When in Doubt, Go for the Back Row

I few months ago, I joined GoodLife.  And hired a personal trainer.  I pay a whackload of money for some guy with a masochistic streak to torture me three times a week.

Jason, my trainer, hails from Kemptville.  I believe he’s about 25 or 26, and seems to be in pretty good shape.  The first time we worked out together, he made me laugh, because he told me to “give’r”, which is something I’ve only heard TOWTP say (of course, upon relating this to KW, he was incredulous, but he’s originally from New Brunswick, and it seems to me that the use of “give’r” might also be an East coast type thing).  TOWTP, hailing from near Kemptville and having gone to high school there, assures me that the correct spelling of give’r is with the apostrophe.  Now, I try to keep track of the number of “give’r’s” I get per workout, but I usually lose count at around three, or whenever I feel like punching Jason in the face, which happens pretty quickly.

Seriously though, Jason has me doing some pretty interesting stuff, which I appreciate, because just hanging around lifting weights makes me want to fall asleep.  Based on some of my experiences at the gym, I offer you all the following advice.

When presented with row upon row of cardio equipment at the gym, I suggest you head for the back row.  Why, you ask?  Well, because all those people in the back row will otherwise be staring at, and evaluating your ass as you walk/run/crawl on the treadmill.  You know I’m right, because you’ve done it.  Now if you like having your ass evaluated, by all means, take up residence in the first row, but if you’d prefer to get through your workout without worrying whether your shorts have crawled up your butt crack in an unappealing way, or whether your cheeks hang too far over the sides of the bike seat, the back row is the place to be.

If your trainer tells you that you’re going to be jumping rope, and you are a woman who has given birth to children, I suggest you excuse yourself to go to the bathroom before engaging in this activity.  Even if you don’t think you need to go to the bathroom, do it anyway.  Trust me.  If you forget, you can just hope that everyone thinks you’re wet from the waist down because you’ve been sweating.  And start doing your Kegels.  By the way, a Google image search for Kegels (which I did by accident), brings up a picture of a man with an erection.  I kid you not.  I’ll let you do your own search.

When doing crunches or other ab torture, it’s probably ok if you fart because the music in the gym is so loud that no one will hear it anyway.  If your farts stink, I can’t help you.

If you hire a trainer, you should  complain as much as possible about the hell he or she is putting you through.  I look at this as a challenge for the trainer.  I mean, where is the fun in their job if you just meekly do everything they say?

And finally …

GIVE’R

Too Fat

After losing a fair amount of weight (75 pounds or so), I have a bit of a problem with excess skin.  The girls point a little further south than I’d like, and worse, the skin on my stomach is, well, rather hideous.  So, I’ve been setting up consultations with plastic surgeons.  I’m hoping to find one I like and plan to have a tummy tuck and breast lift later on this year.

Upon calling one surgeon’s office, the receptionist asked me for my current height and weight.  I told her, and heard her tapping away for a few seconds.  She came back to the phone to inform me that this particular doctor would not consider me for a tummy tuck, because my BMI was too high.  I would need to lose at least 30 more pounds before I could be a candidate.  But they could see me for a breast lift.

First of all, I can’t even imagine how silly I’d look with perky boobs and a huge flap of belly skin.  Secondly, if I had to choose only one procedure, I would choose the tummy tuck, without hesitation.  So, I told her I was more interested in the tummy tuck, and thus not interested in having the consultation at all.

It irritates me beyond all reason that a surgeon would use a ridiculous calculation like BMI, which tells you almost nothing about body composition and relative fatness, to decide whether to even schedule a consultation with someone.  I mean, to not even look at a person, and decide they are too fat is deplorable.

Just for interest, I decided to figure out what my BMI would be, at various percentages of body fat (which is actually a useful measure of fatness).  I have my body composition measured pretty regularly at the gym.  I don’t plan on losing any muscle, bone or blood, so it is unlikely that my lean body mass will go down (in fact, it may go up).  The lowest healthy body fat percentage for a woman is 14%.  This would be for athletes.  If my body fat percentage was 20% (top end of the “athlete” range), my BMI would be 27.4, smack in the middle of the “overweight” range.  If my body fat were at the top end of the healthy range at 31%, my BMI would be 31.5, which is in the “obese” category.

In fact to get to the highest “healthy” BMI, (24.9), my body fat percentage would have to be 12%.  At which point I’d likely have my hair fall out and stop menstruating.

I am a muscular person.  As such, I will weigh more than most people of a similar size.  Most people who look at me estimate my weight to be 30 pounds less than it actually is, simply because muscle takes up less room in the body.

I don’t know why I am so annoyed by this.  Perhaps because it is just such nonsense.  But more likely because after working so hard to lose the weight, I am still being rejected as “too fat”, by people who haven’t even seen me.  And that really stings.

No Take Backs

So, a week ago, I bought a bathing suit at Walmart.  After getting it home, I decided I didn’t quite like it after all.  The tags were still on it, and I had the receipt, so I decided to return it.  To be told that they could not accept returns on bathing suits.

I asked where in their return policy, conveniently posted on the wall, it said that swimwear was not returnable.  I couldn’t find it anywhere (unless you count swimwear as underwear, which I do not, and truthfully, I think underwear that still has tags on it should be returnable, but whatever).  The customer service clerk called the manager to confirm whether she could take back bathing suits.  He apparently said no.

Now, none of this would be so bad, if a) they could show me on their return policy that swimwear sales are final, and b) they hadn’t just agreed to refund the money to a guy who returned a pair of boots that looked like this:

And that guy didn’t even have a receipt!  I asked to speak to the manager, and waited approximately ten minutes for him to arrive before I gave up and decided to take the bathing suit to another store to see if I’d have better luck.  I’ll keep you posted.

One Red Paperclip

Very interesting.

I can’t believe I didn’t know about this before.  He’s funny, and Canadian.

Whispers

I want to know who came up with the brilliant idea to put a vending machine in the break room about three steps away from my desk.

It wasn’t so bad when the vending machine was one floor up, because I couldn’t hear the chocolate bars whispering to me from there.  And even if I could, my general dislike of climbing stairs and fear of being chastised for taking the elevator up one floor kept me from going up there all that often.

Now that the chocolate bars and I are co-located, I can hear them talking to me constantly.

“Eat me,” says the Mars bar.

“We would taste so good,” say the M&Ms.

“Don’t forget about us,” whine the Doritos.

All this is made worse by the fact that I have to go into the break room to refill my water bottle, which results in a flood of pleas to be eaten from the contents of the vending machine.  I’m surprised no one else can hear it.

And to top it all off, all this junk food is only fifty cents.

I’m fighting a losing battle.

More to Come … Really

I have many things to write about since a whole bunch has been going on.  A preview of the fascinating material to come:

• My personal trainer is trying to kill me.  Why do I pay someone for this?
• It’s gotta be KFC
• Reflections on another 60K

But for now, here’s a picture of the Lorax.  Because the Lorax is super cool.

I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues

The Toilet Whisperer - Reprise

Why do I keep running into the crazy bathroom person?  This week, in addition to the weird whispering, she spent a whole lot of time splashing water on her face.  I mean a lot of time.  And she had a really crazed look in her eyes while she did it.

Today she washed her hands for an excessive period of time.  She was washing her hands when I entered the bathroom.  She was washing her hands when I left the stall.  She was washing her hands after I had finished washing my hands and was leaving the bathroom.

On another note, and I’m almost hesitant to say it for fear of jinxing the whole thing, but I’m going to say it anyway. For the first time in a very very long time, I actually think that maybe, just maybe, I might possibly like my job.

They are openly appreciative of my work.  They are investing in me with training and conferences.  And I hear that people actually get raises there.  It boggles the mind.

Toilet Habits

I can’t seem to keep my mind out of the toilet.  But somebody has to tell me if this is weird, or if it’s just me.

On Tuesday, I’m in the bathroom at work, trying to keep my hand out of the too-high water in the toilet bowl, when I hear someone whispering.  I peek through the crack in the stall door and see a woman at the sink.  I become very very silent.  I hear more whispering.  As far as I can tell, there is no one else in the bathroom, so she must be talking to herself.  She spends an inordinate amount of time in front of the mirror, whispering at herself.  I sit in the stall the whole time, even though I’m long since done my business, because frankly, I’m afraid of her.

Today, I’m in the stall again, when I hear more whispering.  Peeking through the crack, I see the same woman I encountered on Tuesday.  She enters the stall next to me, whispering the whole time.  I listen intently, trying to figure out what she’s saying.  As best I can tell, she’s not speaking English.  Perhaps Hindi.  This time, I decide not to be afraid and exit the stall while she’s still in the room.  We wash our hands side-by-side, but neither of us looks at the other, or speaks (I guess she’s done whispering).

Is it me, or is whispering to yourself in a public bathroom weird?

It’s Shiny. And Red.

As alluded to in my previous entry, one of the “benefits” of my job is that I get to have one of these:

Isn’t it pretty?  So shiny and red.  I have to spend significant amounts of time polishing fingerprints off of it.  I’m getting really good at typing with my thumbs.  Pretty soon, I’m actually going to need one of these:

Back to the Beach

Every year around this time, I head back to the beach to play volleyball.  This necessitates a re-iteration of my rant on appropriate volleyball attire (just for you, WWJD).

String bikinis are not appropriate volleyball attire.  Speedos are not appropriate volleyball attire (actually, Speedos are not appropriate attire for any occasion, anytime, anywhere, and I don’t care if you’re in Europe or European.)  Not that there were any attire violations tonight since it is basically winter.  We had hail earlier today.

I decided I would bike home after volleyball tonight.  One of the many benefits of this city is the large number of bike trails we have here.  This means that I can make the approximately 25K trek from the beach to my house without riding down any streets, save for the last few kilometers.

Tonight’s wildlife count:

• One porcupine
• Two pairs of mallard ducks
• Four rabbits
• Four deer
• More geese than I cared to count

There were some domestic animal sightings as well, including a cat at the beach who was walking dutifully behind his owner, who was carrying a cat carrier.

I also saw a whole bunch of trilliums and a rainbow (the second in as many days).  About halfway home, having spent the first half of the trip kicking myself for not bringing a camera, I realized I had my shiny new CrackBerry.