Eight Pound Workout (tm)

I have been developing this new workout. All you need is an eight pound weight, and you are ready to begin. You do not even need time to do this workout, because it is incorporated into your day. The key is that you just go about your business, and carry this eight pound weight with you.

Luckily, CostCo sells eight pound weights. They come in the form of buckets of cookie dough. I think the extra chocolate chips are what give the buckets their heft. Wherever you go, you take your bucket with you. The cookie dough is its own timer. When it is time for you to take a break, the dough will let you know by needing some refrigeration. (This can be determined by feeling the side to test the temperature, or squeezing the dough. I prefer squeezing the dough.)

While the Eight Pound Workout ™ is great for adding size to your muscles, some of us want tone and definition. Everybody knows that you get tone and definition by doing light weights and many reps. You will need a second tool for this. A silver spoon works best. I use an oversized silver spoon, because I am a larger person. Instead of lifting the entire tub, you lift spoonfuls of dough repeatedly. You can do this while you are talking on the phone, downloading files at the computer, or going through the drive-thru.

Follow this routine well into the holidays, and you will soon have the physique that will keep you warm. For variety, you can try cookie dough with walnuts.

Oh, and you will probably want to buy two buckets, so you do not have to turn around in front of your house to make another run to CostCo.

The dough will let you know.

What I Will Not Write About (For The Most Part)

Days into this, and Blogger has already given me computer toys to collect my computer’s pictures, (adjust and alter them as well), send pictures to my blog, and blog from Microsoft Word. I really did not need another distraction from my life.

So, onto another distraction in my life.

One thing I do not think I am going to do is talk about the good foods I eat in my life. Despite movie stereotypes, overweight people are not always shoving food into their face, and it is not always the worst food we can find. For the most part, we eat pretty sensible. It takes very little to keep the weight on, so we do. Mostly, through sedentary lifestyles, as well as taking in more calories than we use, we have lowered our metabolisms to the point where we store fat instead of burning it. In fact, our bodies will protect its fat stores by telling us that we are hungry even though we are not. Most people quit their diets after two weeks, because that is when our brains panic, and start sabotaging our diets.

Besides, fat is flavor.

If you are eating something that is fat free but tastes really good, you have probably been tricked with carbohydrates and sugars. Which make you crave… more carbohydrates and sugar? (This is why I quit eating cereal in the morning. I found myself wanting lunch about two hours later.) Proteins satisfy hunger. I am not saying that you should not have a balanced diet, but breads and starches are too available to us. Sugar is too available to us. Fat is too available to us. More on this later.

What I really want to say is that I do not think anybody wants to read what I eat everyday. I can just follow the wrappers from the kitchen to the front of my television an computer for that. What I do want to write about is the crap I eat, and why I eat it, because I would sure like to know. Also, once I post it, it is like a confession. It makes it real.

Running In Public

I really wish I started this blog when I started FitCamp. (www.outdoorfitnesscamps.com/)

Let me tell you, when you go outside to run, you really make a decision that a) I have no dignity and b) I have no dignity. Okay, maybe that is a little melodramatic. I would me more accurate to say that you cannot have any issues with ego. You can only compete with yourself (which unfortunately explains my current sexlife). You have to be okay with your endurance moving closer to zero/being less inadequate. You have to be willing to take a beating one day a week, so not only the other six days of your week are better, but by not skipping a Saturday, you are not paying in triplicate two Saturdays away.

I am trying to think what I can tell you to catch you up to speed. I will first give you a run down of my training leading up to camp. I am 6'1", and I weigh 310 lbs. Before you gasp, even the doctor's office guesses at 240. I am a weight lifter, and do not fit any height-to-weight ratio charts. There is a certain pride in that, but one day it occured to me that there is no prize for being the strongest dead guy.

One day at my gym, I was looking over a cardio-class schedule, when someone said, "Are you going to come to spin class"? (cycling class to normal people) You know how people who say they are going to quit smoking always have a date to quit? They always made me think, "If you're going to quit, why not just quit"? So, even though I told that woman that was probably flirting with me and I missed it that I was not going in, at that moment, I felt like a smoker six weeks before New Year's Eve. So, I went and and found the right trainer. After that, I was doing cycling weekly. In that first class, I could only "participate" for about 15 minutes, and just pedal the other 45. (I feel that consistency and duration is more important than burning out. I proved that to myself years ago when I stopped trying to kill myself with weights.) By the fourth week, I was participating with the entire hour.

Since I really liked that instructor, I tried another of her classes, pilates. These are basically exercises for people that grew up dancing; women. This is where I learned to let go of my dignity in preparation for FitCamp. I got in there, and despite the fact that it was for flexibility and muscle development, I was breathing and sweating my ass off. When they said, "four deep, cleansing breaths," I would exchange those for "sixteen, conscious preserving pants." I am still trying to excel in this class, but a lifetime of "not being about that" is showing.

So, you have treadmill, spin class and pilates, on top of weightlifting. Once I got my wind, I thought I was ready to run in public.

No.

Very much... no.

I was only in good enough shape to actually start getting in shape.

That first week, it took me four days to not need the railing to walk down stairs, to not have to drop into seats (like toilet seats). Only then did I realize how out-of-shape I was. That, as bad of shape that I was in during high school, I would have to work for quite some time before I even got into that good of shape again.

You know, I talked with one of the trainers for two months before going. You see, people that are in shape do not understand people that are not. The best way I can describe it is like breathing inside a plastic bag with a pencil-sized hole in it. That first time, I lasted about ten minutes before everything became a walking exercise. Even then, the slightest exersion would make me pant like a dog, uncontrolably. Even I was amazed. We ran stadium stairs, threw a medicine ball around and ran after it, and brutal exercises. (Note: very smart exercises, because you only need to do them for about 30 seconds before you are gripping the earth, and crying to the sky.)

After that first workout, we all went to breakfast. Everybody was so careful to order the egg-white blah-blah. F THAT. There will be egg, there will be meat, there will be bread and there will be sugar anyday that I put my lungs and legs into traction. I remember very few details of that day except that the waitress had an accent.

So, if any of the ladies can call and talk to me in an accent, I'm sure I could remember enough to finish this blog.

Welcome To The Frustratiosphere.

This is not my first blog, but I am hoping that it will be my first regular blog. I tried to use Blogger in the past, but it was in the beta stage, and it WOULD NOT LET ME INTO MY OWN DAMN BLOG.

*ahem*

I am doing this, in part, from inspiration from someone that has a fitness blog. He suggested that several of us start some sort of blogging community. If that is code for talking crap, count me in.

What I would hope from my blogs is a very long list of very full comments pages. I was once told that everybody, no matter how you feel about them, has something to teach you. Readers contributions would add scope and dimension to my... uh, already scopey and dimensiony blog?

So, during the week, I go to 24 Hr. Fitness. On Saturdays, I attend Fitcamp hosted by trainers from www.outdoorfitnesscamps.com/ . They have been trained by Torquemada in torture techniques, and by the Kama Sutra in stretching techniques. And still, I will return next Saturday. What happens on those Saturdays will probably be the meat of my writings, because during the week, I do what I am good at, and what I am bad at makes up FitCamp. (There are several words and phrases that end in the word "camp," and they are good about half the time. They must occur in somebody else's half.)

I think I am writing this, because if you are not a runner, then you cannot understand running from the perspective of someone that is out of shape. If I write this correctly, that will create interest.

Wish me luck. Not my luck, but somebody with a normal person's odds.

Allegedly yours,
Very Anonymous Mike