welcome to another edition of...

Do You Like How You Look?!?

[studio audience cheers]

Oh, god, not this shit again.  I was saying to my (virtual) weightlifting buddies the other day that I thought I'd lost some of the weight I'd put on over the summer just from being back to working out five or six days a week while tracking my food loosely on work days and mostly not tracking on weekends. And that if I lost a few more pounds that way, I wouldn't be complaining, but if I stayed where I am right now, I wouldn't be complaining either.  I really have no desire to be lean now and I certainly have no desire to go on a real diet.

And then I a.) actually weighed myself today and b.) tried to put on a pair of jeans I'd forgotten I had that I'd bought last spring when I made it down to 111 for that stoopid contest.  Oh hahahaha.  Ha.  It must be be self-delusion or something that I'd lost a few pounds because, no.

That made me feel temporarily all angsty, like maybe I should suck it up and commence weighing every morsel of food that goes in my mouth and start turning down free cookies.**  Luckily I came to my senses, which is why I'm semi-lying in my bed*** drinking a pumpkin beer**** while I type this.

Like that.

BUT I did make sure to be extra active today (yesterday, whatever). It was such a beautiful morning when I left work at 4:45 am that instead of heading to the gym, I took a four mile walk. Then later after I slept a (very) few hours, I did an errand, went to acupuncture, walked from there to the gym to lift, then walked back past a couple subway stops before getting on the train.  All that is to say that I had a total of 23540 steps on October 14. Which is 8.99 miles, apparently.  (What? I couldn't have walked another .01 mile? Goddamn.)  How do I know this? My new phablet told me. It's got some kind of free app that comes with it that counts my steps for me as long as the phone's, y'know, in my hand or in my pocket or in my bag.  I'm toying with getting a Fitbit since so many people I know have them now, but I'm not sure what it's gonna tell me that my phone doesn't. When I don't leave it sitting on a table, that is.

Anyway. I bet if I walked 9 miles everyday I'd fit into those jeans again. Without giving up beer. Though I'm not sure I wanna be 111 pounds.  All angsting aside, I'm pretty sure my middle aged face looks better with the extra poundage.  I dunno.  I wish I didn't care what my face or body looked like, considering it's all a downhill slide till death at this point, but vain people gon' vain.

Speaking of which, I was at the hairdresser last week, vainly getting my roots touched up, and another hairdresser and her 20-something client started discussing how women need to cut their hair short when they reach like 40. I felt like saying, "Oi! I'm sitting right here, bitches."  Instead I mildly said to my stylist, "I highly disagree with that."  She took my part. Which I'm sure is just good business practice, but whatever.  I was almost as offended at the conversation as I was at not being invited to go zip lining. Apparently I'm in some kind of easily-offended stage. Ahem. But maybe the hairdresser chick and her client *didn't think I was over 40* so that didn't know they were insulting me. Yeah. I'm sure that was it. (Oh, I kill myself.)

Finally, speaking of vanity and my new phone, I signed myself up for Instagram. But I haven't figured out how to use it.  I haven't actually figured out how to use the camera on my new phone yet either.  Shut up. I haven't really tried.  In any case, I am malevolent_andrea, just like on here. So if you use Instagram, follow me. Or what-the-fuck-ever it is, I don't know the lingo. (And get off my lawn.) Someday soon there will be pictures of my food and drinks and cat and hikes and the new clothes I buy and maybe douchey gym selfies.

You know you wanna see.

xoxo

**Both the night nurses on my unit and the people in the sleep lab next door always have food. Like, always.  Last week I was eating ice cream cake at 2 am because it was someone's birthday.  Monday I had a giant chocolate-dipped shortbread cookie left over from a sleep conference.  [A 390 calorie muthafucking cookie. I looked it up.]

***I'm not working tonight because I swapped a shift with a co-worker who wanted to be able to go see her kid's cheerleading comp on Saturday. See, I'm not totally heartless.

****I had a case of Wachusett Pumpcan last year, but this shiz is even better.  Dogfish Head, you are the best.

sad cat denouement and my new gym

Sad news first.

Remember me talking about my cat Eddie's awesome dieting success? Well. He kept losing weight despite my going back to feeding him all the treatz, then he stopped eating much of anything though still being sweet and cuddly as all get out (fooling me into thinking he was just fine), and then last weekend he started getting mopey, so I called the vet.  On first examination, it appeared he had some kind of liver problem--his gums were yellow (!) indicating jaundice.  Blood work, however, revealed his real problem was a severe anemia and the jaundice was due to his RBCs breaking down.  The working hypothesis was that he had a parasitic infection causing the anemia. This freaked me out because a.) it's basically what killed my old cat in 2010 (Evil Kitty, RIP) though hers was complicated by a preexisting heart condition and b.) Eddie's never gone outside a day in his life.

The vet talked me down off the ledge that there is NOT some kind of colony of killer ticks living in my basement, waiting to kill any animal I bring into this house, and that viruses are not gonna live free range on my surfaces for the two years in between cats. Etc. But they told me even if we started treating Eddie, he was very sick and had between a 30-50% chance of making it.  I chose to treat. I wasn't going to euthanize poor Eddie if he had a 50% chance of being fine. So they took him back to the vet hospital for IV fluids, IV antibiotics, steroids, and "hand feeding."  I think hand feeding is a code word for squirting food into his mouth with a syringe whether he liked it or not, but whatev.

This was on Wednesday. By Saturday morning, while he was peeing and pooping and keeping down what they fed him, he wasn't eating on his own and he was still very weak. They called for my permission to do more lab work.  Lab results were back this morning and his RBCs had fallen even lower and now his WBCs were affected as well. He wasn't responding to the antibiotics.  They gently suggested that it would be in Eddie's best interests to cease treatment.  They brought him back to my house so D and I could say goodbye and then put him to sleep.

I am very very sad. And no longer pimping out his miracle weight loss plan. Because the working hypothesis now is that it was due to blood cancer.  Or a parasite.  Lab test for that's still pending.

RIP, Eddie. You were an awesome cat and I'm glad we at least got to have you live with us for 2 1/2 years.


Now on to more blog-appropriate and more cheerful topics.

My new gym and my adventures there at 5 am!  I dunno if I mentioned it, but there are a metric fuckload of people working out at that ungodly hour. Which isn't ungodly for me, because that's like 6 pm in my world. But I think the majority of these people are just up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, at 4 am, for which I should probably hate them.  Most of them are pretty polite, however. They put their plates away. They ask if you're using something before they barge in.  They even put the dumbbells back in numerical order.  The one huge lapse in manners I have observed occurred a couple Fridays ago.  My iPod was't charged and I wasn't wearing anything with pockets big enough to stick my humongous new phone (i.e. my "phablet") into, so I was without music.  I was thus treated to hearing two middle aged dudes discuss how women and teenagers shouldn't be lifting heavy weights because they're not, y'know, men.  But that's not the rude part. The rude part was when another gym buddy of theirs showed up and started inviting them and everyone else in the immediate area to go ziplining in western Mass this weekend. Except me.  I mean, I know I am the new kid on the block and not part of whatever 5 am clique they've got going on there, but this dude even went over to invite some woman on the elliptical that I've never seen him talk to before.  I felt like the only kid in second grade not to get a valentine. Or something.  I mean, don't *I* look like the kind of person who wants to go ziplining with a bunch of strangers??!???!??***  Hmmpphhh.

Other than this little episode, and the fact that this new gym only has squat racks with immovable safeties, not true power racks, plus no steps and risers, just fixed boxes, I have no complaints. I did originally think that they didn't have disinfectant for the benches/machines which kinda grossed me out. But then I figured out the little pop up boxes of what I thought were tissues scattered throughout the gym were in fact wet wipes. Duh. No wonder no one asks me to go ziplining.

xoxo

***I absolutely do not

truth in advertising, part whatever

The esteemed Ms. Crabby said in comments that she wouldn't actually mind seeing some of my flexing pictures, and it got me to thinking why I really haven't been posting "progress" pics on the blog anymore. Oh, I showed you my abzzzz when they started peeking out again in December, but other than that, recent pictures have been scant.

There's a bunch of reasons for that.  One of them is that I've been toying with whether I should associate this blog with my real name. (Contrary to what you might think, "malevolent" is not found on any of my legal documentation, no matter how badass a passport that would in fact be.) It's been a good ten years since I've done anything serious with my writing, i.e. anything that would generate income from it or expose it to a wider audience, and I'm at a point where I think maybe it's time to change that back.  The few people who do read my crap these days often tell me they enjoy it, tell me I'm talented, blah blah, and when I see the number of non-entertaining talent-lacking people who have actual readerships, I sometimes think, damn, girl, you ought to get serious about this writing shit again. And I'm not sure that getting serious includes linking your name and your writing to pictures of yourself in your underwear. I could be wrong though. Anyone who wants to link to Pulitzer prize winners in their bikinis, please feel free.

Another reason is that I'm not sure self-indulgent pictures of me are really what you guise reading this come here for.  I don't delude myself that anyone visiting this blog does so because they're inspired by my awesome fitness example or because I have anything to teach anyone. I'm pretty sure anyone reading this is here because we share a general interest in the topic of fitness and I manage to write about it in a way that amuses you. Or because you googled "serena williams boobs." Tomato, tomahto. I don't judge. But I'm not sure bathroom selfies of me in a sports bra satisfy either of those needs.

A third reason pictures on here are more scant than they used to be is that I take a lot fewer. As I'm pretty sure I've posted before, prior to being forced to take from-every-angle scantily-dressed pics for that transformation contest, I'd pretty much sworn off that activity because in general, it just makes me feel bad. Progress pictures often feel like non-progress pictures, especially when using the camera self-timer, and taking twenty shots in order to get three or four half-decent ones is just exhausting and demoralizing. So much about whether you look good, mediocre, or horrid in a picture is about lighting and angles that it's hard to determine what's even objectively true.  All my favorite muscle definition pictures have been taken in my bathroom mirror. Something about the lighting in that room either captures how jacked I am or makes me look more jacked than I am.  WHO CAN SAY?

Which leads to reason 3b, as it were.  Even pictures in which I think I look good, I am so super well aware that I only look good "for my age."  I'm an average middle aged woman who's just a little more in shape than most middle aged women.  If you wanna look at people for their aesthetic value, there are plenty of DLBs, Klokovs, or 20 year old college students on the interwebs. Plus Serena Williams' boobs, of course. You certainly don't need me and I'm not quite self-absorbed or delusional enough to think you do.

But, since I was asked, and since now it feels like it would be lying to perhaps let you all imagine me in your heads as far more ripped and lean and muscular and whatever than I really am, here's some show n tell.

My all-time favorite bathroom mirror selfie. Vascular like a motherfucker, I am.

During the recent Neverending Diet of Sadness.

Faux tanned, oiled up, 111 lbs, and still the Bulgy Polish Catcher's Thighs are with us always.

But Eddies a handsome devil, isn't he?

xoxo

cold fat and klokov

Oh, hi guys. I'm on the home stretch of my miserable diet body transformation, and while I'm not quite as lean as I was immediately pre-surgery in 2012 (damn surgical menopause), I now weigh the same and I *am* lean enough to be noticing some alarming interesting things going on in my body.

You can see where my ribs connect to my sternum in-between my boobs.  I freaked out when I noticed this and pulled out my anatomy references to see if there was, like, some part of my pec I was supposed to be developing there to cover that shiz up. But no. It's all fascia there with fat over it and when the fat is gone: chicken bones between your breasts! Woohoo!  Apparently the pro-ana girls call the ability to see your entire sternum and the ribs connected there to your "xylophone" and covet it as greatly as they covet the fabled thigh gap, but it really is not attractive.  I think the only way to be very lean and not have that is to have gigantic fake tatas that are positioned really unnaturally close together. And that has, y'know, it's own aesthetic problems. Chicken bone chest it is! At least until I gain some fat back.

Meanwhile the only place left on my body that does still have a significant amount of fat on it is the back/side of my thighs. Bulgy Polish Catcher's Thighs for the muthafuckin win!  Those saddlebags will see me through a war, a famine, or possibly the zombie apocalypse.  But they are getting smaller. Last night after I finished working out it was 9:30 and I was blissfully alone in the women's locker room, all the cardio bunnies and pool ladies having sensibly already gone home. As is my wont, I thus took the opportunity to wander around in my undies, closely examining my fat, muscles, and veins in the mirrors.  Like a douche.  I was interested to note that my thigh fat was bright red (in contrast to the locker room pallor of the rest of me***) and when I touched it, it was ice cold.  This pinged something in my brain. I thought I remembered reading something ages ago about how if your fat is cold after exercising, that means it's being metabolized.  I was all excited to go on my weightlifting message boards this morning and ask my smart friends about it.

Well.  One of my smart friends who vaguely remembered that cold fat meant *something* went and did the web search for me.  And I am saddened to report that what it means is the exact opposite.  Cold fat in a woman's hips and thighs means it's stubborn fat, fat that's very difficult to get rid of, and part of the reason it's difficult to get rid of is that there's very little blood supply to it, so it's difficult to mobilize those fat cells outta there and into the bloodstream.  The little blood supply is why it's cold. Duh. The answer to this is apparently fasted cardio.  Or not.  This battle of the metabolic nutritionists makes little difference to me as fasted cardio ain't ever gonna happen.  I already get up at 4:30 am on work days and I sure as hell don't care enough about getting rid of my saddlebags to get up any earlier. Besides, the zombie apocalypse is probably closer than you think.

Meanwhile, while I was getting my friends to use google for me, another friend's journal contained this Klokov video:

If you don't know who Dmitry Klokov is, what's wrong with you?  Um, I mean, if you don't know who Dmitry Klokov is, he's a Russian weightlifter and one of the strongest, most flexible, and coolest humans on the planet.  He's also not *too* hard to look at.  The things I could do to those thighs...

I complained to my friend that FINE, now I was obviously going to waste my whole day off youtubing more Klokov video. To which she replied, that's not a waste. Another friend popped in to say that she follows his instagram and that's a sweet sweet rabbit hole you probably want to fall down...

So, in recompense for your having to read about the weird shit my body's doing, here's some more Klokov for you.  Enjoy!

It's amazing. Who foresaw that skinny kid would become KLOKOV?  Obviously someone did.

xoxo

***Still no tan. Working on it.

i wanna do a very bad thing

To set this up, a few facts about Andrea which you may or may not already know.

1.) I hate winter. I hate winter with every fiber of my being.  I see no upside in white shit falling out of the sky, being cold, wearing 18 bulky layers of clothing and still being cold, falling on the ice, paying obscene heating bills and still being cold, having to get up five minutes earlier in the morning to have time to put on those 18 layers of clothing and still get out of the house on schedule, climbing over dirty frozen piles of no-longer white shit, having dry skin, dry hair, and dry mucus membranes, becoming a semi-hermit because leaving the house when you don't have to seems like too much trouble, and etc.  Winter sucks, okay?

2.) I am, like, the whitest white girl ever, and I am not just talking about my atrocious lack of dance skillz.  I am pale. By March, I am almost literally translucent.  Like," let's teach the circulatory system by looking at this woman's unclothed body" level.

3.) As evidenced in my last post, I want to take pictures of myself in which I look all lean, muscular, and ripped.  Ghostly pallor doesn't aid in this endeavor.

4.) I cannot afford to go to Hawaii, Cancun, or even Florida. At this point, I could probably afford to go to Rhode Island, but it's not really any warmer or sunnier there.

All these facts combined at the end of last week to lead me to a very shameful activity.  I was looking on groupon for bargain tanning.  Blush.

No, seriously, I have NEVER been tanning, not even in the '90s when all my co-workers went.  At most, I use a little self-tanner on my legs during the summer so they are only two shades lighter (and more orange) than my arms and shoulders, not five.  But tanning beds seem like just asking for cancer and a Bad Idea. Especially since one of those always tanning in the '90s (and at-the-beach-all-summer Gloucester townie) co-workers already had to have a shitload of suspicious growths removed before she turned 35.

Well, some of those groupons for tanning cover spray tans as well.

That's scary in its own right, nomsayin'?

So I'm kinda back to the idea of risking skin cancer--one time in a tanning bed won't kill me, right? RIGHT? plus the propaganda on the tanning salon websites all tell me how non-dangerous it is--or a little self-tanner at home. Which is all well and fine (and a little orange and possibly streaky) on my legs, but I cannot do my own back. At all. Anyone wanna volunteer to rub lotion on my back and save me from melanoma?

Yeah, I thought not.

xoxo

i can't get no...

Wanna hear something hilarious (or sad, or possibly both--I dunno, my hilarious-meter is probably broken)? I wrote my blog title and then I thought, well, of course we need to stick a picture of Jagger on top, so off to google image search I went. Typed in "Mick Jagger abs", perused the results--most of which had nothing to do with Mack Jagger's abs (you're slipping, google image search!), clicked on the best one...and it was from this blog.  Oh goodness. I know exactly which post I used it in too. I decided y'all deserved more than recycled content, so I picked the second best result above. You're welcome. Or, I'm sorry. Whatever.

Onto actual content. Here we go. Satisfaction! And lack thereof.

I told you guys I'm doing that body transformation contest, just as a way to get back on track with my fitness. In a lot of ways it's been working.  I've lifted at least 4x a week every week of the contest except one (where I missed *one* workout due to the gym being closed two days for renovations coupled with a snowstorm later in the week.)  I've been faithfully taking my lunch and snacks to work with me so I don't just buy and eat crap.  I've been getting in 3-4 servings of veggies and fruits every single day.  I've even been back to yoga a few times, though I really would like to improve on that still. I wanted to go at least once a week and that hasn't happened. But, still, on the whole I've been happy with my return to better health and fitness habits.

You know what I haven't been happy about? My results. Despite assiduously eating in a deficit, my weight hasn't budged much. It just bounces all over the place and I never know what the Random Number Generating Machine is gonna say on the days I decide to step on it.  My ability to retain water like a camel, the fact that my bathroom habits are not what one would call regular despite all the quest bars I eat, and my on and off use of creatine all conspire to make it that I never know exactly what I actually weigh, but the number hasn't been encouraging of late. Fine. So I stopped weighing myself. I took solace in that fact that my bicep vein was back, my upper pecs were getting prominent in the gym mirror again, and the fit of certain clothes as markers that I am losing fat. If I'm gonna exist on these poverty calories and pretty much give up beer for 12 weeks, I better be losing fat, okay?

Then I decided to take some midway-through-the-contest pictures, in the same bathing suit I took my horrible, bloated "before" pics in.

Let's just say I was not impressed.

Pretty sure that was exactly my expression.

Damn, I thought, I looked so much better last spring and early summer at more or less this same weight. Leaner, more muscular, tighter, more vascular. Just better. I walked around in that very same bathing suit all June and July at the outdoor pool at the Fancy-Pants Y, totally un-self-conscious, and indeed, pleased when I caught a glimpse in the locker room mirror.

Then I re-thought.  Yes, I undoubtedly gained fat and lost muscle in the 6 months that I was working two jobs and was not eating, exercising, or resting properly.  That is true.  But did I truly look THAT much better last year when I was feeling all smug and happy about my physique?  Or is it that I looked a tiny bit better but was also not swanning around taking underwear/bathing suit selfies and examining them for flaws?

Also pretty sure I know the answer to that, kids.

I had put a moratorium on "progress pics" until this contest made me take them.  I'm committed to final pictures but then the moratorium is back on.  Yeah, I'll still snap a gym or bathroom selfie when a rogue muscle or vein makes an unexpected appearance and I'm like, WHOA. But I'm not gonna set up the camera self timer and examine my flaws from every angle. No good comes from that, at least for me.

xoxo

suck it, Trebek

I know, bad blogger, bad bad blogger.  (Please do not hit me with a rolled up newspaper.)  While I was neglecting my blog, however, I did do a guest post over at Cranky Fitness.  You can go read it if you missed it or, y'know, just go read Ms Crabby's blog in general because she is awesome.

Today, however, we are going to have blog potpourri.  Hence the title.  My titles always make sense. Eventually. If you're me.

Fun fact: about ten years ago when they had auditions in Boston for (the real) Jeopardy, I passed the written test to be on it, but apparently failed the actual audition/simulated game part because I kept buzzing in too soon.   Despite my later being regularly schooled in bar trivia league, I remain convinced that had they let me on there, I'd have won hundreds of thousands of dollars. That was before perimenopause/old age destroyed my memory. God.

Three paragraphs and a video in and we haven't actually even started the real post yet, boys and girls. This might actually be a new record.  Or low.  Depending on how you look at it. Perspective is everything.

Ok!  Random fitness-related crap!  Starting...now.

1.) I entered a $100,000 body transformation contest.  Poof!  Now I'm a bat!  No, no, no, we aren't attempting to transform into small flying mammals or anything actually interesting. We're attempting to transform our bodies into something more aesthetically pleasing to the judges so that we can then later be used in supplement company advertising.  Now I know I have no chance of winning. First of all, it's a 12 week contest, so by my reckoning the winners are going to be people who have approximately 20-25 pounds to lose, which is the most weight you can reasonably expect to lose in 12 weeks unless you're really overweight. I mean, if you're 80 lbs overweight and you lose 50 lbs, that's impressive, but you're still 30 lbs overweight (and thus not supplement company marketable) at the end.  If, like me, you can reasonably only lose 5 or 6 lbs, well, that's not going to make a very dramatic transformation (and isn't marketable.)  Plus, I'm 51 years old. I doubt I am the demographic the company is trying to reach. So very not-marketable.

Nevertheless I entered in an attempt to get my fitness routine back on track.  So far, so good.  Last week during week one, I lifted 4 days and went to yoga once, took healthy food to work with me every day I worked so that I would not go to Au Bon Pain and eat mac n' cheese and brownies instead, had 3-4 servings of veggies and fruit a day, and flushed out a lot of bloat on what I lovingly (ok, not so much) call poverty calories.  The summer of 2012 when I was preparing for my upcoming surgery I was lifting heavy, doing my conditioning, and going to yoga regularly.  I was lean, I was muscular, and I was all-around really fit, because I wanted to go into the first (and hopefully only) major surgery of my life as strong and healthy as I could possibly be.  I want to get back there.  I'm motivated.

2.) Do you tell people at the gym that they're badass?  Every once in awhile, I see someone doing something really impressive and I want to tell them how impressed I am, but I am usually too shy.  Even though I KNOW I myself am ecstatic when I get a gym compliment.  I know, I know, it makes no sense.  Today's example was one of the gym regulars, a dude who has lost a good deal of weight (probably over 100 lbs) in the three years I've seen him around, who was doing waiters carries with the 35lb kettlebells. Since I do those exact same waiters carries, only with 20 lb kettlebells, I was like, holy crap.  Bittybro, I said to myself, someday *you* will walk the entire perimeter of this gym with 70 lbs over your head. Then I laughed and laughed. But seriously, I wanted to tell this guy how badass those carries were, but I didn't. How to overcome this reserve, readers?

3.) In a fit of insanity, I bought these.  They're pretty much a $50 version of my $10 grippy yoga socks, sigh, but since they're officially shoes, I thought I might be able to get away with wearing them in the gym.  I am so sick of being scolded by the Shoe Nazi lady and her minions, I have yet to dare try them however.

4.) Speaking of things at my gym I don't approve of, they shoehorned this giant TRX apparatus into the stretching area which involved moving other equipment around in that already over-crowded gym.  I was facetiously told the other day that the reason I am such a klutz and always have bruises all over me is that I only train for strength, not agility, but I swear to god, if you saw the amount of bobbing and weaving I have to do just to farmers walk around that gym and not break an ankle, you wouldn't say that.  I have nothing against TRX, but if they were going to put something that takes up that much space, they could have given us another damn power rack.  I guarantee you, it would get used more than that TRX. After all, people gotta curl somewhere. (Insert winky face here.)

Alright, that's enough randomosity for now.

Weightlifting baby memes crack me up almost as much as SNL Sean Connery.

xoxo

Addendum: my feet in stretchy shoes

did you know...

there are limited edition fudge-covered Ritz crackers? And you can buy them at Target? And if you go to Target after the gym to buy a gift card for a charity gift drive and some socks, you *will* buy them, because your blood sugar is low and your sense of entitlement is high?

Okay, maybe that last part is just me. But, seriously, kids? I know it might sound vaguely disgusting but, much like with chocolate-covered pretzels, the combination of sweet+salty+carbs is just hnnngggggg. Someone should have invented the damn things back when it was physically possible for me to have PMS.

Before the whole Thanksgiving week/limited edition Ritz thing went down, though, I've been dieting for the last month. Some of my pants were getting a little tight and it was time to put the brakes on. I think I lost about six pounds in four weeks. Which seems like a paltry amount of weight loss for the amount of suffering I've gone through, but a.) I'm a whiny baby and b.) there is no b, I'm just a little bitch.  And now that I've taken a break, I'm having a really hard time returning to the diet despite the fact that I'd like to lose a couple more pounds.  Plus there are so many leftovers in this house.  First world problems, yo.

I did work out six times this past week, though, which is more than I did the entire month of October so, y'know, that's something.  Getting back on track.  Including with the blogging. Pinky swear.

xoxo

delightful cartoon above from http://laughingredhead.me/

don't believe your eyes + a NEW gym complaint

First of all, an oldie but a goodie.

Next time you get depressed because you're comparing yourself to the people in the supplement ads/fitspo or because you've been working out faithfully for 8 whole weeks yet you don't look like those success stories you see online or in the infomercials or because you've been taking progress pictures in your underwear with your cell phone camera in your poorly lit bedroom and you just look at them and go "meh", think of this video and realize real life and bullshit are two different things.

Now, on to gym complaining.

Those, people, are gym towels.  At my gym, you ask the nice person at the front desk for one and they'll happily hand one over.  Once you have this rectangle of white terrycloth in your possession, you can do several things with it. You can put it on a bench or machine you are using to absorb your sweat. That's a good thing.  You can lay it down on the mat you are stretching on, because lord knows how often the gym cleans those things.  That is also a good thing.

Or you can use it for its most traditional function: you can use it to dry yourself off after going in the pool or taking a shower.  Why, yes, it will soak up the H2O clinging to your body. There's no need to walk about the bathroom area of the locker room letting yourself air dry and leaving quarter inch deep puddles of water on the floors of the stalls or in front of the sinks for other people to step in and for the gym employees to have to wipe up.  Grrrrrr.  Dry your goddamn feet and legs off, bitches, and don't drip everywhere. Do you do that in your bathroom at home?  I doubt it.

Okay, I feel better now. Venting about rude people is so therapeutic.

xoxo

fitness blog frauding

I counted yesterday.  I worked out a whole nine times the month of August and twelve the month of July. This is contrasted with my normal average of eighteen times a month--which only includes weight training, which I track. At times that I've been really working on my fitness, there are sometimes cardio-only or yoga days along with those eighteen weight sessions. Needless to say, neither of those things happened this July or August.  I don't think I've actually been to a yoga class since March and I can't remember the last time I went to the gym for an extra cardio day.

Pitiful.

OTOH, there's something to be said for being a bad example.  Or at least an imperfect one.   Just as I think it does some kind of a service for me to post pictures that make plain that I do *not* look like one of those twenty year old girls with their fitspo tumblrs and perfect cellulite-free asses, it may be a service to say, hey, I value my fitness and I love working out, but sometimes life gets in the way...AND THAT'S OKAY. Working out only 21 times in two months hasn't led to losing all mah gainz.  Working out only 21 times in two months hasn't made my muscles fall off and I can still sprint to catch a bus. (If I'm not wearing flipflops. Damn flipflops.)  Perfect is the enemy of good. Etc etc.  

That's not to say I don't feel better (bettah!) when I'm getting to the gym more often, but that's as much a function of getting to the gym more often equating with more free time and less stress as it is with the actual benefits of exercise.  I think.  Did I just commit heresy?

You know what I'm like.

Meanwhile, I just starting reading (okay, skimming) this book.  I think it's gonna fix all the problems with my body, except, y'know, I don't really want to follow his advice. Lulz.  I don't want to squat without pointing my feet out.  I don't want to refrain from crossing my feet and bending my knees when I do pullups and dips. Waaahhhhhh. It's too hard, mommy.  Anyway, I'm gonna read it all and then I'm gonna see if I can implement at least some of it.  With my documented problems with authority, I have this issue where I will initially believe whoever the latest internet guru is, then start questioning why their advice is any better than any of the past internet gurus' (contradictory) advice, then I just end up doing what the fuck ever I want to do anyway. Which is probably why my hip is killing me on and off lately.  Whatever.  I've made it to the ripe old age of 50 without any knee problems and, despite that previously unrecognized congenital abnormality of the spine that was noted incidentally on my abdominal CT scan last year, no major low back problems, so my pointing-out-y feet can't possibly be fucking me up that badly, can they?  Sigh.

If anyone's actually read and put into practice Supple Leopard yet and/or followed the website, please give me your feedback in comments.  Have you really fixed all your aches and pains and stiffness, and improved your athletic performance?

xoxo

oh, look! a post!

I know, I know.  Content has been sparse, but your blog hostess has been having a very busy, stressful month.  

Being as how I love you all and want to keep entertaining you but am too braindead to actually, y'know, write anything intelligent or amusing, I thought I would post up a little pictorial evidence of how lifting ze weights changes ze body.  I have a set of pictures of me in the same dress and shoes, taken in front of the same wall, three years in a row.  They're interesting, I think.   

2011, approximately 113 lbs, just starting bulk #1:

2012, also approximately 113 lbs, in the middle of a cut, post (aborted) bulk #2:

2013, approximately 118, during bulk #4:

Obviously the dress fits me best in the 2012 photo.  But I'm kinda thinking I like the current version of my body, with the extra weight on, a bit better.  Maybe.  In any case, please just note my ass is two inches higher than it used to be.  They don't call it squat booty for no reason.  (Take that, gravity!)  I wish I had a comparable set of pictures that showed my shoulder/trap evolution, because that's pretty dramatic as well.

I highly recommend doing this experiment if you're training even in the slightest way for aesthetics.  Take some pictures in the same clothes, in the same place, in the same pose, six months or more months apart.  You will see differences and changes that you might not appreciate in the mirror.  Try it!

xoxo

what i've been up to

Oh, like YOU care. Too bad. I'ma tell you anyway.

I started a new part time massage job at a place I will not name, but which I fondly (so far) refer to as the Evil Empire. That is to say, it's at one of those chain-type places that are driving the lil guys outta business (like a more zen WalMart) and driving down the wages for massage therapists in general.  Leading me to digression #1: if you get a really cheap massage (or any kind of personal service, really: facial, waxing, etc) either because it's at a franchise kinda place or because it's a groupon, PLEASE tip generously if your experience is in any way satisfactory. Um, and in cash if at all possible.  The reason it's cheap is not because the owners aren't trying to make lotsa money or because they're skimping on the amenities***, it's because they're paying the people performing the service crap.

Why work for crap pay?  Two part answer. One, that's where the jobs are, especially the more entry-level jobs. Two, because that's where the customers are. I'm not sure people who haven't worked in the spa business are aware--I certainly never thought of it before massage school--but your MT or esthetician is only paid when they're actually performing a treatment/service.  So, $15 + gratuity per massage hr for 4 or 5 hours a shift is preferable to making $40 + gratuity per massage hour if you're only getting one client a shift and spending the rest of the time sitting around unpaid, waiting for business.  Well, Andrea, you say, if you get $15/hr and then a $15 tip, that's $30/hr. That's not gonna make anyone rich, but it's a living wage. Um, well, yeah, except NO ONE can physically do 40 hours of massage a week. 20-25 hours of massage a week is a pretty heavy schedule. So divide that $30 in half and your therapist is back to making about $15/hr.  Just some things to think about if you or your child is considering massage school.  On the plus side, it can be very emotionally rewarding. That's better than eating, right?

Where was I? Oh, yeah, don't be a cheap bastard. Tip nicely if you are happy.

The upshot of the above is that what else Andrea is doing right now is attempting to find a second (well, third really) part time job not massaging people.  No one cares that I have my CPT, lemme tell you.  I shoulda been nicer, i.e. sucked up to that woman at my gym who yells at me for squatting barefoot 'cause she sure as hell wouldn't give me a job. But that's another in my long series of bad life decisions. I was never very good at sucking up to people (NO?!!??) and, believe me, I wish it were not so.  But anyways, things are in the works. Future updates will be available.

But to bring this back on-topic, my new massage job is three evenings per week and it is seriously screwing up both my workout schedule and my eating.  I get into work at 2:30 or 3:30 or 4:30, depending on the day, having eaten somewhere between 600-900 calories, which would be my usual at that point in the day, and then maybe depending on how my schedule goes, I get a 200 calorie snack in. Which means I'm home at 10 or 11 needing to eat another 1000 calories or so.  Which, obviously, I don't usually make it.  Being at work, and actually working, during what is my regular dinner time is screwing me all up.  I'm not hungry when I get to work, so I don't want to stuff more food in before I start, but I don't see another solution.  Suggestions from those of you with non-traditional work schedules happily accepted!  Right now, I'm just eating below maintenance on those days I work and making up (most of) the calories on days I don't.  If only I were trying to diet right now, this would totally be a dream****!

xoxo

***Actually, I had a groupon massage just last week at a local place where, um, the amenities? No chair in the room for the client, no place to put my clothes. No clock in the room for the therapist, so she had to keep checking her phone to see where we were at time-wise.  And a face cradle the therapist warned me was a little wonky.  Plus, they were right by the commuter rail tracks and it was rush hour, so the room shook a few times, lulz.

****Actually, when I graduated massage school and was working doing massage half-time, plus my non-massage job, I easily dropped 10 pounds over say three months for exactly the same reason. Which was fine, because massage school had made me, ahem, outgrow all my pants.

i need a twelve step program, or possibly inpatient treatment

"Um, hi, I'm Andrea and I'm, uh, addicted to peanut butter and jelly Quest bars."

In unison: "Hi Andrea!"

Quest bars. Love 'em or hate 'em, they're the protein bar everyone on the interwebs has an opinion on.  In my own lil internet circle, the scale seems weighted towards luv. I had heard about how their macros were awesome and their taste was hnnnnngggg (by which I mean to say, delicious) long before I ever tasted one. Then I had my surgery and there--in a sweet care package sent to me by a friend I'd never actually met--they were, complete with helpful instructions to nuke them for ten seconds or so for maximum awesomeness.   The first time I tried this, I stuck one in the microwave without removing the wrapper. The foil wrapper. OMG I WAS ON NARCOTICS, WHAT DO YOU PEOPLE WANT OF ME?

Ahem.

Well, when I had one that I didn't actually almost set on fire, I wasn't overwhelmed. I might have been slightly underwhelmed. At the least, I was whelmed.  I chalked this up to my taste buds being somewhat funky after surgery/anesthesia. Only certain foods appealed to me. (Hence the eighteen Chobani yogurts and the diet ginger ale in my first postop grocery cart.) I decided to withhold my verdict on the whole Quest bar experience till a later date.

Sometime this spring a later date came to pass. I was buying something else online and I needed to spend a little more money for some discount or free shipping or a gift with purchase or whatever other incentive the clever retailer had come up with to induce suckers like me to drop more cash, so I threw in a few Quest bars in different flavors.  Some were good. Some were meh. Some had sugar alcohols in them that made me unfit to go out in polite society. And then there were the peanut butter and jelly ones. OMG.

I don't know what it is about these things. They're the texture of playdoh, basically, and the color of a breastfed newborn's poop. They have so much fiber in them they're pretty much a rotor router for my colon. They look like something you'd feed the prisoners in a futuristic prison. Well, except in a futuristic prison they'd be made of people. Something like that.

They're delicious. I keep buying the boxes of twelve and eating them in a week. It's like my secret shame. A vaguely food-like substance that only marginally tastes like what the flavor on the label promises and I eat two a day till they're all gone.  But but but...20g of protein and 17g fiber each, yo.

Somebody help me.


Anyway! While I wait for my intervention, I'll share with y'all a recent pic I really love.  I have a couple of vintage dresses, one of which I particularly love because not only is it extremely cute, it has sentimental value.  Sadly, for the last couple years, they've both been too big and just living in my closet.  I tried them on again a couple weeks ago and to my shock, they're now wearable again.  I've finally grown enough lat to take up the space that used to be taken up by my boobs when I was ten-fifteen pounds heavier. Woo!  My friends asked for pictures.

Shoulders not looking too shabby.

Maybe it's the Quest bars.

xoxo

"perfection": worth a little hunger?

I've had the very beginning of this post in my drafts folder for a few days. Then Monday happened. Finishing one of my usual self-absorbed paeons to navelgazing seemed tone-deaf when a horrible fitness-related tragedy in which innocent people were maimed and killed had just occurred in my own city. But you know what? I have absolutely nothing original to say about that. I have no new perspective. There's nothing I could write that hasn't been better expressed elsewhere. I can only suggest that if you would like to read a moving article (and comments) on the meaning of Monday's events from the POV of a runner, you go here.  And if trivialities in the face of horrible events annoy or offend you, click away from here for awhile. Trivialities are all I've got.

..........................................................................................................................

So. Last Friday marked the end of my six weeks of post-fulk dieting. Six weeks of whining and hunger and moaning and hunger and complaining and hunger. Did I mention hunger?  When I diet by calorie-counting**, I am always so, so hungry.  I have a healthy appetite--I may have mentioned that before--and 1400-1500 calories is not much food.  Oh, it could be worse, obviously. 1500 calories is enough to fit in a glass of wine or some other small treat here or there.  It's not super-strict deprivation. But it's not enough food to keep my belleh from grumbling or keep me from constantly thinking about whether it's time to eat again yet.

Last Friday also marked the first time in that six week period that I got the Random Number Generating Device*** to read 113. This was not my "goal weight" (sigh) but it was, y'know, close enough. Close enough that it was time for me to decide whether I was going to keep dieting or call that mutha. In my attempt to make a rational decision about that, I decided to employ a couple other data points besides the RNGD. I measured my waist: 24.75". And I took several unflattering, badly-lit, non-tanned, non-flexed, camera-self-timer pictures directly out of the shower, dripping hair n' all, in naught but my underwear****.

Note: I clearly do see the point that a person who weighs 113 and has a 24.75" waist and all of whose clothes range between a size 00 and a size 2 could be said to be beyond "rational" when considering whether to continue dieting.  If I did not hang around an online (bodybuilding-related) site where many, many people are obsessed with being extremely lean, I wouldn't even be questioning this. I'd be saying to myself, bitch, you have (vanity-sized but still) 00 jeans that require a belt to stay up. No one who can honestly say that has any business being on a diet. Now go eat a fucking donut and hush yourself. What *is* your problem?

I do have a problem. Beyond the crazee. So you hush up about that. My problem is uneven fat distribution.  As my lovely unflattering pictures made abundantly clear, I have approximately 2 pounds of excess fat on the back of each thigh. If you could suck that four pounds out and slather it back on evenly over my whole body, like spreading peanut butter on toast*****, you wouldn't think I had any extra fat. You'd think, huh, that woman's lean as hell. I'd like to say genetics has fucked me, but truth is, that gynoid fat has been proven to be good for one's health. Genetics thinks it's doing me a favor by depositing that extra four pounds of fat right on my saddlebags. It's me that's fucked myself by hanging around people who are in general horrified by it.

I wouldn't even say it's peer pressure. I threw my unflattering pictures up on the internet and my weightlifting buddies, being sweet kind supportive friends, told me I look great and I'd be fine no matter what I decided to do: cut more, maintain, or start another bulk.  Meanwhile on the same forum, people much leaner than me were dieting and other people were putting up transformation pictures where they hit (DEXA-verified!) 15% bodyfat and being effusively praised for it.  No one was going to come out and say to me, "Andrea, yeah, you are still too fat, so suck it up and starve some more" but it is really hard to see other people being lauded for more and more fat loss and NOT think that there's something a little wrong with you if you aren't striving for that. You're lazy. You're half-assing it. You're not serious. You're not committed. You're deluding yourself about how attractive (or not!) you are.

Meanwhile, as I was struggling with this, in other corners of the interwebs, in a great coincidence, other people were discussing the pressure to be lean, the fear of having any fat at all, the difference between looking perfect and being healthy,  and the conflation of fat loss with healthy behaviors.  There must've been something in the air last week or two. Or else all the crap in the media about getting a summer bikini body has made a majority of intelligent, reflective, fitness-oriented women want to pull their hair out, punch someone, or, y'know, blog.

This is me from the front.

Not a great picture, for (as I said) many reasons, but even so, it does not displease me. If I were tanned and lit correctly, if I were flexing and posed right, you'd see how much muscle I have. But even without that, I can look at it and think that, well, I look pretty athletic. Which was always my aim.

And this is me from behind.

You see whereof I speak, I assume. But honestly? I can't make myself hate this very much either. For one thing, for the great majority of my life I wouldn't have even looked too closely in the mirror at myself in a thong, nevermind taken a picture of such. Nevermind shown it to anyone. Nevermind put it on the interwebs where strangers and friends****** could see it. In my old age I have come to love and appreciate my body enough to look at it in all its imperfections and still feel fondly disposed to it. That's a victory all in its own. I may be deluded, but I think my imperfect body is beautiful. And I'd rather be deluded in that direction than in the converse.  Grandiose fantasies are so much more pleasant than paranoid ones.

So what did I ultimately decide to do?  Well, I decided to take the weekend off.  The weekend lasting through Tuesday, since my son's birthday is April 16 and I had Chinese food and cupcakes to consume. Then I was going to reassess.  Well, here it is, April 18 and I still haven't reassessed. I honestly am on the fence still.  Eating till I was actually full the last few days has been blissful. On the other hand? I could lose four more pounds in another 6 weeks and maybe...maybe...some of it would be from that thigh chub. And then I could take a thong picture that wasn't vaguely horrifying when I'm not in the mood to be deluded. It seems so close to achieving. And then I remember how much I whined from March 1 to April 12.

xoxo

**I can lose weight easily and without hunger by going low carb. Unfortunately I can't lift weights on low carb. My muscles demand bagels or they won't deadlift shit.

***the scale, of course

****I have to admit I did put on "good" picture-taking underwear.

*****you diet for 6 weeks and see how many food-related metaphors *you* use

******not sure which is more embarrassing, frankly

And google chrome doesn't think horrifying is a word. Huh.

6 months

Guess what today is? My six month "hysterversary!"

Yes, the hysterectomy support forums do use twee and vaguely nauseating terminology like that. But, hugs! (Yeah, yeah, yeah, do I *seem* like the support group type to you? Let's be cereal here.)

Anyway. Yes. Six months ago at this time I was unconscious while my gyn and her husband** used a magical tiny camera and cauteries and, I dunno, other stuff to remove those girl parts that were trying their best to kill me. Along with their neighbors***. I thought I'd take this opportunity to bore you with reflect on the changes in my body since the big day.

First of all, I'm pretty sure I am now almost 100% healed internally. I have read that it can take up to a full year for all the nerve connections to grow back and so forth, but over the past month or so I can honestly say that I don't feel anything different on my insides any more. Even back in February when I felt mostly totally healed, a few days of physical labor or being on my feet most of the day and I'd feel a little swollen and sore in the cuff where my internal stitches had been. Ten days ago I spent seven hours doing hard physical work and when I was done--exhausted and starving but none of that internal ouchiness. Yeah, baby.  Similarly, it took a long LONG time after surgery for my intestinal function to feel like it had regulated and there weren't weird painful nerve twinges every time it was almost time for a morning meeting****.  Apparently the intestines get really pissed***** about being pushed and shoved aside during surgery and are in a snit about it for quite a while.

Secondly, I am no longer vaguely terrified about the whole works failing and my intestines making a break for it out my hooha while I'm squatting 160 or having sexshul intercourse.  According to the internet it could still happen but I have ceased to worry about and instead choose to believe that a.) my doc did an awesome job stitching me up in there and b.) my body heals super, especially since I took care during recovery to eat ALL THE FOODZ and c.) since I was a really, really good girl and abstained from sexshul intercourse for the 3 months prescribed by my physician (and, okay, even a little longer [see: vaguely terrified]) Jesus/Buddha/the laws of physics are gonna reward me with a fully functioning vagina for the rest of my life.

And now that I have, once again, overshared, let's move on to more blog-topic-related matters.  I lost a lot of muscle mass during recovery. People swore to me that I wouldn't, but they lied. No, actually, they just didn't realize how incredibly restricted I was going to be for the first almost-6 weeks after surgery.  When you're not even allowed to lift your own (admittedly obese) cats or, strictly speaking, your own handbag with its normal contents, and your body is putting forth all its energy towards healing up all the tissue that's been cut and restitched together and regrowing nerves and blood vessels and such, it wisely (from a long term evolutionary standpoint) decides that it doesn't need to expend the metabolic resources to keep all that expensive muscle that ain't being used and ::poof:: GONE.  A month after surgery I was down to 108 lbs. I'm pretty sure the last time I weighed 108 pounds I was eleven or twelve years old, kids.  It did not make me happy. And this with my postop diet of mac n' cheese, calzones, and whatever the hell new cookie recipe I found on the interwebs while I was bored and semi-housebound. So when I was released back to the gym I went on the bulk of all bulks. A fulk, actually. (Fulk=fat bulk.)  Since my birthday and Christmas came in the midst of this there was the added bonus of my friends gifting me with things like bottles of Baileys and the giant Costco gourmet chocolate assortment. And taking me out for drinks and Mexican food and and and. Operation Fatten Up Andrea: successful.

By the end of February I weighed...wait for it...wait for it...121. On the plus side, I no longer needed a belt to keep up every pair of pants I own and I was pretty sure I'd grown all my lost muscle back. I even, in my usual douchebaggery, took pictures and posted them up for my friends, all of whom agreed my muscles were back, baby. So time to "cut", i.e. diet.

It's been one month and one day. NOT THAT I'M COUNTING. I'm back down to 114. I can fit into all my pants (in varying degrees of comfort, ahem) and some of them are back to needing to be belted to stay up. And the saddest fact is, with a lot of the fulk fat off I can see that no, not all my muscle did come back. The extra fat was making me look a lot bigger and fuller than I really was. Right now I'm definitely squishier and softer and smaller than I was at 114 or 112 last summer.

I suppose it's a small price to pay for having my treacherous reproductive organs out of my body, yeah?

Present plan: stay on this muthafuking diet for two more weeks or till I hit 112 (whichever I crack at first), then back to a slow bulk in hopes of regaining more muscle mass. Wish me luck. I'm pretty sure with my ovaries removed I am not in the optimal hormonal condition for muscle growth (ha!) but as I recently remarked elsewhere, thank you functioning adrenal glands! Someone's gotta pump out the measly amount of testosterone my old woman body is producing.

xoxo

**oh, don't worry...he's a gyn too, not a plumber or tax accountant.

***I like to anthropomorphize my organs

****that's my favorite new euphemism for pooping

*****see "***"

i drink alone

This post is only very tangentially related to health and fitness, but it does touch on body image so I'ma drop it in here.  I'm just dying to share this experience with y'all.

Last night I braved the snow to go see George Thorogood, who was performing at the Lynn Auditorium.  Before I get to my point, lemme just express some amusement at this whole set up. They're trying to make Lynn Auditorium happen as a concert venue, which is just a little bit bizarre seeing as it's located in City Hall. I told the friend that I was attending the concert with that this meant there would be no beer. I was wrong. They had concessions set up and they were indeed selling beer. Inside City Hall. I don't even... Alright, I'm probably just cranky about that since I didn't have one. I'm on a diet and very much moderating my alcohol consumption. Sigh.  The other reason they are not gonna make this concert venue happen is that there's really no good parking. We found a space on street a few blocks away, but it took ten minutes of riding around. Plus, if they weren't selling beer inside City Hall, there's no good bars around there to pre-game. Um, without getting stabbed.

Anyway.  We found a space, walked over, got our tickets scanned and went in. (They weren't checking bags. I coulda brought my own beer, yo.)  My friend needed to use the restroom before we found our seats and I didn't, so I just waited in the hall, watching my fellow concert-goers.  It was stunning. Everyone--almost literally everyone--was between the ages of 45 and 60. Watching these clots of middle-aged people milling around the halls, I had this weird deja vu sensation, like someone had scooped us all up out of the halls of my high school in 1978 and deposited us 35 years later.  And the 35 years had not been kind.  My friend came out (bitching that the City Hall bathrooms were not really built to handle a crowd, heh) and I said, "Tell the truth. We look just as old as the rest of these middle-aged people, don't we? It's very humbling."

Readers, it's not as if I don't look in the mirror every day. And it's not as if I don't look at my same age friends and clearly see how we're all growing grayer/saggier/wrinklier/heavier/balder/etc. by the year. But it took a whole concert full of 50-somethings without any younger people to break up the visual to feel the full impact.  Humbling.  I was just saying to another friend the other day that, as I'm presently job hunting, I know I'm supposed to be worried about age discrimination and the fact that maybe a younger person is gonna get hired before me, but that it pissed me off, because in my head, I'm thirty.  A wiser, more experienced, less crazy thirty, but still. Thirty. I was joking about fudging my resume to make it harder to figure out how old I am, but the whole George Thorogood experience made me realize that no one but me is ever gonna think I'm thirty.  I guess that's demoralizing as well as humbling!  I can squat and deadlift and jog and go to yoga and all it's gonna do is turn me into a very fit old person.  Which is better than a non-fit old person, but I don't know what that says about my job prospects.

Here's a couple of my favorite Thorogood song for your troubles.

Yes, I DO know the second one is a cover. Shut up.

xoxo

P.S. Another lesson from last night? Drunk and/or high 50-somethings behaving at a concert like it still was 1978 are not cute. I'm talking to *you* bleached blonde chick in the tight pants, falling off your stillettos while dancing in the aisle and having to be removed by security.  I'm also talking to *you* guy two seats over whose miasma of really really skunky weed almost gave me a contact high and who despite all that apparent THC was NOT mellow and had to keep climbing over me every ten minutes to go to the hallway for god knows what.

P.P.S. Final lesson: I should probably cut my hair. All the women my age with long hair looked like shit and I am sadly probably no exception.

dear mr obama

Oh, DON'T WORRY. I'm not about to get all political up in here. No, I'm just gonna engage in some of my usual self-indulgent whining. Because everyone likes that even better. Right? Right????!!!???

Ahem. Okay, so I've been back in the gym for about two months now and back to heavy lifting for six weeks or so. In some ways I'm happy with my progress. My squats aren't back at pre-op levels, but they're coming along nicely.  I hadn't dumbbell benched in six months or probably longer, but when I tried it the other day, I shocked myself at how much I didn't completely suck.  My lat pulldowns are very close to being back to where they were in September.  Because I haven't been able to deadlift much (more about that VERY SOON), I've been doing a lot of direct trap work I wasn't doing prior to surgery and my shrug and farmers walks weights keep increasing nicely.  I've discovered a great new glute exercise--kneeling squats--and every single time I do those, I add weight to the bar.  So, yeah, certain things are coming along nicely, and since my intestines haven't yet fallen out of my hooha in the middle of the gym floor, I'm getting less nervous about that possibility by the day.

But. (Of course there's a but.) Certain things are really fucked.  Even though I had only the tiniest of external incisions, my abs still apparently took a beating. And not being able to lift anything heavier than my freaking purse for 5 1/2 weeks (and I wasn't even lifting that at first!) didn't help. Since I've been back to lifting, every time I've experimented with any deadlift-type movement, like RDLs or rack pulls, even with for-me baby weights, I've had the sensation that I was this close to effing my back up seriously or I was out of proportionately sore and wrecked for days after. All I can figure is that my core is so imbalanced right now, my back so much stronger than my abs, that the low back is completely taking over in stabilizing me during deadlifting as well as, y'know, doing the work it's supposed to.  Apparently when I squat the fact that my low back is stabilizing my core disproportionately skates by because my low back isn't also doing most of the work of the lift. That's my theory anyway.

Oh, and I can't even do one chin up any more, when I used to be able to do 8 or 9 in a row and 4 or 5 pull ups. When I tried on the assisted pull up machine at the gym, I had to use 25lbs of assist. Which is just too demoralizing, yo.  Since, as I mentioned, my lat pulldowns are almost where I was pre-op, it's not a lat issue. It's got to be my core.  Or my fear of engaging my core that much? Feh.

It's not all of my ab/anterior core muscles though, either. I can still plank without much trouble. I went to a trx class last week just for shits n' giggles and I busted out a bunch of crunches in it without any trouble (which frankly surprised me) but then we did this other ab thing at the end that involved keep your legs up off the floor and after a couple, I just laid back down till everyone else was done. Lulz. So maybe it's a hip flexor weakness? Did my gyn do something to my psoas??!????! Horrors! (Lulz again.)

Which brings me back to our post title. Dear Mr Obama, can we get universal health care to cover post-hysterectomy physical therapy for old women who still want to powerlift? I really would like a professional who's smarter than me to do a shitload of tests on me and tell me exactly what muscle imbalance I have and how to fix it, but I can't afford to pay for one.  Kthxbai.

Alright, if you suffered through all that whining and self-absorbed navel-gazing, here's my real navel and scars for your trouble. Pretty tiny, huh? Modern surgery is the ballz. Even if it did disrupt my psoas or something.

And here's my new favorite exercise!

See? Just like hip thrusts without all that embarrassing lying on your back on the gym floor humping the air business.

xoxo

deelightful, deelicious, deeeeetox

Yesterday I went to a hipster Mexican restaurant where they start out your dining experience by bringing you a refreshing palate cleanser of shaved ice and asking whether you would care to have a free shot of tequila poured on top of that. Um, yes, please?  That OF COURSE led to two margaritas which led to ordering cuatros leche cake for dessert.  I mean, c'mon, that's one bonus leche. It would be wrong not to order it. Duh.

This capped off a two week period that included my birthday, Thanksgiving, the baking of a Christmas funfetti cake (if you haven't already heard that story, don't ask, okay?), the eating of an entire batch of peanut butter cookies all by my own self (if you're intending to bake them for other people, you need to first do a test run for quality control--again, DUH), the purchase of a nip of Godiva liqueur just because, the receiving of a whole bottle of Godiva liqueur as a belated birthday present along with a metric shit ton of chocolate, the finding of some stale Easter candy hidden in my hall closet while cleaning it and the sampling of said candy to ascertain whether it was stale or not, the extra sampling of said candy just to make sure it was really stale, and, um, probably more instances of alcohol and sugar near-poisoning than I am remembering. This all led to my waking up this morning claiming*** I was going to do a detox. Just yogurt and veggies for this chick. Until I'm offered alcohol or cake. Naturally.

It's after three in the afternoon. I've had nothing but yogurt and homemade turkey soup today. Well, that and coffee and iced tea.

Shut UP. Who said I was gonna detox from caffeine too?

Anyway, this all led me down the rabbit hole of thinking about "detoxes" and "cleanses".  Did you know that for only $99 I can purchase a groupon that will provide me with three whole days of (purportedly cleansing) juice? That's half off retail!  R U serious?  There are people alive who will pay two hundred bucks for nine glasses of juice?  Oh, I have a blender and a bridge I'd like to sell them.  As I once famously (infamously?) said about some extremely overpriced Red Sox tickets, I'd only pay that if it included Mike Lowell performing cunnilingus. Which kinda works better as a baseball joke than a dieting one, but I stand by it. Mikey, if you're reading--call me!

The whole juice cleanse/detox thing is patently ridiculous of course.  Much like (apparently--it was before my time because while I'm old, I'm not THAT old) women used to douche**** before the medical, gynecological establishment finally bested the feminine hygiene industry and successfully got women to realize that their vaginas***** are self-cleaning organs, hopefully good sense and scientific fact will win out and the populace will realize that, despite anything noted medical expert Gwyneth Paltrow says, our bodies do not need to be internally cleansed and detoxed because we already have a self-cleaning mechanism firmly in place. People who buy $200 juice? Meet your liver and kidneys.

In summary?  I do not really want to look like a Victoria's Secret model, I just thought that someecard was hilarious.  I do however like booze.

Good thing my liver is awesome.

xoxo

***facetiously

****but despite the fact it was unhealthy for them and totally unnecessary, aren't we glad our mothers or grandmothers did douche, just to introduce the word into common English usage? It's the perfect insult. Go call someone who's a douche a douche. I promise, it will be very satisfying.

*****Andrea's readers: "For the love of God, please stop talking about vaginas."
          Andrea: "I'll try. But it'll probably last as long as the yogurt and veggies thing."

on topic!

I'm pretty sure the above is what is happening to my arms.  If you could have stripped away the skin to see the muscle a month ago and then again today, that's what you'd see.  Okay, I wouldn't exactly match the picture.  I have more boob and less belly, but arms? Uh, yeah, I think so.

See, kids, my post-op instructions included not lifting any heavy objects.   My doctor didn't/wouldn't exactly put a figure on that--I've heard other people having been told no more than 5 pounds (!) or 10 pounds or "no more than a newborn baby" or "no more than a gallon of milk."  Mine said "Weeellllllllll, I wouldn't go lifting full laundry baskets..." I chose to interpret that as laundry baskets full of wet, not dry, clothes, because, bitch please.  Anyway, I have tried to be good.  I have not picked up either of the 19 pound cats. I have not carried my real purse full of what's usually in there because I'm pretty sure that's 15lbs in itself.  I haven't lifted full grocery bags or containers of kitty litter or taken out the trash.

At my two week checkup I was hoping to be released to lift more, but no. Tomorrow's my four week visit and hope springs eternal.  Especially because I have to admit I got a little lax this weekend while doing hurricane prep.  I was instructing my son to put this there and that there, no no no closer...and well, I ended up helping because the sweet Baby Jesus knows I am really not good with delegation.  If you want something done right... So, yeah, I sincerely hope my doctor tells me it's okay to start lifting a little more, just so I can put my mind at ease that tacking a plastic tarp over my basement sliders didn't just cause me internal adhesions.

With all this up-till-now good behavior, my upper body is atrophying like whoa. The first couple weeks after surgery I was flexing in front of the bathroom mirror, as you do, thinking, well now, my muscles are not falling off, go figure. Ahem. Flexing not so satisfying these days.  Coincidentally (or not so much) I've lost three pounds since my procedure, leaving me at a weight that frightens me a teeny bit***.  Since I have been making and eating such things as this and these and oh, yeah, these and (with some substitutions) these and obviously have not been starving myself, I can only posit that I've lost three pounds of muscle.  That's three months of bulking progress, yo. It's enough to make a grown woman cry. (Yeah, yeah, yeah, that and tiny infants in peril. Shut up, I KNOW I'm hormonal, ok? And if you don't know what the hell I'm talking about, it's because you didn't read the previous post. Try to keep up, wiil ya.)

Now, seriously, some time around January when I am cleared to actually lift weights, I know it'll all come back.  Lots of gym time, lots of food = maybe next summer I'll be back to where I was this summer, refusing to wear anything other than a tank top unless strictly necessary.  In the meantime, hey, it's hoodie weather. No one's gotta know that my triceps are sad!

xoxo

***oh, don't be concerned: BMI =19.9, I'm not even underweight