Ow.

Oh yes I did.

I started the P90X plan this morning. Here it is only a short 3 hours later and I can barely lift my arms to the keyboard.

But if you've seen the infomercial, you know I'm going to be totally ripped by June 23.

OR maybe I won't even be able to roll out of bed tomorrow, and I'll just have to die there, too sore to get up.

I guess THEN The Brain will be sorry about laughing all the way through my initial fitness test, because I couldn't do even one HALF a pull-up. He laughed so much that I decided NOT to take any before pictures.

That way if I die, I can still remember myself happy.

Water Walking

So apparently I joined a new club yesterday.

I didn't know I was joining. Maybe they joined me. I don't know.

See, Kami and I have been working out at the rec center several days a week, since our Bally's membership ran out. We usually swim or lift weights or cycle, but last week, we noticed The Water Channel.
It's basically a big circle of water that has a current in it. So you can walk around and around and you have this water current that provides resistance and feels like you're walking upstream.
So we decided that if we did that, we could get the lower impact exercise without the stupid goggle marks that come with swimming, right?

Sure.

So early yesterday, we show up for our foray into water walking. We jumped in and started around the "track". And just to give you an idea? It takes 56 times around the track to go 1 mile.
And it's harder than it looks. There were some underwater jets that I'm pretty sure someone had turned the setting from "running brook" to "tidal wave", and every time we walked past there we had to hold the wall to stay upright. We were just getting the hang of it when the clock struck 7am, and we were quickly joined by a large number of people. OLD people.

"Hi! You're new here! - My name's Barb. what's your name?"

You're kidding me, right? They wanted to make conversation. We were sort of struggling our way upstream, just concentrating on keeping our legs under our bodies, rather than being pushed up behind us, but they wanted to chat. They were chatting with us, chatting with each other, even setting up little get-togethers for after the work-out.

It was a little surreal.

Then as sort of a final jolt into the I Am Never Doing This Again reality... they started lapping us.

Did I mention that Kami and I are both marathon runners? I mean, we're not in marathon shape or anything, but still. It's the principle of it. We were being lapped by 80 year old men.

I'm sure it's really great exercise, but I'm not sure I'll go again. I don't know if I can take the humiliation.

This is NOT a Weight Loss Blog

Seriously. And I'm going to get off that topic now.

Well, maybe just one thing. Don't tell anyone, but I hopped on the scale at the gym this morning. I promised myself I wouldn't weigh again until Monday. But the scale was there, and I was there, and well, you do the math.
No! I'll do the math and tell you that I'm down 3 pounds. Thank-you twice a day workouts.
Shhh-- don't tell.

Now I'm going to be really mad on Monday if it's the same, aren't I?

Oh well, I'll let you know. Right here on my Not A Weight Loss Blog.


Also, this is NOT A Political Blog.




But I did attend a Team Mitt meeting last night and it was pretty exciting. I really think he's the guy to set the economy straight. And I'm more than a little worried about the economy. And securing the border. That's all I'm saying.

Informal poll - who are you thinking about voting for and what is your biggest issue?
We can do this without being nasty and name calling, right?

That Wasn't Me

Let's just picture for a moment, exactly what you would not want to look like if you were to run into an old friend from high school at your local gym. You know, someone you liked and haven't seen for awhile.

First, you would not want to be in 2 day old gym clothes that don't quite fit, you know, because you gained 22 pounds last year.

You would also not want your hair to be pulled tightly into a ponytail because your crazy curly-wannabe hair would then stick out eleventy-million different ways from the ponytail, thus making you look like you were wearing a bouquet of straw on the back of your head.

You would not want to be sweating and red-faced because you just rode the stationary bike for 45 minutes, and you now are trying to figure out the funky outer-thigh machine. Which, as you know, is a really graceful exercise to do if you know what you're doing, let alone if you don't.

No make-up, of course, - unless you count the mascara traces under your eyes.

And then, let's just say that you wouldn't want to recognize that person before they saw or recognized you, causing you to quickly get off said weight machine, getting your foot caught in the process and sort of falling across the machine with a loud bang - thus calling more attention to yourself.

Yeah, I think that about sums it up.

House of Crabby

Yesterday marked the first day of the Discovery Health Body Challenge. (It's not too late to join, by the way.) So I went over to Bally's and spent some time on the cardio machines, and the weight machines. Then I made the huge mistake of getting on the scale in the locker room. It was worse than I thought.
I calculated that in the last year, I have gained approximately 22 pounds. Which is NOT, you know, ok with me.

So all these thoughts that have been rolling around in my head for the past few months, about "really should be" eating better, and "really should be" exercising more? They suddenly jelled into a rock-solid thought in my head, and frankly, it gave me a huge headache. (literally!)

I came home determined to do something about this situation immediately. Today. And Yesterday if possible. (Which, of course it isn't, but I did play the "if only" game with myself for about an hour before I finally snapped out of it.)

In the last 24 hours since The Big Realization, I've have some smaller realizations: (in no particular order)

• Unfortunately, my new awareness is going to put kind of a cramp in the past year's eating style.

• Also my sleeping-in style and my procrastinating dinner planning-oh well we'll just have noodles again style.

• I thought it was also going to cramp my drinking lots of Diet Coke style until about 3 pm yesterday, when I decided that if I quit the Diet Coke thing at the same time as the eating thing, the sleeping in thing, the new exercise thing, I may not have enough energy to get off the couch-thing, let alone get on the treadmill in the evening. Also I might decide I had nothing to live for. Also my family may very well kick me right out the door because of my current state of ultimate crankiness. And really none of us deserves that.

• This will likely also put a cramp in my blogging style. First, because I will no longer be spending hours on the computer, surfing, commenting, and "writing" (for lack of a better term).

• Secondly, at least for the first little while, this detox from extra food and extra sugar, is making me very dramatic. And crabby. I'll try not to let it spill over here too much, but you've got to expect some overlap - after all, this is pretty much what is playing on a constant loop in my brain.
  

• And Third - more grammatical errors. I've rigged up a laptop station over my treadmill, and it's more difficult than you might think to walk fast and type at the same time.

But all in all, it's going to be better. I remember very clearly how great it felt a year ago to be pretty fit, and I'm anxious to get back there.

I AM going to make it happen. I just hope we all survive the journey.