Tag Archives: fitness

Exercise Animals: I Cannot Tell a Lie…

A kitteh haz to do what a kitteh haz to do…

Sure, I did some exercise today. I taught my class, and it was super fun and awesome. But sometimes you just need some pizza. I did that too. Went to Zelo, pretty much the best pizza place EVAR and had a slice. It was heaven. So my little chicklettes, I highly recommend that you get regular exercise. I ALSO recommend that you get a piece of pizza pie every now and again too. Cuz’ when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie that’s amore. And amore means love. Which is what I feel for you, and, er, pizza.

Love,

The Fat Chick

The Zen (sort of) Art of Camping

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Sometimes I joke that the best part of camping is how relieved you are not to be camping any more. Seriously. You know, like when you say to somebody, “It hurts when I do this!” They invariably dutifully ask, “Well, why are you doing that?” You reply, “Because it feels so good when I stop!” Yeah, camping is a little like that.

When I told one of my good friends I was planning on going camping, she said that for her, camping seemed to be mostly about cooking and cleaning up after cooking and getting things ready for sleeping and sleeping and picking things up after sleeping. And I agreed. Camping is kind of like that too. But for me, that’s sort of the point of camping.

For me, camping takes me out of my routine at home and slows me down. Everyday things like making a meal or doing dishes are more challenging when you have to pull everything out of a cooler and make a fire and heat your own water. But I also find that the slower and more challenging nature of doing these things in a more primitive way causes me to live in the moment. While I’m making dinner, I’m not also on the cell phone and figuring out what I’m going to wear today. While I’m doing dishes, I’m not also watching TV and thinking about what my last client said to me. I find that I can be absorbed in what I’m doing and achieve a state of flow.

For me, a state of flow is a condition where for a few, brief, blessed moments, I’m concentrating completely on what I’m doing while I’m doing it. It’s rare and elusive but supremely relaxing. It’s living in the now without reflection and without worry. It’s just a matter of doing stuff while you’re doing it. This is something I also feel whenever I teach an exercise class. There’s so much to keep track of while teaching–from how my students are doing to the temperature in the room to the beat of the music to what step I’m supposed to be doing right now to making sure that everybody is being safe and not getting hurt. Whenever I start thinking about what I’m going to have for lunch or whether or not I should buy that shirt I saw at the mall last night, it all falls apart. I stumble. I lose my place in the music. And I find I have to shake my head, march us all in place for a little while and begin again. But when I’m just thinking about my students and the beat and the dancing, it’s calming and joyous and maybe a little teensy bit zen.

So my little chicklettes–I want to ask you to think about what activities allow you to achieve this sort of moving meditation. What allows you to live completely in the “now”? Is there something you love to do? Something during which you can be completely absorbed and time seems to just “fly by”? I encourage you to find your thing. Maybe you could even try camping. Because, when you stop camping and take a bath and slip in between clean sheets on a real bed, it feels soooooooo good.

Love,

The Fat Chick

Finding Help: Buyer Beware

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When it comes to fitness, if it hurts, DON’T DO IT!

So far this week we’ve been talking about helping others. And I’m a BIG fan of that. Today we’re going to talk about finding help for yourself. And I’m a BIG fan of that too. But in finding help, you DO need to be careful.

Settle in my little chickies, and I’ll tell you a little story–an instructive parable as it were. At one point in my life, when I was deeply worried about being thin, I panicked and I hired a personal trainer. Now believe me, I think having a personal trainer can be an awesome investment. But in this case, I was ruled by panic. Did I check to see if this guy was certified? Nope. Did I ask to talk to other students of his? Uh uh. Did I even do an online search to see if this guy was a maniac? That would be negative. I saw the guys phone number on the gym bulletin board, I called him and I started working with him.

I should also mention that at the time I could barely afford to buy food or medicine. But that didn’t matter because this guy was gonna do it. He was gonna make me skinny and from there on out my life would be PERFECT.

I should have known from the very first workout that this guy was not for me. The FIRST thing he did, before he did an intake questionnaire or asked me about my fitness level or fitness goals or potential health problems was to plunk me on a treadmill, crank up the speed, crank up the incline and to tell me to stay on there for 20 minutes. And by goodness I DID stay on there for 20 minutes. Sweating, wheezing, heart pounding, and feeling sick, I staggered over to where he was reading a muscle magazine. “Wow,” he said. “I wasn’t really expecting you to do the whole 20 minutes. Now we can get down to some real work.”

Now my little chicklettes, that scenario is what we in the business call a “clue”. The guy basically threw me into a “maximal” testing situation where he intended to test me to failure, but he didn’t check my history first, he didn’t monitor me and, here’s something important, he DIDN’T BOTHER TO TELL ME that’s what we were doing. Dangerous? Yup. Epic stupidity? Yah, you betcha! But he later confessed he didn’t tell me because he could tell by looking at me that I was “soft” and he didn’t want me to “wimp out”.

But did I yell at him? Did I quit giving him money? No I did not. I kept training with him because he was thin and muscular and I was fat. I trained with him for months. Unable to walk after our exercise sessions, frequently vomiting in the locker room after workouts and feeling sick and miserable, I worked with him until I got injured and couldn’t work out any more. And I guess you can tell at this point, I’m still pretty darn angry about it.

Look, if I had tuned in with my instincts, which were SCREAMING by the way, that I should RUN (well at least stagger) away from this guy, I could have avoided a whole lot of heartache and saved money to buy something awesome, like shoes. But I allowed my feelings of insecurity and false hopes to lure me into getting myself hurt.

So my little chicklettes, the lesson is this. Please do seek help. We all need help from time to time. No woman is an island. But please seek help that is competent, qualified, and compassionate. Do your research first. Shop around. Ask questions. Ask for references. Ask for qualifications. Any trainer, doctor, therapist or coach who doesn’t want to give this sort of information to you is not worth considering. And if your instincts tell you that this isn’t the right person for you or that you don’t feel safe, leave. Take your toys and GO HOME.

Because my sweet little chickadees, when it comes to helpers as with everything in life, you deserve only the best.

Love,

The Fat Chick

Exercise Animals: Getting a Little Lift

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Okay my dear little chicklettes. Sometimes it can be tough. But it’s amazing how far we can fly when we help one another. That is all.

Love,

The Fat Chick

Why it’s Good Karma to Put Yourself Forward

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Dancin with myself at the Relay for Life event…

Among many activities this weekend, I went and did the morning wake-up workout and stretch for the American Cancer Society Relay for Life in Southern California. It was early. And when I got there, it seemed like most people were still sleeping. I wondered if they even really wanted me there.

I went to plug my iPod and microphone into the sound system. But there was no power. There were lots of cables, but no power. So I followed all the cables to a gas-powered generator. Luckily there were directions on the top, so I fired that up. But after just a few minutes, it died. Okay. So I looked around and located the fuel gauge. EMPTY. But, I didn’t give up. I looked around and found some gas, brought it to the generator, filled it up, fired it up, got all my sound gear set up and started.

At first I was the only person exercising–all by my myself, at 6:30 in the morning, in the middle of this huge field. Suddenly somebody felt sorry for me and started doing some of the movements from across the field. He never did come right over, but he smiled as he did them. I noticed other people from way far away around the field start doing some of the arm movements along with me. They smiled and they danced from afar as they packed their tents in preparation for the closing ceremonies. I joked about having the most spread out fitness class in history. But I kept at it.

Eventually, one woman came right over and danced with me for a little while. When I went over for coffee afterwards I heard from everybody what a great job I did even though I didn’t have a big class of people in front of me. The lady who danced with me got very excited when she heard about my class, and I think she’s going to come for some of them. And one lady even gave me a hula hoop to say thanks! They loved it! So I could gone home bummed that I didn’t have a photo opp with hundreds of people dancing in perfect step. But I chose to be thrilled that I made a difference for somebody–anybody.

So here comes the metaphor kids…We’d like to believe that once we put ourselves out front, we’ll achieve instant rock star status and have a huge following. We want to believe that a limo will pick us up and whisk us to a dressing room featuring our brand of bottled water and bowls of M&Ms with just the green ones. But my experience, in learning to put myself out there as a plus-sized fitness instructor who supports body diversity is that it goes a lot more like my experience in that misty field at 6:30 in the morning. Sometimes you’ve got to fire up and gas the generator. Usually, you have to make your own crowd. Many people watch. Some join from a far. And just a few step right up. But my dear chicklettes, you never know how much impact you’re having or how much good you’re doing. You never know when you’re changing somebody’s life for the better.

So my little chicklettes, I’m going to suggest you put yourself forward this week in some small way. Help somebody out. Share your positive energy with complete strangers. Remember, you don’t have to be a rock star to make the world a better place.

Love,

The Fat Chick

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

But won’t you lose weight if…?

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At the San Bernardino Valley College screening of “Strong!”

Last night at the panel discussion after the screening of StrongI at the San Bernardino Valley College, I got asked a very common question. People assume, that if I did a marathon or if I ate healthy or if taught aerobics, I would have lost weight. And audience members were, as always, floored when I told them, yes I did those things and no I didn’t lose weight. They usually follow this question with a tentative, “well you lost inches, right?”. To which I usually respond, “well I didn’t get any shorter!” Seriously, it seems very hard for folks to believe that a person can do healthy things, even extraordinary physical things and not get thin. This seems to fly in the face of EVERYTHING that they’ve heard. And I’m sorry about that. But it’s still true.

When I started teaching fitness, I went from very little exercise to over 4 hours per week. Did I get svelte? Did I get slim? Nope! When I bumped my teaching up to 9 hours per week, I lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 pounds and ended up with a ligament tear in my knee. I gained one 3-pound pair of crutches for a net weight loss of 0.00. While training for the marathon, I routinely walked and ran 15 to 20 miles per week. Near the end it was well over 30. And you know how much weight I lost? Zero. Zip. Zilch. I felt better. I was stronger and healthier. And no doubt some of my weight shifted around a bit. But the fact is, I didn’t get thin.

And here’s why that’s important. Wouldn’t it have been a shame for me to have crossed the finish line of my first (and only) marathon feeling like a failure? Can you imagine? Going 26.2 miles in one day without dying and feeling like a FAILURE? Well that’s precisely what would have happened had I not learned to separate the concept of fitness from the concept of weight loss. Since I wasn’t worried about losing weight, I can tell you that crossing that finish line was one of the most amazing moments of my life.

So that’s it. That’s why I call myself The Fat Chick. Because I think it is so very important to let fitness stand on its own as an accomplishment. Because I want people to understand that not all folks who exercise look like fitness cover models. A lot of them look an awful lot like me. In fact, if you’d like to see some exercisers of size, don’t forget to hit the photo gallery of Fit Fatties which I developed in concert with the lovely and amazing Ms. Ragen Chastain.

And remember my little chicklettes, if you want to see what an athlete looks like, just check in the nearest mirror.

Love,

TFC