i wanna do a couple other very bad things

Well, that depends on your definition of bad and your definition of want, but we'll get to that later. First, a tanning update.  I cracked and bought a Groupon for tanning, despite my certainty that it will give me cancer instantaneously, and then I also bought some super special tanning bed lotion that cost over $20 off Amazon that some other internet friends pimped out to me (I was so ignorant of this whole process I was completely unaware you needed super special tanning lotion) and then I was so busy at, and tired from, work that I didn't exactly leave myself time to do the tanning before I have to take my "after" pictures this week. Plus, honestly, I'm still a little skeered.  But I have to use that Groupon and that lotion, so it'll eventually happen. Meanwhile I fell back on the Tan Towels the lovely Ms Bethany recommended.  I am not sure my arms are a color actually found on humans in nature and my belly and legs need another coat today, having started out extra white, but I have to say, the faux tan did bring out my definition in the gym lighting last night.  So, at least partial success.

Now, onto other matters.  One of the very bad things I want to do is only bad in the sense that I have always been against it and have come out against it publicly in this very blog. And I don't so much actually want to do it as much as think I should do it. So, with those caveats out of the way, lemme set the scene.  I have always maintained that I do just enough cardio to keep me in shape for everyday life, i.e. I can sprint for and catch a train successfully without feeling like I'm gonna die. Well, a couple of Saturdays ago I was in that exact position, sprinting to catch the commuter rail home from work.  I made the train. And so did the people just behind me, a couple in which the mom was carrying a nine month old and the dad was carrying a folded up stroller. I made the train but I did feel mildly like I was gonna die. It's not that my heart rate was that high or that it didn't come back down, but my lungs killed. And I thought, Andrea, your VO2 max must suck or something and you couldn't have even been running *that* fast. (Nothing to disillusion you about how fit you are as being paced by people carrying a twenty pound infant and a baby carriage!) So, I glumly admitted to myself that I should probably suck it up and do a little more strenuous cardio a little more often. Specifically, I should suck it up and do HIIT, which I have always maintained I have no intentions of doing, since doing sprint intervals till you feel like puking sounds like no fun at all and I think working out ought to be, on the whole, fun.  Deadlifting is fun. Farmers walks are fun. Hitting shit is fun.  Even weighted planks are fun. Intervals are not so fun.

But I'm considering them.

And now onto the second thing. People who are grossed out by potty talk and the mention of bodily functions really need to bail now.  Got it?

Are you gone?

I mean it. If you read after this, it's your own damn responsibility.

Okay.  The second bad thing I would really like to do is colonic irrigation.  I first read about this in the Globe sometime in the '90s*** and it immediately seemed to me like something I would like to try.  To delve straight into the TMI, though I would not say I am chronically constipated, I often feel like when I go, I could go more, but it won't happen.  Particularly when I am dieting and on the poverty calories.  In fact, the best thing about having a cheat day while dieting is not eating all the crap food I've been missing as much as the monster dump the next day.  That feeling of my intestines being totally cleaned out, not in an unpleasant diarrhea way but in a nothing's-blocked-up way, is extremely... pleasurable? satisfying? nice. I'ma go with "nice" because any other terminology sounds vaguely sexual and I'm pretty sure you people are already vowing never to read this blog again.  ANYWAY.  I have always had it in my head that that is the feeling colonic irrigation would give you.  But I obviously never did it in 1994 and over the years I sorta forgot that the whole procedure ever existed.  Until I recently saw it mentioned again somewhere. Being in the midst of my poverty calorie cycle and not happy with the bathroom consequences of such, I thought ah, yes! I always wanted to do that!  So I started googling.

It costs a lot of money.  Plus, I'm sure the initial consultation that goes along with my $130 first session would be all about how I'm not supposed to be eating meat or ingesting sugar or drinking beer or whatever and I'm not sure I could sit and listen to that spiel when all I want is to get that empty feeling of a mondo poop.  Not to mention that when I picture in my head what the operators of some place called ISIS Holistic Clinic must look like, all I get is this:

And then I start giggling, because Fred Armisen in that wig is never not funny.  So, colonic irrigation, i.e. hydrotherapy, probably wouldn't end well for me.  Which is just as well since the medical community is probably as against it as they are tanning beds.  Best case scenario, you've wasted your money engaging in an activity like douching or liver "cleanses" that presumes to clean an area of the body that totally doesn't need any outside help; worst case scenario, some hippie chick who looks like Fred Armisen doesn't know what she's doing and perforates your intestine.

Still sounds better than HIIT.

xoxo

***apparently this was some kind of big fad briefly in the early 90s, as it's a punch line in one of the first Ab Fab episodes as well.  Saffy's yelling at Eddie about how she outsources responsibility for everything in her life including "...and once a week someone shoves a hose up your bum and flushes it out for you!"