Friday Reading Report: More on Acceptance

There are times when I think my textbook needs to see a mental health practitioner.  It has some split personality issues.

I just finished the chapter on metabolism (but I’m not done writing about it yet!  More next week!).  The text pays lip service to body acceptance.  (I wrote about the general body acceptance principles earlier, and they are awesome.)  I am happy to read sentences like this one:  “There are limitations as to what each of us can look like or what we can healthfully weigh.”

Then the other personality shows up, saying, essentially, but if you aren’t thin, you really really really need to lose weight.  Or you will DIE a HORRIBLE DEATH.

Interestingly enough, one chart in the text itself belies the message to lose weight or else.  For adults ages 25 to 59, the “normal” risk of disease/death occurs at BMIs between 18.5 and 25, which is considered to be healthy weight.  People with BMIs under 18.5 have increased risk of disease and death, but in our culture, that is a small proportion of the population.  What is fascinating is that people with BMIs between 25 and 30, classified as “overweight” have a slightly LOWER risk of disease/death.  That is almost never pointed out.  Once BMI reaches 30, all bets are off and disease/death rates increase dramatically as BMI increases.

This is my opinion:  health is about way more than weight.  Health is about the way we take care of ourselves and enjoy our lives.  For some of us, that might include carrying around a few extra pounds.  Others may have different priorities and different things that bring joy.  All of us are valuable humans.

The success obstacle

A lot of the stuff out there about goals talks about how to deal with the inevitable obstacles.  One “obstacle” that gets a little less press is success.

Some of us have people in our lives who are invested in us remaining as we are.  When we start to grow, they worry.  When we don’t act like we used to, when we pass on the cookies, when we unconsciously outpace them on the sidewalk, they fret.  In most cases, these tensions can be worked out, but that they exist at all explains why people who choose to get fit with their partners have more success:  everyone is changing together.  Even friends can feel threatened when we become more awesome.  We may find that one of our new workout skills is reassurance.  (Or, if we discover that our friends are less interested in what is good for us than we hoped, we work out our boundary-setting and our finding-new-friends skills.)

It can be even scarier when our success freaks us out all by ourselves.  We forget, sometimes, that we are amazing.  When we begin to get stronger, when we move faster and with more assurance, things change.  We become less willing to settle because we know we can achieve great things.  And sometimes that is downright terrifying.  We look around at our lives and realize how much power we have to change things.

Some of us find this to be too much pressure.  We choose to abandon our goals rather than learn to cope with success.  Let’s not go there.

Keep breathing.  Get used to the power before exercising it willy-nilly.  Then enjoy.

Mix!

I talk a fair amount about how we need to mix things up.  Bodies like change.  That’s the positive reason to do it.

There is also a negative reason.  When we always do the same thing, we put ourselves at risk for overuse injuries.  They even have names like Tennis Elbow or Yoga Butt (no, I did not make that up and it doesn’t refer to how a behind looks, but to a pain at the pelvic end of the hamstrings.).  Good form can help to prevent or improve some of those overuse issues, but our best plan really is to find a mix of things we love so our bodies don’t wear out any one part.

And no, substituting spin bike for regular bike doesn’t count.