Category: fat

fat · fitness

Dueling headlines make my head hurt

Sam B9 Comments

In the same day I got both of these headlines more than once in my Facebook newsfeed:

1. New Study Lends More Weight To ‘Fat But Fit’ Theory – http://huff.to/1bRFmZ1

Researchers at Middle Tennessee State University, led by exercise scientist Vaughn Barry, Ph.D., examined 10 past studies that recorded information about participants’ body mass indexes and fitness levels. The studies looked at the weight and fitness levels of thousands of participants (the largest one included 21,856 people) and continued to follow up with the participants over several years, ranging from an average of 7.7 years to an average of 16 years.

Barry’s team crunched the numbers on those past studies by dividing participants into three weight categories based on BMI: normal weight, overweight and obese. Then they put them into two categories based on their performance on an endurance test (in most studies, this involved running on a treadmill): fit and unfit.

They found that fitness levels, not weight, predicted whether or not a participant had died in the study’s intervening years. Unfit people, regardless of their weight, had twice the risk of dying during the study than fit people, and overweight and obese people who were fit had similar mortality risks as fit, normal weight participants. Another way of putting it: thin, unfit people had twice the mortality risk as obese fit people.

The study was recently published in the journal Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases

2. ‘Healthy and overweight’ is a myth, study suggests http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25118857

Excess fat still carries health risks even when cholesterol, blood pressure and sugar levels are normal, according to a study of more than 60,000 people.

It has been argued that being overweight does not necessarily imply health risks if individuals remain healthy in other ways.

The research, published in Annals of Internal Medicine, contradicts this idea.

The study looked at findings from more than 1,000 published studies.

Researchers from the Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, found there was no healthy pattern of increased weight when heart health was monitored for more than 10 years.

They argue that people who are metabolically healthy but overweight probably have underlying risk factors that worsen over time.

Study leader Dr Ravi Retnakaran told BBC News: “This really casts doubt on the existence of healthy obesity.

“This data is suggesting that both patients who are obese who are metabolically unhealthy and patients who are obese who are metabolically healthy are both at increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease, such that benign obesity may indeed be a myth.”

From a certain perspective the stories could both be right and not contradict one another. It might be that fat and fit people have health risks but are still better off than the unfit and thin. It might be that weight matters but that fitness matters more.

But having both these stories in my newsfeed on the same day being offered up by friends on different sides of the great weight debates made my head hurt.

Excuse me while I go watch some comfort TV, Once Upon a Time, and cheer on the Evil Regals. Yes, I know it’s not the best TV out there but I watch with resident teenagers and it’s got some kick ass women as both villains and heroes. Love the women in that show, even Snow for all that she annoys me.

Facing Fears of the Group Ride—One Cyclist’s Saga (Guest post)
aging · athletes · cycling · fat · fitness

Facing Fears of the Group Ride—One Cyclist’s Saga (Guest post)

catherine w13 Comments

Last weekend I went on my first long group bike ride in more than a year.  This is odd because I’m an avid cyclist, in a Boston cycling club (Northeast Bike Club), have raced on road, cyclocross and mountain bikes, own very many bikes (the exact number is available on a need-to-know basis), and am pathologically sociable (in a good way).   So why haven’t I been riding with groups?  Here’s why:

  • Insecurity about decreased FITness
  • Consciousness of increased FATness
  • Accumulation of years, recently passing FIFTY
  • Leading to one big pileup of FEAR

Fear sucks.  Fear sucks the joy out of activity.  Fear sucks away our energy.  Fear causes us to question ourselves.  Fear keeps us from doing what we want, what we can, and what we ought to do.  Fear kept me from group riding in the past year.  What was I afraid of?

1) I’m too slow to ride with other people

Cyclists think they are too slow in the same way that academics think that their articles/books/dissertations are crap.  Everyone thinks it, but it’s not based in reality.  Of course, maybe that paper really does need a major revision, and maybe you haven’t been riding much or you’re recovering from an injury or a period of overwork or a family crisis.  That’s not the point.  The point is this:  even though it’s painful to hand over that draft to someone for comments, it is one of the best ways to improve it.  Riding with others does reveal your strengths and weaknesses, but it is a great way to get feedback, support, fun, and a workout. Fear of being too slow is not a reason not to ride with others, it is a reason TO ride with others.

2) I simply won’t be able to do it

In this frame of mind, I think to myself… What?  I’ll be stuck crying on the side of the road? I’ll spontaneously combust? (insert your favorite irrational worry here.)  The activity at hand (50-mile road ride, 3–4 hour mountain bike ride, day-long tourist vacation bike jaunt) can seem too big or too hard to manage.  Again, academics often have this problem at the start of a project.  Keeping the focus narrow, breaking things down into manageable chunks, thinking about pedaling to the signpost at the crest of the hill in front of you— these are ways to stay in the moment.  And in the moment, nothing much is happening other than turning those cranks, which is sometimes heavenly, sometimes hard, and sometimes ho-hum (like life).

3) What will happen if everyone is way faster than me?

This is easy—one of two things will happen:  1) people will slow down to accommodate the slowest rider.  Agreeing to a “no-drop” ride or regrouping at the top of hills is common in social and even training rides.  2) I might get dropped.  This is only really bad if I don’t know how to get back home.  GPS or an old-fashioned cue sheet can solve this problem.  And yes, it feels embarrassing, but happens to everyone.  It can even be a badge of honor (of sorts).

With these fears in mind but also with steely resolve (sort of), I drove out to western Massachusetts with my boyfriend Dan (also a cyclist), to meet bike racer friends Rachel and Ethan for two days of country-road, sometimes-hilly cycling.  We rode 50 miles the first day and 27 miles the second day.  It was fun, hard, sweaty, exhilarating, familiar, and intensely satisfying.  Here is what happened when I faced my fears.

1) In fact I was not too slow to ride with others.  True, I was the slowest rider of the group, but it was not a race—it was fun rides with friends.  I did experience frustration going up a few hard hills, but also the thrill of screaming downhill past my friends (yay gravity!).

2) The 50-mile ride was hard at times—although we didn’t take the hilliest route, there were some climbs.  One unfortunate climb was up a super-steep road that we had to do from a dead stop.  I ended up having to get off the bike and walk because I ran out of steam.  I had company on the walk up—a swarm of mosquitoes, happy that I was going slow, joined me along the way.  This was not a fun moment, but it passed.

About eight miles from the end of the first ride, I asked if we could stop for some iced tea; I was tired and wanted a little break before the last leg.  Guess what happened?  We stopped!  And it was the best iced tea ever—a mix of Earl Grey and black currant teas with an infusion of strawberries and blueberries.  Refreshed, the last miles were not bad at all.

The second day was harder because I was a bit tired from the previous day’s ride, and fear number two was looming large.  But I realized that I can ride when tired.  I’m strong, I love this sport, I enjoy being out with friends, and more fresh iced tea is never too far away (in this case, at a nice café in Easthampton, MA).

3) Everyone on that ride was faster than I am.  Sometimes I was last in line, sometimes we all rode together, and sometimes we split into two groups and the faster group waited for the slower one.  No biggie.

So how do I feel now?  Excited, still nervous about group rides, but filled with plans for more of them.  Last Tuesday I went on my bike club’s weekly Women’s Ride.  I was a ride leader for one of the beginner groups (12—15mph average for a 20-mile ride).  It was great to be back in a group of women in motion and feel that sense of belonging, of athletic identity.  I feel more like a cyclist than I have in a year.

Hmmm– maybe I should buy another bike…

Catherine Womack is a professor of philosophy at Bridgewater State University, south of Boston.  She works on issues at the intersection of ethics and epistemology, focusing on public health, food, choice, and public policy.  She has many bikes and loves to ride them.  She also plays squash when she can get a court and a partner.

Book Reviews · diets · eating · fat · health · weight loss

Book Review: Taking Up Space

Tracy I9 Comments

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I’m a big fan of Go Kaleo so I was happy to see that Amber Rogers has put a lot of her important message into a new book called Taking Up Space.

The very idea of taking up space is feminist to the core. It challenges traditional assumptions about what it means to be a woman, about what it means to be feminine: “smaller, thinner, lighter, softer, quieter, daintier.”

Amber Rogers is tired of it:

I have a body that takes up space.  I have opinions that take up space. I have a healthy sense  of self-worth and that takes up space too.

Like most of the books that I like to blog about, this one promotes an anti-diet approach.  Why?  Because

Our diet culture is designed to keep us fat and sick; hating and doubting ourselves because when we doubt ourselves we will buy more useless crap.

So although the book will be helpful to women who want to lose weight and learn how to maintain a healthy body weight, it is not your average diet book. Don’t expect a quick fix, detailed eating plans, or a detailed exercise routine.

After her disclaimers about people with serious medical conditions and eating disorders (namely, see your doctor, you shouldn’t be getting your info from a book or a blog), she introduces the three rules that guide her approach to weight loss and maintenance:

1. Make peace with your body.

2. Acknowledge that there is an appropriate amount of food your body needs to support your activity and a healthy weight, and that calories are relevant.

3. You’re allowed to eat whatever you want.

The section on making peace with our bodies is full of well-researched information about the “flaws” so many women hate: cellulite, normal fat storage (gluteal-femoral fat reserves), belly pooch, and those various lumps, bumps, veins, hairs, and stretch marks that, as she so nicely puts it, are the “evidence life leaves on our bodies.” Let’s love our bodies a bit more.

Rule #2 introduces the book’s main concept, which is that we need to eat the amount of food our bodies need to support our activity and a healthy weight.  For this, calories matter.

If you have followed the Go Kaleo blog, you will know already that energy balance and metabolic health are high priorities for Amber Rogers.  I have blogged about her metabolic health approach here. Much of that good information is provided again in this book.

She gives the usual information, by now well-supported, about the body’s natural famine-response or starvation-response to severely restricted diets.  In essence, if you drastically cut calories, you’ll lose quickly for a short period of time and then your amazing body will adapt.  The metabolism will slow down to support the body’s functioning on less.

So, in order to maintain a healthy weight without compromising your metabolism, it’s necessary to bring calories into the equation.  Most women need 2000-3000 calories a day to support their activity level at a healthy weight.  And yet most weight-loss diets max out at about 1200 calories a day. Do the math.  You can’t eat that much less, move more, and expect your body to handle it indefinitely without a famine-response.

She links to a calculator  that helps figure out how many calories a day you need to support the weight you want. It’s a great tool. You may be surprised at the result. I know I was.

I turned the dials to reflect my gender, age, weight, height, activity level, and the hours I spend sitting and sleeping, and it turns out that in theory I need 2700 calories a day to support my weight.

I say in theory because I am sure that most days I don’t eat anywhere near that and yet I still weigh about the same as I did back in January (when I stopped weighing myself). So I must be doing something wrong because my caloric intake should support a lower weight.  If the information Amber provides in the book is correct (and I’m not doubting it; she’s very convincing), then the most likely thing I’m doing wrong is not eating enough, and probably not enough protein.

Food quality does matter. She recommends one gram of protein per pound of body weight, an amount I personally find overwhelming. For me, that’s over 130 grams of protein a day and I can rarely manage it.

Knowing whether you’re getting what you need involves tracking. I hate tracking. She acknowledges that lots of people have a troubled history with tracking and that it’s not essential. But she thinks it’s the only method that is guaranteed to work. Why? Because it really is about calories in and calories out.

Two things she says make me think I might be able to work with her approach, including tracking (for a period of time). First, she re-frames it not as a tool of restriction but as a tool of seeing that we are getting enough.  Second, she notes that it’s temporary. She says: “Tracking for awhile teaches you how to judge proper portion sizes, how much food you need to meet your energy needs, and how to put balanced meals together. Over time, these skills become habit and you can leave the tracking behind.”

I did try this a few months ago when I became determined to increase my protein to at least 100 grams a day.  I tracked for about a week.  And I confess that I did find that I was falling short most days, not just on protein, but on calories.  But the thing is, I went to bed every night feeling totally stuffed.  It went against everything I have been doing to internalize the principles of intuitive eating. So this is something I’ll need to work with a bit to see if it’s going to work for me. Frankly, intuitive eating is more important, but I can do it while still trying to make choices that are higher in protein.

Amber is very sensible about weight. She notes that many of us may have a too-low goal weight in mind, and provides a few guidelines for determining whether the weight you aspire to is a reasonable weight for you to maintain.

She encourages slow weight loss that preserves lean mass, metabolic health, and leads to successful maintenance. That means resistance training, eating enough, and developing a sustainable and enjoyable exercise routine. She cites research studies that show that regular activity is essential to weight maintenance.

In order to lose moderately and without metabolic damage, “you are essentially going to eat the amount of food that will support a healthy weight.” The calculator cited above will tell you what you need to know if you dial in your goal weight and take it from there. She gives a few more details that you can find if you read the book.

If you follow her recommendations about caloric intake, choose a healthy—not unreasonable—goal weight, and maintain a regular exercise routine that includes resistance training at least three times a week, you should find yourself eventually leveling off at a healthy weight. At that point you can turn your attention to “body recomposition.”

That’s the process of changing the percentage of lean mass to fat mass. If you maintain the same weight but increase your lean mass and decrease your fat mass, your body will start to look different.  Amber herself has undergone gradual changes in body composition over the years that show up dramatically in the photo series that makes up the banner of her blog.

For those who have moved into the body recomposition phase, she provides some good tips: eat the calories for maintenance, get plenty of protein, eat carbs too, keep in mind that it’s possible for a healthy woman to gain 2 pounds of lean mass a month, don’t restrict fat, EAT, experiment, do resistance training for strength, get rest, and get rid of guilt.

She has a separate section geared towards those who are in recovery from starvation, including a list of signs to help determine if you have an eating disorder.  I won’t go into the details here, but it is an informative section. The most important advice contained there is to seek professional medical treatment.

The third rule says you’re allowed to eat whatever you want to eat. You will find no specific food plans here.  The main guideline is to eat a wide variety of whole foods, including protein and carbs. Nothing is forbidden.  Treats are important so that you don’t feel deprived.

For many people, this will be a revolutionary idea that might require some further work.  I recommend Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch and If Not Dieting, Then What?  by Rick Kausman if you need a bit more about the transition from restrictive diets to unrestricted healthy eating.

Finally, though the book doesn’t focus on exercise, Amber sees “physical activity, not diet, as the cornerstone of health.” Diet’s main function is to support our physical activity, to provide energy and fuel so we can do what we like to do. Find something you enjoy and make it a regular part of your life.

I’ve gone into the book in some detail because I think the information contained is important. But I have still only sketched out the main ideas. The book is worth reading if you are seeking to lose weight or feel happy with your weight but are wondering how you might shift the lean mass to fat mass percentages around.

I have the ebook on my kindle and my iPad, and I feel it’s absolutely worth the $9.99 it cost.  The focus on metabolic health and energy balance makes it unique among weight loss books. I don’t think it’s a negative thing that the book provides information about how to lose weight. There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to shed a few pounds, gain lean mass, and achieve and maintain a healthy body weight.

Amber provides enough information about how to choose a realistic body weight, and emphasizes that in lots of cases the right healthy body weight for you might not match the ideal you have always had in mind: it might well be heavier.

That’s one of the things I like most about her book, other than that it’s well-researched and full of excellent, reasonable information. By the end of it, it’s not just okay to be at a weight that’s a bit higher than you’ve always had as a goal, it’s even desirable.  Even though I gave up weighing myself and swore off dieting back in January, this is the first book I’ve read where I actually feel at the end of it like I’m totally good with the weight I’m at right now. 100%.

If you are a regular follower of Go Kaleo! you will find most of the information is not totally new to you. Amber is up front about this. But it’s good to have it all between two covers (even virtually), and she deserves support for the amazing work she is doing free of charge on the blog!

fat · fitness · Guest Post · weight loss

Count what matters and make what matters count (Guest post)

natalieh (she/her)1 Comment

I love reading Sam & Tracy’s posts about quantifying and qualifying fitness. It makes the number crunching, nerdy part of my brain very happy. I’ve tried calorie counting, graphing my weight, logging distances swam, biked or ran but nothing makes my fit, feminist and nearly forty face smile like counting steps.

Last fall I tried logging food intake and exercise output but a part of me had a nagging suspicion that the data was out of whack. The numbers generated from apps based merely on my weight , 256 lbs, would assume any movement required a Herculean amount of energy, far more than my efficient frame required. I kept eyeballing each apple wondering, was it really 80 calories? Was it smaller? If I underestimated by only 10% I could be eating more than I intended. I started obsessing about food. I started weighing myself daily. My anxiety skyrocketed. I spouted calorie estimates on everything. That diner breakfast 1,200 calories, this beer 68. It was awful. I stopped loving food and I felt pretty crappy when my exercies and food intake didn’t hit targets. Dang.

You may have guessed by now that I have a fairly intense A type personality. I like deliverables, measures of success, quantifiable, all paired with a great story. When I was twenty and in the military I never quite measured up. I was a slow runner, always taking just a little more time than the 12 minutes alloted to complete 1.5 miles. I have asthma that is triggered at max effort so I often have to scale to 60-80% to stay below that threshold. Frustrating. And, at twenty, when I worked out for 3 hours a day, 6 days a week I was 5’4″, wore a size 12 and weighed 180 lbs. I was the embodiement of not hitting the mark on what the military said I should look like and what others thought I should weigh even though I was able to run, bike and swim like a champ.

In January 2013 I read Tracy’s post about doing less, like her I needed smaller, bite sized goals. I also wanted success. My partner, a thin, fast responder type was convinced that counting steps would be my thing.”Every step counts!” he chimed cheerfully and so began my favourite math exercise ever. I tried an app for my phone but it was inaccurate. I was gifted a pedometer, a fitbit, and I fell in love.

The first two weeks I set the goal of wearing my pedometer to get a baseline. While I was convinced I was above average for activity the data told another story. Turns out I walked  on average 8,000 steps a day, just short of the Canadian average. 

I decided I needed to increase my daily activity to the recommended 10,000 steps a day, which I could easily do if I committed to walking the 2km to work everyday and a short 3km walk with the dogs in the evening. I liked that my pedometer uploads to my computer when I walk by and gives me daily and weekly reports. I giggled the day I got a badge saying I climbed enough flights of stairs to the minimum altitude of a helicopter. My partner and I compare steps, turns out being shorter of leg I take 10% more steps over the same distance (insert evil laugh here).

Today I usually meet my daily goal of 15,000 and my best day recently was just over 21,000. I still weigh the same, I still wear the same size pants and I feel pretty rock star about walking as much as possible. I’ve decided I’m measuring success by my resting heart rate (a chill 58 bpm), how well I feel (pretty rocking!) and each step I take towards my well being. If you haven’t found out what to count for your fitness goals think about what matters to you and go for it!

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Natalie is a self described  fat, fit, feminist 38 year old mother of two teenage minions who also lives with her high energy life partner of 19 years. She loves moving her body and sometimes does yoga, short distance triathlons and dances like a fool. Her next measure of success will be being happier and fitter by the end of 2013 than she was in 2012.

athletes · body image · diets · fat · fitness · stereotypes

Fitness as a Feminist Issue

Tracy I24 Comments

Feminist-Coming-Out-DayOne criticism of this blog that I’ve encountered, mostly from anti-feminists in disguise, but also from some who take a feminist perspective on at least some issues, is that in scheme of issues facing women in the world, fitness just doesn’t rank all that high on the list.

Domestic violence and violence against women more generally, lack of representation of women, let alone a diversity of women, in positions of influence and power, global poverty and its disproportionate impact on women, the restricted options available to women where employment is concerned, all sorts of issues regarding differences of privilege and oppression among and between women–all of these issues arguably strike more deeply than sport and fitness.

A spate of harsh criticism and even ridicule came in the wake of my recent post on why we should replace “ladies” with “women” on locker room doors everywhere. Much of the criticism involved the claim that if this is what feminists are worrying about these days, then that’s proof enough that feminism has run out of things to complain about.

We’re at a philosophy conference (the Canadian Philosophical Association annual meeting) this week and so, in proper philosophical fashion, I’m feeling motivated to jump in and defend our position against this particular criticism. Why? Because it’s a criticism worth taking seriously and I believe there are a number of good ways to respond to it.

I don’t dispute the point that there are lots of pressing, and even lots of more pressing, feminist issues. In fact, I address lots of them in my research, teaching, and day to day life. I’ve been on a study leave this year, but in courses I taught before my leave and in courses I will teach when I return in September, the students and I covered such topics as: marriage and motherhood, reproductive technologies, disparities of power and privilege among women globally, and anti-racist feminist theory and practice. I write about collective action theory, and my recent book on moral responsibility includes a chapter on cultural ignorance, responsibility, and oppression.

Last year, a colleague and I co-organized a conference on gender and transitional justice in which distinguished scholars presented sophisticated work in philosophy and legal theory. I am currently co-editing a special issue of the Transitional Justice Review on the same topic. I’ve just completed a paper, forthcoming in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, in which responsibility for sexual violence against women figures prominently. I presented parts of that paper at a seminar the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health on a trip to Washington D.C. a couple of months ago.

My co-blogger, Sam, is equally engaged in feminist scholarship on a range of issues that have nothing to do with fitness. Her body of work is nothing short of impressive.

We are also both of us engaged daily in feminist practice, organized and not organized. And I don’t just mean lifting heavy weights and blogging about the ways in which fitness discourse, culture, and practice invites feminist analysis.

So the first point I want to make here is that we have no quarrel with the claim that feminist issues in fitness are not the only feminist issues there are. It’s obvious to both of us that there are lots of other concerns about gender equality and equality more generally that warrant (and get) our attention. Those who think that the post about “ladies” is meant to exhaust the things feminists have left to discuss have missed the mark.

Even in the context of all that we blog about here, it’s easy to see that that post was meant as a fairly light discussion of the more serious general issue of the subtle power of language. Similarly, the post about pink was meant to raise a more abstract question about the way social meanings of seemingly harmless things can stand as obstacles to equality. In feminist discourse we sometimes call it death by “a ton of feathers.”

Granted then that there are more important issues. That doesn’t mean that a feminist analysis of sport and fitness is so trivial that it warrants no attention. Some of the issues we raise on the blog call attention to significant impediments to women’s flourishing: fat shaming, body image, the tyranny of dieting, the narrow aesthetic ideal of femininity and how antithetical it is to athleticism, the sexualization of female athletes, women and competition, issues about entitlement, inclusion, and exclusion, the way expectations about achievement are gender variable, the harms of stereotyping.

What’s more, we also interrogate the very assumptions about what constitutes “fitness” in the first place. And in the future, as I start exploring disability theory in more depth, I will be asking more questions about the concept of “fitness,” its Darwinian origins, and thinking and talking more about ableism and non-disabled privilege. Discussions with philosopher, Shelley Tremain, have contributed to my thinking in these matters.

So I would also dispute the charge that there are no significant issues regarding feminism and fitness. And in many instances, sport and fitness provide us with microcosms of more general feminist concerns about power, privilege, entitlement, and socialization.

Despite that there are other pressing issues—many more urgent than fitness—facing feminists, I stand behind the blog tagline in which we declare that “fitness is a feminist issue.” Fitness is most certainly a feminist issue. Yet nowhere do we claim, nor would either of us ever claim, that fitness is the ONLY feminist issue.

If you happen to be at the Congress of the Canadian Federation of Humanities and Social Science this week in Victoria BC and want to hear more feminist philosophical analysis of fitness, please join us at the joint session of the Canadian Society for Women in Philosophy and the Canadian Philosophical Association on June 5th (tomorrow) in the Clearihue Building, room 109 from 9-noon.

aging · body image · diets · eating · fat

Middle age bellies, body acceptance, and menopause

Sam B12 Comments

As a result of the blog and our posts about body acceptance lots of friends have been sharing with me their thoughts about women’s bodies, shame, aging, all sorts of interesting stuff. Given the range of fitness activities I do–CrossFit, rowing, cycling, Aikido–I hang with some amazingly fit, strong, confident women.

It’s interesting to hear them chat about their bodies changing with age. They’re a very fit bunch, aging athletes all, and they have a lot of respect for what their bodies can do. Mostly I’d say their attitudes about their bodies and appearance are better and healthier than those of the less active women I know.  But the one thing that universally seems to irritate  is the change in the distribution of body fat that comes with age, with menopause to be precise. All of sudden, wham, everyone has a belly and no one likes it!

We all know that the changes in hormones associated with menopause leads to change in fat distribution. Lower estrogen levels post menopause move fat storage from hips and thighs to the midsection. And it’s the chubby bellies that bug people who’ve been on the thin side for most of their adult lives.

Here’s a recent piece, May 2013, from the Star Tribune on the science of it:

“A groundbreaking study, co-authored by the Mayo Clinic, has determined why fat storage shifts from a woman’s hips and thighs to the abdomen after menopause: Proteins, revved up by the estrogen drop, cause fat cells to store more fat. The study also revealed a double whammy: These cellular changes also slow down fat-burning by the body.Even though the research doesn’t provide weight-loss solutions, it may bring a sense of relief to millions of middle-aged women who have been fighting an often losing battle against the dreaded “post-meno belly.””

If the research doesn’t provide solutions, why might it be thought to provide relief? There’s a principle in ethics that’s relevant here–ought implies can. Blackwell’s dictionary in Western philosophy puts the principle this way: A formula in Kant ‘s ethics, meaning that correctly judging that a given agent is morally obliged to perform a certain action logically presupposes that the agent can perform it.

So there’s no point in saying you ought to get rid of your belly fat, if you can’t do that. You can aim to be at a healthy weight but beyond that there is little you can do about where the fat our bodies have chooses to hang out. That’s largely the fault of hormones and hereditary. (Newsflash: Spot Reduction/Spot Training Does NOT Work.) So the best you can do is learn to love your new body and treat it well. (Love is a better motivator than hate)

What works for acceptance? Look at your body and the bodies of other women lovingly. Look at imagery of sexy women with larger bellies. (Belly dancing and burlesque for example.) Shift your focus from sexy young bodies to the bodies of those older than you. And for God’s sake, please give up on the goal of visible abs. Down that path leads misery.  Watch Go Kaleo on visible abs.

Interestingly, Amber from Go Kaleo, is like me naturally gaining weight in the legs, thighs, hips and lean through the middle. It’s how I can weigh significantly more than the normal weight for my height and still wear clothes in the usual range of sizes. I gather that will change as I age and I’m hoping I cope well. Life is all about change. It’s either that, or death, I remind myself with my philosopher’s hat on.

body image · diets · fat · training · weight loss

Newsflash: Spot Reduction/Spot Training Does NOT Work

Tracy I18 Comments

I went through a brief period when I was about twenty-one when I committed to doing the Jane Fonda workout (!) every day (!!).  What I loved about Jane’s workout was the way it targeted all those “problem” areas–you know, the thighs, the waist.  Jane and I and all her workout friends in the video, with our big hair, eighties shiny spandex and leg warmers, blasted those areas with leg lift after leg lift and crunch after crunch.

Sometime between then and now it’s become common knowledge that spot reduction is a myth. There is even a Wikipedia entry on it.  In an inconclusive study in 2006  some scientists had male subjects do leg extensions for THIRTY minutes with the same leg. They found that the blood rushed to the active more than the resting leg (I’m no scientist but that doesn’t surprise me in the least), as well as increased lipolysis (lipo=fat). But if it makes a difference, they’re not sure how much of a difference it makes.

I can tell you from my Jane Fonda experience, repetitive exercises that focus on one body part do nothing to reduce just that part.  An article about spot reduction on Livestrong says:

There are no reliable studies that support the idea of spot training. There are, however, several that discredit it. One of the most well-constructed studies to provide evidence against the concept of spot training was conducted by researchers at the University of Massachusetts in the 1980s. During the 27-day program, 13 male subjects were required to perform 5000 sit-ups. Fat biopsies were taken from the subjects’ abdomens, buttocks and upper backs before and after the study. Although the subjects only trained their abs during the course of the study, the results showed that fat decreased similarly at all three test spots.

If it doesn’t work on men, it almost certainly won’t work on women. Again, I can attest to this in an anecdotal way.  Lots of focused effort, no focused reduction.  The science didn’t prevent Livestrong from recently posting this misleading video on the best yoga moves for slimming the waist. I have to say, given the science, this video really infuriated me. I thought we’d established that this “spot” approach was a myth.

Look at the instructor — she doesn’t need any spot reduction of any kind.  No yoga move will literally slim your waist if by “slim your waist” you mean reduce the amount of fat you carry at the waistline.

As Danielle from the Body Yoga Divine blog ranted back in 2012, the whole yoga body idea is a conspiracy! It’s designed to sell yoga, yoga clothing, yoga accessories, yoga magazines, etc.  And it’s not even a healthy ideal, as Danielle, herself a committed yogi, points out:

Lets face it, the yoga body is not a healthy ideal. It is a body overworked and underfed. It is not the result of regular yoga classes but the result of a narcissistic obsession with working out. And it is driven less by empowerment than by feeling ‘fat and inferior’…

The spot reduction thing is just another way of packaging the same idea: body hatred and body obsession. It promises that we can whip those unwieldy areas of our flawed bodies into shape.  It perpetuates something similar to the diet mentality, assuming that there are aspects of our bodies that are unacceptable and need to be dealt with in a way that is at best tedious and at worst thoroughly punishing.

The false promise of spot reduction is akin to the false promise of fad dieting.

Enough!

The only way to see lasting changes in our physical bodies is a combination of physical exercise and healthy eating in reasonable amounts. There is no other way.  And if we’ve had any consistent message on this blog, it’s that it doesn’t need to be a journey of deprivation and self-abuse.  We can engage in activities that we enjoy, set performance goals to get us out the door, have fun getting active with our friends, learn ways of eating (in my case intuitive eating, in Sam’s case, the Precision Nutrition approach) that involve new, healthier habits and mindfulness.

It is true that it is possible to sculpt an already lean body through weight training.  But this is a different thing altogether from spot reduction exercises that supposedly slim areas of the body that are hidden under body fat. For most of us, this is the reality. The ripped, competition-ready physique of a fitness model or body builder is not the norm even for fitness models and body builders.

And above all, we can learn to accept our bodies now, appreciate what they are able to do, maybe even become aware of and grateful for the structural and systemic and often un-acknowledged privilege that being a non-disabled person in this world affords us.

As we approach our fifties, neither Sam nor I plan to follow Jane’s model of binge and purge (she had bulimia during all those years she was making those exercise videos). No, we want to enjoy ourselves, eat well, and have strong, healthy bodies that work for us in our chosen activities. Instead of working at spot reduction, I’ve opted to work towards a healthy body image and to embrace only those things that will take me in that direction (so, no more trips to the bod pod for me; I learned my lesson last month).

Don’t just take my word for it. I invite you to do a google search of “spot reduction myth” and you’ll find articles everywhere from CNN (10 Exercise Myths that Won’t Go Away) to Bodybuilding.com. (You Can’t Spot Reduce: Learn Why!”).

So let’s lay that one and all the body hatred that it suggest to rest for once and for all.

body image · diets · eating · fat · fitness · running · swimming · weight lifting · yoga

Reflections on Setbacks

Tracy I26 Comments
Disappointment concept.
Image decription: “Road sign” that says “Welcome to disappointment. Don’t stay too long!” (credit: Bigstock licence)

I had a demoralizing experience at the bod pod earlier this week. The bod pod measures body composition (lean mass to fat ratio).  I went once before, in September.  And since getting leaner is one of the goals I have, the bod pod is a good way to get an objective measure on that.  Tuesday’s result: I’ve lost 2 pounds of lean mass and gained 4 pounds of fat since September.

I had some reservations about going to the bod pod at all. First, I’ve been following the intuitive eating recommendation of staying away from the scale. This has been a great freedom for me and has released me from years of obsession with food and weight. That alone is a great success for me, not one I will trade in, even for a few pounds.

Second, I know for a fact that I’ve fallen out of routine lately, with both my running and my weight training suffering for it.  Backing off of the weight training is likely a key explanation for my loss of lean mass.

Third, I don’t think I’m getting enough protein. As explained in my last post, I’m making an effort to get more.  That post yielded some good advice. I’m tracking protein for a little while anyway, until I get on track. I’ve got some distance to go. Yesterday I fell short of my 100 grams/day goal by 24 grams.

So I have the explanation for why the decline in lean mass and increase in fat.  Today I’m feeling okay about it but I have to say that on Tuesday and yesterday I felt pretty discouraged.  I remember that feeling from when I used to weigh myself regularly.  Given that I’ve fallen out of my routine, I probably didn’t need the bod pod to tell me that my lean mass hasn’t increased and that my fat has increased. In fact, that little voice in the back of my head was telling me to cancel the appointment.

The thing was all made worse by the fact that the bod pod guy assumed that I would feel discouraged and went into a long list of suggestions about what I should or could do about it.  These ranged from relatively sound advice about working with a sports nutritionist or following the Precision Nutrition plan, to eating all of my food within a six hour period each day between 4 p.m and 10 p.m. (!!).  I really just wanted to get out of there at that point, but he’s a nice man and I didn’t want to be rude. At the same time, I wasn’t seeking his input, just the results of the test.

I only enjoy wallowing in the negative for a short time.  So I spent that evening and yesterday feeling discouraged and demoralized, a little bit hopeless and a little bit helpless, frustrated and sorry for myself. I shared my tale of woe with Sam, who is always great at lending an empathetic ear and seeing the positive side of things.

What good can I glean from this setback, if that’s even what it is?  The first question is of course this: is doing a bod pod measurement a useful thing for me to do, given my aspirations to stick with intuitive eating?  I’m not so sure it is. I think for the time being I would do better not to monitor my “progress” in this manner, but instead to stick with a few performance goals that I can feel good about.

To that end, I’m getting back on track with my running now that the weather is a bit better. I start a clinic with a local running group this evening.  It’ll be my first experience running with people and I’m kind of excited about it.

The other issue is my resistance training.  I’m not pushing myself as hard as my trainer used to push me. That’s I guess the main reason we hire trainers, isn’t it? But I’m not interested (at the moment, anyway) in going back to the training studio.  It’s a lot of money and I have enough knowledge to figure out my own workouts. It’s the motivation factor that I need to get back.  I’ve got to mull that one over a bit. I could start training at the Y again. I have a membership already because of the pool, and I have fond memories of the camaraderie of the gym.  Maybe.  If I can’t get my home routine back on track over the month of May, then the Y is an option.

And then there’s the issue of what IS working. Sam reminded me that, for me, getting over the food obsession and letting go of the scale are significant changes.  The bod pod result made me question everything for a short time. I started to think that intuitive eating wasn’t “working.”  I even felt drawn to go on some sort of diet, but then remembered that diets don’t work. The fact is, intuitive eating is working just fine.  Other than that I now feel it’s time to focus a bit more on high protein choices, I’m doing well with the intuitive eating approach.

A brief reflection on “what went wrong” yields that the main issue hasn’t been food (other than that I could get more protein) but training.

Being fixated on the numbers that the bod pod gives me isn’t much different from fixating on the numbers on the scale.  I’ve learned that it’s really difficult for me to react well to a reading that isn’t as “good” as I wanted it to be.  Yes, it’s information, but is it the sort of information that I really need to have in order to achieve my fitness goals?  I’m not so sure about that.

Re-grouping, I plan to stick to my original commitments: running 3 x a week; resistance training 3 x a week; yoga 3 x a week; swimming 2 x a week; leaving the car at home more often, opting to walk or cycle instead.  That’s a good re-start.

Once I have the routine back in place, I can think about upping my performance goals.  I like the strategy of gradual progression, adding just a little bit each day or week.  For example, instead of swimming for 25 minutes, swim for 30; or make a few of the laps sprints. Instead of doing 20 kettlebell swings, do 22.  That sort of thing. Subject matter for a future blog post.

For now, I’ve got to be somewhere soon, and if I’m going to walk instead of drive, I need to hit the road!

[image from Bigstock]

diets · eating · fat · overeating · weight loss

Listen to your body, yes, but with a skeptical ear….

Sam B7 Comments

Tracy has written lots about what works for her when it comes to food choices. Listening to her body rather than following a strict diet plan is the main piece of that. (See her post on intuitive eating.) She’s also not interested in seeking the advice of sports nutritionists (see here.) Largely she thinks our bodies know what they need and listening to our bodies is both healthier and less alienating than ‘mediated eating.’ We should eat what we want not what the latest diet plan or diet guru tells us to eat. See her post on fad diets here.

We hear this same idea from others too. According to Amber at Go Kaleo, we should listen to our bodies and let them guide us.

Our bodies are not the enemies. I like that as a slogan. The thing is I’m convinced my body is not my enemy. But I’m also not convinced it’s always my best friend either.

That said, I’m not as angry at my body as eat, drink, and run is. I’m not as amusing either. She explains why she doesn’t listen to her body in these terms:

“Because my body is kind of a little bitch.  Yep, this body is all about guarding its own shortsighted interests.  Go for a run, body?  Noooo…I asked the legs, they’d rather take a rest day! Eat some of that broccoli?  Noooo…taste buds want ice cream instead! Get out of bed and go to work?  Oh…I consulted the epidermis and it says that these warm covers feel just fine, so we’re staying put, KTHXBAI.” 

Go read the rest here. It’s very funny.

Mostly I’m in agreement with the intuitive eating idea, especially the claims that we need to make peace with food and end restrictive dieting.  I think self trust matters for women’s autonomy. Casting aside the advice of experts is liberating.

These experts tend to target women with their advice and treat us as incompetent idiots. They create incompetence and then sell products to fix the problem.

Like the woman centred childbirth movement–if you feel like walking around in labour, walk around– the intuitive eating approach teaches women that we know what’s best for our own health.

Shut out the outside noise–whether the noise is fast food advertising or nutritional advice from experts–slow down and feed your self when you’re hungry, stop before you’re full, and eat foods that appeal to you.

What’s great about trusting your body, especially for women, is its radical potential. And as I’ve said, I think lots about this is right but here I want to raise some doubts about intuitive eating, at least as it applies to my life.

The worries I have been be divided into two categories, the internal and the external.

First, let’s look at the internal issues with intuitive approaches to eating.

Our bodies often want things that aren’t the best for us. That seems obvious to me and there is an easy explanation of why this is so. In evolutionary terms death by starvation was a much more likely bad outcome than the health risk of being overweight, especially prior to childbirth years. We are creatures geared for feast and famine times living in an environment of all feast, all the time. We’re not wrong or mistaken to want to eat whenever food presents itself. Until very recently in human history that desire would have served us very well.

Our bodies also aren’t unitary desiring machines either. There are conflicts between well being for different bits of our bodies. What’s good for our brain may not be so good for our thighs. Our brain’s desire for sugar is fascinating and it’s in clear conflict with what’s best for us overall. See “Why our brains love sugar and why our bodies don’t,” here, in Psychology Today.

It seems to me to be a very romantic view of embodiment to think our bodies know what’s best. I’ve written before about the variety of ways that our bodies undercut our best efforts. See this post about our bodies scheming against our weight loss efforts.

Second, let’s look at the external factors. There is no ‘what I want’ separate from my environment. I crave cupcakes, when I crave cupcakes, because I’m in a cupcake heavy time and place. There are many places and times where I might have lived where I’d never crave cupcakes. Would I have wanted something else? Sure. I don’t crave or eat meat but in much of the world not eating meat wouldn’t be an option and probably I’d come to desire it.

On a smaller scale now this is true about the environment I create for myself. I don’t like potato chips very much and I don’t buy them or bring them into my house. But if they’re there I come perversely to want them. Our desire for food isn’t separate from our environment. And I think this is especially true for food that’s designed, like cigarettes, to be addictive. I’m looking forward to reading Salt, Sugar, Fat reviewed here in the Guardian.

My next post in habits and environmental cues looks at how we might intervene and help ourselves make better choices.

Here’s what intuitive approaches get right. We don’t do as badly as we imagine we’d do if all food is available and nothing is off limits. And I think it’s right that lots of over eating stems from restricting our diets. Certain foods are held up to be both magically bad and desirable. And highly restrictive diets are destructive for just this reason.

But, for me at least, intuitive eating isn’t perfect either. After days without vegetables I come to crave them it’s true. But I doubt that left to my own desires I’d come to want enough green things. I also think that in small amounts we might eat more than we need in some cases and less in others. My own examples come from sports performance, not eating enough when I’m racing and eating too much on days when I do long slow rides. My appetite isn’t a reliable guide to what I need to eat to perform well.

Okay, what can we do? I think small changes in behavior and in our environment can make a difference. What sort of changes? These will be the topic of my next blog post.

Note it may turn out that for you, even small restrictions bring to mind the full on serious restrictions of heavy duty during, the way that tracking and nutrition counseling affected Tracy. If that’s right then I agree it’s best to stick with intuitive eating as a way of recovering from a history of dieting.

But as I’ve said in a few blog posts, it’s part of my goal to get leaner and to improve my nutrition. I’ll be listening to my body too but with a critical ear and strategizing about ways to get it what it wants while still meeting my goals and changing my eating habits.

Further reading:

When listening to your body doesn’t work, Part 1

When listening to your body doesn’t work, Part 2

(Mark’s Daily Apple)

Nia Shanks: Ditch the diet rules, listen to your body for optimal health

The most effective diet: listening to your body

body image · diets · eating · fat · fitness · overeating · running · swimming · weight lifting · yoga

If Diets Don’t Work, Then What?

Tracy I17 Comments

One of our favorite things about the blog is the way it has generated conversation and a sense of community.   We enjoy hearing from people, not least of which because we’ve had generous comments for the most part. Once in awhile, however, someone calls us on something. That’s okay too. Debate is good. We’re philosophers, and, as Sam said, that’s how we roll.

I was called out just last week when a regular commenter said that I spend a lot of time repeating that diets don’t work, but I don’t offer anything hopeful or helpful. Craig said, “if this blog is about getting fit and healthy, and not simply about “fat acceptance” – give us some clue as to how obese people can lose a lot of fat in a healthy way and keep it off for reasons pertaining to health, as opposed to just reminding us of the inevitability of us being fat and unhealthy forever!”

Granted he is right about one thing for sure: neither Sam nor I has given any advice for how to diet away fat and keep it off.  The stats for success using that approach are depressingly grim.  I say “depressingly” because I wish it were not so. But does this mean that I think there is no hopeful or helpful approach that might take the place of plans and programs aimed specifically at losing weight and keeping it off?  Not at all.

Sam has blogged quite a bit about the potential to be both fit and, by the standards of most charts, overweight. Both of us stress performance goals over weight loss goals.  And both of us would love to be leaner for various reasons having to do mostly with the strength that additional muscle mass would bring, thus enabling us to perform better at some of our chosen activities.

We have also talked about metabolic health. Amber at Go Kaleo! is a strong proponent of focusing on lifting heavy weights and eating in such a way as to stoke the fire that is our metabolism. That usually means eating substantially more than we thought we needed to eat and that most diet plans will tell us we need to eat for maintenance.

Though I have not yet read Amber’s new book, Taking up Space, I know that the information from her blog is first rate, and that the book compiles a lot of information from the blog, making it easy to find and use.  As Amber tells her own story, she was quite overweight by any standards and had a damaged metabolism. She says,

2008, after 35 years of the Standard American Diet, a sedentary lifestyle, and two pregnancies, I found myself obese, exhibiting a whole laundry list of Metabolic Disorder symptoms, and hurtling madly down a path toward chronic illness and an early, preventable death…After decades of diets, yo-yoing weight, and thousands of dollars spent on weight loss gimmicks, I decided to stop trying to lose weight and instead focus on nourishing my body with real, whole foods in adequate amounts, to achieve HEALTH, not weight loss. Instead of punishing myself for dietary indiscretions by spending hours running on the treadmill, interspersed with years of absolute inactivity, I started finding activities I enjoyed..

After doing her own extensive research she developed an approach that has certainly worked for her and enabled her to change her body composition dramatically while eating lots of good food, including carbohydrates. So that’s an approach that I would recommend.

I have also talked about Matt Stone’s Diet Recovery 2, another book in which metabolism and the damage that diets can do to it figure prominently.  Again, he recommends an approach that is 180 degrees from what we usually see recommended in the form of diet for weight loss.

My preferred approach and the one that I am practicing these days is Intuitive Eating.  It is working for me. By “working,” I mean that I am not obsessed with food and weight. That’s a big change from my experience for the majority of my adult life. I do not weigh myself anymore, and the last time I did (for curiosity’s sake — a dangerous move that I will not engage in very often), I weighed the same as when I’d started intuitive eating. If I end up gaining, I will not let a weight gain deter me from continuing to develop an overall healthy relationship to food, weight, and activity.

I combine this way of eating with my favorite activities: yoga, swimming, running, and resistance training. I follow a schedule for training, though I am not rigid about it.  I would rather do less than I think I ought to do than aim so high that I start wanting to skip working out or feel as if working out is an obligation instead of an enjoyable part of my life.  I recommend that anyone who is just starting out or who is struggling to find a rhythm with it aim lower rather than higher.

Above all, Sam and I don’t budge on being anti-diet.  Why? Because they don’t work. I didn’t make that up and, as I said, I wish it weren’t true. I don’t keep saying this to discourage people, but rather to allow us to move on from a failed experiment.

We pretty consistently offer a different approach to those who are interested in improving their health (again, as Sam said yesterday, you don’t have to be interested in this). And we do offer some specific tools and information for embarking on that approach.

I have said before that it is not an easy thing to do. It’s very possible that those who follow Amber’s approach or Matt Stone’s approach or the intuitive eating approach or the focus on strength, not weight, will weigh more than the weight they have in mind as their ideal. But over time, the focus on that number will recede into the distance as a more energizing focus takes its place.

The “results” might not be as immediate or dramatic as what you will see on a restrictive diet. But they will be more sustainable.

When I was always dieting and gaining back weight, my dad — a family doctor — liked to say that the only thing necessary to lose weight and keep it off was to “change your eating habits.”  This truism used to annoy me, but the fact is, I never took it seriously.  I did have to change my eating habits.  The single most necessary change I had to make was to stop eating beyond my comfort level.  This requires a more mindful approach to food and to how I feel when I eat it. It’s every bit as difficult as dieting but the difference is that it produces sustainable changes.

There is nothing extreme about eating mindfully. And there is nothing extreme about the recommended approach to activity. In both cases, let’s make choices we enjoy.

I hope very much that the overall message of our blog is not one that inspires hopelessness, but rather one that encourages those who wish to enjoy a healthy approach to physical fitness to try doing things differently, and in more sustainable ways.  We would love to offer a “how-to” with 5 or 7 or 10 easy steps. But that’s not how we do things around here.

[thanks go to Craig for sparking the conversation that led me to write this post]