Mary Spencer's Blog

I am an amateur super heavyweight strongwoman. I am fat. I am 5’8 and I weigh 320 pounds. Why did I tell you my weight? Because I exist. Because others aren’t comfortable sharing. Because what women do weigh is a mystery to a lot of people still. The fitness industry is a difficult place for fat folks. We deal with everything from outright shaming to constant microaggressions — large and small reminders that we live in a world that assumes we’re lazy, incompetent, and unhealthy before we speak. We’re supposed to try be smaller, at all costs. But we can be strong and powerful just as we are. Lifting logs, pulling trucks, and flipping tires — strongman is the first place I felt at home in my body. I stopped trying shrink or apologize for being too much. Lifting weights was the first step. It was my gateway to not just strongman, but running, hiking, kayaking, swimming, yoga, and even trying pole dancing. Competing was the reason I took a real, honest look at my eating — and created ...

There’s something absolutely thrilling about being a beginner. It can also be downright terrifying. The gym is one of those places where we can feel deeply out of our comfort zone, and it can take us a while to find our rhythm, and figure out all the little details that can help switch our experience from daunting to empowering. With this in mind, we’ve asked members of the GGS Community to share some of the elements and items that help make their life easier at the gym. Choosing the right gym can certainly be an important step in your journey, and you should take the time to look at the options you have instead of letting persuasive marketing tactics pressure you to sign up at the very first place that you come across. Take the time to draft a list of what you’re looking for in terms of feel and equipment, in order to be better equipped to ask the questions that matter. Does the gym have barbells and squat racks? Kettlebells? Suspension trainers? Is the weights-to-cardio equipment...

Name: Gina DeRoos Age: 40 Location: Manteca, CA What does it mean to you to be part of the GGS Community? To me, it means unapologetically loving and valuing yourself as a masterpiece and a work in progress. It embodies living in the present moment and loving the version of who you are right now. How long have you been strength training, and how did you get started? I started strength training around 2013 as preparation for my first NPC (National Physique Committee) competition. It was a whole new world for me, but I quickly came to love how strong I was becoming, not just physically, but mentally as well. I also quickly came to realize that training strictly for competition was not my thing. It was incredibly demanding and deep down I wasn’t really happy. Sure I was happy with my stage-ready body, but at what cost. After injuring my sacroiliac joint prepping for my last competition, I decided it was time to give up competing for good. Unfortunately for me, what seemed like ...

I’ve never liked to cook. Many years ago, when I started trying to make better food choices, I tried forcing myself to cook in hopes that I’d eventually learn to enjoy it. It wasn’t until recently I finally came to terms with the cold, hard truth: I loathe cooking . However, I love eating, and it’s important to me to eat healthy, so I chose to look at my disdain for cooking as an opportunity to figure out how to do so using minimal amounts of really simple cooking. Before we go on, let’s consider what it means to “eat healthy.” What Is Healthy Eating? If we asked a dozen people their definition of healthy eating, we would get a dozen very different answers. Healthy eating depends on several factors, which means it won’t look the same from one person to the next. Here are four things that are often overlooked when one creates their own unique definition of healthy eating. Cultural Considerations Healthy eating can look quite a bit different depending on a person’s culture. For exa...

Low back pain is the leading cause of pain and disability worldwide. Globally, the prevalence of low back pain has increased 54 percent between 1990 and 2015 [1]. In light of this, it is naive to believe we are doing a better job at managing low back pain through protective messaging and training. To me, this means that we need to change own beliefs about the spine and low back, so that we can properly coach, educate and empower our clients — low back pain or not. Global burden of low back pain in disability adjusted life-years by age group [1] Get Rid of Old Beliefs In fitness, the first step is a basic conceptual change about biomechanics: understanding that, for most people, they are less important than we once thought [2,3]. We need to stop promoting the belief that people will break when they’re put under load in a way that doesn’t look good. This fear and pathologization of movement is making a big problem worse, and perpetuating myths about our bodies through something cal...

When our female friends are feeling insecure, we are often quick to reassure them with statements like “You’re so beautiful,” or “You look hot.” Often, this kind of situation arises either because our friend is criticizing herself (like “Ugh, I feel so fat today” ) or she’s asking for us to give our feedback on her appearance (like “How is my hair?” or “Does this look ridiculous?” when trying on clothes). Either way, we understand that our job to make her feel more confident, and we attempt to do so by telling her she’s beautiful, hot, thin, or otherwise attractive. It makes sense that we try to make a woman feel better by praising her appearance, especially when her appearance seems to be the source of her insecurity — in our culture, being hot is often considered the ultimate compliment. Plus, we genuinely mean it! Even if our friend diverges from the cultural beauty ideal, she tends to be beautiful to us, because we love her and see her as beautiful both inside and out. But co...

Earlier this year, LA Fitness called the police on two African American men because they didn’t believe the men had memberships, even though both of the men had checked in and one of the men had been a member of the gym for eight years. The police arrived and requested the men leave. Three LA Fitness employees, including the manager, were later fired for the incident [1]. While some may argue this isn’t an example of racism or racial profiling, with similar incidents occurring at places like Starbucks and Waffle House, it’s evident that racism is a clear problem, and the gym is only one of the areas in which racism exists . You may be thinking that you don’t understand what racism has to do with fitness. Why is it important? I don’t personally believe we can talk about fitness or empowerment without discussing race, politics, access, inclusivity, representation, and even more, who gets a seat at the table — who gets to be fit, who gets to be represented in fitness, and who gets the ...

Name: Polly Hawver Age: 36 Location: Olympia, WA How long have you been strength training, and how did you get started? Ten years. I was never athletic and I have been somewhere on the fat spectrum most of my life. My family was working class and there was always more important things in life than exercise. My experience was limited to PE in school, and I absolutely hated it. It wasn’t until I was much older and I realized that there are many different ways to move my body. Because I was bigger, I knew I was strong and I thought it might be fun to try weightlifting. I joined a local gym known for its meatheads and I was immediately hooked! I could deadlift over 200 pounds pretty easily and that made me feel proud of my body. I gained confidence almost immediately. It has completely changed the way I view my body. For the first time my body was celebrated for being larger. It has changed who I am forever. What does your typical workout look like? I have been struggling lat...

Exercising everyday? Crushing your macros? Getting compliments on how “great” you look? You are the picture of health, and yet you haven’t had your period in nearly a year. How could this be? You’re doing everything right. You clearly are healthy. Or are you? Too Much of a Good Thing About 3 to 5 percent of all women suffer from amenorrhea. Amenorrhea is the loss of menstrual cycle for more than three months (or an irregular cycle for six months) [1,2]. The most obvious symptom is lack of a period. There are a few different causes of amenorrhea. for exercising women the most common reason is functional hypothalamic amenorrhea (FHA). Half of exercising women have been found to have abnormal periods (compared to 4.2 percent in sedentary women) and 33.7 percent of exercising women were amenorrheic [3]. If Exercise Is Healthy Then What’s Going On? Causes of functional hypothalamic amenorrhea include stress (psychological and physiological), dieting, vigorous exercise or chronic illne...