Category Archives: Health

Spoonie for Life

August 1, 2014 Theresa Dee 1 Comment

The Spoon Theory was written by Christine Miserandino, while explaining to a not-chronically ill friend how her chronic illness, lupus, effected every part of her life.

It goes like this: Christine picked some spoons off a table and told her friend that everything she does—from getting out of bed, to shaving your legs, to preparing a meal, to making a phone call—costs a spoon. When she is out of spoons, she cannot do anything else. The spoon theory exists to point out the limits the chronically ill face, limits that not-sick people might not think of on a daily basis. Those are the basics—but I really, really recommend reading the whole, original article.

I don’t remember when I first read the spoon theory—I don’t remember it being a part of a whole website-network-forum like it is now, nor do I recall being able to buy mounted posters with its details. I just remember how it began to be passed around in a whisper, devoured by others like Christine and myself, to people who had no way to conceptualize the reality of our lives. I don’t remember when I began to call myself a “spoonie,” only that it sure sounds nicer than “chronically/invisibly ill.” And now spoons are kind of our thing. (I’m dying for this pendant in particular.) From the spoon theory sprung many social groups, an aesthetic to rally around, and (I believe) helped mobilize us sickies—along with social media—to create networks through which we can support and care for one another.

When I first read about the spoon theory, I had been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia for a couple of years. I’d endured strange looks when taking the elevator from the first to second floors, supposedly light-hearted teasing from friends, and of course, the inevitable cajoling and pleading: “Just one drink!” “Stay out with us until 10!” “It’s not that far of a walk, right?” Even after talking to friends, loved ones, and professors, over and over, I still found my illnesses—this new way I had to live my life—so hard to explain.

There’s the fact that I am alright one day and barely able to get out of bed the next—some days you have a lot of spoons and some you don’t. I took on successive, strange diets to try to curb my body’s inflammation. If I didn’t get ten hours of sleep, I felt like death; the same went for getting out of bed before 9 am, when my arthritis is the worst (damn you, 8:30 am college algebra!). I had been sick for four years before getting a diagnosis, but it took another four to find a “medical cocktail”—less fun than it sounds!—that my body responded to without unbearable side effects. Even now, I struggle with managing my illnesses, symptoms, lifestyle, pain levels, and medication/therapy schedule in order to maintain what looks like a normal life.

But thankfully, I have the spoon theory. A very dear friend, who’s known me from my first days of college as a perpetually-grumpy-and-pained frosh, recently told me that reading the spoon theory really helped her understand what I was going through. My boyfriend understands when I groggily wake up in the morning and groan “not enough spooooons.” They help represent the reality of my life, where I only have limited, constantly changing amounts of physical, and thus emotional, energy. That sometimes putting on make-up gives me an extra emotional boost, or that I can walk through a grocery store but need a wheelchair at Disneyland. I’m thankful for the idea of spoons—that they represent concepts so intangible, like chronic fatigue, pain, discomfort, and the fatigue that comes from being in pain all the time, in a way that I myself can easily communicate to others.

Like Christine says in the article, no matter how much someone watches you from the outside, it’s really hard to conceptualize what their life might be like. We live in an ableist society that subtly insists that our value as people and the amount of things we can do are intrinsically tied—and that getting out of bed, going to work, and seeing friends is simply a matter of willpower. In this way, I’ve also found a lot of strength and hope in identifying as disabled, because a) I am, b) I have a community with a history of anti-ableist activism, and c) people sometimes believe you if you say you have a disability! If someone can’t understand the basis of the spoon theory, that my energy is limited, and that it’s a thing they should respect—my objections to being called an “old lady” or being told to go out dancing when I physically can’t—then I probably can’t be friends with them. Realizing this saved me a lot of heartache. Spoonies ourselves are an exercise in cognitive dissonance—we may not look sick, but that sure as hell doesn’t mean we’re healthy.

I’m not sure if Christine had anything to do with online support groups now available for young adults with chronic illnesses, but it least allowed me to have that keyword so I could look for “spoonies” on every social media site ever created. After meeting offline maybe three other young adults in my whole life who are also chronically ill, joining a group with twenty to three hundred members made my eyes do the heart thing as I sighed in relief at not being alone. These support groups have done just as much for me as any doctor or medication—the unwavering support and love of people I’ve never met, who nonetheless, get it in a way non-sickies can’t is abso-fucking-lutely mind-blowing. I’ve met thoughtful, struggling, lovely people and finally have been able to think Yes, this is me! Me too! And, just as importantly, I am able to give that love and support that I wish I had received early on, and that all people should receive from every person they encounter.

Photo by Gali Levi-McClure

Health

Living and Leaving an Abusive Relationship

July 30, 2014 Anonymous Leave a comment

Living and Leaving an Abusive Relationship

Everyone wonders why the abusee stays. I wondered for several years after the conclusion of my relationship… why did I stay those 3 years, my college years? The simple answer may sound banal: I loved him. The convoluted answer is that love was worth fighting for, no matter the costs.

I thought that I could fix him, that I was the only one who could or would understand him. And for a long time, that made me feel special and important. But sometime between the belittling insults, the punching and shoving, the time he spit in my face, the time he dragged me across the carpet and threw me out the door in the middle of the night, and the time he cancelled my cross-country airline ticket home without my knowledge, leaving me stranded, penniless, and hopeless in the JFK Airport, I stopped feeling special.

The end started at that exact ticket counter. Andrew and I had spent four painful days in Manhattan visiting his sister, an NYU sophomore at the time. Our return flight to California was scheduled to leave early Tuesday morning. After nearly a week of yelling at each other, we both figured it was finally over, but despite my better judgment, I agreed to share a cab with Andrew to the airport. We hopped into a cab at 4 am with the plan of beating early rush-hour traffic and checking in early for our flight. The cab ride was particularly painful because after four days of fighting, we couldn’t even make eye contact. All I wanted to do was get home and away from him. Something in me told me that this was it: all I needed to was to get home and then I would be safe, with my family and friends there to help me through whatever storm was brewing.

We arrived at the airport with several hours to spare before we were allowed to check our baggage and print our boarding passes. I piled my suitcase, backpack, and purse into a makeshift cushion and tried my best to nap after the exhausting previous days. I was so close. I didn’t even need to sit next to Andrew on the flight. I could make it home on my own, without him, as long as I had my belongings and my plane ticket. I slipped into a light sleep for an hour or so before it was finally time to drag myself and my things to the ticket counter.

The airline employee at the ticket and baggage check-in counter asked for our ticket confirmation number and our IDs. He typed in our information, checked and double-checked his computer screen, handed Andrew his printed boarding pass, and looked up at me sympathetically, “I have one flight reservation for Andrew, but it appears the other ticket on the reservation, the one for you, miss, has been cancelled.” My knees buckled, my mouth dropped open, and tears immediately flooded my eyes. I looked at Andrew, pleading for an explanation, for his help. Andrew had booked our tickets, and sometime in the previous few days, he had intentionally cancelled mine. After days of arguing and fighting, he was exerting his final act of control over me, this time financially.

Andrew stared expressionless at the airline employee, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I didn’t cancel that ticket.” I looked him straight in the eyes and whispered, “You motherfucker.” The one-way, last minute ticket from NYC back home was $800, and I was a broke college student. The employee said, “Sir, it states right here that only her ticket has been cancelled. You cancelled it.” Andrew shrugged his shoulders and grabbed his boarding pass and his baggage. “Well, I better make it through security,” he smirked at me. “Good luck.” And he walked off toward the TSA security line.

I ran after him, not even bothering with my things still parked at the ticket counter. Grabbing his arm, I pleaded, “What are you doing? You’re leaving me here?! How am I going to get home?! Andrew, I need to get home.” I started to beg, my voice shaking, along with my hands. He had complete control over me and my ability to get home. “Andrew, please. I can’t pay for that ticket. My credit card can’t even accept that charge. Please.” The passengers waiting in line to pass through security stared at me and whispered to each other. I looked delusional and crazed. I was panicked, and Andrew was smiling. He was enjoying this. He loved the manipulation.

By this time, I was on my knees sobbing. He looked down at me condescendingly and replied with a smile, “You have that Coach purse I gave you for Valentine’s. Sell that. It’s gotta be worth three to four hundred dollars, easy. You’re half-way there already.” He shook me from his arm and headed off again in the direction of the security line.

Looking back, why didn’t I call my family back at home for help? There was a way to get out of this: all I had to do was use my phone. But that’s the scary thing about abuse. I was so afraid and so wrapped up in Andrew’s manipulative game that I felt completely isolated. He was my one and only confidant. You’re supposed to be able to rely on your partner when things get rough, right? But what the fuck do you do when the person you love is the person who will openly humiliate you in public, just to see you suffer?

Somehow ignoring the surrounding crowd, I picked myself off the floor and walked back to the ticket counter and back to my belongings. The airline employee was fully aware of my pleading attempt get Andrew to help me. I looked at the employee, hoping that there was some magic button on his computer that would reverse Andrew’s manipulative trick and restore my reservation on that flight home. “Please, sir. I have no money. He cancelled my flight. I need to get home.” And this man somehow knew that I was telling the truth and that I was hopeless. That I was forced to stand in front of an audience of airline passengers and employees, pleading for help on my knees to a guy that was getting a rise out of the whole dramatic scene. And somehow that airline employee knew something was wrong. He sighed, “Okay, miss. I can restore your seat.” He typed some commands into his machine and printed my boarding ticket with a concerned expression.

I inhaled deeply and thanked him repeatedly. I wanted to hug him. To this day, I wish I had recorded his name in my memory. He was a stranger who might have risked his job by taking a chance on a young woman who, in that moment, clearly could not help herself.

It took another three months after this incident in the airport to finally leave Andrew.

Revisiting the entries of my journal from those last few months, I now realize how I omitted all the specific events involving physical, emotional, or mental abuse. Maybe writing them down forced me to face them, made the feelings real. What I did write was, “When am I going to be enough? When am I going to be worthy of me?” It took three years to lose my self-confidence and my self-worth, and it’s taken me just as long to gain it back. Now, I know that I am worth more.

Photo by Sara Slattery

Health

23andme, Myself and I

July 28, 2014 Theresa Dee 2 Comments

I’m a really information-driven person. I commonly get lost on Wikipedia rabbit-holes, feel unhappy if I’m not learning something new every day, and was one of those kids that sometimes enjoyed school. So, of course, when I heard about a way to learn more about your own genes from the comfort of your laptop, I was so there.

In late November, I signed up for 23andme, a service that analyzes your DNA and gives you shiny, color-coded information on your ancestry and health. But if you were paying attention to the news last fall, you already know where this is going—the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) asked that 23andme “stop returning health results to new customers until [they] completed the agency’s regulatory review process.” So, that spring, when I got an email from 23andme saying my results were ready, I had already come to terms with the fact that I wouldn’t be getting everything I supposedly paid for.

Side note: Yes, it took over 6 months for me to get my results. There was a huge influx of participants right as I signed up, so I’m hoping that’s what took so long. I signed up for 23andme a few days after they made their decision to comply with the FDA’s request but, obviously, before I had heard about the change. This problem might have been avoided if I had read through the website before handing them my money. Sad trombone.

I imagine the ancestry results—I am “18% United Kingdom” and “78% other European”—could be really useful. And getting to know how much Neanderthal genes you have in you might make for good conversation…? I guess…? But, as a chronically ill person, I was 99.99% interested in the health results 23andme supposedly offered. Ever since being diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in 2007, I’ve read and re-read Wikipedia’s article and every news release I see. I should probably just set up a Google Alert for every diagnosis I have to automate the process. One thing I learned is that the highest risk factor for autoimmune disorders is, unfortunately, already having an autoimmune disorder. So I was hoping, among other things, that my 23andme results might shed light on what other disorders I might be at risk for, as well as cancers and medications to which I might be sensitive, etc. I was really open to whatever information they might offer!

If you order 23andme now, your health information will be delivered in the form of SNPs. These basically don’t mean anything unless you’re a certified genetic counselor. I discovered that I could import my 23andme results to a third party, Promethease, who then (for the low price of $5) gave me the information I thought I’d get through 23andme—and then some. What is really cool about Promethease is that, while your and everyone else’s information is up in their cloud, their SNPedia (a kind of Wikipedia for those SNPs) is constantly being updated, so your results should reflect whatever latest information is up on the SNPedia.

I say “should” because, as my genetic counselor was nice enough to point out, SNPedia is editable by anyone with a computer. Yes, after giving my 23andme results to Promethease, I then sent those results to someone else—a genetic counselor! My genetic counselor showed my Promethease interpretation of my 23andme results to someone with an M.D. in Genes (I don’t know, y’all, I haven’t taken a science class in like seven years). Because I looked at the Promethease results and realized I have no idea what I am doing. These genes literally just say the results of the one study to which they’re referring.

So, for example, I had one SNP that said, “Most people with this SNP have blue eyes” and one that said, “Most people with this SNP have brown eyes.” Well, both my eyes are the same color, and they’re not blue—but my mother’s are. So, this indicates (if my seventh grade biology is correct) that I have both genes, and that any children (LOL NOPE) I have might have blue eyes! And according to the genetic counselor I spoke with, it’s even more complicated than Punnett squares taught us: there are thousands of eye colors, because there are more than just two genes associated with eye color. So if you wanted to use genetic therapy to make sure your kids have a certain eye color, well, a) what science fiction novel are you in, and b) it may not work that well!

And that’s just eye color. I had four SNPs—that I saw—that related to rheumatoid arthritis. Two said I was less likely to get it, two said I was more likely to get it. Ha! I also had an SNP that said I may be less susceptible to caffeine, an SNP that said that alcohol is three times more toxic to my liver (but that something like 40% of the population may have this gene?), and another that said I’m sensitive to a blood-pressure medication my grandmother used to take. I always thought I had a low caffeine and alcohol tolerance, and I hopefully won’t have a chance to test my sensitivity to Wayferin anytime soon.

I think synthetic biologist Terry Johnson (quoted by Newitz at io9) encapsulated this problem well:

I worry most about the popularization of the idea that when a genetic variation is correlated with something, it is the “gene for” that something. The language suggests that “this gene causes heart disease”, when the reality is usually, “people that have this allele seem to have a slightly higher incidence of heart disease, but we don’t know why, and maybe there are compensating advantages to this allele that we didn’t notice because we weren’t looking for them”.

So basically: there are a lot of different genes doing a lot of different things, and so far we haven’t, mostly, isolated what does what enough for it to be terribly useful.

“BUT WHAT ABOUT THAT BREAST CANCER GENE,” I perhaps shouted into the phone while speaking with my genetics counselor. Well, she said that, a) I don’t have the BRCA genes, and b) most of these SNPS involve increased risk. Increased from what? Well, you would have to figure out a couple major things to figure out your baseline risk: detailed family history and environmental factors. So, for example, I had a 30% increased risk of multiple sclerosis. If my baseline risk with no family history or environmental factors was 1, my new risk would be 1.3. Not that much of a difference in the grand scheme of things, especially considering that we now that some lifestyle factors that decrease the risks of certain diseases. If anything, detailed family history—including what kind of medication family members used, the type of heart attack, when a disease originated, etc.—is just as, if not more, useful to your general practitioner when talking about your risk for health problems.

It was also pointed out to me that a) doctors can do these tests too, when you’re trying out new medications! and b) doctors can do these tests too, when you’re thinking of having a baby! It makes sense to me, logically, that family history would be super important—I saw a lot of health issues in my Promethease report that don’t appear in my family history, so I should probably be more worried about the things that do run in my family, like heart disease, strokes, and skin cancer.

In the end, I didn’t really get the answers I wanted—and according to every doctor I talked to, there aren’t really any answers to be had. I was hoping for a print-out of my genetic destiny, but instead a digital run-around and a barrage of uninformative scientific information happened instead. I did learn about the importance of family medical history, some stuff about genetics I’ll probably forget sooner or later, and that if I ever need blood thinners I should mention this to my doctor. For someone incredibly data driven, learning the real reason I began to love Brussels sprouts and that I might be genetically predisposed to be less socially empathetic than others (…okay, then), I still had a really good time.

So tell me, curious readers: Have you patronized something like 23andme? What did you learn about yourself? And how did you feel about the results?

Photo by Andy Sutterfield

Health

An Alternative to the Unacceptable

May 16, 2014 Michael Cox Leave a comment

Waiting on the bench in an 8’x10’ white-walled box was not exactly how I’d planned on spending my Friday afternoon—least of all in a gown that made me feel more naked than if I hadn’t been wearing anything at all.

I’d been having some back pain for the few months leading up to this appointment, and this was supposed to be the solution to my sleepless nights, spent tossing and turning—looking for sleep but nagged by a persistent tightness across my shoulders and my lower back. It was supposed to be an in-and-out, “here’s how you fix this,” with a laundry list of things that I should and shouldn’t do, followed by no more pain. Instead, I was told “we’re going to fuse your spine, and that should stop this from getting any worse.” What kind of a solution is that?! “Oh, no big deal, we’re just going to severely limit your mobility for the rest of your life by performing a surgery that will impact most of the rest of your senior year of high school with a flat-on-your-back recovery.” How about no, thank you.

Of course, I was very polite to the doctor at the time, as was my shell-shocked mother. Scoliosis runs in my family so it wasn’t exactly a huge surprise, but the severity of my scoliosis and the solution described by the doctor (and the urgency with which he described our next step of the recovery journey) caught both of us flat-footed. We said that we would call back in the coming weeks to set up a surgical consultation, but my mind was racing to find any other viable solution. Up until this point, to say that I was a firm believer in Western medicine would be an understatement: I used to laugh at all of those people who would go to accupuncture, who would rely on massage, who would change their spiritual lives to impact their physical selves. Well, at that point I was just praying for the chance to eat my words and find some alternative treatment plan that wouldn’t involve inserting surgical steel into the central support of my nervous system.

I started out with Google. After reading 20-30 pages of life-changing stories, I was no more ready to take the plunge than I was in the office. So I called up my aunt, who had worn a back brace for years in order to deal with her own scoliosis, but the outcome of that conversation led me no closer to believing in the all-powerful solution of major surgery. So when my sister woke up for work that evening, I talked to her, defeated, unsure of what to do. She had recently gone through a series of chiropractic visits to deal with a lasting whiplash injury after doing a 360° kickflip in a Camaro at 75 MPH on the freeway. So, of course, shetold me to give chiropractic a try. Considering how horrified I was at the prospect of becoming a cyborg at the ripe old age of 17, I thought “why not?” and set up my first appointment for later that same week.

I had brought my x-rays from the doctor’s visit with me to the chiropractor, and he outlined a plan that would free me of pain and arrest the progression of my spinal deterioriation. He could tell that I was skeptical (and terrified), but what did I have to lose other than some time and some money? If it worked, then I would be able to avoid some life-changing surgery. And if it didn’t, then I was no worse off than I was before. So, here we go on a whirlwind chiropractic adventure! Pop-crack-snap!

Ow, was my thought the following day, and after the next appointment just a week later. The chiropractor had shown me what he was going to be doing: how the different decompression techniques he was using would limit the pressure on my slightly bulging discs and alleviate the strain on my lower back that had been plaguing me for quite some time. He gave me some exercises (which I dutifully took to), some recommendations for maintaining better posture, and activities that I could do that would be beneficial for my spinal health, and my well-being overall. Once again, the skeptic in me couldn’t overpower how much sense he was making. I had horrible posture, thanks to my habits of gaming too much and studying too late. While I regularly ran and tried to lift weights, I had never targeted any areas that might actually help my back (like my core). So, I gave it all a try.

While the western medicine approach of throwing a few nuts and bolts at the problem would likely have been effective, it was lacking in some key areas. The doctor didn’t even talk to me about changing my habits to make things better—the first and only option was to make with the choppy-choppy. The chiropractor worked through my daily habits and routines to come up with a total life-routine makeover that would mitigate my pain, improve my well-being, and help me develop the habits that would keep my condition from getting any worse.

Within three months, my pain was receding and we could tell that the treatment was working. I continued some regular appointments, just to keep tabs on things, but within the year almost all of my pain was gone. I still have the curvature in my spine, but it hasn’t progressed in the last couple of years, and I’m hoping that it will keep me going until some other alternative medicines are available. (Nanites? Stem cell therapy? Who knows what the future holds!) Sure, trying to do a backwards somersault still hurts (and I was never good at those to begin with), but doing the things I love—like sleeping!—didn’t hurt any more, and I could run, jump, swim (until I got mono… but that’s an entirely different story), and play to my heart’s content.

Even though it took me weeks of going through the treatment before I truly began to accept that it could be worthwhile (and not merely a method of procrastinating the inevitable surgery), I eventually came to understand that non-conventional methods of treatment for chronic pain and illness can be effective. Growing up in the holy halls of western medicine, I never gave alternative treatments like accupuncture and chiropracture the time of day. What could any solution not founded in science offer me that studied, peer-reviewed, proven-to-work solutions couldn’t? Well, it turns out that this particular solution offered me more control in my life and an option to mitigate my pain while preventing further degeneration without the risks of major orthopedic surgery. Not too shabby!

Photo by Meggyn Watkins

Health

Fuck Moderation

May 14, 2014 Lea Emery Leave a comment

January is a divisive month in England—large portions of the population have decided to spend the month sober in an attempt exorcise the sins of 2013. Some make it through the month and receive their imaginary gold star and real-world sense of superiority, some don’t, but either way the rest of the population thinks they’re idiots. In pubs, bars, and restaurants across the country the disdain for sober Januariers is palpable.

Well, the last three years I was one of the sober January idiots and now I’ve taken it a step further: I’m about 7 and a half months into an alcohol-free year. A year of no booze at all—not even wine, which at one point I viewed as so non-alcoholic it was basically like drinking a glass of quinoa and Gwyneth Paltrow’s sweat. None of it. The lovely comedian Luke Toulson has a line about how ridiculous it is that people always ask why you don’t drink anymore, because it’s not like the answer is ever going to be “Oh, well I was just TOO happy and successful!” This is spot on, so I don’t feel the need to go into why I decided to give it up for a year. But in addition to the ‘why’ there was another question I kept running into—nearly every person I told looked quizzical and asked why I didn’t simply… drink…. in moderation? If you’ve ever tried to give up anything you’ll be familiar with the fist-clenching and teeth-grinding this infuriatingly matter-of-fact tone provokes. I spent the first month after I gave up smiling manically and struggling not to shout “OH WOW! Wait, let me get this right: just DON’T drink do much! Oh now I’ve got it—what a helpful idea! I’m sorted!” It’s not just annoying, it’s also counter-intuitive. You would never ask a heroin addict why they don’t just try doing a little heroine. You would never say, “Oh come on, just have a one little hit—it’s my birthday!” It seems ludicrous, right? But alcohol is addictive too, and everyone knows that. We know alcoholics and that it’s horrible, dark place that no one wants to go to. So why does it seem weird for other people to want to stop the habit when they see it heading in the wrong direction?

I was never an alcoholic, or close, and this post isn’t about those people with serious drinking problems who hide behind being able to give up for a week or a month. But I think there are a lot of people like me who aren’t alcoholics yet definitely drink too much or just have a problematic relationship with drinking. Like, I don’t know, all of England. Seriously, go anywhere in England on Friday night. The pub. Work. Church. You will see people drinking too much. Not everyone, of course. There are some lucky people who never seem to get addicted to anything, who just aren’t wired that way—that annoying friend who smokes two cigarettes eight Saturdays a year while saying “I could really take or leave these, you know?” as you sit there gripping your 15th cigarette of the day and try not to put it out in their smug little eyeballs. Similarly, as crazy it sounds, there seems to be evidence that some people can do heroine without addiction forming; if you’re interested take a look at ‘Occasional and Controlled Heroine Use: Not a problem?‘ (HINT: The answer is for some people it is not). But on the other end of the spectrum, there are people who can become addicted to anything—I used to smoke 20 or 30 cigarettes a day, and when I quit I quickly got hooked on the endorphins from exercising. EXERCISING. Weirdly, smoking is now something I can do in moderation—I took a break where I didn’t smoke at all for about 6 months and for the last few years I’ve found I can smoke socially, but not without a lot of thought and effort and putting out cigarettes in people’s eyes. The addiction didn’t go away, I just got it far enough away to keep it in check. I’m hoping to do the same with alcohol—I’m giving it up for a year hoping to get far enough away that when I come back to it I can do that in moderation, too. But maybe I won’t: it might be something I simply can’t get myself to do in moderation, in which case it’ll have to be gone forever. And I don’t think there should be any shame in that.

It’s certainly not a perfect approach, but just telling myself that I would cut down didn’t work. Between doing standup and socializing, I’m in bars and pubs nearly every night of the week and for whatever reason the same willpower that gets me up for early morning runs and keeps my smoking to the social level seems to be on a coffee break whenever it comes time to turn down the next drink. So completely cutting it out is the best plan I could come up with and constantly facing the cultural obsession with moderation made it not only an uphill battle, but an embarrassing one. Telling friends I wasn’t drinking was a consistently humiliating affair, riddled with sharp intakes of breath, worrying looks and choruses of “not drinking at all? Isn’t that a bit… EXTREME!?”

Right—”extreme.” Extreme was everyone’s favorite buzz word in this situation, as though not having a glass of moderately priced sauv blanc (ECHO FALLS GENERIC WHITE WINE) with dinner is somehow akin to duct taping myself to a live cheetah and bungee-cording off Tower Bridge. I felt freakish. Why would I cut it out—everything in moderation, right? Everything. Everyone should do everything in moderation. I have no idea where I first heard that but it’s so familiar to me, to us, it now sounds true. This ubiquity of moderation rhetoric makes it seem that it is obvious solution, that it’s no trouble for everyone to just keep themselves in check. Surely it’s only gluttonous ogres swigging Lambrini by the bucket that can’t control themselves and, oh god, that means I’m one of those ogres because I can’t control myself (a preference for Lambrini is purely coincidental). It took me a long time to wade through this language and this attitude and realize that simply can’t be right. There are lots of people who aren’t full blown addicts but must struggle to do things in moderation—whether that’s booze, cigarettes, sex, drugs, Nutella—or in my case all of the above. I mean, substances that are addictive are inherently difficult to do in moderation. That’s what that word means. So we should probably get over the idea that moderation is the easiest thing in the world for everyone and, more importantly, that it is the answer for everyone. In fact, when you encourage someone who’s struggling with an addictive substance to do it in moderation what you’re also saying is “Hey, you know that stuff where as soon as you have a bit you want more and more and more until it makes you unhappy? Yeah, have a bit!” It’s not helpful to tell someone to have just a little alcohol if they’re struggling with it, just as it’s not helpful to tell someone who’s dependent on food to have just a little cake. Has any person ever eaten just a little cake? No. No people. Only witches.

So, instead when you run into a friend who is abstaining completely, whether temporarily for a good start to the New Year or for forever, don’t encourage them to drink a bit. Be supportive and treat it as a completely legitimate, if not necessary, alternative for those people when moderation is not an option. No one is trying to ruin anyone’s fun, and it’s not a commentary or judgment on your drinking. In fact, be grateful for your own healthy relationships with alcohol. Or sex. Or cigarettes. But not Nutella—never Nutella. That cruel mistress owns us all.

Originally written by Lea Rose Emery in January 2014.

Photo by Remi Coin

Health

The Cost of Squeamishness

May 12, 2014 Meggyn Watkins Leave a comment

Damn, waking up in the morning is hard. And with this weird, non-stop buzzing noise.

There’s like… static… and voices? …I’m not in bed.

I’m face down. On a very hard, very cold floor.

My face is wet? Oh… it’s blood. My blood.

—

My mother was born with a heart defect. Just a small flutter in her heart… it was something she had lived with her entire life. Then, last summer, “atrial fibrillation” became a noun in our world, “stroke” was a concern, things like “end of life” documentation arrived, and I was signing papers about being her “medical advocate.”

It was terrifying. But open-heart surgery could not only avoid worst-case scenarios for the future, but also give her a better quality of life in the here-and-now.

I tried not to cry. I tried to be brave. I encouraged her to be optimistic, to sit down and talk through the pros and cons of pig versus bovine versus mechanical valve s, to consider whether she should go on the trip of a lifetime overseas before surgery and risk an atrial fibrillation attack away from hospitals or wait until after the surgery when she was possibly relearning how to live with a valve.

There was a lot of talk, a lot of anxiety, a lot of stress, and a lot of love.

…I wasn’t expecting a lot of debt from my own trip to the ER.

The day of my mom’s surgery, my sister and I woke up before dawn, picked my mom up, and brought her into the pre-surgery prep wing. The entire morning was ramping up to be pretty anticlimactic overall: my sister and I were treated to an hour and a half of sitting in the waiting room with mom, without mom, with paperwork, without anything to do except browse reddit and play mobile apps.

Finally, the monotony broke: a nurse at the hospital found us in the waiting room and invited us to come back to say goodbye before my mom went under!

She led us back to our Mom’s room and the other pre-op nurses ran to find us a couple chairs in the otherwise-empty room. The first nurse jovially chit-chatted with us, and then proceeded to shove the most massive catheter into my mother’s forearm. No warning.

As possibly the most squeamish person alive, it only took about 1.5 seconds for me to hit the floor.

I woke up on the floor next to my mother’s pre-op bed. Through the forest of swarming nurses’ appendages, I could just barely see her over the edge of the bed but she kept looking away from me. The nurses wheeled me away on a stretcher to the emergency room, as I deliriously screamed how sorry I was… over and over and over. At the time, I was terrified that my accident had stressed her out and caused her to undergo life-threatening surgery in a poor physical and mental state.

My sister stayed behind with our mom until she was wheeled into surgery, and then Sara joined me in the ER: laughingly, she reassured me that our mom was on so much morphine that she probably didn’t realize I was gone. I was glad to know I wasn’t going to be the cause of her hypothetical death, but seriously distraught that I didn’t have the opportunity to say goodbye. My mother was unconscious for the next 26 hours: I alternated between pacing the waiting room with tears in my eyes and curling up in an exhausted heap on the floor, as her initial surgery dragged to an interminable seven hours. The post-op offered no respite, as it devolved into eight hours of platelets platelets more platelets until I made the decision to sign the authorization papers for an emergency find-the-leaking-hole-in-her-heart surgery.

She made it through the night. A week later, she made it home. She was alive, and she was healthy. Everything was finally okay.

—

It was at this point when I stopped focusing all my energy on my mom and started considering my bank account. I entered this optimistic state of denial: the hospital wouldn’t possibly send me a bill for an ER visit they caused themselves! They know the nurse brought me to an off-limits area. I am definitely not liable for this.

Imagine my surprise and disappointment when the bill finally materialized in my mailbox: approximately $3000 for the hospital, $300 for the doctor, and $200 for various labs and tests. As a recent college grad sans-benefits, my measly $100-bucks-a-month health insurance wasn’t doing me any favors. My friends and family encouraged me to pursue litigation. So, I scoured the firms in my area, called some malpractice numbers, and waited for someone to deliver me from this obviously unfair burden. I’m definitely not a litigiously minded individual, but I just couldn’t afford that bill. So I waited. And waited. No one was calling me back.

Finally, a lawyer took pity on me. Not that he swooped in and won my case: he took just enough pity on me to spend 20 minutes explaining why the legal system was not on my side, and explained my alternative options. After drowning in anxiety for two weeks, the dose of transparency was a very welcome breath of fresh air.

What he explained was that, thankfully, the half-inch lightning-bolt scar newly gracing my browline could not be considered “disfigurement.” That was the good news. The bad news was that, without disfigurement, there was no way that I would be awarded a settlement large enough for a lawyer’s cut to be worth his or her time (not including the thousands it would cost to hire an expert witness to testify about nurses’ standard of care). The numbers simply didn’t crunch.

He did encourage me to keep looking for lawyers. My friends even suggested finding a pro bono lawyer just to get the bill waived. Or maybe someone appointed to me through my local community. But by this point, I was so overwhelmed and disheartened, I just couldn’t bother. In the space of two weeks, I received three or four new copies of my bill. You know: just in case I had forgotten. Thanks, hospital!

With yet more encouragement from friends and family, I looked into the last-ditch attempt the lawyer had suggested on the phone—only to be used if I could not find any other legal representation. I called the hospital’s main line and asked for the Risk Management department. This is how I met Tim.

Tim was so kind… so sympathetic… so absolutely impotent. For three weeks, I was talking with Tim every few days or so, with him updating my files and forwarding my messages to the Billing office, awaiting the verdict that never seemed to come. Finally, frustrated, but not wanting to sacrifice the “pity me” persona that I’d developed with Tim, I asked if perhaps I could call this mysterious Beatrix woman from Billing who never seemed to receive Tim’s messages on my behalf.

Magically, everything changed.

Later that afternoon, Beatrix called me. Something, something, something, no indication of malpractice in my records, something, something, 20% discount. “Hold up,” I said. “I appreciate any discount possible… But, obviously there is no indication of malpractice in my records: my doctors in the ER were wonderful. You know it was my mother’s nurse who did this to me, right?”

Nope, she had no idea. Thanks for passing along the story, Tim.

My BFF from Billing called me back the very next morning: the hospital wasn’t admitting fault, but Beatrix verbally tiptoed her way through an explanation that the hospital bill would be waived ($0 owed), the physician bill would be discounted 50% ($150 owed), and the lab costs were the only things I had to pay in full ($200 owed).

In the end, the check I wrote was only 10% of the cost of my original bill (not including the price of the tears, sweat, and undiluted stress that emanated from me during those months). But finally, there were no more Tims to fight, no more Beatrixes to convince. And my faith in the goodness of human nature was not completely destroyed.

Photo by Sara Slattery

Health

The Perilous Depths of Self-Perception

April 11, 2014 Mak Akhtar Leave a comment

We’ve all seen that picture of a little kitten staring into a mirror and seeing itself as a big ol’ scruffy lion… you know the one. Followed by the quote, “What matters most is how you see yourself.”

Well, I’d like to challenge that idea. It’s reversed: I am the lion(ess) but see myself as the runt of the litter (the cutest automatically but also the least likely to survive). Why? Freud could probably explain a thing or two about my childhood. Fortunately, I recently received a personal revelation… It came in a vision—a man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them—Oh whoops, nope, that’s John Lennon on the christening of the Beatles. Short attention span. Ok. The revelation:

How you see yourself is utterly and ridiculously different from how others perceive you.

Some of you are thinking, “Well, yeah…” but this epiphany blew my mind. These ideas I have about myself, the way I see myself in a mirror, my attributes —they’re all so distinctly separate from how the world views them. It’s like the Rorschach test. And that’s ok. In fact, it’s brilliant. Why? Because I tend to be wildly self-critical: I’m too skinny, I’m not helpful enough, my (damn Akhtar family) nose (that doesn’t skip generations) is too big, I’m passive-aggressive, I have no tangible “talents” (like playing the ukele or parkour), I sure as hellfire can’t cook—shit, I can’t even sew on a damn button. And apparently I can’t spell ‘sow’ because I had to Google that. But it’s Saturday, so I’ll cut myself some slack because I won a lot of spelling bees as a runt. But I digress… these are sincere perceptions I have about my own self. Again, you have my full permission to call upon the spirit of Freud to ask why, but only if you report back your findings.

A mentor of mine is world-famous, inspires positive change in people’s lives and has met countless world leaders and celebrities. You’d imagine this guy feels mighty crisp, right? Well, he recently revealed to a group of bewildered Stanford kids something deeply personal and baffling: every single time before he goes on stage, he curses at himself saying he’s an idiot and that he’s going to fuck everything up (yes, exact words) in front of everybody. He sincerely verbally kicks himself in the ‘nads. And yet every time he gets up there, his serene, powerful, and hilarious presence just blows everyone to smithereens. This is a man that spreads world peace through teaching inner peace, a best-selling author who is revered worldwide. To know that somebody of that caliber has the internal self-critical dialogue of a girl entering the perpetually insecure world of puberty is a really humbling experience in the bizarre and obnoxious phenomenon that is the human condition.

Most of us have been wired to tell ourselves we’re not good enough—by our families, society, our peers… this list isn’t new knowledge to you. But lately, by some stroke of brilliance, I’ve realized that it is the people who interact with you, who see you from literally an outsider’s perspective, who can tell you how fabulous you really are.

I’m blessed to have acquired this two-way mirror perspective of the disparity between the outside view and my self-perception. I think I’m going to start listing it as one of my talents. I’m involved in this incredible personal development program in which people praise each other anonymously at the end: the only rule is you can only look at the slew of praise when everyone’s done writing it. You’re hit with a monstrous freakin’ avalanche of praise. I’ve had the immense honor of participating in this over a dozen times, and what people write often makes me weep. They make you realize truly how cool, special or beautiful (or all the above) you really are.

The things I hear about myself most often are how beautiful my eyes, hair and smile are, how hilarious I am and how comfortable others feel divulging any information about themselves to me because it’s safe from judgment. Really? Because my brother’s greenish-grey eyes are way more beautiful than my hazel ones, my hair has a frizzy, semi-straight/semi-curly/semi-can’t-even-be-categorized mind of its own (thanks mom and dad, for shaving my head and letting me be the bald little girl in a frumpy dress), and I have crooked lower teeth but hate dentists so much I kicked one in the face when I was 11 so forget that. I’ve been in crowds that certainly did not care to laugh at anything I had to say even though I thought it hysterical, and I’m petrified solid of having people be uncomfortable around me and feeling like I can’t help someone who needs it: it is my number one fear to lose someone I cherish because they felt they had no one to turn to.

And what’s even more perturbing is these are genuine thoughts that feel like facts; I don’t say them to seek validation or fish for compliments. They feel real. Here are some more ‘facts’ about me just to really drive the point home…

Physically: As a kid, I tried to cut off the mole above my lip with scissors… with scissors, folks! Kids used to tease me that it looked like a fly was on my face, because children can be horrible little shits. And as I’ve grown older, people have told me it’s a beauty mark and have compared it to Madonna’s and Cindy Crawford’s… Not that I see it any differently, but what on Noah’s legendary Ark? How did it just graduate from a fly on the face to celeb status?

Professionally: When asked about my current job, I say I do a lot of event coordination, communications and management (among numerous other things) at a compassion research center. But the last time I was saying this, my dear friend Abhishek interjected, “Oh man, she gets to hang out with enlightened beings for a living.” Which is also partially true: I’ve had the honor of hosting some inspiring leaders like the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Eckhart Tolle, but it’s such a small portion of what I do that I don’t even think of it first. But for my first job right out of college, I’d like to hope that’s not shabby at all.

Emotionally/Socially: It’s been a gnarly beginning of the year (apparently for many), and I’ve been gouging my emotional eyes myself feeling like I’m the bad person in recent fall-outs. Empathy can be a big ol’ stick up the wazoo. Luckily I have a support system that reminds me I’m not a sociopath and that I am doing the best I can while listening to my intuition, which should never be ignored. Even though it’s been a rocky start, I’ve already experienced so many moments where my love organ (that would be the heart, you twisted beings) has literally felt swollen and heavy with all the gratitude for the people in my life. From those who let me crash at their homes and took care of me, who helped me move and provided free services, who connected me to others and gave me a support system that is unmatched by any other: I’m lucky to have these people in my life who see me in a wholly different, positive light. And I should just shut up and accept that.

So, what’s my point?

Let people praise you, damn it. Let them reflect you so that you, the lion(ess), finally can see the lion reflected back at you.

Only the Walrus himself can explain this with grace: I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. This idea that we attract goodness because we are good is all too new to me, because lately I sincerely feel the best thing about me is the people in my life. And, when I say that out of gratitude to my friends, they say lightly, “Oh, we are just a reflection of you.” And I just want to bash them over the head and say, No, goddammit: I’m amazing because of YOU; just let me be! And we get into a ‘You’re awesome!’ ‘No, you’re awesome!’ tiff for days. I now realize why these are the Tool lyrics I gravitate most toward always: Overthinking, overanalyzing separates the body from the mind. The mind tends to cling to the negative, so you need to tell it to bugger off and let you do your thang. Don’t let your self-criticism get in the way of what you want to achieve. Meditation helps (ooh, smooth plug!)

Ok that’s not the only point. Here’s another:

Don’t disregard your life experiences.

I’m stoked to live a pretty easy life, but when I tell people my story—lived in a third world country half my life, have moved over a dozen times in the past 8 years alone, survived a 12-year long family separation and my father in a coma for a month without health insurance, etc.—they tell me, holy shit… you are a strong person. Well, I don’t feel strong because I’ll cry at a traffic light but I only realize what I’ve endured when I think of the emotions associated with those events.

So take Tool’s advice and learn to swim so you can navigate these perilous, murky depths of the ocean that is your being, and let those who love you tell you what you truly are: a fucking awesome creature, a brilliant collective of billions of cells. Goo goo goo joob.

Photo by Gali Levi-McClure

Health

Learning How to Actively Take Care of my Body Without Hating It

April 9, 2014 Emily Knight 7 Comments

As a lady who lives on Earth, I have some body issues. Luckily, these didn’t really start for me until I was 17 (which is apparently, and distressingly, a pretty late age to begin worrying about this stuff, considering that some start as young as 9 years old.)

The Old

So, what happened at age 17? The birth control pill. Over the course of the first two to three months I was on it, I gained 20 pounds. I was definitely never skinny to begin with, but this was the first time I thought of myself as actually “fat.” Before the year was out, I was on Weight Watchers and I stuck to it pretty diligently. I lost that 20 pounds after following the program for a few months but even though the scale said 145, I still looked in the mirror and felt 165. And, yet, despite insisting that the fat-free ice cream (which, as someone who has since made her own ice cream—how is that created??) tastes just as good as the regular, religiously checking the calorie count on all the breads at the supermarket and weighing that against the size and density of the slices, going to bed hungry and looking forward exclusively to eating in the morning, I was done.

Policing one’s weight is hard work. I didn’t want to do it anymore. But I had been raised to be a hard worker, to not quit just because I haven’t succeeded, and to excel at all the things I do. So a few months later, I tried again, with some other plan. And then another. And another. They really all blurred together over the next six years or so. But in trying and failing to lose weight, I gained it. And kept gaining. Sometimes, just deciding to count calories again would be enough and I wouldn’t even lose anything, just start to slowly gain. I would constantly berate myself with the pinpoint-accurate, harsh criticism that only I can inflict on myself. Too bad fat shaming doesn’t actually motivate weight loss and actually predicts weight gain instead, ‘cause that’s what happened.

It took a long time to realize that my sizeism was hurting me. (How interesting—there is a red squiggly line under this word. “Did you mean ‘sexism’?” Microsoft Word asks. No. Then again…) It took even longer to realize that the reason I had trouble (strike that, have trouble) letting go of my sizeism is because that would mean that I would have to reject that idea that if I were just less lazy and weak-willed, I could be better. To accept the idea that I’d been going about it all wrong for five freaking years. But I had been.

Dieting does not work. Not even if you don’t call it a diet. Not even if you are just “trying to eat healthier” or “just eating whole foods” or “counting calories.” It is actually, as that last link explains and my body can tell you firsthand, a predictor of future weight gain. Because, of course, those things do work! For a while. And then they don’t anymore and you end up with more health problems than you would have if you had just stayed kinda fat, which is, in fact, not a health problem.

As you can probably tell, this is something I have spent a lot of time and feelings on. About a year ago, I was seriously freaking out. I weighed more than I ever had, I was feeling like crap about myself, and whenever I even thought about dieting, my body started freaking out from deprivation anxiety and I couldn’t last a week. The definition of insanity is when a person tries the same thing again and again and blahblahblah… I’m still fat. That’s when I went crazy with the online research. That’s when I finally admitted I had a huge body image problem and a terrible relationship with food. That’s when I went to see a body image counselor.

The New

Here is what I do now: I practice intuitive eating. I do not restrict what I can eat—I’ll eat whatever I damn well please, since restricting it is what screwed me up in the first place. But I do pay attention to my fullness. I do consider how my body will feel—not look, feel—after eating whatever I’m considering. And I do work to take care of my stress, unhappiness, loneliness, and whatever-other-feelings with methods that are not soothing them with tasty food. My love of cooking has been both a help and a hindrance to this. I cook what I want, just like I eat what I want, but I still try to consult with my digestive tract to figure out what is going to make me the happiest. I try—and this is always a battle—to truly and honestly consider my health, vitamins, nutrients, and essential food groups, etc. over my weight when making dinner. This is the hardest thing I still struggle with.

As for exercise, I similarly exercise where and when and how I want. I try to refuse exercise that I feel like I “should” do and only do what I want to do. Instead of daily runs and elliptical work, I get to do an activity that I actually really enjoy doing, instead of just appreciating it as a way to burn calories. I regularly practice yoga, bike to work, dance in tap classes, and play Quidditch. Doing exercise because I like it while I’m doing it instead of just feeling self-congratulatory afterwards gives me the opportunity to do it without the guilt and self-pressure to exercise as a means of eating more. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone for a run (a thing I despise) instead of riding my bike because it was a faster calorie burn and I was having people over for dinner later. This is a recipe for a terrible relationship with both exercise and food.

Finally, a part of what I do that you won’t find in any size policing plan: managing my psyche. Real talk: I’d love to lose some of the weight I’ve gained from my past dieting experiences. It would be awesome. But to avoid dieting again—a constant temptation despite my past experiences—I work hard to make sure I feel happy and beautiful how I am. As a big Pinterest fan, I noticed I felt lousy every time I went on—because all the fashion boards I follow have only skinny white women. I immediately found five “fat fashion” boards to follow. Seeing these beautiful women of all shapes and sizes and colors makes me feel like I can be beautiful too. We see obese people in the world a lot, nearly always portrayed as lazy, stupid, face-stuffers. It is no wonder that nearly everyone is sizeist, even fat and obese people! Seeing them as beautiful and sexy everyday does wonders.

Clothes shopping is another battle against feeling good, but I do it because I like fashion and want to get dressed every morning feeling like I look stylish and fun. For a long time, I kept thinspiration clothes in my closet, hoping, knowing that I would fit into them someday. What a great way to feel like shit every morning! I have since gotten rid of them and replaced them with things that look good on me now.

Keeping up with fat acceptance and fat positivity bloggers has been awesome. This is more deprogramming of my sizeism and it makes me a better human to both others and myself. Isabel Foxen Duke is sassy and funny and sends weekly e-mails reminding me to continue the awesomeness. Others: Dances with Fat, Nude Muse, and Fat Nutritionist.

The Future

To even suggest, let alone say outright, that I am all fantastic and super happy all the time in my fat body and always make the best choices would be ridiculous. I’m still learning. But I do:

Refuse to bully myself or let others bully me around food and exercise choices
Actively work to love myself and how I look
Allow myself to thoughtfully eat whatever the hell I want to and exercise however and whenever the hell I want to
Seek out others who will support my positivity

Let me tell you: these things make a huge difference. It’s a lot of work to love yourself, especially if that self is not deemed “loveable” by society. But it is most definitely worth the effort.

Photo by Michelle White

Health

We Don’t Know: Is My Exercise Routine Hurting Me?

April 8, 2014 Liz Bohinc Leave a comment

Last week, I shared how and why I make exercise a priority. As I was researching my article (and reading my regular health blogs), I stumbled along this post on The Greatist. I was literally turning in my final draft for last week’s article and I already knew I had to write a follow up.

Fitspo, Thinspo, and all other “spos” on Instagram, Facebook, or Tumblr are said to be promoting a healthy lifestyle. But I’m wondering if, more often than not, they might just be distorting our body image and our health even more than before.

The big question is: what is too much exercise?

There are a lot of different articles out there that say you should do this many minutes of exercise a week and this percentage should be cardio and this percentage should be strength training. That’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about exercising to the point where you are damaging your body.

When I was fourteen years old, I played a lot of softball. And I mean, a lot of softball. Between the two JV & Varsity teams, I was one of only three pitchers. That meant I often would play six games a week. If I threw sixty pitches a game, that meant three hundred and sixty pitches a week (not including any practices, warm ups, etc.). As the season would progress, you could slowly see me fall apart—my mechanics, my pitches, my focus—finding the strike zone got harder and harder and it wasn’t my arm.

You see, at fourteen, I wasn’t strong enough to carry a college level-schedule for pitching. That many pitches a week is a lot, even for an eighteen-year-old or a twenty-four-year-old. But I didn’t know that. So I kept pitching. The more tired I got, the shorter my step became, and I started locking my knee. Sure, this gave me a great drop ball, but it also made the ball-and-socket joint in my left hip repeatedly pound against each other. Yeah, it hurt! It hurt a lot and I didn’t know why. The trainer and the coaches just blamed it on fatigue: I would get used to it. Now, I look back and say, “Hell yeah, it was fatigue.” My body was fucking tired, and it was telling me to slow down and take seat. But I was an athlete, I could handle it. I kept playing and a mere six weeks into the season, I tore a tendon in my hip that took a piece of my bone with it. It left in its wake a crack just small enough to not need surgery but serious enough to put me on crutches for eight weeks. I was fourteen, not eighty-five. And what followed was four years of physical therapy (due to continuing alignment issues), knee pain, and back pain. Anytime I go to the running store to get fitted for new shoes, they are surprised I’m a runner because my right leg still supports a majority of my body weight. Perhaps that’s why I enjoy it so much: I wasn’t ever supposed to be good at it again.

The psychological effects of my injury ran deep. I never threw off my high school’s home field pitching mound again. I eventually quit swimming, field hockey, and softball. Maybe if someone had told me not to push myself so hard, I would have enjoyed them through college. Now, as an adult, I shared with you how I make time to exercise regularly. I tried to focus that article on having fun, not burning calories. Why? Well that’s another dangerous line to toe. You know bulimia? The potentially life-threatening eating disorder. People with bulimia may secretly binge—eat large amounts of food—and then purge, try to get rid of the extra calories in an unhealthy way. For example, someone with bulimia may force vomiting or do excessive exercise.

I think often, we forget about that part I put in bold and only focus on the vomiting. I’m not a doctor but I have experienced the obsessive emotions associated with disordered exercising. It’s hard to get them out of your head. You don’t have to be skinny to have them. Yes, being incredibly underweight is a sign you are sick, but so are other things: Is your workout schedule making you lose sleep? Are you constantly stressing about when you can have your next workout? Do you go through a run despite illness or injury? I have. I have obsessed about how to plan my weekend around my workouts. I justify it in some ways because I’m “training for a marathon” and getting enough miles in each week. Or I will sit and look over an entire restaurant menu and plug each and every item in to make sure it’s not too many calories because I only ran five miles today. Most of the time, it means plugging in 10 ingredients per dish to figure out if it’s right and, by the way, that takes forty minutes of my day. WTF, LIZ.

Though I’m really proud of my healthier habits, there are times where I feel my fitness obsession is also my biggest demon. I never feel more alive than I do after a spin class. Running has taught me so much about my limitations and given me confidence in myself I never had before. Early on, running was a way for me to get away from twenty-something stress (work, friends, etc.). But at the same time, I wonder if threw myself into it too fast.

So now, I say: Liz, if you want the damn pastrami melt, get the pastrami melt. I hate this term, but YOLO. Stop wasting hours obsessing over whether you worked out enough to earn that pastrami sandwich. Don’t go home for a run you didn’t plan just because you ate a bit too much. You shouldn’t punish yourself for living life like a normal person. We’re all different. We will find different activities and foods and lifestyles we enjoy. It’s great if you lose ten pounds before summer but if you don’t and you are loving life anyway, that’s all that matters. Go forth!

Photo by Meaghan Morrison

Health

The World from the Saddle of Your Bike

April 7, 2014 Andy Sutterfield Leave a comment

Last week we talked about how to work with your bike. This week, we get into how to make your bike effectively and safely work for you!