Tag: exercise

The concept of health in a broken world

I’m in this endless pursuit of this mythical idea of health, and I’m not even sure what that means.  I picture myself hanging by my legs upside down from a 20ft tall geodome as a teenager with no fear of falling, of my body when I was a dancer and could see the muscles beneath my skin.  I picture being able to climb a tree without a second thought.  But what I don’t picture is how much time I had back then, how I climbed that geodome during a summer where I worked and played outside all day every day.  How I was a dancer in high school where walking home from school, between classes, to the metro to go hang out with friends, was the norm.  How I had time every day once school was over to do 200 cruches each morning and night, and how there was really no stress constantly looming because fuck ups were inconsequential and slipped off the glassy surface of my mind without leaving large jarring scratches.  When I climbed trees with no second thought I was carefree, and time outdoors was plentiful, weekends were jaunts in the woods full of energy that didn’t require caffeine or a sugar high.  My ideas of health are all colored by the backdrop of childhood, lack of stress, abundance of free time, everything falling into place with no schedule.  My ideas of health are colored by an absence of trauma responses and chronic pain.  My ideas of health neglect to remember that half the time I was obsessed with numbers on a scale and numbers of calories burned and eating less then 200 calories a day when I could get away with it.  My ideas of health forget the years where I could go the five days in the school week subsisting on mountain dew and nothing else, and the weekend living on two taco hell burritos and feeling like that was too much.

I want the energy and exhilaration I had in childhood.  I hit puberty so early, so I was this tall and at my healthy adult weight by the time I was a teenager, even a little bit before.  So my whole idea of what this shaped body I have now should be able to do, is based on a concept of a thirteen year old with no cares in the world.  When I try and imagine fitness at this age, I can only picture the lean muscular elderly folk I see running the trails at the park.  They’re in their seventies and eighties and probably in better shape then I’ve been in for over a decade.  I think about the ideal of mental health.  I don’t know anyone mentally healthy.  My generation is all people who are traumatized and fucked up beyond belief because we give voice to the problems of the world and they weigh on us like bricks.  How can you be mentally healthy when watching the rise of fascism and the death of your peers for loving a different gender then expected or being a different gender then expected?  How can you be mentally healthy when you see the earth that you want to reach to for sustenance, becoming a ticking time bomb counting down to the extinction of your species, because of the greed of corporations and the wealthy few in power?  For that matter, how can you be physically healthy when there are another hundred cleanses and fad diets birthed each day?  When you are constantly told that health looks like photoshop lies, and comes from on of the thousand one true ways to decrease in size that is marketed violently and splashed all over any physical or virtual environment you step into?

So I wish I had a conclusion to this, but I’m not there yet.  I’m just at the -the world is fucked and my brain is too, but I need to get to a better healthier place, and that’s hard and I have no idea how, but I’m gunna do it anyway- point.  I do hope to offer more insight if I get there though.

New year’s resolutions

It’s a brand new year, all shiny and hopeful and just prime for a good fucking up.  So, in the nature of things that are just waiting to be fucked up, I’m going to make some new years resolutions!  I’m actually very fond of the practice, it can be a meditative exercise for me, figuring out what I need to change and focusing on it, examining the motivation, and trying to imagine the progress and reaching the finish line.  This year I snuggled up in bed with Kelev and we decided to each come up with three resolutions, preferably well grounded goals, since our extensive and loftier ones last year lasted until mid February.  Here are my three:

Health

My first resolution is to improve my health.  This is actually a multifaceted one, a series of mini resolutions you could say.  First, I need to work on eating better.  I have some food intolerances I have been ignoring for a while now, which leads to chronic pain, so to start I need to better stay within my limitations in what I eat.  During the spring/summer/autumn I get most of my veges from a weekly CSA (community supported agriculture) program through a local farm.  It helps me eat seasonally and support a local business, and I know my produce is raised in a way without a negative environmental impact.  I did not get a large enough CSA share to store and can for winter though, so winter this year is when I get to choose what is “in season” for me from the abundance at the grocery store.  In some ways it’s lovely, I really did miss avocados a lot during the rest of the year, but it doesn’t fit my ethics in the long run.  Plus, when I don’t have an automatic big box of fruits and veges that I have to go through in a week, I tend to hop more on the pasta train, and eat out way too much.  So, limiting the eating out and adjusting my diet to a more healthy balance again.  I also need to reincorporate yoga into my routine, my flexibility has dropped drastically since I got too busy for it, but I want to do it weekly at the minimum and then increase that.  Also trying to consistently get to 10k steps on my step counter.  I’m very good at that some days, but during school I do a lot of sitting and studying, and those days my step count is pretty sad.

And weight loss.  Big sigh.  Weight loss for me is often a side effect, not a primary goal.  I have struggled with an eating disorder since my teens, which was at its worse around the time I developed adult onset bi-polar.  So I’m very very careful with weight loss, not to mention it often isn’t a focus when I’ve learned to really enjoy the fat on my body.  I embrace body positivity whole heartedly, and I love when I see myself taking up space and having curves and rolls to my body.  When I was getting the most complements and praise from my parents and friends, was during the times where I would eat one day out of an entire week for months as a time, and subsist in between on cigarettes and sips of vodka. That was when I was applauded for looking “healthy”, I really had to decide on my own what healthy was for me, and body fat is a proud part of it.  It means I’m not self-destructing, I matter to myself, I have a will to live.  That all said, I know weight loss will be a side effect of the changes I’m making, and I plan to embrace that if it is happening in a healthy way, and also later transition to gaining muscle so that I can still take up space in a way that makes me feel real.

Finance

This year the founding group of the intentional community I’m a part of is beginning to meet regularly and move forward with our plans.  As such, I really need to learn to budget tightly, and help Kelev do the same, so we can start planning for our future there and map out what we are about to do financially.  I want to cut down on eating out for my health as well, and hope that in doing so, I can also save a little money.  I try to be a prudent person who does not buy what I don’t need, but the stress and lack of spoons from school has led to me leaning more on pre-made food because it was a choice many times between having the energy to study or having the energy to grocery shop and cook, and I chose my grades first.  That is reasonable, but I want instead to find solutions where I can still maintain my study habits, but also have time to cook and eat healthier and cheaper meals.  I also will be looking again at my budget, as I do every year, and figuring out what I can trim back.  And, when I do my yearly spring cleaning and de-cluttering this year, I will see what I can part with and sell, as the beginning of my savings for my community venture.

Learning

I had an amazing first semester with nursing clinicals, and a difficult and stressful second semester.  I did not take enough time to relax during break and then went in to the semester already stressed and scrambling to keep up.  That feeling pervaded through the entire fall, and while I did the best I feel I was able, it was a struggle, and I would like to feel more competent and on top of things this time around.  I also am appreciating the amount of personal growth that has been coming of writing this, and place to continue it daily and learn as much as I can about myself in the coming year.

 

So, I am looking forward to a year in which I can let these three guiding resolutions or areas of focus light my way.  If it is anything like last year, I may have a lot of change thrown at me and have to adapt to all that as well.  Maybe this year will bring more relaxation and time to recoup and plan.  I hope so, because I am setting the building blocks to forge ahead to a bright future and many ambitious plans, and I’m ready to do this right.