Cate is biking in Cambodia over the holidays. Here’s day 1 of her adventures. Reblogged from her personal blog.

Over the top scary click baity headlines and the holidays go hand in hand. Here’s today’s Being a couch potato for just two weeks can cause weight gain and muscle loss: new research.

Headline aside, there’s an interesting worry here raised for midlife and beyond athletes.

Short version: “New research to be presented next week at the Physiological Society’s conference in Liverpool, England, indicates taking just a short break from physical activity could be a recipe for disaster, particularly for older adults. Researchers studied 26 young adults between 20-35 years old and 21 older adults between 54-66 years old. After two weeks of reduced physical activity (around 1500 steps per day), researchers found the older adults had lost significant amounts of muscle and had gained a substantial percentage of body fat – particularly around their waist. The lack of physical activity also reduced bone density, increasing the risk of developing osteoporosis and breaking bones from falls.”

Grim news. But also, of people who are already active, who takes two weeks off completely at the holidays? For me, for some of the time, having a more relaxed work schedule gives me more time to do fitness-y things. I might take off Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and Boxing Day but that’s about it.

I decided to poll the Fit is a Feminist Issue blog team to see what approach they take. Cate, you all know about, since she’s off taking 35k steps a day in Hong Kong and then biking in Cambodia. I think we can safely say she has nothing to worry about in the holiday fitness department.

What about the rest of the gang?

Nicole: “I usually keep my regular schedule, but also mentally tell myself that whatever I do is great. Meaning, if I go to a class, I am not trying to out do myself, or set a PR, this time of year. Just being there and moving is a win this time of year (since like most people, I feel more tired than usual). Also, I have a tradition of going for a light jog on Christmas morning. It’s usually perfect weather for this time of year and very peaceful out early Christmas morning. One of my favourite things to do.  I think the real risk of a prolonged break, is breaking the habit of exercise. For people who exercise regularly and have for awhile, I don’t think this is a big risk. More for newbies trying to establish a habit. I am sure if people, no matter their age, resume their usual workouts after a short holiday break, they will recover from any potential losses fairly quickly.”

Marjorie: “Whether or not I take a “fitness break” depends upon if I’m traveling or not and what kind of travel I’m doing. If I’m at home, I keep doing my usual routine. For travel, usually we are on foot for hours at a time, wandering some new town, and then I would hardly call it a “fitness break,” it’s just a different type of activity. (The record for steps in a day was San Francisco at about 30,000 until our honeymoon in Italy, where we walked over 40,000 in Venice.) A place like Las Vegas where I might walk less, I don’t mind scheduling in some gym time into my day and making do with whatever they provide at the hotel. It’s not the same as what I’d do at home, but it’s something, and it provides a much-needed break from the crowds. “

Susan: “I think the “panic” around losing ground as if it some sort of loss of days of life is silly. Pleasure and rest are important as much as movement is important. I like to try to remember to keep moving, whether it’s dog walks or at home yoga but that is the same for every time of the year. If I don’t move my body complains in ways that are owie. Whatever I “lose” is gained back once I start training again. Since I am not a competitive athlete, the fact it takes time doesn’t bother me one schmick. I’m basically just happy to be here and upright and mobile. Although I am standing on one leg whenever I think of it because my hip stabilizers are really unhappy. That can be done while eating a cookie.”

Me: “I don’t really take time off fitness pursuits though what I do might change. I often do active things with my kids. I used to go for a Christmas Day run every year with my athletic son. I can’t run anymore but as a family we might go snow tubing or ice skating. We’ve also had warm years where we rode bikes on Christmas Day. No matter what else there are dog walks. The various gyms I’ve gone to have only closed for a day or two and so that doesn’t even count as a break. Some years I’ve made a specific point of working out every day the week after Christmas.”

Kim: “I enjoy doing exercise-y things along with holiday things. I suspect I’m addicted to the endorphins. I like a good swim, walking, stair climbing outside. I want it to feel both exertive and festive. Being out in the cold air and active feels great, so I do it”

Christine: ” I often amp things up a little over the holidays. During the time just before and just after Christmas, my time is a bit more my own and it is easier for me to be consistent with my exercise. I have more long stretches of time to spend walking or doing yoga or whatever. I agree that taking a break is not going to ruin your progress and that you will get back in the routine quickly after the holidays.

I think the key is to make a DECISION to take a break and make a plan for when you will get back to your routine. If you just kind of fall out of the habit, it will be harder to get started again. Making a choice to take an exercise vacation is a deliberate thing.

And, if people new to exercise do want to keep or establish a routine of some sort over the holidays, it’s usually a good idea to pick some definite times and specific activities rather than waiting to ‘feel like’ exercising.”

For a more reassuring point of view here’s Selene Yeager.

How about you? Do you take time off fitness over the holidays?

Despite the fact that curling season is upon us in many parts of the world, I am not referring to the rocks used in that sport. I am referring to the analogy often quoted by Stephen Covey fans with respect to priorities.

It goes like this: someone puts a bunch of large rocks in a jar and asks if it is full. Audience people say yes. The person adds some gravel and shakes it around to make it settle. Is it full now? Not likely, admit the audience. How about now, after adding a bunch of sand? Stil room. The presenter fills it with water. Now? Yes, everyone agrees.

What is the lesson asks the facilitator? You can make everything fit (actually the most common response). Not really though, because if you put in the gravel, sand and water first, you wouldn’t have room for the big rocks.

The lesson is to put your priorities first and then accept (or make room for) the priorities of others.

I recently finished up some big projects and I’m starting some new ones. I am at a point in my training where I have already reached a couple of big goals for me  (not injure myself, gain some skills, become reasonably fit). And it’s December, near the end of the decade, and the new year is fast approaching.

I realized in looking back at 2019, that I didn’t always make physical activity or my hobby one of my big rocks. And I want to change that. I’m not really a resolution person, but I do make a strategic plan for myself where I think about the things I want to achieve.

So now it’s time for me to choose my big rocks, look at how I want to set my agenda and how I want and need to support other priorities. I’ve made a weekly schedule, updated my electronic calendar, and acquired my paper agenda to document the record.

I’ll be talking with my trainer about my new goals in the gym (more than just showing up but moving forward to a specific benchmark). I decided I want to learn how to use triangles in quilting and I found a way to make that happen. I also made a list of work I enjoy and things I do not know and I am pursuing projects that allow me to achieve both. I also have a couple of other personal priorities I’m still refining.

Compared to previous years, I’m more realistic in what I want to fit in, I am more honest about what I need to let go, and I am excited about actively choosing to make space for my big rocks rather than shoehorning them in wherever I can make them fit.

What big rocks do you want to put in your 2020 jar?

— MarthaFitat55 lives in St. John’s.

I spent Tuesday swanning around Hong Kong, and then at about 530, Fitbit swooshed a new badge into my email: the “Hiking Boot,” for walking more than 35000 steps in a day.

Those steps were so many things.

They were “workout #339″ for 2019, representing a year where I shot past my goal of 300 workouts as I embraced a realization that moving my body pretty much every day is a necessity, like oxygen or water.

And the new badge meant fitbit was pointing out that this is the most steps I’ve taken in a day since I got the device two years ago. They added up, unintentionally, as I flitted, hummingbird-like, from one vague idea of what I might want to do in the city to the next. When I realized I was close to 30,000 and still 3km from my hotel, my Completist came to the fore, and I trudged home, weirdly proud of my little digital badge.

When I expand peel the onion one more layer, I also see those steps as a proxy for for my Explorer self, the Viking traveller Gudridor in me.  I came to Hong Kong on my way to Cambodia for a couple of days, just because I’d never been here.  On Tuesday, I set out from my hotel with no plan, found the cable car up Victoria Peak, tried to climb to the very top and followed the wrong google directions and ended up getting lost and accidentally traversing the entire peak, encountering unexpected wild boars, many blind alleys. I came down the peak and wandered around to find the dim sum my friend Grace recommended, the only solo diner in the crammed place. I navigated the unsettling pedestrian walkways to find the ferry across the harbour to Tsim Sha Tsui, up the road that “looks like Hong Kong” of my imagination, through a conversation with a couple of women near the ferry dock collecting images of protest. I signed one, and they gave me a little yellow origami hat. I had a hankering for afternoon cream tea in post-colonial fancy hotel, and then the slog home.

There’s yet another layer beneath the traveler — the person who needs to go out into the world to go inside myself.  Being in a place that is trying to shift itself, assert its voice, fits me.  Hong Kong is the incongruities of laundry hanging out the windows of decrepit apartment buildings, dried fish and herbs cramming the streets, traditional red lanterns beside graffiti proclaiming Police are Cunts, old women bent in half over sticks trying to make their way through the streets, glittering shops with unfathomable excess like a $20,000 stationary bicycle, a pulsing revolution of a completely new kind.

This underneath self is what I need most from these steps.  I need liminal space, to hear my own voice, react step by step, rhythm by rhythm.  I had an overwhelmingly busy fall, mostly with work, but I’m in the middle of some shift and re-formation of myself. I know there is something Next, but I don’t know what it is.  I’m doing an intensive coaching certification program, and like therapy school, that means I’m being coached as well as learning to be present in new ways to people. Things in my life are good — and yet, I’m more present to the jarring places where work doesn’t quite fit, my sense of purpose hasn’t fully evolved, the pace I’ve sustained for years is wearing on me.  I’ve had a year of shifts, ending some work things that should have ended long ago, opening up new relational spaces, being more and more fully with glistening truths. I need this shivasana of the soul, where I just move according to what feels like the next impulse, settling into who I’m becoming.

Hong Kong is a two day liminal space between my real life and the real point of this trip to Asia, a 10 day bike trip in Cambodia. Adjusting to the time zone, adjusting to what it means to let go, temporarily, of the many many needs that beset the end of the decade for me.

My first day, I walked 35,000 steps.  My second, I completely let go of my plan and, after some desperately needed morning yoga, I wandered into a mid-day Thai massage, an unexpectedly perfect lunch atop a fancy rooftop.

While I’m here, I’m reading Mary Pipher’s book about women getting older, called Women Rowing North. It’s really about the developmental phase of our 60s onward, what comes next next for me. But Pipher has always captured my emotional landscape better than anyone else — exemplified in a story she told years ago where she and her husband were lying in bed, and she asked him what he was thinking about, and he said pie, and how much he liked pie, and how he would like to eat some pie, and he asked her what she was thinking about, and she said “the holocaust.”

That’s me, idly pondering genocide when other people are thinking about mango ice cream or the beach.  It’s not a bad thing — it’s just… present. And because this is my tendency, I’ve had to more deliberately shape my quest for happiness, for joy, for satisfaction — and, in this decade of my life, I feel that resilience more fully than I ever have.

Pipher writes about the part of mid-life when our bodies change, when the people around us are ill or experiencing losses, when doors close, as a developmental stage that brings huge opportunities for expansiveness:  “if we don’t grow bigger, we can become bitter… when our problems become too big for us, our healthiest response is to expand our capacities.  That growth is qualitative.  We become deeper, kinder to ourselves and others, and more capable of bliss.”

Statistics bear this out, Pipher says — “most women are increasingly happy after age fifty-five, with their peak of happiness toward the very end of life.”

With every one of those 35,000 steps, I stepped closer into that resilience.  Listening to my body’s impulses, feeling its strength, letting my curious explorer self just guide me.  Gratefully rowing north.

Fieldpoppy is Cate Creede, who lives in Toronto and wanders the world.  Here she is getting ready to head out for her wandering day.

Last week, amid all the kerfuffle about *that Peloton ad* the thing that bothered me the most were all the people who said the wife didn’t need the bike because she was already fit. How do we know she was already fit? Her size. But that’s just not true. Fitness is one thing and fatness is another. Running them together hurts thin people too. Here’s an earlier version of me on the subject.