You Gotta Like It To Do It
hi babes!
today's newsletter is a little bit practical/STUDIO-related news and a bit about the power of like (read: actual enjoyment) when it comes to healthful habits & fitness. enjoy!
located at 87 richardson st (just a couple blocks from mccarren park), my beautiful new studio is a place devoted to helping curious movers and creative babes feel better now. i'm open for private pilates sessions NOW (get in while you can, babes, before my schedule fills!) with VERY small in-person pilates & barre classes coming soon.
healthful habits don't have to suck
i've always said that the best exercise is the one you'll actually do. and because we need to move roughly every day of the rest our lives, we may as well ENJOY it, no? well, the same applies to food.
my parents raised my sister and i on extremely healthy food and for this, in many ways, i am forever grateful. i know that childhood nutrition sets us up for a lifetime of health, and i know i'm lucky to have had such forward-thinking parents who belonged to a food co-op, pretty much never had soda or junk food of any kind in the house and bought organic everything as much as they could afford.
but there's another side to being raised on "hippie" food. for one, the way we ate was so different from my friends that as a child i would go literally insane at my friends' houses and consume entire sleeves of oreos and peanut m&m's by the bowlful. my very plain lunches never seemed appetizing to me, so i frequently would skip them and instead scrounge for change to buy ice cream (because what, really, is better than a fudgsicle) or nibble on people's extra cheetos. when i was finally on my own at college, i remember having nothing in my apartment except ramen noodles and frozen cool whip for a several months, and my preferred lunch in between dance classes was skittles and a diet coke.
pure & natural rebellion, obviously, but luckily i figured out early on that these previously forbidden foods didn't make me feel particularly good, and i got a restaurant job and was able to eat better food (aka actual food).
the other problem with the hippie foodways in my house is that we also lived by the 80s & 90s-era diet culture advice to eat low fat and, because of my dad's chronic high blood pressure, low salt. the low salt-ness meant that otherwise healthy and delicious foods came out bland and hard to eat (what the hell, dad - boiled potatoes, cabbage and broccoli with no salt or butter????) and eating low fat meant that this growing teenage girl was never satisfied because i was never satiated. the intuitive desire for fat energy in food had to be satisfied somehow, and thus quantities of grains and sugars were consumed instead (such as absolutely insane amounts of pasta followed by those weird snackwell's lowfat cookies).
it also means that to this day, there's a bunch of "health food" that i actively, vehemently dislike; including, but not limited to: whole wheat bread, brown rice, tofu, tempeh, lowfat yogurt, quinoa, bean sprouts, flax seeds and raisins, thank you very much. i don't eat any of those things, and yet i am, by all standards, healthy af (and probably a teensy bit of a hippie still). i eat plenty of fat, and while i steer clear of many packaged foods with their crazy amounts of sodium, i am not shy with salt in my own cooking. i eat protein in abundance and carbs for dinner, and always fruits & vegetables. i eat things i love prepared the way i like and it works - both body and mind are happy and healthy in equal measure, most of the time.
now, if you love these foods, by all means eat them, and save me a bite to help change my mind. the point is - it's better to eat what YOU like and makes YOU feel good, not because it's a trend, not even because the american heart association tells you to, and definitely not because every other gorgeous fitness babe on your instagram feed is a gluten-free vegan or subsists entirely on chicken breasts, kale and protein powder. now that i have kids of my own, i try to be careful not to stigmatize or fetishize foods. i offer choices, i'm not stingy with treats, i make vegetables taste delicious (broccoli and cheese, y'all, holy goodness) and i let them eat brioche as sandwich bread because fed is good and balance is great.
in closing, babes, i hope you are loving how you're eating, moving and choosing to spend your precious time. if you need ideas, i'm here, and i hope you choose to move with me :)
with love & planks,
annie
