The first week of my solstice-to-equinox exercise streak has come and gone, so I thought I would check in.

Let’s be honest here: doing something EVERY day is hard for me. (Except for, you know, stuff like brushing my teeth and taking showers.) I admire people who set a goal to do something every day and then actually follow through; as evidenced by my attempt to blog every day, the do-it-every-day habit seems to be anathema to my personality.

But I did learn a few things from my attempt to blog every day (which I still intend to take up again): It really does build on itself. Something is better than nothing. Planning makes the habit easier to establish. Personal weaknesses will become obvious over time.

So each week with my exercise streak, I’m just going to pay attention to what I am learning, and this week I learned the power of improvisation.

First, though, here’s what I did on my streak:

Friday, June 21: 3.9 mile hike with Kendell (Stewart Falls)



Saturday, June 22: half hour of sculpting (abs, hips, and glutes)
Sunday, June 23: 8.4 mile hike with Kendell (Pine Hollow overlook)
Monday, June 24: half hour of sculpting (abs and arms), two hours of tree trimming (that should count for something, yes?)
Tuesday, June 25: 3 mile hike with Wendy (Bonneville Shoreline trail), half hour of yoga and other stretching
Wednesday, June 26: 3.7 mile run (Provo)
Thursday, June 27: 26 minutes on the elliptical, 1 mile on the treadmill, 20 minutes weight lifting (rec center)

Every single day, I’ve made a plan. And every day, I’ve changed it. Friday, for example. Fridays are my long day at work so I know I have to plan accordingly. On Thursday night I made my plan: picked out a running route, put all my running clothes in the hall bathroom, set my alarm so I could get a run in before work. Then Kendell was like, “hey, how about I exercise with you after work?” and at first we decided to do our run/walk combo on the PRT (we decide on a turn-around time, and he walks/jogs while I run and then we meet back where we started). Then I looked at some pictures from the hiking group I belong to on Facebook and I said “no, let’s hike Stewart Falls instead.”

On Saturday, I did the binding on a baby quilt, made a cake and then took it to the baby shower celebrating the baby I made the quilt for, ran errands with Kendell, made dinner. Then I saw my streak chart hanging on my kitchen door and realized I hadn’t exercised yet—at 8:30pm! Too late and too close to eating for cardio (I need at least two hours after I eat before I can exercise without feeling like I’m dying), so I did a workout on the Aaptiv apt.

Wednesday I had to adjust because the trail I drove to was closed (it’s being renovated), so instead of a run in the shade by the river, I ran in the sun after thinking “maybe I should just skip it today” but deciding to stick to my streak.

And this morning, even though I had an hour of running planned, I woke up with a headache that I threw caffeine, extra sleep, carbs, and gardening at but which wouldn’t budge until this afternoon. So I went to the gym instead.

All of which is to say: planning is necessary, but so is flexibility. Being willing to improvise when issues or other ideas come up has to be part of being consistent.

But I also learned that the streak itself will help me keep streaking, because really, if I wasn’t attempting this streaking goal, I would’ve skipped working out on Saturday, Wednesday, and today. So I feel a little bit of success and trust in myself that I can continue.

Here’s to another weak of streaking! If you’re also streaking, how is it coming for you? Or if you want to join, it's never too late, just start! HERE is some more info, along with a chart to track your progress.

Happy streaking!

The poems I know well, and love best, I do not need to read. I can catch a couple of lines of a page or from memory, and the pleasure of the whole poem is there.

Why had I led the life I had led, done so little, achieved so little? When my life is of such significance to me, how is it I could not claim any significance for it in the eyes of a disinterested observer?...Who is to say that, whatever it might have been, that alternative life would not also have left me, as I sat in the hospice parking lot, with a sense of having been in the wrong room all my life, the room where nothing was happening?

Sometimes I discover a book that makes me realize I probably spend far too much time wanting to read what is new. Partly this is a function of my job—I need to understand what is popular so I can either help patrons find it or help them find something similar while they wait for something uber-popular. (For example, if you are on your library’s very-long waiting list for Where the Crawdads Sing, I might recommend The Cove by Ron Rash—or anything else by him!—Oral History by Lee Smith, Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell, Where All the Light Tends to Go by David Joy (even though I resent the title), or A Land More Kind than Home by Wiley Cash.) Part of it is that new books are the ones that are (usually) most discussed on social media in whatever form, so they are the ones that draw my attention. (Until, of course, something else new comes out and then I want to read that one. And on and on.)

This means I tend to read by what comes up on the hold shelf for me, despite the different ways I have tried to break out of this pattern. There are just so many books I want to read! And it also means I’ve lost the pleasure of just wandering down the library shelves in search of something new to read. (It’s strange: when you work in a place you’ve always loved, your relationship with it changes. I can’t, for example, smell the library anymore, because I’m here too often.) So I can’t quite remember how I came to the book Meet Me at the Museum—was it on a read-alike list? a random bookstagram post? I’m not sure!—which was published 18 months ago. (Which still might mean “new” but definitely not “brand new.”)

But I am so glad I found it, as it’s one of my favorite books I’ve ever read.

It tells the story of Tina Hopegood, who lives on a farm with her husband and adult children in England, and Professor Anders Larsen, who works at the Silkeborg Museum in Denmark. Tina writes the museum about the Tollund Man, a bog person who is on exhibit there, and Anders writes back. A friendship is formed. And on that simple premise I found a book full of characters with different pieces of my identity.

I loved this book so much.

Not just for the story—because honestly, at one point I said out loud (I was reading in the bathtub) if this turns out like The Bridges of Madison County I’m going to be so mad. I liked the story for the gentle way it develops, and for the ways that Tina and Anders influence each other, how they each change through their friendship.

But what I adored was their exchange of ideas. You have to read it to get the whole picture, but one of the ideas that Tina comes back to over and over is how her life might’ve been different if she had made different choices, and how, as a woman with adult children, she might shape the last part of her adult years. The way she finds the courage to change her life. The ways that Anders changes, too, from doubting himself in certain ways to understanding his value.

I’m not sure if I read this in my twenties if I’d love it. But reading it now, in my 40s, with so many years of reading, thinking, learning, and wondering behind me, I can appreciate its richness.

Plus, bog people are fascinating to me, and archaeology, and history. And museums. And Seamus Heaney, who wrote a poem about the Tollund Man.

And it was only after I finished it that I learned its author, Anne Youngson, is older than me, and this is her first novel. (It gives me hope!)

However I came to find it, I am glad for the bookish serendipity that brought this into my hands.

A few weeks ago I was watching TV with Kendell and scrolling through my photos on my phone, deleting those I didn’t need to keep. I’d not done this for a little while, so I started with January, and as I scrolled through, I started realizing: holy cow, I can watch myself getting chubbier! I hadn’t really noticed because my clothes fit very similar, but since this fall (I went back further in my picture gallery to make sure) I have grown a belly. 

But what really pushed me over the edge was this photo of me and my friend Lynne on the saddle above Fern Canyon in the Flatirons:

When I got back to our hotel, I texted the photo to Kendell, with a whole bunch of expletives and sadness and pointing out of my bulges and just generally freaking out. The weight isn’t just on my belly. It’s also above my hips and on my sides and on my face, and I made sure to circle all of the offending parts. As well as the way the skin on my hands is starting to look old for good measure.

Sometimes he doesn’t handle that kind of thing very well (he’ll make a joke instead of really listening to what is actually going on underneath my rant), but this time he was calm and kind and encouraging.

Which really reinforced the realization that I need to start working on losing some weight.

I let myself wallow in the self-hatred for a little while. I listened to my mother’s voice saying “wow, look how heavy you are.” I thought about chocolate and other treats, a litany of bad food choices to castigate myself with.

Then, a few days later, I took a deep breath. I thought: OK. This is the fact, without emotion but the objective fact: I just need to lose some weight.

I thought about all of the things I am already doing. I already exercise quite a bit. When I cook, I use healthy fats and keep an eye on sodium and sugar. I don’t drink soda very often, I very rarely eat fast food, I don’t eat potato chips. When we eat out, it’s usually at places like Costa Vida which, while not paragons of healthy eating, are at least not fried foods—and I never get the rice.

But obviously there are still some changes I need to be making.

One thing I finally did was research how I should be eating since I have hypothyroidism. (I’ve been taking medication for it since 2008 but never really received any direction as far as diet.) I got a couple of books from the library and read them, and I learned I’ve been taking my thyroid medication wrong, with not enough time after taking it before I start eating and taking my antidepressant too soon after my Synthroid. I need to get in to the doctor and have my levels tested; I think that, in January when our deductible starts over (unless something radical happens this year and we have to pay the whole damn thing again) I am also going to make an appointment with an endocrinologist if my regular doctor won’t figure out a different medication. (Something that balances both T3 and T4, not just one or the other.)

In both books, I read that people with low thyroid levels really do have a harder time losing weight. It’s not just because I’m lazy or overindulgent, although those contribute. It is harder for my body to let go of weight because of the chemical balances playing out in there. They both suggested that an hour of exercise every day is the goal to shoot for; it’s also important to focus on muscle strength.

Right now, I don’t exercise every day, and when I go running I am usually out for about 40-50 minutes. I know enough about running and about my body to know that I can’t just all of a sudden start running every day for an hour. But I’m going to make that one of my new goals: working up to running for at least an hour whenever I run. When I hike it is always longer than an hour. But I also can’t run or hike every day. So I’m going to add in a walk, and, if I am brave, a Zumba class. And some sort of weight training every single day. (Not an hour of it, but some every day.)

I also need to make some changes to my diet, but that will be its own post.

On Memorial Day, I noticed someone on Instagram was doing a Memorial-to-Labor-Day running streak. I thought that would be a great idea, but since I didn’t notice it until Memorial Day was over, the timing felt rushed.

So, instead, I am going to do an exercise streak, where I try to do at least 30 minutes of exercise (but always working toward being consistent with at least an hour) from the summer solstice to the autumn equinox.

I’m going to weigh and photography myself on June 21 (the solstice) to start. (I have been avoiding the scale since, I don’t know…October? November?) I’ll re-measure on July 21, August 22, and September 23 (the equinox). Hopefully in that time I will see some changes.

And because I am motivated by checking things off and keeping track of numbers, I made a chart. I printed mine on a piece of cardstock (double-sided) and am hanging it on my kitchen door so I can write down what I do every day. (And of course I keep track of all my runs, walks, and hikes on Strava because if it isn’t on Strava, did it even happen?)

I would really, really LOVE it if other people joined me in my streak! I’m going to use the hashtag #solsticetoequinoxstreak on Instagram (probably won’t post about it every day though) and will be giving periodic updates on my blog. Here’s the chart (it's a PDF) if you also want to play along (and let me know if you do, even if you’re not on IG or other social media places).

Download Solstice to Equinox Exercise Streak

I’m really trying to be positive and encouraging with myself during this experience, rather than working out of a place of shame or self-disgust. It’s not about winning the skinny prize. It’s just about getting myself into a healthier, happier place with my body. I hope you’ll join me!

If you know me, you know this: I’m pretty passionate about exercise clothes. That might seem like a weird thing to feel passionate about, but I have a firm belief that comfortable AND functional exercise clothing keeps people exercising. (Cute is also important.) Exercise clothes designed specifically for women are important in the exercise community because really: we aren’t men. Our bodies are different, our curves, our shapes, or musculature, even our height.

And, yes: our weight.

Well-designed exercise clothes don’t chafe. They don’t ride up between your legs. They felt well over breasts and hips; they support and breathe and wick. They flatter a moving body, no matter if that body is running or hiking or biking or swimming or doing yoga or lifting weights. They keep you moving, and if that is weird or silly, if it makes your eyes roll, then you’ve likely never had to work out in clothes that weren’t well designed.

There’s been a little bit of an uproar in the exercise-clothing world this week: Nike had the audacity not only to make plus-size exercise clothes, but put them on a plus-size mannequin. And a writer for The Telegraph definitely did not like it. She saw it as yet another way the clothing industry lies to people in order to sell things. The “fat acceptance movement,” she thinks, is not helpful to women because it gives them freedom to accept who they are right now, instead of working hard to become some better (read: thinner) version of themselves.

I’m not really sure how she fails to see the irony of her argument. She’s say two opposing things: marketing ploys that try to trick you into believing you have to be super-skinny to be attractive are wrong because the ballerina body is unhealthy, but this marketing ploy—the one that says “if you’re overweight, you still get to have comfortable and functional exercise clothing”—is wrong because fat people can’t be attractive.

Which is it?

She ends her article by asking “where is the body shape between the tiny and the immense, which is where true health lives? Where is the ordinary, medium, contented woman?”

As that is where I think I am—a medium-sized woman, neither small nor large—I’d like to let her know.

I’m here, working out. Moving my body in my favorite ways. I’m doing it in clothing that I love. That fits! That has pockets! That is cute and makes me happy and makes me feel pretty. Some of it is ruffly. Some of it is so perfectly compressive I only want to take it off because I sweat so much in it.  Some of it is pink, some is purple, some is even black.

I wear a size medium, usually. And I can’t be the only one because it’s remarkably easy to find exercise clothes in my size.

I want everyone to have the same thing, even women who are bigger than me. Clothes that fit them well and help them get out and move. It shouldn’t even have to be newsworthy, that an exercise-clothing company makes exercise clothes for large women

Because guess what helps people get healthier?

Exercise.

And if we are really concerned about the health of larger women, as this woman’s article seems to suggest, guess what? We should encourage them to exercise. And if they are exercising, they are going to need exercise clothes.

One of my favorite things about running races is that I get to see athletes of all shapes and sizes. Yes, there are some of those tiny, muscled runners. There are a lot of them, in fact. But there are medium-sized women like me. And there are larger women too. And all of them—even, I’d imagine, the elite runners who regularly win races—all of them have something about their bodies that they feel self-conscious about.

One of my running friends has one of those tiny, elegant, muscled bodies. She has a thigh gap and a strong back and willowy arms, and she is fast. And people criticize her for being too skinny.

Another running friend wears a size 16 but she runs five or six marathons every year. And people criticize her for her weight.

I’m that medium-sized runner. Probably on the bigger size of medium these days, but still, yeah: medium. Medium-fast, middle-of-the-pack runner. And people criticize me, too. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been outside running and someone driving past me has shouted something like “keep on running, chunky!” or “hey there, fat ass!”

(And that’s not even mentioning the language I use inside my own head, the way I have to fight to see something other than my chide sunkies (my nickname for my out-of-control-these-days side boobs), my batwing arms, my chubby belly, my thighs that haven’t gapped since I was eleven or twelve. I have to fight not to let those words overwhelm me and to keep reminding myself that what matters is to just keep moving and to draw strength from all of the ways I have already moved.)

I think it’s a rare woman who doesn’t have body issues.

So that woman writer (and I’m not linking or sharing her name, because if you want to read it you can google it), with her critical voice and her surety that no one of that size could run anywhere, that the answer to obesity is to “just stop eating sugar”—that woman is not solving any problems. She is creating more shame. And that is the opposite of what is needed by anyone with a body.

Especially women with bodies.

The point of the fat acceptance movement isn’t to encourage unhealthy weights. It is to help clear away the element of shame that is so wrapped up in weight.

We all feel that shame. (I am 100% certain that clearly, the writer herself feels shame, because otherwise, why bother? Why knock down instead of encouraging overweight women, unless the presence of an overweight woman in her exercise space is threatening to her in some way?)

We are all trying to overcome the shame and to embrace what is positive.

Exercise is positive.

Moving your body is positive.

Wearing something you love while you move your body is positive.

Whatever encourages healthier actions is positive.