Sixteen weeks (give or take) prior to this, the weekend of my five-year college reunion, I, spurred on by an off-handed jab at my flab, embarked upon a fairly comprehensive overhaul of my diet and exercise regiment. Five-times weekly cardio sessions (because Bones is on back-to-back, literally, everyday-) were reduced to two, then one; now none, as thrice-weekly lifting.
Nutrition-wise, I have some good days and some (very) bad days. The underlying goals have been to 1. up protein intake and reduce carbs consumed so as to appropriately supplement strength training and ensure gains and 2. to not eat "mindlessly". My good days average at about 80 grams of protein between white meats, eggs and shakes, raw greens, and lots of water; my bad days begin and end with sticky-sweet baked goods.
The results are observable, encouraging. I've gained strength, and I've come to know my own body a lot better. I'm less doughy, and, when in deficit, tawny. I successfully, conscientiously lost 8 pounds to rock a slinky dress, and I'm confident that I've got the baseline education and fitness to resume deficit eating when I need ("need") to.
Lessons learned? After gaining back the 8, I found that I look better. I feel stronger, healthier, and confident in the weight room. Dieting is hard execute, and impossible to maintain (for me, anyway). Sleep is important; I underestimated the value of sleep.
Goals moving forward? Importantly, I want to escape the mindset that an ice cream cone flushes the rest of the day's dietary habits down the drain, and that I "might as well" wait till the next day to start over. I don't want to work for "perfect" days if the result (and it inevitably is) is a really bad day following. It's hard, but I could definitely use to be a little more balanced about eating, since I'm no longer aiming to lose weight. I'll probably scale back on gym hours this summer in favor of activities that can incorporate a little photosynthesis. I'll get stronger, gradually, I suppose, but there's no rush; I think I'll cycle in more intensive workouts when the weather starts to turn in the fall.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
Free Personal Training Sessions Are Just. The. Pits. And Here's Why -
I occasionally employ free trials as a sales tactic at work - when a potential client (and everyone is a potential client) is dubious about the quality of my work, there's no more effective way than to jam a foot through a closing door than to offer up a risk-free, complimentary taste of the goods. During the free trial, it's my goal, as a salesperson, to demonstrate a dearth, and to satisfy it so completely, that there's no question that I'm the superior service provider. It's the client's job to defend their soft dollars, and refute the suggestion that a need exists, and scrutinize my performance. And so the dance begins; a series of interactions that's part-performance and certainly full of tension. By its end, both parties will have reached some level of utility; capitalism is achieved markets are efficient, the kingdom is saved.
If you happen to be a personal trainer by trade, the strategy subsists analogously. "Heather", thirty-three and reeking of Mid-Atlantic strip malls, sat me down to demonstrate the dearth - expose, through some form questions and 'test's, my insecurity, my inexperience, my ignorance about diet and exercise.
H: What are your fitness goals?
H: What's your diet like?
H: What would you like to change about the way you look?
As the client, it was my job to defend my disposable income against her witchcraft, by exhibiting that there was no dearth - that I was perfectly confident, clever and capable:
M: To squat 120, press 100 and deadlift 170 by July. I'd like to increase posterior chain strength to compensate for anterior dominance. I used to be a swimmer.
M: I'm on a macrobiotic diet. I consume approximately 80 grams of protein daily.
M: Nothing.
We advanced to the mat, where she again reapplied the pitch, while I reapplied resistance. I sassed my way through some warm-up exercises; she remarked that my hamstrings were abominably weak. I disagreed on the form she recommended; she cited the American Academy of Sports Medicine. (I met defeat on the push-up mat; I breezed through two sets of fifteen; she countered by assigning two more. Red-faced, puffing, dripping sweat, I had to fumble a nod when she said, triumphantly and didactically: "See? That was hard, wasn't it?" Never get in a land war in Asia, never challenge a Sicilian when death is on the line, never put your push-ups where your personal trainer's mouth is.)
The second reason personal training sucks is that it's so goshdarned dogmatic. Working out is, after all, an endeavor of vanity. Subscribing to an exercise and nutrition regiment - and then making a concerted effort at adhering to it - takes so much devotion that it's impossible not to take different denominations personally. I'm not really combative by nature*, but this woman was getting under my skin with her questionable directives, and I hers, with my arrogance and impeccable form.
I ultimately survived - both the hour with Heather and the ensuing sales pitch - unscathed, save for some upper-arm soreness the morning after.
*Not really
H: What are your fitness goals?
H: What's your diet like?
H: What would you like to change about the way you look?
As the client, it was my job to defend my disposable income against her witchcraft, by exhibiting that there was no dearth - that I was perfectly confident, clever and capable:
M: To squat 120, press 100 and deadlift 170 by July. I'd like to increase posterior chain strength to compensate for anterior dominance. I used to be a swimmer.
M: I'm on a macrobiotic diet. I consume approximately 80 grams of protein daily.
M: Nothing.
We advanced to the mat, where she again reapplied the pitch, while I reapplied resistance. I sassed my way through some warm-up exercises; she remarked that my hamstrings were abominably weak. I disagreed on the form she recommended; she cited the American Academy of Sports Medicine. (I met defeat on the push-up mat; I breezed through two sets of fifteen; she countered by assigning two more. Red-faced, puffing, dripping sweat, I had to fumble a nod when she said, triumphantly and didactically: "See? That was hard, wasn't it?" Never get in a land war in Asia, never challenge a Sicilian when death is on the line, never put your push-ups where your personal trainer's mouth is.)
The second reason personal training sucks is that it's so goshdarned dogmatic. Working out is, after all, an endeavor of vanity. Subscribing to an exercise and nutrition regiment - and then making a concerted effort at adhering to it - takes so much devotion that it's impossible not to take different denominations personally. I'm not really combative by nature*, but this woman was getting under my skin with her questionable directives, and I hers, with my arrogance and impeccable form.
I ultimately survived - both the hour with Heather and the ensuing sales pitch - unscathed, save for some upper-arm soreness the morning after.
*Not really
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Hi, Ma!
Last night my mother, a serial hobbyist, revealed that she's taken on baking bread. "Loaves and loaves of bread; I eat so much bread!" "Well, don't eat. . . mindlessly," I cautioned. "No, I don't eat mindlessly," she gushed. "I eat this bread with my whole mind and my whole heart! I'm okay with a B-, C+ grade in staying healthy."
Bless her.
Bless her.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
REFEED CITY
I went into uber-deficit (read: very bad weight training) mode in the four days leading up to my formal affair, so as to compensate for my hair and make-up inexperience. The best thing the dress had going with it was its slink factor. I donned big jewels, big lips, big hair (inadvertently channeling Sandra B. -to show solidarity!) little dress, and a hundred and thirty-sex pounds (that's right, 1-3-6) of primp and confidence. Judging from my ex boyfriend's inability to make eye contact for the first hour after I made my entrance, I think I can say I killed it.
The three ensuing weeks have been filled, not unlike the moist sugary centers of creme-sandwich cookies, with moist sugar. I scarfed a half-dozen Dunkin' Donuts the morning-after (after brunch); the floodgates open, I rediscovered pastries, ice cream, whiskey, pasta, and, most winningly, accessibly and destructively, creme-sandwich cookies. Pleasingly, it took about ten days to gain any weight at all - I was still all narrow boy-belly and golden tan until just last week, when I reached, and hovered comfortably at 140 lbs.
One forty. As a Big Girl - accustomed to shouldering Big Girl inconveniences (the ill-fit rompers, the involuntary air of austerity, the dreaded Big Spoon Syndrome) - the number haunts me. I'm -dare I say it? - self conscious. It's not a Big weight to be sure; but while my build is stubbornly svelte, and my clavicular lordosis* lends itself to the appearance of delicacy, there's simply something about being Big that runs counter to femininity. (135, on the other hand, ekes out 'winsome'.)
Numbers aside, though, it's got to be said that I look better at 140 lbs. I don't apply "too thin" lightly - I admire thinness, aesthetically speaking. Taylor Momsen, in a skeletal blaze of cigarette smoke and cigarette jeans, is addicting to look at. There's something ethereally striking, almost academic about a really willowy woman - the prominent leanness of Angelina Jolie supersedes, in my mind, pin-up types (quite low-brow, really) and athletic figures.
Of course I realize that weight isn't a particularly relevant component to endearing appearances. A 98 lb Jessica Simpson retained, albeit on a smaller scale, her bux.
Angelina, meanwhile, makes a lanky pregnant lady. The frame on which one carries one's weight is the determinant of perception - and mine, as it were, isn't "skinny". Infuriatingly, I look "too thin" without actually being too thin! The frumpy turn of phrase 'being comfortable in one's own skin' is the inevitable solution.
*Not a medical term
The three ensuing weeks have been filled, not unlike the moist sugary centers of creme-sandwich cookies, with moist sugar. I scarfed a half-dozen Dunkin' Donuts the morning-after (after brunch); the floodgates open, I rediscovered pastries, ice cream, whiskey, pasta, and, most winningly, accessibly and destructively, creme-sandwich cookies. Pleasingly, it took about ten days to gain any weight at all - I was still all narrow boy-belly and golden tan until just last week, when I reached, and hovered comfortably at 140 lbs.
One forty. As a Big Girl - accustomed to shouldering Big Girl inconveniences (the ill-fit rompers, the involuntary air of austerity, the dreaded Big Spoon Syndrome) - the number haunts me. I'm -dare I say it? - self conscious. It's not a Big weight to be sure; but while my build is stubbornly svelte, and my clavicular lordosis* lends itself to the appearance of delicacy, there's simply something about being Big that runs counter to femininity. (135, on the other hand, ekes out 'winsome'.)
Numbers aside, though, it's got to be said that I look better at 140 lbs. I don't apply "too thin" lightly - I admire thinness, aesthetically speaking. Taylor Momsen, in a skeletal blaze of cigarette smoke and cigarette jeans, is addicting to look at. There's something ethereally striking, almost academic about a really willowy woman - the prominent leanness of Angelina Jolie supersedes, in my mind, pin-up types (quite low-brow, really) and athletic figures.
Of course I realize that weight isn't a particularly relevant component to endearing appearances. A 98 lb Jessica Simpson retained, albeit on a smaller scale, her bux.
Angelina, meanwhile, makes a lanky pregnant lady. The frame on which one carries one's weight is the determinant of perception - and mine, as it were, isn't "skinny". Infuriatingly, I look "too thin" without actually being too thin! The frumpy turn of phrase 'being comfortable in one's own skin' is the inevitable solution.
*Not a medical term
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