7 things I can say to myself regarding body image

Over here, Rachel is starting a series on body image.  I look forward to reading it. Often we talk as if body image issues are the domain of teenage girls. Not so.  As Rachel points out, mature women stupidly hanker after impossible, pre-adolescent thinness just as their daughters do, and judge themselves and others by their ability to attain such perfection.  

I have nothing of any significance to say on the topic, no profound way forward in the battle to view our bodies rightly, but I feel like writing something, so I'll write a list.

7 things I can say to myself regarding body image.

1.  I am a mature woman.  I should expect to have the figure of a mature woman.  I will not resent my hips and thighs.  [Skinny jeans will always look stupid on me (as they do on most women) so I won't try them on.]  Three children have grown in my womb.  My shape will be different to what it was.  This is a small price to pay.  I will not make it my aim to look as if I am 20 years younger than I am and that I never bore children.  This is an insult to my years and my family.  I will aim to be healthy and fit for the tasks I want to do.

2.  If I watch movies and tv shows where the heroines are pencil thin, I am going to want to be pencil thin too!  If I think what I watch is not going to effect me, I am stupidly over-estimating my strength and discernment.

3. God has made me to need a certain amount of food to survive.  Scientists have worked out how much this is, based on my gender, level of physical activity, age etc.  It may be significantly less than I've trained my stomach and mind to think that I need.  When I exceed this amount, I will put on weight.  If I exceed it long term, I will have (often major) health issues and I will be fat.

4. Like all areas of life, the games of beauty and weight control are not played on a level playing field.  If may be harder for me to keep my weight under control than it is for my friends.  My friend may be prettier than I am.  I need to stop looking over my shoulder and coveting her body. 

5. I am thankful to God for my pretty and graceful friend.  I find joy in her movement and appearance as I do in a purple and orange sunset or a mountain stream.  I do not need to feel threatened by her beauty. 

6. Losing weight and changing habits is hard work.  If I cut what I'm eating by a third (as many Australian women need to do) I will suffer discomfit (I'll feel hungry and get headaches) while my body adjusts to the new regime.  When I start exercising, it will hurt.  I need to push through this.

7. I need to accept that my body is dying.  Every day I am getting older and any efforts I make will have no effect on the final outcome.  In a hundred years my body will be an unattractive pile of bones in the ground (as will that of my thin sister and fat cousin).  Some things last beyond this life.  They are more important.

How to lose 1.5 kilos in a week

1. Eat the same as normal

2. Do 2 less weights classes

3. Do a long, very slow run

Trouble is, I don't think this kind of weight loss counts for much or lasts for long. I think I'd rather be heavier and stronger.

running plan

Complete lack of discipline and excessive chocolate comsumption has caused me to put on a few kgs in the last month or two. Nothing at all drastic, but it would be good to take control now. I need a bit of focus for my exercise, something new to aim for. I'm not a runner at all (a year ago I couldn't run 500m) but I've decided to set a running goal. My aim is to get to 5km in 30 minutes in 4 weeks. I can now jog 4km but I'm very slow.

I've adjusted a training schedule from here. Here is my plan:

Week 1

• Monday = Pump class
• Tuesday = Circuit class
• Wednesday = 30 minute run/jog
• Thursday = rest day, nothing.
  
• Friday = attack (cardio) class
  
• Saturday = 30 minute run/jog
• Sunday = 30 minutes run/jog

Week 2

• Monday = Pump class
• Tuesday = Circuit class
• Wednesday = 30 minute run/jog. After the run ask yourself how you felt during the run and whether you enjoyed it.
• Thursday = rest day, nothing.
  
• Friday = attack (cardio) class
  
• Saturday = jog/run for 15min then 5min at the pace you would like to run your 5km's in then followed by 10min easy jogging.
• Sunday = 30 minutes run/jog

Week 3

• Monday = Pump class
• Tuesday = Circuit class
• Wednesday = 5min jog/run then 15min at the pace you would like to run your 5km in, then followed by 10min easy jogging.
• Thursday = rest day, nothing.
  
• Friday = attack (cardio) class
  
• Saturday = an easy day. Only 30min jog/run. Can you see your improvement, if not then you need return to week 2 of this schedule.
• Sunday = 30-40min light jog/run TALK TEST

Week 4

• Monday = Pump class
• Tuesday = Circuit class
• Wednesday = 5min jog/run then 15min at the pace you would like to run your 5km in, then followed by 10min easy jogging.
• Thursday = rest day, nothing.
  
• Friday = attack (cardio) class
  
• Saturday = 20 min light jog/run TALK TEST with exercises after
• Sunday = Go for your PACED 5km run and enjoy.

I don't like popping pills...

... even fish-oil capsules. But I persevere. Kind of. Every second day.

something fishy

Okay. So I've had fish oil twice now and I don't feel any lighter. I just feel... fishy.

It's meant to be odorless. I'm not convinced.

On the up-side, I don't feel like eating anything sweet. Cake wouldn't go well with the fish.

fish oil trial begins

So I've bought the fish oil and taken my first dose.

Here's the research.

It's the only supplement I've ever taken - except for a bit of folate and iron when I was pregnant. Let's see what happens.

fish-oil and weightloss blog trial

It seems there might be a link between fish-oil and weightloss.

My friend has found this to be true. She started taking daily fish-oil supplements a month ago and has lost weight without dieting or exercising.

I'm not normally into supplements but thought it might be fun to give this a go. Fish oil is also meant to help concentration and do other good stuff for our brains.

Would anyone like to join me? Simply go buy some fish-oil supplements, take them each day and report in when I do the next post about it.

Of course this is highly scientific. The rest of you are the control group. You can report back too.

So, are you in?

A Gutful

My sister Nicole will be on SBS's insight tomorrow night. She does gastric surgery on morbidly obese people. The show is featuring a 16 year old boy who she has or will operate on. It may be controversial.

SBS, Tuesday 7.30pm. Have a look and tell me what you think.

Obesity surgery in Rockhampton

My sister is the surgeon in this article.

She will be on SBS's Insight in the near future.

swimming

I've been swimming 2kms most days lately as well as my normal gym stuff.

I'm not trying to loose weight. I would just rather not put it on. Seems, though, the swimming has probably been useless (and possibly worse than useless) as an additional exercise.

Research published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine shows that in the absence of a controlled diet, swimming has little or no effect on weight loss [1].

Professor Grant Gwinup compared three exercise programs for three months. Each program began with up to 10 minutes of daily exercise. The length of each workout was increased by five minutes every week.

• Test subjects following the walking program lost 17 pounds of weight during the three-month study.

• Those following the cycling program lost 19 pounds of weight.

• However, subjects following the swimming program actually gained 5 pounds.

Assuming that all three groups burned a similar number of calories, the swimmers must have compensated by eating more. "Presumably," speculates Professor Gwinup, "swimming in cold water stimulates the appetite to increase caloric consumption."

D'oh.

I do enjoy it, though, so not all is lost!

a question

How much gym is too much?

Do I have a problem if one hour a day no longer feels like enough?

goal achieved!

Regular readers might recall that I've been trying to lose weight. My original goal was to lose 7.5kg in 7.5 weeks. I lost the first 5kg pretty fast, but the last couple have been slower to shift. But I've now done it! It took me 10.5 weeks. I feel great.

Now the hard part. Not putting it back on again.

just 2kgs to go

My seven and a half week weight loss challenge finishes next Tuesday. I aimed to lose 7.5kgs in 7.5 weeks. Six and a half weeks down and I've lost 5.5kgs. I feel pretty good - I can now get through a gym class without a drink and my clothes fit again (which is satisfying and convenient).

But I think it will be pretty hard to shift the last 2kgs in just one week. Perhaps I need to change the rules and weigh myself without my joggers on.

Any suggestions to help me succeed? I'm not into supplements or starving myself.

[update: not into amputation either. Thanks anyway Nathan.]

weight loss and george matheson

I've been studying my blog stats. It seems that the best way to get hits is to write posts on George Matheson (a scottish hymn writer) and weight loss.

I'd combine the two and write on George Matheson's approach to weight-loss, except it would all be pure conjecture.

Did GM have a weight problem? Look at this picture (thanks wiki). Perhaps he did, but it might be just his robes. If he did need to shed a few kilos, he would probably have found exercise a challenge, being blind and all. Cooking would have had its challenges too.

Is that enough? Has Mr. Google led people to this pointless post?

Just in case, let me add a few more catch words: rainbow, hymn-writer, fat, diet, women. That should do it!

ps. If you're actually interested in George Matheson, let me point you to this great series of blog posts.

stress, metabolism and weight loss

Since I'm on a weight loss kick at the moment, I thought I'd post a few thoughts on the subject. I'm a little hesitant to do it, ultimately it's not something that really matters and in the game of weight loss, women often feel very beaten (when the playing field was never level to begin with...) But anyway, here are a few ideas.

1. Weight loss and stress
Most women fall into one of two categories: stress eaters and stress non-eaters. Me, I'm a stress eater. Put me under a bit of pressure and that block of chocolate, tub of ice-cream, or loaf of bread looks irresistible. My stress non-eater friends assure me that their plight is pretty bad, but I wouldn't mind it occasionally (They tell me that they get anxious and can't eat and later because their stomachs are so empty the thought of food makes them nauseous, so they continue not eating, and just feel sicker and sicker...) Unsurprisingly, stress non-eaters tend towards being underweight, and stress eaters tend towards being overweight. It's not rocket science.

But what this means is that it's very difficult to lose weight if you are stressed. A friend of mine has put on considerable weight in the last few years. She has a very high maintenance family (no, worse than you are thinking) as well as other significant pressures. To label her as greedy or undisciplined because of her current waist circumference would be unfair.

So, unless you're a stress non-eater, you'll lose weight best when you feel some degree of calm and contentment about yourself and life. This will be a considerable hurdle for many of us. (An aside: ever notice how being told that you're chubby doesn't make it easier to lose weight? It causes stress and makes that mud cake all the more appealing!)

2. Weight loss and metabolism
I read up on this last night and am pretty taken with it. Hope it's useful to you.

Our resting metabolism (which is the amount of energy we use when we're doing nothing) is dependent on the amount of lean muscle we have in our bodies. The more muscular we are, the more energy we use, simply because it burns a lot of kilojoules just to maintain muscles. So if you have a slow metabolism (if you put on weight easily), you could increase it by getting a bit more muscular. If you want to lose weight, the most efficient exercise to do is weight training. If you walk you'll burn kilojoules while you're out walking, but if you do weights, you'll burn the energy while you're working out and your metabolism will increase and you'll continue to burn the kilojoules during the day.

Now here's what was new to me. When we lose weight, we lose it from fat AND muscle. If we only diet and don't exercise, we will lose weight at first but pretty soon our weight loss will decrease because our metabolism has slowed because our overall amount of muscle has decreased. So if you diet for a couple of weeks without doing any exercise you could end up with less muscle and a slower metabolism - resulting in weight gain reasonably soon. Interesting, huh?

3. Weight loss and the future
It's not a competition. The person who dies the thinnest doesn't win. (In a hundred years time none of our bodies will have much flesh on them.) The person who averages the lowest BMI over their lifetime doesn't win either. Actually, how much we weigh is something of an irrelevancy in the eternal scheme of things. Most women worry about their weight far too much. And because of point #1, such worry is counterproductive. We need to be more concerned about loving Jesus and serving our neighbours and families than we are about our dress size.

If you're interested in a much more thorough look at dieting - check out these posts on Jean's blog.