78% Pure Love

This is because I have the most generous and truly uppity friends and family on the planet.

Loving thanks to…

• James & Jennifer
• Meg, Bill & Max
• Megan

…and Anonymous - you donated three times! That’s amazing! Whoever you are, I love you!

Technorati Tags: Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure

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“The trouble with jogging is that the ice falls out of your glass.” — Martin Mull

It’s that time again, folks: May.

And that means the annual Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure is just six sweat-filled weeks away.

The Race for the Cure is really awesome - where else can a bunch of kindred spirits gather in service of boobs? Thousands of psyched-up women + race-day adrenaline = five kilometers of yakitty-yak-yak.

And if you’re a guy, you get to wear pink and still be macho. Need I say more?

Yeah, this 5K doesn’t resemble a race so much as a big, co-ed coffee klatch. All kindsa folks show up, from high school boys who don’t break a sweat to groups of grandmas who walk the whole way hand in hand. And lots and lots of Average Jo’s like me who race for the cure for Desk Job Ass.

Oh, there are still your race addicts who run the 3.2 miles in 10 minutes as a warm up for their afternoon triathalon. Like the two brawny Amazon women who cut in front of Kevin in the t-shirt line last year (he would have called them on it but they scared him).

The last person to walk across the finish line last year was a survivor fresh from chemo. She had tears in her eyes - tears of joy that she was there at all.

I’m running this year in hopes of raising $200, and Dog knows I ain’t too proud to beg…

Visit my race page and let me give you a run for your money!

I’ll be blogging my training, too, so ya’ll come back now, ya hear?

Technorati Tags: Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, breast cancer, running, fitness

Honey, I have a headache….

… and you got the cure…

This Excedrin commercial nearly made me slip in my own drool and fly right off the treadmill.

Technorati Tags: Rusty Joiner, men we love

News you can lose

Yesterday we heard from the Department of Duh. Today we are treated to the unholy collaboration of the Department of Duh and the Office of Misleading Information.

Reuters recently reported on a study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism 2007 on the effects on weight loss of dieting vs. dieting with exercise:

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A new study debunks the widely held belief that diet plus exercise is the most effective way to lose weight. Researchers report that dieting alone is just as effective as dieting plus exercise.

Yes, it is certainly true that calorie restriction will usually result in weight loss. Everybody has a shaky, chain-smoking, yo-yo dieting great aunt in the family who will testify to that.

What this article does NOT tell you is that weight loss achieved through dieting alone is not only temporary, but ultimately results in major fat boomerang.

Statistics show that the vast majority of dieters gain back all the weight they lost, plus some. Why? Because dieting wastes muscle tissue, so now the lucky dieter has even less than they started out with. So the moment they resume their usual eating habits, they begin to gain back the lost fat, plus a little more. And it gets harder and harder to lose fat with each time you try.

This is not my definition of “effective.” Reuters, don’t make me open a can of buff blog on your ass.

Technorati Tags: fitness, health, weight loss, exercise, diet, responsible reporting, critical thinking

Molested at the gym

A couple of mornings ago, I was jogging along on the treadmill, plugged into my iPod (not singing, I’m learning), really getting into the groove of my workout. It was one of those runs that felt great - like all the mornings spent sweating were really accomplishing something. It doesn’t happen every time, so I was enjoying it.

I was stylin’. I was looking good.

About half way into my workout, I noticed a gym staff person going from treadmill to treadmill, peering into the cup holders. Clearly she was looking for something.

I wondered briefly what she could have left there - keys? inhaler? cell phone? candy bar? (you’d be surprised). Then my thoughts went back to the grooviness of my workout.

A few minutes later, I felt something soft and warm brush the top of my thigh. What the hell was that?

The treadmills on either side of me were vacant, so I ruled out any pervs I’d need to punch. (Hey, I’m a city girl.)

I pondered for a moment, then decided that whatever had caressed me so forwardly was probably still around somewhere. Maybe the candy bar that girl was looking for somehow bounced out of the cup holder; how abashed she will be when I hand it to her and say “Here’s your lunch. It felt me up!”

Still jogging, I turned my head a bit and looked down. There on the floor behind my treadmill was a little black sock.

My brow furrowed. Why was that girl leaving socks in the treadmill cup holders?

Then the all-too-familiar Homer Moment: Doh!

I detest static cling, but I stopped using those anti-static dryer sheets some time ago for environmental reasons. (The sacrifices I make for my beliefs!) I bought some kind of reusable cloth thingamajig that is supposed to do the same thing, but it only works occasionally - like maybe when the moon is full and a white buffalo is pregnant, I’m not sure.

So I continue to battle my sticky enemy every week…And sometimes, it wins.

The next time that girl comes by looking for whatever she left, I’ll tell her to check in her shorts.

Technorati Tags: working out, embarassing moments, static cling

Buff Blog Returns, Part 3

We’ve all had this experience: We’re in the grocery store, waiting patiently in the check out line. We scan the magazines perched on the end-cap racks. Our eye falls on the mostly-naked, bizarrely top-heavy, super-buff “fitness model” grinning from the cover of a “woman’s magazine,” the headline of which screams:

A BODY LIKE THIS IN 6 WEEKS!

I’ve seen it a million times, but I always feel the same way - a complicated mixture of anger, frustration, incredulity, sadness, and amusement. And I always think the same thing: Do they think we’re retarded?

Women do not naturally have 5% bodyfat. Even less natural is a woman with 5% bodyfat and double-D breasts. Yet that is exactly what we see held up to us as the ideal physique. But even more obvious is that even with all the personal training, drugs, and plastic surgery one could stand, it’s impossible to get this unnatural physique in 6 weeks.

Is this a news flash? No, of course not, unless you have lived in a cave your whole life or are under the age of 12. Which is precisely why the acceptance and prevalance of this ideal bothers me so much. In a word: women know we are being compared to and judged against an impossible standard, which works only to our disadvantage, yet we accept it anyway.

Now, before you assume I am saying “Yes, we must be retarded,” read on.

It’s way more complicated than that. I could rant about how and why, but I’d run out of bandwidth. So let me give you the Reader’s Digest version: Unrealistic ideals prey on human insecurities. Centuries of viewing women as primarily sexual objects has created expectations for us with that focus. Western women are cultural creatures like everyone else; if we are taught directly or indirectly a certain thing all our lives, it works its way into our emotional being. Our brain says “no” but our insecurities say “yes.” Or at least sigh, “ok.”

It’s time to say “no.” Not just “no” but “Fuck no.”

This fight-the-power sentiment may not seem like much of a news flash, either. We modern women all pay it lip service, then go buy the magazine (and the fat burners, the diet food, the Thigh Masters, etc.).

So let’s try this again. Fuck that shit. OK, once more with feeling.

Once you get in the habit of it, you’ll be amazed by how addictive exercising (ha) your power of choice is.

But be careful. That one small flame of defiance may ignite a firestorm of cultural insubordination. You may experience disconcertingly increased feelings of inherent self-worth, and find yourself saying “Fuck no” to all kinds of things you never knew you hated so much, like unequal pay, belittling Significant Others, and stillettos.

Now that we have established The Power Of No, a word of clarification: Thou shalt not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Rejection of ridiculous physical ideals doesn’t mean rejection of fitness. A weak woman has trouble rejecting much of anything.

And please, all you intellecktooel women out there, resist the delusion that you don’t need fitness because your body is separate from your mind. It just ain’t true. If your body is dying, your mind and heart are not far behind.

Uppity Fit is not about vanity or narcissism. It’s being committed to caring for your own self as much as you do others. “Please put on your own oxygen mask before assisting your child.” So ditch the martyrdom, it looks like hell on you.

Uppity Fit is not about feeling good because you look better than someone else. It’s about coming to realize that you do not need to be approved of - a.k.a. the euphemism “desired” - by someone else in order to feel worthy.

Uppity Fit is not about exact bodyfat percentages, scale numbers and clothing sizes. It is not the end result. It is the process of becoming fit that heals you.

Uppity Fit is about giving a serious shit about your physical health because your quality of life depends on it.

Can you do all this through fitness? Fuck yes.

Technorati Tags: fitness, women’s health, strong women say fuck, women’s magazines, sexism, really painful shoes

Buff Blog Returns, Part 2

I once posted on a message board what had worked for me to lose about 20 pounds in less than a year. One of the readers asked if I had thought of writing a book? I had to laugh.

If I wrote about how I had lost weight, I’d be hard put to find a publisher. Who wants to hear that 99% of fitness & health is a matter of personal responsibility? About 7 people, judging by the sales of the hundreds of books by get-thin-quicksters.

So for you 7 folks, courtesy of the free-press blogosphere, I bring you Uppity Fit:

1. Exercise aerobically (known these days as “doing cardio,”) within your fitness level, for 30 minutes minimum, five days a week. Simple: walk. Once and a while during your walk, push yourself just past your comfort zone, then back off. Congratulations, you’ve just done “intervals” and they burn fat like gangbusters.

2. Strength train twice a week. As in, pick up something heavy, put it down, rinse, repeat. If you hate gyms, buy some dumbells. They’re el cheapo at Wal-Mart.

3. Make the majority of your diet whole foods. The chemicals and additives in processed food fuck with your body’s fat metabolism, among other things. If it comes in a bag or a box, it’s out; if you can’t pronounce half the ingredients, it’s out. Don’t even get me started on the Feces Burgers at your local fast food joint. (Don’t believe me? Read it and weep.)

4. Ditch soda pop and anything else with high fructose corn syrup in it. The way it wreaks havoc in your body, the stuff and the people who invented it should be outlawed.

[Note: In truth, just doing 1-4 is enough to make even the Fattest Bastard lose weight. So if you are tired of being lectured, feel free to skip 5-10 to the titillating bathing suit photo.]

5. Stretch whenever you have the chance. It does a body good. If you love it, do yoga.

6. Drink water all day long. Water is a very underestimated ingredient in your diet; your body needs it to do virtually everything, and even more when you exercise.

7. Toss out your scale. Even toss your measuring tape, if measuring makes you obsessed. Just judge progress by your clothing.

8. Be consistent. Which means, show up. Even if all you do is 15 minutes of cardio that day, you showed. It may not seem like anything then, but over the course of time it will be the difference between being fit and wishing you were.

9. Give up quick fix scams forever. I mean the diets, drugs, contraptions, gurus, “plans.” How many have you tried? Did they work? Are you a lean, mean, bikini-wearing machine? Right. So.

10. Do whatever you have to do, short of murder, to get 1-8 done each day. For most of us, that translates to giving up our cherished excuses. The kids. The commute. The money (or lack thereof). The unsupportive friends/significant other/family. Emotional baggage. We all have the same 24 hours in the day, we everyone of us have challenges. You can let them make your decisions for you, and if that is what you want, then fair play to you. But then admit it and stop bitching.

11. (for extra credit) Just for shits and giggles, educate yourself about health. Read everything, but become a critical thinker. You will soon find that there are really very few new scientific discoveries about those subjects each year…not enough to sell books and magazines, anyway. It always comes down to the basics: exercise and eating well are the closest thing to a magic pill you will ever find.

And that’s about it. Do you see why I wouldn’t be on Oprah? Nothing new, quick or chemically enhanced. No mention even of calorie counting or fat percentages or heart rates. Not gonna sell any magazines, just gonna make you look and feel a lot better.

Oh, and of course, as promised:

This is the only photo of me in a bathing suit taken since I was about 5 (and I think I liked that suit better). Kevin took this of me on the beach in Hawaii about 3 years ago. I’m maybe 5 pounds heavier here than I am now.

(By the way, I’m not peering up at the sky in this picture. I’m doing my “a wave tried to drop me on my head and break my neck and all I got was this skinned chin” pose.)

I realize this photo won’t end up on the Vogue paparazzi pages, but then, real women never do. We’ve been looking at fembots for so long, would we know a real woman if we saw her?

Chisel Chick I’m not. But when this was taken, I was strong enough to withstand a severe ass-kicking by a wave hell bent on bending my spine the wrong direction. No chemical, guru, contraption or “diet plan” could do that for me. So exercise, eat, and educate. The life you save will be your own.

Tune in again soon for Buff Blog, Part 3 - the hidden hazards of Uppity Fit (including dangerously high levels of self-esteem), plus another rant: “Women’s Magazines: Do they think we’re retarded or what?”

Technorati Tags: cardio, weight training, Vogue, fitness, processed food, Fast Food Nation, whole food diet, regular exercise, fembot, weight loss scams, real women have curves

Buff Blog Returns, Part 1

I’m standing in line at the neighborhood burger joint, ordering my Boca burger. The young gal behind the register doesn’t let taking my order interrupt her conversation with a fellow employee.

“I’m getting fat,” the other girl complains. (Given that she could be maybe 90 pounds soaking wet with lead in her pockets, I intuit that this is a bit of hyperbole.)

“You should workout,” says the order taker.

“No!” says Waif Girl decisively. “I don’t think women should have muscles.”‘

Last I checked, this was 2007, not 1907. Yet I still hear and read this same sentiment all the time, and each time I do, I want to say, “That’s funny. I’ve been lifting for ten years, and I still don’t look anything like Arnold Schwarzennegger. What am I doing wrong?”

I ponder the tenacity of the ignorance that, despite well-documented evidence to the contrary, equates women who weight train with the Incredible Hulkette. Then I think of the one person besides myself to whom I give the credit for my life-long healthy attitude toward exercise and food, and general imperviousness to the nonsense that passes as fact about those things.

It was the ’80’s - like, totally dude. I was a junior in high school and, like most kids, had suffered through years of P.E. teachers and classes from hell. Physical “education” meant forty minutes of bashing each other in the head with a dodge ball, or hearing that “situps would keep my tummy flat for my bikini,” or learning one’s place in the peer pecking order by how close to last you were chosen for teams.

But even more often, “P.E.” meant running some established “course” in a certain amount of time. It didn’t matter what your fitness level was, whether you were the class fat kid or jock: you ran. And you ran in a certain amount of time, too, whether you had to vomit at the end or not. If you couldn’t make it in the time allotted, you ran it again. This was standard “P. E.” logic.

Most people I know had a similar experience with P.E. and - guess what? Most people I know hate exercise.

Never having been athletic, I am sure I would, too, were it not for Mr. Hughes.

Mr. Jerry Hughes (whom I just discovered became Dr. Hughes a year after I graduated and went on to become quite accomplished in the field of fitness education) started a new kind of P.E. class. It was so radical, he had to call it “Ski Conditioning” because there was no other niche for it at the time. It was a brand new paradigm, based on the then-cutting-edge science of Dr. Covert Bailey and his 1978 book Fit Or Fat.

This is the “physical education” we received from Mr. Hughes:

• Aerobic exercise burns fat and increases your fitness level, if you do it the right way (translation: no vomiting).
• Muscle is the only tissue that burns fat, so we need it. Only way to get it and keep it is to build it; only way to do that is by doing weight-bearing exercise.
• Workout within your fitness level. Start where you are and build from there, using your heart rate to guide you. If exercise is painful, you are tearing down, not building up.
• To get the fat off your body, get it out of your diet.
• Eat whole, natural food. When all is said and done, the quality of your food is more important than the quantity.
• Perfection is a myth; consistency is the key.

Sound familiar? That’s because it’s still true twenty years later.

You’d never know it, though, judging by the never-ending varieties of snake oil that people in our country suck up like Condoleeza to the President: The Fatkins Diet (twice!) and spawn, Thigh Masters, Ab Rollers, food logs & calorie charts, liposuction, gastric bypass, laxatives, diuretics, Dexatrim, Clenbuterol. Ad nauseum.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

I’ve had better years for it than others, but in general, since that fateful class, I’ve remained relatively healthy and fit. Never was, never will be, don’t wanna be “athletic,” but I enjoy working out. I don’t hate exercise because in that class, it didn’t require vomiting. I wasn’t taught that I “shouldn’t have muscles,” so I’m not intimidated by gyms, free weights, or the Myth of the She-Man. (Besides, I think they have surgery for that now.) I learned the basics of nutrition and metabolism, so to me, food is fuel, not a grail.

And believe me, as I near the age of forty and contemplate the Dysfunctionally Unfit, Processed Food, Quick Fix America I live in, not a day goes by that I don’t thank my lucky stars.

For my health, my knowledge, and Mr. (Dr.) Hughes.

Tune in tomorrow for Buff Blog Returns, Part 2: unsolicited advice, more ranting (probably), and bonus bikini photo!

Technorati Tags: fitness, women’s health, weight lifting, aerobic exercise, whole foods, Covert Baily, Fit Or Fat, Dr. Jerry Hughes

Tengo una quemadura en mis nalgas!

Just two days before the first bull run, more than 1,000 activists, most wearing little more than a red scarf and horns, ran through the streets of Pamplona for the annual Running of the Nudes. Compassionate and fun-loving people from around the world met in Pamplona for the run to show the city that it doesn’t need to torture animals for tourism. Lucky for us, PETA Europe got it on videotape!

The Runner’s Ten Commandments

1. Thou shalt not run on the treadmill exclusively, lest thou miss the whole summer.

2. Thou shalt not be so anal retentive about running time, target heart rate, perceived level of exertion, and calories burned that thou canst not take the camera along once and a while to capture the vista.

3. Thou shalt not kick the ducks.

4. Thou shalt give thanks for the preservation of some green in this concrete jungle.

5. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s treehouse.

6. I said - thou shalt not covet thy neighbors treehouse! I’m serious now!

7. Thou shalt break into a verse or two of “Under The Boardwalk” if the spirit moves you.

8. Thou shalt not be intimidated by the last hill on the route (hey, it’s not steep but it’s long).

9. Thou shalt give thanks every day for thine home sweet home… and the end of the day’s run.

10. Thou shalt feed the cat.

Technorati Tags: running, ten commandments, patient cats