Exercise

Running Again


When I met my late husband I was running somewhere between 8 and 10 miles nearly every day. I was weight-lifting once or twice a week. I had joined a local Tae Kwon Do school because even though I had given up my training after earning my first degree black belt, for reasons that only make sense to me, I missed training. The school offered a kick-boxing fitness class that I hit about 3 times a week. I had also discovered deep water running, which I hope to start again soon here. Was I a fitness freak? Maybe some would see it that way. Some women like shoes. Some clothes or jewelry. Others find that changing their looks by altering hair color and style makes them most happy. I like being lean and strong. Will always told me that I didn’t have to be thin for him, but it wasn’t about him just as it isn’t about my husband, Rob, now. It is, and always has been, about me.

I started running in college. The university had this absurd idea that forcing its Liberal Arts undergrads to take P.E. classes would round us out as people and start us on the road to lifelong healthy habits. Then, as now, the idea that physical education does anything more than reinforce self-esteem issues is ridiculous. I didn’t mind the requirement. I had never disliked “gym class” really. Probably because I have always been a rather natural athlete.  I was never left standing unpicked and humiliated on the sidelines. I may not have had an overwhelming enthusiasm for every game I was required to participate in (dodge ball comes to mind), but I played and usually did quite well.

The jogging class, as it was called, was a quarter semester class like all the others. We would met on the green in front of the student union, and the instructor would give us his spiel of the day and then assign the laps and miles for the hour. I actually listened to most of what he had to say. I had tried running before but various problems from shin splints to sore feet to never being able to build up mileage had always dampened and then doomed my attempts. I learned quite a bit about shoes, stride, and training, but mostly I was just forced to run. Daily and far. After the class ended, I continued to run. It was difficult to do really. No one I knew ran. Truthfully, no one I knew exercised at all. All of my friends were of the genetically gifted class of short, thin and pretty. Although I lost weight when I went off to college, and continued to do so for most of my time there without much effort; I was tall, sturdy and plain. I admit that some of my motivation in the beginning was to be thin like everyone else I knew. As time went on though, I just grew to like it. The time spent in solitary pursuit of the next mile. Breeze blowing by. Tunes in my ear. Lost in my thoughts, daydreams mostly, but sometimes very good ideas or solutions to problems were worked through to a finished product. The best thing about running by far however was the freedom.

Most people regard aerobic exercise as punishment, and jogging or running certainly tops many a list of least favorites when it comes to getting in shape. Personally, I would rather grow to my sofa than participate in the types of alternatives that many of my peers prefer. Exercise classes of sheople dressed in Flashdance attire are akin to being put in a cage to me. Give me the open road, my walkman (now iPod), and a pleasant evening, and I was the happiest of women. The thing about running is that the motivation has to come from within. There is no one with a headset, plastic painted on smile and Stepford wife voice to shame you on. You have to push yourself. No one likes to push themselves, even when it has to be done, and most people reason that when it comes to exertion there is no such thing as “has to”.

After my daughter was born, I tried to get back into running. I missed me. I was okay with the weight I put on and would retain as a necessary part of pregnancy and nursing, but I missed the time with my thoughts and my music when no one could interrupt or impose. Those runs where more than “exercise”, they were a time to recharge and detoxify myself. I am not a loner, nor would I make a good hermit, but the time I spent with people, and the kinds of people I interacted with, wore on me. I needed to be free of my confining existence and when you can’t do that physically, the mind takes flight. Running gave my mind and soul their escape route.

I have been running again for maybe a month. I can run a mile and a half non-stop on a good asthma day. I try to run at least two miles all together and walk a few more. I know I will never run ten miles again and that’s okay. I have selfish desire to save my knees for my old age. I would like to run outdoors again though. Four miles maybe. Along a bike path on a sunny day. I wish I could put into words the true release and renewal that running for miles on end can be. It’s like breaking free of skin and bone and flying in certain respects. Running is soul food. And maybe that is an acquired taste.

Diet Coke


Diet Coke Products

Image via Wikipedia

Diet Coke has fallen victim to the latest faux health craze which is that of infusing beverages with supplements. I first noticed this latest “improvement” when I was shopping at Target a week or so ago. A mother and her two young teen daughters stood transfixed in front of the display. A favorite addiction of the semi-calorie conscious was now healthy as well as fat-free. Who could resist such a siren call? Target had cleverly set up the display with single serving bottles to promote sampling. After all just one 16 ounce bottle was not much of a commitment, was it?

 

I remember my first brush with Diet Coke. It was in the student union at Iowa in the fall of 1982. I was a freshman. Diet sodas, in my opinion, were to be devoutly shunned. They recalled forced dieting of days past when I had been systematically starved, weighed and shamed by a variety of the well-meaning from pediatric professionals to the plump next door neighbor whose lawn I mowed. She would bring me this foul tasting diet soda whose grape-fruity saccharin aftertaste could not be improved with any amount of ice.

 

My first encounter with Diet Coke left an equally foul aftertaste though not in my mouth. I had stopped to grab a croissant and a Coke between classes and the very skinny girl behind the counter asked me if I wouldn’t rather have a Diet Coke. Maybe it was her job to push this new product but I remember she practically glowed with the celestial light of the born again when she extolled the wonders of NutraSweet. If only I had been older and wiser, I would have recognized the Stepford glaze reflecting the fluorescent lighting for the demonic possession it was. Instead, I declined, a bit contemptuously, and told her I didn’t think I needed to drink diet. What was the point after all? In my own experience diet drinks were more an indicator of fat rather than a way to take fat off. But the look she gave me was nearly as scathing. Clearly she viewed me as being in need of a sugar intervention.

 

I drank regular Coke that day and for a few weeks longer. It was the subtle pressure of my thinner friends that eventually coerced a conversion out of me. So although I escaped university without “acquiring a taste” for beer or coffee, I graduated with a B.A. in English and a Diet Coke dependency.

 

Not quite twenty-five years later, I am Diet Coke free. The aspartame aftertaste is once again evident to my palate and even the occasional sip curls my tongue. I was amused by the vitamin additives in what is essentially a questionably chemical laden drink. The artificial sweetener is not good for a person’s system regardless of what the FDA might believe. They, after all, were under the leadership of Donald Rumsfeld when they granted the okay for aspartame in absence of any finished studies or research on its effectiveness. The sodium content alone is reason enough not to drink it anyway, but add to that the fact that recent studies have found a link between weight gain and the drinking of diet sodas and you have made a convincing argument for one to “just say no”.

 

It’s not easy to avoid the artificial when it comes to food and drink. When millions of chickens and thousands of pigs can consume what amounts to plastic in their feed and still be deemed safe for human consumption and when it costs more to purchase organic food products than its preservative-laden counterparts, what hope do we really have? I suppose we can settle for vitamin additives in our Diet Coke rather than demand clean water to drink but in the longer run are we better off for having done so?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18507734/site/newsweek/

Fat Girl Inside


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I was reading an interview with Lisa Delaney, the author of Former Fat Girl, today as I hunted down blogging ideas. The title of her book caught my eye because I too am a former fat girl and being such felt an immediate kinship. It may not be easy being green according to the song sung by a rather famous amphibian Muppet but his portly pink companion could have warbled an entire opera on the downside of being “pleasingingly plump”.

In the news this last week there have been many articles about a recent study that found, unsurprisingly, that diets do not work. There are no long term benefits for the vast majority of people who attempt to lose weight using the array of dieting methods that proliferate like e. coli on Canadian beef. Only a very small percentage of dieters will lose weight and keep it off for more than a year. The majority will gain it all back and then some. I didn’t need MSNBC to tell me this though. I know from firsthand experience. I was put on my first diet by a….I would like to say “well-meaning” pediatrician, but I think in retrospect he was a sexist pig. I was twelve and almost as tall as I am now and maybe about only about 10 lbs heavier. Which is to say, I wasn’t fat as much as in need of more exercise. I was pretty much at the weight my body has always gravitated towards regardless of my level of fitness. But in 1975 the baby boomers had yet no need of Lycra in their Levi’s and the clothing industry had not begun its vanity “re-sizing”, and I was shit outta luck. I didn’t lose much weight. 10 lbs maybe. Putting me curiously at about the weight I am now and which my mother, ironically, thinks is much too thin. At the time I wouldn’t have found the irony amusing even if I had known what irony was. I was the “fat girl” at school. The “unattractive sister/daughter” at home. I wore big clunky plastic framed glasses, and my mother commanded me to keep my hair as short as a boy’s because long hair “makes you look heavy”. I was forever being told that I had such a pretty face if only I would lose some weight. The backhanded compliment of choice for fat girls.

So I lost 10 lbs. My father was pleased. My mother “rewarded” me with a trip to the mall for new clothes (a dubious reward as I hated to shop for clothes) and my younger, thin as a stick sister got her nose bent out of shape when boys began to notice me. Older boys. I gained the weight back. And thus the pattern for the vicious circle of the next 15 years or so began to spin.

You see, you are always a fat girl inside. It doesn’t matter how much time has elapsed. The memories of taunting and name-calling. The dances you never got asked to. The horrible shopping experiences that would have reduced you to tears, if you were the kind who cried in front of people, and left your mother grim and tight-lipped. None of that ever goes away.

I started to lose weight when I went to college because I walked everywhere I went mainly and I was free of the meat and potato diet that my father’s preferences imposed on our family. At some point I started running and began to toy with weight lifting on and off. In my mid-twenties, I picked up martial arts and began to run in earnest despite the asthma that I was developing. By my thirties I exercised nearly every day of the week for a hour or two a day and recently, certain health conditions have compelled me to explore organic, meat-less and nearly dairy-free eating. I do all of this because I want to. Not to be thin. But. There is still a part of me that needs to check my weight often. That panics a little when clothes feel a bit snug. And that mentally shudders at the thought of gaining weight. Because you are always a fat girl inside. Always.