Category: weight loss

body image · diets · gender policing · health · weight loss

Three Amazing Rants about Food, Nutrition, and Weight Loss

Sam B3 Comments

Must be something in the air…

  • Krista Scott Dixon at Stumptuous in Rant 66 December 2012: The First Rule of Fast Club rants about and aims fury and righteous rage in the direction of lots of things including the following: why intermittent fasting may not be the cure all for women’s weight woes, why in general what works for young men won’t work for women, and why women shouldn’t listen to young, thin, male personal trainers.

Most lean young guys giving fitness and nutrition advice are basing that advice — in part — on their own bodily experience. Which won’t match yours. (See above.)

Most lean young guys giving fitness and nutrition advice have not seen a sufficiently diverse client base. Hey, that’s what happens when you’re young. It’s not bad. It’s just the math of reality. In a few decades, then they’ll be Dave Draper and have some awesome yarns to spin. And then maybe I’ll take their advice.

Food Villain Mythology is usually supported by a handful of (cherry picked) scientific studies and an elaborate and sophisticated web of logical fallacy. The resultant construct usually holds that the Food Villain in question is the root cause of either modern society’s obesity and diabetes epidemic, or the root cause of an individual’s obesity and illness. There is usually some kernel of truth in the claim. Take wheat for instance: it is true that wheat can be problematic for some individuals who have an allergy or intolerance, and for anyone who consumes it in excess or to the exclusion of other foods that would provide a more well rounded nutritional foundation. There are other issues with wheat too, involving its cultivation, processing, ubiquitousness and nutrient profile. But Food Villain Mythology has taken those issues and created what amounts to mass hysteria in some circles, with an entire mythology centering on wheat’s Magical Ability to single-handedly drive obesity and disease. Scary stuff.

Points, at first, were a fun game to follow, and they did make me more aware of the amount of vegetables and healthy foods I was consuming. Just like in my middle-school WW years, I carefully controlled my caloric intake, I joined Jazzercise (which, to this day, I love — fit is it!), and I ate Weight Watchers-sanctioned aspartame gummies (1 point, entire package, ingredients unpronounceable) nearly constantly. Fuck an apple, those fools were two points, and points were valuable, like precious gold. Or something even better because you can’t eat gold.

I’m working on my own Weight Watchers rant and will post it here in the near future. Til then, enjoy these.

fitness · racing · running · training · triathalon · weight loss

Fittest by Fifty? Who’s the Competition? She is!

Sam B8 Comments

If it’s my goal to be my personal fittest by fifty, then I need to know where the bar is set. Who do I have to beat?

As Tracy and I have mentioned neither of us had particularly athletic childhoods. We have no sports trophies gathering dust or teenage personal bests to conquer. Thank God.

For me, there are two possible candidates for my competition.

Here’s contender number 1. Meet the me that resulted from my last fitness run-up to a significant decade. It’s me at 40. Say hello to Sam, circa 2004, photos below.  She’s in the yellow tank, wearing a number on her chest, no shoulder tattoo yet. She’s thinner and fitter than I am now, if we use running as a measure of fitness. I think she’s probably slower on the bike. She’s certainly not as strong nor as muscular. Shhh. But either way she’s not as fit as I will be at 50.

No thinness goals this time round. From 2002 to 2004,  I went from 230 to 160 lbs but while I stayed reasonably fit I didn’t manage the keep all the weight off. This time my focus is fitness. Though like Tracy, I’d also like to have a better fat-muscle ratio. (Read why here.)

I love these photos because it was such a happy day. I came 14th out of the 40 women in my age group at the Waterloo duathlon. What a terrific race. 5 km run, 40 km bike, 3 km run. Much better than the one I’d done before which ended with a 5 km run. Like all duathletes who turn out to be really be cyclists, I loathe the 2nd run.

A few other things about that day stand out.

I competed with my good friend Martin with whom I’d trained for the race. We actually sort of cheated, just a little bit. He was in the wave ahead of me and so when he’d finished he came back and ran the last run again, with me, for moral support.

You are not supposed to do that, no outside help allowed, and it’s true his nagging– “See that girl ahead in the blue shorts, you can pass her”–helped. If it makes you doubt my ethics, and I’m an ethics professor (geesh), it might help to know that I had no idea this was breaking a rule at the time. It was my second duathlon and it was all new to me.

The hills were also my kind of hills, rolling, steep and short. I could power up and over them without much need to change gears and I’m happy to aggressively pedal down them.

But I’m not sure running is a good way for to measure fitness now, two stress fractures later. That said, in a combined run/bike/run event, I think I could take her by 2014.

Contender number 2 is cycling me, me after 10 months of training with the Vikings Cycling Club in Canberra, Australia and a lot of racing: road races, time trials, and criteriums. She’s below in the blue and white bike jersey, looking very happy just having finished a race. I use a photo from that era as main image on this sight for inspiration. Those were very happy, and very fit, times. I miss the Stromlo Crit course and the weekly club level racing. Miss all the women cyclists and all of my friends on bikes, both there in New Zealand. Need to get more women riding here and I wish we had more recreational racing but that’s a  problem and a post for another time. I was very bike fit by July 2008 when I came home from Australia and I’ve got loads of good data to use in a comparison.

Maybe I’ll need to beat them both but we’ll see how my running holds out. This project would be seriously setback by another stress fracture.

 

body image · diets · fat · fitness · health · weight loss

Working Out While Fat

Sam B1 Comment

Just after I reposted my story of why I left Goodlife Fitness in 2006 two super posts appeared on the problems of working out in public while fat.

The wonderfully titled essay by Lindy West, Hello, Fellow Gym-Goers, Look at My Fat Butt, details how wonderful exercise is but also how awful it is be everyone’s idea of a ‘before’ picture:

The more I exercised, the more I loved it. I felt strong and lean, I had tons of energy, I slept like a brick. But my body didn’t look much different. You’d still see me on the street and read “fat person.” And as a fat person, going to the gym is doubly challenging. There’s the basic challenge we all face—of getting the fuck out of bed, finding a clean sports bra, physically moving your body toward a place where a man will yell at you until you do enough lunges (IT DEFIES ALL EVOLUTIONARY LOGIC)—but for fat people, there’s an even more intimidating challenge on top of that.

It’s entering a building where you know that every person inside is working toward the singular goal of not becoming you.

Do you know how hard it is to walk into a building devoted to not becoming you when you are you!? It’s the worst! I’m me literally every day! “Fat=bad/thin=good” is so seamlessly built into our culture that people I consider close friends don’t hesitate to lament their weight “problems” to me—not stopping to consider that what they’re saying, to my face, is “becoming you is my worst nightmare, and not becoming you is my top priority.”

And Emily Anderson published Fat Acceptance at the Gym Burns More Than Calories at Women’s E-News. It’s an excerpt from her contribution to the anthology “Hot and Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion.”

Being a fat woman at the gym is in itself an act of social disobedience. I shouldn’t be in there, taking up the space of the lithe-bodied, unless it’s with a face of sincere penance and shame. But I have claimed the gym as my own. I celebrate being visible and fat all over the gym–running and sweating and sometimes breaking into song, lifting dumbbells alongside muscle-laden men with uncompleted tribal band bicep tattoos, flinging my weight around in aerobics and finally cooling it poolside in my bright, non-apple-body-shape flattering tankini.

I smile and chat with women before yoga and mention how hungry I always am after class and can’t wait to eat. I want to be seen. I am fat and happy in places where I should be fat and shameful, and denying this stereotype is a political action in my eyes.

You should definitely go read Anderson’s essay to find out about her daring and transgressive act on the elliptical machine.

I loved what both writers had to say, despite my own ambivalence about the word ‘fat’ as it applies to me. Thanks Lindy West and Emily Anderson for your fat pride trail blazing ways. I too hate it when people assume I’m either new to the gym (ha ha ha) or that I must already have lost a lot of weight and then they express admiration that I’ve made it so far. I really do worry about putting fat people off exercise when they think they only reason to do it is to lose weight and then they meet me.

I’ve often thought I’d like to teach a fitness class for big people, one that doesn’t mention weight loss at all. No mention of calories burned or looking good in your skinny jeans. I’m cool with people trying to lose weight–I’m not without goals in that department myself–but my dream class would focus on fitness and moving for fun only. The Y’s fitness instructor certification classes look like they might be fun. And I think I’d have a blast teaching spin classes too. Perhaps I’ll get my certification as part of this ‘fittest at fifty’ project.

Clearly, there’s a need for a spaces without fat shaming. A gym in Vancouver, Body Exchange, set out to create a safe haven for plus size exercisers but it ran into controversy with its plans not accept skinny members.

The Province interviewed Tony Leyland, from Simon Fraser University’s department of biomedical physiology and kinesiology, about the plus sized gyms and he was adamant that people not downplay the social value of creating safe places for mothballed bodies.
Leyland also says some bodies are naturally resistant to being lean. Even slightly pudgy people can be terrific athletes, he says. “Fitness trumps a lot of things,” he says. “The evidence is clear that people are really going to benefit from getting fit whether they lose weight or not.”You can read more about it here, Canada’s only plus size fitness company: no skinnies need apply.
I’m still not sure of what I think of a plus size only gym–generally speaking I prefer inclusion to hiding out in safe spaces and I worry that then people would think that’s where you belong, “Get thee to the fat gym”–but I think plus size, healthy at every size inspired classes would be lovely.
fat · fitness · health · sports nutrition · weight loss

Fat, fit, and why I want to be leaner anyway

Sam B22 Comments

As you’ll know from reading my posts on our blog, I’m fat and fit, aiming to be fitter and to be the fittest I’ve ever been, at 50. (In some moods I prefer big and fit, read why here.)

Weight loss isn’t a direct goal for me in this project. That’s partly because I’m a supporter of the Healthy At Every Size movement, partly because I don’t think there’s a fatness-fitness connection, and partly because for me, personally, there aren’t health related reasons to lose weight. So I take it as a starting point that it’s possible to be the fittest I’ve ever been and not weigh the least I’ve ever weighed. Indeed, although I wouldn’t like it, I might be the fittest I’ve ever been and weigh more than I do now, though I’d much rather that not be the outcome I get.

As I detailed in Fat, Fat, and What’s Wrong with BMI I’m a bit of a healthy living rock star. Yes, I’m significantly overweight but I have excellent blood pressure and heart rate, excellent good-bad cholesterol ratios, and excellent blood sugar levels. I’m also an over-achiever in the bone density department but that’s from years of living large and lifting heavy weights.

(An aside: Bone density is a great reason to lift weights, especially for you small, thin women whose frames aren’t much challenged by the mass you carry around. Weight lifting works to build bones unlike endurance sports such as swimming, cycling, and running which in volume can actually hurt bone density. Read “Training to Improve Bone Density in Adults: A Review and Recommendation here.)

I’m also not sure about the wisdom of picking a goal–long term weight loss–that defeats almost all the people who aim for it. (Read Gina Kolata’s Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss—and the Myths and Realities of Dieting for some of my reasons.)

Oh, and I already eat very well. I’m a vegetarian, aspiring vegan, non-drinker, who stays well away from fast food. I have a bit of a sweet tooth and sometimes I eat too much of  good thing but there’s not a lot of room for nutrition improvement.

But I really would like to improve my ratio of lean to fat, by building more muscle and losing some fat, even if I think that’s got zero to do with fitness or being fittest by fifty.

Why?

That’s a question that in our culture hardly seems worth asking. Everyone I know, pretty much, wants to shrink. The size 4s want to get back to size 0, the 10s back to 4, and so on. It’s a cultural obsession and mega money making industry. I try to stay clear.

Most people assume weight loss is why I exercise. But really, if that were my goal I would have quit long ago. Indeed I worry that lots of fat people quit working out because they aren’t getting thinner and why else would they go to gym? The fat but fit person looks like she’s doing all the work and not getting the rewards. Nevermind that the real rewards are health related and have nothing to do with weight.

So again, why do I want to be leaner?

My main reason I want to get leaner is sports performance. An awful lot of what I do depends on a power to weight ratio. For an explanation of power to weight ratio and its importance when it comes to cycling, read The Pursuit of Leanness over at Australia’s Cycling Tips blog.

I’ll never be a hill climber. I’m a reasonably powerful sprinter and time trialer (for a recreational cyclist in her midlife years!). I know my place in the cycling world. But I’m sick of getting dropped on hills.

My second motivation for the pursuit of lean is wear and tear on joints. I love sports and physical activity. Hard to imagine life without it. But you don’t see many overweight runners in their 70s. Cyclists either. I worry about stress on my knees and hips and think there’s got to be an advantage to weighing less. Or at least if I want to play with people lots younger than me, as seems to be the case with every sport that I do, I want to even the playing field.

Evening the playing field is one of the reasons I feel great being a non-drinker on multi-day cycling events. Stay up, you 19 year olds and 25 year olds. Have another beer. I’ll be asleep, sober, and well hydrated by 10 pm. Not fun now but fun when I see you suffering tomorrow.

Finally, there’s  bad motivation, one of which I try to be wary. And no, it’s not looking good naked. Like Tracy, I’m pretty comfortable in that department. I don’t have a lot of body image issues. I’ve often wondered about why that’s so. I’ve got some thoughts about my resilience in that department, fodder for a later post, I think. (Short answer: Thanks spouse, thanks feminism, thanks queer community.)

Sometimes I want to look like the very fit person I am. There are days when I’m weary of fighting the good fight, challenging our notions of the size and shape fitness takes. Sometimes I want people to look at me and see who I am and what I do.

For example, I’ve got incredible abs. You can’t see them as they are under a layer of fat but they do amazing things. I’m very strong in my core but it’s like they’re a secret super power, my invisible abs.

Not being seen for who I am is a bit of a struggle on my life on a few fronts. (You can read some of my work on bisexual invisibility here and here.)

So sometimes I’m sick of it all and want to be seen as the athlete I am.

But I’m hoping to keep those motivations at bay and focus on the hills and the climbing.

body image · fat · fitness · health · weight loss

Fitness and exercise are what matters, not weight loss

Sam B5 Comments

Even though it’s quite clear to me that exercise itself has no effect on weight loss, from time to time I need to remind myself that even if I’m not losing weight, exercise is helping my health.  Indeed, weight loss itself is a lousy measure of just about anything. Here’s two blog posts that came across my screen this week as reminders.

Longevity Shocker! Exercise Increases Life Expectancy Regardless Of Your Weight:

A new study on physical activity that involved more than half a million participants over age 40 found that modest exercise increases life expectancy regardless of weight.

That’s right, it doesn’t matter whether you are morbidly obese or have a normal body mass index (BMI), exercise helps you live longer regardless.

Counter to most of the attention given to obesity as the crucial risk factor for health, the study found that an active lifestyle increased life expectancy to a greater extent than a lower BMI, in general. In fact, participants who were active but class I obese lived an average of 3.1 years longer than those who were at a normal weight but didn’t engage in physical activity. This is in-line with reports from earlier this year that excessive sitting is unhealthy and that reducing excessive sitting to less than 3 hours a day alone can improve longevity by 2.0 years.

Health is Not a Size:

When I was 250 pounds, I was eating the right amount, tons of vegetables, very little junk food.  I was exercising regularly, 6 times a week for more than an hour each time without fail.  I had lost almost 40 pounds but I was still obese.  People could look at me and make assumptions about my lifestyle based on my size, but they would have been wrong.  Lucky for me, I realized that improving my health was about actions and behaviors.  Repetition of those behaviors led to weight loss.

When I was 230 pounds, I could run a 5K.  I have “healthy” weight friends who cannot run one mile.  Who is more fit, the fat girl who can run 3 miles or the thin girl who gets tired walking up the steps?

At no time at any weight did I ever have high blood pressure, diabetes, heart problems, or any other diagnosable health problem.  “Healthy” weight people can have heart disease.  Heart attacks.  Triple bypass surgery.  Diabetes.  High blood pressure.  These issues can often be resolved by lifestyle changes.  Inactivity and over-consumption of junk food can harm your health even if you are thin.  Our focus is in the wrong place.  How many thin people afflicted by lifestyle-related diseases thought they were immune because their weight was within the “right” range?

fitness · weight loss

TV shows, fitness, and weight loss: Love and hate

Sam B5 Comments

Television hasn’t been part of my life for many years, not since I gave it up as a pre-tenure faculty member with small children. Indeed, I blogged about the decision to abstain from TV here.

We do watch television shows on DVD and Netflix again so it’s no longer a complete ban. But what is missing is regularly scheduled programming and ads.

This past year though I was on sabbatical in Australia and New Zealand in rented houses that came with televisions. For the first time, I got to experience reality TV.

Given my interests it’s not a surprise that I watched shows about weight loss and exercise.  Here’s my take on the best and the worst.

It’s no shock that I hated The Biggest Loser.

I worry about very fast, competitive weight loss and the circus freak mentality around fat bodies. That said, it was refreshing to see big people exercising.

The show I liked though was Are You Fitter than A Pensioner?

Here’s a description of one episode:

America has given birth to a new breed of super-fit pensioner. In Oakmont Village, California, the senior residents are doing everything they can to live long and healthy lives. What happens when four young, unfit and unhealthy Brits are sent to live with some of the fittest pensioners in the world?

25-year-old lazy Welsh socialite Ashlei Swain, 20-year-old bone-idle punk student Jennifer Lovell, 22-year-old fried food lover Nicole Pereira and 18-year-old chain smoker Ben Katchi are about to meet their fate. For a week they must stay with 68-year-old Bev Levy and her 71-year-old husband Ron, and 77-year-olds Carol and Jim Cotton.

The hosts might be in their retirement years but all four are fitness fanatics. From competitive swimming to yoga and daily gym workouts, they look forward to whipping the young Brits into shape.

In a life-changing week, the Brits are forced to quit their usual lazy lifestyles and exercise to the max. They swap burgers and sweeties for a healthy diet and are pushed to their physical and emotional limits. At the end of the week they face the ultimate battle of the ages when they take on four golden oldies in a cycling relay race, to find out if they really are fitter than a pensioner.

Can stroppy rebel Ashlei conform to the strict regime? Is punk rocker Jen able to conquer her fear of exercise? And how do the Brits fare in the big race – are they victorious or do they suffer defeat at the hands of super-fit pensioners?

I loved the super fit pensioners, a stark contrast to what we’ve traditionally thought of as old age. No rockers here! They really did look to be having a great time, enjoying yoga, cycling, swimming, dancing, whatever. They also looked to be thriving in communities of like minded people. Good to have happy role models paving the way ahead.

Nice too to see seniors as the font of wisdom, as having something to offer the youth.

There’s of course the angle of national stereotypes– unhealthy Brits versus fitness obsessed Americans–but it’s made okay, I think, by the cross generational interaction.

I’m no fan of TV but I did watch and enjoy a few episodes of Are You Fitter than a Pensioner? Do you have any fitness/weight loss reality TV shows you love or love to hate?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aNrpYUDu1Y]

Aikido · Crossfit · Rowing · running · training · weight loss

Is it time to ditch exercise?

Sam B8 Comments

Exercising, working out, or training? I almost never use the first of these terms and I have a strong preference for the 3rd. Here’s some thoughts about why.

Recently the media reported on a study from the University of Alberta that showed shows like The  Biggest Loser put people off exercise with its extreme depiction of what exercise involves.

From the U of A website: Researchers in the Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation found that watching a short video clip of The Biggest Loser fueled negative attitudes toward exercise, raising further questions about how physical activity is shown in the popular media.

“The depictions of exercise on shows like The Biggest Loser are really negative,” said lead author Tanya Berry, Canada Research Chair in Physical Activity Promotion. “People are screaming and crying and throwing up, and if you’re not a regular exerciser you might think this is what exercise is—that it’s this horrible experience where you have to push yourself to the extremes and the limits, which is completely wrong.”

Read more about this here.

For me, the word ‘exercise’ has negative connotations, even without The Biggest Loser. At best it sounds dull and joyless. I use the word to describe physio rehab that I do. Those are exercises but that’s about it.

I’ve been active a lot this weekend but, physio aside, none of it has been something I’d call exercise. Saturday mornings I go to Aikido where I practice and I train. The emphasis is on skill development and training seems to me to be the right word. True, I got really hot and sweaty during hajime training but getting hot and sweaty wasn’t the point. Moving fast, without thinking, putting the techniques in ‘body memory’ was.

Saturday afternoon I had a soccer game. We lost against the Chocolate Martinis. (An aside: I think nothing screams ‘middle aged women playing soccer’ quite like the team names. Last week we won against Cougartown.) Was that exercise? I ran fast and played hard but I wouldn’t describe what I was doing as exercise. I was playing. We were competing. Yes, it’s a recreational league but we do play to win. In the end we lost but we had a lot of fun.

And Sunday morning I’ll be at the rowing club for an early morning erg session. Again, there’s a lot of technique involved and I think of it as training, not exercise per se. For example, we did a really challenging drill Thursday night trying to match a pace slightly above our 2 km test pace but with a much slower stroke rate. Tough work and really hard to concentrate on technique. Usually my bike ride home from rowing is much slower than my pace on the way there.

Most weekends I also take my dog out for a 5 km + hike in the woods. Usually we run together. I love being outside and I like the feeling of running on trails in the woods.

So Aikido, soccer, rowing, bike riding, and dog-jogging. But no exercise?

I’d say in one sense that’s right. I do these things because they’re fun, a big part of what I think of as the good life. I spend a lot of time as an academic in my head, with words, books, and ideas but being physical really matters. It’s a key part of who I am.

No wonder inactive people are put off by The Biggest Loser’s participants. Those people are not having any fun. It’s joyless. They are exercising for one reason and one reason only, to lose weight. If that were my reason, I’d have quit a long time ago.

My advice to people who want to be more active is to find something you love, something you enjoy, something you’d do anyway even if you didn’t lose weight. We need to experience more joy in our lives, joy in moving our bodies in ways that feel good.

For you, that might be dance, yoga, walking, or gardening.

For me, I’m a competitive person and I like races and games with winners and losers. I also like skill development and getting better at something, like testing for new belts in Aikido, crit interval drills on the bike, or learning the technique involved in rowing.

It’s clear with cycling, the sport I love best, that it’s not medicinal exercise, taken in daily doses for health related reasons. Instead, at various times I’ve trained and raced. These days more often I ride for fun with friends. I also often commute on my bike and use it for practical transportation.

Even Crossfit–the one thing I do to which the term ‘workout’ really applies–has both a skill building (weight training, Olympic lifting) and a competitive element. It’s ‘as many reps as possible’ or ‘so many reps for time.’ I usually focus on competing with myself but other people there seriously train for the Crossfit games.

If exercise, as a term, works for you, great. But for many of us it misses the mark.  For us, let’s ditch talk of exercise and talk instead about all the fun physical activities that are part of the good life. I think sharing the joy in physical activity is a better route to getting more people moving than in prescribing exercise in medicinal doses.

body image · fitness · weight loss

Why I left Goodlife Fitness some years ago

Sam B10 Comments

The recent post on Five Things Every Gym Should be Doing reminded of me of why I abandoned the last traditional fitness centre of which I was a member. I blogged about it then, in 2006. I decided to re-post it here, since the reasons still largely apply:

Goodbye Goodlife

This week I said goodbye to my health club membership. In part, it’s for the usual reason. I am not there enough to justify the cost. I have a Y membership and like lifting weights at the Y better–more free weights and less attitude.  I also prefer my cardio outdoors–biking, cross country skiing, running along the river. And I’ve fallen in love with the Velodrome and track biking. Pure speed and pleasure. Yum.

But I did love the Bodyflow classes at Goodlife–nice mix of tai chai, yoga, and pilates. Fast paced for attention deficit disorder exercisers  like me. If I could have tele-transported into the classes, avoiding the ads and the locker room, I’d have done it. But I really couldn’t take  the emphasis on weight loss and physical beauty, where that means skinny and 20. It wasn’t even presented as one of the many goals one might have.

I’m okay with some people wanting to lose weight and that being their reason for going to the gym. It’s one goal among many: get faster, lift your kids without pain, staying flexible and keeping your balance in your 80s…. But the quest for the perfect body and weight loss was the only thing promoted in the women’s change room.

I love the Y locker room for its range of body shapes and sizes, tattoos and wrinkles, all ages, physical and mental abilities. In Goodlife the mostly pretty, mostly 20-35 year old, women hid behind towels. Too modest for me. I made a point of stripping naked there, walking across the room, and talking to friends naked, any excuse to change the norm.

Anyway, I complained about the weight loss posters. Emailed head office. No reply. Talked lots to my friends and to the instructors and got sympathy but no progress.

A staff member at work tried their weight loss program which consisted of a 1400 calorie a day starvation diet. She was told she’d be too weak some days to do much exercise.

Final straw? A spin class instructor-skinny minnie–talking to a class about how fat she was and how many calories we’d burn in an hour. Did I care? No. I was there as a cyclist to maintain speed, fitness over the winter. She was the thinnest person there! Did she think the women in that class would find that motivational?

ARGH. I quit. Having discovered what I love about being fit and about exercise–speed,the outdoors, being strong, going fast and hard for as long as I can–I thought I could reenter a traditional gym and keep my healthy body image intact. I was wrong.

Bye bye Goodlife.

body image · health · weight loss

Five Things Every Gym Should Already Be Doing

Sam B1 Comment

Five Things Every Gym Should Already Be Doing.

Great post from the terrific blog, Dances With Fat: Health Comes in All Shapes and Sizes.

Here’s my favorite bit:

Put the Focus on Health: Research shows us that while movement is really bad at creating weight loss, it is really good at supporting health. Instead of selling people a cardio room and a bag of magic weight loss beans, your gym should be educating people about the actual possible benefits of exercise.  I would suggest starting by offering to measure things other than weight.  Offering tests like VO2 Max scores, blood panel, strength, stamina, flexibility etc.  People could choose the baseline tests they want at the beginning and then take them again three. six months in etc. to see if there are any changes.  That way people wouldn’t think that exercise is “failing” just because they aren’t losing weight.

I had V02 max testing done a few years ago. Maybe it’s time to get it redone?
You can watch it here, V02 max, the movie! https://www.facebook.com/v/574547894831
body image · Crossfit · weight lifting · weight loss

Six Things I Love about CrossFit and Six Things I’m Not So Sure About

Sam B23 Comments

I started CrossFit in Dunedin, New Zealand at the end of the cycling season in March 2012. It was NZ autumn and days were starting to get cold-ish and wet. I didn’t want to join a traditional gym, running in Dunedin didn’t much appeal (hills, hills and more hills) and I’d been hearing the buzz about CrossFit for awhile.

Being the academic, geeky sort I did a lot of reading in advance and so psychologically at least I was ready for what they offered. I had fun moving from CrossFit women (my gateway program of choice) to regular CrossFit classes and then started at CrossFit London just a few days after my long flight across the ocean and a dateline. I thought I’d share here what I like most about this style of training and what I’m still unsure about.

Six Things I Love

1. Wow, Women, and Weights: I’ve been lifting weights–free weights, as some people say–since I took Fundamentals of Weight Training for academic credit at the University of Illinois in the 1st year of my PhD in 1988. I had a tuition waiver, so why not? I also took Intro to Sailing the next semester. The only small hitch was that I  got a B (my only grad school B) and it’s listed on my transcript as just “Fundamentals” so when I was on the academic job market I ended explaining to places that requested my transcript that it wasn’t logic or metaphysics.

I love lifting weights. I decided back then, in my mid twenties, that if I was going to be big I was also going to be strong. But I’ve never had much female company in the weight room. Don’t get me wrong. Those really muscly, very inked men in the weight room at the Y have been incredibly warm and welcoming and helpful through the years–they are some of the nicest and most gentle people at the gym– but I’ve always felt a bit of an oddball.

CrossFit is different. The gender ratio is about 50-50 most days and the women are strong and powerful. It’s so refreshing to see so many women lifting weights. Lots of them are lots stronger than me and that just makes me smile. I feel like I’ve found my people!

2. The Workouts: Intensity, Variety, Scalability

CrossFit workouts are intense. There’s nothing else like them. Burpees, box jumps, medicine ball throws, pull ups, sprinting, rowing, with some Olympic weight lifting thrown in for good measure. There’s also never a dull day. The workouts change every day and you just don’t know what to expect. Also, all of the efforts can be scaled to your ability. You might not be able to do pull ups (lots of people can’t) but you can do jumping pull ups or banded pull ups (with a big elastic band for assistance). So there is always a place to start and a place to move up to. That ability to measure, set targets, achieve goals really appeals to me.

They combine two things I’ve written about before as essential elements of good training programs, high intensity and heavy weights.

As Speedy joked at CrossFit Dunedin, “If you want to walk on a treadmill for hours and watch television there’s a Les Mills gym across the street with lots of that going on.”

3. The Teachers: Excellent careful instruction, nice ratio of instructors to students, and people who are really committed. Thanks Rachel, Grant and Speedy and Dave!

4. The Community: Yes, I own my own kettlebell and I could jump up on to my deck instead of doing  box jumps and I could do burpees and sprint out in front of my house. Would I? No. Certainly I’d never do them as fast. I love that the CrossFit participants cheer one another on. It’s an incredibly supportive and motivating workout environment.

5. It Works: My body has changed a lot since starting CrossFit. What most people want to know is whether I’ve lost weight and the answer is not very much. More than 5 lbs, fewer than 10. But I’m down a clothes size and I have all these brand new muscles in my core. I’ve had muscular arms and shoulders and legs for years but these muscles are new. I move more easily. I notice that it’s a lot easier to fall and get back up at Aikido. In fact, everything is easier, from running to picking up heavy things around the house.

6. I love kettlebells!

Six Things I’m Not So Sure About

1. The jargon: Again, I did my research so WOD didn’t throw me. It’s Workout of the Day. Rx is the recommended weight. AMRAP is as many reps as possible. And so on… It’s useful shorthand but the jargon can feel like it’s meant to exclude beginners from those in the know. There are lots of guides to CrossFit lingo out there but really, it shouldn’t be necessary.

2. Fitting it all in: I do CrossFit in the morning, three times a week in theory, and then lots of other stuff too (Aikido, rowing, bike riding, running, soccer) and sometimes the CrossFit weight workouts leave me too sore to do the other things I love to do. It’s a challenge for those of us who do CrossFit and something else to fit everything in. But that’s true I think for weight training in general.

3. Where are the older women? There are lots of women but not very many older women. Often I’m the only women not in her 20s! Most days there are women in the 30s as well but I’ve only met a few women in their 40s and 50s, both here and in NZ. No wonder the other women run faster than me. I read inspirational stories about CrossFitting grandmas but I haven’t met one yet. This is my favourite. I like her functional fitness goals.

http://community.crossfit.com/article/jean-stewart-deadlifting-great-great-grandma

Three years ago, Jean Stewart began to feel old. A proud woman, she realized she needed to make a change in her life to improve her long-term health.

“I see people who are stooped over and old, in their 60s and 70s,” Stewart says. “I don’t want to be that way. I was losing function for everyday living, stooped over and lifting things improperly. I just wanted to live my life (and be) healthy.”

As a retired physical education teacher, she’s always had a passion for fitness, but became bored in physical therapy-type exercise classes. Worst of all, she was tired of being treated like an old person who was incapable of physical activity. So, at the age of 83, Stewart decided to reinvent herself.

“She came walking into the gym with our newspaper ad folded under her arm and handed it to us,” remembers Cheryl Cohen, founder, owner and head trainer of Desert CrossFit in Palm Desert, Calif. “I asked her what she wanted from CrossFit and she said, ‘Well, I would like an easier time in the garden, getting down and getting back up again. I’d like to be able to move the 20-lb. bag of potting soil.’”

4. Paleo diets: I am a vegetarian, aspiring vegan, so not an ideal candidate for the caveman diet. I’m also not big fan of dietary dogma. I like the slogan over at Go Kaleo: “Eat real food. Move around a lot. Lift heavy things. And skip the kool-aid.” And besides there’s a fair bit of evidence our human ancestors were nearly all vegetarians.

5. I like to train hard while smiling and laughing as much as the next person but sometimes there’s a bit too much gallows humour around the CrossFit workouts that I worry puts off new people. At least, would put off new people who aren’t into pain and suffering. CrossFit tshirts exemplify this with slogans like the following: Embrace the Pain; Become the Machine; Your workout is my warmup; CrossFit on front, on back: “Hard. Fast. No Cuddling After”; Yes, you will pass out before you die.

This is my favourite though: On women’s shirts with image of weights–“I don’t cook, I clean.”

6. Why do the workouts get women’s names? Chelsea is 5 pull ups, 10 push ups, 15 squats, On The Minute Every Minute For 30 Minutes. There’s also Fran, Angie, Barbara etc.

If you’re in London and want to give CrossFit a try, there is a free ‘give it a try’ class every week. You can register here.