On the road again ...

Driving to Georgia for a wedding today and really enjoying the books on tape, Cracker Barrel, seeing Cincinnati friends and sunny skies.

Fat Girls in Swim Suits

There have been some CRAZY things going on around the internet. Like real cray. I thought I need to weigh in as well. It seemed to start from a blog post from one of my favorites GABIFRESH. She posted pictures of herself in a bathing suit, oh excuse me, a fatkini. From the words of Gabi:

As always, I truly encourage you guys to get to the beach (or a pool) this summer--don't let body shame keep you from having a good time! I don't expect everyone to feel comfortable in a two piece, but hopefully I can inspire some of you to take the plunge. I can't tell you how freeing it is to just have fun without worrying about what other people think.

Of course the world went crazy over a fat girl in a swim suit. This lead to an oxjane article about fat women and swim suits from the again amazing Gabi. The article also featured a photo slide show of women of all sizes wearing bathing suits. I loved it.

Then That Cortnie Girl posted a picture on of her in a swim suit on her Facebook, resulting in over 90 comments! Most positive, but of course, there was some body shaming as well. You can see her video response here.  

I thought, what a better way to celebrate my birthday (PS, yay I am 25, my brain is developed and ready to make some mad crazy sound decisions)  than to reaffirm my commitment to fat acceptance and the healthy at every size lifestyle then posting some pictures of myself in a bathing suit! It all really worked out perfectly, because I needed to pick a suit for my trip to Georgia this weekend anyways! 

Low a behold, a living, breathing obese person in SEVERAL bathing suits! Gasp! 

Here is me and all of my body, standing in solidarity with all other people that have been told their body does not deserve to wear a swim suit in public. 

What I Learned from the Races I Didn't Run

I am a runner. I like the feeling after a run, I like making training plans, and I like racing. This passion has not translated into completed races in quite some time. To get this post started let me recount some recent races I did not run.

Columbus Half Marathon - April 2010 

I hoped this would be my second half marathon and precursor to the full marathon in October. I ran more miles during this training bout than during my first, with a long run of 11 miles. At the time I had just started a research position at Ohio State. One of our community partners was hosting an event the same day as the race. I felt I should go to the community event instead. 

Cleveland Full Marathon - May 2011 

During the spring of 2011 I went through a lot of transitions. School to work, one job to another job and then to another. When I first arrived in December I had quite a lot of free time on my hands. Slowly my time was consumed by my graduate project, work, and various advocacy projects I was working on. I made it to a 13 mile long run, and again threw in the towel on marathon training. This time I threw in the towel to exercise completely. 

So now that you learned the stories of my "failed" races, here is what I learned from them ... 

There will be many more races. 

Training for a race causes me to fixate on a date. I focus on working hard some I can be successful on this specific day. When that date passes and I didn't complete my goal, I feel disappointing and empty. Then the sun rises the next day, I do a bit of googling and realize there are many more races to come, and much more time in my life to train for them. I am young, and I have many more opportunities to race. 

Its not you, its timing. 

Life is long, and growing up has many hurdles. Last year for me my hurdles included finishing school and finding a job. The year before that it was focusing on my research position.  I set my priorities and running just fell too far down the list. Sometimes even things I love need to be put further down the list. 

On another note, I believe you make time for what is important to you. If running is important to me, I need to choose to do less or certain things (advocacy work perhaps) and make room for running. To me, that means making a commitment to yourself, and activities that bring joy to your life and satisfaction.

You grew as a runner from the training, even without the race. 

The worst part about deciding to not run a race is the frustration you feel from putting in all the work and training "for nothing." Well, it isn't for nothing. Ilearned some much from both of my "failed" training attempts. I learned more about how my body responds to distance running. I learned how to effectively fuel, hydrate, and create training plans. I became more comfortable with double digit runs. Just because I didn't complete the races, I still progressed along my journey as a runner. 

Where to from here? 

Today I registered for two races, the Cleveland Half Marathon and Canton Half Marathon. As I continue to train and race I will bring with me the wisdom I learned from races in which I proudly crossed the finish line, and races I didn't even make it to the starting line. 

Don't shame thin bodies, duh

You do not empower one person by oppressing another person. In the body acceptance movement - all bodies are accepted, period. 

This is NOT the answer. 

Sometimes in an attempt to empower people with fatter bodies, thinner bodies are put down. I have seen memes similar to the one above circulating Facebook and Tumblr. Memes like this are counterproductive to the body acceptance movement. I was glad to see this refute a few days later.

Phew, that is better.

Lets travel back to visit high school Ashley to learn more about accepting all bodies. 

 In high school I attended an event called Challenge Day. I know many schools around the country host these events, and it was even featured on MTV. This was a really powerful event for me, and I am glad more students get to have this experience.

Pink-haired 15 year old Ashley 

Challenge Day at my school included a "cross the line" activity. Statements were proposed and if you identified with the statement, you "crossed the line" by taking a step forward. The question was asked, have you ever been teased because of the the size or shape of your body?

The words stung as memories of being taunted on playgrounds, boys mockingly flirting with me to get a rise out of their friends, and being pelted with crab apples while walking home from school flooded my mind. I took a big step forward. I then looked from side to side and was suprised to see who had also crossed the line with me. A thin, blonde cheerleader stood on the other side of the line, tears streaming down her face. I had always thought she was so beautiful, how could she have possibly experienced the shaming that I did? There had even been times I assumed that if I had her body, all the pain I had felt from bullying would disappear. But then I remembered boys mocking her flat chest, height, and thin "boney" legs in the school hallways. I guess our experiences with our bodies were more similar than I thought.

I wanted to hug her that day but I never did. Therefore, I dedicate this post to anyone who has ever felt shamed about their body. This blog post is like an "internet hug" to all those who have ever felt like either of us did not that day. Be reminded no one should be shamed for being too big, too small, for having too many rolls, not enough breasts or the excess/absence of any other body part. This is an internet hug to any person who has ever felt devalued because of the treatment of others in response to their body.

Be reminded, ALL people and all bodies are valuable.

Letting go of Ashley the "Skinny Bride"

So are you still training for that race? 

No, I am no longer on the training plan I mentioned before. I stopped because I felt pressured to spend my fitness time in a more "productive" way. I started doing HIIT (high intensity interval training) workouts, specifically Insanity. After a few weeks I stopped my Insanity workouts, and am now back on a running plan. 

If I didn't like HIIT and Insanity, why did I do it in the first place? 

This really is the tip of a much bigger iceberg in my journey of body acceptance. I felt I needed to do HIIT because these workouts are the fastest way to build muscle mass and lose body fat. If you are unaware, there is a really big day coming up in my life in which over a hundred people will all be staring at me. I felt pressured to "look my best" which pressured me to do workouts I don't like, and diet, which I don't want to do anymore. 

Well, I am officially done. Consider this a public service announcement on all issues of my body and my wedding. 

I, Ashley Thompson, am officially giving up my since childhood fantasy of being a skinny bride. Many girls have their dress, colors or flowers picked out for their wedding long before they have a ring on their finger. The only thing I dreamed about was being a skinny bride. I used to think marriage was a milestone that represented that your life was coming together. You were growing up, starting a new chapter of your life, and had a least some of your shit figured out. I thought that once I grew up, and had my shit figured out I would magically be thin, too. Now I realize that the together-ness of my life has nothing to do with the size of my body. Finally I feel ready to give up fantasizing about being something I am not, and learning to nourish and love what I am, body included. 

If this isn't what having your life together looks like, I don't know does. 

Compared to my current weight, I have weighed more, and I have weighed less. I have spent LITERALLY  spent the last decade of my short life dieting. For once in my life I am going to make a commitment to myself to nourish and take care of my body and love it, not matter what shape it may be. 

For friends and family who think commenting about my weight, or my exercise/eating habits is appropriate - stop. 

It has, and will always, negatively impact my ability to accept my body. Talking about my body does not motivate me to lose weight or improve my health. If anything it fuels self destructive behaviors. Trust me, I literally have a degree in health behavior, if there was a magically way to make people lose weight, I would have heard about it. Also weight loss is not the same as improved health. I am continuing my commitment to improve my health, I am just no longer using the amount of weight I can lose as my measure for success in this endeavor. In my attempts to lose weight I have picked up some healthy behaviors and some destructive behaviors.

All in all, I do have my shit figured out, it just looks different than I thought it would when I was younger. 

I have a job that I love, I spend my time reading about issues I care about, I have an amazing fiance that I am excited to start a family with, and I have my whole life ahead of me. I have yet to figure out the how-to-eat-without-dieting thing, but I am working on it. I do know that being obsessed with my weight has not improved my physical health and definitely has negatively impacted my mental health.


I do know trying to lose 30 pounds before my wedding will not help improve my ability to accept my body or improve my health. 

In case you are still a little confused, here is a recap: 

• No, I am not dieting for my wedding. 
• Yes, my body could change, but that is part of my current journey to find a weight I can maintain without dieting. 
• No, you are never allowed to comment on my body or my physical activity/eating habits, even if you think what you are saying is a compliment. It is not a compliment, by the way. 
• Yes, health promotion is still an important aspect of my personal and professional life. I have just learned that promoting health looks different than I originally thought and a healthy me might look different than I originally though. 
• No, I have not yet learned how to eat without dieting, and accept my body, but I do now those two goals are what will lead to improved health, and happiness in my life - not dieting/weight loss. 

Phew, that feels good to get off my chest! 

Pre-pre-training plan!

Girl has to start somewhere – and somewhere for me is the pre-pre-training plan! I went a little crazy one morning and cranked out a training plan! Here is the first 11 weeks of training that will prepare me for a half marathon training plan.

Week	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat	Sun
1	Stretch  Strengthen	1.5 m run	1 m run or cross	1.5 m run + strength	Rest	20 min cross	1.5 m run
2	Stretch Strengthen	1.5 m run	1 m run or cross	1.5 m run + strength	Rest	20 min cross	2 m run
3	Stretch Strengthen	1.5 m run	1.5 m run or cross	2 m run + strength	Rest	20 min cross	2 m run
4	Stretch  Strengthen	2 m run	1.5 m run or cross	2 m run + strength	Rest	20 min cross	2 m run
5	Stretch  Strengthen	2 m run	1.5 m run or cross	2 m run + strength	Rest	25 min cross	3 m run
6	Stretch  Strengthen	2 m run	2 m run or cross	2.5 m run + strength	Rest	25 min cross	3 m run
7	Stretch  Strengthen	2.5 m run	2 m run or cross	2.5 m run + strength	Rest	25 min cross	3 m run
8	Stretch Strengthen	2.5 m run	2 m run or cross	2.5 m run + strength	Rest	25 min cross	3.5 m run
9	Stretch  Strengthen	2.5 m run	2 m run or cross	3 m run + strength	Rest	30 min cross	3.5 m run
10	Stretch  Strengthen	3 m run	2 m run or cross	3 m run + strength	Rest	30 min cross	3.5 m run
11	Stretch  Strengthen	3 m run	2 m run or cross	3 m run + strength	Rest	30 min cross	4 m run

Very exciting, huh? This is adapted from Hal Higdon's plans. If you are a runner, I am sure you know of Hal! Hell, if you even thought about running enough to google couch to 5k, you probably know Hal!


Anyways, I thought a new running blog project would fun to track my training progress. You might be wondering – Ashley – what are you training for?


When I put together my plan I had a half and full marathon in mind. I now realize I have another commitment the day of the full I planned, so I am going to have to go back to the drawing board on that one. Regardless, the half I had planned is the Rite Aide Cleveland Half Marathon. I had done this distance before, I live in Cleveland, and I need a new fitness goal – low and behold my decision to train for this race. Simple, no?


Anyways, I thought it would be fun to recap on my training. Here is week one!

WEEK ONE: getting into the groove!

Monday – Stretch and strength
Wasn’t sure what to do, so basically layed aorund my floor stretching things out. I realized stretch and strength is code for yoga, which I plan to do from now on on these days.


Tuesday – 1.5 mi
Just a usual run, and it felt pretty good! This was my first run from work, and shower at work. I think I was more excited about the shower than the run.


Wednesday – 20 min kickboxing
… or in other words, searching clips of turbokick on YouTube and jumping around my office. Standard cross training.


Thursday – rest
Nuff said.


Friday – 1.5 mi run and DANCING
Felt good to get out and move on my run. I really got my workout that night at the halloween dance. I have the blisters to prove it.


Saturday – 30 minute elliptical and weights
Food network and weights more like it.


Sunday – 1.5 mi run
This was my easiest feeling 1.5 miler yet! I am excited to bring it up to 2 miles next week!

Out of my hands, off my shoulders

My biggest ah-ha moments tend to be after/during exercise. Maybe it is the lack of oxygen to my brain or something, but for whatever reason, when my body starts moving, so do the gear upstairs.

Point being – had an ah-ha moment today while working out. I started my evening with a little ashley-robics. I hope you don’t think I just made Ashley-robics up. They are in fact real, and I do them quite often.
Anyways, after jumping around my room for a little while I decided to cool down outside and headed outside for a walk. It rained a lot today, so everything looked glassy, with a blue and black tint. Kind of like in those film noir movies, when you see the lead character walking down the street alone at night.
In that moment, while walking around feeling my heartbeat slow down, I appreciated that while my exercise method of unconventional, it was effective. This made me think about another forms of exercise I love – running.
I love running, but there is something deeply competitive about it. Each time I set out for a run I am hoping it will be “good.” I guess good means fast, and pain free. A lot of runs aren’t good. My chest feels tight, my feet hurt, or something else in my body isn’t working right. In all of this I feel guilty.
I guess I never realized I felt guilty about my bad runs. This guilt comes from the fact I have a strong belief that I have control over my life. If I study hard, I will get a good grade. If I work hard, I will be able to find a job. If I treat my partner well, our relationship will work. This is all rather “pull yourself up from your boot straps-y” for someone as progressive as I am! I guess I allow other people to have flaws, but not myself.
Anyways, in that moment I realized, Ashley, you aren’t always in control, and therefore, you aren’t always to blame for mishaps.
For some people this revelations might feel like, well duh, but for me its huge. I have spent far too long worrying about what I did wrong. Somethings are out of my control, and all I can do is my best.
Maybe that pill I easier for other to swallow, but for me, it took an post-dancing sweaty haze to get it. A little Adele in the background helped too.

Ashley-robics

Hello fitness fans! I give you the new revolution in fitness. Ashley-robics! Just follow the easy steps below.

1. Clear the room! Move all of your stuff out of the way. You are going to need a lot of space. Dopey face optional.

2. Literally google “top 40 music.” As you can see by the purple links, I do this often.

3. Click the songs you love. Start with Britney – you should always start with Britney, duh.

4. Dance. No, don’t dance, just MOVE. Move your arms, move and legs and just pump it! You will find on occasion your rhythmic pumping actually looks cool. Most of the time it just looks crazy. This is why we do this at home, and alone. I could seriously look at that last picture all day, so funny!

5. Take a break! You have been going hard! Catch your breath. Please note sweat, the program is working.

6. Time to cool it down. Start by switching up the music source to Pandora. Make a “Rolling in the Deep” channel and play.

*Please note I have channels called “boy band bitch” and also “material girl.”

7. Turn down the lights, take slow breaths and stretch it out. This is the relaxation phase. Focus on where you are feeling tight and stretch. Mmmm… stretch. I am a fan of the slow moving dark room combination.

There you have it folks! A full workout with no gym, no equipment, no exercise instructors and no money. All it takes is a little sense of humor and good music. Oh, and internet… and Britney Spears. Again, always start with Britney Spears.

Chowey, sweat-ily signing off!

Finding balance

This past weekend I spent time reflecting on my work life balance. One thing stuck out to me – I know how to be happy, but I am not doing it. I am going to start moving back towards a life that makes me happy with a few small goals. I will explain more later.

Source

First set of goals:

• Schedule a weekly planning session on Sundays to plan and review my week
  
• Track food and fitness on My Fitness Pal
  
• Shoot for 8 hours of sleep a night
  
• Journal 4 days a week focusing on emotions, challenges in balance, and positive thinking

This is all about making me a priority again, and learning how to reorganize my life as working girl Ashley, not student Ashley!
and your moment of Zen, Ashley getting down with the foam roller.

Foam rolling, the best part of the day!

Bodies and Victim Blaming

I follow healthy living blogs. I also follow healthy-at-ever-size, or fat acceptance blogs. In reading these blogs I saw an interesting reaction to emotional triggers related to bodies.

One HAES blogger wrote a post the other day about an emotional trigger for her, bad pictures. I think this is very relatable.

Her response was to realize most bodies she sees do not look like hers. In addition, she does not spend much time on a regular basis looking at her own body. She notes that unless people spend time looking at their bodies in full length mirrors regularly, they might forget what they look like, and start to think their bodies look like ones they are visually exposed to. The bodies we are mainly exposed to come through mainstream media – ads, TV, magazines and so on. These bodies are not real, and they are usually unattainable and non-representative of the majority of people.

Some bloggers in the healthy living community also had recent experiences with triggers. One of the bloggers is pregnancy and talked about the difficulty of accepting that her clothes no longer fit. She expressed feeling upset loosing a body that she worked so hard to achieve and maintain. When she reached her pre-baby weight she vowed never to gain weight again. Obviously this isn’t possible during pregnancy. Another blogger wrote about feeling upset and shocked after stepping on a scale.

In these examples, women felt the blame or cause was not unrealistic images in the media, but instead themselves. The thought was that either they needed to just feel better about their bodies, or actively do something to change their bodies till they were happy with them.

Here is what I understood:

HAES blogger

• cause of anxiety – a culture that only finds certain bodies acceptable, causes individuals to become disconnected from ]their own body.
• solutions – normalize all bodies. This can mean taking time to actually look at your own body, or see other images of real bodies.

Healthy Living Bloggers

• cause of anxiety – I am unhappy with my body.
• Solution – learn to love my body, or change my body.

I feel blaming a person for feeling anxiety about their bodies is victim blaming. An individual is given a warped sense of what bodies should look like from being over exposed to certain bodies, and under exposed to others (ones that actually look more like theirs). Wrongfully, some argue being affected by these environmental factors makes an individual weak. They need to rise above these influences.

I can already hear voices saying – only a weak person would let images in the media impact their sense of self. Then the individual is told, be strong, foster body image and so on, but the root cause of the anxiety, societal pressures, unrealistic images, are never addressed.

Kind of sounds like this other example of victim blaming – you knew dressing that way made people think you wanted to have sex, you were “asking” to be sexually assaulted. That is victim blaming, and telling someone they are weak because they have body anxiety caused by a culture that promotes unrealistic bodies is also victim blaming.

The real solution to these problems is societal-level change in how we view and express bodies. Our society does not accept bodies unless they look a certain way. To create cultural change I need to normalize my body. There needs to be MORE pictures of my body, and people, including myself, need to look at them. One example of normalizing different bodies was Fa(t)shion February.

Ok, I am getting on a ramble – night folks.

Building a strong base

I don’t know when I wrote this – but it is wonderful. Thank you Ashley of the past for brightening my evening. Enjoy!

If I want to move forward on a journey towards improved health, I need to start by building a strong foundation to work from. Before I can try to improve my own health, I need to start believing that I have the capacity to improve my health. Therefore, I need to start by building confidence in myself and fostering a sense of self respect.

Recently I watched a show called “I Used to Be Fat.” There are a billion things wrong with that title, but that is another post. Anyways, the girl in the show wanted to run a sub 10 minute mile. During the show she pointed out that she has the physical capacity to run a sub 10 minute mile, but psychological barriers were keeping her from reaching that goal.

Sometimes I wonder if my slips and falls along my journey have created self doubt and psychological barriers to improving my health.

While I lack confidence in my abilities, time and time again I have proven myself wrong. Only 6 months ago I thought I would never get a job related to sexual health, but here I am typing this blog during one of my breaks between sexual health education classes. I ran a half marathon, went to graduate school and lobbied congress. When I was younger, not even in my wildest dreams would I have imagined I could do all of those things. But I did, so its time to stop the doubt and start trusting my ability and capacity to achieve and succeed when it comes to health, and all other areas of my life.

Surprise!

Imagine you are going for a run. There you are, jogging along having a good time. You have your iPod on and Miley Cyrus is blasting. It is a cool 60 degrees on a June night. Then you see this …

This is what I ran into last week. I later talked to my landlord and learned that they are filming a movie down the street from us. How cool! Cleveland has a tax credit for film production that brings many studios to the city to film.

After a little googling I cam across the Greater Cleveland Film Commission. The web site lists all the films that are being produced in Cleveland, and also about local positions available through the film project.

The movie they are filming down the street from me is called Fun Size. The film features Victoria Justice. Yeah, I guess she has a show on Nickelodeon. Here is more info on the movie:

“sarcastic teenage girl who is forced to take her little brother trick-or-treating on Halloween, then loses him and must find him before their mother finds out. It is described as a cross between Superbad and Adventures in Babysitting.”

Source

Superbad meets Adventures in Babysitting? I am skeptial. Whatever, I will totally go see it, I saw where it was filmed!

Checking out this week

Enough said. If Ohio legislators would stop attacking women maybe I could blog more.

Jog dancing

This is what happens when I go for a run.

First I get all jog attired out. You know, sports bra made of steel, spandex all over, and way to expensive shoes. I make sure I have my key, put some rocking tunes on my iPod and then open up the old air ways. Thank goodness of inhalers! This is what the “making-sure-I-care-breath” part of the process looks like.

OK good, lungs work. Also note the misplacement of my broken eyeball. How glorious.

Now most of the time I just run. You know, the typical one leg in front of the other thing. Other times jog dancing happens. There are no words to explain jog dance. Just watch.

Dance jogging as performed by Chowey

Five Chowey Favs –June 19th (21st) edition

This is out of order, but Sunday (or Monday, not sure yet) I want to start posting my top 5 favorite things from the past week. Here are my favorite moments from last week. PS – I will get better at this the more I do it, right?

GLEE! Second best concert (N SYNC always first!)

Getting back into running

Reading for fun

Cuddle time with Kevin

Getting enough SLEEP!