Really, it's not as painful as it sounds.
John, from JohnIsFit.com, meme-tagged me and a few others with an opportunity to write about our biggest health/fitness vice. The lineage of this particular meme started with Fit36 and passed through Andrew and then on to John before tagging me. I'll tag a few myself before I'm done here.
What is my biggest health/fitness vice?
White chocolate and macadamia nut cookies from Costco. Dammit! Just writing about them has me salivating like one of Pavlov's dogs. Those big chewy disks of golden sweetness peppered with big chunks of chocolate and nuts are like kryptonite crack. It's a billion-calorie binge teetering on the precipice of a shame spiral circling the bowl in the bathroom of best intentions. White chocolate insanity, baby. Yeah, I got it bad. Quick somebody, hold my hand while I sweat this out.
And.......scene.
Moving on...
Let me just tone it down a notch. Exaggeration and hallucinogenic drug references aside, I really do like cookies (particularly those cookies) a lot. I tend to eat them by the 1/2-dozen and once they're gone I breathe a little sigh of relief. Eating them is a vice I allow myself infrequently- about once every couple of months-- or whenever they appear in my pantry. Those Costco cookies are pretty darn good but if there was a local source of Mrs. Fields' or Mrs. D's cookies of the same variety, I'd be a lot plumper.
Dammit, I'm drooling again.
Tagging on...
What is Your Biggest Health/Fitness Vice?
Heidi @Buddy's Fitness News
Laura@Junk-Foodaholic
EJ @Losing It - Getting Fit
Heidi @Health Nut Wannabee Mom
Dutsji @Dutsji
Here are the rules (copied from Fit36):
1. If tagged, write up a short article detailing your biggest health/fitness vice(s).
2. Link back to whoever tagged you from somewhere within your article.
3. Tag 4-6 more people by linking to them at the end of your article (and be sure to let them know that they’ve been tagged).
6/26/08
The missus and I had an awesome time in a great place and are back and raring to... well.. hey, we're still married, alright? Truthfully, twenty years has been the duration of a blink of an eye. It's been great thus far and I look forward to many more years with a person who's earned sainthood many times over. Articulation and eloquence evade me when I attempt to describe just how I feel about my wife so I'll put it this way, she rocks, and rocks hard!
Some day I'll figure out how to say stuff right. Moving on...
Surprisingly there is a downside to having a decadent vacation of self-indulgent whimsy. I call it a conspiracy of consumption and binge-side gastro-economics or, in simpler terms, eating lots of crap adds a few pounds. Turns out that the metabolic honeymoon is over for this old fart and acting like a Roman emperor just before The Fall is a sure way to roley-poley martyrdom by way of congestive heart failure.
To our credit, we did quite a bit of walking but as I've learned over the past several hundred days, over-consumption trumps exercise just about every time in the weight loss game.
So- bringing things back into focus and on target to reach my goals is the first order of business today. I've been to to gym, had my smoothie, and am dedicating myself to organization and planning so that reaching my current goals is an inevitability. I'll be tracking all food intake and exercise on the FitDay website (it's worked for me and it's free so it's double-awesome) and applying everything I've learned while losing the previous 150 pounds.
This morning's workout consisted of:
Biceps Curl - 160/10/3
Pull Downs - 130/10/3
Butterfly - 220/10/3
Triceps Extension - 100/10/3
"Not Worthy"* - 70/10/3
Calf Raise - 60/10/3
Leg Lift - 150/10/3
Bike to and from gym
Today's smoothie:
1/2 Banana
1S EAS Protein (chocolate)
1S Ground Flax
1/2S Açaí Pulp
1T Peanut Butter
1P Crystal Light
Water
*"Not Worthy" is done on a weight machine but is based loosely on the following:
Johnisfit.com, one of my favorite reads, is giving away a bike to some lucky winner. I wish everyone who enters the very best of luck and a reminder that I have a birthday coming up...
I think it's the combination of two activities that represent both the old me and the new me; sitting and exercising. The old me did a lot of sitting but not a lot of exercising, while the new me strives for a life weighted more heavily in physical exertion. My alternate trips (run/ride) to the gym are a ridiculous trip down memory lane.
#26 - Ride A Bike
Hey, it's great exercise and a little easier on my old joints than running.#27 - Walk This Way
And every which way. Walking is the premier low impact mildly aerobic exercise- and requires no special equipment.#28 - Take The Stairs
There is something seriously wrong with taking the elevator to the food court on the second floor of our local shopping mall. I would never, ever, never do something so lazy- again.
My goal date is growing ever nearer and I'm getting a little antsy. Once the days-left hit double digits the old urgency gene kicks in. I've been at this goal a while and I've experienced a moderate amount of success- so I think it's time to really apply what I've learned along the way and kick things up a notch or so.
So for the last fifty or so days I'm going to apply fifty or things each and every day to ensure that my goal of losing 150 pounds before my birthday becomes reality. I even had what I thought was a clever name for it. Alas, my nose is again rubbed in the steaming pile of fact that I haven't an original thought in my head. It seems that at least some variation of "50 Ways I'm Losing My Blubber" has been done a bazillion times. So, no names just fifty or so little things that have made a big difference in shrinking my body and improving my health posted right here between no and my birthday- a very short 53 days from today.
Subscribe if you like- I'd hate for you to miss a single one.
Geeze! I was limping like Festus Haggen yesterday. It seems I overdid it doing calf raises Monday and tweaked the crud out of my foot. I thought I was going to need a wahmbulance!
OK, a bit of exaggeration on my part. It did hurt and still does to a lesser degree today- but man-oh-man I had to baby it yesterday. No doubt I decided work around the calf raises this morning at the gym. It was still a pretty good workout and I was able to incorporate some other exercises I read about in Men's Health with the extra time.
So here's the thing; a what point do I stop? When do I quit? What is it going to take to make me abandon the path of self-improvement?
I once had a summer job that didn't require a lot of energy or attention. It was part of a scholarship program for engineering students at a new facility out in the middle of nowhere- or about 40 miles outside of a nowhere town in the vast expanse of the Wyoming high desert. Because it was a new facility just beyond the break-in period of production we had very little to nothing to do. Our days consisted primarily of driving around the site and taking pictures and generally just farting around (aka “busy work”).
I want everyone to know that I was and remain forever grateful to the large and powerful multinational corporation that provided me with such a lucrative summer job and generous scholarship money. The company was very helpful at a time when I needed it. All HAIL!
It was a cake job- and fairly dull most of the time-- a dullness that was countered by extracurricular partying with my coworkers. Partying all night. Every night.
It really took some conditioning and I'll admit that having fun all night long is strenuous and unforgiving. Just a month into the summer, the bags developing under my eyes had their own set of luggage and I found myself having a hard time making it through the day. I went from farting around during the day to power-napping; which is totally uncool no matter how “cake” your job is.
Well, one night I asked my coworker how she managed to maintain her seemingly endless amount of energy. “Don't you need to sleep sometime?” I asked in between shots of Jägermeister. She then introduced me to an oft-used misnomer I, myself, have used many a time since. “Sleep when you're dead!” she said and dragged me to the dance floor.
I'll never forget what I saw the next day when I walked into her office at the end of our shift. My party-all-night coworker sleeping in a puddle of drool at her desk. Not dead, just dead-tired.
The rest of the summer included generous razzing and a little less party.
Now back my questions.
1. When do I stop? Answer: Never stop, only adjust.
2. When do I quit? Answer: I'll quit when I'm dead.
3. What is it going to take to make me abandon this path of self-improvement? Answer: See #2 above.
