In two weeks I will be on my annual vacation in Vermont. I call it my week to live my life on my terms. I get in plenty of movement, eat whole local foods (i.e. local food co-op and farmer's markets), writing, read, and have significant alone time with my husband.
A few times I have attempted to climb Camel's Hump mountain which is a four mile trek going up. I'm not a big hiker and I don't have much practice. In previous years I've made it halfway which is a trek by itself.
My big exercise is swimming. I'll take the four mile swim over a four mile climb. However I feel it's necessary to make to get as far as I can on Camel's hump because I no longer want to be told I can't do it.
Fat people get a double standard when it comes to exercise. We are yelled at for not doing exercise and when we do, we’re told we are slow and clumsy. We essentially are told to lose weight before we dare exercise in public.
Julie Creffield, a UK blogger, wants to get more fat women running not to lose weight but to get fit but even she’s finding the double standard.
But after years of training, she still faces skepticism. She recently wrote for the Huffington Post about a visit to the doctor. She'd pulled a muscle, but he basically told her she was too fat to run. Now, medical pros generally advise working your way up to really intense exercise if you're heavier, but Creffield wasn't exactly a newbie. It's a handy illustration of how even somebody well-meaning can derail exercisers.
Of course no thin people ever suffer from sports injuries.
Her site: a Fat Girl's Guide to Running
We are not here to shame people into losing weight, no instead we are on a mission to simply get 1 million FAT women running.
So whatever your exercise: Walking, running, hiking, swimming. Don't let anyone tell you that you can't so it. Listen to your body, know your real limits and soar to whatever your top may be.
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