mental health

Evil Corporate Overlords

~ swithrowking ~ 1 Comment

After about ten years of hard work, I have managed to disentangle movement from my body size. I do not exercise to lose weight. I do not exercise because I hate my body or because I had cake last night. I exercise now because I want to be strong, flexible, and emotionally stable. I exercise because it makes me feel better in the moment and in the long run. I exercise because it helps me sleep at night, provides community, keeps my internal organs healthy, and makes aging a little easier.

It has been a slower and more difficult process, but I am also learning to love food and to resist eating based on “should.” This book, which I am working through with an extraordinary Registered Dietitian, has been a gift.

But I am a long way from loving myself. Not a day goes by that I don’t wish I were in a smaller body, that I don’t feel some measure of shame for the size of my gut, the hunch of my shoulders, the fold of fat behind my knees.

In 1959, Stunkard and McLaren-Hume reported on the failure of weight-reduction programs for the treatment of obesity. 1959. Since 1959, we have knowingly trapped fat people in cycles of dieting and weight gain. We have known this cycle compounds problems and creates lasting physiological and psychological harm. But golly day, there’s a lot of money to be made from the endeavor.

In an effort to reclaim my brain from body shame, I’m naming the unhelpful thoughts. They’re the Evil Corporate Overlords. The ones who made billions telling people like me that we were weak-willed and gluttonous. The ones who flooded magazines, television sets, billboards, and newspapers with images and words designed to make me believe that my body was wrong. As a young person, I didn’t have the tools to fight back. Hell, I’m not sure I had the tools two months ago.

But Evil Corporate Overlords are easy to identify, and pretty fun to say a big “fuck you” to. This is my top-of-the-head list. Feel free to add yours in the comments.

  • Slim-Fast
  • Weight Watchers, aka Invus (private equity)
  • SnackWells, formerly Nabisco
  • Jenny Craig, formerly Nestle now Nutrisystem
  • Atkins (it’s holding company has created billions in shareholder value!) and South Beach (Nutrisystem)
  • Nutrisystem, aka Kainos Capital (private equity)
  • Ozempic, aka Novo Nordisk (BlackRock is an investor!)
  • Wegovy, aka Novo Nordisk (see above)
  • Ro, initially started to make Viagra easier to sell to men
  • Oprah’s wheelbarrow of fat
  • Healthy Choice, aka ConAgra
  • Victoria’s Secret (but we know the secret now)
  • The Sport’s Illustrated Swimsuit edition and every magazine at the grocery check-out counter that let us know it held the secret to losing ten pounds of belly fat, fast
  • Lean Cuisine, aka Nestle
  • Special K, the K is for Kellogg’s
  • Curves, owned at one point by the same private equity firm that owned Jenny Craig. Hungry women can’t build muscle.

best year ever

~ swithrowking ~ Leave a comment

Today was my last workout of 2018 with my Eugene CrossFit family. I’ll be so sad to miss the next couple weeks of workouts, but will try to keep up some semblance of a routine while I’m on the road. I’m really bad at burpees. I might do a lot of them, to try to get better. We’ll see.

It’s been a very hard year in many ways.

But for my mental and physical fitness, for my feeling of accomplishment, for the realization that I can do very hard things in the very hard years, this has been the best year ever.

So many friends have encouraged me over the years, and I appreciate them softening the ground for this year of incredible discovery. Running Roxborough hills with Kasey, tabata at the YMCA with Beth, lightpole runs with Dorrie and Deirdre, trail running in the Wissahickon…all of these experiences showed me that I could decide to do something a little out of reach, work for it, and do it.

I never expected to love Eugene CrossFit. I never expected going there to be the highlight of my day. And yet, that’s what it’s become: home, a place where I surprise myself, a place I always leave feeling better than when I arrived. It’s only December and there’s a lot of winter left to go, but I’ve found a thing that helps keep the hound of depression at bay.  I love the calluses on my hands, the ache in my shoulders, the salt on my skin. I love that I can run faster than I could earlier this year (a little), that I can jump higher (a little), and that the assault bike doesn’t scare me anymore (at all). I can pick up heavy things, and carry them. I can scale a workout, but I won’t cut corners, and my brain will always always always be clearer when the clock stops.

This has been a hard year, next year may be harder, and I’m so grateful for this little haven where I don’t have to be in charge, strategize, or worry about much, where I can just show up, do my best, and have a hell of a lot of fun along the way.

crossfit

~ swithrowking ~ 5 Comments

I was going to wait for my one-year anniversary to write this little confessional, but something happened that made me want to get it out earlier.

Late last September, I started CrossFit.

[I now grant you three minutes to make all the evangelical vegan CrossFitter combination jokes you can make, I realize the temptation to resist will be too great].

I’ve got a lifelong history of starting ambitious workout programs and quitting within a few weeks. I donated to Planet Fitness for two years and only darkened the gym door four times (once to sign up, twice to work out, once to cancel my membership). That is just the latest of a long list of examples. Signing up for races and training to run them kept me active when I lived near the amazing Wissahickon park in Philadelphia, but moving to Eugene put me too far from the nearest trails for a daily routine.

I’d heard people talk about “drinking the CrossFit kool-aid,” but knew nothing about it. As I researched gyms in Eugene, I was increasingly drawn to the website of Eugene CrossFit. The video and photos on the website showed people of all ages, shapes, and sizes. The workouts looked varied. And I liked the idea of trying something new.

So I went for an introductory workout with the owner, this super peppy dude named Jeremy. A women named Becky was there for the intro, too. She was wearing a t-shirt that said, “Be kind to animals or I’ll kill you,” so we were destined to be pals. Also, she’s the best vegan baker on the planet. It was one of many signs that this was the place for me.

The workout was fun and I was a little sore the next day. OK. A lot sore. It felt good. Despite feeling nervous about making an 18-month commitment after one date, I signed up for a two-class-a-week membership. When I was a kid and wanted piano lessons, my parents made me practice for months on my own before they agreed to pay a teacher. Turns out, they know me pretty well. I took the same approach here. For the first month, I took two classes a week. The next month or so, I bumped it up to three. And then, unlimited.

In first five months of 2018, I worked out 121 times. 121. Most weekday afternoons, I shut my laptop lid, change my clothes, and go spend the best hour or two of my day at Eugene CrossFit.

Let me now enumerate a few of the things I love deeply about this place:

  1. I show up and do what I’m told and it’s always something a little new. Even if I’ve done the moves before, I’m working toward a higher jump, a heavier weight, a faster time. I’m competing against myself, my brain, my doubts and I’m kicking my own ass.
  2. The people. Being anonymous doesn’t work for me. When I don’t show up to Eugene CrossFit, someone notices. My neighbors go to different classes and it’s fun to stand out on the street and commiserate about whatever crazy hard thing happened that day. The people in my classes are kind, supportive, funny, strong, inspiring, and so much more. I love the people.
  3. The coaches. Oh my gosh, the coaches. They see us as individuals, and they respond to our particularities. Workouts can be scaled or modified, no problem. If my form is off, they take the time to help me figure out what’s wrong and fix it. They push and encourage me without shaming, and they are as happy about my accomplishments as I am.

Speaking of my form…I am so bad at so many things. Like, really bad. My shoulders are all locked up from years at a laptop. My knees are old and rickety. My burpees are slow. I’m usually good at things I try, perhaps because it has been my MO to try things within a limited range. But in this case, there are a lot of things that I simply can’t do.

AND THAT’S OKAY.

I am bad at these things now, but I am getting better. In the meantime, don’t hate myself for not being able to do what other people can do, or what I want to be able to do. I actually understand and accept that it will take time to improve, and that improvement won’t come magically, but through consistency and hard work. It’s incredibly satisfying.

And it’s not just physical. I mean, it’s physically taxing and I kind of want to die sometimes, but I’ve been surprised at how much of the experience is mental discipline. Almost every time I lift more weight than I’ve ever lifted before, it’s because I look at the bar and tell myself, “Pick it up, don’t stop lifting, you can do this.” Sometimes I get halfway through a workout and think there’s no way I can continue, but then, you know, I do. I finish. I get stronger. My form gets better. I get a tiny bit faster.

And I come back the next day.

Fair warning: I’ll be writing more about my newfound passion. I can’t help it. It’s too amazing to keep to myself anymore.

 

how sarah’s brain works (or…doesn’t)

~ swithrowking ~ Leave a comment
  1. I wonder why I haven’t heard back from my professor yet about my book?
  2. Come on, Sarah, it’s only been, like, two hours. Give him time to get through traffic and get home, for crying out loud.
  3. Duh, of course. I’m being unreasonable.
  4. [a day passes]
  5. OK, but I would have expected, like, a text or something by now indicating something that he liked or, like, marking the number of times that he’s already cried. Maybe I’m too much of a Debbie downer? Maybe I was even snarkier and more obnoxious than I remember and it makes reading painful?
  6. Sarah, it’s fine. He told you once he’s a slow reader, remember? Plus, dude’s on sabbatical, has family that he enjoys spending time with, and a life. Plus, it was a really nice weekend. The world doesn’t revolve around you!
  7. (sigh) You’re right, you’re right, I know you’re right.
  8. [two days pass]
  9. Shit. Shit. Shit.
  10. What now? For crying out loud. Get it together.
  11. It’s just that…he’s clearly discovered that I’m an impostor and he’s trying to find the nicest way to tell me that I am fundamentally incapable of doing theology.
  12. I don’t think so, he seems to genuinely think you’re smart.
  13. No, for real. You wrote a lot, and it’s only been three days.
  14. Three and a half. Almost four. And he said he was going to read it right away.
  15. Seriously, get a grip, Sarah. He’s got other things to do.
  16. Maybe I should email him? Joke about whether or not he regrets agreeing to grant me a degree?
  17. Oh, please don’t. No one likes the smell of a desperate approval-seeker.
  18. (sniff) Is that what that is? I thought it was just my new deodorant…Do you think this is weirdly passive aggressive, or charmingly vulnerable and honest?
  19. It’s hard to tell. I give up.
  20. No, wait! I didn’t mean to make you mad! Come back!