tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43650574037676743122024-03-06T03:21:10.744-05:00a v i d a l e g r i ahungry happiness:
the delights and disorders of foodAi Luhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01197869780327408592noreply@blogger.comBlogger134125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4365057403767674312.post-74818236157409354282009-07-05T16:15:00.000-04:002009-07-05T16:16:09.886-04:00taking a breakAll is well. I'm just taking a break this summer.<br /><br />~Ai LuAi Luhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01197869780327408592noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4365057403767674312.post-17318280135485227882009-05-27T20:38:00.000-04:002009-05-27T20:43:24.927-04:00"Ordinary" athletes and body image<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcBYwNnvGh7cdf_vh-fq_x_sNaeJZDfX0EU3g6doNo4o8B9UCnRZEFjNuhrXHP_ks09SW1yCCgfd3pYXCNtNpyFDkH9X7y6UyUpB89VQic1FgFXORunEvo_pttBXSeCl4ZTApRra-6z8I/s1600-h/triathelete+photos"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 305px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcBYwNnvGh7cdf_vh-fq_x_sNaeJZDfX0EU3g6doNo4o8B9UCnRZEFjNuhrXHP_ks09SW1yCCgfd3pYXCNtNpyFDkH9X7y6UyUpB89VQic1FgFXORunEvo_pttBXSeCl4ZTApRra-6z8I/s400/triathelete+photos" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5339760743152724306" border="0" /></a>OK, so maybe there isn't such a thing as an "ordinary" athlete. I'm probably kidding myself when I think that there are obsessive athletes and non-obsessive athletes, as if the line between them were a lot stricter than it really is. In statistical terms we would call this line a "zone of rarity," dividing one population from another, but <a href="http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/160/1/4">more and more scientists</a> recognize that these hypothetical zones of rarity may not really exist when it comes to mental illnesses. Instead, the border may be just a thin, arbitrary dividing line along a continuum from health to disorder.<br /><br />Why this scientific digression? I was in a bookstore yesterday and had time to peruse some magazines before meeting my parents. I am not a triathlete, but the cover of the latest issue of <span style="font-style: italic;">Triathlete </span>caught my eye. "BODY IMAGE: Are triathletes obsessed?" it asks, alongside an image of a very fit female athlete in a bikini. It turns out that this also happens to be the "special swimsuit edition."<span style="font-style: italic;"></span> What irony!<br /><br />The fact that the editors would dare to ask this question alongside an image of almost impossible beauty also suggests that this magazine just doesn't "get it": you can't pretend to be concerned about your readers' obsession with body image, and then promote an ideal that is so difficult to reach, without calling into question your own integrity as a publication.<br /><br />If all triathletes feel that they should look like this woman (or her male equivalent), I would say that yes, they probably are obsessed with their body image. So what, if anything, makes these folks different from people with eating disorders? Where is the line between wanting to compete for the sake of the game, and wanting to compete to have this (or another) body?<br /><br />I am not sure myself where this line can be drawn. In my own life, I have had to set it for itself, to know what feels healthy and what feels disordered in relationship to exercise. But I don't feel comfortable speaking for all of the athletes out there who are working to improve their performance through improving their bodies: what right do I have to draw the line for <span style="font-style: italic;">them,</span> when I cannot claim to understand their motivations in the first place? There must be triathletes who participate in the sport for reasons other than enhancing what nature gave them; I would like to know more about how they stay focused on those goals, and what pressures they feel to have a beautiful body, apart from how fast that body is.<br /><br />Any ideas?Ai Luhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01197869780327408592noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4365057403767674312.post-17036441535274515392009-05-26T09:32:00.001-04:002009-05-26T10:06:15.098-04:00Dividing lineLately, I have been thinking a lot about exercise addiction, and I had <a href="http://ed-bites.blogspot.com/2009/05/not-so-healthy-addiction.html">Carrie's post</a> earlier this week to spur my thoughts. I have not "trained" for a sport since high school; while I exercised a lot in college, that felt obligatory to me, a punishment rather than a pleasure. Now, when ask myself if I am cycling is "too" much, I compare my exercise in my college days with this new hobby.<br /><br />Then, I felt that I had to exercise every day or I would get fat. Now, I know how important it is to take breaks, and to give my body time to rest and recover. Then, I would hardly ever eat before or after my runs; now, I am sure to bring along a snack on any ride over 45 minutes, and I always eat after the ride, too. Then, I usually exercised alone; now, most of my rides are with other people. Then, I measured my success in terms of how my body looked; now, I look at how my body <span style="font-style: italic;">feels</span>.<br /><br />When I lay it all out like this, I know that this is much closer to how "ordinary" athletes feel about exercise, than how eating disordered folks feel. And it is pretty clear to me what kinds of behaviors would signal a return to that older, disordered patterns of exercise. But in the end, it really boils down to whether or not I'm <span style="font-weight: bold;">having fun</span> with my sport. There's no fooling myself in that regard: either it's fun, or it's not -- regardless of how strong or how healthy I think I am becoming, or how "good" it is for me.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZrTLy1uEI4I2PF4fFLlG-9rBPIyUnwNkK-qjEpgPmqDAoQg1q6M2VPsvtPPl2LqGi3_QyvOdU-OsxHcZ3MTE20XGjJ7E1dYR-5upfK5aa4YHgNeLEFTCI5lB4ygw-57enUPpFYiT7AOk/s1600-h/3537515878_e8cf2950a6_b.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZrTLy1uEI4I2PF4fFLlG-9rBPIyUnwNkK-qjEpgPmqDAoQg1q6M2VPsvtPPl2LqGi3_QyvOdU-OsxHcZ3MTE20XGjJ7E1dYR-5upfK5aa4YHgNeLEFTCI5lB4ygw-57enUPpFYiT7AOk/s400/3537515878_e8cf2950a6_b.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5340133473730310402" border="0" /></a><br />I have never felt as free and joyful about exercise as I do about cycling; it is so clear to me that this is something that I <span style="font-style: italic;">like </span>to do, rather than something that I <span style="font-style: italic;">have</span> to do. That's the dividing line, I think, between hobby and obsession, between health and disorder.When it stops being fun and starts being a duty, that's when I'll stop. But for now, I can't wait for the next ride -- for all of the right reasons!Ai Luhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01197869780327408592noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4365057403767674312.post-87162764497159237492009-05-25T09:15:00.010-04:002009-05-25T09:51:49.509-04:00Sensuality<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0LDlbaEmM0aoxPssC4qDxE79B7u_ocCG2WI8UhmkOIQ0P77ujMXfnQwXonAgZ2IfwT69_d0Ls5-fTJutYal_wKE15dGWWNuKYmhSnutOwebxV-NXL1RgPcga9Q0QJYqVy7rIm3pE328o/s1600-h/DSC_0354.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 266px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0LDlbaEmM0aoxPssC4qDxE79B7u_ocCG2WI8UhmkOIQ0P77ujMXfnQwXonAgZ2IfwT69_d0Ls5-fTJutYal_wKE15dGWWNuKYmhSnutOwebxV-NXL1RgPcga9Q0QJYqVy7rIm3pE328o/s400/DSC_0354.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5339758588823119554" border="0" /></a>There are many "side effects" to my new cycling hobby -- among which, I am proud to say, weight loss does not figure --, but I have been most surprised by the emergence of a sort of sensual pride in my body.<br /><br />After a long ride, there is nothing that I like more than to spread out a few yoga mats on the floor, grab a bottle of lotion, put on my shortest shorts, and give my legs a deep massage. Do you know the feeling of hand over muscle? It is incomparable. Of course I'm tired, and sore, and maybe even a little sleepy, but I like those moments of leisure, when the hard job is done and I'm still eager for the next ride.<br /><br />There is also the sensuality of the ride itself -- the feeling of wind on my face; the motion of my legs on the pedals; the total concentration that I have to employ to keep myself alert to the road and its dangers. I love riding fast, down hills and on the flats; I love the mental place where speed takes me, the feeling of flying (and fleeing?) on my two wheels.<br /><br />In college, when I developed my eating disorder, I had an academic lifestyle that was almost devoid of any contact with my body or my senses. My days were spent in lecture halls, reading in the library, and writing papers; I heard plenty of speeches from professors about how to put our minds to the best use, but no one ever talked about our bodies. My eating disorder, with its intense preoccupation with food and my body, seemed almost a reaction to an academic world that denied corporeality and substance. Ironically, perhaps, I found that I had to go deeper into my body -- through yoga -- and pay more attention to food -- through cooking -- in order to give those aspects of my life their due. Massage helped too, as did music, and knitting, and no wonder: all of these were activities that allowed me to focus on the senses, instead of denying them as I once had.<br /><br />Do you feel that there is a relationship between eating disorders and the senses? What does that look like, and what does it mean to you?Ai Luhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01197869780327408592noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4365057403767674312.post-78097108930601221742009-05-20T19:27:00.003-04:002009-05-20T19:47:18.346-04:00Tuna salad days<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk6n6dievnHFP3V2HaU-zMbivvtTI7NuKiWojzL-bRfy_fCenDz2SAsXAUADwqvuC9oINpLJ4mFVOYnWZJ7B2_AWFGO4vWZzET12aKmosDu0Z9yRKxh6341LMirdSpCLV6GGfMPA3nRIo/s1600-h/DSC_0277.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 266px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk6n6dievnHFP3V2HaU-zMbivvtTI7NuKiWojzL-bRfy_fCenDz2SAsXAUADwqvuC9oINpLJ4mFVOYnWZJ7B2_AWFGO4vWZzET12aKmosDu0Z9yRKxh6341LMirdSpCLV6GGfMPA3nRIo/s400/DSC_0277.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5338051863585380770" border="0" /></a>I am 26 years old and I just started to like tuna salad.<br /><br />It began, I think, about a month ago, when I stopped at the little cafe at <a href="http://www.strictlybicycles.com/">Strictly Bicycles</a> on my way back from a Sunday ride in Jersey. This was <a href="http://avidalegria.blogspot.com/2009/04/signs-of-spring.html">the day that I got the clamp fixed on my seatpost</a>. As the mechanic worked on my bike, I settled in on a stool and devoured lunch: tuna salad in a long, thin pita. The salad was fresh, dripping with lemony mayonnaise sauce, and nothing like the picnic salads of my elementary school days. In short, I was hooked. Since then, I have been trying tuna salad sandwiches at every deli I happen to enter, and twiddling with a version in my own kitchen. Tuna salad is the best dish that I have discovered in recent memory: it's easy to make, packs its protein (always tough with salads), and can stand by itself or accompany another meal. I am kicking myself for never having given it its due before this. But then again, I think of how many years I may have ahead of me to eat tuna salad! I give myself a good fifty, at least.<br /><br />I wasn't satisfied with the recipes that I found in my cookbooks, all full of red pepper and chopped celery (bleh!), so I combined one of my favorite homemade carrot slaws with tuna and a mayonnaise dressing, and came up with the following:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Ai Lu's Tuna Salad:</span><br /><br />2 4-ounce cans water-packed tuna<br />3 medium carrots, coarsely shredded<br />1/4 head fennel, julienned<br />6 dried figs, finely sliced<br />1/2 cup raw cashews<br />Optional: 1 cup cooked rice<br /><br />Dressing: 1/4 cup mayonnaise, juice from 1/2 lemon, 1 tablespoon honey, 1 tablespoon olive oil, 1 tablespoon tahini. Mix well before incorporating into salad until slightly moist.<br /><br />Condiments: A generous amount of ground pepper, sea salt<br /><br />Tomorrow I'm traveling to Minnesota to visit my parents over the long holiday weekend, and since I'm too stingy and too picky to pay for airport food, I'll be bringing a tupperware full of this tuna salad with me on the plane. Nothing could be better at 30,000 feet! I just hope that the person next to me likes the smell of fish...Ai Luhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01197869780327408592noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4365057403767674312.post-7958597454014737442009-05-13T07:14:00.002-04:002009-05-13T07:14:02.976-04:00Ride-a-Muffins<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_eenbM6wYGenVwlvq0UWSyqRXb_6cA0oRFOPezYvj-RX4J2ahHRkLEQwedh79SIlUznqUnWQf1uyM7ZHeXsxgr-3HHY9kTU-4bR1Oec9QNvELzNWjDoXa4_XPcfe8VtzukLf1fOGN-Lo/s1600-h/DSC_0276.JPG"></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiwLmTx5FV-xRCAruNqQMNNmZadeyQpiSlBmtca2LFmtBs9ZsBrhMpkXd2j_xfLvxS5f1-I0kFt9MDr5rQwGFKmAt7q7w6o3OuGw0s50TXZWgyDS57KOe-n2tP5_GqmTyXYUDs8so_zM0/s1600-h/DSC_0281.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5334894326284300274" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; WIDTH: 266px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 400px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiwLmTx5FV-xRCAruNqQMNNmZadeyQpiSlBmtca2LFmtBs9ZsBrhMpkXd2j_xfLvxS5f1-I0kFt9MDr5rQwGFKmAt7q7w6o3OuGw0s50TXZWgyDS57KOe-n2tP5_GqmTyXYUDs8so_zM0/s400/DSC_0281.JPG" border="0" /></a>In an effort to supply my active body with enough carbohydrates to get through my long bike rides, I have taken to making muffins. Banana muffins, apple-fig muffins, zucchini, carrot, date muffins -- I am looking for more ideas, so if you have any favorites, please let me know. As soon as I buy poppyseeds I'm going to make lemon poppyseed muffins, just for the sake of rounding out my repertoire with that classic flavor.<br /><br />My recipes are simple, straight out of <em>The Joy of Cooking.</em> My muffin tin only makes 12 at a time, so it's a dozen, every time. If we have another fifteen minutes before the fish will be ready for dinner, I'll whip up a batch of muffins and pop them in the oven as soon as the fish comes out. We'll eat a few for dessert, I'll save some for breakfast the next day, and the rest of the batch goes into the freezer.<br /><br />I eat muffins on my bike rides because there are only so many sports bars that I can eat before I say "enough is enough" to the sugary, sticky messes. A part of me has a dreadful suspicion of the "sports supplement" industry, despite knowing plenty of people who rely on PowerBars, Clif Bars, Hammer Bars and the like to get them through their activity of choice (myself included). My suspicion comes from the fact that I usually don't have a clue what the ingredients actually are that make up these odd concoctions. A case in point: <a href="http://www.powerbar.com/products/67/POWERBAR_PERFORMANCE_Chocolate.aspx">PowerBar's first ingredient</a> is "C2 MAX CARBOHYDRATE BLEND (ORGANIC EVAPORATED CANE JUICE SYRUP, MALTODEXTRIN, FRUCTOSE, DEXTROSE)." Thank goodness they clarify what C2 Max Carbohydrate Blend is, otherwise I wouldn't know that they're just talking about <em>sugars</em>, of which I'm not so fond, anyway. (Or, I should say, I know that I can be all <em>too </em>fond of sugar, and I need to be careful about consuming too much!)<br /><br />I like my homegrown energy solutions. I call them "ride-a-muffins." When cut into quarters and stored in a plastic bag in the back of my bike jersey, they make a perfect snack 20 miles out.<br /><br />What do you like to eat before/during/after exercise? What keeps you moving, literally and physically?Ai Luhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01197869780327408592noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4365057403767674312.post-65814995248819631442009-05-12T06:43:00.005-04:002009-05-12T07:13:58.407-04:00Lost magic, perhaps<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeSMfTsNmK0xGsLQCj9jdaMtTqX7ZQYE59SsKuny9wdr_srsWDwuVpHrarUaga3uJgmrQbHAIgR8LQ1R6UdKXVJzGoGF1BYni7130BsHSG0MT3cTxfLhpWbFDEjcNGE1tWMljX2rQ3dvk/s1600-h/DSC_0007.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeSMfTsNmK0xGsLQCj9jdaMtTqX7ZQYE59SsKuny9wdr_srsWDwuVpHrarUaga3uJgmrQbHAIgR8LQ1R6UdKXVJzGoGF1BYni7130BsHSG0MT3cTxfLhpWbFDEjcNGE1tWMljX2rQ3dvk/s400/DSC_0007.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5334894039733584562" border="0" /></a>Last night, I asked Chuan what he'd like to eat more of (namely, what we should cook together), now that he and I have both finished our final exams, and he'll have loads more time this summer to dedicate to cooking, if he should choose.<br /><br />We came up with a list together, mostly inspired by him. These days, I am not so interested in food as I once was; it's harder for me to say definitively "I want this" or "I want to make that." I take this as a good sign, as part of this long recovery from my eating disorder: I don't take the same care to put together meals like I did even a year ago. I'm not sure when the magic went out of food, but I think by giving food my full attention for these last few years, it stopped feeling so special or so forbidden. That's my pet theory for the day: indulge your obsession a little, give it the space it demands, and it just might stop being so alluring after a while. (My cognitive behavioral professor would probably call this an "exposure technique".)<br /><br />So -- food is not calling my name as persistently or forcefully as it used to. And I'm finding that it's pleasant, for a change, to have a partner who is willing to put together a menu and has strong preferences for certain foods. Last week he invented an excellent curried chicken stew, browning chicken legs in a bit of oil and onions before simmering them with green beans, curry, balsamic vinegar, and a touch of cream. The man is a bit of a genius in the kitchen when he puts his mind to it -- once he realized that day that he couldn't make a Chinese stir-fry with chicken legs, something else had to come out of the pot. And now we're both still thinking about how tender and fragrant that chicken meat was.<br /><br />Looking forwards, we decided that we want to make <span style="font-style: italic;">salade nicoise, </span>shepherd's pie and apple pie, beef stew and meatloaf, cornbread, eggplant moussaka and <span style="font-style: italic;">gazpacho. </span>These are all comfort foods, in one place or another, and I find it striking that now, when winter is past, we still crave the warm, meaty dishes of winter. There has not been enough ease in our lives in these last few months; perhaps part of us feels stuck back in January, yearning to be taken care of in the darkest days of the year. And so I'll buy a rolling pin and learn how to make pastry dough; we'll put together giant vats of stewed beef to keep us going for a few days; and I'll search for the ripest tomatoes of mid-summer to make a <span style="font-style: italic;">gazpacho</span> to remind me of Barcelona.Ai Luhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01197869780327408592noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4365057403767674312.post-63700655291745427112009-05-04T09:10:00.002-04:002009-05-05T14:58:23.554-04:00(Extra)ordinary feastsToday is just one of those misty, damp days in New York that reminds me of some parts of China -- Sichuan in particular, famous for its "four rivers" and the resultant humidity of the landscape. There, people eat loads of spicy foods, apparently for their heat-producing effect (to ward off the dankness of the air). Sichuan hotpot has become famous in recent years, but boiling food in a small coal-power stove is common in many parts of China.<br /><br />I recently came across these photos of my trip to Yunnan in December, and I still have something to say about that trip. After a two-hour horseback ride, we finished the morning with a bowl of fresh rice and a Yunnan hotpot of boiled cabbage, pork fat, potatoes, and squash. I remember this meal clearly, as it was so simple and so good -- the warm broth of the soup after the cold wind of the morning, the vegetables freshly picked from the fields around us by the women below.<br /><br /><p align="right"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqDqyZkEithT9Xna67Xnm6HSeN2xvsI7yAt9vR6cQoEmQRv7Rn7oLA21q0Nkfe8FhM5mMy0HX7ZTh3VjN-QbE8ZnZGu7IJqA_xyBBwBuvDVcaN5IHLKq3eJe4B7UmgicbVXJ9JKXS4z_c/s1600-h/IMG_1137.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5289116447452645586" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; width: 400px; cursor: pointer; height: 267px; text-align: center;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqDqyZkEithT9Xna67Xnm6HSeN2xvsI7yAt9vR6cQoEmQRv7Rn7oLA21q0Nkfe8FhM5mMy0HX7ZTh3VjN-QbE8ZnZGu7IJqA_xyBBwBuvDVcaN5IHLKq3eJe4B7UmgicbVXJ9JKXS4z_c/s400/IMG_1137.JPG" border="0" /></a></p><p> Sometimes, when I have a meal that good and that perfect for the occasion, I want to hold onto it. I want every meal to be that way, and I have trouble relinquishing it for the everyday. Travel is like that too: every image seems sprightly and enchanting, not hum-drum and tedious like life back home. But just as I can't keep up the peripatetic lifestyle forever, not every meal can be extraordinary, either. There will be mornings, like today, when fresh apple muffins and caffe latte make up a quaint breakfast. But there will also be mornings of stale cereal and mushy bananas -- and they're just as much a part of life as anything else, just as much a part of life as taking the crowded 4 line of the subway, or cleaning the toilet, or suffering through the anxious minutes before I fall asleep.</p><p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE5iiE0VM4BNnxyofwq02989m_qrpAklhz-R1Gu2REiKZoIkX3JU8xDXNXSsefIONDhgWGFLaQuooT7IxJpgxboLvjwmCaQe0YjtBSpGKfwFPigz9t-Q9i2KtVcq3PMIhsoEmGT8-NREg/s1600-h/IMG_1139.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5289115906448483058" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; width: 400px; cursor: pointer; height: 267px;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE5iiE0VM4BNnxyofwq02989m_qrpAklhz-R1Gu2REiKZoIkX3JU8xDXNXSsefIONDhgWGFLaQuooT7IxJpgxboLvjwmCaQe0YjtBSpGKfwFPigz9t-Q9i2KtVcq3PMIhsoEmGT8-NREg/s400/IMG_1139.JPG" border="0" /></a> When I yearn for the extraordinary, whether in food or in life, I remind myself that <em>these </em>minutes, too -- the ones that I am too happy to let pass by unawares -- are the stuff of my existence. This drab New York morning, this tired lumbar spine, this boredom of keyboards and numbers -- these things, too, are <em>it</em>.</p>Ai Luhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01197869780327408592noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4365057403767674312.post-42862301658587834892009-05-01T09:07:00.004-04:002009-05-01T09:33:25.858-04:00In the lovely month of May<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx_CBlLg707Vk4l14NgsTvB0uDv_N_1n-U33yWMJz7TlPKGZbx1U60rbAW8Yi2plytEDd1h5xhg_IkoZyRyPHMbFuaDnFFbp9vjp-QYogx1qiwQ2S6S12nTZoIlRuIkgI6S8KGYY2aTFU/s1600-h/DSC_0070.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx_CBlLg707Vk4l14NgsTvB0uDv_N_1n-U33yWMJz7TlPKGZbx1U60rbAW8Yi2plytEDd1h5xhg_IkoZyRyPHMbFuaDnFFbp9vjp-QYogx1qiwQ2S6S12nTZoIlRuIkgI6S8KGYY2aTFU/s400/DSC_0070.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5330845637802956578" border="0" /></a><br />I love May Day. Today's hardly the poster day for it here in New York -- it's gray and overcast out, threatening thunder storms at any minute -- but I love the old-world, witchy feel of May Day. Perhaps the fact that the U.S. refused to name it a workers' holiday, unlike all the other countries, means that it always will have that touch of pagan flower festival about it, rather than being a radical labor day.<br /><br />May, this year, means the end of my second semester of my Ph.D. program. I didn't say the end of my first year, because I'll be taking summer courses until August, but for now I can take a deep breath and say "I made it." (Almost -- just another week and my papers will be handed in and my final exams over and done with!) Chuan and I have made a reservation at <a href="http://www.blogger.com/www.peterluger.com/">Peter Luger's Steakhouse</a> to celebrate the end of our exams. It's a splurge, but we feel that it's important to mark the end of this semester, to remind ourselves that we have gotten through it all.<br /><br />This month I'm also leaving my research job at the prestigious hospital where I've been miserably working all year. I am <span style="font-style: italic;">so</span> glad to let this one go, I can't tell you! I'm about up to <span style="font-style: italic;">HERE</span> with prestige and name-brand hospitals and being told that I'm so privileged to be entering someone else's data. Early-stage career exploitation is a terrible thing to experience, yet all so common to those of us who are in our 20's and have high ambitions. I know that I'll have to put up with a lot more before getting my Ph.D., but I still hate it. Eck. Now I'm ready to move on.<br /><br />This May I'm visiting my parents in Minnesota over Memorial Day, so that's something else to look forward to. And on May 16 I'll be finishing the <a href="http://www.nycc.org/rides_sig_a1.shtml">spring training program</a> with <a href="http://www.nycc.org">my cycling club</a>, culminating in a 108-mile ride (OMG) to Bear Mountain, New York. Yikes! This will feel like my greatest accomplishment all year, because cycling really has been what has kept me sane through all of the problems on my job and through all of the stress of graduate school. And there's a not insignificant satisfaction that I feel in being able to return to athletic endeavors now that I have put my eating disorder behind.<br /><br />All in all, May is looking like a great month!Ai Luhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01197869780327408592noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4365057403767674312.post-47858928031208671822009-04-26T18:40:00.006-04:002009-04-26T21:19:08.945-04:00Signs of spring<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsW8TmRVw6KnNA8O2FGMpZk0jA8JMRri6phbp7hxg0n0XU4OcCo8CsxhqgYiRWAl4RZwB_GeOeJrHXEhQbaGrpwfIphyphenhyphenAH1tutAhcwxDyS3i4VVKbl0OZRmc2fTnJFQKY7Gund-0u6J1k/s1600-h/3475050138_2cea3ecf9e_b.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsW8TmRVw6KnNA8O2FGMpZk0jA8JMRri6phbp7hxg0n0XU4OcCo8CsxhqgYiRWAl4RZwB_GeOeJrHXEhQbaGrpwfIphyphenhyphenAH1tutAhcwxDyS3i4VVKbl0OZRmc2fTnJFQKY7Gund-0u6J1k/s400/3475050138_2cea3ecf9e_b.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5329133759983619330" border="0" /></a>If you live in New York, have you been outside today? Yesterday? I certainly hope so, because even though it's still April, it felt like summer arrived this weekend.<br /><br />I had some fun yesterday on an 80-mile ride that took us through orchards and along meandering rivers in Rockland County, northwest of New York City. My seatpost kept slipping down during my ride -- it has been slipping in spits and bursts for the last few weeks, but yesterday it slipped about an inch in a matter of minutes, and I spent the first half of the ride feeling like I was riding on a kiddie bike, my knees up in my chin. A riding buddy came up with the ingenious solution of attaching a clamp hose, begged from an auto repair shop along the route, right above the original clamp. That got me through the ride, and by the time the entire group met up for some beers by the river, the repair job was the talk of the day. Photo courtesy of another rider in our. Cyclists are such tech geeks! Imagine someone taking a picture of this repair job, just because it was clever. But I'm slowly seeing the charms of this way of thinking about bikes, and you can be sure that one of my first stops today was the bike shop, to get a <span style="font-style: italic;">real </span>replacement clamp.<br /><br />Like<a href="http://avidalegria.blogspot.com/2008/05/forty-four-miles-to-nyack-and-back.html"> last spring</a>, I feel so grateful this year to spend so much of my time outdoors. My biking habit exposes me to so many of the green spaces of New York and its environs, that there are times when I really forget that I'm living in one of the most densely packed cities in the U.S. This morning, for example, I rode my bike across the Hudson River, over the George Washington Bridge to Fort Lee, New Jersey, where I cruised for 10 miles down "River Road," a paved trail through the forested banks of the Palisades Park. I have seen coyotes on this route, and hawks above, and I have picked raspberries from the rocky hillside -- enough wilderness to satisfy this city girl.<br /><br />This is the time of year when the cherry trees are blooming in New York, when the daffodils are just about to pass, and the magnolias have been with us for a few weeks (oh, the magnolias!). Growing up in Minnesota, where only a few hardy crab-apple trees could survive the cold winters, I was surprised to move to New York and discover how many trees, and not just bushes and flowers, can actually bloom! This evening Chuan and I took a walk down the main pathway through Columbia University, just as the sun was setting orange above the Hudson. We walked through Riverside Park, where we saw tulips and daffodils, bleeding hearts and Dutchman's breeches, periwinkle and dogwoods. We turned at Grant's Tomb, entered Sakura Park (with its namesake cherry trees all a-flutter with pink blooms), and then headed home.<br /><br />At our return, I promised Chuan a special dessert. "You know," I said, "How there are always things that are strawberries-and-cream flavored? Well, we're going to have the real thing and you can see what it's like." (This is what is delightful about having a spouse from a different culture: I get to show him all sorts of things for the first time, and see his wonder.)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhluCSvSlQQfS3XMpznAUcFp1SwC1pznDc5nTOoviQS9FolgW59Su74TWlB12kEAlc1Afm7X4wLR8yQW81ySiwvCVkwoTymOt882mvyC-hlX5UBXYCapdt7Uii7YFtkZMp4iqIGe4QuOAA/s1600-h/DSC_0275.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhluCSvSlQQfS3XMpznAUcFp1SwC1pznDc5nTOoviQS9FolgW59Su74TWlB12kEAlc1Afm7X4wLR8yQW81ySiwvCVkwoTymOt882mvyC-hlX5UBXYCapdt7Uii7YFtkZMp4iqIGe4QuOAA/s400/DSC_0275.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5329172402418012642" border="0" /></a>When I was growing up, and we spent summers in Maine visiting my grandmother, my mother would sometimes serve my sister and me blueberries and cream, or strawberries and cream, or whatever wonderful New England berry was in season. This is a summer treat, to be sure, and though the calendar says that it is still spring, New York seems to have jumped from winter to summer in less than a fortnight's time. So Chuan and I had strawberries and cream for dessert, after our sunset on the Hudson. Not a bad way to end the weekend, or to celebrate this inter-season.Ai Luhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01197869780327408592noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4365057403767674312.post-44557817742830298432009-04-20T10:09:00.005-04:002009-04-20T10:44:51.094-04:00Release<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/corneveaux/2366161922/in/photostream"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326783835475666194" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 266px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 400px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBHy8I9yiV6pHasDzKVvVi8xH0RJYQNOVeF4W6_OKt3dJfWCagA1W7GbC26rQgL2Y4_mBfTkpJro6wrhrdhsuuValI37ki9k91_YzCEFakJILuE7ULatSasRFYQDntGQr3qpWDeG5Vjjs/s400/desert+creek.jpg" border="0" /></a> Today I want to talk about menstruation (without sounding like your junior high health teacher!). <div></div><br /><div>I am having my period again for the first time in over eight years.</div><br /><div></div><div>Let me explain: My doctor recently removed the intrauterine device (IUD) that I have been using ever since my first year in college, when my periods were long and painful. After one particular cycle when I bled for over a month straight, my doctor suggested that I might benefit from hormonal birth control, which would regulate my periods. I tried taking "the pill" but I had trouble remembering to take it every day, and so I switched to the Mirena IUD. About 30% of women who use this IUD will stop having their periods after a few months, and I was one of the lucky (I thought at the time) few. </div><br /><div>So now that I don't have my IUD, my periods are coming back. And, surprisingly, I am quite happy about it! I felt a little burst of excitement when I saw blood again; it reminded me of the first time that I had my period, how grown-up and mature and womanly it made me feel. Of course, it's messy, it's inconvenient, and I keep forgetting that I need to bring tampons and pantiliners with me everywhere -- but some part of me is still really happy to be having my period again.</div><br /><div>These eight bloodless years remind me of Federico Garcia Lorca's play <em>Yerma, </em>about a barren woman in a barren land who longs for a child but cannot conceive. The whole landscape of the play is desolate, empty, desperate. Part of my life during these years felt like that, too: the part connected with my eating disorder. Many women with eating disorders stop having their period (amenorrhea is still a criterion for anorexia); in my case, it is hard to tell if my period stopped because of my IUD alone, or because of the IUD <em>and</em> the eating disorder. My doctors never knew what to think, either, when I told them that I hadn't had a period in years. </div><div></div><br /><div>Well, now I know that it was mostly the IUD that was responsible, because as soon as it came out I started to bleed again. I mean, almost <em>immediately --</em> within hours<em> --</em> as if the blood was just waiting to start flowing again<em>.</em> But even though I can attribute my barrenness to a medical device, I still feel that the return of my cycle signals another step towards healing myself of my eating disorder, by replacing the desolation of my inner landscape with a fertile course.</div><br /><div>What else has been dammed up inside me, waiting to get out?</div><div></div><br /><div>What sources of creativity and fulfillment have been blocked in my life?</div><br /><div>How can I release the pent-up waters and bring bounty back into my life?</div><br /><div>I don't have the answers, yet. But I am profoundly grateful for the blood between my legs, for the spring that is rising, and for the irresistible pull I feel towards wholeness, and redemption, and sanity. </div>Ai Luhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01197869780327408592noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4365057403767674312.post-89103128205213499262009-04-19T15:11:00.005-04:002009-04-19T15:38:23.866-04:00Unfettered but still (a bit) fearfulA few things have been on my mind lately, regarding those oft-touched upon subjects here: food and weight.<br /><br />As you may know, I have recently taken up road cycling with a heady enthusiasm. Yesterday I rode 71 miles with my cycling club; today I did a (briefer) 22 mile morning ride on the Jersey side of the Hudson. All these miles translate into a <span style="font-style: italic;">lot</span> more food for this busy body, and I have to admit that it makes me somewhat uncomfortable to have to re-set my appestat yet another time.<br /><br />What I mean is this: for the last four years or so, ever since I re-established "normal" eating habits, I have had a pretty good sense of how much food my body needs every day. (Disclaimer:<br />Such knowledge didn't come easy!) Sure, a run here or there could change the equation, but in general I <span style="font-style: italic;">knew</span> how much to eat. Any deviation from that "normal" point for me was an indicator that other things were going on in my life -- non-food issues -- that were somehow getting translated into eating behaviors. Thus I knew, for example, that if I really really really wanted a third cookie, it probably wasn't about the cookie. I could have it anyway, but eventually I would have to deal with whatever issue was behind the cookie-longing in the first place.<br /><br />Now, however, I'm not sure about that cookie. My rides are making me HUNGRY like I haven't felt in years. So when I come home and finish dinner and still want to eat, I am not sure what that is about. It may be just that I have had a really long ride, and my body is begging me for more food (most likely). But I am uncomfortable with my own hunger, and I am sure that this stems from how I dealt with hunger in the past: it could be that the hunger I feel after a ride is a reminder of how it used to feel when I forced hunger on myself and then chased it down with excess food and a large dose of regret.<br /><br />Right now, I find it hard to "listen to my body" and distinguish between <span style="font-style: italic;">hunger-that-comes-from-hard-exercise</span> and the memory of <span style="font-style: italic;">hunger-that-sets-up-a-binge</span>. I find it difficult, but not impossible: I haven't slipped back into out-and-out binges, nor have I purposefully sought out hunger for its own sake. At the least, I feel that, by writing about this and admitting it, I am one step closer to getting a better handle on my hunger this time around.<br /><br />Getting into cycling has reminded me that there are so many areas of my life that have been touched by -- and limited by -- my eating disorder. I would not dared have tried cycling even a few years ago, in fear of getting back into the old pattern of deprivation/binge. But now that I am doing it, and managing my fears as best I can, I can see other ways in which my eating disorder, and even my recovery from it, have constrained my behavior. As the fetters gradually come loose with this one new activity, I wonder where I'll find other sources of growth in my life.Ai Luhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01197869780327408592noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4365057403767674312.post-65082135414077404492009-04-05T21:08:00.002-04:002009-04-05T21:28:18.461-04:00Music for the better times<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZAmqDNe0rD4coTveqp7lgXnbRHCeiJKCMBbWOXtzPMB-PWRpNZ-TBDE1eHr_MMstxmMFqKjkDldeZum_ZifhaGw6zhrmuchAdU7SJjFc61hJp2S8l5svYsuigmRJs8otZnpO2BgNwGTs/s1600-h/DSC_0007a.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZAmqDNe0rD4coTveqp7lgXnbRHCeiJKCMBbWOXtzPMB-PWRpNZ-TBDE1eHr_MMstxmMFqKjkDldeZum_ZifhaGw6zhrmuchAdU7SJjFc61hJp2S8l5svYsuigmRJs8otZnpO2BgNwGTs/s400/DSC_0007a.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5321383971704638546" border="0" /></a><br />I don't write about it much here, but I love music. I played viola in youth orchestras when I was growing up, and from that time I retain a love for Beethoven, Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Mozart, Sibelius, and Mahler. But I also love bossa nova and fado and American folk music, West African music and tabla music from India, obscure Baroque masters and modern Cape Verdean geniuses. Music gets me through the day, from the moment I wake up to the hour I go to bed; it's rare for me to make it through the whole day without listening to something, and more often than not my iPod battery is worn out by the time I get home at night.<br /><br />I even think that music has played a role in my recovery from my eating disorder. Sometimes, when things were really bad and I was avoiding the urge to throw up, I would shut myself up in my room and listen to my favorite songs over and over again, grounding myself in the music so that I could focus on something besides food. Nowadays, when I am in a bad mood, feeling lonely, or simply bored, I can find so much meaning in music.<br /><br />Take Leonard Cohen's "Anthem." I don't care so much for the honky arrangement (if you've heard it you know what I mean), but I love the words:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Ring the bells that still can ring<br />Forget your perfect offering<br />There is a crack, a crack in everything<br />That's how the light gets in...<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span>This winter, when I was dealing with all of the drama and humilliation at work, I listened to this song almost every day before I headed out. It did me good to remind myself that I needn't be perfect -- nay, that my very imperfections were what made me human, made me beautiful. I clung to this song like a lifeline, as it indeed was.<br /><br />What songs get you through the day? What songs do you listen to when you want to celebrate the good things in life? What songs fill you when you are feeling depressed? Please share them with me -- I am always looking for good music!<br /><br />Lately, these are the song that have made their way onto my "Feel good list" on my iPod:<br /><br />Joni Mitchell -- Come in from the cold, Carey, California, All I want<br />Cry Cry Cry -- Cold Missouri Waters<br />Cristina Branco -- Há palavras que nos beijam<br />Jewel -- Jupiter<br />The Be Good Tanyas -- Lakes of Pontchartrain<br />Ceumar -- Pra la, Dindinha<br />Clara Nunes -- Canto das tres raças<br />Luciana Souza -- Eu nao existo sem voce<br />Roberta Sá -- A vizinha do lado<br />Abigail Washburn -- Song of the traveling daughter<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span>Leonard Cohen -- Anthem<br /><br />Please, let me know what you're listening to!<br /><br />~Ai LuAi Luhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01197869780327408592noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4365057403767674312.post-85697403204231739262009-04-02T21:33:00.008-04:002009-04-04T15:22:22.760-04:00Cycling around<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/bernatcg/2509946461/"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS-d70kTvIFPoELNR66vS04Vfo86Z4BovB2-yRsYuLqI8RIVrYt1pe503ibv7ADIsvkiFrz3BLG-4cb6vp_MU23j8UC2P4If1Difm72pJ2WPZMeGF9egxfbuHNC1_iwWx89D5yjpOpr_Q/s400/2509946461_05f8034df8_b.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5320918282229416450" border="0" /></a>I have been thinking about some of the comments on <a href="http://avidalegria.blogspot.com/2009/03/last-hurdles-and-fast-legs.html">my last post,</a> especially those from Katharine and the Jenninat0r, about men and sports and eating disorders.<br /><br />Maybe I came across as a bit naive in my last post, thinking that by participating in group sports with men, I am exposing myself to fewer eating issues than if I were with women. (Note: avoiding other athletes with disordered eating is <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> the reason that I have taken up cycling -- it just seems to be a side effect of the fact that more men than women are road bikers.) I do recognize that men also have insecurities regarding their bodies and what they put into them; these insecurities are probably accentuated, not diminished, among male athletes in comparison to other men. But for <span style="font-style: italic;">me</span>, as a woman, I enjoy being in a place where the focus is not on my body as a female body <span style="font-style: italic;">per se</span>, but as an athletic, fast body. Maybe this would still be the case if I knew more serious female athletes, but <a href="http://www.nycc.org/">my cycling club</a> happens to have more men than women.<br /><br />To date, I haven't spent enough time around the club members to know what hidden fantasies they might have of getting fitter and buffer from cycling (I have <a href="http://avidalegria.blogspot.com/2009/03/would-you-exercise-if-it-didnt-change.html">already written about my own</a>!); for now, I am enjoying the apparent <span style="font-style: italic;">absence</span> of such longings, as it gives me the space to focus on more important things (like the fit of my bike, not my clothes!).<br /><br />One good thing that I have seen so far, was a message from one of our group leaders before our first ride. Instead of advertising cycling as a weight-loss activity (as some people might), he drove home another point, saying: "Now is not the time to start a diet. You'll be working really hard on these rides in the next twelve weeks, and your bodies will burn thousands of calories on each long ride. So don't diet or you won't be able to get through the season!"<br /><br />I liked hearing that. It reminded me that, in some arenas, we simply cannot eat enough good food. Cyclists, marathoners, cross-country skiers and other endurance athletes know this intuitively, but it did me good to hear it stated outright.<br /><br />~Ai Lu<br /><br />P.S. Thanks, also, to Tiptoe for gently reminding me of the fact that some of the men in my club might like the sight of a young woman in spandex tights -- but I'm OK with that, because these days I like what I see, too. :-)Ai Luhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01197869780327408592noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4365057403767674312.post-83351738072158524772009-03-31T15:38:00.004-04:002009-03-31T16:20:16.928-04:00Last hurdles and fast legsThis morning I joined a pack of riders from my cycling club on a fast-paced, three-lap tour of New York's Central Park at 6:00am. This was a no-holds-barred, keep-up-if-you-can ride -- and I was proud to be the only woman hanging on at the end! I keep surprising myself with cycling, putting in longer distances and reaching faster speeds than I would have thought possible even a year ago. But it's easy, in a way, because I love it! I took to cycling, as I told one of my ride leaders, like a fish to water. It feels right and good to be perched on top of my bike, to go fast and furious down the roads of New York and New Jersey, and to join in the camaraderie of a long, slick paceline.<br /><br />I like cycling, too, because in becoming a cyclist I feel that I am overcoming the last hurdle in my eating disorder, meaning that I am beginning to repair my relationship to exercise. For a long time after my eating disorder abated, I did not want to engage in <em>any</em> form of intense exercise; I had forced myself on too many runs and had spent too many hours of my life on the elliptical machine at the gym to continue to do so once the compulsion to exercise ended. I turned to yoga, and long walks, and occasional jogs; those things were healing and gentle, and I needed them for a time. But now I yearn for sweaty exertion, for the feel of my body soaring through the air. Cycling gives me these things, but it also gives me a community of likeminded people to share in the endeavor; while in the past my exercise was solitary, now it is almost always conducted in the company of others, my early-morning training buddies and weekend ride partners.<br /><br />Many -- or most -- of these people are men, and I find that I enjoy being in masculine company for a change. Eating disorders are such feminine concerns, after all, centered around women's bodies and women's roles; writing here, for example, I am mostly addressing a female audience. Clinical psychology, my chosen field, is also increasingly dominated by women, as men flee pscyhology for the less touchy-feely disciplines of psychiatry, neuroscience, and behavioral medicine. As for myself, most of my classmates are female, and I spend a few days a week working with breast cancer patients, so I certainly have my share of the fairer sex! When I'm cycling with (mostly) men, on the other hand, it doesn't matter how thin or how pretty I am; all that matters is that I go fast, or ride well in a group, or show up on time. It's such a relief, for a change, to be able to focus on those things in a sport, instead of thinking about how I look in the uniform.Ai Luhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01197869780327408592noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4365057403767674312.post-49938548847279388502009-03-29T21:28:00.004-04:002009-03-29T21:51:53.055-04:00Chocolate calienteI have had a hankering for hot chocolate lately -- the homemade kind -- and today's rainy, foggy weather in New York made the yearning reality.<br /><br />Courtesy of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Joy of Cooking</span>:<br /><br />Stir together in a small, heavy saucepan:<br /><ul style="font-weight: bold;"><li>1 tablespoon unsweetend cocoa</li><li>1 teaspoon sugar</li></ul>Vigorously stir in, first by tablespoons and then in a slow, steady stream:<br /><ul style="font-weight: bold;"><li>3/4 cup milk</li></ul>Heat, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom of the pan, over medium heat until bubbles appear at the sides. Remove from the heat and stir in:<br /><ul style="font-weight: bold;"><li>1/8 teaspoon vanilla</li></ul>Top with: <ul><li style="font-weight: bold;">Ground nutmeg or cinnamon</li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Whipped cream or marshmallows</span><br /></li></ul><br />I have had a large bag of organic cocoa on hand now for quite a while, not really knowing what to do with the powdery goodness (there are only so many chocolate puddings that you can make for your husband before he has to admit that he doesn't like pudding, anyway). Here and there I had been reading that "milk makes a great workout recovery beverage" and being the kind of person who eschews bottled protein drinks in the first place, I thought that I might doll up my post-bike ride cuppamilk with some cocoa.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0c/Abuelita_Package_and_Product.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 321px; height: 283px;" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0c/Abuelita_Package_and_Product.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Have you had homemade cocoa lately? Not the kind that comes in packets with names like <a href="http://www.hersheys.com/products/details/cocoamix.asp">"Goodnight Hugs" (Hersheys)</a> or <a href="http://shop.ghirardelli.com/product-exec/product_id/124/nm/Premium_White_Mocha_">"Premium White Mocha" (Ghirardelli)</a> or that kind of thing. I'm talking about the kind of recipe that I used, consisting of just three real ingredients: cocoa powder, sugar, and milk. I have to admit that the last time I made homemade cocoa was probably in eighth grade, when I bought Abuelita Mexican chocolate for a Spanish class assignment. Hardly an authentic cultural experience (poor Abuelita is owned by Nestlé), but I still remember having to resort to my mother's cleaver to cut the chocolate disk in half. Try the above recipe instead; it's much simpler, and much cheaper, than buying premade cocoa mixes or a bar of granny choc.<br /><br />And the taste? I couldn't believe how good it was. Let's just say that I won't wait for another workout to try this one again.Ai Luhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01197869780327408592noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4365057403767674312.post-78613875920285487872009-03-24T14:07:00.000-04:002009-03-24T15:11:58.529-04:00Would you exercise if it didn't change your body?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnmQYswfi5RYuvapuzR2XKP09v1CVavip1MHrhAhDc59jdXT0kL5ma7p43_7nOCciC-2u-k6egihgqM1VCpplthfVAmmssiio431xPRpl8OSo47Yh-zhaFRmDFngbmraBoOeglbJrwlUM/s1600-h/2043919288_e438ccd5f5_b.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316806258415414658" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 300px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnmQYswfi5RYuvapuzR2XKP09v1CVavip1MHrhAhDc59jdXT0kL5ma7p43_7nOCciC-2u-k6egihgqM1VCpplthfVAmmssiio431xPRpl8OSo47Yh-zhaFRmDFngbmraBoOeglbJrwlUM/s400/2043919288_e438ccd5f5_b.jpg" border="0" /></a> This is a question that I once posed to a friend, another woman with ED-like behavior. She was the kind of runner who would run until her bones snapped -- and then keep running (this actually happened to her in a race! -- I'm not kidding). We met in high school, when I was an exchange student in the mining city of Copiapó, Chile, and she was another exchange student in my program. Sara was from Alaska, and just about every sport that I had tried -- running, skiing, swimming, hiking -- she had tried, too, but under more extreme conditions. I felt like a novice when she talked about cross-country skiing to school with a gun strapped to her back in case a bear came by, or when she described the time that she was climbing up a glacier and the person below her hammered her calf with an ice pick, necessitating an emergency evacuation. My stories of canoe camping in the Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota paled in comparison to hers. But in one respect we were similar -- in our devotion to running (our obsession, I should say) -- and we soon became running partners. There were few desirable places to run inside Copiapó proper, so we took to running in the mountains surrounding the city, the bare slopes of the Andes that course through the Atacama desert halfway between Chile and Peru.<br /><br />One day, as we charged up a mountain, I asked Sarah if she would run if it didn't make her fit -- that is, if her body never changed no matter how much she ran. At the time, I was desperately trying to lose the twenty pounds that I had put on since leaving the U.S. (a common occurrence for exchange students, no matter the country), and running seemed like the most direct path to my goal. Sarah hadn't gained any weight, as far as I could see, and I credited her devotion to running (versus my having participated in no exercise, whatsoever, in the first months in Chile) as responsible for her slender figure.<br /><br />Her response to my question was "I probably wouldn't run just for the view."<br /><br /><div>With that, I knew that she was also running to stay thin.</div><div><br />Since then, I have asked this question to myself: <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Would I exercise if I didn't believe that it would change my body in some way?</span> Right now, I am asking myself that question about cycling, as after almost two months of very hard effort on the bike my body seems pretty much the same as it did before. I weigh the same that I did in November, I have the same trouble getting into my favorite jeans, and I still feel guilty when I decide whether or not to have dessert.<br />Let me make it clear that my intention, upon starting this cycling program, was not to lose weight. I had plenty of other reasons to ride my bike, such as<span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"></span> feeling freer and more alive; controlling my stress; meeting new people; getting outdoors; and just plain liking the feel of my body on the bike. But, despite these good reasons, a little voice in the back of my head still says:<br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">"Yes, but wouldn't it have been nice if you had lost some weight, too?"</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">This is exactly the problem. </span><br /><br />Does this little voice bother you, too?<br /><br />I find myself reading cycling columns about weight-loss and diet during training, trying to see what I'm doing "wrong" here. The other voice in my head, usually the stronger one, says:<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-size:180%;">"Just keep riding and doing what you like to do. Don't worry about how you look. Worry about how you </span><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"><span style="font-size:180%;">feel."</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;">Even though this voice is immensely more sensible than the other voice, sometimes the smaller voice is more obvious to me; it's like the way you can always pick out the piccolo in an orchestra, while the tuba tends to blend into the background.<br /><br />How do you make sure that you hear the tuba instead of the piccolo? </span></div>Ai Luhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01197869780327408592noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4365057403767674312.post-89611166598001996382009-03-23T15:11:00.004-04:002009-03-23T16:03:34.897-04:00Buenos Aires and back<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/planeta_roig/328519067/"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 183px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl1gLgkRPXLigMovHlsmFS7xPGjTdyc1wPArZq9ef9WbSXCMTcIpKEuXfY5p3HphvYO0qERzOq-wSOL8Z8vycV2I42FMgWD2e-pT2-50P60WzES2Lg3ThjmLC-SZjGu2rW6DA9_dXrNzw/s400/328519067_bfa702e691_b.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316476219778293938" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />It has been a while since I have written here.<br /><br />Now I feel like I'm apologizing to my diary!! -- which, in fact, this blog has effectively replaced.<br /><br />Chuan and I spent the last week in Buenos Aires, of all places, as a much belated honeymoon. I hadn't been there in over five years, since I studied abroad at the Universidad de Buenos Aires in 2003, but the city has been one of the most important places that I have lived in, and I have long wanted to show it to my husband. So, when we had the same week of spring vacation from our respective universities, we jumped at some cheap airline tickets, found ourselves a small apartment to rent for the week, and took on the town!<br /><br />Besides being the place where I perfected my Spanish, Buenos Aires was where I first saw a therapist for my eating disorder, where I took the first steps towards understanding it, and where I purged for the last time. I was worried that, being there, the old urges might come back, but they didn't. The very foods that I used to binge on -- ice cream, <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfajor">alfajores</a>, </span>cakes and candies -- did not hold the same allure as they used to. This time around, I was more interested in trying out <a href="http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/central-and-south-america/argentina/buenos-aires/60725/la-cabrera/restaurant-detail.html">different steak houses</a> and drinking <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malbec">Malbec</a> than in stuffing my face with sweets.<br /><br />It gave me a lot of satisfaction to be able to visit that city again, without feeling overwhelmed by memories of my eating disorder. In the end, despite the suffering caused by bulimia, my year in Buenos Aires was a healing experience. In therapy and out of it, I learned new ways of relating with the world around me. I discovered new sides of myself in Spanish; being a foreigner allowed me the space that I needed to construct a new, stronger identity for myself. I also credit the people there with helping me, albeit unknowingly, begin the road to recovery. The most meaningful relationships that I developed there -- with my therapist, my host mother, the director of my exchange program, and numerous Argentine friends -- offered me the opportunity to try out different ways of relating with others, and to establish personal boundaries that I had not been able to establish before.<br /><br />This week, with Chuan, I was able to visit some of those people again, and to remind myself that <span style="font-style: italic;">the past is never past. </span>It circles back and says hello from time to time. For a few years, not long ago, all I wanted was to return to South America, to escape everything fearful and broken about my life in the United States. This week I was afraid that, returning to Buenos Aires, I might feel some nostalgia or the stirring of those old longings to run away -- but <span style="font-style: italic;">NADA </span>of that reappeared<span style="font-style: italic;">. </span>I can always return to Buenos Aires to visit, I realized, but it is not my home in the way that Minnesota was and New York now is. I am American, not Argentine or Chilean or Brazilian or Chinese or any of the other identities I have tried on. I am home in New York now, and more at home with my body than ever before.Ai Luhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01197869780327408592noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4365057403767674312.post-84337588226400691142009-03-07T19:50:00.005-05:002009-03-07T20:25:42.782-05:00Enter, bikeI'm not sure who will be reading this Saturday night -- I rarely have a chance to sit down and write, so I take whatever free moments I can get -- but I wanted to put something out for the record, before I fall into sleep.<br /><br />Today I rode 50 miles on my bike, the furthest yet this spring. One of my <a href="http://avidalegria.blogspot.com/2008/05/forty-four-miles-to-nyack-and-back.html">earliest posts</a> on this blog was about cycling, and the sport continues to be one of the greatest sources of joy in my life. In that blog, I said that I would use a later post to write about how I got my bike; I don't believe that I ever followed through on that promise, so here it goes.<br /><br />I got my road bike about a year and a half ago, shortly after our wedding. My husband was a cyclist in college, and he wanted me to be able to join him on his rides. Whenever we tried to run together as a couple, he was far faster than I was and the run would end up being frustrating to both of us. A bike, it seemed, could ease the gap between our speeds. With some of the cash gifts that we received for our wedding, we set about finding me a bike.<br /><br />Our first -- and only -- stop was Trexlertown, Pennsylvania, site of a legendary, semi-annual "swap meet" where cyclists and shop owners converge on the Lehigh Valley Velodrome for a day-long bike fair. There, you'll see hundreds of sharp booths run by east-coast bike shops, along with more informal offerings of bike parts and frames scattered here and there across the grass. Chuan was ruthless in his pursuit of my bike. We stuck to our strategy of "bike first, gear second," and raced around from seller to seller looking for a fast road bike in our price range. We ended up buying my bike, a 2006 Fuji Roubaix RC, from a youth "development team" that had been sponsored by Fuji the year before and was selling their old bikes to make way for the new set that they would receive.<br /><br />After I got my bike, the rest of the swap meet passed by in a frenzy. Chuan and I ran around looking to "gear me up," that is, to get me properly equipped to actually ride the bike. We bought a helmet, bike shorts, a jersey and a jacket, cycling gloves, a computer to track my speed and pace, water bottle racks, and a "trainer" so that I could ride my bike indoors in the winter. I knew next to nothing about bikes, other than that I had always known how to ride one, and I was amazed at the enthusiasm of the other cyclists that day, whether they were buying or selling equipment. I felt like I was gaining entry into a community, the community of <span style="font-style: italic;">serious cyclists. </span>Strange people they were, and yet I liked this feeling of entering a sport, of being on the cusp of something new in my life.<br /><br />We bought the bike in October of 2007; four cold months followed before I started to ride my bike outdoors. Last spring I taught myself the basics of road cycling, riding early in the mornings and occasionally on the weekends with Chuan. This year I want to go deeper with my riding, and I have joined the New York Cycling Club. On a whim, I decided to do their A Classic training group, meaning that every Saturday for the next three months you will find me on my bike in some remote New Jersey, Connecticut, or Westchester County roads. Today it was 50 miles around the New Jersey suburbs; next week it will be a longer ride to White Plains, New York, until we eventually work our way up to a "Century" -- a hundred mile ride!<br /><br />It is especially meaningful to me to be able to join a new sport at this point in my life, after having recovered from an eating disorder several years ago. Looking back, I could never have done this sport when I was actively bulimic -- or any other sport for that matter. Honestly, I would not have been strong enough, and my obsession with food and exercise would probably have hindered, not helped, any training efforts. It is very rewarding to see that now, having changed so many of my behaviors towards food and exercise, I am at last able to participate in a sport for its own sake. What freedom!<br /><br />As Susan B. Anthony said:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-style: italic;">I'll tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than any one thing in the world. I rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a bike. It gives her a feeling of self-reliance and independence the moment she takes her seat; and away she goes, the picture of untrammelled womanhood. </span><br /></div>Ai Luhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01197869780327408592noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4365057403767674312.post-46915705848176733272009-03-01T21:29:00.005-05:002009-03-01T21:58:28.078-05:00Good-bye lunch<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGTDPzFBLMxBQn-G8xtaG966RmYWMacwsdmHArJhXMk-R-vciEoneIpqs6QEQQ88VEtEEXUzMeC7_a5R7AZpeLXD1qLVbie5c-hpq79_U1A7Q12Bb2tZkHDxdPM3rddd1b9n9rkQimoyc/s1600-h/DSC_0278.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGTDPzFBLMxBQn-G8xtaG966RmYWMacwsdmHArJhXMk-R-vciEoneIpqs6QEQQ88VEtEEXUzMeC7_a5R7AZpeLXD1qLVbie5c-hpq79_U1A7Q12Bb2tZkHDxdPM3rddd1b9n9rkQimoyc/s400/DSC_0278.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5308413899319921778" border="0" /></a>My sister came to visit us here in New York this weekend. She lives in San Francisco now, so my chances to spend time with her are far and few between. On Friday we went to Soho looking for a spare part for my bike, and then we wandered around Little Italy and Chinatown, searching for ingredients for a big meal we had planned for last night. I love walking around New York with a destination; I have lived here long enough that simply wandering the city just doesn't excite me like it used to, and I'm too American to be a<span style="font-style: italic;"> flâneur</span> -- I like to know where I'm going and what I'm going to do when I get there. It began to rain late in our tour, but it was a warm day, and the rain just added to the special-ness of the occasion: a day just to be with my sister, here in the city that I call home, doing nothing extraordinary but enjoying every moment of the intimacy of the streets.<br /><br />My sister and I don't always get along. I know that most siblings are like that, but with us there have been some particularly bad months over the last few years. We are trying to make things better, even though we live so far apart. I think it's a good sign that, after she left this afternoon, I felt lonely without her.<br /><br />This morning we both woke up early and visited the nearby farmers market, picking out sweet potatoes and parsnips, arugula and milk, bacon and cheese. It was delightful to walk around one more time with her, this person who looks so much like me, this person who knows so much about me, more even than I could tell you. I took particular pride in showing her our neighborhood and our city; maybe, someday, she'll decide to leave California and make her way to this coast.<br /><br />We spent the rest of the morning much as we did growing up, each one working on her own project (she was finishing an article for work; I was starting a take-on exam). From time to time we called out to each other, commented on this or that, and then she went to have coffee with a friend, and I made us lunch.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ4VHzw5Nv-K08FA3fVrn_MVo_iYdb2Y6WkcY0vO2O-JYtCqqEHx1FrHHGi40S0fxNLQY1lnaoYDLPyqFjrfj99CFLjoFNdIfemR0LO6qzgZVQbYuH4L5YpqHzhf2cArj2D9snDWBUJUU/s1600-h/DSC_0275.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 213px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ4VHzw5Nv-K08FA3fVrn_MVo_iYdb2Y6WkcY0vO2O-JYtCqqEHx1FrHHGi40S0fxNLQY1lnaoYDLPyqFjrfj99CFLjoFNdIfemR0LO6qzgZVQbYuH4L5YpqHzhf2cArj2D9snDWBUJUU/s320/DSC_0275.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5308413801714128834" border="0" /></a>I often make lunch on the weekends, for Chuan and me, but he was away with other friends this morning, and this lunch was for my sister. She has started to cook for herself, too, now that she has graduated from college and is living on her own. Every meal that we have together is sprinkled with questions and comments to one another about the recipe, the ingredients, how we did or that or what we might do better in the future. This time, she wanted to know how I make beans. I love making beans, and already on this trip she had tried one version of mine (large white beans, Italian-style, with lots and lots of olive oil and black pepper). For lunch I made a quick-cooking dal, flavored with hot curry, red pepper, asafoetida, and cumin seeds. We had carrot risotto left over from last night's Italian feast, and the salad was arugula and apples from the farmers market. Blackberries and honey formed a simple dessert.<br /><br />I find it easy to cook for the people that I love. I only wish that I could do it more often, that my family were not spread across this country, shore to shore. In the scant hours before she left, I felt myself grasping at the time remaining, wishing that my sister could stay just a while longer. Afterwards, I sat at the same table where we had just eaten, and tried to focus on my exam. I couldn't. I felt sad and I just needed to feel sad for a few minutes. Listening to Bach's keyboard concertos helped, as did my bike ride later this afternoon, but I still feel lonely. And that's how I should feel, I tell myself -- there's nothing wrong with these feelings, but like all uncomfortable feelings, they are disconcerting. But rather than push them aside, let me admit that I said good-bye to someone today, and it hurt. I love her, I miss her, and I said good-bye.<span style="font-style: italic;"></span>Ai Luhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01197869780327408592noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4365057403767674312.post-60550832657638550382009-02-25T21:06:00.006-05:002009-02-25T21:46:52.231-05:00Fueling up<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ8olgxRlv-R3Of6vyGQG_70seKRpeRxP-bpxgdO-w48qyD5Vhjqun5NxGGREm263NDU-L879WfIPDN9FGt034BpKD_M5_49uyfdXobtoy1weMgD5FKxR3eBsJLL89Ije5iH_Wua0OihU/s1600-h/DSC_0276.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ8olgxRlv-R3Of6vyGQG_70seKRpeRxP-bpxgdO-w48qyD5Vhjqun5NxGGREm263NDU-L879WfIPDN9FGt034BpKD_M5_49uyfdXobtoy1weMgD5FKxR3eBsJLL89Ije5iH_Wua0OihU/s400/DSC_0276.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306928392101863666" border="0" /></a>Lately, I have been thinking of food in a very elemental way; perhaps in the most elemental of ways -- as <span style="font-weight: bold;">fuel</span>. I recently joined an amateur cycling club here in New York, and I am now spending a few mornings a week riding my bike with other enthusiasts in Central Park and further afield. These rides aren't your ordinary commuter trips; this morning, for example, I rode 21 miles starting at 7am, and was back at home, showered, and out the door by 8:45. On Saturday I plan to ride 50 miles, and that's just the first of this year's longer rides. Eventually I'll work my way up to a Century -- that's 100 miles! I am putting in some serious miles on my bike, and my appetite can feel the difference. Today, for instance, I ate two breakfasts: a quick meal of toast with pecan butter and a banana before the ride, and a second breakfast afterwards, of granola and blueberries (above). Even with those two meals, I was still hungry before lunchtime, and have had to remind myself all day that it's OK for me to eat a little more.<br /><br />The first time I went on a long bike ride, early last spring, something happened to me that happens to most cyclists at least once: I "bonked," meaning that I ran out of energy (for us, that means calories!) before the end of the ride. The cause was simple: I didn't eat enough as I rode. For a three-hour ride, I need to eat at least 150/200 calories per hour <span style="font-style: italic;">simply to keep going</span> on my bike. And that's assuming that I'll have a big meal afterwards to make up for rest of the calories lost during the ride. I still forget sometimes that I really do need an awful lot of food to keep my body and my bike going, but I have been a quick study where this is concerned, because the signs of bonking are so obvious. Without my energy drink and my sports bar, and a constant flow of water, my legs turn mushy, my vision blurs, and my breathing becomes ragged. While I can make a shorter ride without any re-fueling, for a longer ride such snacks are indispensable.<br /><br />Eating to ride, and not exercising to eat, is a new mode of operation for me. It's amazing to me that I can eat, after a long ride, in a way that is almost instinctual, so far from the over-thought appetites of my eating disorder. I eat because I am hungry. I eat because my legs are tired. I eat to ride again. <span style="font-style: italic;"></span>I eat and eat and eat and eat -- and don't worry about it! I just eat because my body is telling me to eat. And what could be simpler, and further from disorder, than that?<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.roadbikeaddicts.com/images/roubaix.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 471px; height: 294px;" src="http://www.roadbikeaddicts.com/images/roubaix.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Ai Luhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01197869780327408592noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4365057403767674312.post-28528796252109772632009-02-21T12:58:00.008-05:002009-02-21T15:27:53.610-05:00Basics<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzjD_k8mTsbdpSHoX-o-0bY-gHPhf-jY1oPUc_55CAGdkaif8di7GV_FlN2GIQY7hurmVo9TSF5mjTfau7lpRzzkNWDbpuS2UlpSAjKu9wQTnb4QzXElvWgVc7wLTOikwu0sBlYjCxuag/s1600-h/DSC_0273.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzjD_k8mTsbdpSHoX-o-0bY-gHPhf-jY1oPUc_55CAGdkaif8di7GV_FlN2GIQY7hurmVo9TSF5mjTfau7lpRzzkNWDbpuS2UlpSAjKu9wQTnb4QzXElvWgVc7wLTOikwu0sBlYjCxuag/s400/DSC_0273.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305349653354745842" border="0" /></a>Tonight we are preparing a real feast for friends, so lunch was simple: red lentil soup and carrot and raisin slaw.<br /><br />The soup was <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Madhur-Jaffreys-World-Vegetarian-Cooking/dp/0394748670/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1235248046&sr=8-2">Madhur Jaffrey's invention</a>, but carrot slaws have become my winter lunch staple, and the recipe is all mine:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Carrot and raisin slaw</span><br /><br />Ingredients:<br /><ul><li>1 large carrot, grated</li><li>2 shallots, diced, or 1/4 of a sweet onion, also diced</li><li>1/4 c. yellow raisin</li><li>1/4 - 1/2 c. pecans or pumpkin seeds</li><li>salt to taste</li><li>freshly ground black pepper to taste</li><li>1 T. honey</li><li>2 T. mayonnaise</li><li>1 T. white wine vinegar (or other light-colored vinegar)<br /></li><li>1/4 c. olive oil<br /></li></ul>Mix the first six ingredients in a serving bowl. For the dressing, combine the honey, mayonnaise, vinegar, and oil and mix until smooth. Dress the salad 10 to 30 minutes before serving.Ai Luhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01197869780327408592noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4365057403767674312.post-70296400941365249512009-02-17T11:31:00.007-05:002009-02-17T12:08:28.534-05:00Slow quick quick slow<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/shesnuckinfuts/1343051440/"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303808854817852578" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 400px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdYeR5NZRniqiWsebRLXQ-CA9LCzKNZBJwdHwLcxcdnFJwSBCNlXbGykZcACxXfUad1zXSKyGJSxtI1MOnKjs3AD6Yo-NWb4scxdQxPxmn1uzuI6NsPe5Y_8Es_MBIDHbKZLCtn_p1di0/s400/herons.jpg" border="0" /></a>Several years ago, when I was riding strong in my recovery from an eating disorder, changes seemed to happen so quickly in my life. I felt myself opening up in new and wonderful ways: my relationships with my parents improved; I met the man who is now my husband; I stopped following goals that were set by others; I found a new spiritual path; and I no longer turned to food and exercise as the exclusive sources of comfort in my life. <div></div><br /><div>Around that time, in December of 2004, I got my first tattoo, of a blue heron. There are many herons on the lakes of Minnesota, where I grew up, and I at once associated the bird with my faraway home and with the changes that I had recently undergone. In some cultures, the heron, like the phoenix, is a symbol of resurrection and transformation. In Egypt, for example, <a href="http://www.egyptianmyths.net/phoenix.htm">the heron-like Bennu bird</a> called the world into creation at the beginning of time. For these reasons, the heron seemed like an appropriate animal to carry with me always, to mark on my body as a reminder of what I had gone through, and of the new life that I was embarking on after my eating disorder.</div><div></div><br /><div>Sometimes, I look back on those early days of recovery with a feeling of nostalgia. Sure, I was still binging, still exercising off the calories in ridiculously long runs -- but change was brewing. I could feel it. Later, even my body changed, losing the ability to digest the foods that I had once craved and consumed in abundance. There were clear markers to let me know that things were different, and I felt, in many ways, reborn. </div><div></div><br /><div>The struggle of recovery now, four years down the line, is that it doesn't always feel so extraordinary. In fact, I rarely have the blissful, life-rocking moments of insight that seemed so frequent as I learned new ways to pattern my relationships and new ways of being with my body. Now, those skills are a part of me, no longer new and shiny and revelatory. Life doesn't seem nearly as overwhelming and tragic as it did during my eating disorder, but nor does it often reach the heights of emotion that I felt during my recovery. I know that I haven't stopped growing, haven't stopped learning from my day-to-day life, but the changes are more subtle, less frequently noticed by others or myself. </div><div> </div><div>This is what life after an eating disorder and after recovery from an eating disorder feels like to me: pretty <span>ordinary</span>. While I still have problems (who doesn't?), more and more they resemble the normal concerns that everyone has, like how to get along with others and find my own path in life. My sorrows don't feel like tragedies anymore, my joys are deeper, and the emotional fireworks are fewer. These days, it is just me and my <a href="http://www.ordinarymind.com/">ordinary mind</a>. </div>Ai Luhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01197869780327408592noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4365057403767674312.post-16008619035059936762009-02-15T06:48:00.006-05:002009-02-15T07:40:13.164-05:00Permissions, continued<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidt8JLFkONtneK6s6vsNpr0npbKPvd2y2KM8FNOawoXauj4zPECKIbwt0_qu8fXerRZSYL6DXlNxJ5kJpBD5-s-kW4jYPvE9fTXJJObV6OYROaIvxrQLJIdnqtF6xWNKqG_F-l4HwjqEw/s1600-h/IMG_1041.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidt8JLFkONtneK6s6vsNpr0npbKPvd2y2KM8FNOawoXauj4zPECKIbwt0_qu8fXerRZSYL6DXlNxJ5kJpBD5-s-kW4jYPvE9fTXJJObV6OYROaIvxrQLJIdnqtF6xWNKqG_F-l4HwjqEw/s400/IMG_1041.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303001480333662418" border="0" /></a><br />I am glad that <a href="http://avidalegria.blogspot.com/2009/02/permissions.html">I gave myself permissions</a> last week, because some of them certainly came in handy.<br /><br />Take #1, "Buy warm cycling clothes." Last Saturday I planned a long bike ride outside of NYC and, like any outdoorswoman, dutifully checked the weather forecast ahead of time. It said that the day would be in the 40's, so I happily set off at 8:30am expecting a great day. Not so -- the temperature never got above freezing, there was a blustery head wind the whole way out, and by the time I got to my turn-around point, in Piermont, New York, it was all I could do to not spend the rest of the day in a coffee-shop and find a bus back to Manhattan. Instead, I found the nearest bike shop and explained my situation: unless I found some warmer clothing, I would never make it home! Could they help me? Did I have my credit card on my person? Yes to both. To make a long story short, I spent much too much money on biking clothing for my paltry income, but happily I <span style="font-style: italic;">did </span>make it home that day, and I have new booties, gloves, and polypropylene to show for it.<br /><br />Perhaps most significantly, the third item on that list, "I give myself permission to not like my job," has also been useful this week, as I have been going back and forth over whether to stay in this particular research lab next year. Admitting to myself that I don't like it there was a first step to realizing that I need to leave. Moreover, I learned this week that they won't have any "funding" (i.e. <span style="font-style: italic;">salary</span>) for me next year, giving me even less of a reason to stay, but if I liked it even a smidgen I just might consider staying there anyway, because the research topic is interesting. As it stands, I have been treated coldly by some of my colleagues and unjustly by others, and the work itself is not engaging enough to make up for the lack of personal connection there, so I'm outie. Just taking the step last week of admitting to myself how much I do <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> like my job, has made it so much easier to say "No, thank you" to another year of the same.<br /><br />As for #18, permission to "Disagree with my husband about Joni Mitchell's music," yesterday I went to the <a href="http://www.nypl.org/research/lpa/lpa.html">New York Library for the Performing Arts</a> and picked up another of her albums, <span style="font-style: italic;">Songs of a Prairie Girl</span>, along with all of the Bach cantatas that I could carry home. So I will keep listening to her regardless of my husband's opinion!Ai Luhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01197869780327408592noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4365057403767674312.post-34318726373818945992009-02-10T10:11:00.006-05:002009-02-10T10:18:57.705-05:00Rubbing stone<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/gammell/367811242/"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5301187536858848354" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 300px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDzoyv16uJp8ihSGmO_86aoGJIzPNOZNJdB8eGvfKA1GZuUjLkWAW7KCvbCbc1h0FsrdBv6BCWWOCYuu0HxQeUiUHkeYE1MNbYpqpRHiKqPiSBHiD2DKaqQHeINntvON-ga-ZrdWfKRfI/s400/367811242_82759f7d3e_b%5B2%5D.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><div>Let me admit to you that sometimes, I find people (and I am also talking about a certain person, in particular) difficult to deal with.</div><div><br />A part of me just wants everybody to like me – wouldn’t that be so much easier? – and so I work to make that the case. I try to be pleasant, acquiescent, perky, and attentive. But inevitably these efforts will fail to work on someone: I will feel dejected, and look for ways that I can do better. Couldn’t I just smile a little more, remember another detail about that person, do her one more favor? I run through my repertoire with difficult people, but what makes them difficult is that none of these tricks work with them. I just can’t crack them with my charm, my compassion, or my competence. And this I find so, so frustrating, coming against a place where I cannot move, where there is nothing left but resignation and acceptance.</div><div><br />There is a person at work that is playing out this routine with me. I smile at her, she frowns at me. I do her a favor, she criticizes my work. I come in early, she asks me to stay late. I cannot seem to win. I have come to dread going to work, and all because of this one person! More than anything, I want her to like me, to accept me, to treat me like a friend or colleague. Instead, I get blank stares and sarcastic comments from her. She hurts me, and I can’t seem to do anything about it. All of my active striving to improve the relationship hasn’t helped, and I am at a loss for what to do next.</div><div><br />My Buddhist teacher would probably say that this is what Zen practice is for – through meditation, we learn to stick with the discomfort just a second longer than we are used to doing; we allow ourselves to acknowledged the icky-ness, the feelings of rejection and longing, and by noticing them, they become less powerful in our imaginations. Eventually, visiting them day after day, we wear them down, like a rubbing stone. They cease to “catch” us in their grip, and become like any other problem that we have relinquished: just a part of life, not good or bad. </div><div><br />I suspect that this process of wearing down and letting go of our problems is especially difficult for people with eating disorders, because first we have to admit that there is a problem, and next we have to avoid turning away from it. Eating disorders (and other addictions) help us cover up those feelings of anguish and rejection and anger and fear that we cannot stand, the feelings that we have never learned to face, for whatever reasons. </div><div><br />These days I feel raw and vulnerable again, like I did in the early days of my recovery, when I realized that I didn’t have the shield of food or hunger to hide behind anymore. Life felt brighter around the edges, but my problems should out in sharper focus, too, and threatened to overwhelm me at times. I am still making up for the years of subterfuge that my eating disorder allowed me. Now, or never, I have to learn to take in all of the feelings that frighten me, acknowledge them, and carry them in such a way that they do not shatter this fragile sense of self. </div><div> </div><div><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/oceanflynn/1520725524/"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5301188191978342450" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 300px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA3YIEC9sh0zmA8aPpD59zOPHvab-JpMnK0l_MYkrAksCJZZa9L9OvYe854m0lT08M5g_8iQQs8uDr9Sisehr9OQqqxEHWGYDw12XBsFasOf4XJMLPwSLPxLggSp_jeYA8-GgbzeIijoY/s400/1520725524_704b6f6cc5_b.jpg" border="0" /></a></div>Ai Luhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01197869780327408592noreply@blogger.com4