a book i didn't hate!

I know, I know, I generally only review books I loathe so you guys can listen to me froth and snark and bitch and eye-roll.  But since I've actually recommended this one to other people and it's kinda sorta blog-topical, I'm going to break with tradition and write a positive review.

Oh, Andrea, what the hell book are we talking about?  This one, kids:

Disclaimer: I love this pop science shiz, but I'm well aware when reading it that the author could be citing all the studies that support his thesis and ignoring the ones that don't and that if you're not in the field yourself you'd have no idea.  Mr Epstein, however, seems pretty good about presenting conflicting opinions and data and saying hey, there are only a few experts in the world studying x and they disagree with each other, so I was lulled into believing what he told me.  You all can read and judge as you want.

The most fascinating part of this book for me were the tidbits sprinkled throughout about what physical attributes make a person world-class at any given sport or athletic activity. It's not always what you'd think. For instance, do you know what trait all major league hitters have in common that sets them apart from the general populace?  I'm a huge lifelong baseball fan and it never occurred to me. Hint: it's not anything that can be improved with HGH or any other performance-enhancing drug.  Likewise, what kind of body do you need to succeed in the NBA? If you're sitting at your computer saying, "you need to be 7 feet tall, Andrea, duh," you'd be only half right. Yes, most NBA players are freakishly tall, but more than that, they have freakishly long wingspans.  Even for very very tall people, they have longer arms than normal.***  According to the book, this helps explain the racial disparity in pro basketball. Black people, as a general rule, have longer limbs compared to their torsos than do white people as a general rule.  As one of the scientists quoted in the book said puckishly, it's not so much that white men can't jump, it's that white men can't reach.

I guess I should mention that, yes, the book delves into why certain racial and ethnic groups seem to excel at certain sports and acknowledges that that conversation is uncomfortable for a lot of people.  You can't really deny it out of some kind of misguided political correctness. There are a lot of blond Scandinavian people, but not all Scandinavian people are blond. There are a lot of short-limbed Eastern European people, but not all Eastern European people have stubby legs compared to their torsos like yours truly. Those who do, however, are optimized for the sport of weightlifting and this is part of why Eastern Europeans kickass in international oly lifting. There are physical, genetic differences between people of West African and East African ancestry which explain why Ethiopians win all those marathons but the greatest sprinters in the world are Jamaican.  Actually, the Jamaican sprinter thing is fascinating and the book has a whole chapter exploring the controversy about why Jamaica? and particularly why a very small area of Jamaica?

Moving away from world class athletes to the rest of us, another fascinating study the book references took a bunch of normal people of varying ages and fitness levels and put them on a highly-controlled aerobic training program aimed at increasing their VO2 max for x weeks.  Some people made huge gains. Others made...none.  And it didn't correlate with how good you were to start with.  Some people with great VO2 maxes made huge progress. Some made little. Some people with crap VO2 maxes improved a lot, some didn't.  (And--this killed me--there were/are some people walking around in everyday life who never trained a day in their existence, who basically can and do sit on the sofa eating Pringles and playing World of Warcraft and when you measure their VO2 max, it's extraordinarily good. We hate these people, right? I mean, just a little. C'mon now.)  There was also a similar study done with strength training that showed similar results: put a varied bunch of regular people through the same training program and some gained a whole bunch of strength and muscle and others, not so much. What gave me pause with that is, they controlled the training but they didn't control the nutrition (or at least didn't report controlling the nutrition). So, from my perspective, it's entirely possible that the people who didn't make gainz just weren't eating enough calories and/or protein while the people who did were. Eat to grow! It makes me wonder if there's some similar confounding factor in the VO2 max study that affected the people who didn't improve and I myself just don't know enough about running/aerobic training to know what it could be.

Anyway, I could go on all day talking about interesting shit I read in this book, but instead I'll just suggest you buy and read it yourself.

BTW?  What all major league hitters have in common?  Better than 20/20 vision. You need extreme visual acuity to pick up the ball the second it leaves the pitcher's hand, register its position, and the position of the seams on it, etc, to then unconsciously draw on the database in your head built up from many many years of practice and study to almost instantaneously figure out where that ball's gonna be when it reaches the plate. All the practice, study, and lightning-quick reflexes in the world ain't gonna do shit for you if you can't see the minute details on that baseball when it's 90 feet away.

xoxo

***The takeaway being, if you as a parent are trying to decide what sport to nudge your offspring towards and they're always outgrowing their sleeves before anything else, buy them a hoop and a ball and in 15 years maybe they'll be buying you a Mercedes and a new house. It's worth a shot, eh?

...and your food looks like chit...

Feliz Navidad, kids! Hope whatever holidays you do or do not celebrate, the end of December is treating you well.

Now that the seasonal pleasantries are out of the way, let me ask all y'all a question.  Did you know there are entire forums on the internet devoted to mocking, snarking on, and generally critiquing other people's blogs?  I was sorta, kinda vaguely aware of this in the way I'm aware there are Christian dating sites or places on the interwebs where you can* go to hire a hitman.  I'd heard of it but never really felt compelled to visit, y'know?  

But fairly recently, I rectified that lapse in internet completism. Well, as far as the blog-snarking boards, not the Christian personals.  (And as far as the hitman-hiring goes, I'm staying mum. That doesn't mean some people shouldn't watch their backs. Ahem.)  Do you know what is prime capital for internet blog-snarking? "Healthy Living"/fitness blogs.  Like this one, I guess, though I have never ever claimed to have good health habits or to be some kind of model of clean living.  Having to regularly use the Fourth Macro (alcohol, duh) when logging one's food kinda craps all over that possible claim, amirite?  But if you were going to slot MMINAE into a category, that's where you'd probably stick it, the category of mildly-amusing-sarcasm-and-mouth-frothing-rants-with-sucky-underwear-pics-of-old-women being a little too overly specific.

I won't even tell you what the google image search was that returned that^^^ but I had to use it even though it's completely irrelevant to anything in this blog post.  Cat in a babushka, c'mon now.  

Where was I? Oh, yeah.  Healthy Living blogs=endless source of mockery fodder.  And one of the greatest generators of lulz is what healthy living bloggers eat and, oh yeah, post recipes for and pictures of.  Any of y'all who've been around the block a few times will recognize the clean eating staples. Kale, oats, quinoa, egg whites, chicken breast.  Cauliflower "pasta".  Protein powder and Quest bars.  (Shut up.)  Bloggers who eat these things are routinely accused of having eating disorders (and to be fair if that's *all* you eat, yeah, you may have, at best, orthorexia) and their pictures of the above are often responded to with a cute little vomiting emoticon and comments that their food looks like shit.

Oh, so many feels.  You guys know that along with the wine and the fudge-covered Ritz crackers, I have been known to eat--frequently--concoctions fondly referred to as proats and sludge, even though I rarely subject you to photos of the same.  Yes, mixing protein powder into other foods or using it to bake with may sound gross. It may well be gross. I don't do it for the taste, that's for sure.  But what the people mocking it may not understand is that if you lift weights semi-seriously to seriously, you need more protein than the average person (.8-1g/lb of bodyweight or, for me personally at least 92g protein a day) and unless you're willing to eat way more chicken breast and egg whites than I am plus forego the wine and beer calories, it's hard to meet that macro and stay at maintenance or below calories without resorting to adding protein to other non-protein foods.  When I'm bulking, yeah, I can eat waffles for breakfast knowing I have plenty of calories left to fit all my protein in later in the day.  When I'm dieting, not so much.  I gotta eat those proats for breakfast instead. If I'm gonna "waste" 300 calories by 9am, they've gotta have the 25-30g of protein in 'em. Is that disordered?  I dunno.  I kinda think it's eating for your sport, much in the same way endurance athletes need to eat lots and lots of carbs.  But no one's gonna mock them for eating waffles for breakfast on a day they run because...waffles!  Believe me, I wish simple carbs were all I needed to eat to build muscle but sadly that's not how the human body works.

Now, saying that proats look vomit-worthy? Well, um, yeah. Is there any way to photograph any kind of oatmeal and make it look delish? I mean, I personally think oatmeal *is* delish, but it's gruel. It looks like gruel no matter what you do to it.  Just because it doesn't look pretty doesn't mean it's not awesome. It's got a great personality, all y'all.  I mean, yes, I guess I understand mocking the posting of pictures of gruel and/or mocking fawning blog commenters who say ZOMG, that looks mouthwatering! to pictures of said gruel.  But just because food isn't gorgeous-looking doesn't mean it doesn't taste good or isn't nutritionally worthwhile.  

Does this all sound crazily defensive?  I'm not saying that there are not a lot of people in the fitness blogosphere who are disordered as hell.  I'm not saying there isn't a crapload of mock-worthy behavior out there, my own included. (The fact that I go months weighing and logging just about every morsel of food that goes in my mouth? Totally mock-worthy and borderline disordered.  The only thing that makes it not completely disordered in my opinion is that, sweet baby Jesus, I can and do take a break from it periodically and I'm rolling my eyes at myself every time I put something on that goddamn food scale.)  I'm just saying that there are good reasons some people eat shiz that may look and sound to you like it's OMG groce. WILL NO ONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN MY MUSCLES????????  

You think that shiz^^^ grows itself? God.

xoxo

*allegedly, allegedly

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/

i hate people

...and other Thanksgiving-appropriate sentiments.

Oh, hai. Long time no write. I owe y'all so many posts. My excuse is that I just finished working 12 days straight. Including my birthday. For someone who has been known to brag about how lazee she is, that's just...wrong.

Be that as it may, I had a fabulous night at the massage job last Friday. I can't go into details here in a public forum lest the HIPAA police come after me, but I took over a client from another therapist who was AWOL and said client, who had certain special needs, left me a freaking $60 gratuity. And all my other clients left cash tips too, such that I left with almost $100 in my pocket and a smile on my face.  Made it through two more days of work, one at the hospital, the other at the massage spa, and Monday morning with the prospect of three whole days off (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thanksgiving) on the horizon, I was unreasonably perky and made it to the gym before I had to head off for my 12th straight (but last!) work day in a row. Had a fabulous workout. Felt great. Went back down to the locker room and found that apparently I had failed to secure my locker properly and all the cash was gone out of my wallet.

Yup, my $60 tip, the rest of Friday's tips, and some other money too. $116 in all, which is way more money than I usually carry around with me. So ka-CHING, locker room thief. I was unreasonably depressed about this all of yesterday afternoon and evening. I'm not working all those extra hours because I don't need money, y'know?

But today I decided to put my bitterness behind me and enjoy my first of three days off. I went back to the gym, even. And I did NOT leave a post-it note on locker #117 that said, "Dear person who stole my cash out of this locker on 11/25, happy Thanksgiving and bless you. You must really have needed the money to do something so low!" But I thought about it.

The scary thing? You know who's in the Y locker room at noon on a Monday? The 75 year old pool ladies. Do senior citizens steal?  God.

Less complaining about the gym and more actual content tomorrow. My holiday present to YOU, readers.

xoxo

a brief interlude

I will write and publish "part the second" at some point but meanwhile I want to explain the private joke in part the first *and* brighten your Monday with pictures of a hot guy. Because, y'know, full service blog n' all. Okay, if you are one of my hetero male or gay female readers, maybe pictures of a hot guy aren't going to make your Monday any sunnier. Semi full service blog. God.

Mikey Lowell.  Who is Mikey Lowell? Well, he's the former Red Sox third baseman known to the rest of the world as Mike Lowell.  And though I always think of, and refer to him, as Cuban, the unimpeachable sorce of all knowledge which is wikipedia informs me that though his parents were from Cuba, Mr Lowell himself was born in Puerto Rico and has always considered himself as Puerto Rican. That's me told, then.

A few years ago, a friend of mine was discussing some new seats the Red Sox were putting in on the third base side of the park and the exorbitant price they were going to charge for said seats.  Being me, I said, "Pffft. I would only pay that for baseball tickets if they included Mike Lowell performing cunnilingus on me in-between innings" and a private joke was born. Let me make clear, before that conversation I had no particular sexual fantasies about Mr Lowell. He was one of my favorite Sox players and a good-looking gentleman, but he only got drawn into my little sex joke because those seats were on the third base side and so was he.  (Imagine if the seats had been in right field. I could have made that joke about J.D. "Nancy" Drew. It's too horrible to contemplate.)  As time went on, however, and the joking reference was perpetuated amongst certain of my friends,  I indeed started thinking of Mikey with lustful intent and he became one of my celebrity boyfriends.  (Oh, hush. You know you have a list of celebs you would do, no questions asked, if the chance arose.) I also started calling him Mikey for reasons that are unclear. Lulz.

Anyway, here are some pictures so you can see what we're dealing with here.

Smirking.

Bro hug of happiness.

Holding a trophy.

Glamor shot.

Admit it, you'd do him.

Oh, alright, here's his beautiful wife. Fine.

And just to prove that some things improve with age like fine wine:

Young Mikey Lowell was kinda geeky looking. He needed the salt-and-pepper goatee to fully come into his shmexiness.  (Hetero male readers, is that cheering YOU up? Ahem.)

xoxo

"i just wanna hit shiz. and possibly people." part the first

Big doings in the malevolent andrea/Bitty Bro world, kids.  No secret I haven't been getting to the gym much of late.  Part of this is that I've mostly been working six days a week at two different jobs, both with horrible to semi-horrible commutes, for the past almost-three months.  Excuses, excuses, right?  Time was, I'd have made it to the gym even so. But I seemed to have lost my mojo.

Being an analytical sort, I carefully sat down the other day and considered just why that might be.  Part of it is that my gym (which was extremely conveniently located to my OLD job) is now in the opposite direction of my two new jobs. I'm simply never in the neighborhood anymore and if I have to go past my house to get there after a 12 hour day, you know I'ma end up on the couch, not the weight floor.  Secondly, there's the fact that after my surgery last year, I was never able to completely get all my strength back.  Oh, I got back to my previous weights on some lifts and close on others, but I certainly wasn't smashing PRs.  Since what I enjoy most about lifting is/was feeling strong and badass, this took some of the joy out of it.  Thirdly, the new gym management that started busting me for squatting barefoot and otherwise enforcing other heretofore not-enforced petty gym rules also took some of the joy out of it.  Time was, that ghetto Y felt like home to me. Then suddenly it didn't.

With all these extremely important insights (lulz) in mind, I made two decisions. First, that I just have to find someplace closer to my two new jobs to work out and, second, that I have to find something that's a new challenge, something that's gonna reignite my passion. (Because you know I think working out is supposed to be fun, not some grim chore you grit your teeth through.)  And thus I started googling.

My first thought was crossfit. Now, in some circles in which I hang, crossfit is roundly mocked. Sometimes for good or semi-good reasons: kipping, Paleo diet cultism, cultism in general, badly coached Oly lifts leading to spinal injury, etc.  Sometimes for no good reason: "we're just better than you are, nyah nyah."  I was willing to look past the kipping and the Paleo diet. Besides, one of my online weightlifting pals switched to crossfit and she still looks awesome and is strong as boool.  Mr Google found me a crossfit "box" walking distance from one of my jobs and a stone's throw from Fenway Park.  It costs $270 A MONTH. See, kids, that's two weeks worth of groceries or a freaking car payment or, in laymen's terms, more fuckin' money than anyone should pay to go to the gym EVAH unless it includes Mikey Lowell showing up nekkid to "coach" you. Next!  (There were more reasonably priced, if still expensive, crossfit boxes on google, but none of them were convenient enough in location to make them irresistible.  So, next!)

What else have you always wanted to do, Andrea? I asked myself. What other fitness endeavor would a.) make you feel strong and badass and b.) is something that you would have been too shy, unsure of yourself, and intimidated to try when you were a young woman?

Well, kids, as I expressed it to my friends...I just wanna hit shiz. And possibly people.

I googled some martial arts type places, but I knew, from my son having taken kenpo karate for several years as a kid, that that wasn't exactly what I was looking for. The whole belt system...taking tests, being judged and graded...just not what I wanted in my workout.  I respect that and I think it's awesome in instilling discipline etc etc in kids (or other people that have a problem in that area) but my whole life is awash in self-discipline.  I know all about hard work, delayed gratification, working towards a goal, blah blah fucking blah. I don't need that in my gym life. I just wanna hit shiz. And possibly people.

Mr Google provided me a boxing gym.  A boxing gym with something like 40% female members and testimonials from Shawn Thornton, the Phantom Gourmet guy, and a few Red Sox wives.  Including Mrs Mikey Lowell. (Who, obvs, must be a former, not current, member since they live in Florida now, but how is that not fate?  Apart from the fact that I'm a few years too late to punch her in the head and yell "I want your hot Cuban husband, bitch!"  Kidding, kidding.  I'm willing to share.)  Where was I?  Oh, yeah, said gym is also a little over a mile walking distance from one of my jobs and a reasonable T ride from the other.  My only sticking point was the fact that nowhere on their beautifully designed website was there any indication of how much it cost.  I could only imagine that it might be even more than the $270 crossfit place. After all, Shawn Thornton, Mrs Mikey Lowell, and the Phantom Gourmet guy aren't exactly the kind of clientele one runs into at the Ghetto Y. Nevertheless, I signed up for my free introductory lesson...

TO BE CONTINUED

donut? blunt object or not?

Oh, hi. Still alive.  Have had things to say but no time to say them, and then when I do have time, I've forgotten what I was all excited and/or irritated about. Today, however, my irritation is fresh in mind and thanks to the miracle of free wifi on the MBTA commuter rail, you get to hear about it.  Say "thank you, MBTA!"  Note: if you live in Boston, that will probably be the first, last, and only time you utter that sentence. Ahem.

I'm kind of stumped on a title here. I'd like to go with Oh, Fuck You, but y'know, I hate to show up with blatant profanity when nice people have me in their blog rolls. So we'll see what shows up up top by the time I press "publish."

What's got you pissed off THIS time, Andrea? you ask. Well, kids, here's the thing.  In the last couple days I've read more than one person saying, either of their own volition, or in repeating what their coach or trainer has told them, or what some well known fitness model/figure competitor has said in an interview that "a bulk is no excuse to get fat or eat whatever crap you want."  My gut reaction to that? See profanity above. But, no. To put a finer point on it, my reaction is no one needs an excuse to get fat.  Getting fat is not a crime, a faux pas, a lapse in etiquette or judgment, a moral failing, whatever. It doesn't need to be excused. One doesn't need forgiveness or permission.  Having more adipose on one's body than these fitness models, trainers, or gym rats think is acceptable is not your problem.  You wanna gain 25lbs on your bulk, that's your business, kids. And whether you choose to take off some of that adipose with a diet afterwards or not, and how aggressively you do or do not do that, well, that's your business too, kids.

We won't even go into what I think about people deciding what you have their permission to eat or not?  Hint: if you're not my mother and I'm not under the age of 12, shut the fuck up about it.  Or I'll throw a donut at you.   A stale one, so it hurts.

Those don't look stale, they look effin' awesome.  Just saying.

xoxo