this body

Jan. 11th, 2023 12:12 am
forgotten_aria: hanging in a cyr wheel (cyr)
I am so mad at myself. I anguish over how bad I am at physical things, but I have a pretty neat body. Sure it can't do uncommon things or even a lot of common things, but it can do a lot. So why do I keep lamenting about what it cannot do? Why can enjoy just trying, being, using it. Why do I have to be GOOD at something for it to be worth doing?

I did a squat workout, went to TKD, and practiced cyr, including my first attempt at strengthening for coin. I mean, come on, me!

anti-diet

Sep. 7th, 2022 05:57 pm
forgotten_aria: (susuwatari stars)
I gave up on dieting a while ago, but in the last few years I've been really focusing on unlearning diet culture. We are saturated by being told that we are bad for eating certain things. Things are marketed as "guilt free" and products will proudly tell you what they don't have, even if they never would have had it in the first place. Example, a pure sugar product proudly announcing "fat-free!" While I do believe that eating too much of one thing will leave you short of many things your body needs, and that I personally do much better on lots of protein (I wish I had known that earlier) so I'm not against adjusting what one eats for your own personal needs and health. But I do think labeling foods as "bad" and "good" does more harm than good. Food is more than calories, food is more than building blocks. Food is mentally stimulating. Food is social, cultural, and nostalgic.

What I've been doing lately is really trying to listen to what my body wants and needs. This wasn't easy at first, partly because dieting had made my body just desperate for things that would not make me feel my best. I was hungry all the time too. That hunger was often unhelpful in communicating what I wanted/needed.

Now that it's been a few years where I am actively telling myself it's ok the eat things that our society says are "bad" if that's what I really, truly want, I have a much better relationship with food, with hunger, and in generally have been craving calorically dense, but otherwise nutritionally light foods a whole lot less. My body is also getting better at telling me "oh you need more protein this meal," or, "you really need some complex carb," or even "alert! sugar now!" Most importantly I am not hungry all the time and food doesn't dominate my thoughts. Things aren't perfect yet, but this feels a lot better than when I was restricting. I am not formally following intuitive eating, but I think this falls close to what it is.

The most important thing is I am no longer at war with my body. I experienced a lot of harm from treating what I ate and exercise as consequences of being fat. I hated being hungry all the time, since I was still fat AND hungry, so clearly my body was the enemy. Exercise was about shrinking, not about health, so I would push through pain, safety, how I was feeling, and feel bad if I didn't "keep up" with my thinner counterparts, because clearly it wasn't that they had less weight to move around, it was that I wasn't thin because I wasn't doing what they did. Hating your body is so damaging psychologically too.

The more I look into studies, the more it seems that restriction (other than for allergies or sensitivities) actually makes things worse in the long run. A lot of more modern nutritionists suggest adding things to your diet that you think you might be missing, rather than restricting "bad" things.

As a side note, a few of the nutritionists/dietitians I follow point out that the diet industry is also racist, since it will often treat almost equivalent foods differently depending on their roots. If you are interested in this side of things, check out https://www.instagram.com/theblacknutritionist/ and https://www.instagram.com/fit.flexible.fluid/ and I'm sure a whole bunch others.

Anyway, this post came about because this week I've been skipping a lot of my physical activities because of both my booster and the physical effects of the stress and sadness of Iz passing and my body seems to have very quickly compensated by reducing my hunger response to match the reduced activity and it feels really nice to have my body adjusting correctly rather than being in "famine panic mode" and just generally with a messed up relationship with food.
forgotten_aria: (Default)
I've been trying to get up to 4 hours of crossfit in a week, but with 4-6 hours of taekwondo and lyra, my body hasn't had the energy to make it the week. I've only have my one hoop class and I'm signed up for 3 more, but I'm thinking I can't quite do it all and I might give up hoop for now, but I will reevaluate after the 3 classes are done.

I'm still super happy to know there is a hoop/silks place where I can feel comfortable, even if I can't take advantage of it for now.

I'm thinking of starting a Instagram account focused on the things I've been doing with my body that I was told as a kid wasn't possible at my size in hopes that more people will just go out and find their happy exercise.

Handstand!

Jun. 3rd, 2019 06:07 pm
forgotten_aria: (Default)
HANDSTAND! That is all.

forgotten_aria: (crushed cats)
The last few years I've been trying to focus on exercising and eating good foods because it will make me feel better, stronger, and more able and not because it has any chance to help me lose weight. I've been doing ok at that, not getting too bothered by times when my fat makes it so very obvious it's there (like when I'm doing a roundhouse, back hook in the air and my fat makes this slapping sound when I land.) Part of this is that the people at TKD are very good at not judging people and my master can see my strength, beyond my weight.

But the social programming runs deep and when I decided to finally get rid of my size 16 and lower pants (and even some smaller 18s) it hit me kind of hard. Like I was "giving up" on the quest to be that size again.

I want to be smaller, but I want to do so in a way that is sustainable and good for my mental health and so far I haven't found that.

It's weird how hard it hit me and reminds me how not ok I am with being fat, even though I try to be.

Hating yourself is so unhealthy, however, so I'll try to get back to my place of complacent disregard.
forgotten_aria: (chun li kick)
Today I had a huge break through on my back hook kick, but I'm really posting because I did my first legit (though I'm sure ugly) cartwheel. This is not only a physical victory for me, but this is a huge physiological one. Cartwheels were something that as a kid I basically wrote off as not something a obese kid could do, so I did seek someone to teach me.
forgotten_aria: (casio sb)
Taekwondo is still awesome, though I might get a little stuck on this belt because my shoulder doesn't like the front falling technique. Surprisingly, however, my shoulder is doing better with it than I thought, so instead of testing by falling from my knees (which my Master was going to be fine with if it seemed like my shoulder wasn't going to be ok with it any time soon) I have told him I want to learn to do it right and catch myself falling from standing. It's progressing more quickly than I thought, but I also need to be super careful, since if I do it wrong, I might hurt myself and set things back further.

For my birthmonth (which is next month) I decided to finally splurge and bid on a handpan. I got really really enamored with this one handpan, bid on it, and then the guy took down the auction. Then I went through a strange thought process. I found out there was a kick starter for an electric hand pan. Half the cost and you could program it to be in many different keys and even a few different voices. I thought "that's silly, but those are good points about handpans" and so I came to the sad conclusion that I shouldn't spend that much on such a constrained instrument, even though I've wanted one for years and years.

And then my favorite handpan person had an auction that didn't sell, and he reposted it. And I was worried that I would change my mind and regret, which also seemed silly. But some how I rationalized that I could likely resell the thing for more than my budget. So I bid (less than my budget was when I bid on the auction that got taken down) and surprisingly won. I wish I were as excited as I would have been a year ago, but given that I'm not sure if I convinced myself of something I shouldn't have done... well, well see. It is supposed to arrive 22nd. Hopefully the weather won't knock it out of tune. It has three extra bottom dings, which I'm not sure how you are intended to play them (though I know that's not unique.)

Maybe if I love it, it will be weird enough I can get hired as background music.

EDIT: I'm getting a little bit of excitement now. "Holy cow! I'm going to own a handpan!"
forgotten_aria: (silver Dress)
So I think I could be happy being this overweight (I'd of course love to be back to my sexy 150, but hey, no ponies) except that this time my weight seems to be super lumpy. I don't want to be lumpy.

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