The Truth about Truths: Embracing and Navigating Contradiction in and Beyond Recovery
Something I learned in therapy was that two things can be true at the same time. It can be that the way someone else views something may completely contradict the way you see it, but ultimately both views are true because both of you are experiencing it. This two truths concept also applies to thoughts and beliefs we host within ourselves.
A lot of the therapy I underwent for my eating disorder recovery focused on identifying and embracing these kinds of insistent contradictions.
For example, one truth I held steadfastly was, “I don’t want an eating disorder.” And another equally real truth I had was “I am scared to give up my eating disorder.”
The key to being able to navigate both truths is to embrace them both— NOT set them up in conflict to one another. The first step is as simple and as subtle as word choice when speaking or even thinking about them.
We tend to use “but” when comparing two things that seem to contradict one another:
“I don’t want an eating disorder BUT I am scared to give it up.”
However, something changes when you replace that “but” for “and”:
“I don’t want an eating disorder, AND I am afraid to give it up.”
The latter validates both perceptions but does NOT so planitively put one above the other.
“But” infers that the fear is stronger than the will to live without an ED. “And” allows the possibility to be afraid, but do it anyways.
There is a story about a warrior and his meeting with fear, taught by Pema Chodron. The ultimate revelation the young warrior comes away with from this meeting is that bravery is NOT the absence of fear; It is feeling the fear, BELIEVING it, with every cell in your body, and facing it anyways.
It is not: “I want to, BUT I am afraid.” It is: “I want to, AND I am afraid.”
Unlike the former, which almost immediately dismisses any action, the latter births the opportunity for both truths to coexist, and for the fear to be conquered.
I am not currently in therapy, and I’m not really “recovering” anymore, but I am still living in this place of navigating two truths.
A big one right now that I hold is: “I am so grateful to have made it this far in my recovery, AND I am sometimes nostalgic for the identity my eating disorder gave me.”
Another is: “I am proud of my body, and I love being healthy AND I often think I would be happier if I lost weight.”
Sometimes these truths are even more specific to a moment. Take this past week for example, when I took a spontaneous trip to a family cottage for some r&r by the lake. I was having repeating thoughts of “I really want to get a good sweat from a workout AND I want to relax and do nothing.”
And on a similar train: “I feel guilty and not hungry for dinner from eating so many appetizers on the dock AND I am still looking forward to eating more at dinner.”
It’s hard, honestly, navigating these two often equally compelling voices. Ultimately, the healthier one always drowns out the one I know instinctively is rooted in my ED neural pathways. That’s what makes it uncomfortable. Continuing to eat, and rest, and attempt to feel happy and at ease in my skin, and to NOT fixate on what I eat or how much I weigh, while simultaneously living with this feeling that I “should” be doing a lot of the things that I used to do (a lot of things that a lot of people without EDs do: opting for “healthier” options, watching what they eat, having a strict workout regime, etc.)
Sometimes, it feels like I’m driving backwards on the highway, trying to live up to the healthier truth.
Even though I am pretty good at this point at doing the right things for my mental and physical health, there are still moments when it seems like the wrong thing.
Restricting and exercise were always a quick fix for any larger stressor in my life.
Fighting with my family? Don’t eat dinner.
Feeling sad or lonely that I didn’t have plans on a friday night? Go for a run.
Realizing how lonely I am, feeling disconnected from all my friends? Try even harder to change my body, thinking if I looked the way I thought I “should” look, I would be more likable, more loveable, and regain those kinds of connections I had thwarted.
None of these quick fixes ever really fixed anything, obviously. They only led me further into my eating disorder and farther from the kind of connection and happiness I was seeking.
So I do realistically and rationally understand that attempting to change my body, or start actively controlling my food or exercise is NOT the answer to any of my concerns today. But (or and, as I should say), I still have fleeting thoughts that these behaviours will.
I’m writing this blog post right now to remind myself of this ultimate truth: two things can be totally contradictory and still coexist equally as truths. Feelings are real, and valid, but they do NOT need to dictate our actions. We can feel the fear, believe it, and face it anyways.
Hopefully this reminder might render itself useful for you too.
What are some conflicting or contrasting beliefs that you hold? How might replacing that “but” with “and” alter your perception of how to navigate them? Often the right path is the hardest one to take.
Don’t sell yourself short by opting for the road that feels easiest in the moment, but ultimately never gets you to the place you wanted to get to in the first place.
Embrace the “and.” Do the hard thing. And in the moments where you fall victim to the contradiction, have the self-compassion and grace to pick yourself back up and carry on, because life is too short to live in debt to your own regrets anyways.
Love and light,
Jae
The Fear of Being “Ordinary” (and why being average is perfectly enough)
“Shoot for the moon. For even if you fail, you will still land among the stars.”
This was the poster that greeted me on my first day in my Grade 4 classroom. It was hung by my kind and enthusiastic teacher, who wanted nothing more than to inspire and motivate her students to live up to their potential; the message essentially being to do better, we must aim for nothing less than the best.
As innocent this message may seem, it stems from a “never enough” mentality that is destructively pervasive in our culture. A mentality that being ordinary is not enough, and that in order to be “good” we must be special.
We must do whatever it takes to be extraordinary.
Throughout our lives, many of us have fallen victim to this mentality of self-deciprecation. We learn to view '“average,” “normal,” and “ordinary” as lacking. We fear that falling into the category of “average” is settling for a lesser identity, or accepting a loss of power.
When we hear the word “ordinary,” it is loaded with negative connotations of monotony, or boredom, or the mundane. When at is essence, ordinary is a very neutral term— and who is to say, not a positive one?
For a long time, I considered being “ordinary” a failure to live up to my potential.
And its a shame (and quite f***ed up really) to walk around carrying this fear of ordinary. Ordinary is synonymous with average. And average quite literally means “the norm”-- the category most people and endeavours fall into (duh).
By rebuking and fighting anything that falls in this category of average- whether it be our average job, average body, average grade, or average skill or ability at a sport or art or hobby- you are ultimately leaving yourself with very little chance to be happy.
This pursuit of the extraordinary is NOT something for which we can really blame ourselves. It is something that is pervasive in our society, birthed in the same seeds that planted the American Dream, and the unquenchable thirst for “more” and “better” that consumes and drives our modern lives.
Its these seeds planted in you with the best intentions and love when you were little, with parents and loving adults promising you that “you can be whatever you want to be,” and that “no dream is too big.”
You take one dance class and they assure you that you were on your way to become a prima ballerina. You take a liking to your family dog and they start setting aside a fund for vet school. You sing and you dance and you are told you can grow up to be a famous performer, that all you have to do is “try,” and to “believe in yourself.”
Unfortunately, the biggest dreams often require much more than that.
I grew up with these messages. And I never questioned it, or even thought it strange. Still today, I will find myself making the same grandiose statements to the kids that I teach: “Oh wow, percy, look at that beautiful drawing! You are going to have a painting in a gallery one day!” and Aliza, you can be an olympic gymnast!”
Of course, encouraging kids to try hard and “dream big” is important to build their sense of worth and self-confidence. But what about when they are 18, and not admitted to art school? Or 25 and they only job they can get is some entry level accounting work, far from the “pursue your passion” speech they had been spoon-fed ever since they were being spoon-fed?
And who knows, maybe Aliza will be an olympic gymnast, and Percy a famous artist. But chances are, they will not. But that does NOT mean they will not find happy, meaningful, and rewarding lives.
The truth is, the majority of people in our society are working average jobs, making average wages, in so called “ordinary” fields or professions. I am sure Karen did NOT dream of growing up to be a retail manager for a tile company. And while these kinds of jobs are likely NOT anyone’s true passion or life calling, they are doing work integral to the functioning of our society.
And who is to say that people that are working these mediocre or average jobs, are living lives that are any less fulfilling or meaningful or joyful, than someone working in a so-called “noble” profession.
For myself, this fixation on the extraordinary kept me in a long season of tire spinning— wanting to do everything, but nothing seemed enough. I was rooted to the spot, unable to take a step in any direction afraid of stumbling into a career that was anything less than my “calling.”
I did not want to settle for anything less than the glamorous dreams I had birthed unto me as a kid. Respectively, I dreamed I would grow up to become a vet, a gymnast, an olympic snowboarder, a best-selling author, a broadway star, a professional horseback rider/trainer. and a plant-based chef/food blogger.
Notice what each of these dreams have in common: the element of fame, and of top-tierdom, of being the best.
It wasn’t even so much as choosing which of these paths to purse that caused me so much angst, but the very true possibility that whatever I did, that I would not be able to do well enough to achieve the level of fame or recognition that I so valued. I wanted my name to be known, whatever I did. I wanted to turn heads when I walked into a room. I wanted to be anything but ordinary. Because to be ordinary, to have an average, unknown existence, felt worse than failure.
This has been a big obstacle for me in recovery too. Contrary to widespread perceptions of eating disorders, I never saw myself as fat, or even overweight. I never considered myself to be ugly. Even when I was in the depths of ED, avoiding mirrors and hiding from my appearance, I still innately understood that on the spectrum of ugly to beautiful, or fat to thin, that in both categories I was at least “average.”
But that didn’t stop me from feeling loathing towards my body. I did not want to be average. I wanted to be thin, uniquely so. I wanted bones. And then I wanted to be the fittest. I wanted washboard abs and veiny arms, and rock hard limbs. I wanted to turn heads. And in that pursuit of extraordinary, I spent years iron-fisting my body to be my masterpiece.
If I were to get all psychological about it now, I could say that all the fear and uncertainty and pressure I was feeling about what I would do with my life, I channeled into my feelings about my body.
As cliche as it is true, the lack of control and powerless I felt over the greater meaning of my existence, was compensated by exerting control where I could— controlling my food, and my body. But this is tangential, so I will leave this for another post.
In essence, an “average body” was something I dreaded and feared. Even being told that I was approaching a “normal” weight, I felt like a failure.
I felt like I was sliding down the rungs of a ladder I had given years of my life and all of my strength to climb. I was letting myself go, and slipping back into the throes of mediocrity.
I felt silly, and narcissistic, admitting to this realization, but it was truly how it felt. Allowing myself to settle at an “average” weight really did feel like I was giving up.
This is not unique thinking. I am NOT the one lone human who feels dissatisfied with a perfectly good and “normal” body. Countless studies have reported a surprising percentage of the population, all genders and ages (although especially young women) suffer from negative body image, and desire to change or “fix” their appearance.
Once again, we can thank the glamorized body ideals that pervade our society. With every photoshopped, face-tuned, airbrushed image posted to a feed, what is extraordinary is presented as a standard to which we perpetually struggle to live up to.
There was lots bundled into the pile of kindling that ignited my eating disorder, but a significant piece was the unattainable ideal of what I should (could) look like -- I just needed to try.
It takes a lot of work, a lot of time, and a lot of therapy to rewire the belief that the extraordinary is achievable simply through try. And even more to come to accept the ordinary, the normal, the “what is” as just as worthy and meaningful.
I am now in a very average position in my life; I am paying an average rent, living in a perfectly average house, working a very average, but rewarding job as a teacher; I am at an average weight, in an ordinary body, that is beautifully healthy and functioning. I bake sourdough bread that is far from perfect, but tasty. I take pole classes with fellow students and instructors that keep me humble about how much I still have to learn. And I love every minute of it.
I am coming to realize that the worst part of being “ordinary” is holding on to the belief that you shouldn’t be.
As soon as you can let that go, and embrace what is for exactly how it is, happiness and meaning and purpose just start pooling at your feet, as if a hose has just been unkinked and freed to flow.
There is a fine line between self-acceptance and self-improvement. I may never be a vet or an olympic snowboarder or a broadway singer. I will never look like a Victoria secret angel, or be 5’8 with long legs and a short torso.
But I can be perfectly happy and fulfilled working towards being the best version of average me, teaching and writing and riding and snowboarding for the joy of it, laughing over my mistakes and failures, and making connections with other people who are equally as human-- NOT allowing my insecurities and shame to isolate me.
This is self-acceptance. To be okay and happy exactly as you are, and where you are, grateful for you in all its ordinary excellence.
And once you do that, you might start to notice where meaning and happiness truly reside— and be free from the unattainable ideals of perfection.
The Post-Christmas Mind-Fuck (A Survival Guide to “New Year, New You” and other BS)
We all know it. You might be in it right now—that vacuum of time and space that exists between Christmas and New Years. That one week of the year where you don’t know what day it is, and don’t really care, when it gets to be late enough in the day that it feels counterproductive to change out of your pyjamas and christmas cookies remain a viable food group.
In all honesty, its this aftermath of Christmas that is my favourite time of the holidays. The shopping, cooking, cleaning, and wrapping have all been done, and (in none pandemic times) there are no more relatives to visit or guests to entertain.
There is literally nothing to do but revel in the wrappings of all the festivities that went down, enjoy some of the new toys or gadgets you received, and crack open that bottle of wine and box of chocolates that was under your tree.
And it’s important to enjoy this time— to truly enjoy it. Because as soon as New Years’ Eve hits, reality as we know it turns on its head. This, my friend, is the Post-Christmas Mind-Fuck
property of @cheezeburger.com
The Post- Christmas Mind-Fuck (Explained)
January First hits with the force of a a full champagne bottle, and in the blink of an eye, reality is turned on its head. Everything we have been told is right is now wrong, everything we are told to buy and eat and do we are told to avoid or undo. It is like being in a snow globe being shaken so violently that we can no longer recognize the scene within.
All the messages and ads and posts for the past month telling us to indulge, bake cookies, buy candy, eat, drink and be merry, and watch christmas movies huddled under blankets, are replaced overnight with messages about new year cleanses, detoxes, exercise regimes, and self-discipline.
Every Christmas baking recipe on Instagram is replaced with an ad for a detox tea, juice cleanse, or Keto diet trial. The influencers that were posting pictures of candy-cane rimmed eggnog and gingerbread donuts are now posting pictures of their new Gymshark clothing doing “damage control” at the gym for their “holiday guilt.”
It is enough to make you want to crawl beneath your new weighted blanket and not resurface until March. But then again that would be disregarding the revered commandment of “thou shall turn off Netflix and exercise away every ounce of chocolate consumed.”
And that is the mind-fuck.
Everything that was being toted as festive and merry and of the “season” become demonized overnight , and implying that you, dear, sweet, ignorant mortal, now have the duty-- no, the privilege, to rectify your moral wrongdoings by fixing your body.
Perhaps you have not been directly told to “fix your body”, but instead to “shed weight,” “get back on track,” “cleanse your system” or “detox your gut.”
Regardless of how it is worded, the message that bombards us every January that the most productive thing you can do this New Year is to change your body.
As someone who once subscribed to this message not just on New Years but all year round, for many years, I am writing this post to call bull sh**, and to hold your hand through this mind fuck so that you can still eat your chocolate if thats what you want to do on January 1st without feeling like a less worthy being.
So here is a survival guide to help you through the next few weeks of diet culture propaganda headed your way..
The Christmas Mind-Fuck Survival Guide
Arm yourself with knowledge
“New Year New You” and the messages about diet and weight loss that accompany it exist so people can make money. “You are fine exactly as you are doesn’t exactly spur people to buy things. However “Change your body to be better” and “here are the training plans, workout gear, cookbooks, and other products that will help you do it” has a better chance of having people spending money.
Become Diet-Culture-Literate
Check out this post here for myths about food, exercise and metabolism. Understand that so much of the cleanses, detoxes, crash diets, and even lifestyle restrictive diets from Keto to paleo to vegan to whole30 don’t quite live up to their promises. While it is true that most of us eat more and move less around the holidays, and that can result in some weight gain, studies have found that to average in one pound of weight gain for an adult human. And that minimal amount is easily lost as the person returns to their normal routine after the holidays. Our bodies are wonderful, intelligent mechanisms that can maintain equilibrium and maintain a healthy set point weight with little to no intervention or micromanaging on our part. Silly human.
Walk Your Own Path (use a filter for what you say and what you hear from others)
This time of year, everyone and their mother has a comment to make about how much they’ve been eating or how little they have been exercising or how excited they are to get started on their new resolution to start the ____diet or ___exercise program in the new year.
If you typically feel yourself anxious or stressed by these comments of food or body by others, you have a few options:
Change the Conversation. Spend time with people who have more interesting things to talk about than their bodies. Politely ask those people if they wouldn’t mind changing the subject if they bring it up, or better yet, slyly make the subject change yourself.
Be the change. Set an anti-diet example by reaching for a second cookie as they start talking about their upcoming cleanse. If they give you any kind of shocked or harrowed expression, tell them that they are welcome to do them, and that you will do you. And you trust that your body can handle a little extra energy and rest without any conscious efforts from you to “detox” it afterwards. And then send them over to this post.
Smile and nod and stay in your lane. Listen without actually listening, because whatever someone else’s choices are for their one bodies will not affect yours. Just because your best friend is going Keto January 1st does not mean that all of the sudden your own body is going to start rejecting gluten. Follow your own path, and do what works for your own mental and physical health-- NOT just because you saw it on Instagram.
4) Enjoy the rest of the holidays (and your life) in peace. It is going to be back to real life before you know it. One day in the not-so-far-off future, you are going to be back at work (whether in person or in your living room), fully dressed, with a dog to walk or kids to get to school and dinners to make, with not so much as a lindt chocolate ball in sight, and you will be wishing you spent December 29th watching one more Christmas movie.
Life is going to keep going, so enjoy the slower rhythm while we have it. Move in ways that feel good, whether thats a walk around the block, a skate at the local rink, or tobogganing with your kids. Eat food thats feel good, whether thats leftover mashed potatoes or a big salad and a plate of cookies. Honour your hunger, respect your cravings.
5). Make some resolutions for the new year that have NOTHING to do with what you look like.
Thats what I’ll be doing as I sip on my latte and eat some leftover potica today.
potica!
Want to see what those are? Hang on for my next post!
Hope you are all staying positive and testing negative, and Happy NYE!!!
Jordan
The Quarantine Fifteen Part II: MythBusting
**This post is about diet culture. If you are a person with a very healthy relationship with exercise, and don’t think too much about what you eat, this post may not interest you. Good on you- keep doing you and check back for my next post.
If you ARE interested in learning to navigate the messages about health and fitness bouncing around the web like a beach ball at a Nickelback concert, keep reading.**
With gyms closed, and many people working at home in close proximity to refrigerators, gaining weight during this social quarantine is becoming a prevalent concern. As I discussed in my last post, this idea of the “quarantine-fifteen” is perpetuating some fitness and weight loss propaganda from which companies in the health and fitness industry are profiting.
I am NOT writing this post because I have some sort of personal vendetta against any of these companies or individuals. I love being active, and feeling healthy and strong in my body. But coming from a decade long struggle with anorexia, I know how harmful some of these messages can be when taken a bit too seriously. Especially when many of these weight loss “hacks” really work the opposite way they were intended.
During my recovery, I devoured (pun not intended) countless studies, articles, podcasts, and other research regarding bodyweight, metabolism and exercise, desperate to understand what exactly I had to do to be healthy- mentally and physically. There’s a lot of conflicting information out there. However, a constant throughout was that extreme diets or “lifestyles” do not work long-term.
For every study that there is saying why one food is the the key to eternal youth (ie. coconut oil), there is another claiming it to be the devil (ie. coconut oil). I am no expert. I can’t tell you the best way to eat or exercise or “be healthy.” This is because there is not one best way. There is only the best way for you.
For the past couple years, I have committed myself to eating unrestricted, relearning what it means to eat intuitively, and rebuilding a new relationship with exercise. I still have some rewiring left to do, but my mindset towards food and exercise is much healthier and infinitely less consuming than it has been.
We live in a diet culture. Its only when I actively forced myself to step outside of it that I could truly see some of the bulls*** that is being conveyed as “healthy living.”
So let’s get down to it and dispel some myths about weight gain and the “quarantine fifteen.”
Myth-Busting: Weight-Loss Edition
Dieting will make you lose weight
In the short term, yes. Eating in a caloric deficit will make you lose weight. A lot of it water and muscle, but the scale will go down. HOWEVER, within a few months, or even weeks, depending on how much you restrict your intake, evolutionary biology will kick in. Your body will feel the threat of famine, and will fight every way it can to make up the energy it is not getting. This may mean slowing down metabolism, increasing hunger hormones, and signaling your brain to obsess over food in a way you never did before you started dieting. You will likely find yourself more prone to cravings, overeating, and even bingeing. Whether its restricting certain food groups, eating “cleaner”, or simply cutting calories, making certain foods (or amounts of foods) “off-limits” will only make them even more tempting and irresistible.
Intermittent fasting is the best way to diet without being on a diet.
If you are a person that tends to be less hungry waking up in the morning, there’s nothing wrong in waiting a few hours upon waking before breaking the fast. However, if you are overriding your body’s innate hunger cues in favour of the time on a clock, and not eating until your stomach is eating itself (or you have been hungry for so long, the hunger is passed) you are not doing yourself any favours. As mentioned above, overriding your body’s innate hunger may cause your brain to adopt a “feast or famine” mentality, making you over-fixate on food. This makes it much harder to tune into your body’s intuitive cues, and to stop before all the cookies are gone.
Intermittent fasting can also wreak havoc on your hormones, especially if you are female. Chronic low blood sugar in the morning can cause a spike in cortisol, a stress hormone that can inhibit the production of estrogen and other important reproductive hormones. In my eating disorder I was “intermittent fasting” before it was even a thing, and I did not have a monthly cycle for over eight years (If that’s TMI, sorry, but not sorry. … I’ll talk more about my experience with Hypothalamic Amenhorrea in another post).
High intensity workouts are the key to weight loss.
Some studies have shown a minimal increase in metabolic rate following sessions of intensive exercise or HIIT workouts. However, the lingering caloric burn for several hours afterwards is minimal. A 45 minute cardio burn session is not a free pass to all the donuts you can eat for the rest of the day. Especially when that exercise intensity could be wreaking havoc with your hormones and hunger cues. High-intensity workouts or excessive cardio can cause a huge spike in cortisol just the way intermittent fasting can, as well as raise levels of the hormones that regulate your hunger and appetite. This makes many people ravenous throughout the day, and prone to eating more than feels good.
Before you come at me, I am NOT saying that it’s never a good idea to work hard in your workouts. Some people can incorporate some HIIT training in their week quite healthily. But if you are feeling a little run down or over-hungry or have any symptoms of hormonal imbalance, you may want to think about the type of exercise you are doing.
Not exercising = gaining weight.
This all depends on your set point weight, and if you are using exercise as a way to hold your body at a weight below where it is optimally healthy. If you are at a weight where your body is optimally healthy and happy, and you aren’t following any kind of rules or lifestyle to maintain, working out less for a month or two really won’t make any noticeable changes to your body. However, If you are holding your body below its natural set point or happy place, through diet or exercise, and you decrease the amount of activity that you are doing, regardless of what you are eating, your weight may start to creep upwards. This is your body gravitating to its set point, the weight that only your body gets to decide is its optimal healthy place.
The beautiful thing about being at your set point is that even a few weeks or months without exercise, and eating a normal, unrestricted diet, is that you will NOT gain weight. Your body will keep you within a ~few pounds of that comfortable weight, and will raise or lower metabolism accordingly to adjust to your energy intake and output.
** I didn’t go into much detail about these things, because I’m sure many of you already have a pretty healthy and balanced mindset when it comes to these things. But if you are interested in a little more of the science and expertise backing these concepts, I’ll leave some links at the bottom of this post. **
It’s Not About Changing your Body. It’s Changing your Mindset.
Essentially, adopting a “diet mentality” and over-fixating on food or exercise is NOT how to escape the “quarantine-fifteen.”
And again, even if you do lose some muscle or put on a few pounds, who really cares? Your body is just trying to cope with the new stresses and threats in our external environment, (ie. global pandemic). It is healthy and normal to go through periods of rest and recovery. From animals preparing for winter, to athletes detraining or moving into off season, it's okay to not be in peak athletic form year round, and for bodies to change.
This guy’s got the right idea.
Nourish yourself with lots of sleep, good food, and self-compassion. Remember that health encompasses more than your physical body. Take care of your mind, your spirit and your soul (Pro-tip: Chocolate keeps the dementors away).
Let me know in the comments if you want more posts about these kinds of things. I will probably post more about my experience in the future. If there’s anything in particular you want to know more about, fire away. I could probably write a book or two (or a hundred) about anything food, fitness, or recovery related…
In the meantime, stay tuned for some more procrasti-baking recipes and isolation inspiration coming down the pipe shortly!
(social distance) Hugs,
Jordan
More on Set Point Theory and Diets
https://www.healthline.com/health/set-point-theory#body-weight-set-point
https://www.floliving.com/intermittent-fasting/
https://tabithafarrar.com/2020/04/you-were-never-supposed-to-be-micro-managing-your-food-intake/
https://fitonapp.com/fitness/the-truth-behind-why-your-hiit-workouts-may-not-be-working/
https://www.thereallife-rd.com/2017/05/finding-healthy-set-point/
The “Quarantine Fifteen”— Gaining Weight during Isolation
If you have been on any form of social media these past couple weeks, you may have come across one of the countless posts, memes, or tweets about gaining the covid-nineteen, or the quarantine-fifteen. Essentially, these puns stem from the idea that staying home is making us fat.
Some of these posts are pure humour, outrageous memes of people “before” quarantine and “after.” Maybe they are a little crude, but harmless, and provide a good chuckle.
Other posts take this quarantine fifteen a bit more seriously. Many influencers, fitness studios, and other health or wellness companies are perpetuating this fear of the “quarantine fifteen” to get us to subscribe to things like at-home sculpt workouts, HIIT classes, or virtual spin subscriptions. My feed is filled with posts and videos entitled “What I eat in Isolation to not gain weight” or “Quarantine Exercise Regime.”
These individuals provide us with “health hacks”, from morning green smoothies, to water fasts, to DIY basement gyms, oh so benevolently saving us from our gluttonous, lazy selves, who would undoubtedly be lying on the couch on our third bag of chips had we not been gifted with the details of their regime.
a screenshot of a few of the hundreds of videos on youtube about staying “healthy” while in isolation
Don’t get me wrong. Eating healthy is important, and working out is great for your mind and body. I’ve been doing tons of yoga and pilates and other classes with some of my favourite instructors during this isolation period, and the sense of community and connection I get from these sessions is invaluable.
HOWEVER, the problem I have with this new rise of at-home fitness and clean eating regimes is how it is often being marketed as the antidote to not gaining weight-- and implying the loss of fitness while we are at home to be shameful.
A couple things. First, we are in the midst of a global pandemic. I won’t get too morbid here, as the media is already doing a fabulous job of keeping us up with the rising death tolls across the world each day, but in a nutshell, the disease is spreading. People are sick, and people are dying. People are dying alone, and families are grieving loved ones without being able to come together to support each other. Hospitals are running out of supplies, and there are not enough ventilators to support all the cases that come to hospital that could recover otherwise. We are all at risk. Even going to the grocery store endangers ourselves and our families.
Many of us are also facing other challenges, such as losing income, being unable to pay rent and other bills, or being catapulted into new roles of homeschool teacher and/or caregiver. Not to mention, the tremendous toll on our own mental and emotional wellbeing during this scary time.
Second, pandemic aside, is gaining weight or losing fitness really that terrible? Putting on a few extra pounds or not making any new PRs over the next few months should not be a moral sin.
The people who love you, who want you to be safe and healthy during this pandemic do not care if you can fit into your tightest pair of jeans right now. Let’s be honest, who’s actually wearing real pants these days? Your dog doesn’t care about your quad development. Your zoom chats or face-times with your friends will not be any more fun or meaningful if you ran 10 kilometres beforehand, or you are following a keto diet religiously.
Yes, staying healthy is important. Sleep is important. Eating a good and balanced diet is important. Moving your body in a way that feels good, that serves you mentally and physically, is important. None of that has to do with weight.
During this time, you need to do whatever is healthy, mentally and physically, for you.
Just because Karen manages her mental health by running 25 kilometers every morning, refueling with a smoothie bowl, and doing back to back Zoom HIIT classes everyday, does not mean you can’t eat the cookies your sister baked.
Meet yourself where you are at. Get some fresh air, (while being safe and social distancing), move your body in a way that feels good, for however long or short you have. Watch your favourite Netflix shows (Schitt’s Creek is my latest obsession), read that book (Harry Potter- any one) that’s been sitting on your nightstand for a year and a half, start that craft or hobby that you’ve been threatening to do when things “calm down”, or bake some bread (or cinnamon buns!), because God knows you have the time to wait for yeast to rise right now,
Doing a lot of knitting these days and not mad about it.
The worst thing that might happen is you put on a couple pounds. Its not like you are training for the olympics. And even if you are, you’ve got at least a whole year to get back in competing form for when the olympics have been rescheduled in 2021.
Health is not the same as fitness. Health is not gaining or losing weight. As long as you are nourishing your mind, your body, and your emotional well-being during this isolation, the “quarantine-fifteen'“ got nothing on you.
Stay healthy, friends,
xoxo
-Jordan