Exercise

Large Women need not Apply


For most of my life adult life I have weighed roughly 160lbs and have ranged from a 10 to a 12 in size depending on my level of fitness (which, of course, was far greater when I was single and could devote hours and hours a week to exercise). During a year long bout with gallbladder disease followed by food allergy issues, I was unable to eat much at all because of the pain and consequently I lost most of my muscle mass and dropped to an all time low (and I mean all time that includes my adolescence) of about 145. I was actually able to squeeze into a pair of size six capri’s. How scary is that for a woman nearly 5’ 10” tall? And though I freely admit to having loved being celebrity magazine skinny for the only time in my life, I was frustrated by my inability to eat much of anything and by my lack of physical strength which kept me from being very active. Having now identified most of my food triggers – a lengthy and nonsensical list – and taken up weight lifting again (about four months now), I am back up to my pre-illness weight and, dismayingly for me, size. A size twelve most comfortably in pants as I loathe form-fitting anything and a size ten in some other styles – notably my Lululemon gear. Like most women my age, especially if they have had children, my tummy muscles are not what they were and I don’t have the same ambition to tame them that I did before (or the time – who has two hours a day for exercise?). As long as I keep the tummy covered, I look really good for an older woman. But I know that I am not quite fit and it bugs the heck out of me. When did I get so effing vain?

 

Yesterday we were in the city to shop. We stopped at Earth’s General Store on Whyte Ave because Jordan had given us a gift certificate to the place as a wedding gift and as we are hurriedly arriving at our first anniversary (June 26th) we needed to get it used. The store is just a room upstairs from street level that has a peculiar odor that stops sort of foul and though it carries a few eco-friendly things (soaps of all kinds, cleaning products, toiletries, baby products and free market coffees) it is mostly a purveyor of over-priced, feel good about yourself without having to do much, tree-hugging, pseudo/wanna be activist stuff. We stocked up on laundry stuff mostly and then after another quick stop at Planet Organic for toaster pastries, we hit the MEC.

 

The Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) is really a place for the hardcore outdoor sports enthusiast to gear himself or herself up. It is also a Mecca for the dilettantes. I am not quite the former but not exactly the latter either. I needed a pair of hiking pants for our upcoming honeymoon trip to Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois. The kind that dry quickly and zip off at the knees if one gets overheated. Lots of over-sized pockets and such. While I was there, I also tried on a few pair of shorts and sports tops. One thing I noticed is that there were a plethora of small sizes. XS, S, and M/M. Larges and X-larges were non-exist or picked to the point that only the bright yellow or neon pink colors were left. And if you were a larger size? Shop somewhere else. Preferably a fat chick store and I say “chick” because the men who shop at MEC are allowed to be more than large but like so many places, women are confined to acceptably size limits.

 

I found this to be true of Lululemon too. The sizes stop at 12. Yes, you read that correctly. Women over the size of 12 must shop elsewhere (though I have noticed when I am there that plenty of my middle-aged sisters are willing to endure muffin top for the sake of the Lulu trademark on their back or bum). And I have gotten to wondering once again, why the insistence by clothing manufacturers and retailers to ignore the obvious? Most of us are not small. We are average (size 14 or 16 depending on your source of information) or larger. At the Lulu store, the 10’s and 12’s are always out. The larges (there are no XL women in Lulu’s world) are picked to the ugly colors and less aesthetic styles.

 

I find this annoying and, oddly, patronizing. At a 12 I am considered a plus size. Remember Anna Nicole in her Guess jeans days? A 12 and referred to as a gorgeous women – for a plus sized model. Huh? Last year I was a bony size eight. Bony. Seriously. Sure, I could slide with ease into just about any piece of clothing but it didn’t disguise my protruding collarbones and the fact that you could see my ribbed chest. And I was an eight. According to the test I took at the Self magazine sight, my “happy” weight is 157lbs. I am a bit over that, but the accepted weight range for my height is 127 – 171lbs. At 145 I was veering on dangerously thin and if you look at the fashion and celeb magazines there are women my height who are routinely about twenty pounds less than I weighed when I couldn’t eat. And that’s the key to being on the lower end of those oddly figured weight ranges. Not eating. You just can’t do that for long and of course that is why diets don’t won’t as well as changing food habits and exercising (although that isn’t as quick-fix or easy).

 

I have to admit that I am struggling with the return to my natural weight. I dislike the in between period of getting toned again. I don’t like feeling encased in my own body even when the reality is less about being buried in fat (which is what I feel like) and more about not being in shape with which I am most contented (and just as an aside – between pregnancy, childbirth, care giving and widowhood – it has been years since I reveled in my own body). At present, my weight training level is now about satisfactory but my cardio level has dropped because I am so effing board with circling an indoor track everyday. I long to run outdoors and I know I am strong enough now to do it again but the winter drags on and on.

 

Mostly though, I am tired of society and its sexist imposition on women via fashion. Although this is hardly the only way in which women are still oppressed in our world, it is one of the most effective ways of keeping us in our “place”. Despite my progress – I have no interest in make up, shun bras and aside from hi-lighting (I love being blonde) don’t fuss with my hair at all I am still a slave.

Perimenopause



I have never been a fan of my plumbing. From the day my mother handed me a little booklet with characters out of a John, Jean and Judy book explaining the “exciting and wondrous miracle puberty”, I pretty much knew that girls got more than their fair share of the short end of God’s stick. It starts with not being able to be an altar-boy and just goes down hill from there. I think I was in sixth grade. Not quite twelve. And big for my age. So, my mother assumed, incorrectly I might add, that it was time to bring me up to speed on the whole menstruating thing. As it turned out, I didn’t start having a regular cycle until the beginning of eighth grade and that my greatest source of information about getting my period was not my mother, who’d had a hysterectomy before I was even born and hadn’t ever had what one could call a “normal” cycle, or the charming pamphlet or even the 1960-ish filmstrip presentation the sisters at my school inflicted on all the girls when they reached a “certain age”. No, like most things to do with the nether regions of my body – I learned what I needed to know from my peers. A dubious source of information to be sure but one that has stood the test of generations of young people everywhere. That is to say – the near-blind leading the legally so.

Now that I have once again reacher “a certain age”, I am finding that my peers are once again the leading edge of information as I wander, sometimes willingly and sometimes resentfully, into the valley of the shadow of menopause. 

Ironically, it is my husband who has supplied me with much of my current information as he as been down this path, so to speak, before with his late wife. All manner of natural supplements have been suggested for my own good and his comfort. Black Cohosh and red clover for hot flashes, he thinks. The hot flashes are mainly a night time thing right now and only around that time of the month. Too much information? The change is like any other phase in a woman’s reproductive and sexual existence. When it is in season, it is fair game for conversation. That’s why preteens obsess about their breasts and when they will get their firs period and teens and twenty somethings can think and talk of little else but sex. It’s why married women suffer, loudly, about baby hungry and pregnant women will divulge the most intimate (and disgusting) information to anyone without even being asked for it. Labor and Delivery stories, breast-feeding adventures, and the big C of life – we are arguably more fascinated with our bodies than any man could ever be.

I am technically not menopausal. I know this because I was having issues last spring and my wonderful doctor did blood tests and had an ultra-sound done just to make sure that nothing more sinister was afoot (which caused a fair degree of worry for both Rob and I because we are now firmly in the camp of “it can happen to us” because it has). As it turned out I am just experiencing that long and winding down part of the reproductive years. From my reading, I know that it can take up to a decade to wind down to the point of actual menopause and that your best predictor for a time frame is the age at which your mother and grandmother stopped unwinding and ground to a halt. Being adopted, I don’t have that information. But, given that I was about 42ish when I first noticed things starting to change, then 52ish is a good guess. That’s eight years. Good God. That is a heck of a long time to wait for the demise of something I have never been all that fond of in the first place, and the list of symptoms that I am/could experience just bring up the short stick thing I mentioned earlier. One of the symptoms I noticed on the list was memory and concentration problems. Oh great. First it is PG brain, then mommy brain, followed by caregiver brain and then widow-brain. Top these last six years off with the hormonal (or lack thereof) induced thinking blips caused by peri and definitely menopause and by the time I am in my “right” mind again I will be too far gone in senior “moments” to notice.

Until recently, the whole aging thing hadn’t been a big deal to me. I look a tad younger than most of my peers – which I attribute to good genes and a near shunning of the sun when I was a teen and in my youngest adult years (fat girls don’t wear bathing suits). But, the white hair is getting harder to hide with just highlights and the physical things I once did without thinking need to be thought about it, and I am not sure that when you throw hormonal imbalance on top of this that I am as indifferent to getting old as I have been in the past. Rob is always talking about having this finite number of “good” old age years. As he sees it, one can still be okay – as in fit and healthy – enough to do as they would like during the 50’s and into the 60’s but that one gets maybe about 15 years max once you reach the top of the hill and round over. That is so depressing and what is worse is that I appear to be under the elder Boomer delusion that I will still be functional as a 70+ year old. Of course, perhaps I will. I read an article in the Globe yesterday about a couple of studies down with centenarians that determined it is not simply good genes that help people live into their 90’s and hit the 100 mark. Lifestyle is key as well and that they really can’t say when it is too late to improve one’s lifestyle. 

It is not easy. Undoing the damage of caregiving and the stresses of the last years. Going on six now since Will’s first troubling symptoms began. I have started Yoga and I find that if I ignore the Mahareshi side of it I enjoy it quite a bit. I walk. I even have Rob walking. I can run again but try not to overdo it as it is hard on my knees. I lift weights. Heavy ones. I am Zena. I am a near total vegan but I need to work on the fruit thing. I hate out of season fruit. It’s squishy during the winter. How can anyone think about putting squishy fruit in her mouth without gagging?

Perhaps I will do okay. 102 is a good age to shoot for, don’t you think. One can’t set too lofty a goal where living is concerned, in my opinion.

The Women’s Locker Room


I’m not modest. No shock or even mild surprise there, eh?  Even when I was a fat teenager and awkward co-ed living in the dorm, I didn’t have a problem with nudity. Not really. When Will and I were first living together he asked me out of the blue one day if I ever put clothes on when I was inside the house. He was teasing me but only just. I don’t know if Rob is as taken aback by my clothing optional ways once the wee one is tucked in for the night but given the fact that the neighbors once had to ask his late wife, Shelley, to talk to him about the possibility of adding a towel or robe to his early morning attire, I highly doubt it.

 

The one place where one would think that au naturel would not be a problem is the changing room at the gym or the swimming pool, and maybe it is just a Canadian thing, but I have never been so weirded out by women’s reactions to my changing into and out of my running clothes. I embarrassed some woman again today at the DCC fitness center. I was about half dressed after showering when she rounded the corner of the locker bay and seeing me topless, did a half retreat, stuffed her jacket hurriedly into the closest locker and fled. This isn’t the first time I have gotten strange looks for changing in a changing room either. It’s happened several times. Always with much younger women. Even at the town’s public pool, I noticed that everyone changed in little cubicles that were most impractical for mothers with children due to their size and configuration. I asked Rob about this one night when his friend Chris was visiting and they both assured me that Canadian men at least, have no such problem with locker room nudity and neither knew of any cultural precedent for what I had experienced. Rob did mention to me later though that Shelley hadn’t any problem either with using a changing room for its assigned purpose but both his daughters made mad dashes for any privacy they could find when having to change in a public locker room. 

 

So, maybe it is a generational thing? That would be ironic. A generation of young women whose clothing is by design quite revealing, and not always in a flattering way, harbors a latent prudish streak. I guess that makes sense really. The chief complaint my female high school students had about P.E. class, which incidentally was the main reason so many of them failed, was that they wouldn’t dress out for class. Not because they were worried about getting sweaty or didn’t want to participate in the activities but because if they changed their clothes, someone would see them naked. Other female someones. Who would judge them. Negatively. Never mind that these were girls in clothing so tight and in some cases scanty that what they looked like was not really a mystery to anyone with even a half a mind to speculate about it.

 

Still, just another thing about Canada that I find perplexing. That and the fact that I have yet to walk into a washroom stall and find that the toilet seat hasn’t been liberally sprayed.