Tag Archives: Jeanette DePatie

Arriving

I had a chance to put some of my steps technique into practice yesterday as I jetted off on a last minute jaunt to New York City. I’m going to be interviewed on the Katie Couric show today and it’s due to air tomorrow (Thursday) on ABC. To say I’m excited, is an understatement. Thrilled, terrified, hopping up and down with adrenal glands working mega overtime, that’s just the half of it. But I have to tell you a little secret. One of the most exciting things so far was arriving at the airport yesterday. The show sent a driver to pick me up at the airport. And as I descended the escalator to baggage claim there he was: a very nice, well-dressed man holding up a sign with my name on it. It may seem like a little thing, but to me it really wasn’t. I have been flying for over 25 years, and I have always wondered whether one of those well-dressed guys at the airport would hold a sign up with MY name on it. Yesterday it happened. I, well I “arrived”.

I wonder sometimes about the life that led me to this point. I wonder about the hard work and the sacrifices I have made. I wonder about the many, many sacrifices my parents and my husband have made. I wonder at the support of my dear friends and the multitudes of blessings I have received, and I guess my feelings all boil down to one thing. I feel grateful–deeply and humbly grateful for this moment. As my dear friend Kate advised, I’m breathing deeply and joyfully. And I’m trying to savor every dang moment of this victory.

I don’t know how the taping will go. I’m praying that it will go well. But whatever happens, I’m grateful for this little moment. For Rocky who drove me to the fancy hotel next to the studio and for that tiny little sign with my name on it.

Love,

Jeanette DePatie

AKA The Fat Chick

P.S. The episode is due to air on ABC tomorrow. So tune in and see how I did.

oxoxoxo

More Steps Towards Awesomeness: Thanksgiving Edition

Athletics and Allergies–Ahh-ahh-CHOO! (Now, with cat pictures!)

Taking Your Spirit for a Walk

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We’ve been talking a lot about pedometers and counting steps and walking towards physical fitness in the last few weeks. But walking does a lot more than strengthen your body and mind. Walking can also have a profound effect on calming and lifting your spirit. There are many approaches to using walking to speak to your soul. So take a deep breath, and let’s explore some of them together:

Love walking: Going for a walk with somebody you love deeply can be a great balm and help for both of your souls. If you walk with one of your children, this can be a time for you to really listen to them and focus on what is happening in their life. In order for this to work however, you really have to focus. That may mean muting your cell phone or turning it off altogether. (But don’t leave your phone at home. A fully-charged cell phone is one of your most important pieces of fitness safety gear.) This can also be a time for you to observe nature together. If your child is young, you may want to be prepared with some games that you can play as you walk like iSpy or simply naming the colors, animals, plants and shapes you encounter along the way. Love walking with your significant other can be a time for you to share the details of your day, or even just to hold hands and enjoy some silence together.

Social Walking: Walking can be a great time to catch up with friends and share thoughts and feelings about what is happening in your lives. And walking regularly with a good friend can help you keep your walking program on track. Having a great jaw session can help bring the fun into fitness and help you forget that you’re exercising. And don’t forget, laughing while walking also engages your abdominal muscles!

Prayer Walking: I’ve known some people who have found a lot of joy in using their walking time for prayer. You can take time during your stroll to pray for friends and family. You can even take time, as you walk the sidewalks in your neighborhood to pray for the people who live near you. Aside from allowing you to really focus on prayer a few times per week, I’ve talked to some prayer walkers who find that turning focus away from the physical benefits and towards caring for other people helps them to prioritize their walking program and be sure to carve time out for it. And spending time sending love out to the universe is sure to have benefits for you and for everyone you touch.

Walking Meditation: Walking is a rhythmic, repetitive process that can really lend itself towards meditation. Some people find it easier to meditate while they are sitting very still. Some others find that the physical action of walking really helps them with their body awareness and aids their meditation practice. There are many forms of walking meditation–from quite simple to more complex versions. However, here’s a few tips for engaging in a walking meditation:

1. Silence is golden. Bring your fully-charged cell phone with you, but mute or turn it off during your walk. Unless you are using music or spoken word specifically tailored to your meditation, you may want to leave your MP3 player and earbuds at home.

2. Take some time before you start to become centered in your body. Take a few deep breaths. Feel the breaths move your tummy in and out. Check in with your hands and feet, and sense how your body feels before you start out.

3. Take the easy path. Try to walk somewhere that will not require you to dodge a lot of people or obstacles. Some gurus suggest that you pick a relatively short, straight path. When you come to the end of the path, stop, reconnect with your body, turn around, and walk again.

4. Spend time as you are walking checking in with your body. How does your breath feel going in and out? How do the soles of your feet feel where they are touching your shoes or socks, and how does each footfall ground with the earth? How do your arms feel? Does your body feel light or heavy? How does the air feel as it touches your skin?

5. Send yourself some body love. A walking meditation is a wonderful time to send positive messages to your body. You can even choose a mantra–a brief phrase that you repeat to yourself over and over as you walk. The best mantras are rhythmic in nature and allow you to put a syllable on each step as you walk. Here are a few of my favorites:

I am worthy.

I am enough.

I am grateful.

Thank you body.

So what do you think? Are you interested in taking your spirit for a walk? I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences as you give some of these techniques a try. Don’t forget to share in the comments section!

And yet another one of our faithful readers will be receiving a jump start to his fitness program! Rob Gokee, you’ve won a free pedometer! Don’t forget to send me an email at jeanette at thefatchick dot com with your mailing address so I can get your pedometer out to you!

Love,

Jeanette DePatie

AKA The Fat Chick

P.S. Want to get access to FREE STUFF? Just opt in RIGHT HERE!

The True Virtue of the Turkey Trot and Other Tips for Holiday Fitness

Up Hill Both Ways: 30th Anniversary of Shadow on a Tightrope

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A new generation is introduced to Shadow on a Tightrope. Photo Credit: Substantia Jones

I have to confess. I recently re-read Shadow on a Tightrope in honor of this blog carnival. I tore through the book at warp speed, reveling in the sheer, unadulterated, radical awesomeness of it. I was moved by the rawness and honesty found in so much of the writing. And I felt a deep sense of gratitude for the women who came before me in this amazing movement of size acceptance.

I felt all of these things, but more than any of these things, I felt a sense of awe. These women blazed a trail across this far-flung land. They build a bridge to one another through their written words. And they did it with pencils and typewriters.

Now I understand that there’s a real danger here that I will tell the activism equivalent of walking to school and back, in the snow, and that it was uphill both ways. But isn’t that sort of what we are talking about here?

In reading these stories, I was struck by how hard it was for size activists simply to find one another. I was fascinated by the level of manual work they did, collecting checks to cover the costs of photocopying medical journal articles and studies, copying them and mailing them out to one another.

I was also struck by how often a writer in the anthology refers to years or even decades in isolation–believing they were the only one to feel the way they did. And I was moved by the joy expressed in finding even one like-minded soul with whom to have dinner, swap letters or share late-night phone calls.

It’s hard to speak of size acceptance today, even with the myriad of online research resources and the powerful forums and channels that bring like minded activists to the distance of just one click from one another. While it’s true that modern life brings a different set of headaches (like moderating yet another absolutely vile YouTube comment) it also brings us comfort and tremendous support. Often, within seconds of writing a blog post or sharing a thought on Facebook, I’ll have a word or two of support or encouragement. I can debate difficult questions about the nature of size acceptance in real time, with scholars throughout the world. But even so, it can be hard to stand aside from the mainstream on notions of weight, weight loss, fat acceptance, and Health At Every Size.

But how much more difficult was it back in 1983 or even earlier? Shadow on a Tightrope, was created in a time when writers put their stake in the sand, said their piece and then waited weeks or months or even years to see what the world had to say about it. Yet it’s astonishing, how many stakes were planted, and just how much ground was covered by this early work.

We owe a debt of gratitude to these early pioneers. That’s why I am so excited to see projects like this one, celebrating the 30-year anniversary of a seminal work in the Size Acceptance cannon, or the history project initiated by Barbara Altman Bruno on behalf of ASDAH, and the tremendous work being done by Ragen Chastain to document the stories of the founders of this movement in their own wordsl

I am proud and honored to share in some small way, my heartfelt thanks to those who not only added to the scholarship side of the size acceptance movement, but also paved the way for me to step off the diet/body hatred merry-go-round and learn to love my body far, far earlier than I would have done without their guidance. For helping me reclaim weeks, months, years and even decades for body love, self acceptance and even joy, I’m very, very grateful.

Perhaps 30 years from now, the young upstarts will be rolling their eyes and wondering how we old farts ever built a movement without transporter beams and holographic recording. If at that point we are able to leave behind even a small fraction of work on par with that found in Shadow on a Tightrope, I will count us successful indeed!

Love,

Jeanette DePatie

AKA The Fat Chick

P.S. Want to get access to FREE STUFF? Just opt in RIGHT HERE!

Why this Might Be the Best Week all Year to Start Exercising

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Sure, any time is a good time to start exercising. But if you live in the United States, this might just be the best week all year to start a new program! Why? I’m so glad you asked!

In most of the United States, this past Sunday, we set the clock back in honor of the end of “daylight savings time”. Now in many ways this is a bloody nuisance. But in one important way, this can be a new exerciser’s best friend! You can exercise at any time of the day, but I think people have the greatest degree of success if they start exercising first thing in the morning. There’s a lot of reasons for this. It allows you to get your exercise in early, before too many life traumas and distractions can get in the way. And if you’re like me, and you don’t bother to shower or do your hair or makeup before you work out, it means you only have to get “duded up” one time in a day. Roll out of bed, don spandex and get to it! And exercising late in the day can either be dangerous (too dark) or make it difficult to sleep at night.

All in all it’s best to just get up a little earlier to start exercising. The hardest thing is training your body to wake up earlier. Except, this week, you PROBABLY WON’T HAVE TO! Your body is already trained to wake up one hour earlier, because you set the clocks back. So if you start this week, like this very moment, you can go through that transition without actually getting up any earlier in the morning! Yup! You’re Welcome!

Now the one challenge with this is training your body to go to bed a little bit earlier at night. But we have a couple of tricks up our sleeve in this department as well. First of all, it’s getting dark earlier, like oh my gosh it’s the middle of the afternoon earlier. This will help you feel sleepy. Also, exercise in the morning tends to help people sleep better at night. So you’ve got that working in your favor as well! And in terms of all of the holiday craziness, you get about one week’s respite from trick or treating and making your kid’s Halloween costume (and 4 dozen spider cupcakes) and shopping for Thanksgiving. Because I’ll tell you what. Once the Thanksgiving cleaning, and shopping and cooking and eating all begin, it becomes a lot harder to start a new exercise program. And you could be be sitting at the Thanksgiving table being silently thankful that you started to move your body in new and joyful ways this year.

And let’s not forget the weather. In much of the country, the weather is beautiful this time of year. There’s a crispness in the air that gives a new pep to your step, and the autumn leaves put on a gorgeous show that changes every day. Of course, it can also be rainy and snowy and crummy, but then you can go check out the new holiday decorations at the mall, BEFORE the mall opens and the gabillions of people descend.

Of course, any time is a good time to start exercising. I just think this week might be a teensy bit better. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment section.

By the way, reader Kim Rodriguez may have a special reason to get started as she is the first winner in our Great Fat Chick Pedometer Giveaway. We’ll be giving away four more pedometers, so keep your eyes peeled to see if you are one of the winners. If you didn’t enter before yesterday, don’t worry! We’ll be doing other giveaways. In fact, if you’d like to make SURE you don’t miss one, why not join the Fat Chick Clique. You’ll be sure to get some free stuff right away, and I’ll make sure you don’t miss another one of our amazing giveaways! Just opt in RIGHT HERE!

Love,

Jeanette DePatie

AKA The Fat Chick

Fitness Training and Trash Talking

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Did you know that it’s “Fat Talk Free” week? I just found out yesterday and I’m super excited. A whole week dedicated to not trash talking our bodies?!? Sign me up! The day was created by sorority Delta, Delta, Delta. You can see their video here:

Today I’d like to talk about how to talk to your body while you are fitness training. We’re all familiar with the notion of trash talking in sports. That’s where you call out your opponent and do verbal intimidation to help you win (or at least get air time). If you want to see some amazing examples of trash talking in sports, you can follow this link to the Top Ten Sports Trash Talkers. Unfortunately many of us have also faced trash talkers, gawkers and mean people who have tried to derail our fitness attempts in various ways. From having people belittle your fitness efforts to offering unsolicited advice to throwing eggs at you while you run, other people can be brutal about your fitness efforts.

(Honestly, who throws eggs at people who are exercising?)

But as awful as other people can be about our bodies while we exercise, we are often the hardest on ourselves. It’s so easy to slip into the habit of disparaging our bodies when we work out. How often do you find yourself making negative comments about your body or your capabilities before, during or after exercise? Maybe you find yourself saying things like, “I’ve got to work out these flabby thighs. I hate my thighs.” Many of us do this so often, we hardly recognize it any more. When I catch my students saying things like this about themselves during class, I stop them right in their tracks and ask them to apologize to their bodies for being so mean. I’m serious! Because it starts with one little comment, one person engaging in a little bit of “Fat Talk” and soon the entire class is feeling bad about their bodies–whether they choose to verbalize it or not. Because trash talking your body doesn’t just affect you. It affects everyone around you. This is why trash talking your own body in public is kind of selfish. Because just a few minutes of saying hurtful things about your own body is all it takes to get everybody around you focusing on their own bodies in a hurtful and negative way.

(Fast forward to about 1:00 to hear a discussion about hating your thighs…)

I also sometimes hear my students trash talking their own abilities. They will say things like, “I’m so uncoordinated!” or “I just can’t dance.” And again, I stop them right there. Because if you tell yourself you are uncoordinated or that you can’t dance, you will believe it to be true. And if you believe it to be true hard enough, you will make it true. But there is absolutely no reason for this kind of talk. First of all, everybody struggles sometimes with exercise. Let me say that again. EVERYBODY STRUGGLES SOMETIMES WITH EXERCISE. I don’t care how gifted or athletic you are, when you try something new or significantly increase your exercise efforts, you are going to struggle. It’s hard enough to do new stuff without telling yourself, before you even start, that you can’t do it. It’s fine to laugh at yourself a little when you struggle. There’s no point in taking yourself too seriously. But if you tell yourself you can’t do it often enough, you’ll be right. Celebrate yourself for trying. Revel in the awkwardness that means you are stretching outside of your comfort zone and doing something new and fabulous for your body.

Trash talking has no place in amateur fitness efforts. It may have a place in competitive professional sports, if only to pump up TV ratings. But in real, every day life, trash talking will only harm your fitness efforts and the efforts of those around you. There’s only a few days left in “Fat Talk Free Week” but I’d like to invite you to take this time to practice happy body talk and happy body thoughts while you work out. Be your own cheerleader! Sit yourself on the stool in the corner of the boxing ring and massage your own shoulders. Tell yourself you can do it often enough, and you’ll be right!

Love,

Jeanette DePatie (AKA The Fat Chick)

P.S. Want to get access to FREE STUFF? Just opt in RIGHT HERE!

Knock it off, Michelle Obama!

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AAAAAARRRRGGGH! We’ve recently gotten news that Michelle Obama is to appear on the upcoming series of the television show, “The Biggest Loser”. Apparently her topic will be somewhat benign. She is to talk about the importance of drinking water. And given the show’s somewhat checkered past in dehydrating clients to help them achieve weigh-in goals, a focus on drinking water might not be such a bad thing. But the fact that the FLOTUS plans on appearing on this piece of crap show at all is not, to quote Martha Stewart, a GOOD thing.

A fair amount of criticism has recently been leveled, especially by the size acceptance, eating disorder prevention and anti-diet communities against the First Lady for making this choice. There’s this amazing video showing dozens of people from the community (including me) speaking out against Michelle Obama’s upcoming appearance. And there’s even a petition you can sign asking Michelle to “just stay home”. We haven’t heard much from her camp yet. But I imagine if we do hear from her or her people about this appearance, she’s likely to scoff and say that she’s just talking about the importance of drinking water for goodness sake. What can be bad about that?

My response? Plenty.

Here’s a few reasons why I think Michelle Obama should just knock it off, and refuse to be on The Biggest Loser:

1. The show is built on the notion of shame. And as I state here and here and here and in my submission for the video, SHAME DOES NOT HELP. It doesn’t make people healthier. It doesn’t make people happier and it doesn’t make people thinner. It makes people less happy, less healthy and it tends to lead people into disordered behavior around food and exercise.

2. The show is based on BAD SCIENCE. I wrote so much on this topic in the past, I had to create a two-part blog post. The “weight loss” techniques depicted on that show are contrary to accepted professional practice and can be downright dangerous. It needs to stop.

3. The show routinely tortures its contestants. Check out these interviews between Golda Poretsky and a former Biggest Loser contestant. The cult-like experience of this former contestant demonstrates the unhealthy power dynamic between contestants, directors, producers and other show staff. And the long term health prognosis for many of the former contestants is not very good.

4. The show uses the magic of editing and other Hollywood tricks to further mess up people’s expectations around exercise, health and weight loss. Sometimes weight losses that are depicted as taking a week actually take longer. People’s fluid levels are manipulated to help them look like they are losing more weight than they actually are. Extreme exercise is described as an important weight-loss tool even though it is not that closely related to winning weight-loss totals. It’s described, oxymoronically as “reality television” even though it bears little resemblance to the real world.

5. This show is unhealthy not only for those who participate in it, but also for people who simply watch. Several studies came out showing that the show negatively impacts viewer opinions regarding people of size. Additional studies show that those who watch the show wind up LESS INCLINED TO EXERCISE than those who don’t. So much for “Let’s Move!” Michelle.

Look, I think it’s awesome that Michelle wants to encourage people to engage in healthy habits. And it seems in many ways, she has toned down the weight-loss rhetoric in her “Let’s Move” campaign verbiage. But even if she doesn’t appear with a weight-loss message on the show, simply being on the show adds weight and credence to a television program that is irresponsible and just needs to go away.

Feeling good and mad over this whole thing?

Good! Let’s do something about it!

1. Sign the petition.

2. Share the video.

3. Join weight neutral exercise spaces like the Fit Fatties Forum.

4. Stop watching the show.

5. Help spread the word about Health At Every Size(R).

Go get ’em!

Love,

Jeanette DePatie (AKA The Fat Chick)

P.S. Want to get access to FREE STUFF? Just opt in RIGHT HERE!

Exercise Discovery–Finding Your Fun

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Naturally a lot of people ask me what I do. And very often when I tell them, they say, “Oh I hate to exercise.” And if they seem happy with the idea that they hate exercise, I leave it at that. People are allowed to love exercise or hate exercise or do exercise despite the fact they hate it or start a small hat shop. It’s not my job to tell them what to do. But sometimes people ask me how they can stop hating exercise, and that’s what this blog post is about.

Because as the graphic says above, exercise is like sex, if you’re not having fun, you’re not doing it right. And if you flipped that slide over, you would come to the second part of that statement which is, “sometimes you’ve got to kiss a few exercise toads before you find your exercise prince or princess.”

Cuteness aside, I think a lot of people try one kind of exercise one or two times and decide that they hate exercise altogether. And I’d like to gently suggest that maybe you need to try “dating” a few other kinds of exercise in a few other places with a few different people before you decide to give up on exercise forever. That’s not to say that some people don’t simply hate all forms of exercise. I’m sure that’s true for some people, and that’s totally okay. But if you haven’t tried any form of exercise since elementary school dodge ball tournaments or Jane Fonda leg warmer exercise videos, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to try something new.

We started out this week with a day dedicated to discovery (at least in the United States). And whether you choose to call it Columbus Day or Bartolome Day or just that extra day off in October, we can choose to let that day encourage us to be adventurers. Let’s choose to be exercise explorers together.

One way to begin is to evaluate your last dreadful exercise experience. What did you hate about it? Was it the sweating? Was it being outside? Was it in a class where you felt you couldn’t keep up? Was it somewhere that made you feel embarrassed or inadequate? Did the exercise hurt? Were you too hot or too cold? Did you get injured? See if you can pinpoint the specific thing or things you hated most about your experience.

Once we’ve got that figured out, we can work to expand our exercise minds. ANY kind of movement can be considered exercise of one sort or another. Even if it seems too “easy”. Even if it doesn’t seem like exercise at all. It could be gardening or playing racquetball. It could be walking around the mall or roller skating or having magnificent tantric sex with movie stars.

Next, we can work to evaluate a the items on our expanded exercise list based on a few criteria:

1. Does it help us avoid the stuff we hated about exercise last time? If we hated walking outside was it the walking part we hated or the outside part we hated or both? If it was the outside part, will walking on a treadmill or walking inside at the mall be better? If we hated walking will cycling or roller skating outside be better? You get the idea.

2. Is this form of exercise something I have a reasonable chance of actually getting to try? I imagine that wild, frantic, fabulous sex with James Bond would be high on my list of exercises I’d like to try. There are just a few problems with that: A) I’m married, B) I don’t know where to find James Bond, and C) James Bond doesn’t exist. I don’t want to pee in your pool here, but if you live in Iowa, maybe surfing is not the sport for you. If you want to go to California on your next trip and try it out, by all means please do. But in the meantime, maybe you’d like to try something a little closer to home.

3. Does it seem like fun? Surfing and secret movie star sex aside, there is probably some sort of activity that will sound at least a little bit fun to you. Maybe it’s salsa dancing or hula dancing lessons. Maybe it’s Japanese drumming. Maybe it’s running around with a DV camera and recording stuff or swimming or scuba diving or canoeing. There are so many activities out there that can increase your strength, flexibility or stamina. Get some magazines! Surf the net! Roll some different kinds of exercise around in your mouth until something tastes delicious and you are eager to try it.

4. Accept that you will have to kiss some more exercise toads. In our search for Mr. or Ms. right, I think most of us understand that we won’t necessarily find our perfect match on the first date. Or the twentieth date. Or even the one hundredth date. But you know what? There’s a lot of fish in that exercise sea. And sometimes, ya just gotta pick yourself up, dust that spandex off and try again.

5. Evaluate, rate and keep trying. Each exercise “date” deserves a little post mortem. Ask yourself, what did I love about this? What did I hate? What parts were just okay? Is there a way to make this exercise more fun or am I just dressing up a toad here? Is it possible for the Fat Chick to even get one more silly mixed metaphor into a single blog post? After you’ve done your evaluation, you can decide if you’d like to try another date with that exercise, if you’re done dating that exercise or if you never want to see another exercise remotely like that EVER AGAIN. It’s up to you.

By the way, I’d like to add one more tip. Given the fact that we’re “dating” exercise forms here, can I humbly suggest that you don’t offer to marry that exercise before you’ve even gone out on your first date? Please, PLEASE, PLEASE don’t sign up for $8,000 worth of courses or sign up for an 18-year non-refundable gym contract before you know if you even like a form of exercise or a place to do it? I myself have subscribed to the, “If I pay $3,000 for it, I know I’ll do it, because I don’t want to waste the money” school of thought. And I’ve spent many years hanging my lingerie on the treadmill while I learned the folly of that thinking, hopefully for good.

So my dear readers, I hope you feel encouraged to go out there and try something new. And once you find your exercise bliss, I’d love to encourage you to take photos and share them with Ragen and I on the Fit Fatties Forum. And don’t forget to have fun!

Love,

Jeanette (AKA The Fat Chick)