More gym issues...

I think I just have to accept that, rather than a steady pull that builds like a literal snowball from the really annoying awkward shuffling around just sort of patting a tiny ball in the snow to a giant cartoon pinwheel of snow thundering down the side of a mountain, my efforts at self-improvement will happen in broken fits and starts sort of like a manual car being driven by someone who doesn't know how to drive stick.  Momentum is not something I will ever have on my side.

In the end, I think, the best I can hope for is to cut the time between each new effort down more and more until it might seem, to an outside observer, that they are, in fact, all one consolidated effort.

Tonight was yet another of those renewed efforts.

A month or two ago Kara put me on a two week challenge to eat better and to work out regularly.  The requirements were: breakfast every day, followed by at least one other real meal a reasonable number of hours later, including one serving of fruit and one of vegetables every day; cardio three times a week; and some sort of strength building twice a week.  I think I came up short some cardio both weeks, and the eating fell apart on the weekends, but overall it was a good experience.  Then the two weeks were over and I entered into the two weeks of insanity at work.  My tender little habit seedlings didn't stand a chance and were crushed mercilessly under the boot-heels of 10-12 hour work days.  As is my custom, after the crazy work subsided I made no attempt to reinstate Kara's regimen.  I think since then I've been to the gym 2-3 times.

But what is life but a daily opportunity to improve today what you failed to do yesterday?

So tonight I went to the gym.  I did not want to.  But I went and was blessed in the form of Ever After playing in the cardio cinema.  With credits, I arrived an almost perfect 30 minutes before the end of the movie.  It was like Fate or Jesus metaphorically patting my head and rewarding me with a biscuit.

I ran my customary 15 seconds to crank my heart rate up to near-heart-attack rates as quickly as possible.  The great irony of my life these days is the fact that I actually could theoretically run longer--perhaps 30-45 seconds even.  And the struggle is not, as you might be thinking, the bosom issue.  I have acquired an impressive torture device sports bra that manages to lift and compress my chest into a sort of clavicle-level squshd boob battering ram that minimizes the bouncing from a full on coordinated beating and smothering to simply a muted pounding on my chest.  The side effects of this impressive piece of engineering have been winnowed down to a feeling that my lungs are slightly collapsed and basic arrhythmia as the pounding on my chest confuses my heart as to which rhythm it should actually be following.  Both of which are completely manageable.

No, in the end, it is a different jiggle problem that stops me running.  As it turns out, I am fat.  And my particular fat likes to hang out in two major places: boobs and waist.  The boob situation may be under control, but alas, the waist remains free to jiggle all it wants.  And jiggle it does, to the point that after only a few steps I am in danger of my shorts shimmying right off.  And while it may be dark in the cardio cinema room, I am confident that it is not yet dark enough that no one would notice the shining white legs of the girl whose pants fell off whilst she was running on the treadmill.  Thus, every few steps I have to jump off the belt and hitch my shorts up, then jump back on and run for a few more steps.  Why there are not people working on solving this problem I do not know, because I do know I'm not the only one suffering.  In the end, it is my frustration with this ritual which puts an end to my running, not my lungs, heart, or even legs.  Oh irony, truly thou art a bitch...

Sadly, tonight was not the night I conquered the bros and the machines.

Instead I came home and improvised some very technical body-weight and strength exercises.  One of the bonuses of being fat is that you come with weights built in and ready to go.  If, however, I feel that I need to augment my own natural heft I have managed to find a successful free weight alternative.  Because who wants to buy fancy rubber-gripped weights if you don't have to?  Owning  a 12" cast iron gnome means you don't have to.  Miles actually makes a really good free weight.  And somehow, lifting a gnome is just more fun than lifting a boring dumbell.

And so tonight I began again the endless battle.  Attempting to take control of my life and my body.  Fat jiggles and free weight gnomes and all.  Tomorrow I am hoping to make it to the grocery store after my hair appointment to restock on yogurt so I can make another attempt at being a person who eats breakfast.  Somehow telling the interwebs about the struggle helps, so I shall try to continue to update on my repeated attempts.  Wish me luck!

Thoughts on a night out...

Did you listen to that song?  If not, please stop reading for a second, scroll back up, and click play.  Then you may continue reading.

Tonight I attended the Punch Brother's show in Park City.  The song you should now be listening to was the song with which they opened their set and it was, if you can believe it, even better in person than that recording.

I was able to attend because of the truly magnificent generosity of my dear Matt, who decided that I needed to experience Punch Brothers live and so bought me a ticket as a birthday gift (somewhat prematurely, as my birthday is not till September).

Technically he bought me two tickets, though I intend to repay him for the second.  The goal was for me to bring someone to the show with me.  Unfortunately, it turns out that none of my friends love me enough to come see a band in Park City that most of them have never heard of, which hurt to discover, btw you guys (or, in the case of a few, they HAD heard of the band, they just had lame excuses like poverty or hanging out with their wife's sister who was in town for a short while).

As such, I ended up attending alone.  Which was fine except for the part where all of my witty conversation and observations were wasted with no one to hear and inevitably appreciate them. Which is why I'm sharing them with you all now.

So, without further ado, here is a small selection of the conversations I WOULD have had tonight, had I had anyone to have them with....

....wow...it turns out I did not need to leave nearly so early to get up here.  How shall I pass the hour and 45 minutes until the show starts?  Staring at nothing?  Sounds good....

....these people in front of me literally just pulled out 5 bottles of wine...

....This opening act is so boring that I'm daydreaming about getting a blood clot in my leg from this chair so I can leave to go take care of it...

....HOLY COW I LITERALLY CANNOT HANDLE WHAT AMAZING MUSICIANS THESE MEN ARE!!!....

mostly a picture of the drunk people in front of me, but also of the band all tiny at the front

....dude seriously, this song is so great....

....Chris Thile!  So nerdy!  So adorable!  Might very possibly be the most awkward dancer in the entire world.  Half the time he dances like Scott Pilgrim, the other half like he just needs to pee reeeeeally bad.  He is an even more awkward dancer than Chris Martin....

....Dear Utah, please stop being so tacky and leaving 10-40 minutes early so you can "beat the traffic"....

....And THAT is how you play a bass solo!....

....My mind is still being blown by these guys.  Totes 100% worth it!....

....WHAAAA????  Is he seriously busting out his Bach right now?!  From memory of course.  And this huge crowd of drunk people is actually digging it?  Aw yissssss....


....they drank all five bottles of wine, one bottle per person.  How are they getting home?....

....SHIRT!....

....Oh crap.  I may never get home.  I am 1000% lost on this mountain.  I will die here.  I wonder if anyone besides my mom will miss me.  Oh, this is the road I'm supposed to be on.  Ok, we're good....

....Dear Heber McDonald's:  You might have very fancy bathrooms and a confusing layout, but you gave me diet Dr. Pepper (so nasty) and onions on my hamburger.  We are not friends.....

....Who knew driving Heber canyon at night would be so fun!  I should maybe slow down?  I'll probably definitely get a ticket if a cop sees me.  And animals?  But...Gypsy Kings are singing "I Did It My Way" in Spanish and my speeds remain marginally safe and if I do crash at least there's no one else in the car to die with me! WHEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gym Issues

I went to the gym today.  It was part of my ongoing struggle to fill my Saturdays with something...ANYthing worthwhile.  Filling my time successfully is a topic for another post, however.  My point today is that I went to the gym.  

Every time I go to the gym my "routine" consists of the exact same thing.  I head straight back into the comfortably dark "cardio cinema" room, where I walk (with the very occasional addition of 15 seconds of jogging) at varying speeds on the treadmill.  I do this for 20-30 minutes, 45 if I like the movie they're playing.  Then I stop the treadmill and walk right back out to my car.  I might stop at the water fountain on my way out.

About 60% of the time I have much more ambitious aspirations about my workout on my way in.  I'm going to do my 20 minutes of cardio, but then I'm going to use some of those fancy fancy machines that I pass every time going in and out of my friendly cocoon of darkness in the back.  I'm going to stretch.  I'm going to really get the kind of work out you're "supposed" to get when you go to the gym.

Do you know how many times that has actually happened?

none.  none times.

The first blow to my plan is all the bros.  As I walk into the cardio cinema room I will pass on average 5-8 swole dudes sauntering around.  These are the guys who you look at and cannot imagine anything else they do with their life besides work out.  Except maybe summer sales.  And the strange wandering they do around the gym when they're not actually working out in it.  I mean, where are they walking to?  Why don't they just go home if they are done working out? 

There is literally no human being on earth more incompatible with my personality than a bro.  I'm more than willing to admit that this is partially my fault, but the fact is, bros (and their attendant ladybros to a marginally lesser extent) don't really appreciate the things that make me me.  They tend not to appreciate my sense of humor, my interests, and they definitely don't appreciate my physique.  And the feeling is almost always mutual.

Which is fine, btw.  It is perfectly ok if the bros and I never really hit it off.  We don't exactly have anything to do with each other.

except at the gym.

Because the gym is their house.  Going to the gym and expecting not to find bros there is like going to the chapel on Sunday morning and expecting not to find Mormons.  It's stupid.  Unfortunately, like church, you're still expected to go to the gym.

The second problem is, of course, only a problem because of the first.  And that is my complete ignorance of how to actually use all of those aforementioned fancy machines.  Put me in a room by myself and I'll happily sit down and start pushing and pulling till I figure it out.  I'll quote Bryan Regan.  It will be fun.  

But as we've already established, you're not alone at the gym.  You're surrounded by an entire flock of the people you find yourself most uncomfortable with (to be fair, I'd probably find myself more uncomfortable with, like, a room full of neo-nazi militant ultraconservatives, or perhaps a room full of cracked out pimps).  That is not a situation conducive to me dropping my guard enough to look like an idiot as I figure out the machines.  

And lastly, there's always the problem of me being fat and out of shape.  After my 20-30 minutes of walking I'm tired.  When confronted with all those bros and all those crazy machines my tiredness says "eh....you can always use the machines some other day." and it turns out my tiredness, when united with my uncomfortables and judgies, is a super persuasive kind of feeling. 

Perhaps one day I'll conquer the weight machines.  Maybe I'll even do it in front of all the bros and conquer that issue too.  I'd like to think I will.  But definitely not today.  Nah, it can wait for another day for sure...