Let's Get Physical
It is obvious (at least to us) that fat people can and do exercise. And yet as a fat person who joined a very crowded gym near work yesterday, it’s still nice to be reminded of that fact. (I haven’t figured out my summer fitness regime yet, but I do know I have one. Maybe “go to the gym” is a nice place to start.)
Perhaps you remember the story of the 400-pound man named Jacob who ran the Boston Marathon. He lost 80 pounds in the process, and came in last place. It took him almost ten hours. He wrote about it on his blog, and he is pretty funny:
I’d also like to congratulate the 122-year old guy who passed me around mile 13. I have no idea if he finished but as he passed me — he took with him any and all self-respect that I may have had.
He also wrote about people glaring at him, laughing at him, and staring at him. Nice, people. If you hate fat people so much, how about not making us feel like shit when we actually exercise, huh?
There’s also a LiveJournal group (god bless you, LiveJournal) for fat athletes called fatheltes. I loved this photo of an awesome woman on mile 35 of a 150-mile bike race. Inspiring, huh?
In honor of Jacob and androgenie, I vow to wear my spandex proudly! Well, maybe not spandex. Yoga pants. How about you guys. What’s your favorite form of exercise? What kind of workouts do you plan to do this summer?
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Exercise, Fat Positive, Health
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From his description, though, it sounds like the dirty looks he got were the result of a serious breach of marathoning etiquette–he didn’t register for the race! This is called “banditing” and many people regard it as straight-up stealing.
Yeah I was reading comments about banditing too. It is apparently very controversial! I sort of avoided that whole can of worms. But I am curious; is it stealing because they didn’t pay to run? Can’t you… just run anywhere you want, if it’s a public street?
At my last job, I had an extremely discounted membership to a gym and I loved going – mainly because I went around 9pm when the only people around were…other people like me. Oh, and also the 17 year-old boys who were working on their muscles. However, I don’t have that little perk anymore and can’t afford another membership and don’t exercise nearly as much as I’d like.
However, my summer fitness plan is to do what I can, when I can. I take walks (about 15-20 minutes) almost every afternoon, which is way more than I was doing two months ago!
Yes, it’s all about not paying. And taking advantage of things (water, volunteers, medical assistance, etc.) provided along the way. Marathons are a BIG deal to throw, moneywise. They cost a lot and require a lot of everyone involved, runners and organizers alike. Those of us who pay our dues, support the efforts of the race organizers don’t appreciate seeing someone jump into the fray and just start running along without a paid entry. Also, depending on the marathon, space is a problem. I’ve run in the NYC marathon, which has over 30,000 entrants. It’s already a pretty tight squeeze maneuvering your way among all those runners (especially us slower runners, who are the majority!). We don’t appreciate the freeloaders who clog up precious pavement space :-)
Yeah, Mary is exactly right. And I have to say, this guy sounded like a bit of a jerk from some of the stuff he wrote in that entry. Like this:
“They had water stations manned by some incredible volunteers at every mile along the race. I timed it just perfectly that as I approached the water stations for the first 10 miles, they were in the process of breaking all the tables down.
“I know it was just poor timing on my part but it felt like a cruel joke.
“And not to worry for all those people who b*tched about me “stealing funds” from the race — my friends got me drinks from the store along the way and I treated my own medical conditions. Go whine elsewhere.”
So it was a “cruel joke” that the water stations were closed, but he was planning on buying his own drinks anyway?
Mo Pie- Awesome post, awesome links! – the banditing controversy doesn’t stop me from laughing about and being inspired by Jacob’s entry.
The fact that fat people are mocked or fear being mocked while exercising is another sign that fat hatred really *is* social prejudice, not just concern about health and, of course, the children. If people really were concerned about fatties’ health, they would beam fondly and think warm fuzzy thoughts as they watch a fat jogger or cyclist go by. Kind of like the reaction produced by people running with strollers, or cute dogs. That is my fantasy, anyway.
Self-consciousness about my body and exercising kept me from developing an exercise habit for a long time. It even kept me from realizing until recently that I actually like to move and work my body- that a hard-uphill walk or stair-climb actually can make me feel good!
Once a week or so I walk the hills and stairs in my neighborhood. I found some dance-workout videos I like, and so a couple times a week I also jiggle and wiggle in my living room.
Recently I went on a never-ending hike with some (non-fat) friends. At the time, I was ashamed that I was by far the slowest, most out-of-breath hiker, but I’m proud that I didn’t quit despite the high altitude and sense of impending doom. It’s going to take a lot more time before I’m comfortable busting my dance moves without the blinds drawn!
But Jacob and the fathletes provide some much needed inspiration for taking it outside.
PS- thanks to this post, I’m going to go shake my booty to some Bollywood beats instead of taking yet another lap around the Internet.
It took me a really long time to use the very expensive gym membership I have had for years, mostly because of the fear of fat girl condemnation glances. Once I got over it though, it was very liberating — this year I plan to lift weights and swim as much as I want!
This is so cool!! Running is a HARD activity to do while fat (and I know whereof I speak).
I cringed over the ‘banditing’ thing, though. I hate to see someone do something so cool then leave themselves wide open for criticisms that will undermine the whole thing. If you’re going to solicit sponsorships and publicize what you are doing, it’s best to dot all your i’s and cross all your t’s.
I did read it that he was just being funny about those comfort stations. Whether you meant to use them or not, it would be pretty depressing to see them gleaming in the distance, a haven of rest, only to see people packing up and tearing down when you got there (presumably a couple of hours after having doled out a drink to the 122-year-old man).
Brava for joining the gym, Mo!! It’s a great place to build up fitness and start exploring your options. I started out my Big Exercise Plan in 2002 with regular gym attendance and eventually built up to 4 hours a day on the bike, steep hill rides, runs, yoga and weightlifting. It was too much, but the good I kept from that experience was the knowledge that there were all these kinds of exercise I loved to do that I would never have guessed at before I went to the gym and started getting in shape (meaning fit – not skinny!! I was doing all of that at 300 pounds for the first couple of years). Best of luck, and keep us posted on your fathlete experience!
I’m in the middle of trying to get my exercise regimen going again. Lots of summer biking, weight lifting three times a week and, eventually, the hated running – which seems to provide something, fitness-wise, that is hard to get from anything else (except maybe X-country skiing). I’m not sacrificing my good knees for anything though, so…carefully (that worried me for Jacob, based on his post. He looks pretty young, though – probably still have a few lives left on his joints).
Mondays – bellydance
Tuesdays – walking or a video
Wednesday – swimming (I just figured out the snorkel thing and it let me swim a 1/4 mile this week!)
Thursday – swimming or walking
Friday – ?
Saturday – Yoga
Sunday – probably a hike
I just figured out that heat + exertion = migraine for me, though. So I have to be careful with the hikes. Swimming is beautiful…I get a full body workout, I stay cool, and when your head is underwater looking at the light reflecting off the bottom it’s very zen.
Well I’ve been resisting the gym because I looooooved my gym when I lived in Green Bay. I mean, I still miss that fucking gym so much. There was never anybody there (hello, Green Bay) it was easy to drive there (and I had a flexible schedule so I could go there anytime) the ellipticals had individual high-def cable TVs that you could tune to anything you wanted, and they had plenty of trashy magazines. Heaven. Now I am stuck with downtown San Francisco and a bunch of people just getting off work.
But I will deal!
I’m trying to rotate through some different activities to save myself from overuse injuries – so I’m aiming for two days a week of each of the following:
– 60 minute beach walk
– 30 minutes on a stationary bike with 2-3 higher intensity intervals in the middle, followed by 30 minutes of light pilates
– 60+ minute hike in the hills
My short term goal is to work up to 3-4 hour hikes on the weekends and my longer goal is to climb Vernal Falls when I’m in Yosemite in October.
I’ve been on hiatus from roller derby, which has been bad news because I’m not working out at all and my endurance will be shot by the time we pick up again at the end of July. But it’s good for the marriage, not skating three nights a week.
i did the gym thing for a while, and enjoyed it (especially when i didn’t have a tv and could time my workouts with the shows i wanted to watch). and even though i’m a big girl, i never really got flack for it. but for the past year i’ve been enjoying outdoor exercise a lot more–i walk this 3 mile loop a couple times a week, and usually go on a hike or two. for me it’s all about the company and finding friends who want to do it with me. all the friends i take are thin (i am not lucky enough to have fat friends), but honestly i exercise more regularly than most of them. i think when it gets hot this summer tho, i’m going to have to do some night walks and some lap swimming (there’s a free public pool by my work, and yes, i am going to take my fat self over there and put my bathing suit on and swim with the rest of ’em!)–because it can get super hot where i’m at.
on the topic of people giving fat people flack when they exercise, i’ve actually experienced the opposite and find it even more frustrating. several times i’ve had people come up to me and encourage me specifically–like, they don’t just go around encouraging people, but they seem to think the exercising fat girl must need some extra motivation. they will say stuff like “keep it up!” and “you’re doing great!” i guess that since i’m someone who does exercise regularly, and i have for several years now, i find those comments really patronizing and frustrating. i just feel really stereotyped and angry. maybe i’m being too defensive, because i know they’re just trying to be helpful…but it does piss me off.
Belly Dance for an hour -hour 1/2 a day
Walking to and from the bus station from the grocery store to home, laden down with a thirty pound infant and around thirty pounds of groceries.
Walking
Sex
I used to do the Gym thing…but the gym was so far away and off the bus route that it wasn’t really feasible for me to go anymore.
I never run in public anymore…
Had garbage and vile words thrown at me by a truckload of teenagers.
On Wednesday I walked/jogged the 5.6k JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge (Marathon) in Frankfurt/Germany. It was the second time that I participated and last year I felt really weird because of all the joggers “leaving” me behind while I *only* walked (not to mention that I constantly got pushed and shoved). But I made the race in great time then und this year I even managed to beat my last year’s time by five minutes! Go me! ;-)
@rei: I have the same experiences w/ running in public – there is a park that is just behind my house and would be perfect to run in – but I’ve had stuff thrown at me by teenagers, too, so I’ve been forced to find somewhere else to run. It’s stupid and still pisses me off thinking about it.
I currently can’t afford going to the gym and to be honest – I don’t really miss it at the moment. I’ve made the experience the trainers tend to focus on the thin and very fit; I’ve been ignored many times in different gyms.
Regarding snide comments: I’ve (painfully) learned to ignore those remarks and now I don’t hear even them anymore because I’ve got my iPod cranked up to max. :-)
I’m due to run a 5km ‘race for life’ in the UK in a couple of weeks and I haven’t done any training as at the end of the day I’m lazy. I’m running my business, raising a kid, taking care of a menagerie of pets and the only time I get to myself I often feel I don’t want to spend it knocking myself out with exercise. If Jacob can do a marathon, I can sure as hell do 5km and that man is an inspiration to me – I’ll be watching his blog wiht avid interest…Just a shame he had all that crap to deal with during it…
It’s a no win situation for fat people isn’t it – damned if you do exercise and damned if you don’t…
“hello, Green Bay…”
what do you mean by that aside?
That whole teenagers yelling and throwing trash at you makes me want to throw up. I’m glad you guys aren’t letting that get in the way of your exercise lives, but it’s so gross that it even happens. Gah. And Bethany, that’s really interesting about being condescended to. That would piss me off mightily also.
Becky, I lived in Green Bay for a year and that’s where my One True Gym was located!
Swim and swim and swim some more! Sweet Baby Ray, how I do love my pool.
Summer fitness plan won’t be much different than the year round fitness plan: lift heavy and often. :-) The challenge will be keeping it up while traveling.
Free weights (FEEEL the power). Elliptical. Tae Bo. Yoga. Muscle Confusion. (Also Mental Confusion when I don’t watch it.)
Working up to “deserving” a private session at Jivamukti. I have to be brave enough to tell the (skinny) teacher what I want to work on. Plus Sting and Willem Dafoe go to class there sometimes; and what if I run into one of them, and I’m looking stupid doing crane pose? It doesn’t bear thinking about.
I started running last year and will continue to do so this year, while I also continue to procrastinate about weight training. I start training for a half-marathon next month; one of my training runs will be the Army Ten-Miler in DC in Oct.
I need to lose 35 more pounds (I’ve lost 35), but I guess because I live in the third fattest state in the US (WV) I don’t get any comments about Fat Girl Running. That would definitely be demoralizing.
Ah! Hmm. I live outside GB, and am looking for a One True Gym…
Oh really? It’s Fitness America on Ashland in Ashwaubenon. How far away do you live?
I currently bellydance three hours a week and walk to and from work every day, about 30 minutes each way. Dance is my one true love (rei and spinsterwitch: tribal or cabaret?) but I’m really enjoying my daily walks, and I like to swim too. I’ve gone to the gym at different points in my life and it’s been only okay.
Hey all – just wanted to throw this in about the Boston Marathon, in particular – as you guys have pointed out, yeah, there is a lot of work that goes into it, etc. However, Boston is particular because it is a *qualifying* marathon – creme de la creme. You cannot run it unless you have had a separate marathon time fast enough to qualify you for it (I think it was 3:30 for women, at least a few years ago). Which would explain: 1. Why people were pissed; 2. Why he came in last (there are slow folk and walkers at most marathons – at New York several years ago, I was cheering along Mile 8 when a guy brought up the rear flank walking along smoking a cigarette). He should have run another city if he wanted something less competitive and more convivial. And sans Heartbreak Hill. Which is why I suspect he did this on purpose – this is a big eff you to people who take their competitive running extremely seriously and an obvious point to make when you’re the only slow person on a whole course. You’re looking for attention.
Summer motion? Anything that fits into my day and doesn’t cause me angst. Which would explain the treadmill I have at home. Best investment ever. Enjoy the hot weather!
I’ve been boxing for about 10 months now, and I love it! I do it 6 days/week. I mostly hit the bag, but get in an occasional spar with my willing trainers. I would like to kick it up to the next level and start taking some kickboxing or muay thai classes, but I’ve been dealing with a foot issue and waiting for it to heal. I also do about an hour of additional cardio 6 days/week, and then alternate between weigh lifting, ab exercises, and balance/leg exercises. I’ve been doing that regimen for about 18 months now, and hope to keep it up for the rest of my life. I also hope to take up rowing, and perhaps swimming (again). I’m a big girl, and it was a big step for me to take that first step into the gym 18 months ago. But I’m so glad I did it. I feel great these days, my joints don’t ache, and I love the ease of mobility! I may not be at my “ideal” weight (yet!), but it’s certainly been a worthwhile journey getting there.
My platonic exercise routine involves three sessions a week of running, followed by weights and another bout of cardio of some sort. I haven’t been able to do it properly for a while, since I started my postgraduate degree and there is no longer any gym I can conveniently get to from work (I don’t drive).
Nil desperandum. I’ve modified my weights routine so I can do it with dumbbells at home, and I fit in what else I can do when I can.
When I started at the gym, I was very self-conscious, but it actually helped that most people there were training fairly seriously – they didn’t have any attention left to spare for me. After a while, I didn’t have any for them, either (unless they were hogging the equipment I wanted to use…)
You don’t have to throw yourself at the hardest challenge at the beginning. I didn’t start running until I’d been gymming for a few months, and to begin with I could only run for a few minutes. Now I’ve run several 5Ks (the Race for Life is a great first 5K, Jade – good luck!) and I’d like to do a 10K in the autumn. If you take it gently, you won’t hurt yourself and you will get better all the time.
I’m doing my first Danskin Tri in about 3 weeks, so I’ve been in training!
And I’m late to this thread because I was at a web content seminar where the Monday lunch speaker was this guy who clearly had issues with overweight people. He kept on telling the story of the culinary school he did work for, and how all the “400-pound students” there would obviously not be interested in a volleyball team, and he went ON and ON about it. Later in his pointless talk (during which he showed slides of “successories” type cliche business slogans) he spewed on the ol’ “just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should” and showed a slide of a very large woman wearing a bikini, to the groans of the crowd. I got up and left, and complained to the event organizers.
I was hoping, hoping so badly I would run into him so I could tell him, “Look, I’d stop and tell you how vile you are, but my fat ass is on its way to change into running shoes to train for this triathlon I’m doing, belive it or not.”
God, that is totally disgusting. You should look up his email address and write him a letter telling him off. Seriously, that would rule!
Better still, I’m going to blog about it later today! And I’m going to mention his name, because one of the things I learned at this seminar is that if you want to get linked to, if you want your name to turn up in hits, get your name in a blog!
I’ve found this to be true. I just googled up a bunch of subjects (both local and national) that I’ve written about, and MY BLOG (which only gets some 10-20 hits a day, on the average, I’m no blogstar to say the VERY least) turns up almost always on page one of the hits! REally. Try it! Blogging really is weighted heavily!
Be careful what you wish for, Mr. Howard Tullman, you just may get it!!!!!
Well let us know when you blog about it! We can help you spread the word about Mr. Howard Tullman. Hmph.
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I will definitely keep reading your blog, cheers.