I Was a Fat Kid.....

Last night as I was getting in bed my husband said to me, “I think you gained 5 pounds but I think I gained 3 pounds.”

Is he an ass, or is he just being observant?

Body dysmorphic disorder is “a type of chronic mental illness in which you can't stop thinking about a flaw with your appearance — a flaw that is either minor or imagined. “ However, I think there is a different class of people- the formerly fat kids- who also suffer from a type of body image issue.

I was the fat kid. The kid no one would sit next to. The kid who was put on a diet and not allowed to have ice cream when her brothers got ice cream. Yet nothing my parents said or did helped me stop eating. I had a sweet tooth, and I ate endless amounts of candy. I knew I didn’t want to be fat. But my almost magnetic attraction towards candy overpowered any voice of reason that might have echoed in my head.

When I was 13 I got this book from the library, called “total girls wellness guide” or something like that, and it marked a turning point in my eating and weight issues. This book explained that how much you weighed depended on what you did over time. It also said that exercise could help you lose weight but that if you hadn’t been doing it at all, you should start slowly and build up.

This gentle, incremental approach was beneficial for me, but when I was 15 I became really obsessed with my weight and my body. I hated my body. I felt betrayed by my body. I wanted to be Barbie. Every calorie was counted. I started jogging long distances. I got down to 140 pounds (I’m 5’ 8” so that is a healthy weight for me). But I realized that I was so obsessed with food and exercise, that it had completely taken over my life.

When I started college and started working, my priorities changed. I worried less about not putting to many calories in my mouth and more about just having the money to buy food at all. My weight bounced around in college from a low of 155 to a high of 180. I never took up the obsessive diet or exercise again, but I was watchful. I made sure I didn’t get too big.

The problem is that the voice of criticism in my head was never really silenced. I still worry about getting explosively fat. I still eat things that I don’t necessarily like because I want to manage my weight. Come on, salad is not as much fun as nachos! Everyone knows it’s true! What about you? Have you struggled with your weight? Or do you constantly feel you have to battle negative self-talk about how you look? What have you found useful in improving your body image?

If you are looking for resources to help you improve your self-esteem and body image, womenshealth.gov has some great information about how to cultivate a positive image at this URL: http://www.womenshealth.gov/bodyimage/

To Wipe or not to Wipe?

I’ve been thinking for a while about hand sanitizers at the gym. I don’t believe in them. I’ve been getting the stink eye from the one remaining person in the gym. However, I possess an almost religious belief that antibacterial products are unnecessary and could possibly be harmful. Now while I am willing to possess such a belief in a supernatural being, faith isn’t really required when it comes to soap because science can tell us about soap.

So I went off in search of the “truth” about antibacterials. The first thing I found was a piece from the New York Times entitled “Be Sure Exercise is All You Get at the Gym.” The story discussed a position statement from the National Athletic Trainers’ Association that stated (among other things) that athletes should bathe with liquid antibacterial soap immediately after using gym facilities. Somehow, I distrusted this information and dug deeper. A 2007 literature review from the Journal of Clinical Infection Disease found that there was a “lack of an additional health benefit associated with the use of (antibacterial) soaps over regular soap.” Other studies have looked at people washing with regular vs. antibacterial soaps over long courses of time. The result: people who used antibacterial soaps had the same level of bacteria living on their hands as people who used “normal” soap.

However, my big concern- that I would be promoting antibiotic resistant bacteria by using antibacterial wipes- appears to be unfounded. Or at least there is limited evidence in the literature to support this notion. I guess we will have to add it to the long list of problems that merit further investigation.

Does Common Courtesy Demand?

Last night I made my way to the gym. Just as I had predicted, the gym scene has shrunk predictably. Hot guys I and II were there, running on the treadmill. Just like they were back in November. There are also two African-American ladies who are old timers and they were riding the stationary bikes. I hopped onto the elliptical, and was happily peddling away when a new guy walked in. Now this new guy was older, sort of balding, boring looking. He was wearing pleated pants and they didn’t really work for him. He went in to the locker room to change and came out and got onto the elliptical by me.

Isn’t there a rule somewhere? “Don’t wear too much cologne if you are going to the gym?” This guy reeked. The smell sort of made me nauseas. But I made it to the end of my 30 minutes on the elliptical and the smell wasn’t too bad once I went over to the mat to do my physical therapy exercises.

I’ve been doing pretty well on my fitness regimen. Last week I went to Dr Kim in Annandale and he straightened out my neck with his amazing acupuncture techniques. After that I was able to move all my extremities and get back on track with the cardio workouts. I have been slacking on my PT exercises and I can feel that I really have to work now when I lift my legs. Of course it’s even harder to do them when you have to deal with people wearing stinky cologne.

Pain in the Neck

Have you seen the Celebrex ad? “Bodies in motion tend to stay in motion?” This week my body hit a bump in the road. With the fear of gym overcrowding hanging over my head, I had stopped going to the gym in the morning. I was going every day at 1:40 p.m. (no one there at that time!) and doing 45 or 50 minutes or intense cardio. My goal was to reach 5 miles every time I set foot in the gym. Because of the time constraints of leaving the office in the middle of the day, I had stopped doing my physical therapy and stretching routine. I don’t know if the lack of stretching or Murphy’s law is what set off this problem in my upper back and neck.

On Thursday, I ran into the bathroom just before we left to attend the Surgeon General’s “Call to Action on Breastfeeding”. I was pulling up my pants when I got a sudden stabbing, throbbing “don’t move” horrible pain in my neck. It felt as if it were some sort of muscular spasm. I took my Ultram but to no avail. The pain was still there an hour later as we rolled into the George Washington University auditorium. It must have been bad because all four of my colleagues said the same thing when I walked in: “Are you okay?”

Yes, I was okay…no I really wasn’t. I ran into and out of the auditorium. That Amanda Bookmark was right. There was no signal in the auditorium, which made Tweeting out the messages impossible. I had to go outside and Tweet what I was hearing on the webcast. After the event was over, we went back to the office but I couldn’t leave. Dr. M was supposed to come and give an in-service on the Affordable Care Act. Of course, since it was evident that this was just NOT MY DAY, she couldn’t find us and was half an hour late, which meant that she didn’t finish her presentation in time for me to go see Dr. Kim the acupuncture specialist.

That night, my Darling Spouse gave me a massage….and every night since then. I’ve been doing my stationary bike and physical therapy exercises slow…ly….. religious…ly I don’t want to sustain this sort of injury again.

Start the New Year Right!

2011 is off and running and I am afraid of everyone else’s healthy intentions. I am afraid of gym overcrowding. I am looking forward to gym drop out.

Every year I see the same thing in my gym. January first there are more people there than I have ever seen before. The locker rooms are impossible to navigate, the lines for machines long. That state of affairs continues for the first two weeks of January, and then right around Martin Luther King Day, there is a drop off. Something about the three day weekend makes people’s spirits give out. They give up, back away, let go, throw in the towel. That is when I get my gym back.

So my New Year’s resolution is the following: stay away from the gym for the first 17 days of January. I have a stationary bike, a couple of workout DVDs, and a list of physical therapy exercises. I am gonna work on those for the time being. Having the gym all to myself makes me want to go more. I can count on solace, and on having an elliptical with my name on it the rest of the year.

Health expercts argue about what is the best way to adopt a healthier lifestyle. Today while I was pedaling on my bike someone was on CNN saying that it is better to make a “big” change so you get immediate feedback about your behavior. Still, the Centers for Disease Control have taken the approach of promoting “Small Steps” as the secret to lasting adoption of healthy habits. What works for you? What makes you tick? I am a creature of habit and I like being left alone when I am sweating. That’s why you won’t see me in the gym until Jan 18th :)