Fit for Free

It’s been a whirlwind of a week. I’ve finalized plans to start a new job in July (!!), found out that my parents are moving to Colorado at the end of the summer, planned and co-taught a day-long songwriting workshop for GWN, flew to NC for my sister’s college graduation (Magna Cum Laude for Spanish—nice job, C!), and now, back to the grind.

Next weekend is yet another trip out of town (for a friend’s wedding), and the weekend after that is a surprise trip for Sonny’s birthday! I do want to get back into the swing of blogging, though—I have a purse full of food wrappers from various airports that I want to review, some exercise thoughts to reflect on (two years following my first trip to the podiatrist, I’m finally investing in orthotics so I can, hopefully, keep running for the forseeable future without foot pain!), and more . . .

I’ve been missing my daily pictorial food journals, because they helped me identify food groups that were lacking and patterns in my hunger/fullness, so I’d like to resume that (for at least a little while), too!

For now, I’ll leave you with a picture of my family from this weekend

Madeleine, me, Mom, Chloe, Dad

Hope you’ve had a great start to the week!

FUN!

On Tuesday, I went to a Foodbuzz party at David Burke Townhouse (thanks for the pics, Ashley!!):

I thought I was going to someone's apartment, not a restaurant

with Ashley and Ashley (and a lychee martini, the signature drink. It was to die for!)

The drink (plus half a glass of Proseco) was the extent of my free fare at this event; everything else involved seafood, meat, or eggs (but I have to compliment the presentation of the sliders, sushi, and flan-in-an-eggshell!) Please refer to Sarah, Ashley, Missy, Emily, and Diana for beautiful photos of the non-vegan goodies

The event was a lot of fun, but I learned one of life’s most basic lesson for the hundreth time: don’t drink on an empty stomach, no matter how free and delicious the drinks are! I arrived home fuzzy-headed and tummy-achy. Luckily Sonny’s homemade spicy veggie gumbo saved the day (I hope he’ll agree to share the recipe on here . . .)

Also to come:

• Review of the Newman’s Own Organics samples!
• Review of PureBars!
• Raw Wednesday recaps (2)

RUN!

On yet another note, my friend Jen and I went for an impromptu 3.5-mile run in Prospect Park last night. I was a little nervous (since I haven’t actually run over 3 miles without stopping since I did a 5K on December 31, 2007!!). Plus, Jen is an insane athlete (soccer scholarship to college, rode in the Tour de France last year!!). But we set a modest, steady pace (probably around 11-minute miles), chatted to pass the time, and I made it!!! What an awesome feeling. We agreed that we’d be perfect training partners for a 10K or half-marathon, if we ever decide to do one

The run was also particularly gratifying (and blog-appropriate) because it proves that I’ve been able to build up a fitness base since I quit the gym, solely by doing things that are fun for me (yoga, run/walks with Arthur, long walks with friends). I hope if I ever feel the pressure to join a gym again, I can look back on this post and remind myself that it’s NOT necessary!!!

COMPLIMENT SUBTEXT

SQ left a comment on my last post that I think warrants a public response:

Interesting about the difference in your reactions to comments on weight loss by the secure friends and the insecure friend. Were the comments similar in content/approach, or different? If they were similar, was it simply your knowledge that the insecure friend was looking at you with envy rather than an off-the-cuff appraisal that made you uncomfortable?

If the approaches to the compliments were different, that can make all the difference. But I am curious if it was unsaid subtext that made the difference in your reactions.

SQ, yes, the comments were similar in content and approach (“you look like you’ve lost weight; are you doing anything differently?”), but the insecure friend followed up her comment with a string of self-bashing comments (“ugh, I know exactly why I’ve gained so much weight, I’m not supposed to weigh this much, I just like eating too much, I used to run 10 miles every day, now I don’t do anything,” etc. etc.). Plus, she insisted on comparing the two of us (“yeah we might weigh around the same, but you’re more toned than I am, so you look smaller”).

I think it will help if I give you some background on this friend. She’s exactly my height but has a smaller build and has always naturally weighed less than me. We’ve been friends since we were in fifth grade, and for as long as I can remember, she’s always compared herself to me in a negative light (“Vani, you look great, but I need to lose weight, I’m so out of shape and disgusting, etc. etc.”). I remember one day being totally fed up and saying “______, even though this really doesn’t matter, you ARE much smaller than me, and it makes me uncomfortable when you say the opposite, because  it’s not true!” To prove my point, I stepped on the scale at her house and, lo and behold, I weighed around 20 lbs. more than her. She was shocked.

This friend’s body image is so distorted that she’s never been able to see that she looks great—and her “compliments” rope me into the dysmorphia! The subtext, even though I know she doesn’t mean it, is: “if I weighed as much as you I would think I was a whale, because even at 20 lbs. less I can’t stop complaining about how big I am.”

Maybe that isn’t really “subtext,” because it’s what I perceive as being “unsaid,” not what I think SHE’S actually trying to say (sorry about that sentence!). Any “subtext” on her end is just insecurity, plain and simple.

Fortunately, this friend is a wonderful and supportive person who means well—I just worry that she’ll never, ever be able to see herself as beautiful!

How do you navigate compliments with a negative subtext?

This weekend was so much fun!!!

I reconnected with a lot of old friends, spent lots of quality time walking on the beach (and swimming in the Gulf, of course), got the requisite sunburn, drank a little too much, danced a lot, ate many peanut-butter sandwiches, and really had an amazing time.

I have a lot to say, and I’m not really sure where to start, so I’m gonna bullet-point it:

• Worrying about how I felt in a bathing suit was totally unnecessary. The friends on this trip were people I’ve known since I was 10, and they know me for ME—now for how I look.
• A few of my friends are in awesome shape and have such a great attitude about food (particularly the friend that’s getting married, who’s a doctor). They eat enough, they’re energetic, they exercise, and they’re strong and healthy. I want to feel that way! I do sometimes. Just not all the time. My brain gets in the way . . .
• One of my friends has recently gained some weight and didn’t stop talking about it the entire trip. It made me uncomfortable. It made me want to banish body-insecurity from my vocabulary forever!
• A couple friends commented that I looked like I’d lost weight, and it didn’t make me uncomfortable at all. But when the above-mentioned insecure friend made a comment about it, I felt really uncomfortable. And I realized that I used to live with five girls like that. No wonder I had body issues in college!!!

Besides the fact that I had a lot of fun and reconnected with old friends, this trip was awesome because it reminded me of one of the biggest reasons I wanted to change my relationship w/ food and develop more of an appreciation for what my body does: I used to avoid fun experiences like this because I felt insecure. If this bachelorette party had happened six months ago, I’m not entirely sure that I would have gone. The idea of being so physically exposed would have made me really uncomfortable, and I would have been convinced that everyone was judging me. And I hope I never get to that point again!!!!

For now, I am going to keep the blog name as is, and, as some of you suggested, add a page that explains it a little bit. I really appreciate all the support on the last post—I find it hard to focus on one thing and it’s nice to know that I can put a little bit of everything on here

What has helped YOU overcome body insecurity?

A couple weeks ago, when I was hanging out with Sarah and Danielle, we passed a guy on the street handing out free one-day gym passes, and Sarah remarked, “you should take one for Fit for Free!” But I didn’t take one. I had absolutely no desire to. And it’s prompted a reevaluation of the blog.

I feel like a blog called “Fit for Free” should really have more of a focus on free/affordable activity! (Like this page on Melissa’s blog.) But I don’t think that free/affordable activity is really what I’m looking for anymore. The “guilt” from spending money on the gym but feeling like I wasn’t enjoying it or getting a good workout is only a small piece of the puzzle—a contributing factor to my unhappiness with my fitness level when I started the blog, but not the problem itself.

When I first started the blog in December, I envisioned a forum for sharing at-home workouts, and tracking my fitness progress after quitting the gym. I also thought I’d seek out free/cheap passes to gyms, yoga studios, and other fitness classes (like the Bikram yoga 30 days for $30 “challenge,” which I used to kick-start my gym-free life). But I haven’t taken advantage of such opportunities, even though they’ve certainly presented themselves (beyond that free gym pass on the street!)

Case in point: A couple months ago, I received a letter from my old gym with a survey asking “Why Did you Cancel Your Monthy Membership?” The “prize” for completing the survey was a free month-long pass. I filled out the survey and printed out the pass, but despite my best intentions, I didn’t go to the gym once that month. This was partially due to the fact that I’ve found fun (and free!) ways of staying active (every time I wrote “gym” on my calendar, my brain objected with: “I don’t want to waste my energy at a spinning class when I could be running around the park with Arthur!”*), and partially because a less welcome, nagging voice also kicked in (“you could go to a spinning class every day for the next month—then you’ll be in great shape for your trip to Florida in May!”**). After making/breaking quite a few gym dates, I realized that if I want to silence that voice, I need to stay away from the gym, at least for now.

Why? Because the gym isn’t fun for me, and because of this, it turns exercise into a chore rather than a joy, and brings back a lot of body-consciousness. If I’m not enjoying the exercise, then I have to ask myself why I’m going to the gym in the first place, and the only thing I can come up with is vanity.***

I know that joy and vanity aren’t the only two reasons that people exercise. When Brandi did her heart health series a few months ago, and talked about the health benefits of different types of exercise, something hit me: I don’t exercise for health, but so many people do. I exercise because I love the feeling of being active and strong. Exercise improves my mood and self-confidence tremendously. If I did exercise for health, then going to the gym wouldn’t feel like a chore.

The bottom line is: the past few months have taught me is that when I started the blog, it was to learn how to keep activity FUN, listen to my body, and learn how to trust it—not how to spend zero money on fitness. In other words, what I really wanted was to get in touch with my intuition. If my intuition told me to go to the gym, then I’d probably go to the gym, regardless of the fact that it’s not free.***

This blog has been unbelievably helpful to me in the past few months (almost entirely thanks to you!!!) and has brought me to a place where I feel calmer around food, and more confident in my ability to honor my hunger and maintain a good level of activity without forcing it. I’m on a path that I know I can stay on.

So here’s the question: Do you think I should keep my current blog name, or transition to a site more in line with my REAL goals—fitness, balance, and intuition?

____

*I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Arthur as a major motivating factor in staying gym-free. If it wasn’t for him, I might have re-joined the gym, or bought a monthly pass to a yoga studio, as soon as I felt myself falling out of shape. But now, I know that I don’t need to. I LOVE our outings together, and always look forward to them. For the past few weeks I’ve taken him for an hour-long run/walk in the evenings after work, and it’s improving my mood, endurance, and overall sense of well-being. I never have to force myself to get up and go the way I did with the gym.

**I’ll be in Florida on that trip for the next four days, and won’t have access to a computer, but look forward to resuming blogging when I return next week And I’m SO, SO glad that I didn’t force myself through a month at the gym during one of the nicest months of the year just so I’d feel better about myself in a bathing suit!!

***Coincidentally, the word that spell-check insists on replacing my name with.

Hangin' out with SQ in Cape Cod, August 2008

Status Quoman has had a big influence on me. She was my first close friend after I graduated college, one of the first people I spoke with openly about my struggle with food and exercise, and the person who first encouraged me to go to WW mtgs (as chronicled here). So it seems only fitting that she do the first Fit for Free guest post

I encourage you all to visit her blog, The Ongoing Saga of Status Quoman: A Feminist’s Quest to Achieve a Healthy Body—Without Compromise. She’s brilliant, witty, and candid about her successes, struggles, and everything in between.

Hammocking in 2007 (sorry about the hiked-up dress! yeeks!)

* * *

When I was 12 years old, I remember seeing a skinny girl I knew going
for a jog around the field at summer camp. I asked her why she was
running. She answered: “to get in shape.” At the time, this completely
baffled me; why would anyone put themselves through the annoyance of
running when they were already skinny, therefore “in shape”?

I’ve been thinking a lot about fitness lately, and not just because I
love reading Fit for Free (go Vani, go!). I’ve been thinking about
what it means to be fit, from a holistic standpoint – by that I mean
disconnecting the idea of healthiness from the preconceived
associations that I’ve lovingly cultivated over the past however many
years of my perpetually-dieting life. I didn’t realize till now that I
still cling, in unspoken ways, to that adolescent idea that skinny
equals in-shape, and that exercise is penance only for the
pudge-prone.

Case in point: The other day, I ventured onto the scale, and was
astounded to see the number that stared back at me. Over the course of
the last few months of chaos, between my lovely battle with mono and
moving and the saner moments of cooking healthy dinners and taking
occasional walks with my parents, my weight dropped to a point that
now stands only ten pounds above the amount I weighed when I was at
what I consider to be my fittest, which was 3 years ago.

I was surprised. 3 years ago, I was two, nearly three dress sizes
smaller than I am now. By a less quantitative measure, every time I
look in the mirror, I see very little change from the body I had
twenty pounds ago. I mean, obviously, there have been some changes
(why oh why must The Girls be the first to shrink when I’d so much
rather it go from my hips?!), but I’m certainly not the nearly-thin
person I was back then. The weight must have gone somewhere, but
clearly there was more to it three years ago than just weighing less.
Back then, I had a gym membership and worked out at least three times
a week, in addition to two sessions of yoga per week and following
Weight Watchers. I was also fitter in other ways: I reveled in jogging
along the Hudson River, I could dance for hours on end without getting
tired, had an unbelievable degree of flexibility and strength, and, on
another level, had the rest of life in order and was generally more
inclined to put maintenance into my body-machine to keep it in good
working order.

Whenever people at WW meetings comforted those who had gained weight
that week in spite of the fact that they’d exercised more than usual,
using the soothing balm of “it’s probably just muscle gain,” I don’t
think I ever really believed that deep down. It makes so much sense
now. I may have only been ten pounds lighter than I am now, but
clearly I had tons more muscle in me than I do now. I must have been
one muscular babe back then, and I didn’t even know it.

Thus the thoughts about holistic fitness. My definition of “healthy”
has been tied to the number on the scale for as long as I can
remember. Even though it has been clear all along intellectually, I
think it took this bit of personal evidence to prove to myself that
there’s ever so much more to health than something so clear-cut and
quantitative.  It’s given me new incentive to try to find ways of
gaining fitness, even as I gradually convalesce out of mono-induced
exhaustion. I scored a free pedometer recently, and have taken to
evening walks around the neighborhood with my cell phone, which
doubles as a chance to catch up with friends long missed and long
neglected. My talk with Vani the other night netted me 4.65 miles
(minus stops to chase frogs off the sidewalk), and two hours of
much-needed catch-up time. I know I’ll most likely never be a gym
bunny again, at least not in the near future. Right now it’s a matter
of finding more meaningful ways to gain strength, so it’s less a chore
and more a seamless part of a balanced, actively lived life.

This seems like a good first step towards migrating away from one
numeric gauge and towards a more qualitative, multifaceted perception
of what it means to be truly fit; from the desperate, unilateral wish
to be capital-S Skinny to the nuanced, ongoing journey towards
capital-H Healthy. And maybe a little capital-H Happy in there, too.

* * *

I love this post, but rather than comment on it, I want to hear what you have to say!

Also, if any of you would like to share your triumphs, tribulations, or anything else related to food, exercise, and health (mental and physical), feel free to submit guest post ideas! I’d love to hear your story