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Stuff that Weighs More than Me: A Teak Sauna

Just waiting and ready to be filled with some awesome friends.

Ahhh, thought I’d round out The Fat Chick’s Perspiration Inspiration week with a nice relaxing sauna, like this one. You can get this beautiful 6-person sauna in teak delivered to your home but be prepared for a hefty shipping bill because this bad boy is heavy. Even without six of your best friends towel-wrapped and lounging inside this thing weighs quite a lot. Here, my dear little chicklettes, are the specs:

Width: 85.6″

Depth: 70.6″

Height: 76.6″

Capacity: 4-6 people (depending on how friendly you’re feeling)

Weight: 1310 lbs.

Conclusion: Even devoid of awesomely pink, fluffy, towel-wrapped steam bathers, this Teak Sauna weighs more than me.

Is Exercise Sexy?

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The Shake Weight demonstrates the sex/fitness connection, sort of, well not really…

I saw one of those ads for athletic shoes the other day. You know, one of those ads where a perfectly shaped pert little body, glistening just so with perspiration shows a sexy godess of fitness–and I burst out laughing. I was giggling because I thought about how different that particular view of fitness is from fitness in my actual, real life. First of all there is no low mood lighting with special spotlights to highlight the shape of my rear end. I don’t, as a rule, casually drape a perfectly white fluffy towel over my shoulders. There’s no semi-pornographic, oom-chicka-mow-mow music playing where I work out. And there’s nothing that glistens, glows, or gently shines, because girlfriend, I SWEAT. And I think it’s pretty unrealistic that any amount of exercise is gonna make me look like that chick in the advertisement (even if I had the ARMY of stylists and digital re-touchers she’s working with). So I asked myself, given the huge yawning gulf between the advertising view of fitness and what exercise looks like in my world, is exercise sexy?

Well, I think exercise can be really sexy, but not usually in the way depicted on television. I think it can be sexy when it’s a kind and wonderful thing that I do for myself. I don’t think exercise as punishment is particularly sexy (even in a S&M sorta way). But I think the way that exercise makes me feel, is sexy. For example:

Improved Self Esteem–Feels Sexy

Stronger Body–Feels Sexy

Better Sleep/Better Rested–Feels Sexy (and more likely to be awake for sex)

Better Stress Management–Feels Sexy (and a lot more in the mood for sex)

And when you come right down to it. Research indicates that people who exercise regularly have better sex lives. So is exercise sexy? Yes, YES, OH GOD YES!!!!! Just don’t expect it to look like it does on TV.

Love,

The Fat Chick

Sweaty and Fabulous: Plus Sized Fitness Wear for EVERY Body

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Following yesterday’s post about sweat, I thought I’d publish this new video I created with advice about plus-sized fitness togs.

For a lot MORE information about plus-sized fitness wear, you might want to check out THIS thread on the Fit Fatties Forum. If you haven’t joined yet, well get to it! It’s pretty awesome. (And not just because I host it with the spectacularly talented Ragen Chastain…)

Because my dear chicklettes, getting all sweaty is no reason to stop looking FABULOUS!

Love,

The Fat Chick

Getting into a Lather: Why Sweating can be Good

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Sweat can be sexy. Sometimes. Really….

If there is one question that got people talking on our Fit Fatties Forum, it would have to be the question about sweat. Love it or hate it, folks sure seem to have strong feelings about it. Sweating seems to have a lot of connotations in our society. Fitness magazine covers and ads for expensive tennis shoes tend to feature muscle-bound bodies glistening with sweat. (Hint–there’s a good chance it’s oil or Photoshop.) In this context sweat seems to indicate health, discipline and beauty. If a larger body is shown sweating in the media it is often used to denote someone who is out of shape. And if somebody not in exercise clothes is shown sweating it often seems to imply that person is being dishonorable or dishonest. (Remember “Tricky Dick” sweating during the presidential debate? Well, me neither, but I’ve seen footage…)

So unless you’re a fitness magazine cover model, you might find that you are not in love with the idea of sweating. But my dear chicklettes, I’d like to help change your mind about that. Because sweating is actually pretty awesome.

Nerd Alert: How Sweat Cools the Body
Perspiration is how our brain helps us to cool ourselves or regulate body temperature. Fluids, made mostly of water, but also of minerals and a small amount of waste product, are excreted through the sweat glands and the pores in our skin. Sweating pulls blood away from the body’s core and toward the surface of the skin, and then (poof) the sweat evaporates. The change from liquid to vapor requires heat energy, which is drawn from the surrounding atmosphere, namely the body. Heat is pulled out of the blood and skin, and your body cools down. In fact, each gram of evaporated sweat cools a liter of blood about one degree Fahrenheit. So as a cooling mechanism, sweat is pretty darn awesome.

Other Benefits of Sweat
You’ll hear a lot of people talking about how sweat removes toxins from your body. And this seems to be true to some extent. However modern science seems to indicate that the claims for sweat as a detoxifier are somewhat exaggerated. That said, sweat does seem to help clean your skin, and helps to keep it soft and supple. Sweating also raises your heart rate and helps burn calories. (Some estimates are as high as 300 calories per hour, just from sweating.) Sweating does seem to help with stress as it warms and helps relax the muscles. And some believe that sweating helps strengthen the immune system by helping to generate more white blood cells in the body.

But Doesn’t Sweat Stink?
Sweat in and of itself doesn’t really smell bad. When sweat is allowed to stay on the skin over time, it can interact with bacteria on the surface of your body and cause an unappealing smell. So as long as you wash relatively soon after you exercise, you probably won’t smell too bad. In fact, there is some research that indicates that an ingredient in male sweat (that acts as a pheromone in other animals) helps raise a hormone in women that gets them hot and bothered. So sweat, can even be sexy!

So sweating (even a lot) can be very healthy. In fact if you’re doing a lot of exercise and getting very warmwithout sweating this can be a sign of a condition called anhidrosis. This condition can be quite dangerous as it prevents the body from cooling properly and can lead to heat exhaustion and heat stroke. If you get very warm but don’t sweat during vigorous exercise (especially in humid climates) you may want to see your doctor and get it checked out.

Later this week, I’ll be talking about sweating comfortably during exercise. But in the meantime, my damp little chicklettes, I say enjoy getting all sweaty. Revel in it and wear it as a badge of honor.

Love,

The Fat Chick

Exercise Animals: Porcine Olympic Diving Competition Entrant

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Wheeeeee!! How fun is that? Just a reminder to keep cool this week!

Love,

The Fat Chick

The National Weight Control Registry: Oh look, a Unicorn

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Results not typical…

Over the past few weeks, I’ve heard several people advance the National Weight Control Registry as evidence that people can permanently lose weight. To take just two cases, It is currently prominently featured on the Weight of the Nation website and it was thrown at Julianne Wotasik and I during our interview on Dr. Drew’s show earlier this week. Add to that, my new friend Angela sending her amazing slides for a new UK lecture on the NWCR and a blog post seemed kind of inevitable…

The National Weight Control Registry is a list of about 10,000 people who are at or above age eighteen who have lost at least 30 pounds and kept it off for at least one year. There are follow up studies done on subsets of the group over time. But in order to initially qualify for this group you must only meet three criteria: be 18 or older, show an initial weight loss of over 30 pounds, and maintain at least 30 lbs of your initial weight loss for one year. As I mentioned on Dr. Drew’s show, I would have qualified for the NWCR at least two different times in my life. But alas, after the one or two year point, I regained my weight plus a little. (It was only when I stopped weight cycling that I have been able to maintain a steady, albeit higher weight.)

There’s lots of argument back and forth about the level of regain among participants. One follow up study from 2003 indicated that among the subset self selected for the review, over 70 percent had regained some weight over the two years of the study. Granted, most of them had retained a significant percentage of their weight loss at this point, but “recovery from even minor weight gain was uncommon”.

But here’s the main thing folks. The National Weight Control Registry is a study of a very, very small, self-selected sample of people who have lost some weight and kept some of it off. The study was never designed to apply to a general population– “Because this is not a random sample of those who attempt weight loss, the results have limited generalizability to the entire population of overweight and obese individuals.” So this is a study of what a very small percentage of people in the United States did in order to lose weight (lots of different things) and keep some of it off. Sure there have been glowing reports of what these folks have in common in maintaining some weight loss. Most severely restrict calories, exercise daily and weigh weekly. And many media outlets have shouted about the fact that most of these folks eat breakfast every day! (Since I’ve eaten breakfast every day for my entire life, and I’m still waiting for the magic weight loss to appear, I kinda wonder if this breakfast thing has a causal relationship with weight loss. But I digress…)

When I say the NWCR is a small sample, I mean it. At any given time, over 70 million Americans are trying to lose weight for good. The NWCR lists 10,000 who have managed to log some success in that regard. We’re talking about a .00014 percent success rate here. As a point of comparison, over 500,000 people completed a marathon last year. And when it comes to an Ironman race (that’s a 2.4 mile swim followed by a 112 mile bike ride followed by a 26.2 mile run all completed in less than 17 hours with no break) estimates run as high as 25,000 projected participants for this year. So why aren’t we suggesting that all Americans compete in marathons or even Ironman competitions to be healthy? After all, our sample sizes for successful people are 2.5 to 50 TIMES HIGHER than those listed in the NWCR. And since 25,000 people have managed to complete an Ironman, it’s clearly possible, right? Maybe those half million marathoners need to learn from the techniques of the Ironmen and just suck it up and do it. Anybody who doesn’t want to exercise for 17 hours straight is clearly a slacker.

We don’t suggest everyone compete in marathons and triathlons and Ironmans because it’s ridiculous. We know that not everyone has the time, health, money or inclination to train the average 40 miles per week clocked by mere marathoners not to mention the hundreds of miles clocked by Ironmen. While I adored my marathon training and am extremely glad I did it, I just don’t have that kind of time to dedicate to marathon training on top of all of the other fitness classes I’m teaching right now. And with plenty of research indicating that a mere 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week is all that is necessary to achieve extremely significant health goals, I’m happy too treasure my medals and move on. And since there is also plenty of research indicating that I can be happy and healthy by engaging in moderate healthy behaviors without significant weight loss, I’m happy to do that too and just get on with my life.

So my dear little chicklettes, I no longer qualify for the NWCR. Maybe you don’t qualify either, but that’s okay. Why not join my extremely exclusive Fat Chick Clique instead? It’s totally free, you get to get free stuff, and you can live your life however you want. Cuz’ that’s just how I roll.

Love,

The Fat Chick

What we Said BEFORE Meme came on…

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Hi everybody. There’s been a lot of talk about Meme’s hate speech approach to people of size on Dr. Drew’s show yesterday. And I want to especially thank Ragen for standing up for Julianne and I. I DO think it represents a minimal step forward that hosts feel the need to have people like Ms. Roth on the show. In the past, the host would have simply belittled and mocked us directly. So I think the fact that hosts are bringing in a proxy to do the fat bashing represents a small but significant shift in public opinion. (YAY!) But before the clip that’s currently highlighted on the HLN site, Julianne and I did get to say quite a lot and I want to share it here.

Thanks so much to everybody for all your support and cheering. It’s hard to be up there in the lights being attacked. But I know we can bear it because we have such a strong, POSITIVE, SUPPORTIVE community behind us.

Now it’s time to share a little of that love. I suspect that HLN chose that clip to highlight on their site because they thought it was the most outrageous and would solicit the most comments. So I’d like to ask you to go to that comments page and share some positive thoughts about size acceptance and HAES. Here’s the link. I think saying negative things about Ms. Roth will only encourage them to have her on again as she “solicits a strong response”. So I’m going to suggest that you refrain from bashing her in the comments. If you need moral support, please see Ragen’s excellent and wonderful post here.

I think it would be more helpful to shift the focus somewhat and say something positive about size acceptance or how something said about size acceptance resonated with you or was helpful to you. Sorry to give you MORE HOMEWORK, my little chicklettes but we still got a long row to hoe. But before you leave here’s how Julianne most beautifully and eloquently got in the last word:

Love,

The Fat Chick

Judging for Yourself: Some Size Acceptance Data

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I’m headed off to share the size acceptance message on Dr. Drew’s Show on HLN tonight at 6:00 with the amazing and beautiful Julianne Wotazik. We’ll also be hearing from MeMe Roth. So I figured, I’d get some of my data wrangled up to share with you. There are lots of wonderful sources where size acceptance data is gathered and posted on the web. So I’m just going to share some links with you:

Ragen Chastain offers some fantastic research on her blog on this posting (scroll down to the bottom of the post.)

The Association for Size Diversity And Health has a lot of great information posted here on their site.

The amazing Dr. Linda Bacon has a lot of articles and research available here on her site.

And of course, there’s lots of research sited in my book.

There are literally thousands of research studies and articles embracing the Health At Every Size approach to wellness. Hopefully this small compendium will give you a jumping off place in your reading and allow you to draw your own conclusions.

Because you need to remember my dear chicklettes, it’s YOUR body, so YOU decide what is the best way to care for your body and yourself and love the skin you’re in.

Love,

The Fat Chick

Stuff that Weighs More than Me: Tallinn TV Tower

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A big, BIG antenna for watching a few boats.

With all this activity around The Fat Chick on TV, I thought I’d check out some transmission possibilities. I’ve already done a transmission satellite, so I thought I’d look at some television transmission towers. And let me tell you, this week’s entry is a doozy. Located in Pirita just outside Tallinn City in Estonia, this free-standing tower (complete with observation deck) was used to provide better telecommunication services for the regatta event at the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics. So essentially, this HUGE tower was built so that the world could get a better look at a boat race.

The tower has an interesting past, and features bullet holes from the Soviet Coup attempt of 1991 and was apparently held for a time by a handful of radio operators who protected the free radio station by jamming matchboxes into the elevators to force the Soviet troops to climb the over 1000 steps in the tower.

Here’s the stats…

Time to completion: 5 years

Height, including antenna spire: 1030.2 ft.

Foundation: includes reinforced concrete rings over 50 cm thick

Total Weight: Over 20,000 tons.

Conclusion: the Tallinn TV Tower weighs more than me.

In other TV news, the Fox 11 LA news segment will be rebroadcast at 5PM tonight and Julianne and I will also be appearing on Dr. Drew’s new show on HLN this week. Stay tuned!

Olympic-levels of FUN!

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The Fat Chick with Olympian Cheryl Haworth, Filmmaker Julie Wyman and awesome producer Barbara Multer-Wellin at the Pasadena screening of Strong!

I am so excited and blessed that my dear friend Barbara Multer-Wellin and I had a chance to meet two absolutely amazing women–3-time Olympian Cheryl Haworth and extraordinary documentary filmmaker Julie Wyman before the screening of their movie Strong! What an awesome film! (I am trying for the WR for the most superlatives in one blog post ever, so work with me here.) It is such a joy when you meet famous people who are so warm and down to earth and funny. We laughed our heads off! And I do want to give a shout out for the film. I’ve seen it at least 4 or 5 times now (I’ve lost count) and it seriously gets better every time I watch it. The film is beautifully shot and really portrays Cheryl’s strength, sense of humor and well-grounded sense of self.

Part of the sense of self that Cheryl portrays in the film is a sense of ambiguity in her feelings about her physical appearance. I want to applaud both Cheryl and Julie for allowing us to see that ambiguity. During the panel discussion last night, Julie spoke about the great temptation to have the movie be a message and have everything tied up in a neat bow at the end. But life rarely works that way, and the openness of both Julie and Cheryl in allowing us to see that struggle for body acceptance is one of the most powerful things about the film. Self acceptance, especially when one does not meet certain societal standards for body size and shape is hard. The film shows us how hard it is without offering simplistic, preachy solutions. I found that deeply meaningful.

So for heaven’s sake my little Chicklettes, go see this film! If you’re in Southern California, you can join me for a free screening followed by a panel discussion in Long Beach at 6 PM on May 29. And there are still a few other screenings scheduled throughout the country. Or at least plan on watching it on PBS when it airs in July. Just don’t miss it!

Love,

The Fat Chick