Tag: exercise

Working Out Weekly With Older Women Changed My Life

On By erintothemaxIn CommentaryLeave a comment

The New York Times opinion page has declared “an aging face is the new punk rock.”

God, that made me feel alive.

I’m not doing anti-aging. It’s an anti-feminist conspiracy. Once, in the supermarket checkout, my tween daughter asked me to explain. I crumpled up with pride that she would ask. I opened my mouth. TEN WORDS OR LESS, she bellowed. Sob.

In any case, women of a certain age are not supposed to look old. Everyone knows that. Which is why it’s punk rock to buck the trend. As for me, you could say I’ve been waiting my whole life for my Bride of Frankenstein era. My growing gray stripes underscore my personality, and they are perfect.

Let me introduce my exercise instructor. Hope is a woman in her seventies. She sold off one fitness business to start a smaller one focused on healthy aging. Most of Hope’s clients are her age, more or less. Not me.

I adore working out with older women. Each week, Hope kicks my whole ass. No, I don’t know how to do all these partially limbed planks with a straight back for that amount of time. And what for with the leg circles? I’ve been doing them for years and they’re still torture! It’s a blessing her classes are on Zoom and my camera is off. I couldn’t stand to be seen with my modifications and generalized panting.

Throughout class, Hope openly talks about aging and what we can do to keep ourselves strong. She acknowledges when she’s having a bad balance or memory day. Most inspiringly, a few years ago she took a significant fall, and bounced back quickly. For most women (or men) at her age, a major fall is a disaster, and the beginning of a steep decline. Instead, Hope kept teaching classes, acknowledging her limitations and pushing forward anyway. She’s fine now.

I don’t know how or why we ever bought into this idea that women (or anyone) shouldn’t get old. When I was running Grandma’s Marathon last summer, there was a 65-year-old woman running on her birthday. I looked at her and thought, I want to do that.

I can’t overstate how inoculating I have found the experience of working out with retired women to be. It is a contrast to my work life, where I am mainly around younger people. But working out with older women doesn’t really make me feel old, or, for that matter, young. It makes me feel alive in the present, and alive with the knowledge that you can openly age and also be strong.

Treating Food And Exercise Like A Zero-Sum Game Is Peak Eating Disorder Culture

On By erintothemaxIn CommentaryLeave a comment

Here’s a horrible idea that promotes disordered eating: Researchers in the United Kingdom have suggested labels that list the amount of exercise required to burn the amount of calories in a food. As someone who nearly died of anorexia, I know that displaying this information in this manner — on literally all packaged foods — is a direct threat to the lives of the tens of millions of people struggling with eating disorders.

Eating disorders are hell. They make enemies of food, movement, and living life in general. With eating disorders, numbers become instruments of obsession, self-hatred, and self-torture: calories, nutrients, bites, steps, pounds, and sizes.

Putting the number of minutes required to ‘work off’ a food is peak eating disorder culture because food and movement are two different aspects of life that should not be presented as prerequisites for one another. You deserve to eat whether or not you exercise. You deserve to enjoy exercise without verging on the brink of collapse.

Food is fuel and nutrition as well as culture. At times food is an instrument for expression of creativity, love, and joy. Our bodies are built to eat food. Without food, we die. Movement and exercise are energizing, empowering, and make us feel good in body and mind. Even considering the range of disabilities that bring diversity to our communities and perspectives, our bodies are generally built to move.

The authors of this study suggest their food labels could help fight obesity, and troublingly, one representative responded to CNN with concerns about eating disorders with a dismissive, “we’re interested in the population as a whole.”

In the United States, more than 30 million people struggle with eating disorders. As an anorexia survivor, I have learned the hard way that people struggling with lethal eating disorders come in all shapes, sizes, weights, genders, races, ethnicities, socio-economic classes, and ages. We are your children, parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, and non-binary siblings.

As for scientists who wish to be ‘helpful,’ please can you not? Let’s not turn labels into weapons slapped onto every food at the grocery store. We’re still working on getting rid of the digitally altered magazine covers at the checkout aisle.

—

Note for readers who struggle with eating disorders or negative self-image: I want you to know that I believe in you and your ability to live a life without this horrible stuff. You deserve happiness. Recovery is possible. Seek professional support. Keep pushing, it’s worth it. xoxo