I did 30 minor-ups at work on Monday. I feel like i am swaying from
side to side way too much. There isn’t really enough room at my
workstation, but i had hoped to do some while were were slow. After 30 i
was starting to feel the burn.
I wasn’t sore on Tuesday, but i was ill, so i didn't get artound to truing them again.
On
Wednesday i never had a chance to do more that 6-7 before i was
interrupted. I did about 15-20 all together, trying to sway less, but i
didn’t really feel like i was getting anywhere. I’m not sure that this
is helping my running form at all. /: I may rethink this goal, going
to look at my barefoot running book for some pointers.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Seventeen and body image
Around the time i was hitting puberty i remember thinking that Seventeen magazine was trash. My mom and things i was reading (Brio, probably) told me that Seventeen was about dressing inappropriately, dating inappropriately, and unhealthy body image. I've been wondering for over half my life if Seventeen, Cosmo, and every other beauty/fashion magazine out there is responsible for women having low self esteem, low body image, and the trend towards dressing inappropriately. I've been wondering the past few years if magazines such as Prevention, Shape, Self, and Triathlete contribute towards those same issues.
Then a little over a week ago i turned on the radio. It was a Sunday, which meant that my usual talk/news programs had been replaced by a sermon. I have no idea who the minster was, and truth be told i only listened to him for a minute or two, but he did made me think. He was teaching from Genesis, about original sin, and suddenly the issue was clarified for me. Before anyone had eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, no one cared about what their body looked like:
But this changed after only a couple of verses:
So the first time anyone realized that their body needed to be hidden was after they had sinned and as a result of their sin. Small children don't think twice about showing their nakedness, and some might argue that adults shouldn't worry about it either. How much of our understanding and beliefs about modesty are constructed by society, rather than by the Bible? I mean, where in the Bible does it say "Thou shalt not go without a bra"? It's something i'd like to do some research about, what the Bible actually says on the subject, through which "author" (Moses, Paul, etc.), and what Jesus himself said.
But what all of these magazines are based off of is the societal and psychological belief that thin=sexy. I happen to disagree. Whenever i see supposed Before & After photos i usually think that the Before looks better or the After is too extreme. Peter Jackson looks weird thin, sickly and less happy. Can anyone imagine Queen Latifah thin?!? Does anyone think that the crew of Star Trek TNG looked better in the first season than in the seventh?
The point is balance, certainly. Our current collective ideal image is skewed towards an unhealthy and (to some) unobtainable model. Some might point at magazines, the entertainment industry, the fashion industry, Barbie, the list could go on, but it all stems from fears that were triggered in the Garden of Eden. These are beliefs that we aren't born with, but we do develop them as influenced by our upbringing from a relatively young age. These beliefs start out being factual and external but gradually become personal and felt deeply. I started feeling physically insufficient in second and third grade when social pressures and peers started telling me that i was fat. I wasn't fat, not by a long shot, but my residual self-image, influenced by external biases, screamed at me that i was.
I have basically been wanting or trying to lose weight ever since. That's twenty years of beating myself up because my body didn't fit a very narrow "ideal." About half of my life i have been struggling with that ideal, between wanting to fit into it and knowing that i personally don't even agree with that ideal. I don't want to be thin. I want to be athletic, certainly, but i fully believe that a woman is mean to have curves and needs to have curves for her body to be healthy. For a long time i have felt like an athletic person trapped inside a fat person's body, but i have suddenly become aware that my old residual self-image has changed.
I'm not sure when it happened, but now i just feel like a fat person who is not ashamed of being a fat person. I would like to lose some weight, but i never, ever want to be thin. Being plus-sized is who i am, is effectually part of who i was before i even became plus-sized. I'm not saying that i set out to gain weight (in fact, my goals were the complete opposite), but i no longer see my weight as something negative. I would rather be happy and enjoy my life and be plus sized than beat myself up and go to unhealthy lengths to become thin.
Do you see where my brain took that? I think of becoming or being thin as unhealthy. Dieting, overexercise, fasting, purging (from either end of one's body), it is all extremes that i am unwilling to go to. The times when i lost the most weight were times when i was eating whatever i wanted (anything in sight, really, because i was constantly hungry) but i was exercising my butt off (literally). I love to exercise, but i know that there are unhealthy extremes that should be avoided.
Body image has become tied up with an us vs. them mentality, this idea that one must be thin to be desirable. When i look at super thin girls in skinny jeans i feel nauseous. Some people come by that figure naturally. I wonder if they are sickened by my appearance. I wonder if they think they are fat when in reality they are anything but underweight. What average is seems less clear than what the extremes are. Is it my weight that sets me outside socially, or is it something else?
So i can't imagine being thin. I can't even imagine being thinner, really. The only reason it really matters to me is that i want to be a better triathlete. I do have some competitive nature even if my main goals are to have fun and be healthy. With my current job, any time i work a nine hour shift i cannot imagine going somewhere to work out. I would love to have that energy, but the pain in my body wins out. I recently realized that if i really meant to compete in this year's Highline Hustle then i should have started training in March (if not earlier), that April was too late. And lately i've even considered going to the Dark Side.
Someone told me about Peak 8. Simply put it's interval training to an extreme, no endurance expected, trying to get the most benefit out of the shortest amount of effort. I'm not saying that it doesn't take effort, i'm saying it's not paced, it's not what i need to complete a triathlon. Well, it might help me lose weight, but it won't prepare me for exercising for long periods of time.
And then i read about eating a raw diet. Personally, i have always liked my meat rare (except fish, actually, which i prefer to be a little more well done, but of course not burnt). I enjoy eating a lot of vegetables and fruits, i just don't feel like i have the time/energy/money to prepare them. When i was triathlon training before i was spending a lot of money on salmon, organic food, etc. I was eating way more raw compared to my diet now, but i'm not sure if the difference in how i felt then can be attributed solely to diet. I do think that i need to stop drinking sodas, but that is more of a concern about sugar than caffeine. I think i need to cut a lot of sugar and salt out of my diet and stop eating fast food (or out at all, really). I am prepared to start eating more organic fruits and vegetables but i am not prepared to cut all meat out of my diet.
My goal...i don't care about losing a hundred pounds anymore. I want to eat healthier. I want to exercise more. I want to complete another Sprint and start working towards an Olympic. I think that i need to start exercising despite the pain and fatigue or i'm never going to ever start and my weight will get worse. I still don't want to ever break 300 pounds. So i guess to start out that i'm going to start working on my barefoot running technique, repair my bike (it currently has a flat and could possibly use a tune up), and look into swimming again.
Then a little over a week ago i turned on the radio. It was a Sunday, which meant that my usual talk/news programs had been replaced by a sermon. I have no idea who the minster was, and truth be told i only listened to him for a minute or two, but he did made me think. He was teaching from Genesis, about original sin, and suddenly the issue was clarified for me. Before anyone had eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, no one cared about what their body looked like:
Now the man and his wife were both naked, but they felt no shame. Genesis 2:25 (NLT)
But this changed after only a couple of verses:
The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it, too. At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves. Genesis 3:6-7 (NLT)
So the first time anyone realized that their body needed to be hidden was after they had sinned and as a result of their sin. Small children don't think twice about showing their nakedness, and some might argue that adults shouldn't worry about it either. How much of our understanding and beliefs about modesty are constructed by society, rather than by the Bible? I mean, where in the Bible does it say "Thou shalt not go without a bra"? It's something i'd like to do some research about, what the Bible actually says on the subject, through which "author" (Moses, Paul, etc.), and what Jesus himself said.
But what all of these magazines are based off of is the societal and psychological belief that thin=sexy. I happen to disagree. Whenever i see supposed Before & After photos i usually think that the Before looks better or the After is too extreme. Peter Jackson looks weird thin, sickly and less happy. Can anyone imagine Queen Latifah thin?!? Does anyone think that the crew of Star Trek TNG looked better in the first season than in the seventh?
The point is balance, certainly. Our current collective ideal image is skewed towards an unhealthy and (to some) unobtainable model. Some might point at magazines, the entertainment industry, the fashion industry, Barbie, the list could go on, but it all stems from fears that were triggered in the Garden of Eden. These are beliefs that we aren't born with, but we do develop them as influenced by our upbringing from a relatively young age. These beliefs start out being factual and external but gradually become personal and felt deeply. I started feeling physically insufficient in second and third grade when social pressures and peers started telling me that i was fat. I wasn't fat, not by a long shot, but my residual self-image, influenced by external biases, screamed at me that i was.
I have basically been wanting or trying to lose weight ever since. That's twenty years of beating myself up because my body didn't fit a very narrow "ideal." About half of my life i have been struggling with that ideal, between wanting to fit into it and knowing that i personally don't even agree with that ideal. I don't want to be thin. I want to be athletic, certainly, but i fully believe that a woman is mean to have curves and needs to have curves for her body to be healthy. For a long time i have felt like an athletic person trapped inside a fat person's body, but i have suddenly become aware that my old residual self-image has changed.
I'm not sure when it happened, but now i just feel like a fat person who is not ashamed of being a fat person. I would like to lose some weight, but i never, ever want to be thin. Being plus-sized is who i am, is effectually part of who i was before i even became plus-sized. I'm not saying that i set out to gain weight (in fact, my goals were the complete opposite), but i no longer see my weight as something negative. I would rather be happy and enjoy my life and be plus sized than beat myself up and go to unhealthy lengths to become thin.
Do you see where my brain took that? I think of becoming or being thin as unhealthy. Dieting, overexercise, fasting, purging (from either end of one's body), it is all extremes that i am unwilling to go to. The times when i lost the most weight were times when i was eating whatever i wanted (anything in sight, really, because i was constantly hungry) but i was exercising my butt off (literally). I love to exercise, but i know that there are unhealthy extremes that should be avoided.
Body image has become tied up with an us vs. them mentality, this idea that one must be thin to be desirable. When i look at super thin girls in skinny jeans i feel nauseous. Some people come by that figure naturally. I wonder if they are sickened by my appearance. I wonder if they think they are fat when in reality they are anything but underweight. What average is seems less clear than what the extremes are. Is it my weight that sets me outside socially, or is it something else?
So i can't imagine being thin. I can't even imagine being thinner, really. The only reason it really matters to me is that i want to be a better triathlete. I do have some competitive nature even if my main goals are to have fun and be healthy. With my current job, any time i work a nine hour shift i cannot imagine going somewhere to work out. I would love to have that energy, but the pain in my body wins out. I recently realized that if i really meant to compete in this year's Highline Hustle then i should have started training in March (if not earlier), that April was too late. And lately i've even considered going to the Dark Side.
Someone told me about Peak 8. Simply put it's interval training to an extreme, no endurance expected, trying to get the most benefit out of the shortest amount of effort. I'm not saying that it doesn't take effort, i'm saying it's not paced, it's not what i need to complete a triathlon. Well, it might help me lose weight, but it won't prepare me for exercising for long periods of time.
And then i read about eating a raw diet. Personally, i have always liked my meat rare (except fish, actually, which i prefer to be a little more well done, but of course not burnt). I enjoy eating a lot of vegetables and fruits, i just don't feel like i have the time/energy/money to prepare them. When i was triathlon training before i was spending a lot of money on salmon, organic food, etc. I was eating way more raw compared to my diet now, but i'm not sure if the difference in how i felt then can be attributed solely to diet. I do think that i need to stop drinking sodas, but that is more of a concern about sugar than caffeine. I think i need to cut a lot of sugar and salt out of my diet and stop eating fast food (or out at all, really). I am prepared to start eating more organic fruits and vegetables but i am not prepared to cut all meat out of my diet.
My goal...i don't care about losing a hundred pounds anymore. I want to eat healthier. I want to exercise more. I want to complete another Sprint and start working towards an Olympic. I think that i need to start exercising despite the pain and fatigue or i'm never going to ever start and my weight will get worse. I still don't want to ever break 300 pounds. So i guess to start out that i'm going to start working on my barefoot running technique, repair my bike (it currently has a flat and could possibly use a tune up), and look into swimming again.
Saturday, April 07, 2012
first run in vibrams
Yesterday was track practice for four of my six siblings and the family went along to watch and get a little exercise in. It was kinda windy. I strapped on my Sprints and went for my first run in them. I ran about 0.3 miles and walked about 0.9. I didn't have any pain while running (though it did feel a little different) , just some slight fatigue. Later last night, my family went swimming. Both of my calves took turns cramping but not severely. Today my legs were stiff and slightly sore from hip to toe. I think it was a good difficulty level as far as workouts go. I just hope that I'm recovered before my next shift on Monday.
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