Around the world in shape: Keeping fit while living and traveling abroad - Articles

Melpomene Journal, Fall-Winter, 2001 by Gretchen Bloom, Lil Pfluke

Can you imagine living in a city where you only walk all around and up and down? How about a country where no one snacks between meals? Or a place where offices open at 10 a.m. so that families can take early morning walks before the sun rises? How about having your kids in a school where they come home for lunch for two hours every day?

That's right -- there are places like that. And American women can adapt to them and find themselves fitter than ever. Two of us have -- and we'd like to share our stories here with you.

I live in Rome where I work as the Senior Gender Adviser for the United Nations' World Food Programme. Lil Pfluke lives in Paris where she works as an engineer for the American Battle Monuments Commission. We both walk a lot. I live on the fourth floor, up 96 steps, with no elevator, which makes going out for a cappuccino an "I'll give it a second thought" type of activity!

Lil walks her kids to school at 8:30 every morning...then picks them up at 11:30...drops them off at 1:30...picks them up at 4:30. Even though the school is just half a mile away, four round trips a day add up! She also bicycles with the women's cycling team, sponsored by the Paris metro, and sees much of the French countryside throughout the year from her bicycle.

My work takes me traveling around the world. I've been to 65 countries in the 40 years of my adult life, having just added Burundi in East Africa in July.

In May, I was in India when the temperature soared to 117 degrees F. How did I keep fit? By walking before the sun came up, like the Delhi residents, and with colleagues while on a field trip in Madhya Pradesh. By swimming in the hotel pool. By having hour-long massages for US $10-$20. And by running -- yes! On three different evenings, I ran with the Delhi Chapter of the Hash House Harriers, an international running group with chapters all over the world. (I always bring jogging shoes as part of my travel kit, along with a swim-suit, which I keep in my carryon bag.)

Try Hashing

For women travelers, the Hash is a marvelous institution. Lots of fun and everywhere. What is it? (See box on page 9). Each chapter sets a run (you can often walk instead) in different parts of the city each week. Runners scamper along the pre-set flour or paper trail, like a treasure or scavenger hunt, calling "on-on" when the trail is found. In the year 2000, I "hashed" with the chapters in Cairo, Dakar, Budapest, Sicily and Venice, as well as in Rome. The best Rome run was held on the Ides of March. Everyone wore togas and reenacted Caesar's death as we walked around Centro Roma. Try the Hash. Just be ready to be silly and drink beer after the run. (And don't be offended by the bawdy, sexist language. It is harmless.)

Hashing avoids the dilemma of being a lone woman running on rural roads in Madhya Pradesh or in Burundi where rebel forces control the roads just on the outskirts of Bujumbura. It is also a good antidote to the body image dilemma one confronts in Italy and France where thin is in. "Ciao, bella!" (Hello, beautiful!) is the standard greeting in Rome where appearance is really important. Italians, both females and males, make sure they look good before going out. My daughter Claire struggled though Italian images of femininity when she was a student in Padua in northern Italy. She chose to wear her comfortable boots and jeans to go walking through old town Padua rather than a sexy spaghetti-strap sundress and spiked heels. As a result, she was not in vogue!

Paris has more flower stores and beauty shops than anywhere else in the world, Lil reports. Appearance counts there, too. Women in France wear make-up and heels to drop the kids off at school. Lil definitely stands out when she shows up at the door with her baby jogger to run Christopher home. She's even seen her cycling teammates run to their car to take a quick sponge bath after winning a three-hour bike race, then show up at the podium in a skirt to claim their trophy!

'Slow Food' Campaign

The French monitor each other's diets, says Lil. They so much do not want to be fat. Yet, ironically, very few French or Italian women exercise regularly. They don't need to, because they eat right. Food is fresh, natural, unprocessed and purchased daily. Eating takes place at meals, not in between, except for "gelati" in Italy, which come in tiny, small, medium and large, but not huge, sizes. And meals are leisurely, with reasonable portions. The French have even launched a "Slow Food" campaign to contrast to the US "Fast Food" approach. In fact, you really can't eat in France between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. -- all the restaurants are closed! And just try walking down the street munching on a candy bar. People stare at you as if you were a space alien. It causes serious culture shock to land in the US and confront vastly overweight Americans eating enormous portions, and only walking from the TV to the car. What ever happened to "Keep Fit".

Body image has another dimension, though, in the poor countries of the world. In West Africa, where I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the 1960s, I taught English to French-speaking secondary school students. I was profoundly pleased that my neighbors in Sokode, Togo, found me too thin at 140 pounds. (I am now 110 pounds and have been as low as 90 pounds.) As I was just coming off a five-year bout with anorexia and bulimia, I could not believe they found me thin! But that different cultural context, in which plump is beautiful, made it possible for me to focus on my students, not my self image, and to actually lose 20 pounds. Now, in my work with the World Food Programme, I see women, men and children who are the world's hungry poor. Body image is not an issue for them. Getting enough to eat is.