In spring of 2022, I tried out a kick scooter my husband randomly brought home, and loved it, which got me thinking about riding a bike. I needed something to do in the spring and summer, when ice skating is much less available. Back in 2020, I’d bought myself a little three-speed steel retro bike, with fenders and a Dynamo hub and a front rack, but I was too busy and stressed to re-learn how to ride a bike at that point.
So once I finally had the bandwidth, I took my bike out into the quiet parking lot of a closed doctor’s clinic on a Sunday, practiced mounting and dismounting (using a curb), and slowly got myself riding on quiet streets and getting my balance back. Riding a bike as a fat adult felt quite different than it had as an average-sized kid, and it took a while to get my muscle memory back. But with patience and letting myself go slow, it did come back. With a vengeance.
I started riding that granny bike everywhere, as fast as possible, on gravel trails and in the forest, and eventually for 50 km one summer’s day. Then I thought, “I’m gonna need a faster bike.”
All of this, from buying skates and taking lessons, to buying a bike and then needing a better bike, was all wildly intimidating as a somewhat shy person, but also as a fat person. Going into sports-focused stores does not feel comfortable as a fat person. I feel lucky that no one gave me a hard time, but they easily could have, and it would have been very discouraging.
I forced myself to go to a couple of bike shops and test ride some bikes…and then I fell in love, predictably, with the ugliest and most expensive bike possible: a Salsa Warbird with a carbon frame in millennial gray. I was immediately repulsed by the colour when they pulled it off the rack, but when I rode it, I found myself whispering sweet nothings to it, telling it how smooth it was, how fast it was, and how much I loved it, even though it was far too expensive for me. I went home and sulked for a week, and my husband told me to go back and buy the Warbird, so I did.
It was still ugly, and I still loved it more than I have ever loved an object before. It was and continues to be the most expensive thing I have ever owned. I rode it a bunch in the late summer and fall of 2023, culminating in an 85 km trip.
The following spring, I got hit by a car (thankfully it was a very slow, ridiculous crash and I was only a bit bruised), and had to replace a bunch of parts on my bike (which thankfully the driver’s insurance paid for), as well as the frame, which is now a beautiful, glossy black instead of gray. So now I’m even more in love with it, and that’s what I was riding this morning, yet another roller coaster in my life.
I did not think all this would happen when I decided to accept myself as a fat person and stop dieting in November 2000. I just wanted to experience peace in my body, stop caring so much about how I looked, stop experiencing the intense shame that I’d been taught to feel about my weight, and the guilt and confusion around food that came with it. I had no idea I was an athlete; I had no desire to become one. But somehow, learning to treat myself and my body with compassion allowed me to learn things about myself that had been hidden for years, decades.
As it turns out, I’m a small-time thrill-seeker, a diver, a skater, a cyclist. I’m still fat. Hills are hard, but I descend like a beast.
I may or may not have ridden my bike 50 km to eat a Fat Bastard burrito in front of an out-of-business Jenny Craig.
In 2018, I discovered I had a craving for INTENSITY. This was very curious and strange to me, though again, looking back to my childhood, there were signs. I was a somewhat cautious kid, but I also had some small-time adrenaline junkie energy. I loved roller coasters, I had dreams of racing go karts, I loved going fast on my bike, jumping high on a trampoline, or diving into swimming holes.
I spent most of 2018 just considering my options, without doing anything in particular. I thought about a trampoline gym, go kart racing, bowling, aerial silks or acrobatics, taking drum lessons…there were so many possibilities of things I could do to experience excitement and intensity. I took a trip to a local amusement park, but was not able to fit on the most interesting rides. I rode what I could (honestly, it was just a single ride, far too tame for my tastes) and walked around the rest of the day, feeling sad and disappointed. Instead of blaming myself or feeling intense shame about my body, I took it as a sign of what I wanted and craved. And I clearly wanted to do something exciting. I thought about what could give me that experience outside of an amusement park.
A few months later, a couple of (rad fat) friends invited me swimming at an indoor pool (as is rad fat tradition), and I went. I waded and floated around for a bit, then ended up climbing up the ladder and diving from a diving platform roughly a million times, in line with a bunch of hyperactive little kids. That night, I went home and slept like a baby.
Diving reminded me that I could still physically do the things I used to love as a kid, even now as a fat, nearly 40-year old adult. I started to think about what else I used to do as a kid, and that’s when it occurred to me: I used to love skating. I was even kind of good at it. But that was Oregon in the 80s, and it was roller skating. I now live in Toronto, in the 21st century, where there is very little roller skating, but an absolute glut of ice skating. I’d always watched figure skating on TV. I decided then and there to buy a pair of ice skates, since it was December, and to attempt ice skating.
I got the skates and went to a little outdoor ice rink that was completely empty, on a weekday morning, and tentatively stepped onto the ice, gripping a nearby fence for dear life. I stood up. I did a little penguin march, still holding the fence. I did not fall (yet.) My blades slid forward about one inch on the ice. It was the greatest feeling I’d ever felt, and I knew I was home.
I started taking skating lessons, and started skating five times a week, purely for fun. It was just like being on a roller coaster, maybe better. It’s now six and-a-half years later, and I’m a decently good skater. A baby-beginner figure skater, but a figure skater nonetheless. I do little spins and tiny hops on two feet. More importantly, I have something that gets me outdoors on cold winter mornings and reminds me that there is more to life than just anxiety or work or the news. I get to have communion with the little animal inside of me that wants to have fun, at least a little bit, every day.
I’m usually the only fat person present, and I don’t care. I’ve had people make fun of me for that, and I don’t care. I have joy, and I am free.
Mark Lee FINALLY convinced some other Overthinkers (Pete Fenzel and Jordan Stokes) to watch Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Now they’ve started a band and will surely have a meteoric rise to fame and a spectacular drug-infused crash, culminating in recovery and redemption.
The fifth season of Battleship is about to start. Freeform tag suggestions has closed and is being made into a final list while canon/pairing/character nominations continue. It's looking to be a huge exchange again this year, they've even put a hard cap of 280 signups in the rules. (Last year, when sign ups absolutely exploded, they debated closing early if they reached 280 but it ending up closing just shy of that which was still SO much more than earlier years. According to the AO3 profile pages-which will be vaguely but not 100% accurate for various reasons-it went from 63 signups in 2020 to 62 then 80 then 131 then 263). I'm always a little torn about Battleship, I love aspects of it, but some others are oooof. Apparently signups won't be on AO3 itself this year but via some kind of signup form and will be separate from the AO3 signup/prompt collection? But you have to do both? Or Something. IDK, hopefully it'll make more sense once it actually opens. We'll see how it goes.
Since my last post I finished the Use-Up-This-One-Stashed-Yarn afghan I'd been working on (I had to redo the border 4x to not lose at yarn chicken, but I succeeded eventually!) and made another rug. This time I tried something different with the rug and just followed a green->blue->brown order of adding new strips and didn't stress over making full rounds of any one color nor bothered to try to match up the runner with the color being knotted over it. The result was quite different, but I like it. 53”x42" give or take 'Vintage Lace' afghan Three tshirt rug, 27” x 18” give or take And, last but not least, 2 weeks of recthething recs (Tumblr art for Batman, Discworld, Dungeon Meshi, Guardian, MDZS/Untamed, Sherlock Holmes-ACD, ST:TOS): Batman (DCU) - The Oracle’s hand (love the way the computer circuitry lines mimics spiderwebbing in this)
Discworld - Nanny Ogg (love this art's take on her and the witches)
As I write this, I’ve just come back from a nice little bike ride around my neighbourhood. I got sweaty, went fast, climbed a few little hills, descended a few little hills, waited my turn at traffic lights and 4-way stops (you’re welcome), and nearly got hit by two different drivers who were each doing something illegal.
Ah, exercise in North America. So glamorous, so safe, so encouraged.
Anyway, cycling is the second sport I have picked up since I accidentally discovered that I enjoy INTENSITY and GOING FAST. It is the second sport I have picked up since I accidentally discovered that I don’t care if I’m the only fat person at the group ride, I’M HERE TO RIDE. It is the second sport I have picked up since I accidentally discovered that exercise, when you remove all the crusty old baggage about it being a Moral Obligation and a Means to Weight Loss (it usually isn’t, and focusing on that ruins the fun), is something I not only need in some abstract sense, but something I crave in a very visceral, very obvious way.
It makes me feel better physically, it both excites me and calms me down, it cheers me up, it puts a bright spot of play into my day, and it emotionally regulates me in a way that not even therapy could. It’s also just pure joy, pure pleasure, pure fun. I think that gets lost when we live in a culture that alienates us from movement and from our own bodies.
As a kid, I never thought of myself as “athletic” because I did not participate in any formal sports, but looking back, there were signs. I loved tumbling in the yard, playing on the playground, throwing a ball around, bouncing on a trampoline, riding a bike or skateboard, and all kinds of games. I did not enjoy things I found boring: lap swimming, ballet, baseball, football, running a mile or whatever we were assigned to do in gym class, but I still found ways to run around and exhaust myself by having fun, at least until my mid-teens.
Climbing around rocks at the old swimming hole.
By then, so many pressures around body image had developed that made me too self-conscious to use my body for any physical activity, especially in public, and I became not only hopelessly neurotic about my weight and appearance, but also dolefully depressed. No wonder.
As a young adult, I only engaged in exercise for the purpose of trying to lose weight, and frankly, it sucked. There were moments of joy, which surprised me, and moments of discovering some hidden strength or natural ability, which also surprised me, but all of these were overshadowed by The Agenda to burn calories and lose weight. Which meant that, even for activities that I enjoyed, like karate or riding a bike, I applied myself to them with a rigidity and drivenness that precluded all flexibility, all self-compassion, and all joy. And when the diet fell apart, as it inevitably would, so did my relationship with exercise.
I spent the next decade or so only engaging in incidental movement, essentially giving myself permission to not do any intentional exercise. (I once mentioned that on here, and a few commenters were SO MAD about that.) I was lucky to live in a city with decent public transit, and I don’t drive, which meant that I got a fair bit of walking in, which kept me strong and mobile even when I had no desire to do it. This was uncomfortable at times, but because it had nothing to do with trying to lose weight, it was psychologically neutral. I didn’t exactly enjoy it, but I didn’t always hate it either. The most I could muster was a mild resentment.
About seven years in, I started not just taking transit and walking partway to work, but walking all the way to work, a mile each way. For the first time, I noticed that I enjoyed the physical sensations of getting my heart revved up, feeling a bit warm and even sweaty, and the exhilaration of breathing hard. I was only able to start enjoying these sensations once I’d practiced, repeatedly, taking away the reflexive judgment I’d learned to attach to them, like believing that breathing hard meant I was “unfit” and something was wrong with me, or that showing any kind of exertion in public must be a mortifying event because I was fat and everyone would notice. Some people did notice, and did comment that I was sweating, and I was able to calmly explain that I’d been walking briskly. On purpose. For exercise. This was very effective at both silencing them and making them look a bit silly, which I admit, I enjoyed.
Instead of feeling bad, I reminded myself (over and over) that of course your heart rate goes up when you exercise, and that’s what it’s supposed to do, and of course you feel warmer as you move faster, and of course you sweat to cool yourself down, and of course you breathe harder to get oxygen into your bloodstream and to your cells, because that’s what exercise is supposed to do. No matter how much or little exertion it takes to get these sensations, getting to them is basically the point. You can also choose to go slow and not push it, and just enjoy fresh air and stretching your legs, of course, but on days when you want to push a little harder or faster to challenge yourself, your body showing signs of exertion is exactly what should happen. Feeling challenged is literally the only way to increase your fitness. It does not mean something is “wrong” with you.
A few years after that, I started working from home and no longer had to walk much at all. I went through a phase of grief and sat down a lot, and I lost some mobility (and also gained some weight.) The urge to panic was strong, but I held fast to my values, and asked myself what I was truly worried about. Was it really the weight gain, or something else?
In thinking it over, it was mostly fear about the loss of strength and mobility, since I knew my life would get harder. I thought about it some more, and realized the best way for me* to improve my mobility was to…use it. To practice walking. To practice walking in sand, or up hills, or even up my arch-nemesis, stairs. Maybe I’d lose the weight I’d gained and maybe I wouldn’t, but either way, I would be more mobile and less afraid. So I bought some comfy walking clothes, and for the first time since childhood, I attempted to go for walks purely for recreation. I had to remind myself over and over not to monitor my heart rate, not to shoot for any “fat burning zone,” and not to count the minutes or create elaborate fitness routines in my head, but to focus instead on my internal sensations, on doing whatever felt good that day, on the trees, the sky, the dogs, the fresh air and the scenery around me. I did that enough that I started to get faster and feel better, even before my weight did anything. Eventually, over the next five years, it gradually settled back into my old (fat) baseline, without me forcing it to do anything at all.
*this is not true for everyone; see: CFS/ME, certain chronic pain or autoimmune conditions that you can’t exercise your way out of, and which require medical treatment first
I continued walking, for fun, for mental health (because at some point, my therapist pointed out how great it feels to walk when angry, to get all those stompy feelings out, which was an amazing revelation to me), and to enjoy the scenery, and even to enjoy the warm, sweaty exertion of it. I had a solid walking habit between 2011-2018, and I took a walk around lunchtime basically every day.
I always offered myself the chance to go, without forcing myself to go, usually by putting on my shoes and coat and stepping outside for some reason, to take out the recycling or just to check the weather. Then I got to decide whether I felt like going for a walk that day or not. I had full permission to turn around and come back inside if I wasn’t feeling it, but usually I was feeling it.
I started to anticipate my lunch break like a wiggly dog looks forward to the park. Each day, I had permission to walk briefly, for maybe five minutes around the block, to walk slow or fast, or not at all, or to walk farther, for a bigger neighbourhood loop that took 45-60 minutes, if I wanted to. Sometimes I did. Sometimes I walked for five minutes. Each time, I felt good afterward. If I took a rest day and went back inside, I felt good about that, too. I practiced making the right choice for that day. I was flexible.
Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather try to avert their eyes from a barrage of upsetting video endemic to our present, algorithmically driven, engagement-farming digital age. The explore their different levels of desensitization (or is it sensitization?) to videos, for example, of airline disasters, and discuss how to protect your mental well-being in an atmosphere of content verging on the traumatic.
The coping mechanisms they uncover are not unlike parenting, except that you are both the parent and the parented. And there is a particular focus of setting guardrails to avoid become upset in the first place. Once the cortisol hits the bloodstream, it’s too late.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
thefatnutritionist_feed
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
