When Exercise and Health are Not Synonymous: Are boot camp classes bad for you?
Our “boot camp” class on Saturday! Yes, my interpretation of boot camp was to wear a frilly pink tennis skirt with a top that made Gym Buddy Jeni ask, “Are those feathers?!” Also, Lindsey (to my right) pointed out that she and I look more like jolly pirates than soldiers. I love us.
Boot camps, the real U.S. military kind, frighten me. My first boyfriend was a boy with more piercings than appendages, who liked to punch brick walls until his fists bled, and ran with the cross country team as his warm up for daily double-digit runs. I tell you this not to brag about the fact that I know what it’s like to kiss someone who could spit with his mouth closed but to show you that whatever he was, he was not a wuss. And yet when he enlisted in the army straight out of high school and went away for basic training, he came back to me a broken man. We broke up not long after and I credit the military for some of that. He was different. Harder in some ways, more vulnerable in others, but not at all the person I remembered.
I figured he’d been gone for a few months running around with a backpack, doing push-ups in the mud and getting yelled at. But he quickly disillusioned me and I’ve never forgotten what he said next: “The army doesn’t care about push-ups. The whole goal of boot camp is to break you down so they can build you back up into the soldier they want you to be.” What does that mean? He continued, “They want you to be in as much pain as possible. Physically they make you run until you puke. But even worse is the mental stuff. They make you watch videos of real people getting blown up so that you won’t lose it if you see it happen in real life.” And with that he refused to tell me anything else.
I was reminded of this when I came across this post “The Problem With Boot Camp Training” by Michael Allen Smith. Smith, like my ex, is an alum of the U.S. military and because of his experience with doing the real deal he makes some very good points about why boot camp fitness classes – the fastest growing type of fitness class in 2011 – are a bad idea. He writes, “Basic Training was never about turning lumpy out of shape middle aged people into warriors. [...] the function of Basic Training is not about designing optimal athletes or getting lean. It is about building soldiers willing to kill or be killed in defense of their country.”
This functional misunderstanding of the purpose of boot camp is the reason why boot camp training is a problem, Smith contends. He points out that thanks to the military’s rigorous pre-screening standards “soldiers are ALREADY LEAN AND HEALTHY before they ever started Basic Training. And it wasn’t Basic Training that made them lean and athletic. For most soldiers it was youth. (emphasis his).” He adds that people who fail basic training are simply removed from the program. Personal trainers who teach boot camp style classes are not getting a select group of the athletic young and neither can they fail people (unless they want to lose money). “Training an overweight woman in her 30s that just had a baby as if she were an 18 year old infantryman doesn’t make sense to me,” he concludes.
Then Smith adds one last thing that surprised me. “Something I’ve noticed about the type of person attracted to Boot Camp style training is they often have some self loathing issues. They hate their body. They feel their past failures with other programs were their fault. And as a way to undo their past sins, they will pay some personal trainer to put their body through grueling military style workouts as a form of punishment.” As a girl who just did a boot camp style workout on Saturday and loved it (thanks Turbo Jennie!) and who, admittedly, has struggled for most of my life with “self-loathing issues” I had to sit with this one for a while.
He may have a point. But I also think he’s missing some pieces. A big one, for example, is the fact that many (most?) boot camp classes really have nothing to do with military style training anymore. The trend may have started with drill sergeants and push-ups but these days “boot camp” is simply an umbrella term for anything, well, hardcore. At my Y alone, we have high-intensity interval style boot camp (what I did on Saturday), strongman boot camp that involves tire flipping and heavy ropes, circuit training boot camp that incorporates weights and cardio and the regular boot camp class that encompasses everything from sprints to basketball drills to using kettlebells in the pool (yes, seriously, you can use kettlebells in the pool!). On TV I’ve seen wedding boot camps, bikini boot camps and boot camps for kids.
But in the end, I agree with his point that we don’t need to kill ourselves with crazy intense workouts to be healthy. In fact the research has repeatedly shown that moderate consistent exercise increases health in every measure but too much or too intense exercise, as described in this recent study of marathoners, weakens us and makes us more likely to get sick. And of course I have learned this myself with my struggles with overexercising. A recent, powerful, comment from Tanya last week on one of my old over-exercising posts highlights the unique impact this has on women in particular:
“After two years of fighting my body to perform, I started noticing problems. Unusual tiredness, head aches, brain fog, confusion and memory loss. I couldn’t put on weight and I also couldn’t lose it either; severe acne that would leave scars and the most frightening for me was when my periods completely stopped.
I went to the Dr. and asked for tests to be done. I had fought so hard and for so long that FSH (hormone responsible for egg release from the ovaries) had failed. My estrogen and testosterone levels had bottomed out, and I also had high prolactin levels due to an underactive thyroid. Like you, I had never had an underactive thyroid until exercising. [Charlotte's note: One of the worst effects of my compulsive over exercising was discovering after gaining 10 pounds in one month that I had suppressed my own thyroid.] So for me to see the test results, I was flabbergasted. To top it off we also found tumours sitting on the pituitary gland, which had been aggravated further by the exercise regime I had given myself.
Since then, I am still finding more problems. Early onset bone loss and to this day my period has not returned. It has been two months since I have been to the Gym (which is VERY unusual for me) and I feel very uncomfortable. One month ago I started to notice the scales elevating in weight – But I know within myself now that my body would not be able to cope with the added stress now or in the near future.
I’m now getting ready to receive treatment to get the HPA axis of hormones back into order. BUT I can’t do that without rest, proper nutrition and very “light” physical exertion (casual walking). I’ve been told anymore than that could cause a spiral back to where I started again.
There is a difference… Do you exercise to live, or do you live to exercise? Without our health, exercise means nothing.”
Am I saying that all exercise is bad? Of course not. Exercise is fantastic for you and I love it. And I still love boot camp classes. All I’m saying is that it doesn’t have to be hardcore or make you sore to be a workout. You don’t have to push 100% all of the time. This is something I’m still learning myself. As I was writing this post, I got a text from my friend Tyler (of garage gym fame) that I think sums all of this up perfectly. He is recovering from a bout with mononucleosis and was able to do a whole workout today for the first time in months. A hardcore fitness fanatic like me, he has had to reevaluate. He writes, “My mindset has changed. I believed I was entitled to health because I tried to live healthy. And now I’m beginning to understand that these judgments of myself and expectations of how I want it to be are what lead to my misery, not the malady itself. Today all I am is grateful.”
What do you think of boot camp style classes – do you think Smith is right about the self-loathing thing? Anyone else have the mentality that if you’re not sweat soaked and completely spent then it wasn’t a “workout”? Anyone have a first boyfriend story to share??
Soft Porn Fitness: Has using sex to sell exercise gone too far?
Warning: pics in this post probably NSFW and definitely NSFK (not safe to look at with kids around). And that is a warning I hardly ever have to use on this site.
Confession: I love Bodyrock.tv. When I first came across them a few years ago (see below), I had mixed feelings about the sexified-to-the point-of-exploitation videos and pictures used to demonstrate the workouts. But then I got hooked on their unique and hardcore workouts – bonus: they use minimal equipment and can all be done at home – and the Gym Buddies and I have done a “Zuzana workout” (named after the eponymous Polish girl who modeled all of them) at least a few times a month for the past two years. While her trademark heavy breathing and heaving bosoms became punchlines (there was one workout that she did in a sports bra with the straps purposely removed, something we all found hilarious because what exactly is the point of a “high support” bra with no straps??), I kinda came to feel like Zuzana was a friend in a way. And when she came out about her traumatic erotic modeling past as a vulnerable teen in Eastern Europe, I loved her the more for it. And only suffered slight cognitive dissonance wondering why she still chose to use such provocative poses.
Fast forward to a month or so ago and suddenly everything changed. Zuzana, the star, left the site without much of an explanation and Freddy, previously mostly a shady background figure as her boyfriend and videographer, took center stage. In addition to Freddy they now have a rotating cast of young women who are similarly ripped and even more willing – if that’s possible – to pose with their butts up and their legs spread. And while the workouts have always had unique names – “cherry cherry boom boom” was my personal fave – they have now taken on a certain theme with titles like “I like how it feels” “Turn me on” “Wish you would” and “Don’t stop till I’m hot.” Written out like that, it’s practically a script. While the workouts are still tight, I find myself going to the site less and less. It may just be in my head, but the sex innuendo is even raunchier and the girls seem harder and I don’t just mean in their abs. Maybe it’s not worse. Maybe I just miss Zuzana. Change is hard.
Bodyrock, while one of the more flagrant, is certainly not the first fitness company to use a hot body to sell their product. ”If you’ve got it, flaunt it!” so the saying goes and fitness people certainly subscribe to this mantra. Seen a health or fitness mag lately? Unless it is Experience Life, I’d bet you a trailer of tuna steaks with whole wheat couscous and arugula that the cover model is in some state of undress. The bikini-clad-standing-thigh-deep-in-generic-water pose is so popular that I don’t think Shape has done a cover in the last 5 years without it.
Fitness TV shows, DVDs and podcasts are flush with female trainers sporting tiny booty shorts and sports bras. Heck, even CrossFit’s been porni-fied. And if you’ve ever tried CrossFit you will understand how very weird that is.
But is there a difference between showing flat abs in a bikini and, well, this?
Reader Katie sent me the following e-mail a few years ago, referring to Zuzana, but I think the points she makes still apply:
This website has really started to transform the way I approach workouts. They are short, intense workouts–from as little as 9 minutes to 45 minutes-tops. It’s all bodyweight based and just requires a floor mat and the ability to do pull-ups someplace. The woman on the site is very fit and is not shy about sharing that these workouts are ALL she does and that a lot of her battle is also in the kitchen.It all sounds great. Until you look at the site. I’m embarrassed to look at the site around other people because of the way her videos are shot, and the photos taken to show the individual movements. I feel like I’m looking at a soft-porn fitness site! When I’ve showed people where I’ve been getting several of my workouts from, they react with this same mixture of raised eyebrows, but then respect for her solid routines (and body). On the one hand, she sends such a positive message about being physically fit, nourishing your body with healthy food, and to a degree to not be ashamed to show off your hard work. On the other hand, she totally exploits her body and this razzes my feminist sensibilities. Therefore, the message gets a little muddled between the obvious display of silicone and play toward sex appeal and lack of modesty. This site combines so many of my vices—fitness, sex appeal, my love/hate relationship with this site’s goals, and finding the real reason I work out–how much is for my own fitness and how much for outward appearance?
And here’s a shot of one of the new models demonstrating a workout… or something.
:
Celebrities on magazine covers and mad-hot women on the Internet are one thing but what about real life? I remember the last time a girl showed up at my gym with night-club makeup, teased hair and sporting cleavage on both ends. People, both men and women, made negative comments about her look and the attitude they assumed she had. Jealousy rearing its ugly head? Or indignation about the breach of the implied moral code? Both? (Or just the fact that I live in suburban Minnesota and not Miami Beach?) When I wrote about this three years ago, I was inundated with comments from people who are not regulars here telling me that I’m uptight, prudish, just jealous and the like. And maybe I am. I’ll own it. But. There is a part of me that genuinely thinks this is not right and porn-ifying fitness hurts women.
On one hand, sex sells. Duh. Who wouldn’t want to look like Zuzana? I do! And – I can’t emphasize this enough – the workouts are fantastic! But on the other hand, is it necessary to go all Jenna Jameson to pimp your fitness routine? Fitness is often a weird place where, like acting and modeling, your body is your product.
What do you think – is soft porn fitness a problem for you? Is there a line between showing off what you worked so hard to create and selling yourself out? Is there a point where overt sexiness in fitness ads actually turns you off the product? Any other Bodyrockers out there totally thrown by the recent changes?
Top 10 Exercise and Weight-Loss Trends of 2011
Adult footie pajamas are one trend I have never been able to understand. You have to practically strip naked to pee! Just…why??
2011 is almost over and you know what that means! No, not New Year’s parties with all their “auld lang syne” nonsense or fireworks or even resolutions: It’s time for the Top Ten Whatever Lists of 2011! And of course I got in on the action with my piece this week for Shape on the Top 10 Exercise and Weight-Loss Trends of 2011. This assignment gave me a weird mental hiccup because a) I am not an expert in anything much less weight loss so how am I qualified to say what “top ten” means? and b) I have a weird brain so what sticks in my brain may not be what stood out to you. I was having a mental block writing it until I realized that basically I have blanket permission to be an unqualified nutjob. I tried not to abuse that privilege. I ended up with a tour through the warren of What Charlotte Thinks About A Lot and now I’m really curious as to what would make your top trends in health and fitness this year. Check out my Top 10 list and then tell me: What were the big stories that stuck out to you this year? Any of you own adult footie pajamas? Why??
Other stuff I wrote this week:
Top 10 Best Workout Videos on YouTube. Stuck at home? Only have a few minutes? Just really like YouTube? It turns out you can get a really fantastic workout on YouTube – for free! Everything from Pilates to full-length step classes to kettlebells is right there at your finger tips!
Tony Horton’s New P90X Phone App. I always wanted to bring Tony to the gym with me and now I can! Sorta!
Evil or Evil Genius: McDonald’s fights Happy Meal toy ban – by charging 10 cents
10 Hilarious Childhood Stages I Really Will Miss. Nothing irritates me more than when my kid is in the middle of doing something really awful – say, drawing on the grocery store floor with lipstick he stole from the cosmetics aisle – and someone says, “You’ll miss this stage when they’re grown!” No, I can promise you I won’t. But there are some sweet stages that I will and sometimes it is good to think about those too.
How to Deal With Tantrums: New research has answers. Me vs. Dr. Phil – I WIN! Booyah!
Does Your Body Have a Set Point For Exercise? [Duelling Research]
Just when you thought it was safe to retrieve the forks and knives you hid during the “Are white potatoes a nutritious natural food or glycemic index hell tuber?” debate, scientists have given us another research study that brings up more questions than it answers. And this time it’s about your “activitystat”, questioning whether or not humans have an internal set point for activity like it’s commonly thought we do for weight.
Dr. Terence J. Wilkin, a professor of endocrinology at the Peninsula Medical School in Plymouth, England, designed a study to test this out by going to the source of all (hyper)activity in the universe: children. After outfitting the 70 kidlets with accelerometers to measure their activity over the course of four weeks he set them free to run amok as they wished (no word on if ear-tagging was used). The kids were broken down into three groups based on which school they go to – in a sad commentary on the perils of poverty, the private-schoolers had 9.2 hours of P.E. per week, the village-schoolers had 2.2 and the urban-schoolers only got 1.6. The idea was to see how activity levels during the school day affected activity levels outside of school.
The results may surprise you: “When [Dr. Wilkin] collated the data, the weekly activity levels of the students from all three schools were remarkably similar. Students who exercised more at school were less active afterward. In a study published this month in The International Journal of Obesity, Dr. Wilkin and his co-authors conclude that, at least in these 8- to 10-year-olds, ‘activity at one time is met with less activity at another.’” These findings aligned with a similar study performed on adult women in which half of the subjects spontaneously reduced their incidental activity in response to an increase in their workouts. This, of course, has all kinds of ramifications for fitness guidelines.
At first glance these results made intuitive sense to me. Anyone who’s run 20 miles and then come home and begged off going dancing with the girls later that night so they can crash at 8 p.m. in a puddle of their own drool will know what I’m talking about. But the more I thought about this the more it bothered me because while this may be the case for me in isolated incidents when I do something particularly strenuous, it isn’t true for me overall. And because we all know that me and my anecdotal evidence are the most important factor in all scientific research, I have to question Dr. Wilkin and his band of not-so-feisty fifth-graders.
This may shock you: there was a time in my life where I not only did not exercise but I actively avoided it. Really I’m pretty new to this whole fitness scene as I only jumped in – with both feet until I was in over my head and drowning because that’s how I like to do everything – 7 years ago after the birth of my second son. (You can read my how I found fitness story here if you’re curious.) To make a very long story short, I went from being winded carrying the laundry up the stairs to, well, doing what I do now. And over that 7-year span, while I don’t have the accelerometer data to prove it, I greatly increased my activity levels overall. First was because I had to: kids are relentless, if they think you are even considering resting they will immediately get diarrhea or shove a sock down the toilet. Second, though, was because I had so much more energy that I chose to do more.
There is research to support this side as well. Two different twin studies concluded, “While the children’s fidgetiness and enjoyment of activity were dependent on heredity, their actual levels of movement were almost wholly determined by their environment, and in particular by the actions and attitudes of their teachers and parents.” In addition there is the opposite question of what happens to people if you force them to be more sedentary than usual and the research has shown that they usually do not resume their former levels of activity.
My theory, based on minutes of extensive Internet reading and pondering in the bathroom, is that they’re both right. I think that perhaps our bodies do have a set level of activity that makes us feel good and that we gravitate to. But I think that our environment at large can reset our “activitystat” to lower or higher based on what we do. Or maybe not.
What’s your experience – do you have a general level of activity that you gravitate towards? Or do you think that our activity levels are primarily a function of our environment? And just out of curiousity: white potatoes – eat ‘em or avoid ‘em?? (Please don’t throw a fork at me.)
The Sugar Shakes: Blood Sugar, Exercise and What Not To Do (Because you know I did)
Friday morning found Gym Buddy Jeni and I shaky, light-headed, nauseated, cold, and mentally foggy. No it wasn’t because we’d just heard that Demi and Ashton might be breaking up. (If they can’t last then what chance do the rest of us have?? Hollywood, hot bods, oodles of money, custom-made kite boards – that’s a recipe for marriage perfection if I ever heard one.) Jeni and I had just finished an hour-long TurboKick class and we had the sugar shakes. Which makes it sound like we’re sugar junkies jonesing for our next hit of the white granulated stuff (confession: I kind of am) but in reality thanks to Jeni skipping breakfast and me eating breakfast but leaving my post-workout shake in the car, our blood sugar was all out of whack.
This was not a new feeling for me as I used to get low blood sugar – or hypoglycemia if you want to get all technical about it – all the time. If you grew up in the 9o’s then surely you’ve heard of hypoglycemia as it’s the condition that killed Shelby (Julia Roberts) in Steel Magnolias and made me do my first-ever ugly cry in public. (Was that not the saddest scene ever done in a movie? I get choked up just remembering it! She was about to get married! Or maybe she’d just been married! She might have had a kid! Or not! Ok, I’m sketchy on the details – forgive me, I was sobbing my guts out. Solidarity, Liz!) When you’re diabetic, having your blood sugar get too low can be fatal. Thankfully for the rest of us who experience a little hypoglcemia thanks to exercise or some other outside factor – called reactive hypoglycemia – it’s not usually deadly, just uncomfortable. And with a little planning the sugar shakes are totally manageable.
I’m not a great planner. Let me back up.
I’ve always been a fainter. Thanks to a propensity for abnormally low blood pressure – it’s normal for me to be 80/55 and even lower when I’m pregnant – if I stand up too quickly, kneel down too long or lock my knees while singing just like my choir teacher always told us not to, I’ll hit the ground. The faint is over as soon as I’m down usually. So it’s really more like swooning?
My most spectacular faint was in college right after a swing dance competition thing (it was our first and if I remember correctly we really kinda sucked) and thanks to nerves – and let’s be honest, my raging eating disorder at the time – I hadn’t eaten anything all day and then we’d danced for 6 hours straight. I don’t remember all the details except that we were walking back to our car and I got dizzy and nauseous and sat down on the curb. I think they left me? And came back for me? Anyhow, I’d fainted clean out on the concrete. Next thing I knew I was at a gas station, my friend friend Janette was pouring orange juice down my throat and my other friend had confiscated my keys and had to drive us all home in my car.
Janette, who was majoring in nutrition, asked me if I was hypoglycemic. I had no idea. So I went to the doctor and after a blood test the verdict was that yes, I am more predisposed to it than most people (yay me!) as my normal blood sugar is 100 mg/dl which apparently is right on the border of low. Did I bother to learn about my new condition? Take steps to prevent it? Dump the stupid boyfriend who left me on the curb for my girlfriends and/or a scary murderer to retrieve? No, no, and I wish. For years afterward, I just kind of muddled through my “episodes” mistakenly carrying candy to fix them. That is, until I got into this whole health and fitness jag I’ve been on for the past 7 years. It turns out lots of people, especially us fit folk, are prone to episodes of low blood sugar and it’s fairly easy to prevent and remedy.
What Is Exercise-Induced Low Blood Sugar?
The primary source of fuel for our muscles is glycogen and when we exercise very hard or very long (or both), both our muscles and our liver – the storage of the all-important glycogen – get depleted. When you’re a little depleted you experience the symptoms I described above: shakiness, dizziness, disorientation, nausea, chills, fatigue etc. When you’re super depleted during an endurance exercise that’s when you “hit the wall” or “bonk” which is an utterly craptastic feeling as anyone who’s been there can tell you. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt worse in my life, frankly. In addition to the above, you may lose the ability to regulate your body temperature, vomit, faint, lose control of your bowels (oh yes), be unable to stand unsupported and have an irregular heart beat among other scary things.
This effect can be exacerbated by how well (or not) you fuel your workouts.
How to Prevent Low Blood Sugar*
As I understand it, our bodies store glycogen as fuel in our muscles and liver. When we need it, it is broken down into glucose (a sugar) and then metabolized into immediate energy via glycolisis. (I could be totally wrong – if I am, feel free to educate me in the comments and I’ll bump your explanation up here!) However, not all glycogen can be immediately accessed and so depending on how much food we’ve eaten, when we last ate and what we ate, we could have quite variable stores. What you want to avoid is the blood sugar roller coaster where you skyrocket your blood sugar up only to have it come crashing down shortly later, starting a vicious cycle.
To prevent this, eat small balanced meals every few hours. Eat something about an hour before you workout and bring something to eat right after your workout. This last piece has been critical for me. If it’s an easy day, I don’t really worry about it but I’m lifting heavy or doing something high intensity, downing the protein/carb smoothie right after I finish is the difference between feeling like crap the rest of the day and bouncing right back. I can’t even tell you how much this has helped me.
If you know you will be exercising longer than an hour, it’s smart to bring something to refuel during. Sport gus (goos), gels, beans, blox and drinks are popular options. (If you’re Gym Buddy Allison you stick a chocolate protein bar down your cleavage only to discover that when you most need it, it has melted into a pile of goo inside your top.)
The practice of “carb loading” before a race – eating a large amount of simple carbohydrates in the few days before the race in order to stockpile glycogen in the muscles – is controversial. I know a lot of runners that swear by the pre-marathon spaghetti feed but the research on its effectiveness is mixed, possibly because many athletes do not do it properly.
How to Treat Low Blood Sugar*
But what if you’re already in swoon city? Do not, I repeat, do not sit down on a concrete curb and wait for your friends to notice you’re missing. Actually, if you just have the sugar shakes taking a rest and eating something right away usually takes care of it in just a few minutes. You do not want to mainline the jelly beans though as straight sugar will fix your low blood sugar but the high is very temporary and may cause an even larger dip – the sugar “crash” – when you come back down. Something with some easily absorbed protein and carbohydrate works well. Chocolate milk has been shown to be particularly effective (although I gotta say that for me, after a long, hard workout milk does not sound at all good). Think of the kinds of things you see in the finishing race chutes: bananas, salted nut rolls, Muscle Milk, bagels etc. I also find it helps me to keep a sweatshirt handy, even on a warm day, as being cold and sweaty seems to make it harder for me to recover.
If however, you are past shaky and all the way to sickville you need to get attention immediately. This is a hard call because from my personal experience, the mental disorientation makes it really hard to make a rational assessment of your situation. If you run with a friend, make a pact to look out for the other one. If you are in a race, there should be medic tents every so often and if you’re in doubt, go ahead and stop. But make a plan in advance of someway you can find help if you need it. Usually the support people will have you lie down, wrap you in blankets, and get you to eat or drink something. If you’re really bad off you may need to go to the hospital. That’s never happened to me (knock on wood) but I have heard of it happening.
Conclusions
From my experience, the best option is to plan ahead. Carry a few gels on you. Bring a protein shake to the gym. Be aware of what your limits are and what your body feels like when you hit them. A little advance planning is totally worth it.
Do any of you get the sugar shakes? Have you ever “bonked”? What’s your method for dealing with low blood sugar? And did anyone else ugly cry through Steel Magnolias?!
*All of this is based off of my own reading and personal experiences. I am in NO way a doctor, nutritionist, chemist or even all that smart-ist so if you think you are prone to hypoglycemia, please go see a medical professional. This is not meant to be medical advice.
Exercise as a Cure For Depression? [Research Says Yes. No. Maybe. Sometimes.]
Flying or Falling? Can you have one without the other?
The thing about depression is that you don’t know how bad you feel until you don’t feel bad anymore. It’s like wearing a veil that subtly shades everything in your life until you can’t remember a time when rainbows weren’t made in varying grays and when the sky didn’t feel like a weight on your shoulders. But then perchance you get better and glimpse for a moment what everyone else sees: that the sky has been inspiring men to fly since long before Icarus and Daedalus took their ill-fated flight. And while one fell broken to earth and the other soared onward with a broken heart, both knew for a moment what it felt like to be held. Weightless. With the sun in their faces.
Once you know what not-depressed feels like – I won’t call it happiness since while that too is very real, it is fleeting and I’ve found it is better to be surprised by joy rather than expectant of continuous happiness – you want the key to get out of your cell. I know this feeling well. With a personal history of several depressive episodes and with a family tree shaped like a weeping willow, I can recite drug names and treatment methodologies like an encyclopedia. But my experience goes far beyond the academic past tense. I am currently taking an anti-depressant and have been for a couple of years now. I may be on one for the rest of my life. I hope not which is why I’m forever searching for alternatives.
There are other keys. Medicine, yes, and also therapy, electro-shock treatments, journaling, supplements, light – the list is long but there is one whose effectiveness is consistently backed by research. Exercise, time and again, has been shown to alleviate mild depression even better than anti-depressants and to ameliorate more severe depressive episodes, especially when used in conjunction with other therapies. It’s such a cure-all that it is often the first thing good doctors prescribe. But it isn’t quite so simple and a new study shines light on the nuanced way that exercise and depression interact.
Dr. Madhukar H. Trivedi, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, studied 126 patients who had been on SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors – a type of anti-depressant) for at least two months and were still depressed. He divided the groups in half with one group doing light exercise several days a week and the other group doing more intense exercise for the same amount of time.
First, the good news: At the end of 4 months “29.5 percent [of study participants] had achieved remission, ‘which is a very robust result,’ Dr. Trivedi said, equal to or better than the remission rates achieved using drugs as a back-up treatment.”
Now for the confusing news: Patients who did the more intense exercise were more likely to achieve a remission of their depression. Unless they were women with a strong genetic history depression (aHEM). This group was the least likely to feel better but when they did, it was with the slower, easier exercise. Also, people in the intense exercise group were more likely to quit exercising than people in the more relaxed group.
The bad news, part 1: This left fully 70% of patients still depressed despite exercising and taking meds.
And the bad news, part 2: There was no control group in the study so who’s to say if it was the exercise or just good ol’ time that made the difference? Or the placebo effect?
For myself, exercise has been crucial to managing my depression and anxiety (I’m like one of those barrels full of plastic monkeys when it comes to mental illness, you pull one out and a whole slew come out entangled with it). Exercise, especially intense exercise, always, always makes me feel better. Lots better! Unfortunately it makes me feel so much better that it became my one and only coping tool which is a good part of how I ended up an exercise addict.
I don’t know what the solution is. Balance is hard for me to find and even harder for me to stick with. And yet I keep trying to glue more feathers to my wax wings in hopes of flying again. Even if it means I fall, broken. Everyone always feels so bad for the overzealous Icarus who was felled by his own ecstasy but they forget that before that he was flying. And even when he plunged headlong into the ocean I like to think he knew again – just for a moment – what it felt like to be held. Weightless. With the sun in his face.
Have you ever experienced depression? What has worked for you (or not worked)? Anyone else kinda want to drop-kick a researcher who doesn’t have a control group?
We Have Elk in Our Front Yard! [Plus: Heidi Montag's Exercise Addiction]
No children eaten by bears. No bears terrorized by children. I only burned half of dinner. I got one leg shaved before the KOA Kampground Kabin ran out of Khot Kwater. (Do you think the Kardashians were inspired by KOA?) All in all I’d call this a camping success! Seriously though – I’m having a blast with my family. Best thing? Tomorrow is my first birthday in 15 years with all my immediate family members. Best 33rd Birthday Present EVER. My sister is throwing me a Great Fitness Experiment Birthday Party! Pics will definitely be coming.
In the meantime, if you are missing me check out my posts:
Heidi Montag’s Dangerous Exercise Addiction for iVillage
10 Things to Never Say to a Woman in Labor for Redbook
Also? Elk are REALLY REALLY big. Even their poop is huge.
Relay For Life: My First Fundraising Race [Why I exercise]
“If you are a cancer survivor, light your glo-stick.” A few lights sparked around us. “If you have a parent that has had cancer, light your glo-stick.” More lights crackled on around us as the stillness of an impending Midwestern thunder storm pressed down. “If you have a child with cancer, light your glo-stick.” My heart caught in my chest and I said a silent prayer, thankful that my glo-stick remained unlit. And on it went until the bleachers around us were lit up with red, yellow and green glo-sticks like so many fireflies in the deepening dark. As we stood to begin the luminary lap, Gym Buddy Megan leaned over and whispered, “They never said ‘If you have a brother with cancer…’ ” It was then I noticed the tears that glittered on her cheek.
If our parents are our past and our children are our future, then our siblings are our present. They are the only ones who’ve been with us since the day we’re born and experienced our lives in real time with us. Megan’s brother Kevin – 32-year-old husband and father of two – should not have cancer, but he does. As we walked quietly past all the lit bags, each inscribed with a loved one’s name, the announcer intoned, “This is why we walk, for the hope that someday no one will ever have to hear the words ‘You have cancer.’” Hope is powerful medicine.
Friday night found Gym Buddies Megan, Allison, Sara, Rosana and I participating in the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life. As you may remember from a month ago, we were participating in honor of Megan’s brother Kevin who is currently battling rectal cancer and Gym Buddy Jess who is 6 months cancer-free after being treated last year for Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
When we got there, we – and by “we” I mean “them” – set up some tents (the buffet tent being the most critical, obviously!) and donned our tutus becoming the fabulously alliterative Team Tutu Turbokickers.
We started out the evening fresh-faced and fancy-free, giggling at inappropriate things (what happens at Relay stays at Relay!) and getting our butts smacked by Megan every time she lapped us on the track.
The first few laps were so easy, it was like flying – literally, if you’re Allison!
We broke up the monotony by showing off our sweet dance moves. Here Allison just finished doing her “ghetto walk” and Megan is demonstrating her cowboy jig. The best part was they were both talking in the worst Irish accents ever.
Then we met up with Jess and her family by the Survivor’s Tent where we took a dance break to first do The Potty Dance with 3-year-old Jack and then corrupt the preschooler by teaching him the “Roll, pump and slap” move from Turbokick. (If you are curious, you can check out the video I took!)
Jess’ two boys kinda broke my heart with their sweetly scribbled “Mom” luminary.
This may be my favorite picture of Megan ever!
Then the DJ played “Y.M.C.A” and of course we had to do the dance. Megan’s got the M, Al’s got the Y and Jess has… dyslexia? What is that letter, girl??
Megan made 3 luminaries for family members – Kevin’s was particularly funny since he has rectal cancer. (Get it??)
As the night went on, Allison and I decided to stick to just walking the track (stopping every couple of laps for more of Allison’s fabulous veggies and dip) but Megan pressed on. Her goal was to do at least 10 miles in honor of her brother but as lightning lit up the horizon and the humidity rising faster than my hair can curl, she wasn’t sure if she would make it.
The rain finally hit around 11 p.m. This is when Al and I – wusses that we are – decided to check out and go home. Megan stayed to run in the rain with Sara and Rosana. The beads on their necklaces show how many miles they’ve done. By this point, Megan was at 12, Allison was at 7 and I was at 6. They ended up ending the Relay early because of the electrical storm at 2 a.m.
The next morning it’s tradition to hit Turbo Jennie’s TurboKick class wearing our Relay For Life t-shirts. (Turbo Jennie: “Charlotte, when did you find time to doctor up your shirt between last night and this morning? Were you running the track with scissors??” Of course not! I’m a mother, I would never run with scissors! I was walking the track with scissors. Kidding – I cut it up at home. Also, note that we are all wearing fresh tutus. I love us.) This pic was snapped after we did like 5 straight finales so forgive the sweaty Turbo hair!
This is what exercise is really about. It’s about bringing people together. It’s about helping people live so they can be with those they love. Whether you’re walking to raise money for cancer research like we did or hitting the weights to keep your heart strong so you can watch your grand kids graduate from college, this is why we workout. (And also for the divine trail mix Megan made. Really you should have tried it – best combo of salty and sweet ever.)
Why do you exercise? Have you ever participated in a fundraiser like this? This was my first time actually being on the team and I gotta say it was a riot! HUGE HUGE thank you to all of you who donated to the ACS on behalf of our team. Each of you – whether you supported us monetarily or just with prayers or good vibes – are angels and we felt you with us that night.
What Do You Eat to Fuel Your Workout? [Plus more exercise differences between men & women]
Man, I miss Calvin!
Burping noxious flavors is my primary concern when deciding what to eat pre-workout. I know some athletes carb-load while others swear by fasted-state cardio and still others strive for a balanced meal 1-3 hours before getting their sweat on. And let’s not forget the smoothie/shake contingent! ( The difference between a workout smoothie and a shake? Nothing except that women drink the former and men drink the latter.) But who cares about blood glucose levels if I’m regurgitating sausage and peppers between sets? Add in my fish-oil supplement and I might retch on the track. Therefore my pre-workout meals are generally pretty bland. Oh and I learned to avoid soy products the hard way when my gaseous emissions nearly asphyxiated an entire TurboKick class. (Yes, 3 years later and I’m still apologizing for that one.)
The issue of what to eat to best fuel your workout came up as I was reading an interview with Kiefer John that Meanliving tweeted called “Females, Fat Loss and Performance“. The gist of the article is that the differences between the male and female body require different programs. He says, “Most of the recommendations women read in mainstream media are actually recommendations for male athletes that are blindly carried over and applied to women. That’s a huge problem.” His main two points of difference are that women shouldn’t eat carbs because we burn proportionately more fat than men and that we should do less cardio if we want to be lean. His science was a little sketchy but I know a lot of people that wouldn’t argue with his conclusions.
In regards to the first point he writes, “ The hormonal situations occurring when you first wake up creates an optimal environment for fat burning, the moment that you eat carbs this environment is ruined. That’s why I always tell everyone, ‘as soon as you get up, bacon and eggs, bacon and eggs’.
This idea that the body awakes from its overnight fast in a state particularly attuned to burn fat has been around for a long time. But is it true? According to one of my all-time fave fitness writers Tom Venuto (and the first one I ever fell in exercise-love with – his book Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle was my very first Great Fitness Experiment ever!), the research supports this theory.
“1. When you wake up in the morning after an overnight 8-12 hour fast, your body’s stores of glycogen are somewhat depleted. Doing cardio in this state causes your body to mobilize more fat because of the unavailability of glycogen.
2. Eating causes a release of insulin. Insulin interferes with the mobilization of body fat. Less insulin is present in the morning; therefore, more body fat is burned when cardio is done in the morning.
3. There is less carbohydrate (glucose) “floating around” in the bloodstream when you wake up after an overnight fast. With less glucose available, you will burn more fat.
4. If you eat immediately before a workout, you have to burn off what you just ate first before tapping into stored body fat (and insulin is elevated after a meal.)
The real question however is if this makes any difference to fat loss or performance. Venuto quotes Lyle McDonald, an expert on bodybuilding nutrition and author of The Ketogenic Diet.
“All that research says is that you burn a greater proportion of fat this way, which I agree with 100%,” says Lyle. “The majority of research shows that as far as real world fat loss goes, it doesn’t really matter what you burn. Rather, 24-hour calorie balance is what matters. Because if you burn glucose during exercise, you tend to burn more fat the rest of the day. If you burn fat during exercise, you burn more glucose during the day. The end result is identical.”
The second key difference between men and women athletes says Kiefer is,
“For women in particular, one 45 minute bout of cardiovascular exercise at a heart rate above 65% will shut down the major metabolic regulator, T3 [Thyroid hormone] for about a week. So one day of over doing it, and you’ve shut down your metabolism for a week. This is unique to females. That’s a huge misconception, ‘if I need to lose weight, I need to run more, or be on the bike more, or get more cardio’; for women, it’s the opposite. This will make it much, much, harder.”
From my personal experience I would say his second point is right on the money – hello Rachel Cosgrove Experiment and the best results the Gym Buddies and I ever got! – but I’m still not sure about his first one.
In my years as a fitness nut – emphasis on the nut – I have tried everything when it comes to meal and workout timing. I did the only-fruit-for-brekkie thing courtesy of the Skinny Bitches (the book, I’m not calling anyone that) which ended with me leaving class light headed and nauseous to sit next to an old man who asked me if I was pregnant. For a couple of years fasted-state worked great for me but that was because I worked out at 5 a.m. (I miss you L!) and my stomach definitely did not want food that early. When I went through my carb-fearing phase, I loaded up on eggs and spinach which wasn’t bad but I felt like I was lacking some spring in my step. And then there was the 5 straight years of some kind of oatmeal concoction every morning – not bad with a chopped apple and walnuts, gag-worthy with a whole scoop of protein powder, most creatively done as an egg custard.
These days however it’s anything goes. That’s the beauty of Intuitive Eating – I eat what I feel like. Yesterday I had eggs scrambled with salmon and veggies (don’t knock it till you’ve tried it!). The day before it was an apple. This morning it was German pancakes, whipped cream, berries, a fried egg, two strips of (pastured, all beef, nitrate-free) bacon and half a pound of asparagus. What? I was hungry! Like many other things in my life, I find that my pre-workout nutrition is best when I just go with what I feel like that day. But maybe what makes me happy isn’t best for my body? Why does research always generate more questions than it answers??
What’s your pre-workout eating philosophy? What do you think about women needing less carbs and less cardio than men because of our physiology? Anyone else burp up nasty stuff during a workout??
What Do You Eat Pre-Workout? [Plus more exercise differences between men & women]
Man, I miss Calvin!
Burping noxious flavors is my primary concern when deciding what to eat pre-workout. I know some athletes carb-load while others swear by fasted-state cardio and still others strive for a balanced meal 1-3 hours before getting their sweat on. And let’s not forget the smoothie/shake contingent! ( The difference between a workout smoothie and a shake? Nothing except that women drink the former and men drink the latter.) But who cares about blood glucose levels if I’m regurgitating sausage and peppers between sets? Add in my fish-oil supplement and I might retch on the track. Therefore my pre-workout meals are generally pretty bland. Oh and I learned to avoid soy products the hard way when my gaseous emissions nearly asphyxiated an entire TurboKick class. (Yes, 3 years later and I’m still apologizing for that one.)
The issue of what to eat to best fuel your workout came up as I was reading an interview with Kiefer John that Meanliving tweeted called “Females, Fat Loss and Performance“. The gist of the article is that the differences between the male and female body require different programs. He says, “Most of the recommendations women read in mainstream media are actually recommendations for male athletes that are blindly carried over and applied to women. That’s a huge problem.” His main two points of difference are that women shouldn’t eat carbs because we burn proportionately more fat than men and that we should do less cardio if we want to be lean. His science was a little sketchy but I know a lot of people that wouldn’t argue with his conclusions.
In regards to the first point he writes, “ The hormonal situations occurring when you first wake up creates an optimal environment for fat burning, the moment that you eat carbs this environment is ruined. That’s why I always tell everyone, ‘as soon as you get up, bacon and eggs, bacon and eggs’.
This idea that the body awakes from its overnight fast in a state particularly attuned to burn fat has been around for a long time. But is it true? According to one of my all-time fave fitness writers Tom Venuto (and the first one I ever fell in exercise-love with – his book Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle was my very first Great Fitness Experiment ever!), the research supports this theory.
“1. When you wake up in the morning after an overnight 8-12 hour fast, your body’s stores of glycogen are somewhat depleted. Doing cardio in this state causes your body to mobilize more fat because of the unavailability of glycogen.
2. Eating causes a release of insulin. Insulin interferes with the mobilization of body fat. Less insulin is present in the morning; therefore, more body fat is burned when cardio is done in the morning.
3. There is less carbohydrate (glucose) “floating around” in the bloodstream when you wake up after an overnight fast. With less glucose available, you will burn more fat.
4. If you eat immediately before a workout, you have to burn off what you just ate first before tapping into stored body fat (and insulin is elevated after a meal.)
The real question however is if this makes any difference to fat loss or performance. Venuto quotes Lyle McDonald, an expert on bodybuilding nutrition and author of The Ketogenic Diet.
“All that research says is that you burn a greater proportion of fat this way, which I agree with 100%,” says Lyle. “The majority of research shows that as far as real world fat loss goes, it doesn’t really matter what you burn. Rather, 24-hour calorie balance is what matters. Because if you burn glucose during exercise, you tend to burn more fat the rest of the day. If you burn fat during exercise, you burn more glucose during the day. The end result is identical.”
The second key difference between men and women athletes says Kiefer is,
“For women in particular, one 45 minute bout of cardiovascular exercise at a heart rate above 65% will shut down the major metabolic regulator, T3 [Thyroid hormone] for about a week. So one day of over doing it, and you’ve shut down your metabolism for a week. This is unique to females. That’s a huge misconception, ‘if I need to lose weight, I need to run more, or be on the bike more, or get more cardio’; for women, it’s the opposite. This will make it much, much, harder.”
From my personal experience I would say his second point is right on the money – hello Rachel Cosgrove Experiment and the best results the Gym Buddies and I ever got! – but I’m still not sure about his first one.
In my years as a fitness nut – emphasis on the nut – I have tried everything when it comes to meal and workout timing. I did the only-fruit-for-brekkie thing courtesy of the Skinny Bitches (the book, I’m not calling anyone that) which ended with me leaving class light headed and nauseous to sit next to an old man who asked me if I was pregnant. For a couple of years fasted-state worked great for me but that was because I worked out at 5 a.m. (I miss you L!) and my stomach definitely did not want food that early. When I went through my carb-fearing phase, I loaded up on eggs and spinach which wasn’t bad but I felt like I was lacking some spring in my step. And then there was the 5 straight years of some kind of oatmeal concoction every morning – not bad with a chopped apple and walnuts, gag-worthy with a whole scoop of protein powder, most creatively done as an egg custard.
These days however it’s anything goes. That’s the beauty of Intuitive Eating – I eat what I feel like. Yesterday I had eggs scrambled with salmon and veggies (don’t knock it till you’ve tried it!). The day before it was an apple. This morning it was German pancakes, whipped cream, berries, a fried egg, two strips of (pastured, all beef, nitrate-free) bacon and half a pound of asparagus. What? I was hungry! Like many other things in my life, I find that my pre-workout nutrition is best when I just go with what I feel like that day. But maybe what makes me happy isn’t best for my body? I don’t know.
What’s your pre-workout eating philosophy? What do you think about women needing less carbs and less cardio than men because of our physiology? Anyone else burp up nasty stuff during a workout??