Last week I wrote about how discovering a diet that worked for me changed my life (and I want to do a Chris Traeger "lit'rally" here, because I feel strongly about this). Eating paleo was only one part of the puzzle for me, however: the other half comes, as it turns out, from weightlifting.
I've never been particularly femme or butch. Wait, do straight girls get to claim "femme" and "butch"? In either case, neither extreme has really ever rowed my boat. I've always been fascinated by supposed flaws, like gap teeth, freckles, unconventional hair colour, tattoos, and fluffy hair. But my bete noir was skinniness. Fashion models, the tiny girls in my high school, the sub-20 BMI, the size-zero jeans, the 24-inch waist: all of that was my holy grail. I wanted it so bad. To me, being skinny was being a woman. It was being unassuming in body so that my large, sometimes challenging personality was easier to swallow.
This manifested in a lot of different ways. There was the eating disorder, but in between flare-ups, I would often drag myself to the gym in the name of good health. Academically, I knew purging was bad for me, so I tried to get down to that magical waist size by working long hours on the treadmill, or hitting the Pilates classes.
Here's the thing about the treadmill: it is boring. Supremely, ridiculously boring. If you want to talk about the futility of trying to accept your body while still actively loathing it, there is no better metaphor than the Stairmaster. Climbing forever and getting nowhere; sounds about right.
Besides, going to the gym took a lot of time. There was getting there, changing, doing the stair machine, rowing furiously on the rowing machine, clambering on and off the gazelle-looking contraption, wandering around the weightlifting section like a little lost lamb, leafing through the brochures for classes, weighing myself, feeling upset, changing, and leaving. This was no lightning-ops procedure.
At some point, I got a pair of dumbells from my mom, and a weightlift-at-home DVD to go with them. It was very 1993: the hosts wore a lot of Spandex, she had a side ponytail, and he said things like, "Whew, I'm tired just watching you work out, girl!" But I would put it on once a week and follow along at home. At first, I was terrible. Anything to do with my triceps or my quads was just a gong show. But, slowly, I got better.
Scratch that: I got stronger.
And I liked that.
Turns out, I'm not alone. This article by Anna Maxymiw cites studies that show lifting heavy stuff is good for you: "A 2001 study found that college students who completed a course in weight training reported an increase in body strength, lower physical anxiety and general improvements in body satisfaction, while concurrent aerobic activity was found to have to have no effect on body image. Research from 2005 suggests that high-intensity weight-lifting is an effective treatment for older patients suffering from depression." No wonder the treadmill wasn't making me feel better. Besides, people who work out at home rather than in a gym are more likely to stick to their routine, and these days, a pair of dumbells (or even just a Pinterest board of bodyweight exercises) is enough to get me going. I do Russian twists with style, I have five different kinds of squats in regular rotation, and I've graduated from my first pair of blue plastic five-pound weights to a beauty pair of adjustable stainless steel numbers that clock in at about 14 pounds fully loaded. That's a bicep curl that you'll feel.
The outcomes of lifting weights have been pretty dope. I have visible tricep muscles! Do you even know how hard that is? I can do a chatturanga pose for ten breaths and not want to die. Instead of visible hipbones, I have visible obliques. That feels wonderful. It feels like I've made something I'm proud of. And, to be fair, while I love having visible muscles, I felt this way when I was heavier, too, when the muscles were there—and strong!—but not showing off for the naked eye. It's a feeling of knowing that I can push myself, that I am strong, that I'm more than a 24-inch waist, and that I'm proud of what my body can do. That is a rare feeling, and I will praise any path to it with my biggest, loudest voice.
A
2001 study found that college students who completed a course of weight
training reported an increase in body strength, lower physical anxiety
and general improvements in body satisfaction, while concurrent aerobic
exercise was found to have no effect on body image. Research from 2005
suggests that high-intensity weightlifting is an effective treatment for
older patients suffering from depression. - See more at:
http://maisonneuve.org/article/2015/01/29/making-gains/#sthash.ZUM6Xg3f.dpuf
A
2001 study found that college students who completed a course of weight
training reported an increase in body strength, lower physical anxiety
and general improvements in body satisfaction, while concurrent aerobic
exercise was found to have no effect on body image. Research from 2005
suggests that high-intensity weightlifting is an effective treatment for
older patients suffering from depression. - See more at:
http://maisonneuve.org/article/2015/01/29/making-gains/#sthash.ZUM6Xg3f.dpuf
A
2001 study found that college students who completed a course of weight
training reported an increase in body strength, lower physical anxiety
and general improvements in body satisfaction, while concurrent aerobic
exercise was found to have no effect on body image. Research from 2005
suggests that high-intensity weightlifting is an effective treatment for
older patients suffering from depression. - See more at:
http://maisonneuve.org/article/2015/01/29/making-gains/#sthash.ZUM6Xg3f.dpuf
