So, I’m coming back from walking the dog and who is sitting at the edge of the AT&T lot, hollering away, but the orange cat. Whew and we got the stink-eye. And then he herded us back to the house. From the outside, it certainly must have looked like I was walking the dog and cat, but trust me, the cat was walking us.
I was talking with the Professor about this a little bit yesterday–not about the strangeness of our cats, but about walking, and about navigating healthcare professionals who are so focused on weight. I mean, in my own case, I have to wonder where the balance between one’s mental health and one’s physical health is? Because if I have to weigh myself every day and carefully measure what I eat and know my numbers the way some guys know sports stats, I can tell you from experience that I will be in a very bad mental place, especially if it results in what it usually results in for me, where I am hungry and miserable and still fat, and still, according to well-meaning family members, never going to get a man to marry me, and still, according to doctors, lying or not trying hard enough.
So, I’m trying to figure out how to negotiate a way to emphasize health sort of uncoupled from weight. And I’ve been wondering about what kinds of guidelines we would use? Would you say that a person should be able to lift 10 pounds ten times or twenty or whatever? Do ten pull-ups (in the interest of full disclosure, I have never done a pull-up in my whole life. I’m not sure my arms actually work that way)? Walk three miles in an hour?
I mean, you start to see why weight becomes a stand-in for health. Even if it’s completely implausible that every woman who is 5′7″ should weigh 130 pounds, that’s a lot easier than collecting charts and data about what someone with arms that long or legs that long or these breathing issues or those could possibly do.
But it seems to me that there should be some guide, even if it’s only keep your heart rate above x but below y for z number of minutes a day, that is not so intensely focused on women’s bodies and on women’s bodies as belonging to everyone who can see them and not just to the woman herself.
I just don’t know what it is.
But I feel like a guide like that “heart rate x for z minutes” is something I could work towards without feeling like a failure as a human being. So, I’d like to keep my doctors focused on that.
But damn, I’m fighting this urge to just go along with whatever the endocrinologist says in the moment, bitching about it, and then ignoring it because I hate it, rather than standing up for myself and being clear about where we need to put the focus, because I don’t want to be seen as somehow non-compliant.
But I also don’t want to think about food that much. I know a lot of women who think about food all the time and, I love you guys, but I’m kind of horrified at the thought of that. I think about food at the grocery store and at mealtimes and otherwise? It doesn’t really cross my mind. I’m not a big snacker, even less so now that I’m on the metformin and my blood sugar is more even throughout the afternoon.
But the ways that women can know how many calories are in a thing and how many grams of fat and how much this and how much that and can hold in their minds what they’ve had to eat for the past week or longer? If you can do it, more power to you, but nothing about that interests me.
And having to live my life that way?
I just won’t do it.
So, maybe I am noncompliant after all.
Oh god, you know, it’s only Monday. The appointment is four days away and I am already this worked up over it.
I swear.
Filed under: Adventures with Mrs. Wigglebottom, Stories About Me, The Cats
Well, if I may ask, what is your height and weight? I am 5′7″, 200 lb., “obese” on the weight charts! And I agree — I’d actually live a shorter, happier life, not obsessing about food and calories, rather than a longer, anxiety-filled life trying to get thin. But then above a certain weight, health really becomes an issue.
My doc is fairly low-key — He does seem to respect my viewpoint. But I’m sure if I gained 20 in a year, he’d really be on me.
so, I guess my way of separating health and weight are the kind of common-sense measures you’re talking about, only I apply them to my everyday life more: can I run for a bus if I need to? Can I climb a flight of stairs without feeling totally winded? Are some of my vitals – O2 saturation in blood, blood pressure, cholesterol, resting heart rate – about average for my age, or not? Stuff like that, which doesn’t neccesarily link directly to weight.
I can’t even do a pushup, but it doesn’t matter to me (except that I would like to be stronger to improve my yoga practice).
Well, it really depends where you’re starting from. I think there’s some measures you can use:
-Blood pressure
-Pattern of weight gain or loss (as in, lots of large fluctuations, bad).
-Ability to do at least mild exercise (like, brisk 30 minute walk) 3x a week plus regular daily activities without dizziness, getting winded, lots of aches and pains, etc. And sure, you can use heart rate, lots of those easy to find via Google.
-Getting enough sleep–really this is harder for me than anything else. But lack of sleep is a huge factor for various health problems, including ones like heart disease.
-Flexibility–can you touch your toes, reach arms over your head without pain, scratch the middle of your back?
-Muscle strength; I think this is Google-able also, as to what a good limit is. I have a 40-lb kid, so carrying him around occasionally is how I know whether my muscles are keeping up.
I’m going to talk a better game here than I’ve had a chance to even try to pull off. But if the doctor starts talking about calories-in-calories-out-food-logs-blah-blah-blah what about asking for some evidence based research to back up those recommendations? “Oh, can you show me the research on that?” Because it’s not out there. I’ve looked.
I think we fat-acceptance-aware patients too often let ourselves go on the defensive, trying to argue that dieting doesn’t work, but the doctors don’t believe us and then we just look like desperately self-justifying lazy fatasses. But if we made THEM put up or shut up, research wise, I think it’d be pretty interesting. And maybe promising.
I totally feel you on the food obsession crap. I can’t do that either. I tried once. I spent my ENTIRE DAY obsessing about food, calories, “balancing nutrition” it was exhausting. I will never obsess about food again. I don’t care if the freaking Surgeon General himself comes to my house to tell me to, I will refuse. Gah! People shouldn’t have to live that way!
And I agree that there need to be better guidelines for what is “healthy.” Surely there’s got to be some sort of “physical fitness” test/guidance for adults. I know we had to take that test every year in school from K-12.
YOU don’t want to be seen as non-compliant????…Oh, how inadvertently funny…your whole raison d’etre is to be non-compliant!
But you’re right; you have to de-couple weight from health, and you are the one who is going to have to push your health care providers to think in those terms. Work towards a heart rate, a certain number of steps per day, weight training; a certain range of healthy blood pressure, cholesterol, etc. numbers. But NOT as a step in losing weight. As a step in making sure that your body can do what it needs to do to get through life.
As a former belly dancer (a slim one) who got fat (I swear I have heard people thinking, “Boy did she let herself go!!!”) in her 40s, I have been on both sides of the fence. I don’t allow anyone else to weigh me; when I go in to the doctor’s office, and I’m asked to get on the scale, I say, “I don’t do that.” It always sends the nurse into a tailspin; she gets flustered, she says “I’ll have to note that down,” and I realize that if she doesn’t write down that I won’t weigh, she’ll get in trouble if the weight is not noted. But despite my weight, I have good numbers: my blood pressure is low, for example. And my doctor sees that, and doesn’t give me trouble.
Me, I like weight training. You can do it on your own, in your house, and it really pays off bigtime, esp. right at first, which makes it even more attractive.