The Inner Valkyrie Project
Feb. 3rd, 2005 05:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennySo I've started trying to maintain an exercise regime again. [Insert long, complicated history of Truepenny's Boring Health Problems and Stressful (Tho' Equally Boring) Academic Problems and the interconnection there-between here.] And of course, because I am an American woman and have been properly brainwashed and indoctrinated, I find myself thinking about it in terms of losing weight.
Don't get me wrong. I'd love to be a size 6 again. But thinking about exercise and eating in terms of weight-loss is stupid. Because you psych yourself out. Every time you gain a pound, or fail to lose a pound, you cast yourself into the Slough of Despond and wander around thinking at random intervals, You utter sow.
This is not good for one's mental health, one's self-esteem, or one's resolve.
I was thinking about it in the shower, and thinking, The point isn't to lose weight. The point is to gain health. (Like making the next level in Angband and giving yourself CON points like a mad thing.) And this cross-connected in my head with my post about Valkyries earlier today.
My mental image of Valkyries was fixed when I was a wee sprog and my father gave me Rackham's Color Illustrations for Wagner's "Ring". Now (leaving aside for a moment the cultural context of which I did not wot at the time), Rackham's Valkyries are ladies of presence. (He can't draw dragons for shit, though.) I feel sure that they would scoff at the idea of doing anything simply to make oneself skinnier. And while I'm also sure they'd be very amused at my weight-training, I think they might, just possibly, approve.
So I'm listening to my Inner Valkyrie, and my exercise regime is about letting her out.
Don't get me wrong. I'd love to be a size 6 again. But thinking about exercise and eating in terms of weight-loss is stupid. Because you psych yourself out. Every time you gain a pound, or fail to lose a pound, you cast yourself into the Slough of Despond and wander around thinking at random intervals, You utter sow.
This is not good for one's mental health, one's self-esteem, or one's resolve.
I was thinking about it in the shower, and thinking, The point isn't to lose weight. The point is to gain health. (Like making the next level in Angband and giving yourself CON points like a mad thing.) And this cross-connected in my head with my post about Valkyries earlier today.
My mental image of Valkyries was fixed when I was a wee sprog and my father gave me Rackham's Color Illustrations for Wagner's "Ring". Now (leaving aside for a moment the cultural context of which I did not wot at the time), Rackham's Valkyries are ladies of presence. (He can't draw dragons for shit, though.) I feel sure that they would scoff at the idea of doing anything simply to make oneself skinnier. And while I'm also sure they'd be very amused at my weight-training, I think they might, just possibly, approve.
So I'm listening to my Inner Valkyrie, and my exercise regime is about letting her out.
