how not to train (how not to eat)
This person is doing the same thing I am, except that she's doing it exactly how I am not (and it seems that she has an established program to follow, whereas I am researching and creating one from scratch--lack of a conditioning coach will force you to do that--and just doing plain old unstructured, 'make you sweat' workouts until I get the actual plan hammered out). I found this through one of the rugby blogs I read, and this girl is now being linked all over the ruckosphere, especially on women rugger blogs. I'm not sure how I feel about this. There has been some buzz in various spaces about how this woman and her blog are 'so inspirational', and I admit I was interested to see what her program looked like and read her workout log. But after looking at the blog, I'm very uneasy with all the praise it's been getting.
Some time ago, elliotpp and I had a good discussion about food and the moralizing tone that is taken toward it by many people, expecially women, and how, in certain circles, this attitude is approved and encouraged. The attitude involves characterizing your own moral state as "good" or "bad" based on individual food choices. Not that the choices might be bad, or that the food itself might be good, but that you yourself are either good or bad. To be clear, self-denial and discipline is "good." Other attitudes or actions around eating are "bad." In example:
Man, these Chips Ahoy are bad! They are full of transfats and they don't even taste good. Why did I eat them? I could bring a healthier snack with me tomorrow.
vs.
I was bad today. I ate some Chips Ahoy.
The blog is full of the second kind of food talk. There's mention of "good" and "bad" in the moral context, of portion sizes like "sliver" which betray a moral value attached to self-denial, of timing words like "too often," "already," and "once in a while," which suggests a precise allotment of approved daily calories that need to be stretched out, denial words like "allowing myself" and "disciplining myself," and finally one my most hated mantras, "Eat to live, don't live to eat." About the only thing I haven't found yet is anything suggesting a scale-balance concept of eating; that is, "I ate too much today, I must exercise harder to make up for it," and etc.
Elliot and I talked about a couple different problematic aspects of this attitude. He mentioned what a killjoy it was to cook dinner for someone who viewed eating it as an obligation rather than an occasion. I talked about how it's a sign of low-self-esteem if you don't think that you deserve to enjoy what you eat.* And we agreed overall about the horrible mentality American culture has towards food and eating. My point is what brings me around to that fucking moronic mantra and the self-loathing food phobe who came up with it.
Frankly, you have to eat to live. It's the barest fucking minimum, dig? And while an argument might be made that a full, exciting definition of "life" might include full, exciting food experiences, I have never seen the phrase used in this manner. From this point of view, if a person has an athletic life, then I would expect that person to eat appropriately to live that athletic life successfully. The phrase is reductionist and redundant, however, b/c any lifestyle choice that effectively becomes a person's "life" is going to necessarily include the way they eat. In that case, "eating to live" would be self-evident! So that construction falls apart, and you are left with what the phrase, in my opinion, really conveys: the idea that a person has a "life" that does not include enjoyment of food, and that eating should be no more than a physical necessity--and oftentimes burden or obstacle (moral cross to bear, anyone?)--to getting on with that "life."
As a lifelong athlete, I can confirm that the exhortation to view "food as fuel" is ubitquitous at all levels of competition, and by itself, that concept is value-neutral. Considering your food choices as either helping or hurting your progress towards your goal is not in and of itself harmful. Getting adequate nutrition and not negatively affecting your performance are the basis of any sports nutrition program. The problem, as I see it, is when this criteria is the only one used to determine what you will eat.
I live to eat. I do. I like myself a lot better now than I used to, and frankly my growing self-worth has decided that I deserve the best-tasting, most interesting ways to fulfill my daily caloric intake that I can find or create. I am actually becoming something of an experience junkie, not in the quantity of things I've done, but in the quality of them. I figure I have a very limited time to live, so why waste it on being and doing (and eating) things that aren't aimed at creating the most well-rounded, informed and grounded person I can be? It's so easy, in this country, to find yourself in an environment where people punish themselves for eating, where they seem to feel guilty over having to eat at all, and it appears that top-level athletes are not immune from this neuroticism.
I'm sure I'm coming off like some sort of food snob, so I must categorically deny this on the grounds that I've never bought a food or meal based on its price alone. But quite seriously--good tasting food, no matter how cheap or how expensive, is easily ruined when your conscience is so bothered by eating it that you don't bother to taste it as it goes down.
My point, I guess, is that eating is an instrinsic part of life, and that viewing your food consumption as an obstacle or solely as a means to pursue other activities more successfully, causes a person to really miss out on some of the most intense experiences life has to offer. I am well-aware of--and have even met in person--people who claim that they just aren't interested in food. That's their prerogative, of course, and maybe they just don't have very active taste buds and so food literally doesn't taste that great to them and they don't see the big deal (if a certain portion of the population are super-tasters, it follows that there's a population of subpar-tasters, even though I've never seen a study on the latter). But mainly what I'm against is the pervasive notion that food and eating are things to be strictly controlled, with the degree of control over such being linked with a person's sense of self-worth. Ideally, then, ultimate control would be not eating at all, or eating the barest minimum, a twisted ideal which I think perfectly illustrates the fallacious double standard of, "Eat to live." Not eating is not living on so many levels. I think it is profoundly unhealthy to approach food in this manner, no matter the noble aims (elite fitness in this case) of the clampdown.
So no, I don't find this person's blog inspiring. I find it disturbing, and I have been watching it for a few weeks now trying to figure out what to say about it. I won't lie--I have a lot of various interconnected reasons for pursuing elite rugby fitness, and the most important ones have little to do with rugby at all. The whole program is an immensely complicated, painstakingly orchestrated attempt to learn to like myself in new ways and on new levels. It is a progression of my current sense of self-worth, a vehicle for a new quality experience, and a lot of other things. One thing it is not is moralizing self-denial of one of life's pleasures in pursuit of a different one. One minus one is zero.
I'm looking to add things to my life, not take them away.
*Very obviously, I am not talking here about ED, which I understand is a completely different and immensely complex phenomenon. I am talking about your garden-variety, down-on-themselves for eating office birthday cake, always talking about their new diet, run-of-the-mill food moralizing person.
Some time ago, elliotpp and I had a good discussion about food and the moralizing tone that is taken toward it by many people, expecially women, and how, in certain circles, this attitude is approved and encouraged. The attitude involves characterizing your own moral state as "good" or "bad" based on individual food choices. Not that the choices might be bad, or that the food itself might be good, but that you yourself are either good or bad. To be clear, self-denial and discipline is "good." Other attitudes or actions around eating are "bad." In example:
Man, these Chips Ahoy are bad! They are full of transfats and they don't even taste good. Why did I eat them? I could bring a healthier snack with me tomorrow.
vs.
I was bad today. I ate some Chips Ahoy.
The blog is full of the second kind of food talk. There's mention of "good" and "bad" in the moral context, of portion sizes like "sliver" which betray a moral value attached to self-denial, of timing words like "too often," "already," and "once in a while," which suggests a precise allotment of approved daily calories that need to be stretched out, denial words like "allowing myself" and "disciplining myself," and finally one my most hated mantras, "Eat to live, don't live to eat." About the only thing I haven't found yet is anything suggesting a scale-balance concept of eating; that is, "I ate too much today, I must exercise harder to make up for it," and etc.
Elliot and I talked about a couple different problematic aspects of this attitude. He mentioned what a killjoy it was to cook dinner for someone who viewed eating it as an obligation rather than an occasion. I talked about how it's a sign of low-self-esteem if you don't think that you deserve to enjoy what you eat.* And we agreed overall about the horrible mentality American culture has towards food and eating. My point is what brings me around to that fucking moronic mantra and the self-loathing food phobe who came up with it.
Frankly, you have to eat to live. It's the barest fucking minimum, dig? And while an argument might be made that a full, exciting definition of "life" might include full, exciting food experiences, I have never seen the phrase used in this manner. From this point of view, if a person has an athletic life, then I would expect that person to eat appropriately to live that athletic life successfully. The phrase is reductionist and redundant, however, b/c any lifestyle choice that effectively becomes a person's "life" is going to necessarily include the way they eat. In that case, "eating to live" would be self-evident! So that construction falls apart, and you are left with what the phrase, in my opinion, really conveys: the idea that a person has a "life" that does not include enjoyment of food, and that eating should be no more than a physical necessity--and oftentimes burden or obstacle (moral cross to bear, anyone?)--to getting on with that "life."
As a lifelong athlete, I can confirm that the exhortation to view "food as fuel" is ubitquitous at all levels of competition, and by itself, that concept is value-neutral. Considering your food choices as either helping or hurting your progress towards your goal is not in and of itself harmful. Getting adequate nutrition and not negatively affecting your performance are the basis of any sports nutrition program. The problem, as I see it, is when this criteria is the only one used to determine what you will eat.
I live to eat. I do. I like myself a lot better now than I used to, and frankly my growing self-worth has decided that I deserve the best-tasting, most interesting ways to fulfill my daily caloric intake that I can find or create. I am actually becoming something of an experience junkie, not in the quantity of things I've done, but in the quality of them. I figure I have a very limited time to live, so why waste it on being and doing (and eating) things that aren't aimed at creating the most well-rounded, informed and grounded person I can be? It's so easy, in this country, to find yourself in an environment where people punish themselves for eating, where they seem to feel guilty over having to eat at all, and it appears that top-level athletes are not immune from this neuroticism.
I'm sure I'm coming off like some sort of food snob, so I must categorically deny this on the grounds that I've never bought a food or meal based on its price alone. But quite seriously--good tasting food, no matter how cheap or how expensive, is easily ruined when your conscience is so bothered by eating it that you don't bother to taste it as it goes down.
My point, I guess, is that eating is an instrinsic part of life, and that viewing your food consumption as an obstacle or solely as a means to pursue other activities more successfully, causes a person to really miss out on some of the most intense experiences life has to offer. I am well-aware of--and have even met in person--people who claim that they just aren't interested in food. That's their prerogative, of course, and maybe they just don't have very active taste buds and so food literally doesn't taste that great to them and they don't see the big deal (if a certain portion of the population are super-tasters, it follows that there's a population of subpar-tasters, even though I've never seen a study on the latter). But mainly what I'm against is the pervasive notion that food and eating are things to be strictly controlled, with the degree of control over such being linked with a person's sense of self-worth. Ideally, then, ultimate control would be not eating at all, or eating the barest minimum, a twisted ideal which I think perfectly illustrates the fallacious double standard of, "Eat to live." Not eating is not living on so many levels. I think it is profoundly unhealthy to approach food in this manner, no matter the noble aims (elite fitness in this case) of the clampdown.
So no, I don't find this person's blog inspiring. I find it disturbing, and I have been watching it for a few weeks now trying to figure out what to say about it. I won't lie--I have a lot of various interconnected reasons for pursuing elite rugby fitness, and the most important ones have little to do with rugby at all. The whole program is an immensely complicated, painstakingly orchestrated attempt to learn to like myself in new ways and on new levels. It is a progression of my current sense of self-worth, a vehicle for a new quality experience, and a lot of other things. One thing it is not is moralizing self-denial of one of life's pleasures in pursuit of a different one. One minus one is zero.
I'm looking to add things to my life, not take them away.
*Very obviously, I am not talking here about ED, which I understand is a completely different and immensely complex phenomenon. I am talking about your garden-variety, down-on-themselves for eating office birthday cake, always talking about their new diet, run-of-the-mill food moralizing person.