“Easy for you to say you should like your body.”
Well if you saw me in person and wanted to be an asshole you could pick me apart just as you could anyone else. I have stretch marks from carrying a baby, cellulite on the back of my thighs, wiggly parts I’d like to be less so… blah blah blah. But I didn’t start feeling good about myself because I lost a grip of weight. I lost the weight because I started feeling good about myself. I decided to like myself. And I wake up everyday and make that decision again for my daughter’s sake.
It was that choice that lead me to love myself enough to put the work into ME that resulted in weight loss. Losing weight will not make you happy. And it will not make you like your body. That’s the stuff that’s in your head. Working on that is the first step.
It’s really hard not to love her. :) Check out more Fit Mama here!
Did you miss the pics of the custom Fit Villains hoodie she sent me?! If you want one too, there’s a link to her bad ass store.
Skinny Witch vs. Chubby Fairy
What our poll shows about the assumptions women hold…
Heavy women are pegged as…
- “lazy” 11 times as often as thin women;
- “sloppy” nine times;
- “undisciplined” seven times;
- “slow” six times as often.
While thin women are seen as…
- “conceited” or “superficial” about eight times as often as heavy women;
- “vain” or “self-centered” four times as often;
- “bitchy,” “mean,” or “controlling” more than twice as often.
Even the “good” labels are unfair. An overweight woman may be five times as likely to be perceived as “giving” as a skinny one.
“But it just fits into the stereotype that thin women are not that way,” explains Ann Kearney-Cooke, Ph.D. “It’s still putting women in a box based on their body size.”
Fist pumps all around for this winner of an article! (You have no idea how hard I fought the urge to say ‘breast pumps’ instead).
I struggle sometimes in this industry where rapid weight loss is praised, rewarded and used as inspiration. I’ve just seen too many women brutalize their bodies into quick ‘results’ only to gain it all back and too many women give up on healthy habits when their 10lb goal isn’t hit in a week. Two friends of mine who’ve recently had babies couldn’t help but ‘apologize’ for their slightly bigger appearance when I saw them. As if being a new mom and adjusting to a new busy life was somehow a shitty excuse for why they weren’t back in their skinny jeans yet. What? I smacked ‘em. With love. :)
What happened to the ‘baby moon’? The period of time where you can just connect with the wee one, adjust to momhood and not have to worry about losing that weight?
Jamie Eason’s Turkey Meatloaf Muffins
Ingredients:
- 2 lbs ground turkey (or chicken)
- 3 egg whites
- 1 cup quick cooking oats
- 1/2 tsp ground cumin
- 1/2 tsp dried thyme
- 2 tsp dry yellow mustard
- 2 tsp black pepper
- 2 tsp chipotle pepper spice
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 tbsp garlic powder (2 cloves minced)
- 1 small onion (finely chopped)
- 2 celery stalks (finely chopped)
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
- Spray muffin pan with canola or olive oil.
- Mix all your ingredients together in one large bowl.
- Roll the mixture into balls and place in muffin pan. Muffins should be about the size of a racquetball.
- Bake for 40 minutes.
Makes 12 muffins.
Click ‘read more’ to see Jamie at work in the Kitchen!
(via spartanfitness)
A little while ago I got a question asking how I felt about liposuction, gastric bypass & other weight loss/fat loss surgeries. It kept me up half the night, and in the end I decided not to post my answer.
I’ve taken a very firm, non-judgmental stance when it comes to individual’s and their bodies: that goes for weight loss surgery too. I spent hours trying to answer the question because I wanted to address the tone of it: it reeked of judgment & fatphobia (I believe the word ‘fatties’ was used and the surgeries were mentioned as an ‘easy’ way out). Ugh.
Surgery is not easy. The possible repercussions are serious, some fatal. Patients who opt for these surgeries are generally in or close to a life or death situation. They are desperate. And for whatever reasons, they were not able to connect with & implement diet & exercise into their routine. I’ve seen the words ‘lazy’, ‘quick fix’, ‘cheating’ & other negatives thrown around in regards to people who choose these options. I don’t agree. But I think we can all relate to feeling “hopeless”: we all find our ‘hope’ differently.
At the end of the day, I’m pro-people. I know that diet & exercise are key to significant & sustained weight loss, but I’ll never be-grudge someone who made the risky & very personal decision to help themselves through surgery. To me, that’s not cheating. It’s finding their ‘hope’. And once you have hope, you become unstoppable. I can’t relate to needing to lose over 100lbs, or having my weight be THE obstacle in my life. But I can relate to needing hope.
Is it unfortunate that other methods didn’t “work”? Yup, and I think they’d agree. Is it a choice I’d make (or recommend)? Probably not. But when it comes to simply being supportive of those who’s lives have changed because of it, that I can do. Without judgment. With every “best wish” I can muster.
Read Jim’s story here.
It’s NOT just about willpower! Read the post & tips on how you can spot & recognize real hunger here.
For those of you who are still putting more emphasis on the number on the SCALE and not your overall progress: STOP.
I often get requests for exercises that tone, but from people who don’t want to gain muscle. It doesn’t work that way. Toning IS gaining muscle. But gaining muscle does not mean gaining size. Many women have an unnatural fear of the word gain so the marketing world uses words like toning, tightening, flattening, slimming, shave inches etc. ALL of these words mean gaining muscle & losing fat.
Muscle is more dense than fat: pound for pound it takes up less room. You can lose fat & inches without the scale moving. You can get the body you want without losing weight.
The purpose of this photo is to visually demonstrate why the scale doesn’t matter if you’re training hard & SEEING results. If you feel like your balloon gets busted each and every time you step on the scale, you NEED to change the way you think/feel about it or give it up all together. The scale can be a valuable tool to check in on your progress when you’ve got loads of weight to lose, but beyond that it doesn’t tell the whole story and should not be your ultimate goal.
In other words, at the end of the day, the numbers do NOT matter. Decide whether or not you want the body (yay) OR the number (boo). The two don’t always coincide.
The basic formula to lose weight is simple: move more, eat less & keep your metabolism up while doing it. How we go about accomplishing these things gets a little more complicated, but in all cases, that’s how it works. Move more to burn calories & strengthen the body, eat less and eat cleaner foods that the body can USE efficiently, and keep your metabolism up by eating enough to keep your body going strong.
Millions of people lose weight each day and can give you every detail about how they did it. But very few would be able to answer the question “where did the weight go?”
So… where does fat go when we burn it off?
Well, it doesn’t really ‘go’ anywhere - rather it gets used. And to understand how that happens, I’ll explain a wee bit more about calories & fat.
CALORIES & FAT CELLS
A calorie is a unit of energy: you can think of it as gasoline. The calories we eat are either used (through movement or various body functions) or stored as fat (our body’s primary source of energy). They fat is stored in our fat cells: it’s like our body’s pantry.
The number of fat cells we have doesn’t change: they simply get bigger (when they’re storing) or smaller (when the body is pulling energy from them). They develop in childhood, and as we get older they steady off (about 8% die each year & get replaced). Someone who has more fat cells than average, but each is small, can be a relatively thin person. Someone with fewer fat cells, but each is large, can be overweight.
Someone who has a high number of fat cells will find it easier to gain weight & harder to lose weight (NOT impossible, but slightly harder). Overweight children develop a higher number of fat cells, and enter adulthood with more fat cells to work with. While they can still reduce the size of these cells, they have more of them to begin with, putting them at a slight (very slight) disadvantage. It’s more difficult to lose weight and easier to gain it when you have more fat cells to start with.
When we have more calories than our bodies need they get stored in our fat cells, making them bigger. This is a calorie surplus - leading to fat (or weight) gain. When we’re demanding more energy from our body than we have, it takes it from our fat cells, thus making them smaller. This is a calorie deficit - leading to fat (or weight) loss.
This is why myths about spot reduction are false: the rate at which your body removes energy from your fat cells is exactly the same, for every single cell. They get bigger and smaller at the same rate everywhere on the body. Women have deep ends and shallow ends when it comes to fat: we lose fat quicker in the shallow ends and slower in the deep ends. The fat is “emptied” at the same rate everywhere, but there’s simply more fat cells in the deep ends: it takes longer to see progress than in the shallow bits. These areas are different on every woman: ankles, butt, thighs, bellies, arms, boobies etc.
Ultimately, the fat we feel, see (and don’t see) is the result of how big or small our fat cells are.
WHERE DOES FAT GO?
It doesn’t disappear - it changes form (think water & steam).
Once the body has used up carb reserves (glycogen), it starts using fat for energy, a process called ketosis. When the body needs energy, it releases hormones. Those hormones signal your fat cells to release the fat into the bloodstream: the fat cells break it up and kick it out at the level being demanded. After it’s been broken down, it enters the bloodstream, which then takes it where it needs to go. The liver grabs glycerol from the bloodstream fat & breaks it down further, and some of the fatty acids go to your muscles so they can use it for energy.
Once they reach their destinations, the glycerol & fatty acids are broken down again: during this process they produce heat, water, carbon dioxide and adenosine triphosphate (ATP). The ATP keeps some potential energy for use later like a back up system or storage. The rest leaves our bodies through natural methods: the water exits as pee and sweat, and we breath out the carbon dioxide. At that point, it’s not fat anymore really - it’s been broken down chemically. It’s been used for energy, chemically altered and exits through natural substances that always leave the body. And whatever’s left of it takes up MUCH less space.
Bottom Line
When we use fat for energy, it leaves our fat cells - making them smaller than when we started. The fat then gets ‘used’ up like gas in a tank: it gets broken down & breathed/peed out for the most part. That’s how fat is lost. The cycle repeats constantly, with surpluses of energy making your fat cells bigger and deficits leaving them smaller.
When our metabolism is low (we’re not eating enough) our bodies stop sending out the hormone to use fat for energy: it needs fat for survival and will protect its stash. Instead, it will signal your fat cells to collect and store fat, while using proteins from your muscles for energy. This is why people stop or have trouble losing fat when they’re over-restrcting their calories: also known as starvation mode.
Read more…
Why Losing Weight Won’t Change Your Shape (and other FAT facts)
Maintenance & The Fear Of Regaining…
Does shaming kids work when it comes to ending childhood obesity?
The above ad is one of several from Strong4LifeGA, a Georgia based initiative to end childhood obesity. The slogan “Being fat takes the fun out of being a kid” is one of several: others include “It’s hard being a little girl if you’re not” & “Big bones didn’t make me this way. Big meals did”.
While it’s true that some parents may need a stronger, more shocking wake up call, the well intentioned ads simply rub me the wrong way. Instead of addressing the benefits of moving more and eating better, the ads use shaming, mentions of bullying & play on stigmas about the overweight to make their points. Ads like these can be dangerous to children struggling with their weight, and they carry a strong body shaming message to everyone.
They do nothing to promote health, activity or self-confidence: if anything they play on insecurity. They do nothing to inform or educate (although the organization itself does, these ads do not). They seemingly do nothing to promote body love or tolerance, and may even inadvertently make it okay to bully overweight kids (slogans and all).
Ads like these make me nervous. As well intentioned as they are, I think they miss the mark.
Excerpt from ‘Tease Out: Being Mean Won’t Solve Childhood Obesity’ by Sarah Parsons
The ads gave me flashbacks to my seventh-grade cafeteria, so I was surprised to discover that they are actually part of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Pediatric Hospital’s Strong4Life campaign, a $25 million, five-year initiative designed to curb childhood obesity in Georgia. The ads seek to address a real problem—Georgia is America’s second-fattest state, with nearly 1 million overweight or obese kids. But will these shock ads provide parents and kids with a wakeup call, or merely serve up a big helping of mean with a side of shame?
Rebecca Puhl, director of research at the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, thinks it’s the latter. “While these kinds of campaigns may have good intentions, they’re very misguided,” Puhl says. “There’s a legitimate concern that these ads are shaming and stigmatizing children and parents. What we know from research is that this can actually make the problem worse.”
Hear that, overbearing parents everywhere? Guilting people into change can actually make undesirable behaviors worse. Puhl, who has been researching weight bias for the past 12 years, says studies show that when children or adults feel shamed, blamed, or stigmatized for being overweight, they can eat more—even binge eat—and exercise less. All that blaming and stigmatizing also creates negative thoughts, making people susceptible to anxiety, depression, suicidal behaviors, and a generally decreased quality of life.
Thoughts?
If you’re in category #1: Take a few days to monitor your eating: you may not have noticed where all the ‘extra’ is coming from. Keep a journal, or text yourself from your phone. A week is usually enough to know where you need to make some changes.
If you’re in category #2: Boost your calories slowly (200-500 a day) until you’re back on track, and consider taking a few days off from the gym. Your body needs some reassurance that it’s not in danger before it starts being efficient again.
The next time you start feeling discouraged because you don’t see the number you want on the scales, I want you to stop and remember something. Muscle takes up LESS room than fat!! I dislike when I hear muscle weighs more than fat. No it doesn’t. One pound of muscle and one pound of fat weigh the same - one pound. But 1 pound of muscle is much more lean and compact than one pound of fat, thus it takes up less room!
“No matter someone’s body history, their weight is allowed to fluctuate. Jones isn’t obese, and she isn’t publicly discussing any concern for her size or health. She may look a little heavier than she did a few months ago, but you know what ? So do I. And it’s not because I’ve let my health go, or I’m going through an emotionally difficult time. Weight fluctuation is normal and even healthy to some degree. And Jones just doesn’t seem to me like she’s on the brink of becoming obese again or putting her health at risk. And, given that she’s been proactive about managing her weight in the past, I somehow doubt we all need to stay up at night worrying that she’ll find help if she needs it”.
Photo via The Daily Mail
Friday Fit Funny!
I like her attitude, lol. :)
Submitted Question:
Hey there,
I don’t believe in diets. What you’ll want to look for are resources to find healthy recipes that you can incorporate into your lifestyle. Diets don’t work long term - there’s a reason why they make money.
The vast majority of people on a ‘diet’ will lose weight short term, gain it all back and then some, and keep going back to the same diet thinking it ‘works’. Why bother? I’d rather put in the effort, learn recipes & tools that can help me my whole life, and learn how to eat what I like while making it as healthy as possible.
Diets don’t work. Lifestyle changes that you can stick to, do.
These are just a few recipe books/resources that I’ve found really helpful. My emphasis is always on FAST, EASY, INEXPENSIVE recipes, and I prefer books that do the nutritional content work for me. There are tons of great books out there, but I’ll never buy a book with the word ‘Diet’ attached to it.
Note: not all diet cookbooks are bad, but save your money and invest in recipes that you can use for life. The reason the diet industry is BOOMING is because diets inherently set you up to succeed short term, and fail long term. They can’t make money if they actually WORK. :)
Also good to mention: you need to ACT on change. Buying a cookbook does nothing unless you USE it. I know WAY too many people who stock up on healthy cookbooks… and never crack them open except to look at the pictures.
Tip: Keep it simple: try 1-2 new recipes a week, don’t get overwhelmed, and if you find one’s you LOVE, make sure to add those ingredients to your shopping list regularly. You don’t need to re-create Julie & Julia
and do a new recipe a day. Stick a 1-2 a week, and you’ll build a new vocabulary of 50-100 recipes in one year.
Happy reading! If you have other suggestions, feel free to send them in!
xo
Cookbooks/Resources I LOVE
1. The Healthy College Cookbook
This book is filled with cheap, fast, healthy recipes that most people can whip up faster than ordering a pizza. While it’s great for students, I think it’s important for everyone to have quick recipes they can grab & go (most of these are simple, so following the instructions once is enough to commit it to memory for next time).
2.
EatingWell on a Budget (EatingWell)
Same concept, though a few more selections and fancier recipes than the college book. This one’s great for families too, and can give you ideas on how to save money and eat healthier. It doesn’t have to be expensive!
(there are a ton of books in this line, so if you like this one, explore the others!)
You know I’m not crazy about the word ‘Skinny’, but don’t let that stop you. This book is awesome (I have it) and it gives you the nutritional breakdowns of each meal. Emphasis on easy recipes, clean eating, nothing complicated, and easy to find ingredients.
4.
Eat This, Not That! 2012: The No-Diet Weight Loss Solution
A MUST have! I love this book because you can literally find all your favorite foods, and easy to make alternatives to make them healthier. The recipes are solid, and proves you don’t have to give up the foods you LOVE to make a change.
(I like their Restaurant Survival Guide
too)
5.
The Men’s Health Big Book of Food & Nutrition: Your completely delicious guide to eating well, looking great, and staying lean for life!
This one is less recipes, and more about learning about foods. It’s a good read, and you don’t need to absorb everything to take some important lessons away (not just the how’s but the why’s). Really good resource.
Skinny Bitch: Ultimate Everyday Cookbook: Crazy Delicious Recipes that Are Good to the Earth and Great for Your Bod
(note, read bottom post first, top post second).
I think this is an important point for us fit freaks out there! Many have no idea they’re being unhealthy: they believe they’re eating right, training incredibly hard, and don’t see how they could be unhealthy with the choices they are making.
It’s true that eating clean & exercise are healthy for you. But you can get too extreme with it. For women, a healthy, athletic body fat percentage lies between 18-24%. In the 14-17% range, your body may not have enough fat to sustain it’s normal activities (including digestion, liver function, brain function and yes, menstruation etc). Below 14%, most women will notice amenorrhœa (stopping of the period), and other health problems like hair loss, skin flaking, anemia etc. Fat is crucial, especially for women, and having too low of a body fat percentage can affect your health, including future fertility (permanently). When your body has to choose between fat or muscle for energy when body fat is low, it will choose muscle: it needs fat for survival. Muscle is expendable.
It is possible for some female body builders and figure models to drop to incredibly low body fat percentages, but it’s important to point out that most only do so for short periods of time in their training year (show season). They do not sustain that level of training or diet for very long, and are usually carefully monitored. It is not how they live the rest of the year: it’s not healthy or responsible. Even with monitoring, some competitors at this level can still experience health issues pertaining to their level of training and body fat.
Thanks for sending this in!
It’s important to remember that you can be lean, toned and super fit without sacrificing your health. If you’re over-training or think you may need to boost your body fat percentage, simply add a few snacks to your day, eat nutritionally dense foods (you can stay clean, but think things like nuts, quinoa, sweet potatoes), cut down the training (take a day out, or substitute a hard session for something light like yoga), take a few days off, and get back on track!
xo
