I was tweeting back and forth with Shelley Oz, a good friend of mine and the person who introduced me to Mamavation, and I mentioned that I had regained the weight I lost in North Carolina. When we were living there for 2 years, I committed to losing as much weight as I could--and I did. I went down five dress sizes over the course of that two year period and tried so many new things. Like Pilates, for instance. I was so worried that Pilates was going to be for super skinny model types in matchy-patch hoodies and sweatpants. Imagine my surprise when I went to my first class, and I was the youngest one there. By four decades. I had been scared for nothing.
As I spoke with Shelley, a crushing realization hit me like a car smacking into a squirrel. The eternal same-ness of being. The moment we moved back to Texas, the new-ness wore off of life. We went back to our old routines. Stopped trying new things. Gained back weight. All of it. All that hard work--gone. The familiarity of being back home among our friends and relatives is comforting but also lulled me back into a feeling of same-ness.
It's frustrating to no end to begin this process over again. But it has also been a real wake up call. I don't want to be eternally the same, gaining and losing the same weight, fighting the same battles every year, year in and out. The miscarrriage and my subsequent firing made me realize I never want to be vulnerable again, at least not where my work is concerned. I'm ready--ready to move on in the same spirit that dominated our way of life when we lived in North Carolina.
So....I am going back to school. In addition to committing to a healthy lifestyle for life, I am changing careers. Although I will still be a writer, I am going back to school so I can be a paralegal too. I want a steady job, one that will help me be a little less vulnerable to the a--holes in the world. I am so ready. I've never been this ready for a change in my life.
Showing posts with label mamavation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mamavation. Show all posts
Monday, December 12, 2011
Monday, November 28, 2011
Mamavation Monday: Why Does Fitness Have to Cost So Much?
For those of you who don't know, I am joining a sorority. Am I a little old and a little poor for a sorority? Well, yes--if you are talking about the college kind. But what I've joined is Mamavation, a health and fitness sorority for moms. My friend Shelley, who blogs over at Slightly Off-Kilter, has been a member for some time and she's recommended it to me. And since I know Shelley would never join anything snobby or exclusive, I decided to give it a go. And my first task is to join the ranks of the other sisters in blogging about fitness, or more specifically, what should be done about the fitness industry to make it more inclusive to everyone.
I've been pondering this question for some time now, and I think I have an answer. Every time I have foregone fitness, it's been for one reason: money. Health and fitness is a billion dollar industry and we are coached to believe that it's not something we can achieve--or even begin--without laying out a bunch of money. We need gym memberships, fitness DVDs, classes, expensive gear, shoes that cost the earth, clothing that breathes just so, and on and on. It has gotten to the point that we feel we cannot run--the simplest of human activity, the very thing that, you know, has kept civilization going for lo these thousands of years, for after all we needed to run fast to avoid being dinner for another creature--without the latest New Balance or Nike shoes, or those weird shoes that have toes.
Not so long ago, a few generations back, in fact, fitness was not even really the kind of industry it is today. I'm guessing here, but I would say that the modern fitness craze probably started back in the 1950s with men like Jack LaLanne and bodybuilding. In the decades before that, not as many people required any kind of special attention to fitness because they worked really hard. Physical labor, like working on farms, or walking around town, and so forth. During the Depression, if you had come up with a fitness regime, it's likely that people would have scoffed and told you to work harder.
So if the concept of fitness as an industry is relatively new, it begs the question--do we really need to spend a lot of money to get fit?
Most of us nowadays have desk jobs, not farm jobs, so we are far more sedentary than our great-grandparents. So we do have to make that extra effort to stay in shape. I know that as a writer I have to be very careful about including pilates as a part of my day, or else it will never happen. But I would also argue that we don't need to spend a lot of money to stay in shape. Secondhand stores are crammed with DVDs, VHS tapes, and all kinds of equipment for physical fitness. Add a decent pair of shoes and you should be fine. So far I have been using a Callanetics DVD from the early 1990s and a pilates DVD on Netflix to get in shape and help ease my back pain.
And maybe we could find ways to stay fit in a more passive manner--walking more than driving, for example, or taking care of physical labor around our homes rather than hiring others to do the jobs for us. What do you think? Do we need to spend a bundle to stay in shape?
I've been pondering this question for some time now, and I think I have an answer. Every time I have foregone fitness, it's been for one reason: money. Health and fitness is a billion dollar industry and we are coached to believe that it's not something we can achieve--or even begin--without laying out a bunch of money. We need gym memberships, fitness DVDs, classes, expensive gear, shoes that cost the earth, clothing that breathes just so, and on and on. It has gotten to the point that we feel we cannot run--the simplest of human activity, the very thing that, you know, has kept civilization going for lo these thousands of years, for after all we needed to run fast to avoid being dinner for another creature--without the latest New Balance or Nike shoes, or those weird shoes that have toes.
Not so long ago, a few generations back, in fact, fitness was not even really the kind of industry it is today. I'm guessing here, but I would say that the modern fitness craze probably started back in the 1950s with men like Jack LaLanne and bodybuilding. In the decades before that, not as many people required any kind of special attention to fitness because they worked really hard. Physical labor, like working on farms, or walking around town, and so forth. During the Depression, if you had come up with a fitness regime, it's likely that people would have scoffed and told you to work harder.
So if the concept of fitness as an industry is relatively new, it begs the question--do we really need to spend a lot of money to get fit?
Most of us nowadays have desk jobs, not farm jobs, so we are far more sedentary than our great-grandparents. So we do have to make that extra effort to stay in shape. I know that as a writer I have to be very careful about including pilates as a part of my day, or else it will never happen. But I would also argue that we don't need to spend a lot of money to stay in shape. Secondhand stores are crammed with DVDs, VHS tapes, and all kinds of equipment for physical fitness. Add a decent pair of shoes and you should be fine. So far I have been using a Callanetics DVD from the early 1990s and a pilates DVD on Netflix to get in shape and help ease my back pain.
And maybe we could find ways to stay fit in a more passive manner--walking more than driving, for example, or taking care of physical labor around our homes rather than hiring others to do the jobs for us. What do you think? Do we need to spend a bundle to stay in shape?
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