Feminist reflections on fitness, sport, and health
Author: Sam B
Philosopher, feminist, parent, and cyclist! Co-founder of Fit Is a Feminist Issue, co-author of Fit at Mid-Life: A Feminist Fitness Journey, published by Greystone Books.
Those who’ve been reading the blog for a while know that cooking is not my thing. And if I didn’t like cooking at the start of the pandemic, I really didn’t like it by the end of the pandemic.
I think I’ve finally recovered from all the pandemic cooking. So much cooking! Yes, Sarah did most of it, but really, there was enough to go around. We even had a night shift of adult kids making chocolate chip cookies and banana bread in the middle of the night.
Mostly when it’s my turn to be the week night cook, I use food that comes in meal kits with “mise en place” instructions. I’m a big fan for reasons of end of day decision fatigue, helping to commit to healthy eating, and avoiding food waste. But I’m actually getting tired of making GoodFood dinners every night. Eating out is an alternative, but it is extremely expensive right now.
So I’m rethinking this cooking thing.
My 25 in 2025 list even included learning to make a new vegan main course.
Next, a friend made a wonderful vegetable dish. She told me the recipe was from this book. I then acquired the book. (I know, who is this person? What happened to Sam?)
All these things came together and I made Potato and Roasted Cauliflower Salad with Olives, Feta and Arugula from the Six Seasons book.
A version of the recipe is here. The recipe has dairy feta, but vegan feta is easy to find. Or you can just leave it out as there’s already a lot going on.
Next, I made a summer salad that a friend was raving about — featuring peaches, grilled corn, and haloumi. Yum! I made this version with pistachios and pickled onions. Yum! Again, there’s vegan haloumi available these days.
As summer turns into fall, I’m thinking about soups and stews. I’m also looking forward to some of our pandemic favourites, like that black pepper tofu dish that all my feminist philosopher friends learned to make, sharing the recipe on social media. I’ve also been craving tofu and cauliflower wings. And simple things like baked potatoes, sweet potato and black bean chili, and apple pies.
Bring on the fall food. I’m ready!
What are your favourite meals to cook in the fall months? Leave recipes and links in the comments below!
You “lock in” your new good habits before the new year. Starting three months before January 1, the idea is that you’ll have the strength, resilience and routine to start the new year right by the time January comes around.
What are the habits?
9 hours sleep a night
3 litres of water a day
No sugar
No fast food
No smoking
No alcohol
Daily cold showers
Workouts 3-5 times a week
No screens one hour before bed
10k steps a day
My thoughts:
That’s a lot of NOs.
I might add one, NO COLD SHOWERS. For me, anyway. You do you.
What’s wrong with the usual 8 hours sleep a night and 2 litres of water a day?
Seriously, it feels very restrictive and unsustainable to me.
Is there anything about it I like? I’ve always liked focusing on health and fitness in the fall. As an academic September feels more “new year” to me than January. And I’ve never liked thinking of December as binge month and January as the Big Change.
But for more thoughts about making sustainable changes, read the article from The Independent, linked above.
Happy Friday?
How do you feel about challenges like this one? Anything in it that works for you?
Way back when, BTB (“Before The Blog”), I hurt my back pretty badly. First, there was a fall when skiing. Then, there was the Australian beach crash. I talk about the beach incident here. For years after those accidents I put my back out doing simple things like taking off my cycling shoes or sitting too long at my desk.
All of that prompted me to get a standing desk and I’ve used one at work for more than a dozen years.
So for the past bunch of years, since moving to Guelph, I haven’t had very many back issues. I figured I’d solved that problem.
Until last week.
After three days of bike riding, followed by hot yoga, and then weight training, I spent way too much time sitting at my desk. I was tired and somehow never moved my desk to the standing position.
I followed the very long sitting at my desk day with a night at the movie theatre. When I got up from the movie theatre seat, there was that horrible low back pain that I know so well from the past.
The next day I was okay sitting, and okay standing, but moving between those positions was very painful.
I thought, in that doomy and pessimistic way that gets us all sometime especially in this political climate, that that was it. My back would just hurt forever.
Sarah nagged me into stretching. And I ordered a new set of yoga balls to use on my back when I’m sitting.
There are two problems with fall riding. The first is the early dark. Mostly that’s a weekday problem but just a few weeks ago Sarah and I had to sprint back to the car after my birthday bike ride. The second is how busy the fall is for anyone who works at a university.
The answer? Little bike rides
This weekend Sarah and I rode 15 km with our friend Rob just north of London, and then on Sunday we rode another 25 km west of Guelph.
I have to get over the idea that it’s not worth changing into bike clothes and getting out my road bike for anything less than 50 km.
The colours were lovely. It’s still warm outside. And we had fun flying down the road, racing to stop signs, and swooping up and down rolling hills. One road in Guelph was both newly resurfaced (” refurbished” said the sign) and closed to all but local traffic. Zoom! Zoom!
Soon it will be dark and cold and wet and we’ll be Zwifting the nights away, but for now we’re going to keep riding outside, even if they’re just little bike rides.
“World Gratitude Day, celebrated annually on September 21st, offers a moment to pause and reflect on the many blessings in our lives. In a world often dominated by the hustle and bustle, taking time to focus on gratitude can significantly improve our mental well-being and overall happiness.”
I’ve been tracking #threegoodtbings and sharing a daily gratitude post for a few years now. It does make me feel better. Even having to pay attention and look for the good things is helpful.
Here’s today’s #threegoodthings:
1. It’s September 21st! And that reminds me of a very good song.
2. Little London bike ride. Sarah and I went for a short bike ride Saturday afternoon, north of London, with our friend Rob. No photos but here’s the Strava record of our ride.
3. My day began with a dog and daughter bike in Rockwood Conservation area. Gwen and Cheddar and I spent Saturday morning walking through the woods and into the caves.
So Sarah and I just finished three days of riding bikes with the Pedalling for Parkinson’s Spinning Wheels group. There are events in every province. Susan–our guest blogger and our family member, with Parkinson’s–rode in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Ontario. But this post isn’t about Spinning Wheels or about Parkinson’s, though it’s connected.
Today I want to talk about pushing yourself, even when you don’t feel like doing it, and why staying fit is a mental effort as much as it is anything else.
Here’s five reflections on the theme:
😴 On Friday we rode into the University of Guelph and met with Dr. Phillip Millar, a professor who studies Parkinson’s and cycling. We chatted about a lot of connections between Parkinson’s and exercise, but one topic that piqued my interest was fatigue, a common symptom of Parkinson’s. He talked about bringing cyclists with Parkinson’s into his lab on days they perceived themselves as being fatigued and seeing that they performed just as well as on non-fatigue days. How much of fatigue is mental? Could you reframe the message fatigue is telling you maybe? (There’s of course lots of literature on this topic in sports science. For a fun geeky read, check out Alex Hutchinson’s Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance.)
🚲 I was so impressed with the riders with Parkinson’s–not so much the people who were already cyclists and who then got diagnosed with PD and kept riding, but more so with the people who took up cycling after a Parkinson’s diagnosis. They started this new challenging physical activity at the same time as they’re dealing with adjusting to Parkinson’s symptoms. For some of them, there wasn’t a good baseline for knowing what feelings are bike-related and what’s a Parkinson’s symptom. A younger woman asked us, should I feel this tired and hungry after riding my bike all morning? Yes!
🧓 When I got home, I was still thinking about the earlier fatigue conversation and how it fits with “listening to your body.” I started talking with my very active, energetic mother who says she thinks lots of what slows people down in old age is the thought that we should slow down, and that moving less and resting more is natural for seniors. She said that many of her friends often say, “Oh, I couldn’t do that at this age.” But mum thinks that we slow down more than we need to because we think that’s what seniors are supposed to do.
🏋️ I told her about one of my favourite blog posts from way back at the start of the blog. In Is Aging a Lifestyle Choice? I talked about Gretchen Reynolds’ book on exercise science, The First Twenty Minutes: Surprising Science Reveals How We Can: Exercise Better, Train Smarter, Live Longer. I liked her chapter on age and athletic performance.
From that early days blog post: “What exactly is the connection between exercise and aging? The old view was that muscle loss and a decline in aerobic capacity were inevitable with old age. We slow down with age and become more frail, starting in our 40s, it seemed. But new research suggests the connections may run the other way. We become slower and more frail because we stop moving. Older athletes get slower and less strong, not because they’re older, but rather because they train less than younger athletes.” Lots of studies show that older athletes–runners and cyclists–slow down because they don’t train the way they did when they were younger, not because they’re older. Older athletes who do speed and endurance training get fitter and faster just like younger athletes, but they tend to stop doing that sort of training
💪 And this got me thinking about how rarely I push myself these days. I mean, yes, I move lots, but most of it is at an enjoyable pace. (One recent exception, racing back to the car before it got dark on my birthday.) I don’t really do any actual bike training and haven’t since before my knee surgery. It’s been a while since I’ve raced on Zwift. However, on the first day of the Spinning Wheels ride, from London to Stratford, we ended up leaving London late due to a media no-show. At various stages, riders were picked up by support vehicles, as we had a hard deadline for a fanfare and picnic in the park in Stratford. That left just Sarah and me on the road, and we had to cover a certain number of kilometres in an hour. It doesn’t matter really what the number was, but achieving it meant riding faster than our normal, comfy riding speed for more than an hour. Guess what? We did it. We worked together into the wind (mostly Sarah at the front) and made it in time. It felt good to know that we have that kind of speed and power in the tank for when it’s needed. It also reminded me of the feeling good on the bike that is Type 2 fun.
I’ve been riding less and getting slower these past few years but this week reminded me that this is a choice. I don’t have to do that. I’m starting to think about pushing myself this fall and about getting back to longer, faster riding.
Susan and I have been talking about the stories we tell ourselves, whether it’s about Parkinsons or about aging. You can tell the sad story of loss and diminishment, or you can tell a story of change and possibility. Either way, she said, I still have Parkinson’s so to the extent that I can control the narrative, I will.
Put differently, in my case I can tell myself a different story about cycling and aging. It needn’t be about growing old and doing less. I’m still working out what that story will be. Stay tuned!
Here’s video of our arrival into Stratford. Listen with sound on!
When we moved from London to Guelph–swapping the big, very old, yellow brick high-ceilinged house for the mid-20th-century smaller red brick house, I was surprised that I didn’t miss the old house as much as I thought I would.
I mean, I loved that house.
I loved the London house’s high ceilings and three stories full of rooms, but I didn’t miss them. I thought I might miss the enormous backyard, but I didn’t. What I missed most of all was the deep, wrap around front porch with the swing. I loved sitting out on the porch on rainy days, of course. I loved it most of all during thunder and lightening storms. But it was also where I sat before and after bike rides.
Before, I’d get dressed and assemble all the stuff for my ride on the porch. It was on the porch I’d pump up tires. Once ready, I’d sit in the swing with my coffee and wait for friends to arrive. It was also the deconstruction spot, especially after weekday commutes. Rather than running into the house immediately I’d sit on the porch and get ready to face family. (There’s a lot written about mothers sitting in mini-vans in the driveway, but for me, it was the porch.)
After long, hot summer rides, I’m too sweaty to go in the house right away. So I like to sit on the porch with a cold drink. I think of porches as liminal spaces. You’re no longer bike riding but you’re not fully at home yet either.
What’s a liminal space?
Google’s AI says that, “Liminal space refers to a transitional or in-between state or place, often associated with a sense of unease or surrealism. It’s a threshold between two states, neither here nor there, and can evoke feelings of nostalgia, anxiety, or anticipation. The term is used in various contexts, including architecture, anthropology, and internet aesthetics.”
The new house doesn’t have space for a front porch but we have put some chairs, an outdoor sofa with cushions, and a table out there. Next is some cover so we can sit out there when it’s sunny or rainy. We’re getting there. I’m back to flopping outside when I bike home from work. Cheddar joins me and I sit for a few minutes before rejoining family life at home. I like stretching there too.
Do you have a home launching and landing pad for fitness activities? Do you have a front porch and have feelings about it? Share your stories below!
“We’re inviting Canadians to make movement a daily habit – anytime, anywhere and in whatever way works best for them! 💪
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