That One Question

[darkemeralds]

I figure one or two people who've been reading about my adventures in Riding Clyde might have asked themselves That One Question by now, to wit: "Has she lost any weight yet?"

It's a legitimate question, all things considered (all things being our weight-obsessed culture, my own lifelong obsession with my own personal weight, and the fact that I'm consistently burning a chunk more calories than I used to be).

The short answer is "No."



For once in my life, the question of weight and the loss thereof wasn't part of my decision to take up a new activity.

(Hell, even Project Empty had a weight loss component in my mind, so it was revolutionary that I began an actual exercise-thing without part of the calculus being And Maybe I'll Get Thinner.)

But I still know the calculus: one pound of fat is 3500 calories. (Some numbers just get imprinted. I can't help it.) It takes me about seven round-trip commutes to burn that many calories. I've bike-commuted about 49 times so far. I don't think I've changed my eating very much--in any case, I feel as if I'm eating enough but not too much, and the kinds of things I eat are about the same--so I should have lost 7 pounds by now.

I don't think I have, but that's not the point. The point is that for bike-commuting alone to "make me thinner," it will have to go on steadily for two years--and ever after, which I'm planning on. The point is that I don't care.



The point is that riding Clyde every day--because I love doing it--has given me the power to turn to the browbeater in my head and say, "Screw you, buddy. I'm finally doing your magic exercise and I'm still the same big gal I was before, so bite me."

There's considerable freedom in that point.

Comments

[sffan.livejournal.com]

You are happy and healthy, and that's what really matters. Go you!

[emeraldsedai.livejournal.com]

Yup. I've always been healthy. I'm just finally happy about it.

[serenity-valley.livejournal.com]

What an amazing milestone this is for you! It's the height of health, to my mind, when we can just revel in the fact of all the amazing things our bodies are capable of, and enjoying what they enable us to do. Instead of shame and disappointment that our bodies aren't thinner, taller, stronger, tanner, blonder, whatever. (If we thought of treating our bodies the way we are counseled to treat children -- to champion who and what they are instead of comparing them to what they aren't -- I think the world would be a much better place.)

The words "GO YOU" never seemed more warranted. :) Hooray for beating down your Inner Browbeater.

[emeraldsedai.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I'm living in a whole new world with this change. I like it here. Forty years' bad habits of thought don't vanish overnight, or even in a few months, and certain kinds of stresses can still sling be back toward the old addiction to self-loathing (which makes a wonderful excuse for all sorts of more correctable failings).

But most of the time, I live here now, and it's a good house.

[creedcascade.livejournal.com]

You just like a long, hard ride on Clyde!

[emeraldsedai.livejournal.com]

Yup. :D

[lyr]

All I have to say is hallelujah, and go you!

[emeraldsedai.livejournal.com]

Hallelujah is right! It really has been a liberation. Thank you!

[kispexi2.livejournal.com]

The point is that riding Clyde every day--because I love doing it--has given me the power to turn to the browbeater in my head and say, "Screw you, buddy. I'm finally doing your magic exercise and I'm still the same big gal I was before, so bite me."


HUZZAH! For the past 13 years, I've had a dog and averaged probably 4 miles/day extra walking. Has is made me thinner? Has it hell. But I discovered I like walking. I feel better when I do it and a bit crazy/ier when I don't.

[emeraldsedai.livejournal.com]

Better when I do and crazier when I don't is about the best reason for doing ANYTHING that I can think of. It applies to by bike-riding, and to the way I eat, and to most of the creative things I do in my non-work time--the things that practical, hardheaded people might say are a waste of time.

Another aspect to this question that I didn't get into in my post, but that fascinates me, is that of our tainted food supply. It's a huge and separate issue, but I have to wonder: if we exercise consistently over a long period and our body weight doesn't "normalize" (whatever that is), then is it fair to ask whether our western diet has altered our metabolisms? The food-supply documentaries I've seen/read ("King Corn," "Food, Inc.," The Omnivore's Dilemma) all at least hint at that concern. It seems a valid question.

[kispexi2.livejournal.com]

I think you're probably right about food. I mean, I found out recently that some cheese isn't cheese at all - just milk powder, fat, salt, sugar and water mixed together to taste like it. Yuk!

I wonder too about the role of detergents in our increasing fatness. Our drinking water is full of the stuff and studies have shown that they have a feminizing effect hormone-wise. And oestrogen does make a person rounder ...

[emeraldsedai.livejournal.com]

I feel like I've done everything I can reasonably do in terms of cleaning up my diet--many more strictures and I'd be veering sharply back into that magical thinking about perfect foods and evil foods that governed much of my thirties, so unprofitably.

It may simply be that no individual can both live in the community and isolate herself from the food and water supply adequately to buck the vast trend of human self-extinction.

Or, but a little more succinctly, it's probably better to live out what life I have rounder than I'd like, than to fight it anymore.

[kispexi2.livejournal.com]

My thoughts exactly. Except when you have a health scare (like my BP thing) you can just hear people thinking "Well, no wonder! She's so FAT!"

[emeraldsedai.livejournal.com]

Yep. One of many reasons I don't go to doctors. And when I'm riding my bike and getting momentum back after a full stop, I imagine people in cars to be thinking the same sort of thing about me, even though the fit young cyclist in spandex next to me also has to start slowly from a full stop because, you know, laws of physics and stuff.

The beauty of the bike thing is that it allows me to say back to that critic in my mind, "Yeah, but I'm on a bike and you, my lazy friend, are in a car." Then I stick my mental tongue out at their mental sneer, and am mentally healthier all day long.

[kispexi2.livejournal.com]

:D Yay for mentally healthier too.

Must show you these (top picture). Mr Kis got me them to conquer my terror of ice. Well, they arrived today and guess what? They work. I'm amazed. And delighted.

[emeraldsedai.livejournal.com]

Awesome! Studded shoes.

I'm considering studded bike tires--or I was, but it's 46 degrees and drippy out--it always does this January and makes a person think that spring is practically here, and the special winter gear just isn't worth it. Then it'll get icy for a couple of days. (Then I stay home.)

I would imagine that in your climate, studded shoes AND bike tires would be well worth the money and trouble, and those are, in addition, not bad looking. Very nice.