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 […]

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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 […]

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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, […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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