the treadmill of life

Or something like that.

Ever feel like life is an endless series of two steps forward, one step back, one step forward, two steps back?  I've had a couple very positive life things happen recently--after a bit of stressful paperwork wrangling and one surprisingly painless phone call after it was initially screwed up, I got some money that I had coming to me, and then I got some very good news on my recent biopsy. Yay, me. I barely had time to process those things and think, huh, life's all rainbows and sunshine and kitten orgasms for once, when we had flash flooding that deposited water into my basement twice in one day and then last night my dryer just died just as I was putting a load of clothes into it. (The upshot of which is that I currently have a rack full of hanging laundry in my now-dry-as-a-bone basement. I feel like a hillbilly.*** At least it's not on my porch.) 

It's enough to make a person wish that things could just run smoothly and problem-free for a solid month JUST ONCE. I mean, spending one's day off shopvaccing puddles up or having to buy a new clothes dryer are infinitely better problems than, y'know, cancer or being completely broke, but is just one month without anything breaking in the house, no unexpected giant bills, no health problems, no work drama, no agita of any kind--is that too much to hope for? Apparently so!

And thus it is with fitness.  A step forward, a step back.  I was just--just--getting back to the point with my lifting where I was prior to my hip problem when I had my little surgical procedure last week. When the nice recovery room nurse was giving me my discharge instructions which included no heavy lifting for a few days, I inquired what "heavy" meant since I lift weights recreationally.  "We usually say nothing over ten pounds, " the nice recovery room nurse said. "What kind of weights are we talking about?" 

"Well, I deadlift like 200 pounds."

Blink. "Oh. Well, I wouldn't do THAT. You'd probably start bleeding again."  She told me to check with my gyn's office since "that's such a specific situation" she didn't know what to tell me.

Turns out my gyn's office did not want me lifting for 7-10 days. Seriously? For that little procedure? Whatever. I dutifully obeyed doctor's orders, though on day 6 I decided to try some bodyweight dips after cardio.  Oh, I regretfully had to admit they were right.  I could barely do 3 sets of 8 bodyweight dips when I had been doing them with a frigging 35lb plate hanging off me the week before. So on day 7, I went into the weight room and did a workout that was probably equivalent to one I'd have done 6 or 9 months before. Completely demoralizing. One little minor surgical procedure and a week off wipes out 6 months of hard work and progress?  Now, I know it will come back. Yesterday I had a session that while not good per se was at least not humiliatingly bad.  But it seems to point out that things get worse a whole shit ton easier than they get better. Especially at my age.

Add to that that my dieting since the end of May, while successful on one level (back down to 114 as of yesterday), has arguably made me look worse. I mean (and I'll sound like a complete douche saying this, I'm well aware), no false modesty, I look awesome in my clothes now.  BUT I look worse in my underwear/bathing suit/nekkid. One step forward, one step back.  I suppose that since a lot more people see my in my clothes than do in my underwear/bathing suit/neekid, I should err on the side of that. But, like a month of no problems, crises, or aggravation, it would be stellar to reach a point where I look good in and out of my clothes. Oh, yeah. I've had that. It was called being 20 years old. Duh.

xoxo

***credit to my friend P who used that descriptor in a post the other day and cracked me up; it fits here

fat athletes

This is my favorite fat athlete, (one of)my (semi-)newly adopted kitteh(s), Toby. Toby needed to use my foam roller after one of his rousing games of fetch, an athletic endeavor which I will manage to capture on video someday. (Even more film-worthy is when he carries both of his balls around in his mouth at once. And that sentence is much funnier when you realize he regularly tries to hump his brother Eddie. Oh, Toby. Oh, Andrea.) ANYWAY, Toby weighs 19 pounds, yet he regularly will run up and down the stairs for five minutes at a time or jump straight up into the air to catch his ball when thrown to him. I like to say that he is all about fighting the stereotype that fat=lazee.

 Also apparently fighting that stereotype is Oly lifter Sarah Robles. She first came to my attention through this article which I saw linked to in a forum where the comments were not, shall we say, generally kind. Soon after in another (more supportive towards varying body types) venue I saw a link to this post on Ms Robles' own blog. Finally I came across this. I'll just sit here tapping my fingers while you go read all that shiz so you'll understand the context of what I'ma say. Or not. I dunno how busy all y'all are.

 Tap. Tap. Tap.

 You back? Okay. I've got lots to say and plenty of time to say it, since I'm home recovering from my first (minor) surgical procedure. (Don't tell my employer, but I coulda actually gone to work today. Yesterday's anesthesiologist appears to have been better at mixing up drug cocktails than the stand up comedian I had the last time I had surgery and I've been feeling remarkably non-groggy compared to that post-surgical experience. Lesson: doctors who crack you up with jokes in broken English prior to your procedure may NOT in fact be superior to ones who dryly and factually sit down and explain the reasons they might need to switch to general but why those reasons are highly unlikely to happen with you.) Where was I? I'd claim the digressions were post-anesthesia but none of yous would believe that anyway, so.

My first thought is that Ms Robles has A Cause and there's nothing wrong with that. If she feels fat athletes, much like fat people in general, face certain amounts of discrimination and she wishes to point that out and fight against it, well, good on her.  And if she's simultaneously used her speaking out on this to not only raise awareness but to raise money towards her Olympic aspirations, I still have no problem.  If people like what you're saying or sympathize with you and wish to give you their financial support, there's nothing immoral or unseemly about taking it. Despite what some of our parents might have drilled into us at impressionable ages.  Ahem.

I do, however, think that there's some disingenuity going on here. Of course, when one is interviewed by a journalist, one has little to no control over how one's interview is then spun. Therefore one cannot fault the rather sensationalist headline of the first article.  Ms Robles may be broke, but "living in poverty" calls up a whole different set of circumstances for most of us.  And there are probably a hell of a lot of Olympic athletes competing in similarly obscure sports who are broke. Devoting the amount of training time anyone who hopes to be world-class in anything that doesn't then *pay* is very likely to lead to that sort of circumstance. Hence the need for sponsors. Whether those sponsors are one's rich parents, one's NBA employers, Nike, or a bunch of internet strangers is irrelevant and totally dependent on one's own circumstances.  The truth is, anyone competing in an obscure sport probably isn't going to get sponsorship from Nike, Wheaties, or wherever, even if they are conventionally attractive.  The fact that Marlen Esparza has a CoverGirl contract frankly has as much to do with the fact that there's something weirdly titillating about female boxing in our culture as with the fact that she's very pretty, as Fit and Feminist obliquely points out.

Also disingenuous or at least naive is Ms Robles' above referenced blog post about the women's Olympic clothes not being available in her size. The complaint should be that if these companies are going to provide free clothes in exchange for the exposure, then they have a responsibility to custom tailor them to fit all the athletes. I find it unbelievable that they do not. Do we really think all those NBA dudes can wear off-the-rack clothing, even "6x"?  Now if they are getting custom clothing but the female athletes are not, then Ms Robles has a legitimate bitch.  That's sexism.  It's not discrimination, however, if companies don't make and sell clothes that fit every conceivable customer.  I understand and sympathize with larger women who complain about not having the number of clothing choices as their smaller sisters. I myself wish more companies made jeans that fit my stubby little legs and I'm not even *that* short.  But not making clothes to fit fat or short people doesn't make a company bad or discriminatory. It may make them stupid and short-sighted in cutting out a whole possible market, but it doesn't make them prejudiced.

I *do* understand Ms Robles' point that athletic wear companies need to understand and acknowledge that female athletes come in all sizes and that, yes, fat women play sports and work out.  I've seen it happen in the other direction as well--some of my Amazon compatriots who are, like me, pocket-sized have trouble finding weightlifting belts that are tight enough. It's like no one thinks a woman whose waist measurement is 25 inches is gonna be deadlifting, yo. Similarly, I bought the smallest size Versa Gripps and even so I think part of my difficulty with them is that my hands are so damn small.  As annoying as that may be, it is understandable. There probably aren't that many women with waists of 25 inches or under in the market for Inzer belts and there probably aren't that many 4x sized women buying a whole lot of yoga pants.  We exist but we're a niche market and niche markets ain't that profitable in general.  Maybe the answer lies in the opposite direction: when lifting is something most 15 year old girls do and the great majority of plus sized women realize that they can and should go to the gym, then these companies will be forced to provide clothes and equipment that fits them by popular demand. Is it "build it and they will come" or the other way around?

All that dissenting aside, reading all these articles and the responses to them made me do a bunch of thinking.  I myself, having had a fat mom and grandmother (long before I had a fat, spazzy cat), have never been under the false assumption that fat always equals lazy or the converse. That's just silly. It's also, I've noticed, usually espoused by one of two types of people: either "born again" former fat people who did get that way by  sitting on the sofa slothfully mainlining Cheetos (note: these people tend to be even more preachy and obnoxious than reformed smokers, and that's saying something) or skinny people who've never had a weight problem a day in their lives because they can't sit still and/or have the appetites of your average five year old.    So I have a certain amount of empathy/sympathy for Ms Robles' overriding cause.

I also cringed in feminist horror at some of the comments towards that first article referenced. There was a lot of "well, she's fat and ugly and hideous, so OF COURSE she'll never have sponsorships."  While it's true that the real ad money goes to the athletes, male and female, who are a.) talented b.) involved in mega-popular sports and c.) are considered hawt (stand up, Mr Brady and Mr Beckham), it's also true that for female athletes looks sometimes trump talent and for male athletes, looks matter a LOT less.  Maria Sharapova may be rated #1 in the world atm, but she's made more money from sponsorships than for actually playing tennis, and that's all predicated on being blonde and hawt.  Serena Williams, on the other hand, may have had a $55 million dollar Nike deal but has still been out-earned by Sharapova, commercial-wise, and it's hard to argue that that isn't because she's a fairly dark-skinned black woman and dark-skinned black women are outside our culture's dominant beauty ideal.

Of course, if you don't find this picture hot, there's something wrong with your eyes. What.a.body.  But, alas, I am not in charge of determining this culture's beauty norms, so whatever. I just wanted to use Serena's recent post-Wimbleton pic because I lurve her.

And here are a few male athletes who've raked in lots of sponsorship/commercial money.

Taste is in the eye of the beholder, but they're not exactly eye candy in my humble opinion.

Lesson?  For men, what you can do is the most important thing. For women, looking conventionally attractive while doing what you can do is the most important thing.  When women play along with this by suggesting other ladies like Ms Robles are too hideous to belong in a magazine, I don't see this changing any time soon.  To be fair, most of the truly horrible comments I read were from guys.

I also read an interesting comment along the lines of (paraphrased)  "I sometimes wonder if people who compete in strongmen/powerlifting use strength as an excuse to be fat."  That sort of boggled my mind.  I suppose this is why people like Ms Robles have to fight the fight against fat discrimination. No one needs "an excuse" to be fat. Being fat is not a moral failing. But when you have people who are actual competitive athletes and are fat setting world records and appearing in the Olympics and so on, it obviously makes many people extremely uncomfortable.  Probably as uncomfortable as the fact that to be an Olympic female gymnast you have to be a pre-pubescent adolescent girl makes me. But that's another post and I've already digressed all over the place.

Writing this and looking for pictures did keep me from being bored for a couple hours though, and since it's all about me...

xoxo

banana almond protein muffins

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups almond flour

2/3 cup oat bran

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 scoops (62g) ON 100% whey protein, banana cream flavor

2 small very ripe bananas, mashed

3 tablespoons sugar free vanilla syrup***

2 tablespoons oil

Directions:
Combine all ingredients until well-blended.  Fill 6 greased muffin tins. Bake at 350 degrees for fifteen minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.  Nom.

Macros:
311 calories, 16g protein, 20g fat, 21.6g carbs, 6.1g fiber.

***if you don't have or don't wish to use vanilla syrup, you can substitute 3 tablespoons milk or cream. If you do substitute, you may want to add a teaspoon of vanilla extract and/or Splenda (or the sweetener of your choice) to taste.

Small but filling!

xoxo

we come bearing gifts

I recently celebrated my 25th year working for my employer. Well, according to them. Actually I was hired in January 1986, which is 26 years, muthafuckas, but the hospital I work for has gone through so many mergers and changes in affiliation in the past 26 years of changing health care climate that somehow my "anniversary date" has mutated. They can say whatever they want; they've had 26 years of my life.  All the best years, I'm sure.  1986...I was practically a child...so young, pretty, full of hope and ambition and faith in human nature...

Sigh.

ANYWAY, since they think this year is my silver anniversary, I was invited to an honorary banquet which I did not attend.  As many of you know, I am deeply antisocial and going to some stupid function to get a free bad meal and a congratulatory piece of paper was not, y'know, high on my list of things to do.

Some of my co-workers who were also celebrating anniversaries did however attend and they encouraged me to at least GET THE FREE APPRECIATION GIFT to which I am entitled.  In the interoffice mail this week, the certificate which I did not pick up in person arrived, along with--yes!--a catalog with the gifts to which my 25 years of service entitle me .  I have until the last week of August to pick one. I spent some time this afternoon perusing it.  I was deeply disappointed that, apparently, 25 years does not rate a big screen TV.  (Rumor has it that's 30.)  I was deeply disappointed in all the offerings in fact.

It was a weird assortment. Everything from the trademark colonial rocking chairs that the hospital seems to bestow on everyone they wish to honor (and which, frankly, I would not put in my home if they paid me) to jewelry to cameras (too bad I just bought one) to a plethora of iPod docking devices (too bad I'm happy with mine) to deep fryers to deeply ugly vases and bookends to chainsaws (seriously!) to desk chairs to leaf blowers to knife blocks.  Weird and random.  I finally decided I'm probably going to choose a watch. The majority of the women's watches are fairly gaudy and overly blingy, but there's one kinda sporty one I liked.  Never mind that I haven't worn a watch regularly since 2005.  It's better than a pressure cooker or one of those godawful rocking chairs.

But then I was thinking, huh.  Of this weird assortment of random items, why aren't there any sporting goods?  Couldn't the hospital buy me a bike?  Or at least a heart rate monitor or a new gym bag?  It's like they don't want me to be healthy. No, they'd rather gift me with a turkey fryer which would probably explode if the deep frying didn't clog my arteries first.  I see their game. They don't want me to live long enough to qualify for that 60inch flat screen.

I came home to find another missive from the hospital in the US mail.  This one from the financial counseling office.  Seems they have determined that the portion of my upcoming first surgical procedure that *I* will be responsible for is 250 bucks. Please pay up *before* your surgical date, bitch.  Payment plans available if you cannot afford the whole thing in these difficult financial times!

Can I just trade them in a fucking rocking chair for that?  I don't even...

Spend less money on useless award banquets and wave the co-pays for your employees, assholes.

Yeah, I know. They just don't want me to live long enough to collect the TV.

xoxo

President Obama, help me.

This post may have been written under the influence of intoxicating substances.  Speaking of which, I didn't see any fine cognac or Irish whiskey or beer-of-the-month clubs in their stupid catalog either.

sun's out, guns out!

OR...am I there yet??!!?

My youthful inspiration and ideal, the cultural touchpoint that implanted in my brain that a beautiful woman with muscles is both sexeh and badass and just totally awesome in every way:

Well, it took just over 20 years***, so I am no longer anywhere near as pretty as a young Linda Hamilton, but my arms, shoulders, and upper chest now look exactly the way I always wanted them to.  Here are some recent non-flexing pictures:

I told y'all you'd rue the day I bought the new camera.

xoxo

***If only someone had told me about the concept of high weight/low reps + progression in 1992.  Sigh.

in honor of my dad

It occurs to me that if this post was really in honor of my father (RIP, Dad, we miss you <3), it should rightfully have squat video to showcase the Bulgy Polish Catcher's Thighs he gifted me with being put to good use. Unfortunately that was not on the video agenda today. There is plenty of footage of me walking around in leggings, showing them off in all their chunky glory, however. That'll have to do.

What was on the video agenda today? First up, rack pulls!

Some notes before we begin, eh? You'll notice that the camera angle changes from one side to the other in the course of these. Here's the thing. I haven't done these in a good three weeks because of my lil hip problem and also?  Any time I do them it's a crapshoot whether I'm going to feel strong as fuck and rip out a PR or whether I'll inexplicably not be able to move weight I moved easily a week or two before. No rhyme or reason. I figured that today I would video my set at 165 so that even if it became apparent this was gonna be a crap day, I'd at least have that. I set up on the incline bench press bench.  Bueno!  165 felt easy peasy. Gonna try for the PR, but no need to video all my sets. So I took my camera off the bench. Then some guys camped out there to, y'know, do incline bench. The nerve!  Thus the rest of the rack pull video is from my non-preferred side.  (It's tough to be me.)

165x5:

205x1.5:
(205x2 would be a PR, but I just couldn't get that second rep locked out completely.)

205x0:
If my head wasn't out of the frame, I'm sure you'd have been able to read my lips.

205x2:

Third time's the charm!

Not really happy at all with my form. There's entirely too much back rounding. It was bad enough when I played them back on the camera at the gym, but looking at them on my computer? Eek.  Definitely need to video these again the next time I do them.  And I'm going for two plates.

Next up!  Weighted dips!

Before I show you this first video, I want to stress to you just how crowded that corner of the weight area is and how flummoxed I was trying to figure out where I could set up my camera.  I put it on the seat of the leg press and this was the result:

BW+25x7:

Ha!  Yup, you can't actually see my upper body.  I left this video in, though, so you could see me set up. Nothing, uh, phallic about strapping that plate between your legs, is there? I feel my metaphorical balls grow every time I do it.  So then I grabbed my Y employee accomplice, Steve, and asked him if he could film.  I did another seven reps only to find out that I hadn't actually instructed Steve how to start videoing. Oops. But I had another set left in me!

BW+25x7:
Once again, third time's the charm!

These look like maybe I could've gone a little deeper, but I'm hoping that's just the camera angle, because Steve told me they looked good. In fact, he told me that most of the guys in the gym couldn't do those.  I didn't tell him that's because my metaphorical balls keep growing. Just KIDDING.

I should really stop discussing testicles in a post dedicated to my father.  Sorry, Dad.

Hope y'all had a wonderful Father's Day!

xoxo

technical difficulties and updates

I really, seriously tried to post up pictures and the recipe of my cheesecake last week as promised.  However I cut and pasted the recipe into my post and, though I could see it in the draft, it was coming up blank on the actual post. I do not know if blogger is attempting to foil me from using cut n' paste as an anti-plagiarism device (ha!) or what my damage is, but I just could not make it work. Then, somehow, because I am so very technically proficient, I erased half the post and couldn't get it back. Then I was really busy for a couple/few days and didn't try have time to try to figure it out.

Basically what I'm saying here is that I've lost interest in the whole shenanigans now and you're never getting that recipe. However, it's just my own personal riff on this cheesecake recipe and since there are pages and pages of other people's adaptations in that thread, if you're really interested, you can just experiment. The main change I make is that instead of using all fat free cream cheese (which is an oxymoron, not to mention a crime against nature) I use one part fat free cream cheese to two parts neufchatel/farmer's cheese. This does increase the calories but it makes it yummier. And less against my own ethical, moral positions.*** Ahem. I also decrease the splenda but sub out the milk with DaVinci 's sugar free syrup (which comes in very many different flavors--since I used banana flavored whey protein in my last cake, I used coconut DaVinci's syrup for a tropical vibe.) I leave out the salt and the vanilla extract. And decrease the baking time at 325 from 30 to 28 minutes and then turn the oven temp down.

See, that's basically a recipe right there. How hard was that? God.

And you don't need to see a picture, because my food styling sucks anyway.

You'd much rather see a cute picture of a doggy. Trust.

Updates, if you are keeping score:  I (Zercher) squatted and (Romanian) deadlifted yesterday morning for the first time in almost two weeks and since I can walk, sit, and stand today, I'm assuming my piriformis is a-okay now.  And my initial (small, diagnostic) surgery is scheduled for July 9, so apparently my gynecologists and their office don't think I am on the verge of dropping dead.  Cool.  That gives me a whole nother month to hit the gym hard and get my affairs in order. (Kidding. Mostly kidding.)

xoxo

***In my religion, that I have just made up, fat free dairy products are a sin. Fat free Greek yogurt is only a minor venial**** sin.  Fat free cream cheese is verging on a mortal sin. Fat free half and half is so heinous I'm not sure you can confess your way out of it.

****Do people who weren't brought up catholic know the difference between a mortal and a venial sin? Look it up!