Feminist reflections on fitness, sport, and health
This year may not have gone as you hoped. Or maybe it went brilliantly.
Whether you suffered losses, didn’t meet goals, or had a year full of joy with friends and fun activities, I hope that 2026 is (even) better for you.
Just remember, no matter how you choose to celebrate the return of winter, you should do it in style.
I knew my 16-day trip to Egypt with 3 midlife friends would be a fun, budget-friendly adventure, but it also became a test of stamina and strength for me.
We had no tour big bus providing a comfy, air-conditioned bubble. Rather, our ambitious travel schedule took us through half the country, hauling our backpacks up modest hotel staircases and navigating every natural and human-made obstacle in our path. Although we had quiet evenings, including a few days by a rooftop pool, by day our bodies were moving in lots of ways.
In the desert near the Baharia Oasis we climbed up (then surfed down) sand dunes. In downtown Cairo, the honking cars, uneven pavement, and throngs of moving people in the street demanded constant physical manouvering. We toured ancient sites out in the hot sun, including Luxor’s Avenue of Sphinxes and Aswan’s Forgotten Obelisk. We also used steep ramps and narrow tunnels inside multiple tombs and pyramids, crouching under low ceilings carved over three and four thousand years ago!
As well, we hiked three silent, stunning canyons in the South Sinai region that shimmered white, red, and multi-coloured in the sunshine. The next day, after a caravan of camels and their handlers got us most of the way up Mt Sinai, we used 750 steep steps to get up to its peak.
Later, it was a relief to float face down in the salty water of the Red Sea over the most beautiful coral and schools of fish I have seen. We snorkelled twice: off the beach in Sharm El Sheik and off a glass-bottom boat in Hurghada. But even in and near the water, I had to be thinking about dehydration and sunburn.
Getting hurt could mean getting stuck. I nearly did a few times, once when I mildly rolled an ankle in the Coloured Canyon and when I jammed a finger on a tomb doorway at the Saqqara necropolis. But it felt good to keep moving. At least twice we saw a tourist who seemed unprepared or was having great difficulty getting through the tomb shafts.
We covered thousands of steps per day, even on our 2- to 7-hour travel days. At the last minute I decided to leave my fitness tracker at home, and I’m glad I did. It helped me to make sense of how I was feeling in my body rather than by stats on a screen.
And my body did feel many things, as I was under the weather for a good part of the trip: first menstrual cramps, a head cold that turned to cough, then mild heatstroke after the first time snorkeling, and finally a stomach bug. On my worst night, I laid awake shaking with chills, sipping tepid tablet-purified water, and waiting for dawn (or death, I had thought self-piteously).
But I survived. As a white, English-speaking tourist with a credit card and travel insurance on a holiday, I was never really in serious danger. I saw many Egyptians who may have been facing economic hardships and health risks I will never have to deal with as a middle-class Canadian.
Nevertheless, I am so grateful for my three travel buddies, who showed each other constant care throughout our journey. We divided snacks, each bought rounds of water, shared everything from tissues to electrolytes, and carried the mood for each other until someone sick (usually me) recovered.
Kim, who had planned the travel and booked the local guides and drivers, happily made last-minute arrangements to help me join later when an early morning tour of Isis Temple in Aswan wasn’t possible for me. This caring company was the heart of my trip.
I believe that our greater exertions paid off in greater fun. In exchange for living out of packs and in our sore, dust-covered bodies, we got to see and sleep in neat places, including under the desert stars, where we felt extremely lucky to be there, together and alive.
There’s a certain idea of midlife that says to slow down, be careful, rest more. This trip refused that. It demanded and invited all kinds of motion, reminding me how much the body can still do when it must. It turns out that I was strong enough for Egypt.
And by the end of the trip, I used nearly every pill I’d packed and every muscle I had. But getting over everything became part of my adventure story. I came home with a mildly sprained finger, hardwon but still overpriced souvenirs, and a feeling that my flawed and frustrating body could still bring me much, much joy.
My partner and I took our bicycles on a short holiday road trip across part of Ontario, Canada to visit family and friends. It wasn’t a cycling holiday, but it was a holiday that involved some cycling. Road trip cycling was a new experience for us recent owners of a road bike (me) and an e-bike (my partner). Among visits, dinners, and museum trips, we managed to get out 3 times in 6 days.
Road trip cycling gives you a new way to explore new places. On ours, the weather was beautiful and the locations were scenic. After a few times, we got bike and gear extraction and repacking with the SUB down to a science. But it wasn’t issue-free.
A relatively new road cyclist training with a club, I was excited to explore longer paths mapped by other cyclists using my Ride GPS app. But I mistakenly assumed I would be leading the rides. I didn’t recognize it right away, but it turns out my partner had their own ideas about which way and for how long we should ride, decisions made more by feeling and impulse.
Our differences of opinion led to some frustration. The GPS-marked paths I chose sometimes had some longer-than-comfortable gravel stretches or were busy with “walkers.” The random paths my partner chose led to dead ends or us dodging traffic to cross busy roads. One time we each doggedly took what we thought was the best route … and lost sight of each other (phone call, waiting). Another time we got different advice from hotel staff on how to best get our bikes out of the underground parking lot, so we each stubbornly took our own ways up topside.
When cycling alone or with a club, I have learned, there is generally a single and shared vision of the ride. When cycling casually with a partner in new places, the path, duration, and speed must all be negotiated. You’d think we could have just laugh it off at the time, but when one of us had felt really uncomfortable based on a choice the other had made it wasn’t always easy to find levity.
Next time I will still plan our rides with maps, but I will also try to go with the flow, communicate more, and keep upbeat when something unexpected happens. Maybe we agree to alternate who lead the rides. Maybe we each get one “turnaround” audible per ride if things feel bad for one of us. Holiday road trip cycling is not only enjoyable; it can also be an interesting test of a partnership!
Who leads when you ride casually with a partner, family member, or a friend? How do you negotiate differences?
Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah. Also belated Yule greetings and an early wish for a joyous Kwanzaa.
Whatever you celebrate (or not), may today be a peaceful one with minimal obligations, and shared time with family and/or friends if that is your wish.
If you feel like moving, a quick search will turn up many themed workouts from low-impact through to intense multi-day challenges. If the weather is right, a walk, ski, or bike ride might be more your style. Enjoy!
After you’re done, join me for a beverage of your choice. I think I’ll have a hot chocolate.
In case you were wondering, there is zero overlap between Dancing with Christine and Dancing with the Stars.
I mean, unless you count all the gold stars that I have hanging up in different places in my house. Technically, dancing in my kitchen is dancing with stars…or near stars.
ANYWAY!
I like dancing in my kitchen when I am cooking, baking, or just hanging out and here are a few of the songs that I have been flailing around to lately.
I’m offering them to you in case you feel like flailing around in your kitchen right now, too. Flailing in other rooms of the house is also highly recommended, I just tend to flail in the kitchen most often,
A few years ago, we came across JD McPherson’s Christmas album ‘Socks’ and I have been dancing around to it ever since.
The song All the Gifts I Need is linked below but consider also giving Socks and Ugly Sweater Blues a try. Or just dance to the whole album – you won’t regret it.
Brenda Lee’s Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree is an obvious choice but still a VERY fun one.
And again, I am not breaking any new ground here but All I Want for Christmas Is You gives me a ‘put bells on my sneakers because I’m a cheerleader in the Santa Claus parade’ feeling (even though the didn’t come out until I was several years past my cheerleading days.)
If you can’t stand Christmas music or if you don’t celebrate Christmas, don’t worry, I’ve got you covered!
Here are some totally non-holiday songs that I also like flailing around the kitchen to.
The second song in this list refers to a funeral and alcohol consumption, and the third one also refers to alcohol consumption. If these things are sensitive topics for you please take good care of yourself and avoid clicking the links.
Charming Disaster’s Baba Yaga is not only a fun song, it has all kinds of great folklore in it.
Great Big Sea’s The Night Pat Murphy Died may not sound like a good dance topic but my sisters and I have baffled many other dancers at weddings while flailing around to it.
And finally, Spirit of the West’s Home for a Rest will always get me into full-flail.
Do you already flail around to these songs? If not, give them a try and let me know what you think!
Also, please feel free to put your songs to flail along to in the comments.
Have fun out there!
I started writing this from my cottage property, where I hung out for a long weekend of mixed primitive and glamping with my buddy Melanie. The irony of writing on my phone about unplugging is not lost on me.
Though I call it a cottage property, it’s really just a plot of land with a clearing with a fire pit where we can pitch a couple of tents. It got a major upgrade a couple of years ago when Mel and I built and installed a thunder box (a primitive open-air version of an outhouse).
Mel, like me, loves to camp. But it’s also important to her to take time to just be together with other women, alone. Though she loves her hubby dearly and does lots of things with him, taking time away is invaluable. It’s the same for him – staying at home with the cats, indulging in all the baseball.
Mel came with a list of things she hoped to accomplish – clear a better trail to the thunder box, move the woodpile from one side of the clearing to the other, mark some walking trails.
What did I want from the weekend? To just “be”. Go for a swim if it got warm enough. Maybe break out the compass and see if I could identify the edges of the property.
For the most part, just “being” won out. Breakfast not eaten until it’s nearly lunch time. Remembering that if you just sit back and look at the stars, listen to the howling wolves/coyotes and the calls of loons, time has no meaning.
We did some serious contemplation of the impact of humans on the earth as our trail to the outhouse became clearer each time someone walked back there (no specific labour involved). And we thought a lot about the unpaid labour of millions of women who for centuries were responsible for collecting wood and water. It was hard work to replenish a modest woodpile without the aid of power tools.
In the end, we mostly celebrated just being together in a peaceful space with some goofiness,
delicious food cooked over the campfire,
and a swim.
We are already starting to plan next year’s trip, maybe timing it so we can watch the Perseid meteor shower. If we go a bit earlier in the year, maybe there will be more loons, too.
Diane Harper lives and swims in Ottawa.
I’ve written about this week before, the strange week between Christmas and New Year’s that we’re calling Betwixtmas now.
Mostly for me, it’s never been a thing. For me, for most of my life, the week between Christmas and New Year’s has been a regular working week. The people I grew up with held the kinds of jobs that didn’t go on hold. My parents were bakers and my friends’ parents were mechanics, nurses, transit workers, truck drivers, police officers, and so on. Only the school teachers and maybe some civil servants had the week off. Kids were off school but parents worked and somehow we all had to cope.
I didn’t know any university professors.
And my life for a long while also fell into the ‘working the week after Christmas’ pattern. As a student journalist that was the week of cheap hotels and the annual meeting of Canadian University Press. As a professor, it was the week of the American Philosophical Association’s Eastern Division meeting. I know lots of people hated the timing but I loved it. After a week off before Christmas with family, I confess I was ready for a week of seeing old friends and of Philosophy.
The APA has long since given up that less than family friendly date and now its new dates instead overlap with the start of the teaching term in Canada. Me, I’ve joined the rest of the working professionals for whom the week between Christmas and New Year is technically a holiday. I say ‘technically’ because I also have a long academic to do list–drafts of papers, referee reports, reviews of people going up for promotion for other universities, etc etc. If you’re an academic, you know the drill.
This year this week has seemed extra ‘betwixt and between’ because thanks to the pandemic, lots of things to do just aren’t happening. I like to see friends this week and we’re not doing very much of that. I had a long list of movies I wanted to see in the theatre but that isn’t happening either. I am reading fiction, catching up on some shows I’ve wanted to watch (Witcher!), eating lots of chocolates, wearing my new socks, and riding my bike lots.
Just 60 km left before I reach my year end goal of 5500 km!
Also, I definitely need to eat a vegetable!
(I like the suggestion of someone on our Facebook page that for the weeks around the holidays, clementines count as vegetables.)
How do you approach the week between Christmas and New Year’s? What’s on your plate this week?
Here’s my past post about this week:
I tried to make this into a sensible, all-encompassing post with a unified message.
It didn’t work.
So, here are three fitness/wellness/self-care things that are on my mind right now:
1) Being in the in-between
I am feeling no need to try to be productive or to try and accomplish anything this week but I don’t want to fall into the mindless blah of the in-between.
Writing my daily ‘Making Space’ posts and taking walks with Khalee are just enough to keep my days from being too aimless while still being pretty chill.
2) 12 Days of Yoga
This has proven to be more challenging than I thought it would be. I have done yoga everyday but sometimes I am doing the practice from memory rather than going along with the video.
It’s not that I don’t have time and I am physically able to do it. I just have had some unexpected things crop up and I’m surprised at how tricky it has been to work around them and get the video on at a time when I can do it.
That being said, though, I am finding a real difference in how my hips feel when I do the circular sort of movement that Adriene demonstrates to get into extended child’s pose.
3) Making Space -> Go Team
Since December 1, I have been doing a daily ‘Making Space’ post to remind us to make space for ourselves in our own lives.
On January 1, I’m going to switch over to ‘Go Team’ daily posts. Those posts will be about encouraging you to be kind to yourself as you adopt new habits and routines in the new year.
Obviously, you can start a new habit or routine at any point in the year. But, since lots of people enjoy using January 1 as a starting point, I’m going to gather up a big bag of encouragement and travel along with you, handing it out like snacks on a road trip.
And, as always, I’ll be awarding gold stars for your efforts.
Sooooo, what have you been up to since last Tuesday?
So, tomorrow is the 1st of December.
Whether you are just finishing up the end of the year or you are getting ready for the holidays you celebrate, you probably have some extra items on your to do list this month.
When you combine that with the ambient time pressure that December generates, you end up not only having more to do but you feel like you have way less time than you need to do it.
When that kind of pressure happens and something’s got to give, we usually sacrifice something personal like our fitness activities, our meditation, or any breaks we might take to look after ourselves.
I wonder if you can avoid that trap this year (or at least not get caught so firmly) by making some space for yourself in your own head…and hopefully in your own schedule.
Maybe you won’t have time for your usual fitness routine but perhaps you could make space for some stretches.
Perhaps there will be too many people around for you to meditate, perhaps you could take a short walk, or do some doodling, or anything else that will put you firmly in the moment, for a moment.
Or maybe you can even go the other way and instead of shortening your time for yourself, you can find a way to create space to add extra personal time to your schedule. Committing to some yoga first thing in the morning or some meditative colouring right before bed might help you feel more at ease during the rest of the day.
I know some of you are reading this and despairing that there is no way for you to keep up any sort of a routine and you definitely can’t add anything to your day.
If that’s how you are feeling, then I’d like you to create space by letting yourself off the hook. Try to avoid telling yourself what you *should* be doing or feeling this month and embrace the feeling of running around. Sometimes it’s the disconnect between what you think you should be doing and what you actually are doing that causes the most distress.
If you can say ‘December is utter madness and I am just rolling with it.’ things may go more smoothly.
Really, I just want you to be kind to yourself, whatever form that might take this month, or at any time.
Here’s your star for your efforts!
I’m a big fan of intuitive eating and try to practice it in my daily life. I have blogged about it often, making commitments and recommitments to it over the life of the blog. It’s an approach to eating, championed by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, originally in the book Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach, first published in 1995 and now in its fourth edition. They also have a great website that outlines the main principles of this approach and provides basic information about it through a blog, links to the books, and an active online community that people can join.
I had to smile when Sam sent me this “intuitive eater’s holiday bill of rights,” by Evelyn Tribole, self-described as “The Original Intuitive Eating Pro.” The festive season is upon us, and with it many holiday events with food, glorious food, as a focal point. I for one love the seasonal favourites, from sugar cookies to Christmas cakes jammed with dried fruits, nuts, and bursting with flavour. I love vegan cheese boards and special hors d’oeuvres that no one much takes the time to make at other times of year. And I’m a big fan of cozying up with a mug of hot cider made extra yummy with cinnamon and cloves.
Last year most of us had many fewer gatherings, if we gathered at all (I didn’t). So we have the added bonus this year of being in a COVID lull (I won’t say we’re on the other side of COVID quite yet because I don’t want to tempt the heavens) that enables us to gather with friends and family, not just in homes, but also at restaurants.
So…there will be food and people. And where these two come together, so do the mixed messages, the pronouncements from people about how “they really shouldn’t,” the pressure to eat this once-a-year thing that [insert rarely seen member of the family] made just for you because you’ve loved it since you were a kid, a table abundant with choice and more than you can possible comfortably eat, and maybe even food police who ask “should you be eating that?” It challenges even the most skilled intuitive eaters among us. The Bill of Rights will come in handy.
This, like all the items on the Bill of Rights, would seem to go without saying. After all, we are adults. And adults get to choose their food, their portions, and the speed with which they eat it. If I want to savour a thing, I savour it. That is the whole point of festive foods! To be enjoyed. Enjoy!
2. You have the right to enjoy second servings without an apology.
No worries there in my family. We are big on second servings at family dinners all year round and I’m thankful for that. As an intuitive eater, knowing that a second portion awaits if I want it translates into taking a moderate first portion that allows me to check in with how I’m feeling and making an informed decision about whether I want more and what I want more of.
3. You have the right to honor your fullness, even if that means saying “no thank you” to dessert or a second helping of food.
You know that feeling of having had enough (or too much) and not having room for dessert. When the food is as delicious as it is this time of year, that can happen. Sometimes we deal with this in my family by making a group decision to have dessert later, when we are likely to enjoy it more because we have space. But regardless of what others are doing, I know that’s always an option for me. And though it is sometimes are to put off for later what everyone else is enjoying right now, it is really hard to truly enjoy, savour, and taste something when I’m already at 9/10 or 10/10 or 11/10 on the “fullness scale.” I would rather disappoint a “food pusher” (thankfully I don’t have any in my immediate family or circle) than stuff myself beyond what is comfortable.
4. It is not your responsibility to make someone happy by overeating, even if it took hours to prepare a special holiday dish.
We are all adults here. Food is a lot of people’s “love language,” but that doesn’t mean we have to eat when we don’t feel like it.
5. You have the right to say “no thank you,” without an explanation, when offered more food.
I see a recurring theme here — “no thank you” is good enough. Indeed, given how many people explain their “no thank you” by food-shaming themselves or moralizing their decision or literally talking about their weight or their diet, I wish more people would say “no thank you” without an explanation.
6. You have the right to stick to your original answer of “no” even if you are asked multiple times. Just repeat “No, thank you, really.”
Really! Usually I meant it the first time and I do not appreciate being cajoled.
7. You have the right to eat pumpkin pie for breakfast.
Or whenever. Or whatever.
What I like about this is that it dispels some myths about intuitive eating, which is that if we release ourselves from the “diet mentality food rules” we will eat all the time, and always be reaching for desserts. That hasn’t been the case for me, and it’s not the way it goes for most people who find that intuitive eating works for them (it’s not for everyone, and Sam has blogged about some of its shortcomings). It’s as much about knowing when to say “no,” based on what you feel like eating and your own inner fullness meter, as it is about knowing when to say “yes,” also based on what you feel like eating and your own inner fullness meter.
Another issue that comes up for me during the holidays, also related to intuitive eating, is that eating isn’t an act of defiance. If I approach the holiday spread with an “I’ll show you!” attitude, I am once again being motivated by external forces rather than internal guidance. Chances are, I will eat more than I want and will not pay any attention to what I actually feel like doing. I may also shame others who are holding back, not respecting their decisions (again, when others get into the calorie/diet/food moralizing explanations for their own choices it’s hard, but I try not to engage).
Since embracing intuitive eating, I approach the holidays with confidence, eager anticipation, and sincere gratitude for the privilege of abundance in my life — not just food, but also friends and family and opportunities to gather. But that doesn’t mean some of these situations aren’t fraught. The Intuitive Eating Bill of Rights is a great set of principles for navigating some of that fraught-ness.
Enjoy the festivities!
