Tag: exercise

Weekends with Womack

Shake it up, baby: finding new active activities

catherine w17 Comments

This weekend I was at a party with some old friends I’d been house mates with back in the 80s. Some of you readers may not remember the 80s, but those were the days of perms and poodle hairdos. Lucky y’all.

At this party, former house mate Nancy told us about a friend of hers who is in physical therapy for arthritis in her ankle. The therapist told her to do two things:

1) get outside each day to do some activity;

2) learn something new each week.

Nancy’s friend, who must be a conscientious sort, set about to do just that. With respect to 2), she has so far tried a few new things. She rented a bike and decided to relearn how to ride. Apparently there were some hitches in the proceedings, which necessitated walking the bike back to the shop a few times (e.g. chain fell off), but eventually she was rolling down her local bike path. The following week she bought a basketball, went to a local outdoor court, and got some kids to teach her how to shoot hoops. How cool is that? Next week she plans to go kayaking with Nancy.

Is this a great idea or what?

As much as I love my primary sports (cycling, squash, cross-country skiing in winter), it’s possible to get in a sports rut. And lately I’ve been feeling a little restless, not knowing exactly what I’m looking for, but casting about for some novel experiences. Nothing radical like running off to join the circus, mind you, although they do teach trapeze courses in Boston and my friend Steph assures me it’s big fun.

trapeze

Well, flying through the air with the greatest of ease is probably not my thing, but I am trying a couple of activities that feel new-to-me, as I haven’t done them in a long time.

First up is an ocean kayaking skills course. My friend Janet signed both of us up for a 2-day ocean kayaking course that takes place actually in the ocean. I say this because lots of ocean kayaking courses are done in rivers and lakes, as it’s quieter, easier and less daunting for beginners. I’ve done some ocean kayaking and even blogged about it here. But my skills are rusty and also limited—I’ve never done an assisted rescue at sea, much less a self-rescue in the ocean.

assistsolo

But we’re going to learn these skills and much more. I’ve always wanted to take a sea kayak trip off the coast of British Columbia, paddling near orcas. Doesn’t this look awe-inspiring?

orca

Yeah, it scares me a little, too. But it’s exciting to move outside your comfort zone, develop some new skills, check out a completely different sports subculture. Starting with the summer course seems like a move in the right direction.

The second new-to-me activity is much less thrilling, but nonetheless something I’ve not done in years: running. Well, more like jogging. I’ve never ever been a runner. Even while training for a couple of triathlons about 10 years ago, I swam and biked, but didn’t run much at all. I sort of jogged a little and hoped for a miracle. And it was a minor miracle that I finished the running sections of those triathlons…

But recently I’ve been curious about running: wondering if maybe, if I actually train, maybe I could in fact finish a 5k sometime. It turns out there are apps for precisely this goal. I just started using the Couch-to-5K app, about which I’ve read some positive reviews. I’ve finished the first 3 workouts, and so far so good. The whole program is 9 weeks long, so we’ll see how this goes. If by then I can actually run/jog 5K, I may enter a race in the fall. What an idea—I never thought I would choose or be able to run a 5K race. Just the feeling of wanting this and trying it out is new and different.

Who knows how each of these new activities will go? Who knows what goals I’ll meet or what my skill or interest level will be in a few months? But for now, it’s enough that I’m shaking it up.

Cleaning is NOT the new cardio: Women, housework and not working out
advertising · Guest Post · Weekends with Womack

Cleaning is NOT the new cardio: Women, housework and not working out

catherine w24 Comments

Tammy Wynette had it right: Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman. Especially when it comes to domestic labor. Tons has been written about how women, after coming home from paid work outside the home, commence “the second shift” in which they cook, clean, do childcare, and manage household needs. And despite the fact that the women’s movement is easily more than 40 years old, this situation is still pervasive. In the New Republic, Jessica Grose tells her own rather typical story:

“When it comes to housecleaning, my basically modern, egalitarian marriage starts looking more like the backdrop to an Updike short story. My husband and I both work. We split midnight baby feedings. My husband would tell you that he does his fair share of the housework, but if pressed, he will admit that he’s never cleaned the bathroom, that I do the dishes nine times out of ten, and that he barely knows how the washer and dryer work in the apartment we’ve lived in for over eight months. Sure, he changes the light bulbs and assembles the Ikea furniture, but he’s never scrubbed a toilet in the six years we’ve lived together.”

This story illustrates how gendered domestic labor often is. The above-mentioned husband assembles Ikea furniture, which is a one-off enterprise. But doing dishes and laundry, both ongoing enterprises, fall to his wife. And the data show that this is a common phenomenon:

Fathers do slightly more lawn care than moms—11 percent of working dads are out mowing the lawn on an average day compared to 6.4 percent of working moms. So that means dads are out clipping the hedges on sunny Saturdays, while moms are the ones doing the drudgery of vacuuming day in and day out. And this isn’t solely an American phenomenon. Even in the famously gender-neutral Sweden, women do 45 minutes more housework a day than their male partners.

So what’s a pressed-for-time 21st century woman to do if she wants to:

  1. work at a job for money;
  2. cook nice food for meals;
  3. wear clean clothing;
  4. live in a clean house;
  5. hang out with her clean and fed children;
  6. get some exercise?

Well, I can’t speak for all of 1–6  but there are some ingenious websites out there dedicated to helping women combine house cleaning and exercise. One of them urges women to “turn spring cleaning into spring training”, and offers 7 ways to “put the lean in clean”. Among the techniques promoted are:

  • Eschew vacuuming in favor of taking rugs outside to beat them; it will burn more calories.
  • Take multiple trips running up and down stairs to retrieve and put away laundry.
  • If you insist on using the vacuum cleaner, combine vacuuming with lunges.

Another site combines weight-loss and house cleaning advice:

Forget the gym! If women are really spending almost 2½ hours cleaning and tidying up every day, there’s plenty of opportunity to get a sufficient workout without even leaving home!

Housework is a great way to burn calories. But as is the case with any workout, the more effort you put in, the greater the benefit. In particular, polishing, dusting, mopping and sweeping are great for keeping arms shapely. Bending and stretching, for example, when you make the bed, wash windows or do the laundry are good for toning thighs and improving flexibility. And constantly running up and down the stairs as you tidy is a good aerobic workout.

A woman calling herself “Clean Momma” offers dozens of videos that purport to combine exercise with cleaning tasks; one of them promises “great arms and countertops” at the same time.

It’s obvious that these websites are trading on gender and class stereotypes in domestic labor as well as pushing a weight-loss-is-always-good-always-necessary message that we all know is wrong-headed, bad for our health, and bad for our self-esteem. Not to mention ridiculously time-consuming, taking time away from pursuing real projects and goals for ourselves. So, launching into a long criticism of them would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

But, I’d like to suggest that there’s a more subtle form of this cleaning-as-women’s-primary-activity at work in hipper and more modern women’s media.  Apartment therapy, a home decorating/improvement/DIY website, features the January Cure, a month of cleaning, organizing and home improvement tasks. They are motivational and upbeat:

Do you want 2015 to be your best year yet? We believe that when your home is under control, fresh, clean and organized, good things happen throughout your life. If you are ready to get your place back in shape, the very best way is one manageable step at a time, during our once-a-year-only January Cure. By the end of the month, you’ll be sitting pretty in a clean, fresh, organized home. We can do this – together!

Every few days they publish another home-organization task. One of them—a better kitchen by Sunday evening—involves this as a weekend project:

  • clean fridge
  • clean cabinets, inside and out
  • inspect all contents of cabinets and get rid of stained, chipped, extra, unused items
  • clean all surfaces (using earth-friendly cleaners, of course)

This is really impressive, but just reading this list makes me want to retire to the couch for the day.

All of the mainstream women’s magazines (like Better Homes and Gardens, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, Real Simple) emphasize the importance of very detailed attention to every part of one’s house. Maybe I’ve arranged my furniture incorrectly. Or perhaps I need to build my own laundry hamper, which is supposed to make laundry so much easier (hmmmm…)

Now, of course it’s nice to have a lovely clean house, complete with sparkling fridge, uncluttered cabinets, and maybe even a groovy new wire laundry hamper on wheels. But it’s worth noting that women are the ones targeted for these sorts of tasks. And what’s worse, we are at risk of reducing or eliminating physical activity from our daily routines because of the pressures to be responsible for creating an ideal domestic environment.

One recent study, analyzing factors influencing amount of regular exercise in middle-aged women, cited “disruptions in daily structure, competing demands, and self-sacrifice” as barriers to regular exercise. Two factors that were NOT listed as barriers were lack of time and menopausal symptoms. This is good news; despite changes in our bodies and time-crunched lives, women still want to exercise to feel good and be active with others. But we still have to deal with competing demands and self-sacrifice, and these pressures arrive at our doorstep in many forms.

So I say: step away from the vacuum cleaner, march past the cluttered desk, and avert your eyes while passing the laundry room—at least for long enough to get out there for a walk, run, swim, ride, yoga class, unicycle lesson, game of catch with your dog. The mess will keep until you get back home.

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We say goodbye, we say hello: out with winter activities, in with spring
Guest Post · meditation · nature · Uncategorized

We say goodbye, we say hello: out with winter activities, in with spring

catherine w6 Comments

Let’s take a walk

Into the world

Where if our shoes get white

With snow, is it snow, Marina,

Is it snow or light?

Let’s take a walk

excerpt from the poem To Marina, by Kenneth Koch.

Finally, after an unbelievably fierce winter here in the northeast, change is in the air—daylight savings time has returned, giving us more time after work to be outside. And temperatures are edging up, most welcome in Boston where we got pounded with 105 inches of snow this year.  A month ago, streets in Boston looked like this:

parkton-snow

But now they look like this:

parkton-nosnow

Not exactly pretty, but at least the driving is a bit easier.

One notable benefit of all this snow has been the instant access to great winter sports, even in urban areas. I’ve blogged about urban cross country skiing and also trying out new variations on skiing. In Ottawa, the Rideau Canal Skateway had a record-breaking 59-day season, which lots of people took advantage of.

rideau canal

rideau-night

My friend Teri, on a work trip to Ottawa, took the night picture, and even partook of some after-work curling—another northern winter activity (although here you can find out about the curling season, which in fact extends to May).

curling-work

But all good things come to an end. The snow is melting, the late-day sun is beckoning, and it’s time to think about putting away skis, skates, snowshoes, fat bikes and cold-weather running wear. Time to bring out the road and mountain bikes, running shoes, and other springtime equipment. Samantha has gotten the jump on many of us already, restarting bike commuting.

You would think this would be deliriously wonderful news; it’s been a frigid and difficult winter, and I’ve not been on a bike in months. And I love to ride. But change can be hard—even positive change. It requires consciously shifting from one set of habits, one set of gear, one set of exercise partners and locations and muscle groups, to a whole different set. This happens for me on at least 3 levels:

Level one: logistical

Finding places to put the winter stuff while remembering where I stored the warmer weather stuff and deciding when to retrieve it is always a production. The cross-country skis, which lived in the back of the car all winter, are now in their transitional space (the hallway) awaiting being put away in the basement; repeat for lots of other gear and clothing. I also need to take my road bike for a tune-up before the season really gets going, etc. For those of us who are active and profligate about gear, keeping everything in its appropriate place in the seasonal rotation is a job.

Level two: physical

Changing sports or activities means also reminding oneself about the existence of muscle groups that may have been ignored for a while. This winter I skied and played squash, both of which use my legs, but in ways very different than cycling uses them. Lots of websites offer practical advice for ways to transition into spring cycling or spring running.  The message seems to be this: start slow and focus on the basics. This is no news, but sometimes tough to stick with, especially on that first spring day when you are bursting with enthusiasm.

Level three: metaphysical

Change is unsettling.  We’re used to our habits and the pleasures, associations, and even burdens that come with them.  This winter offered up a host of burdens– endless shoveling, treacherous driving, super-long commutes to work, and high heat bills.  But it also provided some opportunities and experiences that I’ll miss.

I now know the neighbors on my street much better through shared shoveling  and snow-driving woes.  To get one car unstuck on my street took representatives from Turkey, Japan, France, South Carolina, and New England; since then we’ve all waved and smiled when we see each other.

I also know some of my colleagues much better through carpooling to work.  The MBTA commuter rail in Boston experienced massive failure, and we had to scramble to find rides for people to be able to teach their classes.  I drove folks to and from school (usually a 50-minute one-way ride, turned into more than 1.5 hours) 3 days a week for several weeks.  It was time-consuming, but we spent time talking and joking and complaining and enjoying each others’ company.

When public transportation was running, I used it (there was no parking anywhere– trust me).  It was sometimes uncertain and often lengthy, but walking around town and taking two buses to get home felt like an accomplishment– moving through the city under my own power (there was lots of walking in sturdy boots this winter) and catching the bus reminded me of younger student days.

As for sports, with several of my women’s league squash matches were canceled due to storms and no biking possible, I had to improvise, often on skis, with friends.  So we skied all over the place– in my neighborhood, at nearby parks, urban woods, conservation lands, groomed ski places– wherever there was snow cover.  I renewed acquaintances with people I ran into who skate ski and bike race.  All of this felt novel, improvised, exhilarating, a little scary sometimes (it tested and stretched my skills) and really fun.

But for now that phase of active life is done.  I hope to hang onto some of the new habits– doing more regular carpooling and tooling around town on public transportation are good plans.  For sports, it’s time to turn to spring activities, which I love.  But it seemed fitting to note the passing of this extraordinary winter, in all its inconvenient and thrilling splendor.  I’ll miss you.  Except for the shoveling.

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Guest Post

Hygge vs The Winter Blues (Guest Post)

natalieh (she/her)4 Comments

Spoiler alert, hygge is winning 🙂

Like many folks, I often find February a very difficult month. As I’m writing this post it’s -25C in London, Ontario and we’ve about half a meter of cold, squeaky snow on the ground and it is definitely February.

Natalie inside, -25C outside

 

The thing is, this year, I feel great in February. Usually by now I’ve lost all motivation to do much of anything. The 2 weeks of vacation in December is far behind me and time with my kids in March seems very far away, but not this year. This year I decided to stack the deck for my fitness and my mental health by learning from some of the happiest people in the world who also happen to have a very long, dark winter, the Danish.

Last fall I read about Danish hygge, the practice of being cozy, warm and in good company as a strategy for being happy in winter. So I started with inviting people over to spin at our house on weekends that rode with me in the fall.

Randonneur Dave and I sweat while my beloved takes a photo.
Randonneur Dave and I sweat while my beloved takes a photo.

I made sure to bake yummy muffins and scones, because after that hard work I think food tastes even better. Plus I find spinning indoors really mentally demanding on my motivation, good company and food help a lot!

thug Kitchen's Blueberry Lavender Scones and Post Punk Kitchen's The Best Pumpkin Muffin

Thank you Sam for introducing me to Post Punk Kitchen’s The Best Pumpkin Muffins, they happen to be vegan AND the easiest and tastiest muffins ever, clearly THE BEST.

So here’s to great friends, food and fitness keeping the winter blues at bay!

 

aging · fitness · Guest Post · health · injury · training

Stretch or bust! (Guest post)

cdaigle

One other important thing I have learned working with personal trainers (see my post Rediscovering my Body: Personal Training) is the importance of stretching. I used to never stretch. Unless you count stretching for 30 seconds overall proper stretching. I used to go straight from doing nothing to exercise, and from exercise to shower. Heck, I am a busy girl and who has time for stretching, right?

Sometimes I feel like a Formula 1 but this is not because I feel high performance. Rather, I feel like I need a whole pit crew to keep me going and take care of my frailty (yes, Formula 1 cars are very fragile). I have a crew of massage therapist, chiropractor, and osteopath to keep the vehicle going and fix it when it needs it. But I have been forgetting the role of the driver in taking care of her vehicle. Stretching!!!

When I was a little girl, I used to really enjoy my grandparents’ yearly visits. Every summer, they came to stay with us for two weeks. For those two weeks, every morning I would do my exercises with my grandfather. He would turn on the TV to some American channel where women wearing leotards and their best smile would make us do various stretching and other light exercises for 30 minutes. Grandpa and I would do them together. Once we were done, grandma would bring us breakfast (an orange, a toast and a cheddar cheese sun for me) and we would watch The Price is Right.

My grandfather’s morning stretching routine was not only a vacation one. He did that every morning of his life. He was right. Stretching is good for you. Getting into a relaxed state and moving every limb gently, waking them up for the day to come is the best thing one could do for oneself. If one trains or engages in more strenuous physical activity more seriously than he did, daily stretching becomes an imperative as is the pre and post workout stretching.

For years I have disregarded stretching. I am very flexible. Who needs to stretch when one can touch their knees with their nose, right? Wrong. Or so my aching body has been telling me. When I picked up running again with my personal trainers in January, my right knee started bothering me again. I mentioned that to my massage therapist (pit crew member, see above) and she offered to work on my legs rather than my back. What she uncovered was a real mess, a situation which, as she said, has been building up for a long, long time. I suspect all the bike rides I have done over the years, ranging from 30 to 120 km, without stretching either before or after, are to blame. Also to blame are all the gym workouts, elliptical, stepper and other devices used without stretching whatsoever (or just a little, once in the shower). Other culprits: the jogging sessions wrapped up with mere walking, no stretching. All of that has generated issues for me that I could easily have avoided if I had stretched properly.

I have learned many things with my personal trainers. A very important thing I have learned is to start and end every workout with stretching. Dynamic stretching to start, static stretching to end. Just get those limbs ready for the effort, you will be better at it and then relax your muscles when you are done, you will feel better after it. In short: stretch or bust!

training

Geeky workouts

Sam B1 Comment

My love of sci-fi rarely makes it on to this blog. 

But as geeky fandom makes it way into the mainstream there are some funny sci fi/fitness interactions.

Here’s some examples:

  1. There’s the Firefly fan group at Spark people discussing how the Serenity crew stayed so fit when they spent so much time of the space ship, here.
  2. Geek Fitness describes his Working Out Like An Avenger fitness program.
  3. Then there’s the Dr. Who Workout, to do while watching marathon episodes of the show. See The “Doctor Who” Workout Is Harder Than It Sounds.
  4. Geek Into Shape has The Walking Dead WOD. Enjoy!
  5. The Ultimate Geek Workout has this suggested cool down:

    “For a cardio cool-down, awkwardly dance anytime a Daft Punk song comes on.

    To tighten your abs, repeatedly sit up in bed at night because some great Doctor Who fan fiction came to you in a dream. Also, aggressively laugh at every reference on The Big Bang Theory.

    Live long and perspire.”

  6. Some people have a specific character as their fitness inspiration. See The Slave Leia Body Challenge: Even geeks need to get into shape. We blogged about it here, Do you want to look like Slave Leia?.
  7. There’s also the Light Saber workout. “The workouts are a mix of martial arts, fencing and play acting — complete with costumes and lightsabers.” Run by the New York Jedi, of course. It’s not just in New York though. The video below is from a California Star Wars workout class for Jedis in training.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4dexq8Jnvw

Have I missed any?

Me, I like to keep my sci fi watching and exercise separate. I like physical activity best in the great outdoors (rowing, bike riding, cross country skiing).

But when I’m watching Red Dwarf/Stargate/Firefly/Dr Who/Torchwood/Eureka etc, I do like to foam roll tired muscles.

 

fitness · motivation

When do you work out?

Sam B5 Comments

My very strong preference is to work out early in the morning. Exercise first, write after.

But I’ve long been aware that it might not be optimal. If you have to choose between sleep and exercise, from a health point of view, sleep wins hands down. It’s not even a contest. (Note to self: blog about why this is so later.)

I’m an early riser by long habit though and once I’m up, I’m up. I sleep and wake up as if I have an on/off switch. And usually I’m in bed early and get enough sleep.

Just last night my partner stopped by our bed and noted he was going downstairs for while but first he’d sit and read and watch me fall asleep. “It’s not like it takes very long,” he said. And it’s true. I do use an alarm clock but often I wake before it goes off and I’m not a user/abuser of the snooze button. (His alarm, on the other hand, is set so that to turn it off you need to do math problems on the ‘challenging’ setting.) But I’m digressing.

My point is that I do my best workouts early in the day.

This isn’t good though when your races are in the evening. I know that you ought to train, some of the time at least, at the same time as you race. And very few races are held at 6 am.

In Australia it was worse because I didn’t have a car and I had to ride to the point where training was held, usually a good 20 km out of town. And I’m old enough to like coffee and a real breakfast before I leave the house. So to make 6 am training I set a 430 am alarm. It’s called Stupid O’Clock in my pull down alarm menu. The photo above is from one of those early morning rides, love watching the sun rise as I bike.

I’ve also trained in the evening. Not because I like to but it’s when things were scheduled. All of my running clinics were evening affairs, ditto track training at the velodrome, ditto masters swimming, ditto Aikido, now rowing. The only one of those that I can right to sleep after is swimming. Something about cold water and  warm jammies.

But now there’s research that says both times are wrong and that afternoon is best.

Why Afternoon May Be the Best Time to Exercise by Gretchen Reynolds:

“The heart, the liver, the brain — all are controlled by an endogenous circadian rhythm,” says Christopher Colwell, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles’s Brain Research Institute, who led a series of new experiments on how exercise affects the body’s internal clock. The studies were conducted in mice, but the findings suggest that exercise does affect our circadian rhythms, and the effect may be most beneficial if the exercise is undertaken midday.

I posted the Reynolds’ story to Facebook and a friend shared a link about chronobiology, a burgeoning research area. Timing is Everything: Modern life is 24-7, but there may be negative consequences to defying our body’s internal clock by Cynthia Macdonald.

While there may be 24 hours fitness centres in most cities, probably the majority of us should stay away from exercise after early evening.

Though there are outliers of course. After coming home from the Canadian Society for Women in Philosophy where I encountered for the first time the word “chrononormativity” I’ve been thinking about time and the judgements we make about those who keep unusual schedules. I’m also a parent of sleepy teenagers who struggle to make their internal clocks match the beat of adult, working life.

Sleep and schedules are often on my mind. Not sure if I’ll ever become an afternoon exerciser though.

Are there times of day that you like best for exercise? Any times you avoid?

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 · 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?

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.