Also, training takes a fair amount out of me, even though I love it. It requires you give another person your completest attention, as much as you can muster at the time, because it’s a team effort and people deserve that and pay for it. But afterwards I get real tired, and if I work a bunch of hours I feel more tired than I used to when I was sitting at a desk and could sort of pace myself differently. I’m by nature an introvert, I like working with people, but it makes me feel a little wasted. And my hours are completely stupid, early morning to midday, then early afternoon to late-ish, so my break is lunchtime, and I use it mostly to cross and uncross my eyes.

This is just the whiny part of the post, though I don’t really mean it to be, I think I’m explaining something to myself. I don’t imagine anyone cares, I hardly do, or I can’t worry about that. But today I felt really depressed or lonely or something, and I have been dying to write for so long, but just couldn’t break past the tired and the inertia to do it. That’s probably what most people feel like when they think of starting an exercise program, gawd, just the phrase “exercise program” sounds ridiculously uptight and exhausting to me, like “bedtime regimen” or “meeting agenda.” And this little description of why I can’t write kinda sounds like what people say to me when they give me the lengthy explanation of why they haven’t done any physical activity for a long time. “When I get home from work I’m just so tired I wanna eat and watch TV and fall asleep.” If I had a gold brick for every time I’ve heard that, I could build a mighty fine palace that would most certainly get ransacked by bandits immediately unless I had ninjas guarding it, ninjas with a fierce loyalty to me who also were willing to accept gold bricks as payment, even though they are a bitch to get into the ATM deposit slot.

I want you to know that writing this post is making me feel a little high. I might just have some sort of sexless orgasm. Is that pathetic?

Soooo, anyway, today I was going about my Saturday kid-is-with-her-dad activities, which usually involve some alone-time and running stupid errands and looking for shit to buy to make myself feel better and trying not to feel guilty about all the things I ought to be doing and the things I have done. Often I enjoy this time very much, it is the white noise of my week. But today I keep fighting off some kind of feeling I can’t tolerate very well, it’s either depression or loneliness or both, feelings I don’t usually have and which frighten me. I don’t know why I feel this way. I had an experience yesterday where a car next to me on the freeway went out of control and drove up the center concrete divider and flew through the air, hurtling towards me, and I had to cross three lanes without looking to avoid being hit, and time slowed down, and I definitely wondered if I was going to die, and it kind of freaked me out. The kids driving the car, who I saw before the accident, may be dead, and they were probably pretty mangled, because the car was upside-down and squished. And since then I’ve also felt like I am crazy for being so upset after the fact (I was intensely calm in the moment and immediately after) because other people have told me similar stories and they seemed to weather these crises fine, and feeling like a dramatic crazy person is a lonely experience for me.

I don’t know if this is why I feel bad or if it is one of the other myriad things my brain likes to seize on and identify as the problem, but that’s the one I feel like writing down.

If this was a real fitness site instead of a pulpit for the church of SEE-ME-PLEASE I would now have some inspiring little story about how I did some amazing run through the forest after the accident and was filled with the joy of being alive and in my body, so grateful to be alive and to expand my lungs with the crisp air, and a deer would bound alongside me, so graceful, and I’d be so in the present and appreciate every moment, at one with creation via physical activity. (In the present it took me five minutes just to try and get all the tenses in that sentence to agree.) But thank fucking god it is not a real fitness site, because VOMIT COPIOUSLY at other people’s running stories, they just make me feel guilty that I’m reading them instead of burning calories (I don’t even approach looking for enlightenment any more, I’m realistic.) If it helps, the only workout I have done since was 25 minutes of kicking a bag and jumping rope, and I was listening to Justin Timberlake while I did it, and that’s about as spiritual as I get. I did, however, manage to stress-eat enough to feed an impoverished rural village for a week. That’s how I coped with the accident. Ate a bunch, now I’ll feel bad enough to have to go running tomorrow, and if a deer runs alongside me I’ll probably try to eat it too. Before it eats me, cuz those bitches are vicious.

No, here’s how I got past my depression and loneliness, which I will call deproneliness. I’m absolutely kidding, I’d never make such a stupid compound word. I was driving home from eating even more food, and thinking that I’d like to shoot myself except it wouldn’t be fair to my kid. While I was thinking about whether I really wanted to shoot myself when feelings are temporary yet feel so permanent and utterly unbearable in the moment, I pulled into the 7-11 parking lot. I got out of my car and as I went in, one of the many drunk homeless guys who hang out in front said something to me. I smiled politely and went inside. When I came out, he slurred, “Can I ask you something?” I hurried to my car and readied myself to say sorry if he wanted money, or drive off wordlessly if he said something about a blowjob. “Can I share your joy?” he asked. At first I thought he said “joint” so I laughed, amused he thought someone so clearly depressed was even remotely high. Then I realized he said joy, and I am ever a giving person, so I laughed again and grinned and said, “There, there’s a tiny little moment of joy for you.” “Yeah, thank you!” He said and I got in my car and burst into tears as I drove away.

I felt like a total fucking idiot for being so blue when I have everything going for me, when a guy with no home, out in the ass-chapping cold, has to encourage me to smile. (Though at least HE was high, he had that going for him. Wouldn’t it be funny if he really did say joint? Ha!) And then I thought, “when I get home, I’m fucking writing.” Because I miss it, and because I think the need to create is one of the basic human needs you feel when you are lucky enough to have your food-water-shelter ones taken care of. Or maybe it’s just the need to express yourself, and I think the fact people on Facebook post about eating soup is proof of that. And also I am highly amused by the fact that I had a small sustaining moment delivered to me by a drunk homeless man, because it sounds like something an Oscar-whoring Hollywood screenwriter would crap up, it’s so cliche and ridiculous and inexplicable that I probably ought to say it where no one can hear me, because I don’t feel stupid enough as it is.

I doubt anyone will read this and probably I should just keep a fucking journal like normal people, but there’s a strange humiliating thrill in the idea that someone might read it. That’s what being a writer is I guess.

So when people come to me because they want to start an EXERCISE PROGRAM and GET IN SHAPE I give them a couple strategies that sometimes work for people, because I’m only going to see them at most a few times a week, and often that is not gonna be enough. I tell them about finding someone to work out with, as a way of creating accountability and having to show up. I talk to them about setting small, concrete goals, short-term and long-range ones, to help with the motivation. I give them the specific activities I think will be most effective for their goals, based on what they express an interest in, what has worked in the past, and what might be feasible with their schedule. We talk about what time of day will work, who they can report to, and how they can track progress. Then as we go along I give feedback and ask questions and try and make sure the EXERCISE PROGRAM is working for them as best it can, though in the end it does come down to what people are willing to do.

I’ve been thinking about doing the same with writing, and I feel the same overwhelmed fear I imagine people experience when they talk to me, fear that they will let themselves down, or that it will be hard and exhausting, or that they are too broken and fucked up to actually do it. (By the way, “thinking” and “feeling” do not make your ass look any better in the end, if you know what I mean, you have to DO, right?) I am not sure if I can do it, honestly, especially since writing won’t give me a better body and I can’t do it with a friend, and I don’t know how or when to work it in with everything else. But I miss it so much, all of it, and I want to, I want the feeling of satisfaction that comes from a regular practice that makes you feel better, from knowing you accomplished something, took some positive action, didn’t just sit on your ass and feel sorry for yourself, and by your ass I mean mine of course, my ass is the sorry one. If I can make some sort of slow incremental build-up, and write a little more all the time, take it one step at a time, maybe I will be okay. And then I can tell people who are looking to start an exercise program, “I suggest a near-collision, a crushing depression and a homeless guy who wants some of your joy.” And I will get paid in gold bricks for my services.

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I do not enjoy being sick. I don’t really imagine other people love it, but I get blue because I feel like the whole world is happening outside and I’m stuck inside, being sick makes me feel invisible. Also tends to ramp up the ever-present self-pity, a conclusion you may have already leapt to if you are shmart. If I’m feeling invisible, I guess I look for attention, and don’t matter if it’s positive or negative. Fact: blogging is probably only a tiny step above flashing your tits at the camera guy in the scale of attention-seeking behaviors.

Soooo on with it.

If I know you I’ve probably told you this story already, but I love it: I was teaching someone a slightly more complicated move the other day (oh yes, I have moves), and she commented that it was both physical and mental exercise. I started with my guest lecturer voice, “True, and in fact body awareness is a very important part of athleticism and fitness. To be able to know where you are in space…” and I stopped because at that moment I accidentally poked myself in my eye with my own thumb. Then fell down while I was laughing.

Body awareness… Yeah. Exercise has certainly made me more coordinated, but not less clutzy, because my brain is still captain of the ship and this captain is highly distractable, meaning I sail through life like I’m a vessel on Deadliest Catch. Vessel is a weird and kinda creepy word. Also, writing while massively congested and fever-y is a little like being drunk.

Some people, usually those who have think-y jobs, have a hard time with the brain-body connection at first, this is what I mean by body awareness being a skill you can develop. Like you’ll tell them to move their right foot and they’ll move their left, or every other part of them will collapse cuz they can only send a message to one body part at a time. This generally gets better with practice, I think it’s just cuz modern life (yo) means we are like brains floating around in jars, disregarding and ignoring our physical selves. I know this because I’ve trained people who literally walked maybe 10 feet total in a day, like “sedentary” doesn’t even begin to cut it, and by the way, many are skinny, which again leads me back to the belief that it’s being hell-of inactive that leads to health problems more than obesity, which is simply a side effect of that and poor diet. Do you care that we as a society are turning into masses of blobby jelly bound for heart attacks? Prolly not.
Just as good as going to the gym…except not even.

But then I get trippy on the fact that in order to be good athletically, you are sometimes better off ignoring what your body tells you to a certain extent. Or what your brain tells you about your body. The ability to push past fatigue and muscle pain and a sense of limits is good, and results in the fabulous ether where FIIIITNESSS happens, woo hoo. Though the ability to ignore pain and fatigue is good only to a point, and it’s a very fine and eluuuusive point, which is why every athletic person I know has some chronic injury.

And here’s another thing: my perception of my body’s limits is highly influenced by my ego and by my social environment. If I’m working out alone, I might hit total fatigue at say, one and a half reps of a given exercise, I’m less of a perfectionist and more of a “well that’s good enough” kinda girl. If there’s simply one other person in the room, one I care to impress (i.e. anyone except my sister) I can do maybe 10 reps, though the weight and other factors are the same. If I’m being trained by someone, I’ve got 15 reps, and if I’m trying to match or beat someone in the room, probably 20, last five executed with ca-ca form.
Spotting made Ted nervous, in a good way.

Truthfully, the three times I’ve ever worked out really hard on my own I had to tell someone about it later, and thought about telling someone while I was working out. We’re social animals, just like ponies… (Only my sister will laugh at that line, for it’s randomness.)

One of my clients told me she read a study that some people are genetically more predisposed to enjoy exercise. (That study was probably in one of the personal trainer magazines I let lapse, it depresses me to look at the photos and see this industry is largely populated by men and women with a serious fondness for the half-shirt and obselete brands of hair gel.) The predisposition according to this very scientific and unverified casual conversation is a higher pain threshold and a more euphoric feeling from working out. Yeah, I think I just have a genetic predisposition for the need to be good at everything, as futile as that is, combined with a large amount of hard-headedness.
Two crotch shots in one picture is a fitness photographer’s dream. Is that guy wearing a tie around his waist? Hope so.

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Anyway, these magazines have sexy exciting titles like “Healthier Health For You” and “Fitness Woman” and “No We Are Totally Into Health” or some such shit, and it is my conclusion from reading them that there is at most one actually useful piece of information per issue, if that, and it is usually a line in the little blurb-y section, and it’s something like, “Blueberries have more vitamin C than oranges” and that’s not a real one, but you get the idea. So these magazines could be, in my opinion, condensed to exactly one sentence, which would leave room for even more of those copious tampon and yogurt ads, and sorry to the guys out there, but the way those two are put in close proximity always makes me think of yeast infections. Collective ewww to your moms, yo.

It did get me thinkin yet again about how FF be more like your average women’s health and fitness magazine.

-Still more articles on “Seven Things Your Doctor Might Not Notice—That Could be the Signs of a Deadly Disease.” I’ve mentioned this before, why is it that in magazine-land, almost all these signs of imminent death are located in and around your vagina? I am pretty familiar with my own vagina, thanks, but in order to self-diagnose I would have to look at that thing with a very invasive mirror, some forensic tools, and a clinical zealotry that would probably quickly devolve into a very inconvenient form of OCD. But apparently it is nothing short of a miracle that my uterus hasn’t come sliding out all riddled with cancer. Ticking time bomb, I guess.

-A diary of my training for an endurance event with the goal of raising money for a worthy cause. I am now training for a quad-athalon (25 mile walk, 1/22 mile jog, 3 mile swamp wade, and 2 mile gatorade chugging contest) for a cause near and dear to my heart. It’s called Operation Pretty Woman, and the organization raises money for makeovers for prostitutes, so working girls can feel good about themselves and make more money. See, when you look pretty on the outside, you feel pretty on the inside, and just because you are selling sex doesn’t mean you have to dress like a hooker, I mean, with some make-up tips and a closet overhaul streetwalkers can walk the streets with confidence and be full of self-love, because everyone knows make-overs aren’t about appearances, they are about self-esteem, which comes from your appearance but not in a shallow way, noooo. Anyway, this organization is important to me, because of course my sister is a hooker. It’s very inspiring.
My sister loves it when I joke about her on FF.

-New exercises touted by a celebrity trainer. There will be some mention of the one first-tier and two third-tier celebs this person trains, and then there will be a variation on the lunge, the crunch, and something shoulder-raise-y. Maybe a squat or two. The step-by-step instructions will be harder to follow than the plotlines on “The Wire” if you missed half the season. You only have to start with 10-20 reps of each three times a week (yes, FINE, with 3-pound weights, what woman owns heavier?) plus walking on other days, oh, and cut-your-calories-to-like-1200-a-day-using-our-bland-recipes-for-slow-soul-death, heeee. And you should see BIG results. Yeah. By the way, “The Wire” is one of the best shows ever, just killah. Love Omar. Isn’t that more interesting than the damn lunges?

-Side by side comparisons of foods. Instead of: [delicious scone photo] have [yogurt and berries photo]. Is there a human being ALIVE who doesn’t know a egg muffin fast food sandwich has more calories and less nutritional value than an apple and a tiny smattering of almonds? Please, please kill me.

-A one-paragraph mention of studies about how stress and/or lack of sleep are bad for you. No. Shit. Also no mention of the fact that some of the studies included about 5 people and were largely inconclusive, but hey, that never matters, we are fitness ladies, not scientists. I’m not saying sleep deprivation and stress are good for you, they just make you a bitchy little writer who sits at home trashing women’s magazines for the 75 millionth time because it’s kinda fun, and more pleasant than having to find actual topics or take a hard look in the mirror. Who the fuck is the fairest… Anyway, the solution? Get more sleep and less stress. No, there might be tips like: you could take 15 minutes to meditate at your desk at work. No one will think you are a weirdo, I swear. I’m doing it RIGHT NOW, while I write this.

Also, I’m making sure I have gotten enough omega-3 fatty acids and doing bicep curls and organizing my desk and having a heart-to-heart with my gossiping co-worker and looking at my vagina for danger signs and also I’m flattening my stomach with heart-healthy foods and still more crunches. And I’m multi-tasking, cuz we ladies are good at that, and I’m getting outside and running away from the rat race and breaking free from emotional eating and moving into a brand-new me. And I’m bored with this topic now, so bye bye.

You know what’s not boring? Jennifer Dziura, who I just stumbled on while looking for a photo to post with this. Here’s her fitness posts, and I think she’s very funny.

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A long ass time ago, I went to see this great nutritionist who told me many wise things, and among them was this gem: Diets are often crap-fuckery (um, those are my words) because they fail to ask the fundamental question, “How many calories are you currently eating?” Meaning that most diets prescribe 1200, or 1300, or 1500 hundred calories without knowing whether the individual is currently eating 2500, or 1700, or 12 calories a day. This means the diet may be not be much of a reduction, or more likely, it might be a serious drop in caloric intake. That could be bad if your body thinks you are starving and does its damndest to maintain homeostasis, and then hoooolds everything once you up those calories a li’l bit, by say indulging in actual yummy food. So a smarter approach would be to find out what the starting point is, then reduce by 200-250 calories if that’s feasible, and if that fails then take off some more gradually, and so on. Because hell, if you can lose the weight by cutting out 200, why kill most of the joy in your life? Plus less chance that way of falling off the wagon and feeling obsessed and deprived and perhaps in a desperate moment chomping an entire bakery case of stuff, etc. Anyway, I just like this option because it sounds less hard than some others, and I love an easier, softer way.
But obsessed and deprived is considered a virtue sometimes, and we call it discipline and success and shit like that. Because we are tweaked and essentially dumbasses. Lots of name-calling here, but I think you know what I mean, and don’t get all righteous with me, I don’t have time for it, this is my site and truth is whatever I happen to feel like today, and that’s why I have been told I have a sass-mouth. Or maybe it was bitch. Whatevah.
Anyhow, I am also a dumbass, because let’s fast-forward to today. So I gained some weight, and here’s the revelatory reason why: I was taking in more calories than I was burning, by not working out and by eating multiple desserts and 17 plate lunches and shit like that. Happens. Because I have a very efficient body that likes me just the way I am, I don’t often yo-yo soooo much and this freaked me the fuck out. And then I sprained my ankle and couldn’t work out the way I wanted for a few days. Up to that point I had been toying with how to reduce calories because I hate tracking and counting and shit like that, I find it boring and I’m an obssesive person and also very very lazy so the whole thing usually just makes me feel like crap about myself with little measurable change. And I’m saying that like I’ve done it so many times, which I haven’t, often I have been fine with myself (meaning freaked out when PMSed or gone swimsuit shopping but mostly okay) and abandoned the thinking about it. And that’s the way I roll, yo. Could be skinnier, big whoop, don’t have the will to try too hard, and love, love, love me food.
I decided to do this whole delivered organic meal thingie that I’ll go into another time. Anyway, they give you calorie intake options, and I said, “1500″, intending to supplement with more food…Well, sort of. Because a small voice in my head had already started whispering about getting think fast and having a rockin body and my very good discipline and it would all be kind of secret because I don’t wanna lose my rep as a lusty eater and hater of all things pious and depriving.
So what was my caloric starting point? (See nutritionist gem from earlier.) Umm, probably somewhere between 2200 and a million calories, depending on the day, and really, I have no idea. I do know I was eating dessert like I was training for a pro-eating career. And I’m active, so 1500 was probably a serious drop.
How do I know this? Because I ate my portioned breakfast, and lunch, and snack, and then a couple hours later was totally starving. I’m a blood-sugar whore freak, when it dips too low I’m much angrier than usual and spaced out and dizzy and sullen and let’s say it again, angrier than a dad on Montel whose paternity test turns up negative. (For the record, I’m trying to fuck up my chances of being on Montel, because he keeps calling me, and I don’t want to be on his special about women who secretly dress in leotards underneath their regular clothes and have tattoos of Jane Fonda in intimate locations. Who knew Jane had a beard?)
But oh, I fell into the obsessive trap, and wanted to be a good, disciplined, skinny girl. So I tried to ignore the serious hunger pangs and went for a run. And here’s what I realized a mile in:
I am not a good, disciplined girl. Fuck that nonsense, because I didn’t feel athletic, I felt like a noodle. I didn’t run fast (though that was in part the sprained ankle, ahem, la la la, it’s um much better now, shut it) and I felt like poo. Nowadays I am not accustomed to feeling like poo, exercise had the nice unintended side benefit of making me more in touch with how my body feels from moment to moment, and it felt really fucking hungry. So I finished my run, went home, ate, and felt better. And I though about all those celebrities who subsist on very few calories and I don’t know why I thought about them except that I get these idiotic PR emails about their diets and my low blood sugar made me more crabby about it and then extra crabby I was even thinking about stupid celebrities in the first place and I think they must just be really fucking hungry and boy, I want no part of it.
So that’s right, I had a whole ten minutes of dieting, yippee for me, now I’m back to trying to work out more and just eat slightly less but leave room for real serious pigouts because I love food. I’ll never be the skinniest girl you know, but I’m good with that, I came to my senses a long time ago when I did get too skinny and now I’m just going for a more balanced, food-loving me, and while I can and will shed the extra that I don’t like I’m going to do it myyyyyy waaaaay. In other words, you should still hide the bacon when I come over, and I don’t mean that as a euphemism.

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-During training, many people turn to me and say, “I just can’t motivate to do this on my own, I can’t get myself to work out.” I always tell them, “Wow, you must be a total lameass, I don’t even understand what you mean. Why, everyone else in the world has absolutely no trouble at all springing from their beds and rushing straight to the gym to do some really intense exercising because, damn, it feels soooo good we all can’t get enough, OH YEAH, give me more exercise before I go into DTs.”
Um, no, what I actually say is, “Welcome to normal.” Most of us go through phases where we have zero motivation, we probably all slack off from time to time (except for those total weirdos, and we don’t even like them, do we? Dear weirdos, FYI, we all hate you) and the majority just don’t sustain an exercise program at all. And that’s not even getting into how hard you work out—-how many people mosey along at the same pace, doing the same run or bike ride or setting on the elliptical for decades? (”Mosey”? I guess cowboy lingo was a’comin from over yonder. Shoot me at high noon.) I do not often feel an overwhelming urge to push myself real hard unless my ego is on the line, meaning I have an audience or coach putting performance pressure on me in some way. Any solo intervals of intensity are undertaken with much bitching and frequent half-assery and restful pauses where I stare at things and use my mind power to get in shape.
Oh, would you like to know why it’s hard to get yourself to the gym? Because exercise is hard work and it’s painful and tiring. Obviously there are these supposed ways it feels good, but those come mostly post-workout and you have to do it consistently to see results. That’s how I sell it, by the way. Exercise: It is some fucked up whackadoo shit. Now come train! This is why the gym is a multi-billion dollar enterprise and I sleep on sheets made of specially treated hundred dollar bills, currency has a high thread-count, dahling. It’s the marketing that made our success.
Well, thank god it’s hard to work out or I would probably be out of a job. Don’t go and get all self-motivated, please, I have bills to pay, and I don’t want to rip up my sheets.

Point two: on the other hand… The other day I spent a good half hour trying to decide if I should work out, talking myself in and out of working out, fucking around with whether I was too tired or had become gigantic and must do SOMETHING or whether I would still be fit to train people if I skipped it but maybe a rest day was in order or perhaps I should do other productive things like nap or blah blah blah. And then I realized I had put more work into the decision whether or not to work out than it would have taken to actually, you know, work out. Procrastination is not quite as effective as exercise unfortunately, but it takes just as long, if not longer. Yes, you can quote me on that INSPIRATIONAL nugget, I’ll use that one during the stadium tour. Since I had my epiphany about procrastination I’ve sprung into action. (Pregnant pause) Well, it did make me workout with slightly less messing around the next day, that realization that I was spending more energy on head-fucking, which should have been outsourced to my sister anyway. Bitch, you are falling down on the job! Don’t make me out-out-source my head-fucking to a contractor. By the way, any takers, willing to work pro bono?

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I’m going to slink in like I’ve been here the whole time. If someone asks why I haven’t posted, I’m going to toss my head and drop something about “coma” or “kidnapped by religious-political group and made to do bank heists” and leave it at that.

Nah, 2009 was kind of a thbbbthh year in some ways, culminating in a thbbbthhh couple months during which I wrote NOTHING except cryptic emails and to-do lists with item #1: “Go to store and buy a new life”.

But Whatever. It’s 2010, I’m getting back to feeling like myself slowly but surely, and this part is just the la-la-la shit for myself. I make no posting promises, but I’m here now baby, and all we have is now. Hey, I’m like a bird, I’ll only fly awaaaay…

So because running is no longer effective for curbing my incessant mind-spinning and head-fucking, I’ve decided to outsource all that to my sister. Not the running, though I really wish you could outsource fitness, I’d be on that train as soon as I could find someone in India who is willing to work on pull ups for me. (Speaking of, those are better, I practiced. See? Occasional follow-through for brief shining seconds.) But I am outsourcing my mind-spinning to my sister, I think she needs a side gig, so get on that sister, for the next fifteen minutes you need to worry about imminent financial ruin, GO!

So what inspired me to write again? A couple things. I got an email from someone who reads my blog who just said she likes my writing and misses me. It was sweet. I felt warm and happy and the desire to say stuff returned. (Note: Hate mail will not have the opposite effect, I’m too hardened for that. Sorry!)

Then Shari sent me this link. I was just getting teary over the ab circle pro, which I saw on an infomercial. I love that thing, first I wanted one and then I laughed over the idea that you can get in shape using it in just minutes a day at home. I mean, if there was ever a body part you could work WITHOUT equipment, at home, relatively easily, it’s abs. So why would spending $200 inspire you to do something when you are not inspired to do, um, simple crunches three minutes a day? And the reviewers at some sites say, oooh,it holds up well if you only plan to use it for fifteen seconds one time, which is probably the average amount of use it in fact gets from people. Although the inner thigh workout mode confirms something I’ve long held: Most exercise equipment is really designed for much more tawdry purposes. Don’t tear a groin muscle, kids, you’ll have a bitch of a time explaining it to the ER doctors!

But hey, back to the link that made my day. The mother fucking god-love-me-jesus what a gift fitness boon known as… The Shake Weight.

You just hold it, the shake weight, for sculpted, sexy, toned arms instantly, in 6 minutes a day. Is it, in fact, one of those things that you use to…? Noooo, but it works by causing isometric contractions in your whole upper body you will feel INSTANTLY.

Ya. Do not misuse the shake weight, it is for your upper body. Do not think for a second it is some kind of vibrator, it’s not, it’s a revolutionary vibrating dumbbell you should keep in the top drawer of your nightstand. That’s it. It’s scientific and shit.

Okay, I never got a pony as a kid, and believe it or not, no one bought me an iGallop. I know this is very sad, but you know, vale of tears. However, getting me a Shake Weight would be totally awesome. I actually don’t wanna use it for anything that might result in blindness, for real, I just think it would be funny, and I love, love, love a running joke like Richard Simmons loves his short shorts.

Feel free to send me a shake weight, or fitness articles, or thoughts on the meaning of life and a status update and coconut cream pie. I’ll try and work out tomorrow so I can remember what that feels like. My sister is hopefully almost done with the finances and ready to move on to my poor life choices when it comes to parenting, so my schedule should be clear.

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Or I’ve just been busy and kind of overwhelmed for reasons far too boring to detail here, and writing for me is like exercise—once you get out of the habit, it is a bitch to get back into it. Hey, I have been working out though! As if anyone cares but me. I kind of wonder if I killed this blog for good with my being gone. Let’s find out. Oh, and I even wrote this post a while ago but never published it because I didn’t like it that particularly, but now I’m too out of practice to care so much, and I figure everyone has gone home anyway, so what the hell.

Did you know there’s not much new in fitness? Ever? There’s some fundamental movements and a lot of variations on those and some great equipment and some kickass sports and forms of dance. There’s even some movements people historically had to do as part of manual labor but now that we are largely desk-bound, we actually simulate these movements for fitness, not survival. That’s about it. I mean, occasionally there’s some new piece of equipment or novel idea, but mostly NOT. It’s all been done before.

I don’t think this is a bad thing—if a movement is so totally unnatural that it hasn’t been done before, it’s probably not going to be that helpful to you in your goals and your life. And if you are like me, and you get bored easily, you are happy to learn some new variation on a theme just for novelty’s sake. There’s not much new, but there is lots of stuff to do out there is the big wide world.

The quest to be THE new thing that spreads to the fitness-hungry masses spawns some really silly marketing. This is how a hundred pieces of dumbass equipment are sold on informercials, and how celebrities and celebrity trainers can market their workouts like they’ve found the one true way, when half the time they just make you do a shitload of lunges. I saw a video in the store—someone’s kettlebell workout for women—and I swear the bell was so small (and non-threatening I guess) it looked like a paperweight.

You know how to sell something to women? Call it “cardio”, because I guess some marketing person would tell me women see cardio and they think “oh, cardio equals calorie burn, that’s good because I want to lose weight”. I do believe real live boxing and salsa dancing have cardio benefits, for example, but of course that’s gotta be spelled out to make it seem more like productive exercise and less like, you know, some scary new hobby. Cardio dancing, cardio kickboxing, cardio yoga, cardio sculpting, cardio water aerobics, cardio shmardio. Sometimes your instructor can dance, or kickbox, and I’m not really knocking it, I’m more annoyed that it has to be soft-sold for people to try it, even though I soft-sell myself and I understand being scared to walk into a class and assume you will get hit or be expected to pirouette when you never have before. Lots of cardio whatever classes are great, it’s not that any of it is inherently bad or that people are bad for using the word. But sometimes the point here is to fill the room with people who want CARDIO something, and slapping that word in front makes it seem more palatable and less like what it actually is, because it may in fact be actual boxing or salsa dance or it may bear very little resemblance to a fighting style or sport in how it’s practiced in a room with a wooden floor. Of course, and we are all a little bored with this I think, if you want women to pick up weights, say sculpt or tone, because heaven forbid we actually strength train and get gigantic muscles, which we all know just pop out the moment you pick up a weight heavier than five pounds. Someday someone will be teaching us Cardio Sculpting Tennis, and we’ll swing a lightly weighted racquet around a gym room but not ever hit an actual ball, it’ll just be strange approximations of forehands and backhands, because we don’t want to learn sports, we want CARDIO to be skinny and TONING to have nice arms. Now watch me offer a cardio something class next because, hey, we gotta call it something.

Don’t want to say CARDIO because it’s soooo 90’s? Say “Power”, because power is good, even if it does corrupt, and absolute Power Yoga Water Pilates Fitness Dancing corrupts absolutely.

Then there’s the unholy alliance of two things, smushed together, or something dumb with some new piece of equipment you toss around. I swear, I just saw that one gym is doing Piloxing. Do you know what that is? A combination of Pilates and Boxing. Yup. Do we think boxers lack core strength, or is it that women will go to Pilates because it’s all lady core strength-y, so now you make them do it while wearing gloves?

So much of this shit is marketing and putting your name on something and making a workout video and pimping it to a target audience like post-partum moms or people who want tantric yoga you can do at your desk. I’m not surprised people don’t know what is good and what is sucky. Hey, I teach bootcamp classes. Have I ever even been in the army? Only the army of one bitch. But if we call it bootcamp, then people know there will probably be push-ups and running, as opposed to step aerobics or water dancing or simply relaxing with a latte. We could call it something else, honestly, and maybe someday we will, and I will trademark the FUCK out of it and you can write to me in my house made of gold bricks and have my personal servants type you out a reply and hand-deliver it to you because I’ll be too rich to even bother with the internets.

If you are going to take movements from a dance style or sport, why not expect to build some actual skills, rather than just burn calories? How come it all has to be cardio fuckity-fuck to get us to try it? And I just don’t get why we laydeeees can’t actually weight train either, we can only tone, but if I talk about that one more time my head will fall off my neck and roll under the desk and I’ll spend the next hour feeling around on the floor for it.

I’ll tell you why: Everyone is looking for the magic skinni-fying, perfect body, fitness bullet.

Maybe I’ll just start teaching Cardio Speedskating Aerobics where we slide around in our socks along the floor. Or maybe I’m going to make a workout where you have to wear a special weighted bracelets, and I’m going to call it the Wonder Woman workout, and there’s lots of sprinting after bad guys in a unitard and I swear to god we will all live out our secret Lynda Carter fantasies. Sure, it’s gimmicky, and might be lame, but by god, I will do my darndest to make millions, at least until someone replaces me with the Yoga Baby Healing workout, where you crawl around on the floor for an entire hour and simulate infant movements as poses so you can align yourself properly, because hell, have you ever seen a baby with a bad back…

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Before I go on about me, which kind of bores even me sometimes, I did read something (yay for me) all by myself with no one helping me with the big words about some female athletes experiencing performance gains after pregnancy. It may have to do with hormones, or better oxidation due to increased blood volume, or just the fact that pushing a FULL-SIZED BABY out of your VAGINA raises your pain threshold. Here’s a quote: “Women re-evaluate where they can anchor pain and many psychologists believe that woman’s pain threshold is effectively reset so that when she resumes or takes up training again, nothing ever seems as uncomfortable.” Uh, ya, I’ll say. I’ll tell you what, it raises something, that’s for sure, like questions about whether this is really a reasonable way for the species to perpetuate itself. Personally, while I may have been willing to consider performance-enhancing drugs and high-altitude training, there is absolutely zero part of me that thinks childbirth is a good idea, even if the second go-round made me into an Olympic contender. But I guess if you do go through with it, there ought to be some perks, aside from the kid you end up being uncommonly fond of in an unprecedented way.

The story includes a rumor that in the 1970’s and 80’s, some East German athletes were impregnated and then had abortions in order to get the performance benefits, known as “the abortion doping scandal”. I imagine that some coaches immediately questioned the wisdom of this move, when the hormone fluctuations started and the athletes began throwing objects at their heads in a fit of pregnancy rage. Oh, don’t tell me they all just fucking glowed…
The creepiest picture ever.

Me, yawn: I have been designing my own workouts and exercising on my own lately, and that’s all fine and good, I’m glad I can do that, but I probably need to get my ass to a class or training very soon. The truth is that I just can’t push myself on bad days the way I can with some sort of audience, even if that audience doesn’t really care what I’m doing and are more concerned with their own workouts. On my own the thought of stopping or slowing looms large; with people around, my own ego and desire to keep up or finish or show off serve me well sometimes. I’m a big believer in using the small, bitter, icky parts of you to get better, and I’ve been blessed with the need to prove myself, which is why I’m even better sometimes with a coach, and I’ll compete with a monkey given half a chance.

Here’s one thing I did notice the other day: Doing this exercise shit has made me more likely to work at things I’m not good at. Before I got into this fitness howdy-do, I mostly stuck with activities I had some kind of natural aptitude for, because I really like being good right away, I don’t want to have to experience frustration or look like an ass. But when you go to classes and train, there’s generally something on the agenda that doesn’t come naturally. My case in point right now is jumping rope. Every person who has ever met me with a rope in hand is sick to death of hearing how it took me a year to get semi-capable at skipping rope, and to be able to do it without dying for more than 30 seconds at a time. Now most of my late-night lonely workouts now have lots of jumprope rounds in them, because it’s very convenient, blah blah. But the idea that I voluntarily pick up a rope and set a timer and then do it for more than 30 seconds is just the product of having to do it over and over in classes until it got easier. I’m not saying it’s like I can do triple-unders now like a jumprope master, or that this is on par with solving world hunger, but it is something I was no good at, that I found difficult and mystifying, and it isn’t so bad now. I’m glad to have had that experience, and I’m glad I looked like a knucklehead publicly while learning it, and I’m glad I was forced to persist even when it took for-fucking-ever to learn, because those things are good for me, even if they are not my favorite things to experience.

Um, I also wouldn’t mind if everything else came easily from now on though. Lesson learned, noted, check. How’s your challenges? Try anything you suck at?

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