Cellulite, why weight loss cannot fix it and Barbie should NOT have it, and Peggy Emch’s Guide to Sexy Pregnancy
Cellulite only affects women. (!) Did you know that? I did not know that. I am ignorant about so many things about womanhood still! This fact was hammered home to me last week when I read the new (and arguably best) guide to primal pregnancy, Primal Moms Look Good Naked by long time primal blogger and new time friend (hooray!) Peggy Emch.
So what’s the deal with cellulite? This is some of what I learned from Peggy:
Cellulite is, in essence, not a condition of fat, per se, but rather the degeration of skin tissue such that “subcutaneous herniated fat starts to bulge through the connective tissue” of the skin.
Translation: cellulite occurs when the normal fat that lives beneath the skin pushes through the skin. This is enabled by the degeneration of skin tissue.
Nice.
Does losing weight help?
No, actually, not really. Cellulite is a problem of the integrity of the skin, not a problem of being overweight.
Cellulite is almost exclusively found in women and almost never found in men. When in men, it only shows up when they have feminized hormone problems. This is because thefemale hormones estrogen and progesterone cause a slight change in skin structure. Women’s skin has two important differences: 1) it is simply thinner around the buttocks and thighs than men’s is, which makes it easier for the fat that normally lives under the skin to push through to the surface. And 2) it has a different structure than men’s skin, which allows fat to more easily fit into pockets and move about.
Unfortunately, because cellulite is only found in women, and because it has become so common these days, many women see it as inevitable parts of life. In fact, there’s recently been some controversy in the media about body image, natural womanhood, and cellulite.
Demi Lovato, a celebrity of some sort — on one of Simon Cowell’s shows? — recently asserted that she’d like to own a Barbie that has cellulite. While I advocate self-love as much as the next raging feminist, I disagree with Lovato sharply. Lovato says
“Cellulite should be normalized. Many women have it and we are made to feel like it’s some sort of ailment that would go away if we were just better at being women.”
Well, actually, it kind of would go away if we just got better. If we healed.
(Emphasis on the kind-of — I have millions of bucketloads of sympathy for women who struggle with cellulite, I do. The whole point is only that I think it is reversible.)
I learned from Primal Moms Look Good Naked that cellulite is not inevitable, or at least Peggy thinks it isn’t. It isn’t a necessary part of aging from her perspective. It is, instead, the result of several different health problems. Contemporary diet and health has gotten so bad that women throw their hands up with regard to problems like cellulite and stretch marks and just go ahead and accept that they’ll be an inevitable part of their lives.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
What causes cellulite?
Peggy lists three specific causes.
1) Collagen degeneration. Collagen is the tissue responsible for skin’s firmness.
Collagen degeneration is, in turn, caused by a) toxic overload, b) nutrient defciencies, and c) cellular dehydration, three phenomena that often occur in tandem. ”Deficiencies lead to toxicity due to our organs’ impaired ability to eliminate toxins. It might not be easy to find a group of test subjects who don’t hae nutritional deficiencies, hormone imbalances, and a toxic liver all at the same time.” Complete protein, vitamin C, and zinc are some of the most imporant components of nutrient sufficiency for healthy collagen and skin. Re: cellular dehydration, I recommend checking out Peggy’s site or book to learn more about it. It’s complicated and fascinating, but the gist of it is that water is necessary for cells to thicken layers of the skin as well as to release clumps of fat from the skin cells.
Nutrient deficiency is why cellulite shows up in pregnant women. Pregnant women share nutrients with their babies, so if you struggle to have adequate nutrient stores, cellulite and other nutrition problems become harsh realities with the introduction of a fetus into your system.
2) Glycosaminoglycans.
Boy, that’s a mouthful if I’ve ever read one. Glycosaminoglycans are another molecule I just learned about and got to researching today. (You can read just about everything there is to know about glycosaminoglycans here.) According to Peggy, glycosaminoglycans are responsible for keeping cells in the skin hydrated. Some of the reasons for depletion are sugar, inflammatory foods, and also excess fluoride in water and diet. Another big one is estrogen dominance. You need more glycosaminoglycans to heal cellulite, and one of the best ways to do so is with bone broth.
3) Congested Lymph and Toxic Liver
The lymph and liver systems are our bodies’ detox systems. If they become overloaded, then toxins move into fat cells, and the fat cells get sick and crowded.
One helpful thing that Peggy does throughout this whole book is write a list in response to all of the problems she descirbes: “You might have this problem if….” This enables us to self-diagnose based on the symptoms we experience.
Peggy does that with all of the different cellulite problems, and then goes one to list strategies and discuss means by which to eliminate cellulite. It should come as no surprise that exercise, detox, and antioxidants are on the list of bonuses. Cellulite creams, Body warps, and other cosmetic procedures are also discussed.
Very cool stuff! Cellulite is nasty, but it’s not intractable! Liver, bone broth, high antioxidant diet, reduced inflammation, and hormone balance….
and none of our Barbies are going to have cellulite.
Not if women like Peggy and I can help it!
You can check out Primal Moms Look Good Naked here, or read about Peggy and all the amazing work she’s done in her own life and out in the world of primal mommyhood here.
Guest Post! An Emotionally Broken Uterus by Kate of Eat Recycle Repeat
The following is a guest post written by Kate of Eat, Cycle, Repeat. I love her stuff. I really can’t say anything more. I can say that I had no say whatsoever in the egregious compliments she pays me throughout this post. At her request I have left them in — but please know that I do so bashfully. :) She’s raw, open, loving, and, get this, has a quote at the top of her page:
“intuitive eating – find what makes you come alive.”
I don’t know if she sources that quote to the same place I do, but it resonates with one of my all time favorite quotes:
“Don’t think about what the world needs. Think about what makes you come alive, then go out and do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
This is Kate in her own words:
My name is Kate. My favorite food is Japanese sweet potatoes. I have an eccentric list of things I want to do to celebrate my life. My favorite kind of shopping is food shopping or buying sustainable, second-hand, or fair trade goods (usually kitchen related). I’m originally from Sherwood, Wisconsin, but I’ve lived in Boston, Dublin, Geneva, and now a little agricultural corner in Chiba, Japan. It is certainly interesting to eat a primal diet in a foreign country, but it is challenging, perspective-altering, and a fun way to grow. I put a lot of my time into preparing and eating great, nourishing food, but there are other areas of my life that need nourishment and stimulation as well.
Kate then lists happiness, community, emotional wellbeing, adventure, and using fear to grow as those areas — with beautfiul elaborations on each and the role they play in her life and the world.
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I’ve been doing every thing that feels right – intuitive and good. I’ve been honoring my body, acknowledging my emotions, shifting my mentality, and cultivating my spirituality. I dance. I laugh. I seek nourishment in all areas of my life.
I did a modified GAPS diet and Chris Kresser’s 30 Day Reset to heal my gut. I take two types of probiotics. I take magnesium for regular bowel movements (yeah, I’ve even started openly talking about poop). I eat an ancestral/paleo diet, avoiding phytoestrogens and all other foods that irritate my gut and immune system – nuts, eggs, seeds, nightshades, and ALL sweeteners, including some types of fruit. I did a 21 day sugar detox. I couldn’t sleep well so I added carbs back into my diet. I supplement according to a knowledgeable practitioner.
I took a few months off of hard exercise and only did yoga in order to give my adrenals some rest. I focused on calming sleep anxiety even though it meant gaining an extra 5 pounds over the winter. I started doing Crossfit in the spring, as well as sprint exercises. I still do yoga and stretching. I love moving my body.
All of these physical steps came a year after emotional healing. I addressed my sleep issues – improving my “sleep hygiene” and doing my best to be in bed early and prioritize & honor the healing, revitalizing process that is sleep. Since my brother introduced me to Paleo for Women last year and the genius that is Stefani, I’ve been working to acknowledge my emotions, actively practice loving myself, and have patience as I shift to new habits and new self-dialogue to move away from emotional eating.
I pursue a practice of nourishing my spirituality by being a steward of the environment, practicing vulnerability and advocating against shame, writing, learning, and meditating. Consciously, I was doing everything I knew I could to heal.
I do all these things – and then I realized that I STILL thought that I had a broken uterus.
Here is the honest to goodness truth of a knowledge bomb: No part of you is ever broken. That should not be your identity. Your disease, addiction, problems, concerns – none of that DEFINES you. You have the privilege of choosing what defines you. I may have Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, PCOS, and some other related issues, but that isn’t ME. I knew that, and my conscious brain believed it. Apparently my subconscious had other ideas.
I was walking to work one day and I felt some cramping in my lower abdomen. I figured it was my intestines, since those usually are complaining with either discomfort or downright pain when they need attention. And I thought, just for a second, is it cramps?! I realized I hadn’t felt anything in my uterus in a long time. I haven’t menstruated in about 4 years. I had a thought – it’s almost like things feel kind of dead in my womb.
This is not a fun thought. When I first found out I had PCOS three years ago, I was terrified. I thought that I would never have children and be barren and scarred for the rest of my life. I never thought there was a “cure”, or rather, a way to recover naturally from PCOS. Then my brother suggested a paleo diet, and I found Paleo for Women. Stefani’s work has helped me address a lot of emotional fears and resistance and learn to love myself again. She opened up a world for me that is crucial to physical repair – emotional healing.
So I thought I was aware. I thought I was addressing every possible aspect of my healing – emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual. But I still have some deep-rooted fears ~ things I was so afraid of I wouldn’t admit them to my conscious self. I’ve been doing a 30 Day Anti-Diet Challenge, and the previous evening we had been working on a guided meditation to access the wisdom and message of the subconscious. It didn’t appear right away, but when I was walking this message came to the surface: I was still afraid of not being enough. For all that I talk about shame awareness – I had a deeply held belief that I wasn’t woman enough because, right now, I can’t give someone, the world, a baby. I don’t want a baby at this point in my life, I just want to get my period. I want to be a part of that rite of womanhood that is as ancient and traditional as conscious life.
And all this fear got funneled down into the very core of my being – the part that gives and sustains life. My uterus needs more than just physical nourishment and hormonal balance – it needs acknowledgement, respect, and unconditional love, no matter what it’s abilities. It needs the same thing that I need as a person, that all people need.
One of the first intentions that changed the way I engaged with life, bringing me to a much healthier place now, is this: you deserve it. When I first heard it I started crying. It touched something in me faster than my brain could process the implications of what it meant. I had spent many years thinking I wasn’t (skinny/pretty/talented/athletic/smart/fill in the blank) enough. Once I realized that I did indeed deserve everything I wanted – love, positivity, health, relationships, joy, and more – making the healthier, more intuitive decisions came easier. It’s taken patience and more than a few mistakes, but each day keeps improving, and I have no desire to go back to what I used to do: emotional eating, negative self-talk, and spiritual disconnect.
I don’t have the complete answer on how to nourish my emotionally-stunted uterus. The lovely and not so lovely thing about the internet is we get to see all kinds of people having a whole bunch of success in healing, because they have found what is right for them. And I used to get jealous (I still get a little jealous) and wanted to do exactly what other people were doing, because I was desperate for something that worked. I had to learn to trust my body, which became much easier once it wasn’t hijacked by all the crazy, inflammatory, addictive substances that pass for “food”. I had to stop repressing emotions and learn how to feel through them safely and compassionately. I had to quit doing what I thought society dicatated I should do, and follow what fed my spirit. I learn and grow from my mistakes, and I trust the process that will eventually bring me to optimal health, even if the way is not always clear.
I do know that the answer begins at self-worth.
I deserve to feel like a woman. A sexy, radiant, fertile woman. It doesn’t matter that my hormones are imbalanced or conception is currently a physical challenge. It doesn’t make me any LESS of a person, especially one of the feminine persuasion. I am going to act as if I am already what I want to be – fertile and attractive, full of light and life.
Whatever your ailment, your “disorder”, your challenges – it doesn’t make you any less of a person. It has no impact on your self-worth, your ability to love and be loved, or your need for connection and joy in your life. That is what we deserve, and that is what we must demand for and respect of ourselves.
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Major thanks to Stefani Ruper, and all her glorious self-love hacks, ingenious PCOS Unlocked, evocative podcast, and generally being an awesome dancing fiend. Also to Liz Wolfe, for introducing me to the idea that fertility is an important marker for health.
Huge honors to Iris Higgins of Your Fairy Angel and her 30 Day Anti Diet Challenge – your meditations rock my world.
Inspiration came from Sean Croxton’s Sexy Back Summit and Nicole Daedone’s Orgasmic Meditation movement.
Gratitude for Brene Brown, Joe Johnson of Cancer Dudes Live More, the Psychology of Eating, and my parents and family for changing the way I engage with life and always supporting my truth.
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Have a food blog? A feminist blog? An ovaries blog? Feeling inspired and want to write a post? Shoot me an email at stefaniruper@paleoforwomen.com.
Guest Post by Alison Golden: On Art, Creativity and Using Your Talents to Improve Your Health and Your Life
“The seed of your next art work lies embedded in the imperfections of your current piece. Such imperfections (or mistakes, if you’re feeling particularly depressed about them today) are your guides — valuable, reliable, objective, non judgmental guides — to matters you need to reconsider or develop further.” ― David Bayles and Ted Orland, Art and Fear.
I write a blog. I also write books. And write about ghosts and ghostwrite for others.
Simply stated, I write. And write. And write.
It is a core skill of mine. One that I am in constant demand for. Because, it seems, no-one likes to write, or thinks they can write (which isn’t true, actually, many people are just fine writers).
Let’s go back a little
I already had a blog when I decided to eat the paleo way.
Naturally, I wrote now and again about paleo and what I thought of it, but The Secret Life of a Warrior Woman was more of a personal journal type blog and many of my readers weren’t paleo or interested in it.
Fair enough.
But when I wrote a blog entitled 27 Ways to Live With Your Non-Paleo Spouse, it got spread around the paleo-sphere in short order.
And I went, hmmm…
Too much
Someone suggested I start a blog about living paleo in a world that isn’t, but I already had far too much on my plate.
In addition to my blog and its’ various social media appendages, I had clients, and a family, and a transatlantic travel schedule that saw Virgin Atlantic cabin crew recognizing me on sight. I really didn’t need another blog.
But I have something of an ego and the demand to write another blog appealed to that part of me. But still, I’m old enough to know that ego-driven activities soon pale if there isn’t some other call to action.
I needed something more concrete to push me off the mat.
Doing paleo
People I knew in real life who weren’t paleo, but did read The Secret Life of a Warrior Woman, started asking me about it. I became known as someone who “does paleo”.
And I noticed a behavior change. Not in them, but me.
I upped my game. I became more committed to paleo. I thought about my choices more carefully. I said “no” more often.
I considered growing my own food.
I saw that perhaps there was a benefit to writing a blog on doing this paleo thing. For me. I saw that with more investment came more accountability, more knowledge, more commitment.
And she’s away!
So I set off, establishing a portfolio of writings that sought to stake out a corner of the paleo interweb that wasn’t being addressed: the corner that addresses behavior change, habit formation and transitions.
I also wanted to talk to people who more like me – who knew the “what” and the “why”, and who didn’t need more persuading, but who did want more on the “how”.
And those who’d never been inside a Crossfit box. Or got tatted up. Who weren’t interested in the paleo dramas, who just wanted to get on with it.
More and deep
Since then, I’ve gone to develop Paleo/NonPaleo beyond my wildest imaginings: thousands of subscribers; kudos, recommendations and well-received guest posts on respected blogs. A book. More clients. It’s all been quite spectacular.
But most of all, I’ve deepened my commitment to paleo. I’ve researched, tested and refined my approach to eating paleo in a non-paleo world.
I try things out on myself, then write about what I’ve learned. Or sometimes it works the other way around, and it is during writing and exploring my ideas that I hit on a new success strategy.
During this time, I’ve analyzed why we do the self-sabotaging things we do. I’ve studied habit formation, cholesterol in women, the importance of sleep.
I’ve shared my personal stories, brought forth rallying cries, coached, motivated (I hope!) and occasionally “told it like it is.”
I’m communicating with my readers, but I’m also communicating with myself.
Learning and solidifying
My thirteen-year-old twin sons are often put into “learning pairs” at school by their teachers. The teachers know that sharing what students have learned with one another strengthens the new teaching.
This is, in effect, what I have done with my blog, and I suggest we all do the same when we are developing a new passion, skill or set of habits.
Ask yourself:
What is your core talent? What do you enjoy doing in your spare time? What are you passionate about?
And then apply your talent to creating something to teach paleo concepts to others.
If you like to code, design an app to meet the needs of someone who is following a paleo lifestyle. If you like to present or entertain, get yourself a booking at a local venue to talk on the paleo diet. If you like to host parties, give your next one a paleo theme.
You can apply this idea to any realm – quilting, scrapbooking, sculpting, interior design, anything.
“Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use – do the work you want to see done.” ― Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative
Get creative and come up with an idea. Use your own skills to spread the paleo word and strengthen your own commitment and skills in the process.
Creativity occurs in the margins; where interest and inspiration overlap
When you produce your art, mix it up with something that illustrates paleo ideas. Combining my skill in writing with my desire to embed healthier eating habits into my life naturally led to a a blog on paleo living. What talent do you have that could be used to deepen your own commitment to, and teach others about, great health, individual responsibility and paleo?
Alison Golden writes on the topic of paleo over at Paleo/NonPaleo. She aims to share ideas, inspire and motivate readers by teaching them how to live paleo in a non-paleo world. She is also the author of the bestselling book, The Modern, No-Nonsense Guide to Paleo, a unique tool that gives the reader hundreds of strategies to navigate the learning process to successful paleo living.
My favorite and most personal podcast yet, on Finding Our Hunger by Kaila and Ito
I have fallen behind on my PfW blogging! There are so many things I have lined up for this week and next, but for some reason or another they continually keep falling off of my plate. I am en route to home in Detroit, Michigan to visit my family. Things keep coming up that trap me in Boston. And to-do’s, as I said, keep disappearing off of my to-do list. Maddening, that is.
Fortunately great things have happened in the meantime. Least of which being that I have made progress on The Book (!) to a significant degree, and I could not be more relieved to continually lighten that burden. Plus it’s turning into a lovely and exciting thing, and I cannot wait to share more details with you.
Unfortunately, I have let something as powerful as the most recent podcast I recorded go unshared, a fact that breaks my heart. This was my favorite podcast I have ever been on, possibly because I am an ego-maniac and it’s all about my soul, but also because I’m a few other things other than an ego-maniac and I think sharing these things is a powerful way to foster empowerment and love and a sense of fellowship in questing in our world.
Anyway. When I searched the podcast to put it up today, I found it and also the kindest thing anyone has ever said about me. Go here to read it (I am an ego-maniac, but not enough of one to post praise for me on my own blog, at least today), and also to download or stream the podcast. You can also get it on iTunes.
I met Kaila at Paleo fx, and we had that instant sort of resonance that told me I had found a hell of a gem, and in a woman I could relate to, too. It’s been an enormous honor to learn from her and to share this discussion with her, and I cannot wait until her work starts helping even more women and men than it is right now.
In this podcast, we discuss
-My struggles with lonesomeness and anxiety over the last several years
-What has helped me find peace with food
-How easy it is to use science to make us of fearful of any food
-Isolation in the modern world’s ideas of adulthood
-The panic attacks I started having about dying when I was four years old and how they’re related to my career as a philosopher, my sense of purpose, and my desperate compulsion to live as fully as possible
-How I wrestle with basing my sense of self worth on achievement
-Why I think “perfectionism” is the wrong word and “neuroticism” might be better
-Why writing this blog is so bad for me and I’m going to be done with it some day
“Don’t think about what the world needs. Think about what makes you come alive, and go out and do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
Debunking PMS TODAY in the Sexy Back Summit!
Ladies! Today’s my day up at bat in the Sexy Back Summit! Whoopah!
Listen to my free presentation on PMS called The Pre-Menstraul Myth: Causing, Debunking, and Overcoming PMS and learn:
*Why so much of what we think we know about PMS is wrong
*The complex biochemistry driving cravings, depression, and irritability
*How your diet directly impacts your ability to stay happy all month long
*What’s the deal with menstrual cramps?
*And the long list of things you can do to help make PMS a part of your past.
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It’s only available for free until 9am PST tomorrow (Thursday morning 5.23.13) — though if you miss it you can purchase it until the end of the week for 50 percent off — HERE!
Free now @ SexyBackRockstars.com!
50 percent off life long access @ Here!
The Sexy Back Summit is underway! The schedule, presentations, and more!
Last week I wrote about an amazing free conference being put together by Sean Croxton. You can register all week–jump into the fray whenever you can!–but every day that goes by without regisering, you’re missing out a hell of a lineup!
The free viewing period for each day’s presentations will begin at 9am PST and end at 9am PST the following morning.
Monday’s videos are already rolling. That gives you a full 24 hours to access each given day.
The line up of speakers from today forward is as follows (I’ve bolded my favorites!):
* Jane Bennett – Natural Birth Control Alternatives
* Reed Davis – Low T: Causes, Symptoms, and Solutions
* Dr. Dan Kalish – Get in the Mood, Stay in the Mood
* Chris Kresser – The Ovarian-Adrenal-Thyroid Axis
* Bridgit Danner – How to Make Super Sperm
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All of which is to say — there are some incredible presentations being available for free, andthen in the evenings there are free Q and A sessions with each speaker.
Mine will be on Thursday evening at 8pm EST!
Join me and thousands of other empowered women in developing intimacy with your body, loving your sexual self, and bringing joy and electricity naturally back to your sex life.
I love the hell out of this summit, and I just have a feeling that you will, too.
Click here or below to register for the Summit and you’ll get instant access to all of the free videos Sean posted last week in addition to the full summit this week.
The Invisible Demographic: Important, Respectable AND Sexy At Every Age?
When I first started writing this blog, I did so because I perceived a dearth in both the medical and the popular literature on women’s health, particularly with respect to evolutionary perspectives. We might talk all day along about insulin and obesity and heart disease. But what about ovaries? 50 percent of the population has them. Or what about depression, anxiety, acne, and gut dysbiosis, all conditions that affect women at much higher rates than men? What about the enormous burden and joy and giving birth? 3 million 999 thousand women in the United States do so every year. That’s 12,000 every day. We needed to talk about women, and we needed to do so fast.
BUT:
compared to women above the age of 45, reproductive women are virtually living in the limelight.
Much as I’ll malign contemporary health dialogues for neglecting the needs of reproductive women, post-reproductive women receive even less attention. But dealing with menopause — that’s even nastier for many women than dealing with PMS. Why do we give attention to one, but not to the other?
The answer is simple: women might be a pain in the ass, but at least the young ones are sexy. That’s what society would have us believe, anyway. Far more than we would like or that we would ever admit to, we reserve an enormous amount of a woman’s value based on her sex appeal. Squirm your own way out of it however you want. But it’s there, deep in your brain, I’d be willing to bet. We can’t help it — this is the product of hundreds of years of conditioning and billions of dollars in advertising every year. The value of a woman is skewed largely by her physicality (helllooo President Obama). It is skewed largely, then, by her youth. Largely by her reproductive fitness. Largely by her virginity, her potential, her sexual wiles.
This is evidenced most obviously by the film industry. From the Huffington Post:
A study released by USC’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism took a survey of the 4,342 characters in the top 100 grossing films of 2009 and compared it to results from the top films of 2007 and 2008. For women, nothing much has changed — in these top films, 33 percent of actors are female and 67 are male.
This means there are twice as many men in movies as women.
Only 17 percent of films are gender balanced, even though females make up half of the ticket-buying population.
Adding fuel to the fire, women are much more frequently sexualized when they appear on screen. They’re more likely to be seen in sexy clothing than men (25.8 percent to 4.7 percent – five times as much) and four times more likely to be partially naked (23.6 percent to 7.4 percent).
And then the proof, lying naking in the pudding: Teen girls feature in movies the most of all age groups. Women ages 21-39 are to be shown as sexy, or partially naked. Older women, aged 40-64, are a) less likely to be shown as attractive (3.8 percent) and b) less likely to be shown at all. Only 24 percent of all characters over the age of 40 are female.
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All of which is to say: I don’t have an easy answer.
How do we give older women the respect and love and attention they deserve? How do we convince the rest of society to do the same?
De-objectifying women is the most important thing we can do in this case. It will be the biggest help, if the most entrenched battle. The more valuable women are for skills and personality, the less we will rank women based on physical appearance and sex appeal. The more these non-physical values are emphasized, the more and more older women will find definition, liberation, and empowerment in all of the non-physical valuable traits they contribute to the world. Right? This is how it is supposed to work for all of us, in any case.
Someday we’ll get there. We’re getting there.
I think film is a wonderful way to help us think about this issue and to identify the problems in our own brains. Why are there virtually no films about or featuring older women? Why are there films about older men? How might we be able to combine and blur those lines? If older roles are usually reserved for executives, mob bosses, and the like — well, women can do that every bit as well as men, can they not?
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Another aspect of it is the expansion of sex appeal. Don’t get me wrong — I don’t want any woman to be an object. In fact, I don’t want any people to be objects. Period. Ever. Obviously. But I also want all people to be embodied and empowered in their own sex appeal. Just because a woman has wrinkles does not mean she is not sexy, people! What the hell! Certainly, she may be out of fantasy range for most young adult males and females. But that does not mean that she is a desexualized, de-feminized being.
Get the hell out of here. The idea is unreal. But we do it, don’t we? We see and enable men living into sexual roles well into older age — we do it all of the time. I’d leap into bed with George Clooney at the drop of a hat — who wouldn’t? But what of Meryl Streep? Helen Mirren? The idea is less automatically appealing. The sexuality of older women is egregiously overlooked and discouraged. I shall not stand for it!
Huzzah! This is a part of the revolution we can do ourselves. As a community of women of all ages, we can reinvigorate our own sexuality however we see fit. We can live into it. We can be natural women — not sexy because we have botox and the ridiculous like — but sexy because we are precisely our menopausal age and yes I have hot flashes sometimes and no my vagina does not unleash a daily cascade of lubrication, but I have been a woman for a damn long time and I know exactly how to own my natral body and to live in it and to love it and to use it for physical pleasure.*
And we can be more than sexual beings at all times of our lives! We always have value — enormous value. We are smart and productive and empathetic and talented and all of that other fancy crap.
Rawr, ladies. Rawr!
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*At least I imagine these are ideas that helpful to think, 40 years down the road. Please share your thoughts and tell me what feels good for you. I’m rather guessing, here, and acknowledge that openly. The whole point being — let us not forget the embodied, sexual power nor the inherent asexual dignity of women at all ages.
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Finally — seize your sexuality with me! Join our community in saying yes to sexuality and yes to our positive relationships to our bodies. Sign up for the series of free natural sexual health videos here.
One week after the magnesium miracle: Ca/Mg balance, Epsom Salts, what happened to me, and how am I doing?
On Saturday of last week I had a pivotal moment. Lying on my bed, exhausted, exhausted of being exhausted, weak, with a racing heart and chest pain, I had to get up and go to a party. I didn’t want to. I couldn’t stand the idea of making myself do that. But then I took a step back and looked at the larger picture. This was the millionth time I had done this in the last eighteen months, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try again. (Go here for the science behind it all.)
Looking at the pieces of my life and diet, it clicked into making sense in a way that it hadn’t ever before. There was no magnesium in my current diet (I had given up on greens in an effort to reduce my fiber intake). I had enormous salt cravings. The further in time I got from the time I removed greens in my diet, and the more stress I was under, the more salt I craved. In January of 2012, when the anxiety first started, I had also first started taking Spironolactone, a diuretic that flushes magnesium from the body. I have had the poorest sleep of my life in the last eighteen months. There were a million different ways to tell the story of my health, but this was one of them. I thought: why not try some magnesium and see if it helps?
It did. Almost instantaneously I felt better. My brain no longer felt frayed. My heart stopped racing. Magnesium is important for supporting the contraction of heart muscles, and it also is one of the key players (if not the key player) in turning off the firing of nerve cells. Things got quiet in my body. And they no longer felt exhausted. They just felt… normal… and for the first time in longer than I could remember.
My brain was quiet. I wanted to weep with relief, but I was too awe-struck to do so.
In the last eighteen months, I have of course experienced some normalcy. I have been able to hold onto who I am, and I have been able to act and to live and to do things that I would have done ordinarily. I published a book, I started a blog, I went to school and wrote papers. I met men and women and slept with them. I went out dancing. I laughed. But all of it was just. so. hard. to. do.
The world was no longer naturally rosy the way it had been in my first couple of decades. I had to struggle every day to be as grateful as I always had been. I had to fight to be happy. I had to start seeing two therapists and to have long, drawn out conversations with my friends and family members (to whom I am infinitely indebted) in order to calm down all of the anxious thoughts running through my head. I checked myself into the hospital one time because my heart was racing so fast. It was an absurd and terrifying time. What was wrong with me? Was there something physiologically wrong with me, or was it a psychological problem? Was it both? How long was this going to take? Was I ever going to get better? Or was I forever condemned to life being so fucking hard all of the god damned time?
I have no idea what started the whole thing. Maybe it was in fact the spironolactone (which I stopped taking in June of 2012). Maybe it was 24 years of chronic stress. Maybe it was the insomnia that’s plagued me my whole life. That doesn’t really matter, however. What matters is that it happened. I now know intimately how painful mental illness can be, how devastating life is when your brain and body aren’t working properly, how scary everything is when nothing seems to be under your control or going according to plan.
I’ll never be able to change that. Whether or not Spiro played a role in my problem, my brain learned how to be anxious. I can still fall into those traps. I can still wlak right back to the horrible questioning and pain that I often fell into in those past 18 months. I am no longer actively fighting to resist those traps, but they are still present in my mind.
A week after my “miracle” I am feeling the same. I have managed to maintain a sense of wellness. Do I have trust in it yet? No. That is going to take serious time. There have been many different occasions over the last eightteen months in which I have thought I found the answer, that I was “cured” or “better” or at least “released.” None of them brought me any sense of permanent relief. I only edged more into wellness slowly, and then often falling backwards after a stressful event.
A week after my “miracle” I have also learned some things. Three days ago, I began having anxiety again, the kind that crops up with easy decisions and is enormously puzzling for that fact. My heart was racing standing in the Whole Foods aisle: which coconut oil do I get, the unrefined or the refined? These are the kinds of questions that have regularly sent me into fits of panic over the last several months.
The next day I woke with anxiety again. And my acne had sprung back to life over night. Over the past week, I had hypothesized that perhaps the magnesium was helping my acne (which has returned with a vengeance prior to my ‘miracle’). It sure seemed like it. I didn’t get any new cysts in the magnesium time and my scar tissue was healing. My thought was that the magnesium was now facilitating the uptake of vitamin A and D into my skin, which is crucial for skin health, as well as calming my adrenals, regulating hormone output, and also fighting calcium, which has the ability to calcify soft tissues — something I think has been happening in the dermis layer of my skin.
Remarkable, right?
So anyway. My anxiety and my acne came back. What happened? Was the magnesium miracle a fake? Did it not have any long term consequences? Was the problem really all in my brain all along?
As I was pacing outside my house and kicking loose bricks in the sidewalk, I had an idea: I had added seaweed to my diet in higher quantities in the last couple of days in order to offset any iodine or thyroid imbalances I might get from eating greens. I also thought the iodine would just be good for my thyroid in general. Maybe seaweed has calcium in it? If that’s the case, then I would cut seaweed from my diet and see if I went back to the blissful, relaxed state I had achieved over the previous week.
I went online, googled seaweed, and found out it’s the densest source of calcium in the human diet…bar none. It has “eight to ten’ times as much calcium as a glass of milk! I slammed down magnesium pill after magnesium pill yesterday and got better, if marginally. It would be a while before balance could be restored.
In order to really ramp up my recovery, I decided to take an Epsom Salt bath. I was a bit skeptical and nervous about it going in, but oh my god, ladies.
Seriously. My God.
Epsom Salts deserve a post all their own.
When I first got in the bath (epsom salts are 100 percent magnesium sulfate — put a cup or two of it in the tub with you), I laid there for a while and promised myself I’d stay in for 15 minutes. I played mind games to keep myself from getting too bored, even though I kept thinking about all the things I wanted to get up and do. When can I get out? I kept thinking. How long do I have to stay here to see if there’s be any effects?
Then it hit me. Somewhere in there, my body got the message, and it started sending an even stronger one back: “Stay the hell in this tub, woman!” it kept shouting at me. My limbs became listless. My brain, free. Something very strong inside of me really wanted me to stay in there. I re-filled the tub two more times. I emerged my whole face. My acne stopped aching. The swelling went away. The bumps on my face began to disappear.
At 11:46 pm I finally got myself out of the tub. That means I had been in there for one hour and twenty minutes.
My whole life, I have had a sore, tight neck and back that has given me countless headaches. For the first time that I can ever remember, I went to stretch my muscles after the bath, and I felt nothing. My body has never been more loose in my entire life. I can’t believe people pay hundreds of dollars for massages. One cup of Epsom Salts costs about 97 cents.
I wanted to call my brother and tell him to stop smoking pot and just start taking Epsom baths. But I was too relaxed to pick up the phone.
Later, as I was walking through the house, I tripped on my computer cord and almost knocked the computer off the table. Did my adrenaline spike? Nope. Did my heart jump a beat? Nope. Just a slow and steady thump thump thump.
All of which is to say, six million thumbs up for Epsom salts.
Today, I do not have anxiety, I do not have chest pain, and my heart is not racing. Seems like the magnesium/calcium balance really is important for my health, and that I have a long way to go for restoration.
I have also been doing some reading on magnesium and inflammation. Turns out — as it goes for many things — magnesium is crucial in this regard. This is probably why it’s been so helpful for my acne. When I take the Epsom baths, scar tissue all over my body heals. Magnesium is also an important factor in the use of calcium, vitamin D, vitamin A, and vitamin K. I’ve been eating liver and salmon like it’s my job — but what good is it doing me if I don’t have the magnesium necessary to process it?
There will probably be a lot more troubleshooting moving ahead. While I don’t have anxiety this afternoon, I did feel my heart race this morning when I logged on to OkCupid. (My heart didn’t race when I got a call at 11am today about thousands of dollars of debit card fraud, but being ignored by an attractive individual? What this says about me I do not even want to think about). Clearly psychological problems will always be able to affect my physiological state. This is the case for all of us, for all of humanity, for all of time. We can’t escape it.
I also know that magnesium is not a miracle. It does not obviously fix everything. This is a lesson I learned the hard way. I was so excited about it when I first discovered how good it was for my anxiety that I thought it really would fix everything. Turns out I still have trouble sleeping, and, just like OkCupid, that probably has a whole lot to do with the stress in my life. Magnesium can help me deal with the stress, but it cannot make it go away.
Magnesium is a big part of the journey for me. I couldn’t recommend experimenting with it more highly, especially for people who are stressed, worry, or sleep poorly. Therapy will remain a part of that journey. And patience, and healing, and forgiveness. I cannot panic if things aren’t perfect, if they don’t feel good, if I feel unsettled, if I don’t sleep, if my menstrual cycles don’t become regular, if I don’t regain my ravenous libido. Like I said, that’s a part of being human.
I now know, however, that it doesn’t have to be horrible. That I can experience specific events of stress and react to them with my adrenal glands firing away, and then go back to normal. Go back to being excited about being alive. Go back to gratitude. Go back to a life without fear and without panic. Go back to losing sleep without panicking. Go back to being confident and ambitious and proud and kicking ass left and right in all of my endeavors. It’ll take a long time to figure out the shape of all of this in my life and to continue to learn how to have faith in myself and my body. But that’s the name of the game these days. This is a fact of life that I am happy to live with.
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Oh, yeah. Don’t forget about the free Sexy Back Summit — talks by 24 sex experts such as Chris Kresser, Dr Kalish, Dave Asprey (and me!) on sex and sexual health. Free videos are being released all this week, and the real nitty gritty of vaginal health, sex drive, hormones, and doin’ it all goes down starting May 19th.
Join me in empowering your natural body, in loving your physicality, and in owning and exalting your sexual prowress. I couldn’t love or recommend this summit more highly. It has incredible power to inform us, to strengthen us, and to help us on our journeys towards proud and vibrant womanhood. I love it, and I think you will, too.
Join me in empowering our natural womanhood this week– And the feminist cat
I recently posted about Sean Croxton’s upcoming Sexy Back Summit, which will by all accounts be EPIC.
It’s a great resource, and for that reason, so many health advocates are participating in it, and so many people are doing their best to share it. This is awesome. But are we different? I think we kind of are. I feel personally invested in it. This feels important and like a great opportunity for us specifically.
The reason I am writing this post is because this event hits home for our community in a way that it doesn’t for any other health community that I can think of. There are a lot of people expected to “attend” this summit. This summit is about sexual health, however. For that reason, for us, it is also about unapologetic sexuality, about reclaiming your libido, and about loving your natural body as a physical and sexual body.
It’s about being intimate with your whole body. It’s about getting to know your sexual self. And it’s about liberating yourself from whatever diet, lifestyle, social, and psychological roadblocks that might be in the way of your embodied and empowered womanhood.
I am writing this post because because I believe in nothing more than the power of women to own our own identities and to exalt in our natural bodies.
I am writing this post because I believe in our community, and I believe in what we are doing over at the paleo for women rag tag community website thing.
I am writing this post because I hope you will seriously consider joining me in exploring your sexuality next week, whether you choose to watch one talk or all twenty four.
Join us as we reclaim the gifts of our natural womanhood. Join us as we deepen our relationships with our bodies. Join us as we rise up in fierce pride, and represent the glory of our community at this Summit.
There will be lots of people involved in this Summit, and I want our voice to be — if not the biggest voice — then the most powerful, and the most proud.
To learn more and join the Summit as a part of the Evolutionary Health, Revolutionary Womanhood movement, click here: http://sexybackrockstars.com.
It’s a FREE conference. There is no better time to do this for yourself. No time like the present, no body or life or love or exultation more important than your own.
It’s our time, and I believe in us. I know it may sound silly — a sexual health summit? Why does she care so much? But it’s free and empowering and I just can’t think of anything more beautiful right now, I just can’t.
Or as FUN, obviously. Feminist cat thinks so, too. And the feminist cat is always right.
http://sexybackrockstars.com.
You’ll be pleased.
Broken bodies, broken trust
The following post was written in a time of great distress for me. In particular, I wrote it before I figured out I was suffering from a severe magnesium deficiency, which caused anxiety, heart palpitations, chest pain, insomnia, fatigue, joint pain, and exhaustion. While the despairing parts of this post have not followed me into my mental health and more stable life, I think this remains a powerful post that speaks about important issues of healing and wellness. Perhaps most importantly of all, I get positive and inspirational and kick-ass-y again at the end. Huzzah!
See here for my post on magnesium and a bit on my own experience. I’ll write more about that in a bit.
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When I was 21 years old, my body betrayed me for the first time. It seemed like no big deal back then. Can’t have babies? Low hormone levels? No problem. At least I can focus properly on taking my finals.
In retrospect, this has been one of the most disrupting psychological changes that has ever happened to me.
As small as my own health issues are, I don’t trust my body anymore. Is it still “broken’? Yes. My acne comes back in pernicious waves. My menstrual cycle winks in and out of existence. I never sleep a full eight hours, waking in the middle of the night needing to eat and meditate. My heart races with even the smallest decisions because my adrenal glands pump out adrenaline like its their job.
Is it ‘better’? Yes. But I do trust it?
No. Not by a long shot. Along with the knowledge of what happened to and is happening in my body, I also now firmly believe that the way we treat our bodies is supremely important. This makes the betrayal sting all the more. As I move forward with my healing, doing what I’m “supposed to do” rarely makes a difference in the way that I’d like it to. ”I’m doing my best, god damnit, what does this thing want from me?” Much as I write on this blog about positivity and patience and progress and loving change over time and all that crap, on very many days I walk around with a frusrated desperation that compels me to kick things more than hug them.
My body broke, and partly because I killed her. Sure, she had her own issues, her own genetic programming. But I ate the wrong things, I exercised the wrong ways, I starved myself. I was trying to do the right thing, and I failed. I can’t trust myself, I can’t trust my body to save me from myself, and now that I am healing, I struggle every single day to find trust in both of us. We broke. We fixed ourselves a bit. But we are nowhere close to “done.” And even if we ever get there, I don’t know how long it’ll take to trust us again.
The dominant theme of 2012 and 2013 for me has been loss of innocence. While I ‘broke’ my body in 2009, I ‘broke’ my brain in 2012. That’s a story for another time, and I’ll share it with you if it’s ever relevant, but take my word for it for now, that that has been every bit as if not more disillusioning than breaking my body. No longer do I believe life is easy. No longer is everything under my control. No longer do I trust my body, and no longer do I trust my brain. People tell me the trust comes inching back over time. It might not ever be perfect, but it does come back, they say. I don’t know. That seems a long way off.
As a part of my work as a philosopher, last week I was reading about people’s existential wrestling with suffering, and I came across this sentence by ethnographer Arthur Kleinman:
A closely related feeling is grief and wretchedness over loss of health, a mourning for the bodily foundation of daily behavior and self confidence. The fidelity of our bodies is so basic that we never think of it–it is the certain ground of our daily experience. Chronic illness is a betrayal of that fundamental trust. We feel under siege: untrusting, resentful of uncertainy, lost. Life becomes a working out of sentiments that follow closely from this corporeal betrayal: confusion, shock, anger, jealousy, despair.
To which I could only say: Amen, Dr. Kleinman.
Much of my struggle in 2012 and 2013 has been dealing with anxiety, and I think a big part of that anxiety comes from this loss of trust. I question everything I do, everything I eat. How might that food affect me? Should I really have had that glass of wine? What if mustard gives me acne? Is eating fruit going to kill me the way everyone in the paleosphere says it is? I don’t wake up in the morning and presume that everything is going to be all right the way that I used to. This is what Dr. Kleinman is talking about. People walk around with the basic assumption that their bodies are just going to keep on working normally. Now that I have broken my body and my brain and watched them do things that hurt me so badly and made me so unhappy at times, and now that I have undertaken healing that has evolved over the course of several years — I wake up and go to sleep every day in a state of nasty, unceasing, disillusioning, heart-breaking distrust.
People ask me a lot about how I do it, how I did it. “Overcome PCOS.” ”Overcome body image issues.” ”Overcome perfectionism.” I don’t know. Time? Hard work? Iron-clad will? A lot of it has been amazing, empowering, enlightening, beautiful. But this trust issue… every day is a struggle. Things get better, but do I trust they’ll stay that way? No. I do keep at it. I have no choice — I’m not going to let any of this defeat me. This is my life, damn you, damn God, damn it all the hell, I’ll be damned if I ever stop living as fiercely and defiantly as I am humanly capable.
I write this confession not as a ploy or a bid for sympathy. My problems are far less entrenched, far less terrifying, and far less desperate than so many millions of people in America and around the world. I am in fact quite happy and well-adjusted, and I have made significant progress in many spheres of my health. I write it instead to share with you this fact of distrust and the role it can play in our lives. To share with you my own humanity. To tell you that while I do believe in positivity and patience and healing and taking control of our own health, I understand what an enormous struggle it can be from a variety of angles. This is for anyone with any kind of body or brain betrayal…depression, anxiety, overweight, acne, diabetes, serious life-threatening illnesses, chronic pain… I am writing to elevate, pay homage to, and hug your psychological struggle. Perhaps most importantly, I write to share with you the basic fact that while lacking trust is so heartbreaking, we have to leap into it anyway. We have no choice.
So how do I do it? If I in fact “do” it at all?
Perseverence and patience are the names of the game. And maybe even faith. Faith comes into play because we have to believe that what everyone says is true. We have to believe healing is possible. Hell, it’s already happening, we’re already doing it. We just have to believe in it. We have no other option so far as I can tell. If I don’t believe it’s going to get better, I may as well pack my bags, say farewell to my dreams, and shrivel up in a corner of my mother’s sofa. Don’t think it hasn’t crossed my mind. I fantasize about it almost every day.
We also need patience. Nothing worth having was ever achieved in an instant. We need patience for ourselves, for our bodies, and for our aching, tired brains. We need patience for all the pain in our lives and in the lives around us. Patience for grace and for forgiveness and for healing. Patience for love. Patience for learning. We need time to let our bodies relax, and we need time for our psychological selves to relax, too. So many of the relationships within our own beings have become tattered, and each of them takes its own time in healing. Let them. The less we interfere in the healing process with worry and anxiety and fear and suspicion, the faster the recovery in fact goes. And the more we forgive ourselves and let the healing move through us, the more efficacious it is. We have to get out of its way, trust that it is happening, and give it the patient space it needs in order to do so. Forgive ourselves. Embrace. Hold. Rest. Accept. Cherish. Love.
Perhaps, however, we need perseverence most of all. We need to be able to put our heads down, and we need to be able to push when the going gets rough. I’ve learned recently that life isn’t easy. Sometimes it’s tough as nails. Sometimes it kicks us harder than we think it’s possible to recover from. But we dust ourselves off. We keep going. Why? Because we must. Because we want to be alive. Because joy is real, because trust is real, because love is real. There’s no throwing in the towel. This is the one chance you’ve got. You’ve got one body, and you’ve got one brain, and you’ve got one heart. No one’s going to care about them the way you do. Give them your all. Let the tears roll. Let the swear pour down your face. Let the screaming fits rip through you. Then push through them because you love being alive. Hell, even if you don’t, trust that someday again you will. This is what living is for. This is your chance. You’re allowed to fuck up. What you’re not allowed to do is quit. Don’t quit, don’t quit, don’t quit.
These are the principles by which I undertake my healing. It’s about healing my ovaries, definitely. But it’s so much more than that. It’s about healing my brain, and it’s about healing my relationships, and it’s about stepping defiantly into the future even when it’s frankly terrifying. I have no idea what life entails for me tomorrow or the next day or ten years from now. I struggle with trusting my ability to handle it every single day. This means that I am often tired. Very tired. And tired of being tired. So tired that some days all I want to do is weep.
I don’t believe that life is easy. I don’t believe that trust is easy, or that healing is easy. What I do believe, however, is that I am equal to the task. We are equal to the task.
