me, but as a feminist that can never be the whole story.

This is a meandering post, with no clear conclusion. As I say to friends and family often when we’re having difficult conversations and I need to retreat for awhile and think, “I’m off to mull some more.”

If you have thoughts to add to my inner conversation, please share them here! Thanks!

Image description: Two hands with pink nail polish resting on a table, texting on a smart phone, in front of a glass of dark beverage and ice. From Death to Stock Photo.
A woman sitting in a yoga pose, with random thoughts going through her head while she's trying to meditate. It’s not you, it’s me. But what to do about it?
fitness · yoga

It’s not you, it’s me. But what to do about it?

catherine w8 Comments

This week, in keeping with my new academic year’s resolutions, I headed over to a morning yoga class.  I am not a happy morning mover, but I want to fit in more yoga, which means taking advantage of class times and open spaces in my schedule.

The class was taught by someone who was subbing for one of my favorite yoga teachers.  Again, this was less than perfect for me, but I enjoy taking yoga classes with different people; they challenge me to move and focus in different ways, learning more about my body.

Wow, this class so didn’t work out for me at all!  One of the new-to-me moves (a leg lift from a sitting position, holding my other bent leg close to me) felt really awkward and borderline painful.  I know, if some movement doesn’t feel right in a yoga class, we are all encouraged not to do it, or to ask for help with a modification.  I guess my vanity interfered with my asking for help.  That’s on me.

My attitude, performance and focus all went downhill from there.  Even downward facing dog– one of my favorite poses– felt odd.  The directions I was getting were unfamiliar (this person has an approach which is different from my other teachers).  And I got in my head about it and couldn’t shake it off.

At that point I was sweating and uncomfortable and grumpy, which is not how I like to feel ever, but certainly not in yoga class.  Yoga practice helps me feel great about my body– I get to see the ways it can move and lift and sink and stretch.  It helps me see which parts are more tender or vulnerable or neglected, and shows me how to care for them, too.

But not on this day, in this class.  It felt as if there was this style of yoga that was not for me at all.  I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

We’ve all had exercise classes or athletic outings that went awry.  I once took a rock climbing class that I had thought was for complete beginners, but man oh man was it NOT for beginners.  I made it through the class intact and have never returned to rock climbing.  When I was eight years old, my mother enrolled me in a beginning ballet class, but at mid-year (which was a mistake).  And– horror of horrors– she bought me black ballet slippers instead of pink ones, so I felt completely out of place.  I did not last very long there, either.  In this yoga class case, the obvious solution is not to take classes with this particular teacher, and I should be all set.

Although… I now think it’s kind of interesting that I had such a strong reaction to this yoga class.  The teacher was not a bad instructor at all, and some of the poses we tried were done in intriguing ways (e.g. tree pose– balancing on one leg–  using a block and the wall instead of on the mat with no support).  Maybe this teacher’s approach is offering me a chance to learn something new about myself, to explore different parts of my body or think about them in novel ways.  It’s a thought.  I may return next week and see how it goes.  Or talk with her about my reaction to the class to ask for her help in navigating the experience.

So readers, what do you think?  What have you done if you had a horrendous activity class experience?  Did you get out of there as fast as possible?  Did you return and still hate it?  Did it transform or inform or reform(ulate) you in any ways?  I’d welcome any comments you have.  And thanks!

Pencil drawings of two yoga poses: cow, and mother f***in' unicorn (a joke).

blogging

Kicking It Up A Notch with Christine

Christine Hennebury8 Comments

Hey there! I’m Christine and I am incredibly grateful to be part of this terrific blogging community.

Yes, I usually smirk in selfies. It’s a thing with me. 🙂

I’ll be posting every 3rd and 4th Saturday. I consider my posts as the beginning of a conversation so I hope we can have a good chat in the comments!

Here are a few facts about me:

I’m a writer/storyteller/creative life coach.

That means I spend a lot of time up to my metaphorical elbows in stories. Either I am telling them aloud, I am writing them down, or I am helping people work through the stories in their heads that keep them from feeling effective in their own lives.

I like making things up and connecting ideas in interesting ways. I always urge people to be kinder to themselves. I want to make everyone feel a little better about their place in the world either with stories to entertain them or with reminders about how terrific they are.

I’m a martial artist.

I have my second degree black belt in ITF Taekwondo and I am working toward my third degree. I train at Downey’s Taekwondo here in NL. I can break boards, I can kick higher than my own head, and I like how much self-discipline TKD requires.

I have ADHD.

It’s the distractible kind, not the hyperactive kind. ADHD seems to manifest in different ways for different people but for me, it’s a challenge for me to stay on task, to make accurate time estimates, to break projects into smaller bits and to keep a lot of details in mind. The upside is that I am an ideas MACHINE and I have all kinds of creative energy.

Otherwise, I’m pretty average, demographics-wise.

I live just outside of St. John’s, NL with my husband and two teen-aged sons. I’ll be 45 in a couple of months. My pronouns are she/her. I like reading and drawing and board games but I sometimes forget to schedule those things into my life. I’m learning how to be a better judge of how much I can take on at any given time.

Okay, lady, but what will you write about?

As you may have already read in my guest posts (links are under this post), I’ll be writing about Taekwondo and my struggles with figuring out how to learn different parts of my martial art. I’ll be using myself as an example to discuss how challenging it can be to: make time for exercise, to make reasonable exercise plans, to deal with setbacks, and to allow myself to be seen. I will also get into more practical things like my efforts to have better balance, to develop more upper body strength, and to sharpen my TKD techniques.

As a coach and, as regular person, I am all about celebrating effort rather than just results, so I will end each of my posts with a KIYA! After all, self-reflection that moves you forward is a victory of effort.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next Saturday!

KIYA!

fitness

It’s concussion awareness day!

Sam B2 Comments

To mark Concussion Awareness Day, we’re sharing some of Meena’s blog posts about her brain injury and her recovery story.

 

concussion

fitness · Martha's Musings · swimming

Me and Dory just keep swimming

marthafitat552 Comments

By Marthafitat55

You may know about Dory, the little blue fish with the positive attitude from animated Pixar film Finding Nemo. Despite the challenges she faces with her short-term memory, Dory focuses on moving forward. “Just keep swimming,” she says, and off she goes.

Not a picture of my pool, but close enough. Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash

I wrote last month about the universal design aspects of our new recreation centre, and since then, I’ve been going to the pool three times a week, channeling my inner Dory. Unlike Dory though, I have been taking notes about some of the things I’ve learned so far.

My usual routine before the pool opened was to get two weight training sessions in a week, and complementing that effort with some floor work at home and trail walking a couple of times a week. My walking partner had to take a break around the same time I got introduced to the new pool.

My first two times in the pool I managed six laps each time. Almost a month later, I get in 10 to 12 laps a session depending on the time I have and whether or not I want to spend some time in the therapy pool playing with the currents. The main thing though is I have picked up my endurance and my speed.

I’m really enjoying it for several reasons. It’s a great way to kick off my day and I get it done by 8 so I am washed, dressed, and ready to work by 9 a.m. I work from home so it’s a good feeling to be at the office by the start of business.

It’s something I can do with my family. My husband and I both have busy work lives; swimming is a place where we engage in idle chatter helping us leave our work preccupations at the door.

I also find it very relaxing. There’s a very meditative feeling to swimming laps, where you go up to the deep end of the pool and then flip back to swim to the shallow end. The repetition is soothing and you don’t have to think hard about the motion.

When I am lifting weights, I am super conscious about my form, ensuring I am in the right position to lift or squat. I’m hyper-focused, in fact, on what my hips and knees are saying, given their previous injury experiences.

In the pool, my biggest risk is running into people. I wear high-level prescription glasses but don’t use them in the pool. As a result, I only see blobs, and sometimes it could just be a trick of the light, while at other times, it could be a person. So far I have avoided any collisions with either people or walls.

The biggest benefit I have found is how helpful the buoyancy of the water has been to my hips and knees. Unlike the trail walking, with its uneven pitch and occasionally slippery gravel (and in winter, sheets of ice), there is no stress placed on my knees or hips in the pool.

In fact, going swimming the day after my weight training has helped ease the tension and stress different muscles feel after a new workout or exercise variation. Swimming helps me get moving more quickly and it has noticeably improved the fluidity of my lifting.

Overall swimming has given me a new appreciation of how our bodies work differently on land and in water. I’m aware of the resistance water can give you against a current in the same way running or walking uphill forces your lungs to work harder. Most importantly, it’s lots of fun and, for me at least, easy to fit into my schedule.

I’m glad I have found a fun activity that complements my weight training instead of working against it. How about you, dear readers? What kinds of activities are you employing to add interest and variety to your fitness goals and objectives? What are some things you have learned from mixing up your fitness tools?

— Martha lives in St. John’s and enjoys weight training, trail walking, and swimming.

body image · diets · fat · fitness · tbt

Imagine if size really didn’t matter. Can you? #tbt

Tracy I

Today I’m doing a “Throwback Thursday” post where I invite you, once again, to imagine how different life would be if we actually lived in a world where size doesn’t matter. Happy Thursday!

fitness

The bike path in September is like the gym in January

Sam B7 Comments
Single red maple leaf isolated on white.

And I’m trying to be supportive.

If you’re a person into fitness and physical activity, you likely get competing feelings when lots of people want to do what you’re doing. We all joke about how crowded the gym is in January and how empty it will be again a month or so later. We are both unhappy that there are line ups for all the equipment and happy that more people are joining in. Later, we’re happy the crowds are gone and sad that they didn’t stick with it. We all wonder how we could make the gym more welcoming and supportive for new people.

That’s the same set of conflicting feelings I have every September. For students and professors, September 1 is our January and we play it out, not at the gym, but on the multi-use pathway to campus. This will be the year that I won’t take the car/bus. This is the year that I’ll bike/walk to campus. Just watch me riding/biking. And the fall really is the very best time of the year to ride. See Reasons to start riding in the fall and There’s a certain chill to the air and The Joys of Fall Riding.

But I also know that in a few weeks they’ll be gone. The first rainy day will take some of them out. The first morning frost will be too much for others. Once it starts to get dark early you need to buy lights to commute. Come late fall I’m riding in and home again in the dark. And like February/March in the gym, I’ve got mixed reactions. First, wheee! Zoom! I’ve got the path to myself again. Second, where are you? What stopped you? How can I help?

The best program I’ve seen to get people riding to university was in Australia. (Of course.) As a regular commuting cyclist you got paired with someone near you who wanted to ride to work. You signed up and committed to ride with them for a week. You got to answer questions about bike storage and about what to wear. At the end of the week the university cycling program bought you both breakfast at the campus cafe most often frequented by regular commuting cyclists. I was still getting used to riding on the left then so I didn’t volunteer but it struck me as a great idea.

What kind of support do you think beginning commuting cyclists need most? What would help you?

fitness

Our fall schedule starting September 2017

Sam B

Susan is the first Friday of every month, Cate is the second Friday, Martha is the third, and the fourth Friday of every month is Kim.

The Saturday line up is Nat the first Saturday of the month and Tracy de Boer the second Saturday of the month.  The third and fourth Saturday are Christine’s.

(Christine is relatively new around here. She describes herself this way: “I’m a writer/storyteller/director/creativity & lifestory coach with a black belt in ITF Taekwon-do. I read voraciously and I write like my fingers are on fire. I’m the founder and Co-Chair of the Association for the Arts in Mount Pearl and I’m the current president of the St. John’s Storytelling Festival. I bake a mean chocolate chip cookie.”)

Sundays are continuing to be Catherine‘s day, “Weekends with Womack.”

As usual Sam will blog Mondays and Wednesdays and Tracy will blog Tuesdays and Thursdays.

There’s also random guest posts thrown in here and there.

Thanks for reading, liking, following, and sharing!

fitness · meditation · sleep

Stressed out? Meditation helps, and so does sleep

Tracy I5 Comments
Lotus flower
Image description: Lotus flower (generated by wordpress’s AI generator).

I went on a retreat this weekend with some friends. It was at a lakeside retreat centre a couple of hours away and the weather was beautiful. I set myself one main goal this weekend, and that was to get enough sleep.

The retreat involved organized sessions that included guided meditations. I like guided meditation especially when it’s “live” and I’m doing it with other people. But this weekend, I uncharacteristically fell asleep through each of the guided meditations. I could feel myself nodding off and there was nothing I could do about it. Obviously, I needed sleep.

This morning I was chatting with my mother, who recently completed a course on mindfulness meditation. I told her that despite the retreat, I was feeling stressed out at work. I really can’t stand complaining about workload because I have a great job and I realize that, but I do feel overwhelmed. But I mentioned this to my mother and she said, “are you practicing mindfulness?” (I love that she took that course and now is offering mindfulness as a solution to stress!).

She’s right that meditation always helps. Even if I just take a few moments of silence, it can bring me into the present moment where things seem a lot more manageable than when I am worrying about what’s going to happen tomorrow.

On the retreat we learned a technique that I have encountered before called “anchoring.” If you’re feeling mental discomfort or distress, think instead of a time when you felt peaceful and content or even joyful. Really focus on that feeling and anchor it somehow (e.g. touching your ring, snapping your fingers, even inhaling an essential oil). If you really connect with that feeling and anchor it in this way, you can use your anchor to bring you back to that sense of peace and contentment when you’re feeling a more negative feeling.

Anchoring is not exactly the same as mindfulness, but it is another process that we can use in meditation. For more information about how to use anchoring to alleviate stress, check out this article, “From Chaos to Calm in an Instant: How to Create a Positive Anchor.”

The anchoring meditation was the only guided meditation that I didn’t fall asleep during. To make up for the others, I took a couple of sessions by myself to sit in silence in a beautiful meditation room they have on site, overlooking the lake. It’s called The Oasis, and for some reason no one ever seems to go there. I love it.

So I meditated, I slept, and I anchored. And yet still I came home with an uneasy feeling. I think one reason this happens after a retreat is that, for me, I have a tough time reconciling that sense of peace with the chaotic pace of my day to day life. I got back to town and went straight out to a birthday party, followed by a different celebratory dinner, followed by an event in someone’s honor. Even though these are all good things, the pace of it all reversed the sense of calm because I had to rush around. I fell into bed exhausted, and felt the urgency of the week’s tasks press upon me as soon as I opened my eyes.

The good thing about meditation, sleep, and anchoring is that you don’t need to be at a retreat centre to do them.

What are your go-tos when you’re feeling stressed out and overwhelmed?

 

 

 

 

fitness

On settling in (reblogged)

Sam B

On moving and self care, it’s Kim Solga