Better Things

I've run into a real stiff wall regarding workouts. It is no small part a bit of depression due to some very disappointing developments on the career front and complicated by a change of schedule. After three years of teaching in the morning and sneaking off to the occasional workout in the afternoon, I am teaching late every afternoon four days a week. I'm not sure how that happened but I must have been loopy when I was asked how I felt about it. Or I wasn't asked at all, which might also be the case.

Another disappointment was spending almost two weeks on a near vegan diet, then going to a routine workplace health screening only to find that my "good" cholesterol has evidently found levels so low as to barely be human. They even trotted out the equipment again and retested me. It was still bad. So off to the internist I went for more blood tests. Maybe it will be better this time; the results aren't in yet.

There is good news: I did pull on the old workout gear and strap on the shoes and find a podcast to listen to and took a 1 1/4 mile jaunt through the neighborhood. It wasn't bad. We're at about 60 degrees and it was overcast so the black pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt did the trick. I found a little stuff sack that fit around my shoulder to hold the phone loaded with Runkeeper and reading glasses. Hey, do not snicker at the last bit of info, unless you are doing so with empathy. I cannot see my phone without them and it was a little tricky to get the podcast going while Runkeeper was doing its thing. So it goes.

The song for the day is this sadly underplayed gem from the Kinks. I think I'll get there. Eventually. I might have to start waking up earlier in the mornings to do so, but it's worth a try.

 Better Things

Just like Starting Over

He was never my favorite Beatle but I can't help but thinking this is the song for right now. Oh, and I blame Yoko for the break-up and I always will.

Starting Over

This isn't about a new workout program; I don't think I'm there yet. For the now, I'm trying to get some of the garbage out of my body by following one of the Martha Stewart three-week detoxify and cleanse thing. There are a couple of nice things about this approach.

1. I started on Wednesday, which is also Ash Wednesday, which begins Lent, which is supposed to be all about discipline and deprivation. Except that I screwed up and only had about 20 minutes to eat before I had to sing the service so I had a cheeseburger at Jack's. Hey, I've had four clean meals since then. 
2. Say what you want to about Martha Stewart, her recipes don't suck. So far the smoothies have been delicious and filling and the other meals have been tasty and satisfying too. Sure, I'll have to take some of the evening time I've spent drinking wine and bitching at the TV to do food prep, but I kind of even LIKE that sort of thing. There was a time when my best approach to losing weight (and face it, that's most of what this is about) was to mindlessly eat something prepackaged and get on with it. I've changed a little and may have grown up some. I know that I like food even more than I used to, so I will enjoy to mindfully prepare it with the proper sense of awareness. Or something like that. 

So far (a little of the way into day three and I already fell of the wagon once) things seem to be okay. I've been sleeping well, drinking water like crazy, and may have even dropped a couple of pounds. Although small changes in stuff like the humidity can make my weight vary close to double digits. 

My next potential stumbling block is a reception I am supposed to attend at The Club this afternoon. Can I really order just sparkling water? Or maybe a little white wine with some sparkling water? And can I only select from the healthy hors d'ouevres? Is it humanly possible? So there are four possible outcomes.

1. Don't go; no one will miss me anyway. 
2. Go and behave. Drink sparking water with a lemon or something. Eat celery.
3. Bend a bit. Have a glass of vino and a couple of things with cheese in them. Then go home and prepare my nutritious and delicious evening meal.
4. Totally fall off the wagon. Slug down shots of whiskey and devour everything related to sausage and/or bacon on the buffet table. 

I'm hoping for something between 2 and 3. That will be success. 

Big Girl

I'm a Bad Dog, Baby

So I haven't been very good about working out since last Friday. I did well on Friday...2.45 miles in 40 minutes by incorporating 30 or 45 second running intervals every 3 minutes...but it's been kind of busy since then.

First of all, I was very sore all weekend. I'm old, this will happen. Then on Monday, I moved my office to a new (to me) one across the hall. This was accompanied by many sad feelings about losing a beloved and valued co-worker, but that's another show. Shorter version: my legs were sore when the computer guys finished at 4:00 and I was supposed to sing for the local unfosterable foster children in town (really, I'm not exaggerating with that, more later) at 7:00. And then this stupid woman rear-ended my car so I couldn't get home in time to even do a workout tape. You get the idea. This was Monday.

Not so sure what happened yesterday. We're getting ready to go out of town for a week, to a wedding and another social event. News flash: I'm not losing 40 pounds in time for the trip, so my incentive to work out is a tad diminished. And I've been knitting a lovely shawlette thingie to wear with my new dress to the wedding, so there's that, too.

Anyways...no workout since last Friday and no hope for tomorrow, either. We'll talk about it when we get back from our trip. In the meantime, here's a mediocre song with a memorable lyric from some guy who used to be pretty darn cute.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXl5P2xO9-o

Giada or Ina?

Oops, I was supposed to post yesterday after my workout. Well, I was tired and had to fix dinner, so sorry. It was a good 40 minutes on the treadmill. For some reason, I like the one that is directly in front of the Food Channel and I'm usually watching either Giada or Ina. Both of them do good food, but are opposites in the body composition department.

Which one would I rather be more like? I'm going to go with Ina here. Let's face it, I'll never be a Giada type. She's too short and has a really big head. OK, I have a big head, but I think it's a little more proportional to the rest of me. Also, I would rather cook while listening to NPR; Giada seems to have 80's porn music piped into her home kitchen which is kind of creepy.

Also, Giada's husband seems to have outkicked his coverage. I'm sure he earns money good and stuff, but there's no real appeal to the guy. Ina and her husband, on the other hand, have a relationship I really like. They've been together forever, and they have both had brilliant and opposite career. Plus, I guess I'd rather live in the Hamptons than L.A. Call it my East Coast bias, I'm sure I've got one.

I married rather late in life and find this to be the happiest I have ever been in my life. Shortly before we got married I saw an episode of Barefoot Contessa where Ina was making a meal for a bridal shower or something else delightfully Hamptons-y. She gave the best advice on marriage that I've ever heard. She said that her priority was to make Jeffrey happy and she knew that Jeffrey's priority was to make her happy. Then she shrugged her shoulders and went on making mayonnaise or bechamel or margaritas or something. Giada's husband always appears mildly afraid of her. Ina and Jeffrey always look like they want to get to the next course and then settle down with a couple of good books and a couple of bottles of wine and snuggle for a while.

No musical selection today. Just Ina making meatloaf.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebUYxwd3x1A

Running on Empty (C25K version)

Were you ever in a class in school where you came to class everyday and did all of the homework and almost all of the reading and studied really hard but still sucked when it came to test time? Well, that's the way I feel about the Couch to 5K program, also known as C25K. 

This is one of those programs that takes you from total inactivity to running a 5-kilometer race (or 5K) in like 10 weeks or so. So one year I decided to get into shape and this sounded like a really good idea. I downloaded a bunch of stuff to my iPod and arranged my schedule so that I could get to the Employer Subsidized Workout Facility (ESWF) three times a week to follow the program.  

And I did. I was damn near religious. I would walk for two minutes to warm up, I would stretch my half-century old body parts so as to minimize damage, and then I would launch into the podcast of the designated day and achieve my immediate term goal. I did EVERYTHING I was supposed to do, exactly as planned. 

I even signed up for a friendly-neighborhood 5K. Some sort of civic thing, all praise to the mayor, cruise by many important sights in town sort of thing. I was following my training regimen and it was all going to be good. 

This is the embarrassing part - I mean, I took enough statistics to get a PhD, how could this have escaped me? - it wasn't until two weeks before the big race that I figured out that the whole C25frickingK concept is based on the premise that one can run a 10-minute mile. Here's some news: not all of us can run a 10-minute mile. Some of us need more like 15 minutes. 

It really sucked to get on a treadmill instead of just schlogging around the neighborhood or the indoor track and find out that although you can run for 28 minutes straight, it ain't nowhere nears 3.1 miles. It's more like maybe almost two miles. 

For some reason, I took this intensely personally. How could I have been duped? Why did I mentally buy into a program that could not deliver for me? 

I ran the damned race anyway. That's a story for another day. Kind of wondering if I should try for another 5K someday. 

Oh yeah, Jackson Browne says "hey". 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJYRtOPUonA

Wouldn't it be nice?

OK, the weight is out of control again and we feel uncomfortable with our person. Therefore, reduction measures are in order. Current poundage ranks as follows:

-22 to all-time maximum

-11 to Modern Era North American maximum

+ 9 over marital weight

+23 to long-term sustainable weight

+33 to (cue the Beach Boys)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L--cqAI3IUI

 I'm taking a three pronged approach to this.

1. Cardio
2. Muscle building
3. Consumption control

There will be more on each of this in the coming days. In the meantime, enjoy some of the finest music ever put together on American shores.