Plus and Pregnant

This post will be related to derby, I promise.

Being plus and pregnant brings to the forefront some issues with fat acceptance and self love that I don't normally have to deal with. You see, when you are not pregnant and plus size, people don't get to give you unsolicited advice. But as soon as you are pregnant, your body is not your own -- a concept I don't agree with. My body and my baby are my business. It's just that other people don't seem to get that. They seem to think that I need their great advice, and that I am actually too stupid to have read a pregnancy book. And while I know this is common -- every pregnant woman gets to complain about unwanted nausea remedies and belly rubs -- not every pregnant woman gets the constant advice to eat well and exercise. Because I am plus size, people assume that I don't. People assume that because I am fat, I eat crap and don't exercise.

In fact, the opposite is true. But I don't want to condescend to this attitude by listing my caloric intake and exercise schedule to every doofus that comes my way. If you think this is just an excuse for me not to confess to eating crap and not exercising, you are probably one of those people.

This comes on the tail of me finding an old math test from Grade 3 where I wrote in pencil at the top "I'm a cow" to which my teacher kindly wrote in her friendly blue pen "No, you are not!" with a smiley face. But this didn't make up for the fact that clearly I had internalized issues of weight and self worth before puberty. Breaking free of associating my self-worth with my weight was the best thing I ever did for myself (thanks to this book) and while I have days where I feel like I'm back at square one, my self confidence, my sex life and frankly my fashion sense have changed so much I sometimes feel like a different person. I wish I could go back in time and change my own brain so that I didn't waste so many years crying over spilt milk -- heh heh, or too many glasses of non-skim.

And now the derby connection.

As I'm sure you can guess, with a physical sport, the way you feel about your body in derby is a big deal. My favourite thing about the sport, before I even read that magical book, was how empowering roller derby made me feel. But I also noticed that when I couldn't keep up and had trouble next to other athletic girls (I've never been athletic, even when I was thinner) I worried that people were judging me. And I'm sure some of them were. I'm sure some of them thought that if I cut back my cheeseburger chuffing diet I would magically become a super athlete.

The truth is that after I got married, I gained a lot of weight -- not all of it healthy, but most of it in reaction to an insane work out schedule I had pre-wedding (I should post about that another time). I couldn't perform in derby the way I had before I got married, because I wasn't working out five days a week anymore. It was pretty embarrassing. But even with my desire to make my body stronger and more empowered -- not thinner, I have to confess that I'm glad I've got my nine month injury while my league is doing this thing called INSANITY, which consists of some things that are basically, well, insane. 

I don't have the program to review, but I know that there is a body fat percentage test, a BMI test and measurement requirements. At the end of the program -- which sounds hellish -- they are determining a winner based on results. If I had been skating I would have refused all of the first three requirements because they would have, I guarantee, put me back in my old mentality and achieved nothing but inducing a night of binge drinking and self loathing. And I would have completed the program perfectly, with some results, but I'm sure someone thinner would do better because you know, people who lose weight easily can already do that. One big misconception that people have is that everyone can lose weight if they just follow some pretty simple steps (eat so many calories, exercise so much). And it's not true. Don't you think if I could be thin, I would be?

So, instead of just disapproving of such a program, let me suggest something better.

I would like to see a fitness contest including results based on positive reinforcement. For example, to encourage healthy eating a person could have a minimum number of fruits and vegetables to eat a day and a minimum number of glasses of water. Strength and endurance tests could measure success. For example, I could run for 5 minutes before, and now I can run for 20 minutes. Or, I could lift 5 lbs. before, and now I can lift 30 lbs. In this way, such a test would accomplish the same goal -- to make the body better for the sport -- without participating in frankly sexist and prejudice mindsets that participate in supressing the female spirit in our culture.

On a final note, I would point anyone who is interested in learning more to this amazing website (she has a great post on BMI and how stupid it is), and also say that this post is not meant to criticize my fellow roller girls who are bravely putting themselves through physical torment over the holidays to become better skaters. I admire their goal, even if I disagree with their method of achieving it. After my baby comes, I plan to hit the gym 5 days a week with my husband who is off for paternity leave, and come back next September or October feeling svelt and ready to knock some bitches over -- but not necessarily any thinner.

Vansterdamn XXX

UPDATE: I got myself more up to speed on the Insanity workout, and it looks like a really good workout program. I would just like to see it without the requirements of BMI and stuff, and instead see success based on results of other tests such as strength and endurance -- which in the end, are really the point.