Tag Archives: health

And I Ran…

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Lin and I were walking back to the parking lots under the highway, after a fun night out at a club with friends, and the crosswalk sign changed when we were still a good distance from the crosswalk. It was chilly out, and I wasn’t dressed as warmly as I should have been, so seeing the crosswalk allowing crossing well before I’m close enough to cross the street was a bit of a bummer. It meant standing in the cold wind waiting.

“Wanna run?” Lin said.

“Yes!” I shouted as I took off running.

Lin called out from somewhere behind me that he was stopping. He was close enough to make it. By that time, I was already crossing the street. Still running, and I didn’t stop until I got to the truck. Running. Running and enjoying it.

I’d run about the distance of a block. Not far by any stretch of the imagination, but that was the furthest I had run in, well, probably years. A lot of years. As I was running, I noticed a few things.

It felt good. I wasn’t pushing myself at all, just casually running, and it felt so good! My legs were strong and sturdy underneath me. My footings were sound. When I finally stopped, my breathing was as slow and steady as it would have been had I strolled along at a snail’s pace. My heart was still beating out a steady calm rhythm. Even more importantly perhaps, nothing hurt. Not the back, the neck, the bum knee or ankle. Every single part of me felt vital, alive, and STRONG. I felt better during that one short jog than I have in weeks, maybe months. Possibly even years.

I don’t know how far I could run. How fast. At what point would it stop being fun and feeling good and start feeling awful. I think I’m curious to find out. I’d planned to start walking when the weather outside turned warm, but now I think I’d rather see just how much running ability might still be within me.

I used to run everywhere, before I was a smoker and spent too much of my day sitting. I used to love running, and I was good at it … fast and with an excellent reserve for endurance over distance. While I doubt I’ll ever be able to run as fast or as long as I did in my youth, I’m curious enough to give it a try, so this spring I’ll be buying me some good running shoes and RUNNING!

I can’t believe it myself. Me willingly running? But what I felt during that be short sprint down a city street felt better than any drug, and it sparked joyful memories in my body and mind. I have to see if I can recapture that sensation! LOL!

Skewed Body Image

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I was just watching the morning news, and the usual “health” segment came on. I don’t tend to pay any attention to them. On a good day, it’s just a bit of fluff news reporting, and on a bad day, it’s totally lacking in facts and full of inaccuracies. In other words, not worth paying attention to, no matter what the subject. But I looked up just in time to see the graphic they’d chosen to use for their “heart vs. pear shaped body type diabetes warning” … and it annoyed me enough to write this post.

As the newscaster said the words “A man with a waist of 40 inches or more” the photo used was a naked man’s waist with a tape measure around it. The numbers on the tape measure read 40″, and it was obviously an accurate representation of a less than buff man’s waistline.

As the newscaster said the words “A woman with a waist of 35 inches or more” the photo used was a naked woman’s waist with a tape measure loosely held around it, the numbers unreadable, and it was obviously an image of a very buff woman’s waistline.

Now I am not all that buff, but I am (and always have been) rather small in size. I have also sewn more small-sized women’s clothing than I care to admit. I know what smaller waist sizes measure within an inch or two without having to get out a tape measure. The waistline used to graphically represent a woman’s waistline “of 35 inches or more” was smaller than my own waist measurement, which means it’s was in the low twenties … at least more than ten inches less than the 35 inch diabetes “warning” measurement.

And people wonder why women have a skewed perspective of their own bodies? This is a perfect example of the sort of –for lack of a better word– programming women get. Men’s bodies depicted accurately and discussed accurately, and women’s bodies being represented irrationally. A twenty-something inch waist being shown to demonstrate a 35 inch waist. It’s a two-fold negative message.

Women who are aware of what a 35 inch waist actually looks like, because they do or have owned one, are reminded that a woman with a 35 inch waist isn’t appropriate or okay enough to be show on the morning news. Women’s waists should always look like flat boards or they shouldn’t be seen publicly.

Women who own small waistlines, in the range of the image shown or smaller, are made to feel that they are in the range of body sizes that need to worry about pre-diabetes, and they better not gain any weight at all or they’ll be unhealthy. They might even get the impression that they are already overweight, if they are the sort of person prone to eating disorders and/or skewed personal body image.

Anyway, it chapped my hide enough in my pre-coffee state to write this post, mostly because I’ve been in women’s clothing departments a lot lately shopping for new clothes, and I’ve noticed a few annoying instances of the misrepresentation of women’s bodies out there too. For example, images of women wearing the clothing on sale in the juniors and standard sized departments who are those sizes and women in the plus sized department who are also small enough to wear junior sized clothing and not the plus sized versions being sold below them. If there are any images of women in the plus sized department at all.

As a society, we are quite honest about the varied and sundry shapes of the male form, and so all but the most extremely large men own bodies that are viewed as natural and acceptable. Women’s bodies are nearly always depicted as Playboy Bunnies or runway models, and so anyone who doesn’t happen to fit into that particular mold is seen as fat/ugly/unfit/unnatural … and unacceptable.

If we could just start showing real women’s bodies as they actually exist, at least in health segments on the morning news, if not in advertising, it would go a long way to making the female firm of all shapes and sizes acceptable by society, and maybe women could stop stressing out about their waistlines and start loving themselves.

And now I’m going to go make my coffee and change the TV channel before the morning news rotates around to that health segment a second time and raises my ire again.