Healthy does not equal thin, and exercise does not equal weight loss, and I don't care how many calories I burned just now

Here is the US Olympic Softball team after their gold medal win in Athens. These were my idols growing up. I played softball, and I played hard. I was in the best shape of my life. I was also 170 pounds, and 5'5", which according to every chart on the internet and in teen magazines made me obese. About one quarter of my softball team fell into that category, and another half were "overweight" and the remaining quarter were "normal".

I wanted so badly to be "normal". I tried every diet I could think of. I added more and more workouts to my schedule, and I ate less and less. I wasn't the only one either. These wonderful, athletic, smart, beautiful women were convinced that it didn't matter if they could hit a ball out of the park, or leap feet in the air to catch a fly ball, or play 5+ 90 minute games in one tournament day. None of this mattered because they weren't thin. They weren't in good enough shape.

I was one of the lucky ones. After a few tumultuous adolescent years of shame and unhealthy body image and restrictive eating I bounced back. At my smallest weight I suffered from a damaged stomach lining, and a compromised immune system which made what would have been a regular teenaged bout with mono into a 6 month ordeal that compromised my health and athletic career. I realized then that there was something massively wrong with a world that made me feel like this, something terribly horribly wrong. How could it be that when I was healthy and active and happy I was obese, but when I fit into all the pretty prom dresses and everyone complemented me I was miserable and ill?

That, my friends, was the moment when I became a feminist. I realized that the way my teammates and I were treated was fucking bullshit. I was lucky. Through some combination of a supportive (and feminist!) family, coaches who realized bullshit when they saw it, and a lack of any genetic predisposition to develop long term disordered eating I made it out alive. I took a break from exercise, and sports, and spent the last couple of years of my high school career going to concerts, kissing people, and watching every episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I got into sports again in college, and worked with the rowing crew in some of the most intense workouts I've ever done. I still never weighed less than 170, although I could sure run the pants off of just about anyone. After I dropped out of college, I quit exercising regularly. I was busy working 70-90 hours a week, and was so tired after a days work that I didn't have the energy.

So now here I am. 23 years old, and living in the City of Angels and I have decided to take up a new sport, get in crazy awesome shape, and not give a flying fuck about losing weight, counting or burning calories, or what my dress size is. I'm currently in week four of my running plan, and by March of 2011, I hope to compete in the Los Angeles marathon. In this blog you can learn about my training, how I keep myself real about food and body image issues, and my feminist dissections of sports culture. It isn't easy, and it takes effort, but I am a feminist on the run and I am miles ahead of the patriarchy.