Skinny

“I want to be skinny like you.”

I may be lean, fit, trim, healthy, maybe even thin, but I am NOT skinny.  In my brain, skinny is a negative word.  It’s a word used to describe skin-and-bones models, the kind who suffer from eating disorders.  Fashion magazines are laden with images of their protruding collar bones and knobby elbows.

In my brain, skinny is a word associated with illness.  My grandfather dying from cancer was skinny, his body devouring lean muscle tissue.  Skinny means malnourished.  Skinny is what you become after several rounds of chemotherapy, when your body can’t keep food down.

In my brain, skinny is the images of starving children in third world countries or from German concentration camps.  It’s not having the nutrition needed for growing healthy bodies, for proper brain function, for energy to swat the flies away from your face.

I am healthy.  I feed my body with quality nutrition-packed foods.  I limit foods that are full of empty calories (calories with little to no nutritional value) like refined sugar and high fructose corn syrup, but I don’t starve my body of the calories and nutrients it needs to function properly.  I exercise to increase my energy and strengthen my muscles, not to lose more weight.  

I don’t understand why so many women long to be skinny.  Skinny isn’t healthy.  It isn’t chic.  It isn’t stylish.  It isn't attractive.  It’s destructive.  If you want to be skinny, are you willing to abuse your body to get there, starving yourself of what your body needs to function properly and making yourself susceptible to disease?  I hope not.

Instead of wanting to be skinny, desire to have a healthier body.  Desire energy and vitality.  Strive for fitness.  Strive for a body you are comfortable riding around in, not one that’s afraid to even nibble a cookie.

Be Thankful For Your Body

Women are professionals at being critical.  I think it must be planted somewhere deep within our DNA maybe between the genes that giveus our mothering instinct and chocolate cravings.  Unfortunately that critical gene tends to turn us against ourselves.  That;s right men, even though you may be tired of the nagging about picking up your dirty socks and chewing with your mouth open, we as women are far, far more critical of ourselves than we are of others.  (I know.  Hard to believe, but trust me on this.)

And where are we more critical of oursleves than in the subject of our bodies?  I don't care how fit or buff you may be, if you are a woman, you probably find something to criticize when you look in the mirror. 

My butt is too big.

My butt is too small.

I look like Jaba the Hut.

I look like a bean pole.

And of course....everything in between.

I'm terribly guilty of it, too.  After all, it's there planted in my DNA.  But in the spirit of Thanksgiving and in an attempt to combat unhealthy body image, I challenge you to take some time to make a list of all the wonderful things about your body, a list of gratitude for all that's right with you.  Don't you dare put one thing on there that is remotely negative.  This exercise is about loving your body and appreciating all it does for you.

So here is my own personal list of things about my body for which I am thankful...

1. I am thankful for my five senses.  I am blessed to have eyes that see, ears that hear, a keen sense of smell, skin to feel, and a tongue to taste all of the delicious tastes in the world (especially chocolate cupcakes!).  Not everyone is so blessed.

2.  I am thankful for strong arms.  I can still lift my youngest child and carry her upstairs to bed should she fall asleep on the couch, or heavy boxes, or beat my insanely strong dog at tug-of-war.

3. I am thankful that my internal organs know what to do without me having to think about it.  Can you imagine if you had to consciously think about your heart beating or breathing or digesting.  There wouldn't be much time to think about anything else.

4. I'm thankful for my hips.  They are wider now than before I had children, but they have made a handy little seat for babies and toddlers. 

5. I'm thankful for legs that can run. I know that I have the ability to run should my life (or the life of one of my children) depended on it. 

6. I'm thankful for my feet, feet that can walk, and kick, and balance in tree pose, and all the other marvelous things that feet can do.

7. I'm thankful for my toes for my feet would be almost useless without them.  Plus they are handing for wiggling into cool summer grass, picking up dirty socks from the floor without bending over, and petting the dog while my hands are busy with holding a good book.

8. I'm thankful for my hands that are so incredibly intricate.  Hands are fascinating things.  I can type this blog entry, play the piano, tie a shoe, tickle my children, stir cookie dough, the list could go on forever.

9. I'm thankful that I can bend and squat and twist without pain.

10. I'm thankful that I can breathe deeply.  My mother was recently diagnosed with COPD.  She has trouble breathing at all and needs to carry an inhaler with her everywhere.  I'll take some extra deep breaths for her.

Pole Dancing For Fitness

A friend of mine recently posted this video on his Facebook page.  I believe his comment was, "Wow."

After watching the video that was exactly what I thought, too, though probably not for the same reason. 

Let's be perfectly honest, these women are BUFF.  The moves they perform require an incredible (and I mean INCREDIBLE) amount of upper body and core strength, serious flexibility and they do it all while wearing shoes that are anything but sensible.  I truly am in awe.

I'd never really thought much about what physical ability it must take to be a truly good pole dancer.  It's the kind of stuff usually left to the dank recesses of sleazy strip clubs.  That's not generally the place I go looking for athletes.  But these women are definitely athletes.

Thankfully for those of us not prone to the strip club scene, it seems that pole dancing is making it's way out of the hazy red light districts and into mainstream gyms and health clubs.  Pole dancing for fitness?  That's right.  Pole dancing as a fitness craze is gaining in popularity, and not just for nubile barely-legal women either, but for soccer moms and middle aged women, too.  They are heading to their local gyms (although not quite so scantily clad as the women in the above video) to get a good workout and maybe even feel a little sexy and sultry.

There are pole dancing fitness videos and instructors across the country.  Remeber KT Coates, the woman who made the bodybuilding championship finals just weeks after giving birth? Yup.  She's a pole dancing fitness instructor.  Pole dancing is one way she got rid of her pregnancy weight gain.

But wait!  Isn't this just a way to maintain the women as objects perspective that we women have fought so hard to conquer?  Women are not just sex objects to be ogled. 

There is one thing about pole dancing that you just can't deny.  Physically it is an awesome workout, building both strength and flexibility.  It's hard to deny that a pole could potentially get you in some pretty serious shape.  And just because you use a pole to help attain your fitness goals doesn't mean you have to flaunt your feminine wiles in high heels and a g-string. 

So what do you think?  Great workout opportunity or just another way sex creeps into every aspect of our culture?

Vanity Sizing and Lowering the Bar

Have you heard of this little thing called vanity sizing? Vanity sizing, or size inflation, is basically putting smaller numbers on bigger clothes. Over the years, standard clothing sizes have changed in order to make people feel better about the size they wear, and therefore feel better about themselves.

It’s really all about money. Clothing manufacturers realize that spending money is quite often an emotional decision. Women will spend more money for a smaller size, because it makes them feel thinner, prettier, more attractive, more acceptable. As American waistlines have gotten progressively larger, the sizes on women’s clothing labels have gotten progressively smaller.

For example, the famed symbol of beauty and feminine sexuality, Marilyn Monroe wore a size 14. Now before you go tooting your horn about large voluptuous women, you have to realize that Ms. Monroe wore a 1950s size 14. By today’s sizing, Marilyn would be squeezing into a size 8. While it’s true that she was much more curvy than today’s pencil-thin models, Marilyn Monroe was definitely no chunky cow.

Maybe vanity sizing is just one more symptom of how we’ve lowered the bar of acceptable. Slowly we’ve made overweight normal. 66% of American adults are overweight. 32% of American adults are obese. Those statistics should scream at you. It’s true that overweight IS normal if more than half of us walking around in this country fall into that category, but it certainly doesn’t have to be acceptable.

I’ve heard the cries from fat people on daytime talk shows. They want to be accepted for who they are. “We should love ourselves regardless of how we look.” “We focus too much on looks.”

It’s perfectly true. We do focus too much on looks. It’s NOT about what you look like. What’s important is what’s on the inside.

But shouldn’t those insides be healthy and strong and functioning properly to keep the you - the real you, that fabulous personality inside your body - living and functioning and well, being you?

It may not be about looks, but it should be about how healthy you are. Your health affects every other aspect of your life, your energy levels, your interpersonal relationships, how you are able to spend your free time, even how you spend your money. Are you spending your money on doctor visits and prescription medications, or are you spending it on fun vacations with your family and building memories with your loved ones? Are your closest relationships strained because of low self-esteem, or are you confident and comfortable with yourself? Do you struggle through each day tired and sluggish, or are you energized to tackle the next challenge that presents itself?

Just because you should be loving yourself just as you are, doesn’t mean you can’t be striving to make yourself better. Love yourself through the process. But don’t lower the bar just to make loving yourself easier.

Different Than Average

 Last night at almost 9 pm, Keith and I laced up our sneakers and headed out the door for a run. We live in the south and summer heat and humidity can be absolutely dreadful, so waiting until the sun goes down is just plain common sense, unless you enjoy dehydration or heat stroke. I admit I could get up early and run before the heat of the day closes in, but the truth is I’m just not a morning person. I’ve decided not to struggle against my nature, so I’m okay with that. Besides, running in the evening is just more peaceful. It’s quieter, except for singing frogs and locusts, and the moon adds nice ambience to our small town atmosphere.

Something hit me while I was concentrating on not tripping over the uneven spots in the side walk - and it wasn’t a bug either. It was the realization that there probably weren’t many people out at that time of night doing exercise of any sort. Heck, on a typical day, the average American doesn’t exercise at all. In fact only 16% of people in the United States participate in any type of sports or exercise activities. 16 PERCENT! That means if you’re out there working up a sweat at the gym, enjoying a morning run (or an evening run like me), participating in a yoga class, or power walking around the neighborhood, you are part of the elite. Doesn’t that feel good?

A wise friend of mine once told me, “If you want to be better than average, you have to be different than average.”

The average American is about 20 pounds overweight and watches more than 4 hours of television a day. While he or she is propped up there on the couch watching Seinfeld reruns, the average American is consuming about 300 containers of soda, 5 pounds of potato chips, and 20 gallons of ice cream each year. Are you sitting down? This next one is shocking. The average American spends $47,000 on prescription drugs each year.

I don’t want to be average.

I choose to limit the time I spend as a vegetable in front of the television. Instead, I choose to join the 16% of people who exercise on any given day. I choose to eat nutritious whole foods, while limiting the amount of soda, chips, ice cream and other junk foods that enter my body.

And because I choose these things I find myself in better health, in better physical shape, and quite probably feeling better about myself and my future than the average American. I’m just saying…