If you take a five-mile hike with Nordic walking poles, and you're not used to using your upper body, you'll be sore the next day. It may look silly, but it works.

You burn up to 40 percent more calories with the same effort, but you're using your upper body. You also see increases of up to 25 percent in a cardiovascular workout.

Nordic walking poles are very popular in Europe; they have Nordic walking parks in Germany and the Scandinavian region. They were developed in 1997 for cross-country skiers to train in warm months.

It's just nice because all I have to say at an assembly is body basics.

There's a gender in your brain and a gender in your body. For 99 percent of people, those things are in alignment. For transgender people, they're mismatched. That's all it is. It's not complicated, it's not a neurosis. It's a mix-up. It's a birth defect, like a cleft palate.

It felt as if my body was, like, literally betraying me because I went from a very athletic, straight-up-and-down little kid to a very curvaceous woman, and it was just horrifying to me.