Answering questions: Can you be healthy but not fit?

I put some time into recent responses on Quora and figured I'd share them here, too, since I clearly need to work on writing more consistently.

Can you be healthy but not fit?

Yes, but we need to define our terms first.

Americans in the US typically use “fit” to describe physical fitness and athletic capability, whereas other English-speakers in the world may use it to describe people’s appearances and level of attractiveness. The juxtaposition of “healthy and fit” implies the former definition (physical/athletic ability).

“Healthy” has myriad definitions, but I assume the questioner means metabolic health, which includes measures of blood pressure, triglycerides, LDL-cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol, total cholesterol, fasting plasma glucose, etc.

There are, indeed, many people who test in the “normal” and “healthy” ranges on such metabolic measures but who do not exercise regularly and/or may have physical limitations or disabilities that limit fitness endeavors. Metabolic measures are frequently influenced by genetics, so that “health” is not entirely within our control. But those influences can result in good metabolic health or poor metabolic health independently of physical fitness, which takes action and training to achieve.

Physical fitness can influence metabolic health, as metabolic health can influence physical fitness. If a person has naturally high blood pressure, it might not be safe for them to undertake an intense exercise regimen in pursuit of physical fitness. However, researchers have found that “even low levels of physical activity have a beneficial effect on metabolic fitness and the overall health of the individual.” (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub...)

Many doctors erroneously mistake weight/BMI as a proxy for health. From the article “Weight Science: Evaluating the Evidence for a Paradigm Shift”:

• Yet using BMI as a proxy for health may be more costly than addressing health directly. Consider, for example, the findings of a study which examined the "healthy obese" and the "unhealthy normal weight" populations . The study identified six different risk factors for cardiometabolic health and included subjects in the "unhealthy" group if they had two or more risk factors, making it a more stringent threshold of health than that used in categorizing metabolic syndrome or diabetes. The study found a substantial proportion of the overweight and obese population, at every age, who were healthy and a substantial proportion of the "normal weight" group who were unhealthy.
• Psychologist Deb Burgard examined the costs of overlooking the normal weight people who need treatment and over-treating the obese people who do not. She found that BMI profiling overlooks 16.3 million "normal weight" individuals who are not healthy and identifies 55.4 million overweight and obese people who are not ill as being in need of treatment. When the total population is considered, this means that 31 percent of the population is mis-identified when BMI is used as a proxy for health.

So athleticism, metabolic health, and body size are all different variables, and while any one of them can influence another, none definitely determines or defines another. A person can be healthy and not fit. A person can be fit and have poor metabolic health. And a person can be either of these at any size or weight.

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Losing My Balance

I have run three times in the month that’s passed since finishing my December 10 marathon. I’ve done a bit of yoga and parkour as well and more walking than usual, but it’s still a marked difference from my previous activity level.

I believe strongly in choosing enjoyable movement to benefit your mind and body, not as punishment or a chore.

Yet I’ve been struggling not to struggle with anxiety regarding the change as it relates to generally recommended amounts of exercise, the amounts I’ve relied upon to manage my stress and mental health, and the amount of weight-bearing exercise I need to specifically counteract the detrimental effects my birth control has on my bones.

Race training was difficult and riddled with aches and pains, minor injuries, and illness. The race itself was pretty awful. I knew I would need a break from running for my emotional and mental health, but I wasn’t sure how I wanted to fill that hole to maintain my physical and mental health, or if I even wanted to fill it. I’d missed spending hours sitting and making arts and crafts, and I was so SO tired for so long.

I met my goal of finishing my first marathon, but the process of getting there wrecked the balance of exercise in my life.

I no longer want to train or race. I don’t want to keep hurting from the sheer volume of pounding the pavement. And I don’t know how to find joy in running again.

I’m letting my pool membership lapse because I hate having to drive to another city to swim laps at 5 AM in order to get a lane and get back before morning rush hour. I really want a membership for the rec center across the street from my house, but I cannot stand the idea of tolerating January-resolution crowds. I can and do use the fitness center at my office, but it has limited hours and I have to split the work day to get equipment and space to myself.

I enjoy yoga and weightlifting and walking and hiking, but will these be enough for my bones and my brain?

I have a strong interest in parkour and hip-hop dance classes, but the evening schedules are hard for me to attend, and I had to cancel last night's parkour lesson because of a migraine (which is likely to happen again).

I hadn't run in two weeks but woke today to a glorious 60-degree morning and laced up my sneakers to go hatch some Pokémon. I ran more today than I had the last two times I tried (both were shockingly challenging and painful and quickly turned into very long walks), and it felt really good. I don't think it necessarily marks a significant transition, but it is one good run, one good day. And that ain't nothin'.

I'm working hard to trust my brain and my body to do what they need to do for now.

And I'm meeting each day one at a time, adopting a bellydance teacher-friend's classroom rules as a personal mantra:

This body. This day.

A good day for a run. #runfie #fitfeminist #healthyliving #gottahatchemall #teamvalor #BAWG #feministselfie

A photo posted by Moniqa Aylin (@fierymon) on Jan 11, 2017 at 6:38am PST

June Journaling 10

I found a list of daily prompts for journaling in June and thought I'd give it a shot.

10. A new thing to try:

You know, I've been working here 4.5 years with an Ethiopian restaurant just down the street that I've been meaning to try. Maybe I should put it on my calendar and go try Ethiopian food.

I'm also trying to figure out how to get involved with Back on My Feet, a charity that uses running to empower people and help them find work and housing. The thing is that they run in the mornings and I would not have time to go home to shower before work, so I need a membership to the office fitness center, which I've wanted since it opened a year ago. I just need to fit it into my budget.

Let's Talk Truthfully About Trainers

The Daily Beast has a great article about important questions to ask when you are searching for a physical trainer. It's definitely worth a read:

... the health and fitness industry is rife with problems. The hype, the body-shaming, the obsession with weight and body-fat—these things stand as barriers to people actually adopting healthy habits that they can maintain throughout their lives. Even so, this is the industry we look to when we decide we want to learn about our bodies—how they work, and how to take care of them, and how we can use them to experience enjoyable, natural movement.

So, if you have a trainer, or you’re thinking about hiring a trainer or some other sort of health professional, you want to be in the best hands. I offer here a simple test: three questions to pose to your potential health guru, to weed out the bad ones. And believe me, there are bad ones out there.

1: Do I Need to Lose Weight?

No.

You don’t need to lose weight. If you’re an average American, you probably need to be more physically active, and you could probably tweak your diet in any number of ways. But your trainer should not be telling you that you need to lose weight.

The above sentiment may surprise, and even upset a lot of people. But the very fact that the idea of “not needing to lose weight” seems so radical is a testament to the brokenness of our health culture.

Despite our obsession with it, weight is a poor proxy for individuals’ health.

  

Here's the link to the rest of it.

Camp Gladiator: Mixed Bag

This morning was my 8th visit to Camp Gladiator and marked the beginning of metabolic conditioning week, where the workouts utilize the things we've worked on for the past 3 weeks and take it up a notch as far as difficulty/intensity. But where I floundered over the last 2 weeks, today was my favorite CG workout of all.

Camp Gladiator is kind of like a boot camp setup with challenging exercises but with a positive atmosphere. The trainers are very upbeat and encouraging, quick to offer suggestions for modifications and reminding you to try your best; they let you determine what your 100% effort feels like.

I signed up because of a spring promotion where I pay $10 up front and can attend unlimited sessions for 4 weeks. If I attend fewer than 10, I get charged more money, so it’s a great incentive.

Week 1 focused on endurance exercises and included a fitness test that I finished in the allotted time but was unable to complete the last 9 of 50 consecutive push-ups. We’ll test again this Wednesday. Week 2 focused on functionality, specifically core-strengthening exercises. We use yoga mats in a parking lot, and my back, knees, and elbows have been bruised to hell because of it. Week 3 was high-intensity interval training. As an endurance athlete, I can’t really do this stuff.

Week 4 started today, its focus being metabolic conditioning. We did 3 minutes of alternating hard exercises (dumbbell squats + curl, push-ups + row, dumbbell squats, dumbbell swings, and Russian twists with a dumbbell) followed by rest and then a quick seven-tenths-mile lap for three or four rotations.

I usually lag far behind the rest of the campers except those who are injured, but I freaking killed it today, pacing and passing a few back-of-the-pack runners on every lap after the warmup except for the final lap when I bonked, in need of fuel.

And actually on Saturday, my workout partner and I dominated one of the exercises where we take turns holding one another back with a resistance band while sprinting and finished ahead of everyone else, working just as hard. A lot of this can be attributed to flow; we figured out how to quickly switch holding and wearing the band on each rotation, but that doesn't detract from the accomplishment in any way.

It's been fun and surprising to find out how my strengths translate to CG workouts, because mostly they don't.

Flexible Training for Real Life

I set up a pretty intense training plan for myself leading up to the May 22 Olympic triathlon. I never follow training plans religiously, but I’ve been sticking pretty close and enjoying my workouts this year. I may go to bed at 8 PM most nights, but I still make social plans when I can, and I have a life outside my sport. So I plan for flexible adherence as well.

Saturday I was supposed to run 6 miles for the first week of Hal Higdon’s marathon training plan, but I had signed up to run the Dash Down Greenville 5k. I planned to run an extra 3 miles when I got home that afternoon, because it can still count even if you split up your miles across the day. But I walked a mile to the start, ran the thing, walked a mile back to my car, and walked an additional 6 and a half miles that afternoon and would not run any more that day. I was certainly active enough on my feet, and one day isn’t going to have a negative impact on my plan to run a marathon 9 MONTHS from now.

Sunday was busy with socializing but not physically demanding. That night I had an especially wicked migraine and went to bed before 7 PM without setting an alarm. I woke naturally at 4:45 Monday feeling surprisingly decent, so I jumped out of bed and went to Camp Gladiator. My performance felt a bit weak and slow, but I finished every task and felt okay about it.

I went to bed early Monday and set my 4:30 AM alarm but was really tired and slept instead of working out Tuesday morning. I often have trouble identifying the difference between actually needing a little more sleep some days for recovery and just wanting to stay in bed because of my depression. The migraine hangovers can last a few days, so I’m not going to fret about needing an additional rest day so soon.

I’m confident that I'll hit it hard tomorrow.

Beating one’s self up over a missed workout doesn’t accomplish anything and is more likely to lead to more missed workouts. Life happens. Let it go.

There’s always tomorrow.

Inspiration

Don't Drop Weights

This morning a man in the rec center dropped his dumbbells after every set, which, sadly, isn’t uncommon among men in weight rooms. Today was especially egregious, though. It’s a small space without padding, so he was dropping 60-pound dumbbells loudly on carpet-covered cement barely a yard from my head while I used the adjacent bench.

It’s a city rec center not a professional gym, it’s against the rules, it’s in your membership contract, the sign on the mirror right there says DON’T, and the equipment is already torn up enough with many dumbbells missing sizeable chunks of the rubber coating.

I sort of wanted to work up the nerve to say something next time, so I asked in a few fitness forums: “Do you ask men to fucking quit it when they're dropping weights? If so, how?”

Several people recommended simply asking the people who work there to take care of it, since that is part of their job.

It’s a small rec center and there aren’t employees actually IN the weight room to monitor these things, so I do have to stop my workout, go downstairs, and leave the area to reach the front desk to say something. I did cut my workout short to ask the women at the front desk if anyone could speak to him, but they seemed reluctant themselves. I don’t fault them for it; their expressions mirrored my own feelings.

A friend pointed out that such aggressive behavior is dangerous in more ways than one:

“Men doing dominance displays with throwable objects, men being negligent with things heavy enough to be dangerous… Those are red flags that confrontation from a peer is unlikely to go well. People who work there are authority figures who should have the clout to tell him to follow the rules or leave.”

Hopefully I won’t encounter him again. But if I do, I’ll think twice about saying anything to him directly and will not hesitate to speak to the staff and return to finish my workout. I’ve every right to be there and to feel safe there, moreso since I’m behaving appropriately and not damaging equipment.

“Dropping once or twice, it happens,” another friend explained and went on: “Dropping every set, or every rep? Someone is lifting too much and anyone pointing that out is threatening Captain Butterfingers’ peen. Throwing the weights down is a hazard to others, self, and property, feckin dangerous, and feckin stupid. Report to the desk. If they don't take action, go up the chain. And if the desk staff seems reluctant for their own safety, include that in your escalated complaint so staff isn’t unfairly disciplined.”

WHAT THE HELL, MEN? Where did you get the idea that you should drop weights every freaking set?

I’ve often seen the rebuttal that “dropping heavy weights is necessary to prevent injury.” Let me stop you right there.

Jim Schmitz, U.S. Olympic Weightlifting Team Coach 1980, 1988 & 1992, says:

“Dropping weights isn’t necessary 80% of the time, maybe more. Dropping weights evolved as weightlifting became more popular around the world, especially in Eastern Europe, and more and more weight was being lifted, which was naturally more difficult to lower to the platform. As dropping weights became more accepted, something had to be done because the metal plates were tearing up platforms and destroying the flooring underneath. Someone invented rubber bumper plates around the middle to late sixties. They certainly have been a big plus in sparing damage to platforms and floors.

“Now it seems that all lifters, from beginners to elite, think that dropping all weights, from warm-ups to maximums, is the way it should be done. This situation has perhaps evolved from watching the world championships and Olympic Games where lifters certainly drop weights, some from overhead even, and yet never have a lift disqualified as a result—even though the rules state clearly that you aren’t supposed to let go of the bar until it is at waist height. I think it’s unfortunate that this has been allowed to escalate to this level because now beginner and intermediate lifters think that is what is done in order to lift the big weights.”

(Boldface emphasis mine.)

So we’ll acknowledge that dropping is useful and necessary in barbell-lifting contexts and heavy-weight competitions. The city rec center does not even have any of that equipment! You should NEVER drop dumbbells; they aren’t made for it, and this is why the set of them is so torn up. Sure, I was lifting half as much as him this morning, but I could very probably use a 60 for a goblet squat, and likely will within the next month.

“The dumbbells cost around $.50 per pound, so they’re pretty expensive to replace. More importantly, if a dumbbell is dropped on the edge they can actually break in half. I’ve seen it happen twice, where the handle broke in half. Fortunately, it occurred when they hit the floor and not in someone’s hand. It would have been worse had they stayed together until the next person used them, and then broken in the middle of a set.” —Tom Nikkola, Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist and Certified Personal Trainer

This absurd display doesn’t make you look strong. It proves YOU AREN’T STRONG and need to choose a smaller weight that you can safely manage. Nikkola agrees:

“Unless you’re performing Olympic lifts, if you’re not sure what those are, you’re not, there’s no reason to drop the weights. If you don’t have the strength to set the dumbbells or barbells down, then you’re using too much weight.”

To borrow the words of Jim Schmitz, “Lowering weights properly won’t weaken you.”

Too Cold to Hold 10k Race Report

Sometime late last year I decided I wanted to train to run a 10k by the end of January but worried about holding myself accountable, so I signed up for the January 31 Too Cold to Hold 10k race at White Rock Lake.

I've been putting off writing a race report because the experience was less than stellar.

A lot of races offer event shirts in the price of registration, but a lot of them don't offer them for women, and it is endlessly irritating. Women make up over half the sport, closer to 60 percent in 5ks but are ignored as having different body shapes than men. I don't want to hear theories about men's shirts being cheaper because they're cut differently; I ain't buying it, because women's sizes require less fabric, and I'm sick and tired of maleness being treated as the default human norm. It took me two hours to alter the last small men's race shirt I received down to fit me, and it's still not very good because I AM NOT A SMALL MAN.

Some events offer unisex shirts instead, which means a men's cut in slightly smaller sizes. That was the case for this event, so I ordered an XS unisex shirt since it's the next closest thing to having a women's cut shirt that would actually fit my body.

I arrived at packet pickup to find that the shirt size I'd ordered was not provided at all. I have 20 race shirts cut up and displayed on my bedroom wall and another dozen sitting in a pile in the sewing room awaiting alterations because these events don't offer women shirts. And they don't offer discounts on the registration price, either, for people with breasts and small waists. It's insulting.

So I didn't get the shirt I paid for, and then the accompanying Too Cold to Hold beanie appeared to have been designed for giants, so my race swag is fit only for the garbage bin. After complaining publicly on Facebook, the event organizer reached out to me and said they were also surprised and disappointed in the quality of the hats ordered, so they ordered finishers' shirts including women's sizes. . . .

Guess what WASN'T at the finish line. There were piles and piles of only men's shirts for an event which the organizer herself said has about 64 percent female participation.

The race itself? It was nice. There was no seeding or separate waves, so it took more than a mile for the crowd to thin enough to run at a comfortable pace; I don't envy anyone trying to hit a PR that day.

I was a little bit sick and a lot sluggish, but I finished. And I looked badass in my Wonder Woman costume, for which I'd found blue shorts only a few days prior. I got a lot of compliments and cheers and one, "Look, it's Super Woman!" from some dude. ONLY men mess that up, you know; this is the second time it's happened. Fake geek guys.

The weather was unexpectedly warm, nearing 65°F before I finished, and many runners struggled since they'd trained in cooler temps for so many weeks. I was SO glad not to be running the half marathon that day. The course around White Rock Lake was pretty as always.

Because parking was limited, we were encouraged to carpool and take public transportation and were told there would be a place to put bicycles with the bag check. I took up that offer, took the DART to White Rock Station, and rode my bike the extra mile and a quarter to the start. I felt speedy and clever whizzing by everyone who'd had to park as far as the train station and walk. I was surprised to see only two other bicycles at the event at all. At the end, feeling irritated, icky, and hot, I was VERY glad to retrieve my bicycle and roll out instead of staying for any post-race activities.

I know the summer event by the same organization offers women's shirts, or at least that's what the race organizer said to me, and I know they have in the past from the one time I volunteered at it. But after this experience, I'm not super keen to spend my money there.

It's great that they support local charities, but Dallas is a big city flush with racing events and several to choose from every weekend of the year, even holidays. I'd rather support a company that recognizes I AM NOT A SMALL MAN.

Choosing (and Defining) Happiness

I'm enjoying this blog post from Kaleo and want to share.

"A simple Google search of the terms ‘diet’ and ‘fitness’ reveals that fat loss is THE defining goal of virtually every fitness and diet program. Try to find a ‘success story’ that doesn’t hinge on the visible reduction of body fat. Fat loss is, quite simply, THE barometer of success in this world. When fat loss is achieved, the program is deemed successful. Most programs are marketed specifically as fat loss plans. We are, as a culture, myopically obsessed with fat loss.

"Choosing to end the relentless pursuit of fat loss is not an admission of defeat, it is not a failure. It can be a very healthy, very positive statement of self-respect.

"I can’t tell you which body you should like better, but I CAN tell you which one eats ice cream, kills workouts and has more sex. The overweight one."

Prioritize your life as best suits you. Mine will include more happiness, satisfaction, and celebration with food and friends, less obsession over calories and appearance, and more concern with action and experiences.

No one will remember my dress size when I'm dead, but they will remember my attitude and smile.