The Anti-Fit

As we all know, and my sources can verify, the average person gains between 5 and 10lbs during the holiday season. I know the stuffing balls, turkey slices, honeybaked ham, pumpkin pies, cornish game hens lathered in butter, yeast rolls, cheese plates, and desserts, desserts, desserts coupled with the feeling of abandon that usually accompany this time of year can pile on the pounds. Not so for me. At this time of year the biggest problem I have comes not from overeating, but usually from drinking too much.

I've tried to identify a few key reasons this may be the case. Here we go:

1. I'm Irish. Duh! I know that's not a true excuse, but I have to say that until you've been to Ireland and seen how much of the cultre is centered around the pub and drinking, you don't really know how second nature it is to us all. I have may thoughts on why this is so (a depressed nation, downtrodden for decades, a penchant for keeping emotions in tight check, a young population with historically few opportunities etc. etc) which I will espouse upon at some other time, but honestly, it really is a cultural thing. I grew up drinking. To quote Oscar Wilde: "Work is the curse of the drinking class". So true, so true.

2. San Francisco is a drinking city. It's true. It just is. And why not? We have awesome bars, great restaurants, and again a young population. A young population with disposable income.

3. Working at my company is like working at MTV Spring Break  sometimes. Seriously. Now, you kids with your Silicon Valley foosball tables and photo booths and skateboard ramps. You think you know something about partying? My company, which is NOT in  the tech industry, (I'm going to give you a hint, but if we were playing "Taboo" right now I'd totally be out. I bring this up because last time we played Taboo, the H/BF's cousin, who is a college professor and scary smart got frustrated when his wife couldn't get the answer with the clues "Actor" and "Bald", so he resorted to "Spruce Bilious", which is now all I will ever be able to think of Bruce Willis as. But I digress. Anyway, Hint: sounds like "endurance" and the industry is universally hated.) could really show you all some things. This past Friday was our Annual Employee Christmas Holiday party. I kid you not when I say there are numerous locations in the city we're no longer allowed at. But that's sort of what happens when you kick off your Holiday party at 9:30am with mimosas and shots of tequila. By the time the buses had all arrived at the venue with our 400+ employees, quite a few people were well on their way to being full of good cheer and a level of friendliness that would be considered inappropriate at some orgies. Then the booze flowed freely until 5:00pm, where we moved on to the all expenses paid "After-Party", because apparently we're shooting for the one day where we'll reach a "FlashForward" level of blackout and the entire company will lose the exact same amount of time and see the future or something. And this year was tame. Really. This is a company who, in a belt-tightening move installed a fully stocked bar in every office to cut down on our Happy Hour costs.

So, anyway!  at our Holiday party I was speaking to our "Wellness Coordinator" (of course we have a wellness guy whose entire job is to effectively try to counteract the rest of the culture a little bit. That's just smart planning right there) about how working out is such a departure for me and one of the things I'm really enjoying is the feeling that even if I do everything else wrong on a particular day, if I've worked out, I've taken the time to do something good for myself. And it's true. Even with this season of overindulgence, the days I make it to a workout are better than the days I don't.

Plus, there's always January, right?!

I'm back baby! I'm back!!!

OK, so I must say that even though the two week hiatus killed me, I have noticed two benefits to not starting completely from scratch with the working out thing:
1. My pain level has never ratcheted back up to the levels that I had when I began. Now, let me reiterate, when I began I frequently looked like this in-between and during workouts (only, you know, without the jaunty scarf/camo bandage, because that would have required me moving my arms) :

2. It actually seems like maybe it's not taking me as long to get back into the swing of things. I can already see improvements when getting back to some of the moves that are painful/impossible (i.e) burpees, pushups, jogging, squat thrusts, kettle bell lifts and on and on ad nauseum.

Truly though, the biggest boon of working out and the thing that drags me out of bed on rainy and cold  mornings  is the feeling of virtuosity. Don't underestimate it. Everyone loves feeling self-righteous and like a badass, right? No? Just me? Just me then. But seriously, the feeling of being somebody who "works out" (even a measly three times a week) is something I'm very enthralled with. It's the possibility that I can be a better me. That maybe, buried under the layers of stuffing balls and cheese and Milk Duds, my body and my strength can surprise me. Can be shaped into something I'm proud of, something strong and lean and muscular. Something I may still need to do the post-wash jeans dance for, but something that's nonetheless strong and healthy.

I've spent a ton of my life worrying about "weight". I know, I know; alert the media

Breaking news.....

but honestly, as I've gotten older, I've just grown weary of beating up on myself. Life is hard enough, you know? We're all doing the best we can with what we can. Sometimes the best you can do is a Filet-O-Fish. And I'm not going to launch into a diatribe about how we're bombarded with unrealistic images of what a female body should look like (but even Tom Ford, (btw, ahhh, so beautiful Tom Ford. DO WANT!), in this great NPR interview http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121405891 talks about how we're all evolving to look like post-human people, basically because we can now with surgery and eventually we'll all be like beautiful cars, but who wants to be with a beautiful car?) because really, at the end of the day we should all just be kinder to ourselves. Whether that means mac and cheese to you, or whether it means "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels" (which, HELLO? Crock of shit. Um, steak, veggies, fish, chicken, dessert! It's all amazing!), we all encounter enough hardness in the everyday world what with routines and relationships and jobs and kids and pets and bosses and Big Brother coming back three times a week and whew! If you can't show yourself a little love in there it's not much of a life.

I myself used to come down firmly on the mac and cheese side of life, but I've discovered that balancing it with a little genuine feel-goodedness about lifting and pushing and sweating and kicking makes it all even better, which is a shock. (My initial thought was makes it all even "cheesier", which is apropos given my ham-handed imagery (see what I did there?!?! Thanks! I'm here all week! Don't forget to tip your server) and overuse of thoughts within thoughts, but you know what? It's my blog. I can ramble away!)

Anyway, in desperately searching for an ending here before I derail myself even further, working out = guilt-free McDonalds Filet-O-Fish and feeling of awesomeness (different from the McFeeling the FoF will produce)
And also, working out + genetics =

Able to eat Filet-O-Fish nonstop

Oh, it's all so much....*exhausted sigh*.....(Now with more CAPS LOCK!).......

Wow! So this is daunting. Picking up in December when my last blog post was in October. So, um, what have I been up to? Here's a brief synopsis:
Being crazed at work, traveling for work, traveling for Thanksgiving, stuffing myself full of food and wine and good cheer and tidings of expanded waistlines and not exactly comfort or joy.

November was a terrible month for working out due to my travel schedule which had me out of town for two weeks in a row. Again, yes of course you can work out if you're not in town, but my ALL-OR-NOTHING mentality doesn't process that too well. That's been a challenge for me with everything in my life, so not sure why it would be different with working out, but let me tell you that first day back after a two week hiatus nearly killed me. I can honestly say it was the closest I've ever come to throwing up in class, and everything seemed EXTRA HARD, when in reality it was just the fact that building up a fitness level is so easily undone. Even my (pathetic) sit-ups were impossible; mere weeks before they'd seemed like a nice chance to have a seat during a grueling workout.

So now, on top of battling my holiday-infused waistline, I'm also battling to get back to the very mediocre level of fitness I was at pre-two week layoff. Such is the cruelty of working out. For every step forward, every day you sit on your butt and don't try to improve upon it is a swift slide backwards. I could make some lame analogy about how everything in life is like that and it's a great lesson to learn in relation to your physicality, and as Jane Fonda used to say......blah, blah, blah, but in reality it's all very demoralizing. It does not at all feed into our FASTERFASTERNOWNOW mentality. I mean, everything in life is unbelievably easy with all the technology we have nowadays. Think about it - you can be on your iPhone trading stocks while blogging and getting a recipe for a simple paella and then hear a song you don't know but are intrigued by. In the olden days, we luddites would have to debase ourselves by walking up to friends and strangers alike and attempting to hum the tune to a song we didn't know. Then began the endless guessing game and the never-ending frustration. We must have looked a little homeless and crazy, wandering around, hugging ourselves and humming the same 15 seconds of the hook we remembered while saying "I think it was something something dogbone. No? You don't know it?" Now, you kids don't know what off-key humming even sounds like anymore. You just hold up your iPhone and SHAZAM!, your phone tells you everything you ever wanted to know about the song, and by the way, I've just downloaded it for you too. No, no, you're welcome! Don't even mention it.

Hence the jarring shift that comes from working out after decades and decades of doing nothing. NO instant results. As a matter of fact, it's essentially been the opposite. I've actually gained weight since I started working out. And don't tell me about how muscle weighs more than fat. Yeah, got it. I'm pretty sure my muscle won't squeeze over the top of my jeans like this. And in reality, I'm not one of those girls who ties everything to a number on a scale, but when clothes fit in different ways than they did before (both on the good and bad end of that spectrum), I tend to notice. So tell me then how this math works:
No exercise  + eating pretty much whatever = Less than ideal
Some exercise  + eating pretty much whatever three months later = Less than ideal plus some

See? NO FAIR! Everything else is so easy I want three workouts a week to be enough to get me fit and healthy, and I've just got to face it that for me (and most people actually), it won't be. I need to step it up and make it to every bootcamp and then supplement with some additional exercise. I need to not see working out three days a week as a license to eat everything I feel like. I need to remember how hard it was for me to go back after those two weeks and essentially feel like I was starting all over again.

On the other hand I also need to remember how my arms feel sleeker and more defined, how my push-ups are getting better, how I feel really accomplished when I complete a class and I'm covered in sweat, how we laugh as we stretch out to "The King of Pain" or how maybe, just maybe, it actually means something to put a little effort into taking care of myself and it may be better when I get there and know that I earned it. You know, the victory of finally learning what that song you were humming is seemed a little sweeter when you had to do more than push a button and get all the answers. I think Jane Fonda said that.