blog salad

Time to round up some random crap!

1.) Still haven't decided anything on the tanning front, though I did buy some Tan Towels off of Amazon. (Thanks, B!) Perhaps this will end up being like most things in my life and I will procrastinate so long, it'll actually be summer and the question will become moot because I'll be able to just go to the damn beach.

2.) This may be the best tuna ever.

Since I have been being so very, very good at making and bringing my lunch to work for over two months, I am now at the point where I'm looking for different things to take.  Hence buying some tuna, which normally I am not a huge fan of.  (Well, I'm a fan of the tuna MELT but it's kinda hard to make one of those in the workplace microwave. Plus, y'know, what with the mayo, the cheese, and the buttered bread, not really helpful with the whole weight loss business.)  In my family growing up we always got the solid white tuna in water, which to me is kinda tasteless.  At my old place of employment where I'd occasionally buy tuna in the caf, they definitely used the chunk light tuna, which to me tastes like cat food.  I figured there had to be some happy medium between "tasteless" and "cat food."  In perusing the shelves at Trader Joe's, I decided solid white in oil might just be that happy medium. Oh, and it is.  I found it so tasty I was able to marry it with my *other* new lunch food experiment, which is training myself to like mustard.  (I've switched from mayo to mustard on my sandwiches in an effort to save calories.)  I tried just putting the drained can of tuna in a bowl, adding approximately 10g of mustard to it, and eating it like that, no bread or anything, and...it was good. I mean, I know it sounds vaguely disgusting, but it's actually tasty. Coming from someone who historically never liked mustard and wasn't big on tuna, this is a ringing endorsement.  So try it if you're bored with your lunch. Just make sure you get that TJ's tuna above.

3.) I have recently started foam rolling as part of my warm up, not just post workout or separate from it when something hurts.  I did this at a point when my lower back was spasming a bit on me and I was looking for a way to calm it down enough to get my workout in, and I've continued even though my back feels better. I think it actually helps. A friend was asking about it and I found a couple links for her, so I thought I'd share them with youse guys too.

4.) This is my new favorite shirt.

It's the Pacifica UPF shirt from Athleta, and that picture doesn't do justice to how cute it looks on with the ruching at the shoulders and the little sleeve pocket.  It's technically a rashguard but it makes a nice gym shirt or a just-wearing-around-over-a-tanktop shirt (if you inappropriately wear gym clothes err'where like me).  I would buy another one in a different color but it's Athleta and thus expensive.

5.) I wrote an impassioned defense of the humble bagel elsewhere when someone claimed they were nutritionally bankrupt.  A Dunkin' Donuts wheat bagel is 280 calories and 13g of protein.  I think that's a better ratio of protein to calories than a lot of "protein" bars, kids.  I was actually surprised myself when I first saw that nutritional information, but the reason for this is that bagels are very gluten-y. Gluten is what gives them that tasty chewy texture and gluten is the part of the wheat that contains the protein. So, basically, you people that have to avoid gluten are shit out of luck when it comes to getting protein from your baked goods. More tuna for you!

Anyone have any great new lunch discoveries, warm up suggestions, favorite new clothes, or rants about unfairly maligned foods? Tell me in the comments!

xoxo

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

me, pinterest, and some consumer complaints

I don't really "get" some social media and I resist a lot of the rest of it, but I did recently get sucked into Pinterest (three or four years after the rest of the world, right?).  I have no idea how to punctuate the previous sentence, btw.  It may or may not be a surprise to you all, but I like to shop.  Unfortunately, I don't have much money and I refuse to run up enormous amounts of credit card debt, so a lot of the time I am reduced to window shopping or, more specifically, online window shopping. Because you can do that at midnight in your pjs. C'mon now.

Pinterest is genius for this I am finding. I specifically made a board called "things i want, january 2014" and filled it with things that I, y'know, wanted after seeing them online but did not feel it was wise to immediately waste my cash on. Then I was able to go back to these things one or two or three weeks later with the idea that I could reevaluate whether I really wanted them...and 90% of them were sold out. That's a huge money-saver right there, I tell you what.

Like, look at these $50 pj pants from Anthropologie (LOL) that Pinterest saved me from:

 

They're adorable. And now I can just look at them forever without actually wasting fifty fucking dollars on them.

Or this pink sweater:

I don't actually wear pink, I just get seduced by it every winter around this time when I'm so sick of all my drab winter clothing I could spit.

Or these Frye boots:

I couldn't even start to convince myself I could afford them.  But those are some cool boots, yo.

Or this Athleta vest that sold out almost immediately:

But I really really really still did want one of those super thin, lightweight down/down-alternative vests that are out now, because you can comfortably wear them indoors in your cold house or office. Which leads us to the next portion of this blog post.

A couple weeks ago I went to the mall on my day off to see if I could buy a vest similar to the sold-out one above. I went to The North Face store.  The nice young man working there asked if I had any questions.  I refrained from asking my actual question which was, "Why is nothing ever fucking on sale in this store?" Because if that crappy massage job I just suffered through 6 months of*** reminded me of anything, it's that it's NOT NICE to be sarcastic to the underpaid.  No, I just took my leave of his store sans sarcasm and empty handed. Because I was not going to pay $149 for the vest I wanted. So sorry, so poor cheap.

Nevertheless when I returned to the mall later in the week (I had to go to the Container Store and buy a lunch box system because I'm still being good about taking lunch and snacks to work and I was getting liberal hippie guilt from all the plastic ziplock bags I was using), I returned to North Face. And my unspoken sarcasm was dis-proven****. They were finally having their winter sale.  So I bought this:

Which still was not inexpensive, but which I've been wearing almost every day and which frankly looks cuter on me than on that model. Or so I delude myself.  I don't wear mine over an ugly purple turtleneck, so there is that. And M2 told me it brings out the color of my eyes. So.

Pinterest is also good for some fitness stuff.  I found this board which I thought was full of really cool ideas for conditioning/bodyweight workouts, if you're into that sorta thing.  I wanted to try this one:

But I kinda think it requires an interval timer to be done correctly. Which would mean another trip to the mall.*****  I could end up at North Face.

xoxo

***Did I mention in here that my Christmas present to myself was quitting that miserable massage job?  Down to one job. So much happier.

****Spellchecker insists disproven has a hyphen. Really?

*****I wanted to buy one on Amazon but it's really hard to tell in the product descriptions which ones are user friendly and which ones suck. I think I'd wanna see in person before I plunked down my $20-40.

fitting a nap into your workout

Does that sound as appealing to you as it does to me? If so, you are just gonna love my experience with yoga nidra, kids.

A couple Saturdays ago a yoga teacher whose restorative/deep stretch class I really enjoy was holding a workshop on yin, restorative, and yoga nidra. I've done and enjoyed the first two. The third I was all WTF? about, but intrigued, especially when I saw it was described as sleep yoga. Just the concept of that was fascinating enough for me to arrange for a co-worker to cover a few hours of my shift Saturday so I could leave work early to attend. When I googled yoga nidra and read that it was supposed to put you into a lucid dreaming-like state, well, then I was really reeled in.  The whole concept of being awake and asleep at the same time fascinates me.  Plus, for someone who lives in their own head as much as I do, the promise of it being actually productive/healthy/not just daydreaming is like a siren's call.  NO, I am NOT lying down in a dark, warm room covered with a blankie and letting my mind wander, I am MEDITATING, muthafuckah.

Except, yeah, I ended up lying down in a dark, warm room, covered with a blankie, letting my mind wander. It was cool.

We did the yin and restorative parts of the class first and there were a lot of hip and low back openers that we held for long periods of time--which was awesome for me, as those are just what I need, but it was fairly demanding. My groin/adductors were screaming from keeping my legs spread. (Shut up.)  So when the teacher started transitioning us in the yoga nidra, I was certainly ready to lie down comfortably, pull my blanket over me and listen.  She said that in the training/workshop she'd taken some people had actually fallen asleep and snored loudly, which was somewhat disruptive to the other students, so if any of us started sawing wood so to speak, she was going to just come and gently place a hand on us to wake us.  Otherwise we were just going to lie there, listen to her, and let our minds go through the three layers of...something. I forget. But there were definitely three layers involved.

I do not think, boys and girls, that I actually fell asleep. I didn't need to be prodded at any rate, and when she told us during the meditation that we were going to start transitioning out of it, I heard her perfectly. I didn't startle the way you usually do when you doze and wake.  But before she told us we were going to "come back", I was definitely somewhere else.  I was trying to explain it to my friend M2, and all I could liken it to was the breathwork class our mutual friend S and I attended once while we were in massage school, a class which was sorta like yoga if all the yoga was pranayama. I remember getting whacked out on endorphins in that breathwork class and leaving there feeling better than I had in months. The effect of the yoga nidra wasn't as strong, but it was also much shorter, just perhaps the last 20 minutes of the yin/restorative/nidra class.

Anyway.  It was cool.  Would do again. And since Mr Google helpfully provided me with the location of an ongoing yoga nidra class in the Boston area, probably *will* do again.

xoxo

usual baseless excuses and apologies

Very busy, problems with the laptop, can't write on the tablet, blah blah, freakin' blah.

Laptop is fixed and new content will be up shortly.  Thank you for your patience.

xoxo

i take issue

I came across this article today, which claims that, according to a survey, the average woman goes on twice as many diets in her life as she has lovers.  I'm sure it says something (unflattering) about me, but my immediate reaction was, "Huh. Only twice as many?"  I think for me it's more like 4x as many.  I could list for you every guy I've ever boinked, but not every attempt at dieting.  This probably means I should be sluttier. Or less eating-disordered. Or possibly both.  DON'T JUDGE ME.

Besides, both my occupations are heavily female-dominated.  This means I've worked with a lot of women over the years, and let me tell you.  A significant fraction of them started a new diet just about every other Monday and were throwing in the towel by Thursday.  Since most of them were in relationships and not out at the club every weekend fucking random people, the two-to-one statistic still seems bogus to me, even if we're assuming I am less promiscuous and more crazy about my food and body than the average chick. (For the record, I'm not sure I am. On either count.)

So, the question becomes, why do women diet so much?  They're not ALL trying to win supplement company transformation contests.  Maybe it has something to do with advertisements like this.

Or this.

Or this.

How much of this has to seep into your subconscious at a young age before you just "know" that, as a woman, you're supposed to always be making the number on the scale go down? How much has to seep into your subconscious before you think eating disgusting 90 calorie snacks of "diet food" is perfectly normal and acceptable?  How much before you start feeling guilty or full of self-loathing when you do eat the real piece of cheesecake or the actual sugar cookie?

For the record, even though I myself am dieting at the moment and was so hungry after the gym today I could have chewed off my own arm, I would no sooner eat a Fiber One brownie than I would eat dirt. What I did eat while waiting for a decent enough interval to pass that I could make and eat dinner was raw baby carrots*** and ginger tea. When I posted that online, one of my friends who's also doing the challenge said that she'd staved off pre-dinner hunger with ginger tea, raw carrots, and raw broccoli.  (I am *so* gonna win this thing.  Her broccoli probably added an extra 5 calories, ahahaha.)  But seriously. I know it probably sounds elitist or even ridiculous from someone who admits to thinking pb&j quest bars are delicious, but I cannot conceive of eating a vaguely brownie-like substance just because it's only 90 calories. For 90 calories you could have an actual cookie. That tastes good.

This whole 90-calorie food business pisses me off almost as much as the time several years ago that I read an article where some self-satisfied little snot of a nutritionist sniffed that *half* a baked potato is a serving. I'm sure I was just overly sensitive because ever since I was a young child, I've been eating a whole damn potato by myself. God. What a gluttonous pig.  I've mercifully blocked out whatever else was in that article, but I'm pretty sure it was one of those that told women they should be eating 1500 calories a day. When not, y'know, dieting.

Gah.

So, anyway, yeah. Back to my thesis.  I don't believe that the average woman has only been on 16 diets in her lifetime. Unless she's under the age of 25.  It's just too pervasive in our culture.

xoxo

***two things about baby carrots, if you'll indulge me.  Firstly, I was deeply disappointed (and I am not even kidding you) when I learned that baby carrots are not actually baby carrots, they're just regular carrots cut into smaller pieces. Next you'll be telling me those baby corns you get in Chinese food aren't really babies. Or corn.  Or something.  Secondly, my friend and I, through rigorous scientific experiments conducted at Cranes Beach, Ipswich MA for the past six summers, have ascertained that the only food seagulls will not eat (and therefore will not steal from out of your beach bag when you leave it unattended to go in the ocean) are baby carrots.  To control for the fact that perhaps they are averse to the color orange, we tested them with Doritos.  No.  Seagulls are down with Doritos.