Strong to the Finish

[Jean McMillan 2,973]

Remember this?

“I’m strong to the finish ‘cause I eats me spinach. I’m Popeye the sailor man!”

Growing up, I watched Popeye guzzle cans of spinach to instantly restore and increase his legendary strength as he battled his enemies and courted the thin, homely Olive Oyl. I didn’t identify much with Popeye or Olive Oyl – I was more like the portly J. Wellington Wimpy, who would gladly pay you Thursday for a hamburger today. But like millions of other children, I did get the message that spinach was good for me. Magically good! And if eating spinach could help me prevail in the endless fights I had with my brother, it was worth a try.

I never did win a battle with my brother, but I ate my spinach and actually liked it. Not canned spinach like Popeye’s (the very sight of canned spinach is revolting), but frozen chopped spinach, boiled, drained, and covered with melted Velveeta cheese. When asked if he liked spinach, Popeye replied, “I hates it.” He might have liked my favorite cheesy spinach better, but clearly he was taking his spinach like medicine at a time in history when medicine always tasted terrible. The worse the taste, the more potent it was.

Spinach didn’t give me bulging Popeye muscles (or, thankfully, his speech impediment), and since I hated gym class and avoided exercise as much as possible, I didn’t develop any more than minimal strength and endurance. When I reached puberty in the 1960’s, women’s liberation and the concept of a strong, independent woman were still quite new. My macho first boyfriend thought women shouldn’t be allowed to drive a car, never mind lift something heavy. As I wrote in Bandwagon, my parents scorned President Kennedy’s physical fitness advocacy and encouraged intellectual rather than physical strength. The exercise programs and studios I tried in the 1970’s and 80’s prescribed exercise for weight loss and toning; the dance classes I took taught me about form, agility and flexibility; but never did I hear any messages about strength. Perhaps I wasn’t listening very well. I thought that weight lifting would turn me into a muscle-bound freak like the ones I occasionally saw on television.

As an adult married woman, I’ve had a tall, strong husband to open jars, change flat tires, take out the garbage, and reach things stored on high shelves (he claims that’s why I married him, when in fact it was his dog, not his brawn that captured my heart). That allowed me to reserve all my meager strength for the herculean task of moving my obese body from my arm chair to the kitchen and back.

It wasn’t until I had weight loss surgery at age 54 that I learned about the value of muscle during weight loss. That was the first time ever that I heard that muscle burns calories faster, and takes up less room, than fat. The theory sounded good, but for my first post-op year I focused on cardio exercise because an online calculator showed that I could burn almost three times more calories doing an aerobic dance class than the same time spent weight training. I worked out faithfully, walking and doing a variety of cardio classes, and reached my weight goal, but I was still a weakling… a scrawny weakling instead of an obese one, a weakling who could wear a size 10 but struggled to pick up a 10-pound bag of dog kibble. Here at the 9 Dogs Howling ranch, that’s a serious deficit indeed!

Eventually I got bored with my workout routine. To add more variety and challenge to my exercise, I began working with a personal trainer when I was 20 months post-op. My trainer taught me lots of moves with free weights and weight machines, some of which I grew to hate, but after about three months of our weekly sessions, I began to notice some muscle definition in my flabby arms. Nothing like Popeye, but there before me was proof, visible to the naked eye, that I actually had some muscles underneath that sagging skin.

Even after I stopped working with my personal trainer, I kept working at strength training, hoping to see more and more muscles. All that effort was in the service of my vanity, you understand. I just wanted to look “ripped” and it didn’t occur to me that strongly-defined muscles could be pressed into service at home (lifting dogs as well as dog food bags) and at work (lifting boxes, shifting heavy display fixtures, climbing stock room ladders).

Gradually I came to realize that I was getting physically stronger. I could no longer claim to be a “delicate flower of womanhood” like Scarlett O’Hara. That turned out to be no terrible loss. It turned out that being strong(er) was as good for my insides as my outsides. Not only was strength training helping make my bones and muscles stronger, it was making my mind and heart stronger. Instead of being afraid to try something new, I just went ahead and did it, and even if I brought absolutely no skill to the task, I had enough strength of mind and body to tough it out.

Early in 2010 I joined a new fitness studio, one with Stott Pilates machines instead of weight machines. At first I worried that I would lose muscle definition without weight machines as part of my workouts, but in fact my muscle definition improved all over my body and especially in my legs. In late summer 2010, I did some personal training with the owner of the studio. Her first step was to give me a fitness evaluation. I had to do push ups, step ups, toe touches, and other moves to evaluate my strength, agility, flexibility and cardio fitness. Much to my (happy) surprise, I scored above average for my age in most of those areas. Just the process of being tested was a revelation, because each time Caroline instructed me to do a new move, I did it without any anxiety or hesitation about whether or not I’d be able to do it.

Since then, I’ve thought many times about the importance of fitness and strength to an average, everyday woman like me. Not an Olympic athlete, not a dancer, not a ditch digger, not a materials handler, just Mrs. Middle Aged American. Although I admire my late mother and aspire to be like her in many ways, I don’t want to end up the way she did after a lifetime of avoiding exercise. She was only in her early 70’s when she began to struggle with little tasks that most of us take for granted. Dressing herself, picking a pen off the floor, getting out of a chair, walking from her apartment to the elevator, opening a door, all of that was too hard for her. She had never claimed to be a delicate flower of womanhood, either. She was one of the most capable and energetic people I’ve ever known, but she never took care of her body and in the end, her body failed her. I’ve vowed that I won’t let that happen to me. I’m going to keep this body moving, or die trying, and that’s got to be a better way to go than lying helpless in bed while an attendant maneuvers a straw into my mouth. I hope that in 20 years when I’m 78, I’ll enjoy sitting in a rocking chair beside my husband for a while, and then getting up to kick ass in an exercise class.