I hate the gym.

And I think it hates me right back. I have a few questions for those of you who regularly inhabit gyms:

1. Are people always so unfriendly? I mean, I don't expect anyone to tell me their hopes and dreams or anything, but would it kill them to smile and say hi back to me? As I told my sister, "No one at the gym wants to be my friend!"

2. Should the treadmill give me motion sickness? It isn't so much when I'm running on it, but after I get off it makes me dizzy and gives me the horrible nausea that usually accompanies motion sickness. I would like for that to stop, please, because it is making me dislike running. Luckily it goes away after awhile or I'd probably just give up.

3. Do all body builders grunt strangely and proceed to stare at you when you're on the cardio equipment? Cause seriously... that's awkward. And furthermore, why are they acting like they are hardcore body builders when they live in the middle of nowhere? Is there really that little for them to do here?

4. Are people always so possessive about their cardio machine? Today an old man came in and asked me how long I'd be on the elliptical. I replied, "Only 2:37 more!" and he proceeded to stand there... and watch me. It was a very long 2:37.

5. Should the weight equipment be easy to figure out? Cause often I look at it and am lost as to what a machine actually does. It just looks like a big hunk of metal.

6. Do I need to mention the creepy old man from the other day? Please tell me that's not normal. I've been running on the treadmill without the magic yoga pants (gasp) just in case he shows up again. I don't want my booty to be easily visible and defined for him to look at. TMI?

Will I stop hating the gym as time goes on? Cause right now I can't wait for spring to arrive so I can go back to running outside. It's so much more interesting to see cows frolicking in a field rather than a television or a wall when I'm running. Nothing frolics in the gym--not even the grunting body builders.

Stupid Economy.

I had a moment of panic today when I realized that the holiday season is quickly approaching. Mainly because I’m broke and/or haven’t bothered to do any Christmas gift shopping so far this year. Life is so expensive! Still, Christmas is totally my favorite holiday. I like twinkly lights and hot chocolate and hugging people, and it involves all of those things! I plan ahead for gifts for my family but I always forget to think about the other people I like to give things to—my friends, coworkers, grumpy-looking bums on the street corner, etc. Then there’s always the work gift exchange that pops up, or a person who gets you a gift when you didn’t get them one. It’s very tricky, this holiday season, especially when you are trying to pinch pennies.

As a result, one friend and I have declared that we will be the type of friends who give each other cool homemade gifts instead of spending money on each other (cause we’re both broke, and she understands this dilemma). When I think about it, I should employ this technique with several people in my life. I have my family covered and am thanking my lucky stars that I only have two sisters instead of seven, but there are so many people that I like to give things to! It brings me such joy to give people something wrapped up prettily and watch them open it. If I were a millionaire this wouldn’t be a problem at all.

The only question is, what to make? Naturally I decided google would have the answer. I found this lovely list and as a result I am totally going to make completely off-the-wall gifts for a few people. It will probably rock.

A random sidenote: I am thisclose to having lost 75 pounds. It’s taunting me.

Gross.

This would be part of why I am afraid of gyms:

I didn't work today so I ventured to the gym much earlier in the day than usual. As I'm running along on the treadmill I notice that a creepy old man (with a walker, no less) was standing behind me... WATCHING me. He was just standing there staring at my ass! Who does that?

I didn't know what to do. As a result, I just kept running and he eventually left.

Oh, it gets better. Next a woman came in with her teenage son and he took up residence at a table... right behind me. I don't know if he was staring at me or not, but I was already paranoid from the old man. I still kept running though.

Creeeeeeepy. Luckily this isn't a problem when I'm there in the evenings.

I'm still afraid of the weight equipment. How do you figure out how that stuff works? Also, I'm saving the 30 Day Shred for awhile as I wanted to keep going on the 100 Pushup Challenge (only two weeks left). I like to finish what I start.

And now I'm going to relax in the comfort of my own home where no one stares at my ass.

Slacker mode: Disengage!

You can make a lovely hat out of previously-used aluminum foil. Or so said a handy-dandy recycling tip at the top of my Gmail today. I encourage all of you to make a perfectly wearable hat out of tin foil today and wear it to woo a fella'. Go ahead, and tell me your results.

I have been quite the fitness and health-food slacker the last several days. It all began with a horribly pain-ridden knee keeping me from following Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred and catapulted into me eating pizza and Cheetos until I felt ready to explode. I even skipped an entire day of the Breast Cancer Awareness 30 Minutes Challenge, and I felt guilty as heck. So there you go, my sins for the week.

Starting tomorrow I am going to track my food intake for at least a week so that I will be more aware of what I put into my body. I've used this method in the past, and I've found success in the accountability required of me. Also, sigh, I am going to do Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred tonight. I am committing to it right now and pre-scribbling it into the BCA Challenge spreadsheet right now so that I can't skip out.

I did participate in an new exercise for me yesterday, yoga. I discovered Tara Stiles' yoga videos on YouTube and had fun squirming around on my bedroom floor. Here is one routine that I found particularly entertaining... This one's for you, Sarah Palin. Oh, and I attempted a head stand, and I nearly died.



Also, I've been saving this video in my Firefox browser for a week now, and I thought it was time that I shared it with all of you. Richard Simmons is freaking awesome! This makes me want to dig out all of my dusty Sweatin' To The Oldies tapes. And buy some very tiny shorts and a bedazzled tank top.



Since I'm already on a video posting rampage I also want to share this with you, because I find it entertaining as heck. Left for fries, right for democracy! Glasses boy is dreamy, and this is fun, too.



Okay, now to stop blabbering and actually be active.
Here I go.
I'm going.
What are you still doing here?
Okay, seriously, bye.

A snippet from my evening...

Phone call to my sister:

Sister: (whispering) Hello?

Me: (Thinking she's just trying to be creepy cause I always do weird stuff like that when she calls) Hello!

Sister: (whispering) I'm in the library.

Me: (whispering) Okay, I was just calling you back cause I didn't get your text till right now as I was in the longest meeting ever.

Sister: (whispering) You don't have to whisper, you're not in the library.

Me: (still whispering for no apparent reason) Yeah, I just realized that.

Lazy Sunday

So I've been sitting here for awhile watching episodes of the show "True Life" on MTV. Yes, my life is that exciting. I love weekends. Don't worry, this isn't all I've done today--I also cleaned my house and went for a long run (outside!!! yay warm fronts!) as well as walked the dog. And then I sat on the couch and cuddled with the dog and a blanket. I love random marathons of documentary shows.

This show in particular made me think of an episode I saw not long ago called, "True Life: I can't stay thin."

Assuming I'm doing this correctly, you can watch it here:

True Life - MTV Shows

My heart hurts for those two people. Do you think someone who grew up thin and doesn't struggle with weight or body image truly understands that it's a very difficult thing? I often wonder. I hope people who haven't struggled with weight don't watch something like that and judge the two people featured. Sadly, I am sure that some do exactly that. I wish I knew a way to make people understand what it's like. The other day someone at work asked me what made me decide to lose so much weight and I didn't have a clue of what I should say--it's like they thought I decided to be overweight, and that is a stupid thing to believe. Anyway, this show really stuck with me and I thought I would share.

And that's about as interesting as I'm going to get today. At least I can add "wrote a blog post" to my list of things I accomplished." Now I'm going to learn about girls who are compulsive shoppers...

Things to work on:

1. Not letting other people's comments bother me so much.

2. Being even more awesome than I already am.

3. Writing down a list of soup ingredients when I make a batch so I can recreate the magic at a later date.

4. Figuring out the correct form for a squat and/or a lunge.

5. Not deciding that a good alternative to taking the dog for a walk is taking her for a car ride to the grocery store to buy ice cream. Actually, I take that back, that one was totally worth it (and kept the dog happy).

Treadmill woes.

The treadmill is boring. That's right, I said it. BORING!

Is it always boring? Today was the first time I'd ever run on a treadmill for more than the five minutes it took to test out some running shoes. I'm pretty sure I chose the wrong treadmill in the gym because I took one that faced a wall--and it was just a boring, white wall, not even an interesting wall. Anyway, I'm pretty sure staring at a wall made me motion sick so next time I'm going to choose one where I can stare out a window or at the television or something. I was listening to a podcast and thought that would keep me distracted enough but it did not. I ran for 30 minutes and then gave up and did the elliptical for awhile (that's probably good since I was trying to take it easy on the running this week... in fact, I totally cheated on my vow to "take it easy," now didn't I? My legs were itching to run! I can't help it!)

My lack of interesting things to look at led me to create a super fun treadmill game... I started out at a nice, normal speed. Soon, I got bored and decided to see what happened when I went to a higher speed. After awhile that got boring too so I slowed down. Then I wondered what would happen if I went to a MUCH higher speed--and so on and so forth. There was a lot of sprinting involved. Yeah, I'm bad at resting. But at least I amused myself!

The gym owner came over to chat as I finished up and commented that I work out hard. Ha. Is that a compliment? I wasn't sure.

I shall now continue to perpetuate the single girl stereotype by sitting on my couch in my pajamas and watching reruns of "What Not to Wear." My life is so difficult, I tell ya... ;-)

Food blogs

Blogs make it so easy to procrastinate. Seriously. If I find an interesting one I can sit there reading for awhile and lose all track of time—this is dangerous because a lot of times I’ll be taking a break from work and my “break” turns into an hour. Oops.

I found a new one recently that has me all kinds of entertained: Eat, Live, Run. Over time I’ve come to realize that I missed out on learning about things like healthy eating and proper nutrition, and this blog is really informative. Plus, the author inspired me to put peanut butter in my oatmeal, and is that ever a delicious idea!!! I've gotten a lot of really cool food ideas from her. And I recommend the peanut butter in the oatmeal thing to all of you.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading about food and nutrition lately. It’s amazing that I don’t already know what I should be eating. Another thing that’s been helping me are Jillian Michael’s podcasts of her weekly radio show. Shawna introduced me to them and I’ve been listening when I work out lately. Not only does she give her listeners information about exercise, but she also has a lot of good food tips. I’ve found some to be particularly helpful because I have a friend who is trying to deal with being pre-diabetic and has to eat high-protein breakfasts. Did anyone else not know that oatmeal has protein in it? I certainly never knew that. Also, I kind of love Jillian Michaels and think she has fabulous hair. I would like to be best friends with her and her hair dresser, please.

How do people grow up knowing these things about food? And a random sidenote: my parents made me a ton of homemade applesauce (apples and cinnamon, and that’s it) and it is seriously awesome. If you’ve never made your own applesauce, go try it. Right now. Also, tell me interesting things about food that you never knew before.

I feel so productive.

Not only did I join a gym today, but I actually went to the gym! Oh yeah. I am so punk rock.

Due to the fact that I live in the middle of nowhere I had a limited number of gyms to choose from. I chose the one that isn't a chain (I'm all about supporting local business)--turns out its kind of ghetto fabulous, which I'm also amused by. It has a lot of cardio equipment and a whole bunch of weights and whatnot, and it was moderately cheap, so it seemed fine. The owner wasn't busy while I was there so he offered to show me how the equipment works, which was nice of him cause big electronic things tend to frighten me.

I must admit that I really almost chickened out. There is absolutely no reason why I should be afraid of gyms, but I kind of am. I swear my gym class experiences in school have damaged me emotionally--and I'm only partly kidding. Anyway, it turns out that it wasn't as terrifying as I expected. Luckily I was talking on the phone to a friend when I pulled into the parking lot and she yelled at me and told me not to be afraid of the gym people (she has a gym membership already so I trusted her).

After signing up I came home and thought to myself, "Self, why don't you actually go use that membership?" Back to the gym I went. I only logged in a little time on the elliptical since I'm trying to take it easy for the rest of the week. For the most part, I was the only person there. Later a man came in and did some weight lifting and hardcore grunting. It was pretty uneventful.

There you have it. Don't be afraid of the gym. They aren't that scary. Am I the only person afraid of gyms?