Thursday Book Report: Trail Guide to the Body

I admit it:  I like muscles.  A lot.  Bones are also cool because without them we’d all be kind of squishy.  Given that, it is no surprise that I really liked Andrew Biel’s book Trail Guide to the Body.  It is full of useful illustrations, informative text, and opportunities for hands-on exploration with a partner or alone (some parts are easier to explore one way or the other…).

For those even more inspired, there are online resources to pursue for anyone who buys the book.

I happened to read the whole thing, but I will keep it handy in a reference sort of way.  Both anatomy nerds and the generally curious will find fun things to expand understanding and increase knowledge.

I am not a pretzel and I am ok with that

I get to go to yoga twice this week.  Notice:  I do not HAVE to go to yoga.  I am not simply going to yoga.  I GET to go.

As I have said many times before, yoga is not exactly my strong point.  The odds are against my ever achieving a lovely lotus, a perfect pigeon, or an other than mangy mutt of a downward dog.  I love it anyway.

Of course, I also love biking and skiing and other things that come more naturally to me, but learning to take joy in activities at which I do not excel has been transformative for my head.  I can carry that transformation into all of my activities, even the ones I am good at, because I learn more when I release attachment to my own performance and its rating relative to perfect.

What else do we get to do this week to create health in our bodies?

Gimme one reason...

One of the things I used to do to annoy my parents was to ask, “Why?”  I’m not talking about when I was a little kid learning about the world, but when I was older and doing it out of boredom.  My mom might ask me to pick up my room and I would ask why.  She would tell me her reason and I would ask why that was the reason and then query the reply until we got to the point where she would, understandably, snap.  I always ended up having to do it, but consciously or not I decided to spread the pain around.  I do not recommend this course of action.

However, I do think it can be very useful to annoy ourselves the same way.  When we set goals, we can spend some time asking why we want to accomplish that particular goal, which can give insight in times when it is hard to remain motivated.  For example, I, like many people, would like to lose some weight.  Why?  One reason would be for my health.  Why do I want to be healthy?  Because I want to be able to do fun things no matter how old I get.  Because I might someday have grandchildren to play with.  Because I might decide to take up mountaineering. 

That batch of reasons is pretty easy to deal with.  There is nothing awkward or weird about any of those things.  It does get harder, though, when I explore another reason:  because I want to look cute.  When I ask myself why I want to look cute, I have to confront stuff like insecurity, societal bias, personal shallowness, and the like.  It is uncomfortable.  And it is useful to have told the truth to myself about those reasons when I am feeling like skipping a workout.  I may not be motivated by my health reasons at that point, but I might do it to look good at the next fancy event I attend.

The more reasons we analyze for why we want to do something, the more likely we are to find one to light a fire underneath ourselves to get to it.

Dibs on the swings...

Monday is a great day for a workout.  We can wake up energized from the weekend, anxious about the day and week ahead, tired from too much fun, but no matter how we feel, a workout is a good idea.

For one thing, our metabolisms can use the boost.  Interval training and weight work can stoke our inner fires and help us burn more calories, even when we have to sit at our desks later.

Working out stimulates our brains to work better and smarter.  It decreases anxiety and depression while increasing positive moods.  That part is science.  The part where we can take out our aggression by slamming medicine balls or kick-boxing at imaginary targets is anecdotal, but satisfying.

Then there is that sitting at a desk part.  Our bodies are not designed for long periods of inactivity.  Giving them a recess from all that stillness is good for our health.

Go play!

Friday exercise: bench dips

The amazing Stickie greatly admires Mrs. Obama and Madonna because they have beautiful triceps.  Stickie wants her own beautiful triceps, so she is doing bench dips today.

To get into position, Stickie sits on the bench with her hands gripping the bench on either side of her body.  She extends her legs out in front of her with her heels on the ground.  Then, keeping her elbows back behind her as much as possible, she scoots her behind forward off the bench and lowers it toward the floor by bending her arms.  She exhales to push herself back up to a straight-armed position.  After about ten repetitions, she allows herself to take a seat on the bench again to rest before the next set.

On days when Stickie needs less of a challenge, she bends her knees, but does not cheat and use her strong legs to lift her body back up.  Stickie knows that she can also do this exercise on other surfaces, like the kitchen counter, that are higher and provide less of a challenge, or on a stability ball or parallel bars at the playground with her body suspended for more of one.

Thursday Book Report: Anatomy Trains

Anatomy Trains by Thomas W. Myers is directed at “manual and movement therapists,” but has plenty to offer other readers as well.  It focuses on what Myers describes as myofascial meridians that run from place to place throughout the body, a shift in focus from seeing muscles and their connecting tissues in isolation, or “Though some preliminary dissective evidence is presented in this edition, it is too early in the research process to claim an objective reality for these lines… the… concept is presented merely as a potentially useful alternative map, a systems view…” (p.2)

The philosophy, then, of the book is more holistic and less reductionist.  It asserts, like the old song, that the knee bone is connected to the shin bone, but as part of an interconnected web of tissue in which dysfunction at one point may show up somewhere else along the line. (I admit, that version would be harder to sing.)

If nothing else, the book has great illustrations, including photographs from dissections, clear drawings, and “case study” samples.  It is fascinating for anyone who wants to know what’s going on under the skin.

Also, Duck wants to know: why cabbage soup?

We all have things that scare the pants off of us:  spiders, midterms, vampires, romance novels, long conversations with our odder relatives with extreme views.  “Diets” are one of those things for me.

I admit, I am scarred.  I recently tried grapefruit again for the first time since I was a kid.  It is not going to be my favorite fruit, but I also know that it doesn’t taste like I remembered.  I think that is because I remember it in the context of my mom and my grandmother doing a grapefruit diet one summer.  Half a grapefruit with artificial sweetener and a cup of black coffee in the morning does not make for the happiest mom in the world.  It was best to steer clear until the lunchtime cottage cheese came out.  I am sure that both ladies lost plenty of weight over the time they stuck to the program, but I also know they gained it all back. 

What we need is to build a healthy relationship with our food.  Some of that means meeting our foods for real, not in their boxed-up, salty, sexy marketing versions.  This may take some adjustment, but it also may be joyful for those of us who grew up on canned peas and instant mashed potatoes and fish sticks and who survived college on ramen soup and popcorn.  Some of us may never have considered what the greens in our salads actually taste like because what we taste is creamy, fatty, processed dressing.  I learned a lot when I stopped dressing my salads, and most of it was good.  There are lots of greens out there, so I don’t have to eat the ones I don’t like (that means you, radicchio, even though you are purple and not green, and you, frisée, even if you are pretty).

Another big part of our relationship with food that may need adjusting is quantity.  We can love our whole grain organic macaroni with cheese made from free-range fair-trade shade-grown cows without eating an entire vat of it.  In fact, if it is made with real ingredients and love, a smaller portion might be even more satisfying than a vat, especially since we will still be able to move after dinner.

Also, savoring is important.  There are times when we must eat all of the food in the world right now because we just finished carrying a team of sled dogs on our backs over the Iditarod route, but most of the time we can pause to enjoy and taste.  We may discover that when we slow down, we don’t need to eat as much.

Short version:  let’s eat good food that treats us well and enjoy it rather than making food into an unsustainable, harmful torture, with or without grapefruit.