My Plan For Health

From Shelly Dembe's Web site, A Healthier Balance

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

This blog has given me a lot to be thankful for. I’ve learned that I can make changes in my life at age 39 that make me feel better and help me enjoy life more. I’ve discovered that there are many resources at Ohio State to help me accomplish my goals.  I’ve had the chance to write about health and fitness for the first time in years. And I’ve enjoyed the support of so many people across campus — including those who notice when I don’t post updates for a while. For that I am thankful indeed!

But this year, the thing that I am most thankful for is dancing.

I’ve been studying belly dance at Habeeba’s in Grandview, and yoga dance at Ohio State through Lunch & Learn. The classes are very different — Habeeba’s technique is very controlled, while yoga dance is about moving however your spirit takes you.

Habeeba's dancers at the Upper Arlington Labor Day Arts Festival 2009

Yoga dance teacher Shelly Dembe, RN, tells us to “move like no one is watching.” There is just something about Shelly. She can get a roomful of self-conscious people to open up and dance as if we’ve been doing so all our lives. Her class is the most fun I’ve had since kindergarten.

“Think about how you felt when you got here,” she said to me after class, “and how you feel now. That’s what it’s all about.” She’s right — I always arrive tense from the office, and leave relaxed and buoyant.

Belly dancing has been a different experience. The class has been difficult, and I must have quit and unquit dozens of times early on. Now I love it and can’t imagine not doing it.

Me dancing on stage after the show. It's the shades that make the look.

I worked backstage at a Habeeba’s performance at the Upper Arlington Labor Day Arts Festival, and one of my teachers even pulled me onto the stage afterwards. More recently, after we’d just finished learning a new move in class, teacher Sharon Buhrts got me to think about how far I’ve come. “When you got here, you were afraid to move your arms,” she said, “and now look at you!”

I turned to Susan Van Pelt Petry, professor and chair of the Department of Dance at Ohio State, for an academic perspective on all this fun I’ve been having. The following text is from our email Q&A.

Enjoy, everyone, and have a healthy and happy Thanksgiving. Dance with those you love — to burn some holiday calories, and let your spirit soar.

PFG: Do you have any advice for people who are pursuing dance for fitness, such as myself?

Susan Van Pelt Petry

SVPP: Find a teacher who has some dance credentials - either a degree in dance, professional experience, membership in a professional dance organization, etc. Notice if the teacher communicates instruction about movement with clarity and anatomical awareness. They should be able to address things such as how to protect knee joints, how to develop core strength so the back is not at risk of injury, and how to pace a class for appropriate levels of muscle fatigue, stamina building, warmth, and flexibility.

A dance class should have an aesthetic component – it is an art form and one of the reasons it can be an attractive way to “exercise” is that it has that very quality of the mind that makes moving a pleasurable, engaging activity, and not just something to check off your list. Seek an experience where you feel the quality of your body and moving changes, where there are sensations of lightness, resistance, speed, etc. and not just the making of exterior “shape.”

PFG: I am taking two dance classes right now — belly dancing and yoga dance. The form of belly dance I’m studying is Habeeba’s, which is largely based on ballet, and thus very structured and controlled (and up on our toes!). The yoga dance is unstructured, freeform. I enjoy both very much! Can you tell me — what different benefits might I gain from the structured dance versus the unstructured?

SVPP: More structured classes teach dance “vocabulary” and instruct in the building blocks of a style. Often the style will have a cultural or historical context and that can be a very interesting and satisfying experience. In a more structured class one might be able to assess one’s progress quite clearly, as skills get added as you progress through movement sequences. In a less structured class, such as an improvisation group, or some forms of modern dance, or hybrid styles such as “yoga dance,” you have the advantage of learning more perhaps about yourself and you learn how to observe your movement from inside and not from outside instruction. In a less structured class there is often a higher degree of creativity, and that can be very fun. There might be less physical rigor as it is more self-driven.

PFG: Dancing is uplifting, psychologically. For instance, I’m more confident and I don’t mind wearing more revealing clothing (especially while I’m belly dancing — it helps me see my moves in the mirror, right?). The yoga dance is uplifting because it’s just wild and crazy and fun. Would you have any comment about how dance has been uplifting for you personally? Do you find that many people (dilettantes such as myself) get this kind of emotional boost from dancing?

SVPP: Absolutely! Very uplifting. Dancers even joke they get addicted to it…. And there are studies that show there is real brain chemistry that changes as exercise, music, and expression conjoin for powerful rise of seratonin levels. I am at my desk a lot more these days, and I do feel fundamentally somewhat diminished without dancing as much as I used to.

I've updated my data page.

It’s the start of a new quarter, so I wanted to post an update on how my health is evolving. You’ll see a review of summer quarter on my data page.

The good news is, I’ve lost 17 pounds so far this year.

The (bad? neutral? other?) news is that I lied about how much I weighed when I started this venture.

Well, maybe not lied in the strictest sense. If I may reveal my Catholic upbringing for a moment, I would tell you that it wasn’t a lie of commission so much as a lie of omission.

The truth is, I didn’t know exactly how much I weighed when I started, because I didn’t want to know. I guessed 240 lbs. as a ballpark figure.

So when I weighed in at 231 lbs. at a checkup last month, I thought I’d lost 9 lbs. in total. Not bad, but not as much as I wanted for 9 months work. Then my doctor congratulated me on losing 17 lbs. and asked me how I did it. I didn’t believe her at first, so she turned her computer monitor to me and showed me my chart. I weighed 248 lbs. in January (a weigh-in in which I distinctly remember looking away from the scale and sort of humming to myself, while asking the nurse not to tell me the number) and 231 lbs. in September.

So then I had the conundrum of wanting to brag about losing 17 lbs., but having to admit that I was 248 lbs. at the start.

Here it is, out on the table. I lied. Lied lied lied. There you have it.

Other changes are afoot… Though my weight has stayed the same since last month, my clothes are still getting looser, so I think (hope) that maybe my body composition is changing. People keep telling me that I look slimmer, but I’m not certain whether they are just saying that. This morning my husband told me I look “more hourglass-y,” which is a good thing.

I know that I would probably get healthier faster if I changed my eating habits, which I have not done at all this year. I’ve just been working out a lot and hoping for the best. Steven Devor, associate professor of exercise science, offered to give me a little nutritional counseling some time ago — and I’m aware of formal nutritional counseling programs at Ohio State — but I’m having trouble getting past the “I don’t want to” hurdle.

C’est la vie.

Marblehead Lighthouse

I just got back from vacation in Lakeside Marblehead — a week of swimming, shopping, walking the shoreline and watching the surf.

We stayed in a resort on Sandusky Bay, and I enjoyed a spa package — a pedicure and my first-ever massage. The pedicure was excellent, and I was certain after the massage that the world was a bright, happy place and I was impervious to all evil.

Ommmmm.....ommmmm....

My thoughts did occasionally turn to work, and I felt a little stressed about falling behind at the office, but by the end of the week I think I had finally relaxed. It took a while to break out of my old mental patterns and actually feel like I was on vacation, you know?

What do you think? Do I look relaxed? My husband Bill took this photo one afternoon as we sat on the shore at Marblehead Lighthouse.

Everybody needs time away from work once in a while. Stress has very negative effects on the body. Ohio State researchers have shown, for instance, that stress slows the body’s ability to heal and even makes allergy attacks worse. That’s why, when I took the PHA test, WebMD advised me to lower stress for overall health.

In case you’re wondering why I look so blissed out above, here’s the video of what I was looking at (when my eyes were open, anyway). Video courtesy of Bill Gorder.

Click on the image to see a QuickTime movie of the waves at Marblehead Lighthouse

[Thanks to commenter Shaheen for the title to this post.]

I was very interested in Chris Mooney’s latest post in the Discover Magazine blog, The Intersection. He points to a review of the recent AAAS panel on science and the media, in which he commented on the current state of science blogging.

Chris Mooney's blog at Discover Magazine

While there are lots of science blogs out there, Mooney feels that the content is skewed toward polemics, with too many writers focusing on debate rather than offering verifiable science. There’s no “Cosmos” in science blogging, he says.

When I started this blog, I promised to apply the same criteria to my postings as I do to the rest of my science writing. Whenever possible, I interview experts from the OSU faculty and staff to explain the science behind fitness.

Judging by the reactions I’m receiving from colleagues around campus, I think I’m succeeding. The word I keep hearing is “analytical,” as in, “Wow, your blog is really analytical.” Even my FSFP water aerobics instructor Ya Ting commented during class, as she bobbed up and down in the water: “Pam is writing a fitness blog… It’s very analytical.”

My EKG, during a fitness test

Since fitness is just applied science, and my intended audience is the university community, I’m not sure why people find it notable that this blog is so factual. If anything, this kind of writing feels less factual to me, because I add my opinion and personal experience, and make occasional attempts at humor.

As long as people keep reading, and keep learning something about science, I’m going to keep writing this blog. With the wide variety of research done on this campus every day, I’ll never run out of topics to cover.

Mooney’s assertion — which I’m inclined to believe, given his expertise in this area — makes me feel pretty lucky. My job as a university science writer gives me the chance to blog about science as much as I want. I have a host of researchers to inform me and keep me honest. And, on a personal note, I see no better place to pursue fitness than a leading research university. All the answers I need are here.

I believe in the academy, and science will set me free!

Things I learned from reading the Lantern today:

1. I am a researcher! (I’m not. I’m a science writer. I write *about* research.)

2. Making time to exercise despite a busy work schedule is something that I have mastered! (Alright! I like the sound of that.)

3. I am perhaps not losing weight because I am not following one consistent fitness program. (Hmm. Gonna have to talk to Rebecca about that one.)

4. When trying to think of a word for “fat” that starts with a “b,” the best the headline writer could come up with is “brawn.”

Brains and… Brawn? Brains and a Broad, maybe. Or how about Brains and Booty? Brains and…?

My vision board. Click for full-size PDF.

I love my vision board!

Last night’s Lifelong Learning class was fun. The instructor, Melissa Lawson of Joyful Living Life Coaching, led us in a guided meditation in which we visualized our “true selves.” While my classmates and I were all there for different reasons, this was a general-purpose meditation that helped us all zero in on changes we wanted to make in our lives.

I saw myself in an Italian villa on the sea. The house was bathed in sunlight, and bedecked inside and out with things that I made myself. I saw colorful abstract frescoes that I had painted, and a blanket that I had crocheted. And lots and lots of books. When I saw myself in the house, I was making jewelry at first, and then writing, and then making jewelry again. I went back and forth between these two activities whenever I felt like it. And I was happy and laughing a lot. I suppose I *was* fit, but only as an afterthought.

So I decided that my vision board should depict the balance that I would like to see in my life: good food, lots of fun exercise, less stress, and more creativity.

Melissa set us loose on boxes of magazines, and we clipped images and words that resonated with us. After some quick work with the glue stick, this is what I had.

At the end of class, we took turns committing to our life change by declaring it to the class and explaining what was on our vision board. Everybody clapped, and I have to say that it felt really good!

I’ve shown the board around the office, and everyone has pointed out that the two most striking images are naked women. I also inexplicably clipped the headlines “Drive like a pro” and “How to talk to difficult people.” Since this collage is supposed to help me visualize my goals, I guess I must aspire to get naked while driving like a pro and talking to difficult people.

Other themes include eating a balanced diet, reducing stress, and having fewer migraine headaches. Oh, yeah — and getting some exercise once in a while.

Materials for a vision board. (Photo by deb roby, via Flickr. Click on image to see larger.)

One of the advantages of working at Ohio State is that I get to hear about public classes offered by cities in the Columbus metropolitan area, such as Upper Arlington. I’ve signed up for an Upper Arlington Lifelong Learning class on making a vision board. (If you’ve never taken an Upper Arlington class before, here’s how to register online.)

A vision board is a poster that you make yourself, with inspirational pictures and quotes that help you visualize a goal and keep you motiviated.

Here’s the class description:

Vision Board: Visualize Your Future

with Melissa Lawson, Life Coach

Experience this engaging and powerful process and create a personal vision board enabling you to identify and define your dreams and goals and then visually represent them in a concrete and enlightening manner. Guided imagery is used to focus on your future self and pinpoint what it is you really want. Learn basic techniques to put together images, power words and quotes that inspire you. When your vision board is complete, you will be amazed at how accurately it reveals your true self. Take it home to hang in a spot where it can motivate you on a daily basis. This is a great class to take with a friend, spouse or partner. You can become accountability buddies by encouraging each other to keep moving forward toward your dreams, offering support if your vision starts to fade and celebrating your successes along the way.

I’ve never made one before, but the idea appeals to my crafty side. If I am going to harness all of my science writing skills toward living a healthier life, then it makes sense that I would use my creativity as a tool as well.

Class is Wednesday night; I will try to post a picture of my vision board on Thursday.