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New! The Fit Fan
May. 26th, 2011 08:13 pmI’ve decided to launch a series of posts on what you, the humble fan, can do to be healthier.
Now around here, I dish out the cold, hard truth. In almost 20 years of socializing with fannish types, I’ve noticed that way too many of us do not take care of ourselves. Geez, I didn’t take too good care of myself for a long time. Since graduating from college years ago, I steadily packed on the lbs. I rarely weighed myself. When I “graduated” to a size 14-16 sometime during the 1990s, I thought they were just making clothes smaller. Occasionally, I would try to lose weight and sometimes I’d succeed dropping 10 pounds or something. But then I’d go right back to the same old bad habits. About 6 years ago, I was 175 pounds. Three years ago, I was 192 pounds. I was horrified. How did I get to be so fat?
You see, I wasn’t one of those people who sat around eating boxes of doughnuts or had Big Macs at every meal. I seldom drink regular soda. I don’t eat dessert all of the time. Compared to what some of my friends were eating, I looked like a health nut. What was I doing wrong?
Okay, I wasn’t all that active either. But I would do daily walks. I even used treadmills from time to time. What was the problem? I wondered if it was my fate to be fat, one of those things that happens to you as you approach middle age.
Then I figured out I had two problems: portion size and my not-too-healthy-after-all diet. Dinner for me used to consist of a heaping plate of whatever, along with bread and salad. No wonder I’d developed a “growing boy” appetite where I would get really hungry at meals. The other problem was I was eating high-calorie, high-salt, high-sugar, high-fat crap all of the time without realizing it. I don’t blame fandom exclusively, but during the 2000s, when there were a lot of food tie-ins with the prequels and Clone Wars, I ate all kinds of things that did not do wonders for the waistline. Or in my case the caboose. And when I was out and about with friends, we’d inevitably go to some fast food joint or some variation of Applebee’s, Chili’s, Outback, or Ruby Tuesday’s. Going to see the movies, I’d eat popcorn, nachos, or those big movie box sizes of Junior Mints.
If I went to fannish parties or club meetings, there would inevitably be piles of the fattiest, saltiest, sweetest food you could find. Fans LOVE that stuff. When I went to a party once, I brought a big box of Popeye’s fried chicken...I was the most popular girl in the room. Conventions? More junk food, chain restaurant food, and evil snacks.
A few months after I started losing weight, I came across the website Eat This, Not That and the corresponding book. I couldn’t believe what I’d been putting into me all of these years. The average person needs 2000 calories a day to stay the same weight. Depending on your age, your sex, your height, and the amount of activity, that number could be higher…or lower. It’s very easy to go over that amount if you’re not careful and I was shocked to see that some things I had been eating were about 1000 calories in one fell swoop.
So what I am going to do is share secrets that will help you avoid back problems, knee problems, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes by leading a better lifestyle. And it’s really not all that hard. You don’t have to join a gym or make your life too crazy. Trust me.
Now around here, I dish out the cold, hard truth. In almost 20 years of socializing with fannish types, I’ve noticed that way too many of us do not take care of ourselves. Geez, I didn’t take too good care of myself for a long time. Since graduating from college years ago, I steadily packed on the lbs. I rarely weighed myself. When I “graduated” to a size 14-16 sometime during the 1990s, I thought they were just making clothes smaller. Occasionally, I would try to lose weight and sometimes I’d succeed dropping 10 pounds or something. But then I’d go right back to the same old bad habits. About 6 years ago, I was 175 pounds. Three years ago, I was 192 pounds. I was horrified. How did I get to be so fat?
You see, I wasn’t one of those people who sat around eating boxes of doughnuts or had Big Macs at every meal. I seldom drink regular soda. I don’t eat dessert all of the time. Compared to what some of my friends were eating, I looked like a health nut. What was I doing wrong?
Okay, I wasn’t all that active either. But I would do daily walks. I even used treadmills from time to time. What was the problem? I wondered if it was my fate to be fat, one of those things that happens to you as you approach middle age.
Then I figured out I had two problems: portion size and my not-too-healthy-after-all diet. Dinner for me used to consist of a heaping plate of whatever, along with bread and salad. No wonder I’d developed a “growing boy” appetite where I would get really hungry at meals. The other problem was I was eating high-calorie, high-salt, high-sugar, high-fat crap all of the time without realizing it. I don’t blame fandom exclusively, but during the 2000s, when there were a lot of food tie-ins with the prequels and Clone Wars, I ate all kinds of things that did not do wonders for the waistline. Or in my case the caboose. And when I was out and about with friends, we’d inevitably go to some fast food joint or some variation of Applebee’s, Chili’s, Outback, or Ruby Tuesday’s. Going to see the movies, I’d eat popcorn, nachos, or those big movie box sizes of Junior Mints.
If I went to fannish parties or club meetings, there would inevitably be piles of the fattiest, saltiest, sweetest food you could find. Fans LOVE that stuff. When I went to a party once, I brought a big box of Popeye’s fried chicken...I was the most popular girl in the room. Conventions? More junk food, chain restaurant food, and evil snacks.
A few months after I started losing weight, I came across the website Eat This, Not That and the corresponding book. I couldn’t believe what I’d been putting into me all of these years. The average person needs 2000 calories a day to stay the same weight. Depending on your age, your sex, your height, and the amount of activity, that number could be higher…or lower. It’s very easy to go over that amount if you’re not careful and I was shocked to see that some things I had been eating were about 1000 calories in one fell swoop.
So what I am going to do is share secrets that will help you avoid back problems, knee problems, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes by leading a better lifestyle. And it’s really not all that hard. You don’t have to join a gym or make your life too crazy. Trust me.
