My health philosophy, Part II
Sep. 13th, 2005 11:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarahmichiganAt first, my focus was on developing a more healthy relationship to food and stopping my appearance obsession in its tracks. Let me tell you that my body image and confidence now is 10 times better than it has been at any other time in my life, and I attribute it largely to stepping off the starvation/binge cycle and focusing on how my body FEELS, not on how it looks.
Later, I began to address my feelings and attitudes about exercise and staying active. For much of my childhood and teens, I was a fairly active person, but erratically so. I would veg for weeks at a time, and then walk miles all over the city with friends. I would bike for half an hour every day over the course of the summer, only to return to a sedentary lifestyle in the fall.
I never understood why people found exercise pleasurable or even got addicted to it, because I never exercised long enough, hard enough, or consistently enough to get that “rush” that runners and other athletes talk about sometimes. I was mainly exercising for fun but not thinking about it in terms of exercise (those multiple-mile midnight rambles) or I was exercising explicitly in the hopes of losing weight.
These days, my thoughts on staying active are much more influenced by the following two philosophies:
The Health at Every Size philosophy.
I’ll refer you back to an earlier post on this topic:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sarahmichigan/131360.html
One of my hugest pet peeves about health reporting and health-oriented magazines in this country is how much emphasis is placed on dieting, weight loss, and exercising to fit into your bikini. Health encompasses so much more than what you put in your mouth and how often you hit the gym.
For instance, the media is fixated on the so-called “Obesity Epidemic,” and yet pays much less attention to the fact that the majority of working adults in this country are not getting adequate sleep. Several studies have determined that a majority of adults are getting less than six hours of sleep a night. I read a story about a woman who was working a full-time day job and a part-time night job who only got five hours of sleep per night for years on end. She wondered why she was always so fatigued and sickly. Jesus Christ! Why aren’t the health gurus raising the alarm about the “Sleep Deprivation Epidemic”?
Having a healthy lifestyle also includes things such as:
-Having a social support network consisting of friends and family who can support you through rough times and who will cheer you along in your attempts to be physically and mentally healthy.
-Having a guiding life philosophy or religion. (I’m an atheist, but I still find comfort in my secular-humanist-tinged-with-Earth-worship worldview.)
-Getting adequate sleep.
-Learning effective and healthy ways to cope with stress.
-Keeping up with the latest health findings about nutrition, reproductive health, exercise, etc., but keeping in mind that the conventional wisdom on these issues often changes as new studies come out.
-Practicing safe sex.
-Getting psychological or chemical help for mental health issues.
The Spark as explained in the book The Spark: The Revolutionary New Plan to Get Fit and Lose Weight-10 Minutes at a Time
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743201566/qid=1126624701/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/104-0331429-1863935?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
There’s still a bit more emphasis on weight loss and food plans than I’d like, but a lot of the basic philosophy is quite sound. Gaesser, an exercise physiologist, is also a fan of the Health at Every Size philosophy, and he has written several articles backing the idea that you can be “Fat AND Fit.” He has conducted several studies that show a) that many measures of health, including blood pressure, heart rate, and blood sugar/insulin issues are positively influenced by exercise and good food choices regardless of weight loss and b) those measures of health are much worse in people who weight-cycle than in heavy people who maintain the same weight but get regular exercise.
Some of the ideas I picked up from this book were:
-Instead of focusing on *eliminating* “bad” foods, concentrate on *adding* nutrient-dense food to your diet. If you replace white bread and pasta with whole wheat bread and pasta, you’ll feel fuller after a meal. If you’re eating all the servings of fruit and veggies you’re supposed to according to the food pyramid, you won’t have as much room for over-processed “junk” food.
-Exercise is not out of anyone’s reach. If you cannot devote 45 min. to an hour of your time to going to the gym three times a week, you can still walk on your break at work for 10 minutes every day. You can still fit in 10 minutes of stretching on Saturday morning. You can still do 10 minutes of sit-ups and push-ups on Sunday night before you go to bed. I get two 10-minute breaks at work, one about 10:30 a.m. and another about 2:30 p.m. Pretty religiously, I walk at a brisk pace (just short of a jog) for five minutes on each of those breaks, followed by one or two minutes of stretching. That guarantees that I get a minimum of 50 minutes of exercise every week (though I almost always supplement this with longer walks and bike rides a few times a week, and, ideally, hitting the gym to get on the treadmill and lift weights 2-3 times a week).
Later, I began to address my feelings and attitudes about exercise and staying active. For much of my childhood and teens, I was a fairly active person, but erratically so. I would veg for weeks at a time, and then walk miles all over the city with friends. I would bike for half an hour every day over the course of the summer, only to return to a sedentary lifestyle in the fall.
I never understood why people found exercise pleasurable or even got addicted to it, because I never exercised long enough, hard enough, or consistently enough to get that “rush” that runners and other athletes talk about sometimes. I was mainly exercising for fun but not thinking about it in terms of exercise (those multiple-mile midnight rambles) or I was exercising explicitly in the hopes of losing weight.
These days, my thoughts on staying active are much more influenced by the following two philosophies:
The Health at Every Size philosophy.
I’ll refer you back to an earlier post on this topic:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sarahmichigan/131360.html
One of my hugest pet peeves about health reporting and health-oriented magazines in this country is how much emphasis is placed on dieting, weight loss, and exercising to fit into your bikini. Health encompasses so much more than what you put in your mouth and how often you hit the gym.
For instance, the media is fixated on the so-called “Obesity Epidemic,” and yet pays much less attention to the fact that the majority of working adults in this country are not getting adequate sleep. Several studies have determined that a majority of adults are getting less than six hours of sleep a night. I read a story about a woman who was working a full-time day job and a part-time night job who only got five hours of sleep per night for years on end. She wondered why she was always so fatigued and sickly. Jesus Christ! Why aren’t the health gurus raising the alarm about the “Sleep Deprivation Epidemic”?
Having a healthy lifestyle also includes things such as:
-Having a social support network consisting of friends and family who can support you through rough times and who will cheer you along in your attempts to be physically and mentally healthy.
-Having a guiding life philosophy or religion. (I’m an atheist, but I still find comfort in my secular-humanist-tinged-with-Earth-worship worldview.)
-Getting adequate sleep.
-Learning effective and healthy ways to cope with stress.
-Keeping up with the latest health findings about nutrition, reproductive health, exercise, etc., but keeping in mind that the conventional wisdom on these issues often changes as new studies come out.
-Practicing safe sex.
-Getting psychological or chemical help for mental health issues.
The Spark as explained in the book The Spark: The Revolutionary New Plan to Get Fit and Lose Weight-10 Minutes at a Time
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743201566/qid=1126624701/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/104-0331429-1863935?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
There’s still a bit more emphasis on weight loss and food plans than I’d like, but a lot of the basic philosophy is quite sound. Gaesser, an exercise physiologist, is also a fan of the Health at Every Size philosophy, and he has written several articles backing the idea that you can be “Fat AND Fit.” He has conducted several studies that show a) that many measures of health, including blood pressure, heart rate, and blood sugar/insulin issues are positively influenced by exercise and good food choices regardless of weight loss and b) those measures of health are much worse in people who weight-cycle than in heavy people who maintain the same weight but get regular exercise.
Some of the ideas I picked up from this book were:
-Instead of focusing on *eliminating* “bad” foods, concentrate on *adding* nutrient-dense food to your diet. If you replace white bread and pasta with whole wheat bread and pasta, you’ll feel fuller after a meal. If you’re eating all the servings of fruit and veggies you’re supposed to according to the food pyramid, you won’t have as much room for over-processed “junk” food.
-Exercise is not out of anyone’s reach. If you cannot devote 45 min. to an hour of your time to going to the gym three times a week, you can still walk on your break at work for 10 minutes every day. You can still fit in 10 minutes of stretching on Saturday morning. You can still do 10 minutes of sit-ups and push-ups on Sunday night before you go to bed. I get two 10-minute breaks at work, one about 10:30 a.m. and another about 2:30 p.m. Pretty religiously, I walk at a brisk pace (just short of a jog) for five minutes on each of those breaks, followed by one or two minutes of stretching. That guarantees that I get a minimum of 50 minutes of exercise every week (though I almost always supplement this with longer walks and bike rides a few times a week, and, ideally, hitting the gym to get on the treadmill and lift weights 2-3 times a week).
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 04:41 pm (UTC)