Filed Under: fitness

Going to the gym is ridiculous

December 29, 2008 at 8:34 am

Going to the gym is ridiculous. I think this every time I am at the gym. I think this when I get in my car and drive two miles to go run two miles. There is something fundamentally flawed about that scenario. There is something deeply ridiculous about watching the men and women around me operating machines solely to exhaust themselves. They’re not sweating to manufacture shoes. They’re not hunched over setting type to print newspapers. They’re not even running the machine that punches holes in donuts. We’re just running and rowing and lifting heavy objects so we’ll be able to run and row and lift heavy objects. It’s weird.

I think it odd that our culture has developed to a point where we now have to set aside a block of time every day to do something our bodies were meant to do everyday anyway. It’s as though our bodies are not able to evolve as quickly as our society is changing. So we’re left behind, running in place. If you’re clever, you can make exercise fun by playing sports with friends. You can give it a sense of meaning and accomplishment by training for a race, trying to top your best effort. Still, if you are not a heavy laborer or a bike messenger, if you work in an office like me, you have to work to make exercise part of your life.

So, I go to the gym. Except for November when I decided exercise was stupid and watched a lot of movies in bed. But then I walked up three flights of stairs at work and was breathing heavier than I should have been. So I realized, running in place, climbing an endless stairway, is not completely pointless. It has its place and it’s a necessity in a life like mine where I don’t have to fight to feed myself.

But I still think it’s ridiculous.

You can always impress someone

October 31, 2008 at 7:44 am

I had intended to run for 20 minutes but decided 18 minutes was good enough because otherwise I’d be scraping my lung off the carpet after I threw it up. I was a little disappointed with myself. It was only 6 months ago that I ran a half-marathon and now I am struggling to run a half-5K. If you don’t use it, you lose it, unless of course we’re talking about weight, in which case you gain it.

“I don’t know how you do that,” said the 50-or-60-something man who was running on the treadmill next to me in my apartment’s exercise room. In light of the current economic crisis, I’ve decided to ditch my YMCA membership and use my complex’s resources instead. I’ll just have to cross my fingers that no one is using the elliptical machine when I want it and remind myself that a little patience will save hundreds of dollars a year.

“I don’t know how *I* did that,” I replied as I stepped off the treadmill to stretch. I’d interspersed my running with walking and I’d probably faked him out a few times thinking I was done with the good treadmill as he had lifted weights.

“It takes a lot of determination,” he said. “When you get to be my age, you can’t run like that anymore.” It turns out my neighbor ran the Indianapolis Mini-Marathon five times. “I never broke two hours though.”

“I could only DREAM of breaking two hours,” I replied. We had a nice little chat as I finished stretching, which was pleasantly odd because most of my neighbors seem to actively avoid conversation or eye contact. “Well, I’m going to take a shower,” I said as I put on my coat.

“Keep up with it!” He said. I no longer felt disappointed, but proud of myself. I may not be able to run a half-marathon right now, but I can run for over a mile. I’m not in the best shape I’ve ever been in my life, but I’m still in pretty good shape. It was good to be reminded of the positive when it’s so easy to focus only on the negative. And I’m going to keep up with it.

Feng shui cardio

April 1, 2008 at 8:06 am

I emptied 13 shelves of books, CDs and stuffed animals on Sunday so I could rearrange my office furniture. I had to drag my heavy Steelcase desks across the room and walk two 8-foot tall bookcases into the spot they vacated, but I did it all on my own in under 5 hours. I nearly ran out of space to temporarily relocate everything during the process. I was a little worried my tall stack of library books would fall off the kitchen counter into the sink, but thankfully I did not incur any fees for damaged books. I decided the process counted as my weight-lifting for the day and took it easy for the rest of the afternoon.

I wasn’t even exhausted. I took a couple breaks, watched some Face the Nation (politicians suck), and I was surprised by how fast the whole process went. That’s one of the things about weight loss and being fit: it makes getting through life a lot easier. If I’d tried to move all my furniture 3 years ago, it would have worn me out. Simple little things like carrying in the groceries or parking a spot far away from the mall are not a big deal to me now. I like that it’s not a big deal.

I also like my new furniture arrangement. I feel a need to change things up every couple of years. I’d gotten so sick of the way my office was arranged. Now every time I step into the room I get a nice little high seeing everything organized the way I want it. I don’t know precisely what psychological affect furniture arrangement has on the human mind, but I know when my house is neat and tidy my mind feels more neat and tidy too. It’s easier to get things done than when I’m living in a messy environment.

Of course now I’ve started thinking about getting new curtains and a new entertainment center. Hmmmm, this new state of mind might start getting expensive.

Weighing-in on January

February 2, 2008 at 7:40 am

Two weeks ago, reader Christine asked me “I’m just wondering how it’s going not weighing yourself every day?” Well, Christine, I’d be happy to tell you if I’d actually stuck to it. Yes, I totally cheated. I’m a cheater. I also used to hide notes in the source code of programs on my TI-82 calculator back in high school math class too, so I’ve been a cheater for years now.

I did hold out for a week and a half. I was really tempted to hop on the scale after I had food poisoning because I’m sure the dehydration sucked off several pounds, even if they weren’t “real.” But I kept my ass on the couch. And when I saw my little kitty looking so slender in the kitchen, I was tempted to weigh myself and then weigh myself while I was holding him to determine his weight in the difference. But I resisted that urge to and got my mother to do it when we went out to lunch that weekend. Every time I opened the front closet door to throw out some trash, I stared down the scaled and thought, “Nope, not going to weigh myself. No, siree.”

Then one day I just hopped on the scale for no real reason. I was curious. Then I did at again several days later. I’d guess I’ve weighed myself 6 or 7 times this month. And every time I did, I looked at the number, thought about what I’d been eating and how much I’d been exercising and said, “Yeah, that seems about right.” There was only one day I was surprised, and it was because I weighed less than I thought I should. I’m at a point now where I know whether I’ve been treating my body well or not. I know when I’ve come home, felt tired, and eaten half my kitchen. And I know when I’ve come home, changed into my gym clothes and gone to a Boot Camp class. That’s really what I want to concentrate on, not the number on the scale, but how good I feel and how well I’ve been treating myself. That’s my main motivation for taking time off from the scale. Because there are some days when I’ve treated my body well and the number goes up, and other days when the numbers go down even though I’ve neglected proper care and feeding. It’s been nice to get away from checking in with the numbers every day. It feels like a mental weight has been lifted, if not a physical one.

My weight this month is 180, which is up two pounds from the weigh-in at the end of December, but actually down a couple pounds from my highest post-holiday weight. So, I’m heading in the right direction. More importantly, my life has settled down a bit and I’m getting back into a daily routine, though I’m still spicing things up by going to classes at the Y. I’ve decided I’m going to weigh myself at least once a week, more if I feel like it, but I’m only going to report on it once a month. Because I do feel a little psycho having to justify one or two pound gains every week, but I also don’t want to totally lose accountability and gain back 20 pounds. I’ll write again at the beginning of March to let you know how it’s going.

I see it as a reflection of what this blog is about these days. When I started out it was all about losing weight. These days, I don’t care so much about the weight loss as long as I’m taking care of myself and leading a healthy, fit lifestyle. My weight still matters, but it’s not the most important thing. I want to keep my weight within normal operating parameters, but I’m more concerned with being able to finish my half-marathon in May. Speaking of which, I have to go change now and run in 26 degree weather with my training group. Twenty-six degrees! That’s damn near tropical compared to last time.

Weighing in on August

September 1, 2007 at 9:31 am

If my August weight was a person, it would be the twin sister of my July weight. I averaged all my weigh-ins for August and the calculator spit out the number 179.325. The average for July was 179.5. Given at least a 1/8 lb margin of error, I’ve been holding steady.

From the optimistic, “What’s that hanging around my cloud? Oh, it’s a silver lining” perspective, it’s cool to know that I can maintain my weight by doing what I’m doing right now. I know there is a lot of debate in the fatosphere and the scientific community about whether people are genetically doomed to be fat or if you can do anything about it by manipulating your environment. I’ve only lived in my own body, so I can’t speak about anyone else with 100% certainty, but I know that when I show up and do the work, I get paid. Fifty percent of success comes just from showing up.

For example, I recently read an article in Newsweek about the social networking site Facebook by Kurt Soller. The lead sentence was “I have three fond memories from my senior year of high school: the day I got my college acceptance letter, the day I graduated and the day I joined Facebook.” My first thought was, “Wait up, how old is this guy? We didn’t even have Napster yet when I was a senior in high school. Facebook is only a couple years old.” For a second, I was jealous that there was someone much younger than me writing articles for Newsweek. But then I thought, “Well, PastaQueen did you ever apply for a job at Newsweek? Did you ever try to get a journalism internship? Did you even study journalism?” The answer to all these questions is NO. In fact, I rarely ever read Newsweek. Upon deeper reflection I doubt an oddball like me would find any satisfaction working at a weekly news magazine for any other reason than to brag about it to other people. The reason I don’t work at Newsweek is because I never showed up. I never tried to get a job there. I didn’t do the work. If I did try, I may or may not get a job there, but we’ll never know because I have no intention of ever doing that. However, when it comes to weight loss I have done the work. I do show up. I haven’t lost much weight in the past couple months, but I haven’t gained any either. I know that for me personally, if I show up and do the work then I can maintain my loss.

My biggest problem lately is that I have been overeating in the evenings. I have been hitting the yogurt really hard. Live bacteria cultures beware, PastaQueen’s coming to get you! And then she’s coming back for your children! I’m not sure why I’ve been doing this, but my best guess is that exercising in the mornings makes me hungrier in the afternoon. I’ve thinking about eating a bigger breakfast and lunch to compensate. For the past week my strategy for stopping the evening pig-outs has been, “Well, just stop doing that,” but that strategy has been as effective as the troop surge in Iraq. Last night I cooked two pork chops, one for dinner and one for tomorrow. I got my Tupperware container out to put the other one away, but I took a bite out of it before I put it in the tub. Then I took another bite and another and hey, I’m almost done so why don’t I just finish the whole thing? I’m very good at rationalizing, but it’s very hard to justify a two pork chop dinner as a boon for weight-loss.

My best excuse is that I exercised a lot yesterday. I lifted weights in the morning and did Pilates when I came home. Then I decided to run 3-miles because it was so nice out, like Disney movie beautiful with the sun smiling at me. I half expected to run into an animated dragon at the second mile marker who would offer to be my friend. This means I exercised for at least 90 minutes, which is pretty much the limit for what I’m willing to put into fitness on a daily basis. I’ve read that some people exercise 3-4 hours a day to maintain their weight loss, but honestly, I’d rather be a bit chubby than to move that much. I’m willing to try a lot of things to lose weight, but if there’s a line, that’s it.

I will admit though, I have not been pushing myself as hard as I did back in the early days. When I moved here last year I would walk for an entire hour. Granted, I probably burn as many calories running for 35 minutes as I did walking for 60, but I could definitely push myself harder. I’ve gotten comfortable and I need to break out of that comfort zone. I’m reading about running plans and I’m going to make an effort to start training harder, especially since I’m running a 5K in two weeks.

Since my weigh-in numbers in my sidebar haven’t budged much lately, I decided to try for a quicker mile time. The fastest mile I’ve ever run is 9:30. My leg has been feeling much better this month and I’d prepared my body by running 3-4 times a week for two weeks before attempting my high-speed dash. Last weekend I gave it my all and sped down the trail from stone mile-marker to stone mile-marker, dodging dogs on leashes and couples holding hands without breaking through them Red Rover style. When I finished, I looked down at my stopwatch and it said:

9:30

Aaaarggh! Exactly the same number as my last best time. Nine minutes and thirty seconds. Well, at least I didn’t lose any speed when I took July off to heal. But damn, I would have loved to at least gotten 9:29. Next time I’m going to run the other direction down the trail because it’s slightly downhill. Time was not on my side, but next time gravity will be.

In other exercise news, my final tennis lesson was last Monday, and honestly I was relieved. I really suck at tennis, y’all. Which is probably funny for other people to watch, and humbling for me since I’m naturally good at other things, but I could not even serve the ball into the service box. Everyone else was getting much better than me and when we played games against each other I could tell I was dragging everyone else down. My hand-eye coordination SUCKS. It sucks so hard you can probably feel your face being pulled into the monitor right now by its intense vacuum force. You’re most likely reading these words with your right eye because your left cheek is stuck to the screen. There were times balls would pass right by me and there was no excuse for missing them. All those years I avoided team sports and athletics I also avoided creating the synapses and neural pathways in my brain that taught people how to hit moving balls. I’m sure if I practiced a lot (if I showed up), these pathways would be formed, but I’m not crazy enough about tennis to bother. I’m glad I stepped out onto the court, but in the future I’m going to avoid team sports because I prefer to just compete against myself. One of the reasons I like running is because it’s idiot proof and I only have to beat myself, not some ultra-marathoner.

And if all else fails, there’s always aerobic wedding dancing.