I’m in the Happy Healthy Lesbian Telesummit
Amy is the Founder of the Happy Healthy Lesbian, an online community for queer women who want to live their best lives. To help us all off to our best start in happiness and health for 2014, Amy has brought together all of her favorite queer women mentors, coaches and guides in The Happy Healthy Lesbian Telesummit.
And guess who she’s chosen to talk all things Happy and Healthy Body? Your old pal, Bevin Branlandingham!
Ways I’m Embracing My Imperfect Meditation Practice
People are always going on and on about the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health benefits of a meditation practice. I’ve been working on becoming a gold star meditator in fits and starts for years. If my meditation practice had a star it would probably be glitter, shiny and a little distracting.
First of all, I’m a shitty, inconsistent meditator with a lot going on in my head. But I have noticed that since I’ve been attempting to meditate for three years, I am a lot calmer and better at it than I used to be. The trying is the important part. I don’t do it every day though I wish I did. I’ve assembled a few of my meditation tips to encourage other people to seek their inner peace even if they, too, are shitty, inconsistent meditators.
My Experience with the Heart Beets Holistic Seasonal Cleanse
The gateway activity for me and Heart Beets Holistic health coaching was her seasonal cleanse. I was initially extremely dubious. I have heard about cleanses people have used before and they often seem like fad diets or fasting. Many people say “cleanse” as a euphamism for radical diet. As someone who is body positive, fat positive and virulently opposed to diet culture, I am not prone to want to jump on eating trends. Cleanses seem trendy right now.
She’s the first health practitioner I’ve ever been involved with who is pro fat but she is right when she tells me to put butter on stuff. It’s the opposite of how I was raised. It was a non-fat milk, low fat food kind of lifestyle, even though I was always fat.
The cleanse was appealing to me because it was about eliminating the most inflammatory foods. Sugar, dairy, wheat/gluten, corn, peanuts, eggs, and soy. I have kicked sugar before and I felt great, so I knew this would help me reinvent my eating.
How to be a Good Ally to Fat People Who Appear to Have Lost Weight
Our culture normalizes talking about bodies all the time. There is especially a lot of value placed on weight gain or loss. Turn on a television and just listen to diet chatter. It’s pervasive, obnoxious and well-meaning individuals perpetuate it in our personal lives all the time.
I like to create an environment in my life that is about substance over small talk, where compliments are genuine and weight is value-neutral.
“Oh, but Bevin,” you may be saying. “I really mean it as a compliment when I notice you’ve lost weight!”
But, well-intentioned friend, just because you’re well-intentioned doesn’t mean what you say doesn’t have a harmful impact. Weight loss doesn’t mean I look good. I believe I look good at all of my weights–all bodies are good bodies. And I know your perception of me might have changed because you are socialized to believe smaller is better, but I would like to gently invite you to do something different with your nonpliments of “You look so good!” when someone has lost weight.
Getting a Rapid HIV Test at the LGBT Health Clinic
My straight BFF says she’s annoyed when she gets screened for STIs because it’s often as a result of a break-up and she thinks you should get banged after you get a clean bill of health, as a reward. Except you sometimes get this stuff taken care of at the end of the road because maybe you were cheated on or you realized you had some miscommunications with someone about fluid bonding and probably you should get tested for your own peace of mind. And then there’s no one to bang you when it comes back clear. Just maybe a little bit of relief and an iced coffee when you don’t get a call that anything is wrong.
Plus Size Pageant Documentary–There She Is and some questions for my readership about being fat and expressing gender
I’m wondering from readers what they feel like about wearing make-up, whether they find it compulsory, if they feel comfortable in public spaces or specifically queer spaces without it (if they are a make-up identified person)?
In what ways do you feel “in your gender,” and how does that present? How does that differ from day to day, moment to moment?
How do you respond to weight loss in your life? Are there ways that you make it value-neutral?
Three Ways to Reclaim Food Awesomeness on International No Diet Day
Today, May 6th, is International No Diet Day. I used to throw parties every year for it, but now I throw body positive parties all the time so I just have a quiet observation. I thought this was a great occasion to go through three ways that I like to reclaim my consciousness, self-esteem and eating habits from the scars of an early lifetime of dieting.
Fat Babes Pole Dancing Class
My new friend Jacqueline proposed two things after I told her about my recent break-up: a tarot reading (which I took her up on) and finding a pole dancing class. She wanted to go with a fat and/or crip person (two things she identifies as) who was not already a stripper because what’s the fun in being a beginner with someone who can already flip around a pole like it’s no big deal. I love trying new things with other fat babes, so I was all in.
Doing activities in the erotic genre are a great way to reclaim your body in the wake of a break-up and feel empowering especially when you might not be getting laid as much as you’d like to, regardless of your DTF* status. It’s also a great way to expand your repertoire and enhance your fat sex!
The class Jacqueline found for us was at Sacred Brooklyn, a yoga studio and pole dance palace three blocks from my old apartment in Bed Stuy on the border of Clinton Hill.
Lesbian Jack Kerouac Gay American Road Trip Part 7: Layover in Bay Area, CA and Tips to Survive Returning to Your Hometown
In planning my trip I had budgeted the day after Thanksgiving to hang out with my mom and Grandmother and soak up a little bit of the Bay Area. I was ready to stop driving so intensely and excited to have a “destination” for more than a couple of hours.
It’s worth noting that I was miserable growing up and thus unable to appreciate or notice much of the beauty around me. I really love visiting the Bay now. Part of the impetus for this trip was to get to spend some quality time in California.
Oh, home town discomfort you are so real.
Linkage, Buying Jeans and a New Episode of the Lesbian Tea Basket
ITEM THE FIRST: There is this really great article from National Geographic about Health at Every Size. It also includes a pretty great primer on the concepts of intuitive eating and exercising for fun and feeling good and not for culturally mandated self-worth. If only unlearning all of the self-hatred and doubting of food from decades of dieting were so easy to put into a primer…
ITEM THE SECOND: I contributed to Autostraddle’s article The Jeans Issue: Queer Fashion Guide For Various Shapes, Sizes, Styles and Gender Expressions using the help of my trusty friend Leslie Medlik from TLC’s Big Sexy. We talk about how to shop for plus size jeans and what to look for in trends, fit and style. We also recommend our favorite brands and some self-esteem guarding pieces of wisdom to bring into the fitting room with you.
Magical Smoothies
{Also, stuff I’ve been up to lately}
I have given up on caffeine and refined sugar again (after a happy Fall/early winter free of both and physically feeling great) and other than being ever so tired I’m doing okay. I’m sleeping a lot right now. Curse the late winter blah blah blahs and the traitor daylight savings sun that makes it seem like it should be a lot warmer than it really is!
Smoothies are really helping this time, the natural sugar pep is waking me up and ever so tasty. To this end I’ve started concocting smoothies from basic ingredients around. I just made this one up and was super happy about it.
Holiday Gift Guide #1: Yoga Stuff
I am super into yoga. I’ve been doing it at least weekly for a year and a half, but at this point I incorporate yoga into my day at least once, and ideally three times a week do a full hour/90 minutes. I mentioned in my post, The Queer Fat Femme Guide to Beginning a Yoga Practice, that I was never fond of dvd yoga routines as they felt very Jane Fonda-y. Meera, the host and proprietor of Big Yoga, offered me two dvds to review and promised that they wouldn’t be Jane Fonda-y.