Palyne

A reader-friend pointed out that I hadn’t posted on Red Cairo for so long people were going to think I’d keeled over. I have six blogs for different topics and I can’t keep up with one let alone six, so… that’s the way it goes. But I feel sadly remiss at not posting because this one, Red Cairo, is my most personal blog, where I talk about my dreams and weird experiences and psychic sessions and so on. You know, all the stuff that would make readers elsewhere run screaming into the night.

I’ve often felt I survived well in the world mostly because my weirdness was well hidden. I “pass”, as people with issues such as deafness and autism call it; when you function well enough “like other people” that conveniently, they mistakenly assume you are one of them. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s taken me a year to get around to confessing this. I confessed to my journal buddies, and to a trainer friend, and now on my blog.

Have you ever had one of those situations where you’re having some feeling or experience, and it’s powerful and real for you, but you feel like telling anybody about it makes you sound like some kind of lying whining goon? You just feel so stupid you don’t even want to bring it up. Well that’s how I feel about this.

I’ll summarize it like this:

Weight lifting hard seems to be stimulating my body in a way that invokes a ton of emotion. I suspect it is stored biochemical based on past emotion. It’s not positive. It is fear and rage and more, a flood of a million feelings at once, so powerful that the first time it happened, I dropped my dumbell and nearly ran from the room, and went into denial and ‘forgot’ about my interest in weight lifting for six months.

It’s happened repeatedly now. It profoundly affects my doing it at all, or more than several minutes.

I love weight lifting. Love it. I think it’s the greatest feeling, I think testosterone is the coolest natural drug ever, I think I feel so good when I am lifting that it’s almost a different personality on me entirely. Much more tough and competent and physical.

So anything that interferes with that is a problem. I’ve never heard of anybody having their bodybuilding interfered with by an emotional problem. That’s just ridiculous, it seems to me.

It made me wonder if my self-therapy about a horrible childhood, a two year period (mostly) during which I gained ~200 lbs (age 22-24), might have instead just ‘insulated’ me from my own body, my own emotions. It wasn’t long after that I broke through the sociopathic repression of emotion, and who knows?–maybe it was the massive fat that somehow made my body feel less threatened by that; maybe all that stored biochemical of the past is there, stored under the myelin sheath of the nerves as the Biogram theory postulates, and weight lifting is stimulating, releasing it or something. I don’t know. I have theories but I don’t really understand it.

All I know is that weight lifting as a physical thing is awesome and I have no problem with it and am driven to do it. But the emotional overwhelm that seems to kick in some minutes in now — it didn’t used to. (?) — has made it an incredibly difficult, challenging activity.

This is July 2008. It’s basically been a year since I was doing any regular workouts. I’m down to 366#, which with an over 500# high weight is not so bad, but I’ve got a very long way to go. Exercise is starting to feel critical.

I’m starting to WANT to do it. I believe this isn’t just because I’m lighter. I believe that my average insulin is lower over time and my body is hence able to access more of my stored fat for energy. I did a glucose test recently and my numbers were pretty good:

Fasting: 60 (I’d fasted too long, it was late afternoon)
~110+ fast-acting carbs (orange juice, & blueberry smoothie)
15 minutes later: 130
1 hour later: 107
2 hours later: 97

I’m certain my blood sugar wasn’t anywhere near that healthy a couple of years ago, when eating just about anything would nearly put me into a coma a little while later, when I had huge very dark patches under my armpits from insulin resistance. My body seems to be healing somewhat, from eating well. Thank God!

So this is a new month and I feel it’s time to start again.

And if what I’m lifting is less about iron and more about the weight of my emotion, so be it. If I need to play angry rock at 160 decibals and scream my head off while doing it, so be it. Maybe on some level the physical work is forcing me to experience a part of myself I wouldn’t otherwise, that sitting comfortably, sedentary, never forces me to face. It’s difficult. But I guess it’s about time.

PJ

No, it’s not a form of punctuation.

“Periodization” refers to planned variation: you make a Grand Plan for your weight lifting, your goals, and you break a given timeframe into periods, and using some simple calculations only geeks get into, you figure out how much weight and how many reps and sets you should be doing during each period (quarter, month, week, day, whatever).

There’s more to this and further complexities but this is what I’m starting with for now. Why? Well here is Mistress Krista’s take on it, though note her page caveats that this isn’t all there can be to it of course:

For workouts to be consistently successful, intensity and volume should be varied over time. Working with a high intensity and/or high volume consistently results in insufficient recovery, and will eventually lead to overtraining, while working with intensity and volume that is too low will not be challenging enough to stimulate growth.

She’s my web-hero, a former overweight married marshmallow sort who metamorphed into a seriously buff, funny, smart, over-educated Canadian with a great website.

***

OK. Usually this process has a ‘variation’ programmed in, increasing weight or reps differently. The goal is to ensure that at the end of the overall period of time set forth, you will have increased your 1RPM* weight by the desired amount.

*1RPM stands for ‘one repetition maximum’. Generally, it means the most weight you could lift but only once. A person generally works out at some percentage of this. The lower the percentage of the weight, the higher the number of repetitions, and vice-versa.

Asleep yet?

There is a calculation you can use to determine your 1RPM, which if you’re setting up your periodization based on this number (so it becomes part of the calculation), will affect what you lift and where you end up. For example on the Arnold Press, if my newbie barbie-arms can lift 10# about 9 times before actual pain kicks in enough to prevent much more, the formula would look like this:

weight(#) * (1 + ( {intensity multiplier} * reps) )

The {intensity multiplier} can range from .02 to about .09 depending on how insane intense you are about it and what seems possible for your muscles. The higher the number, the more you’d better either be a beginner (which I am) (which tends to see larger gains than most), or probably doing something unusual and potentially chemically illegal. .03 to .06 is what some consider a ‘normal’ and ‘moderate’ range to aim for, and .033 is the number used to calculate a starting 1RM.

I decided to use .060 since I’m a beginner and my starting weight is very low, so my increase should be decent.

On the Arnold Press, using the .060 multiplier, my 10# weight times 9Reps max where I feel I’m starting from, comes out to 15.4# as my 1RPM. That’s where I start.

The 12 week periodization spreadsheet I got at Krista’s site thanks to Lisa (scroll to bottom to see link), if I follow this training regimen, varies my workout from 8 to 13 lbs, reps from 6 to 12, and sets from 3 to 5, depending on the week. At the finish of the 12 weeks, if I keep it up, allegedly I will be up to 16.94# as my 1RM for that exercise.

Genius readers will observe that this is a mere 1.54 lbs 1RPM increase. I noticed this too. I thought at first maybe the math didn’t well apply to the pitifully small weights I’m starting with, but I think it’s normal. That number isn’t really what you’re lifting, it’s a beautiful on-paper number. It’s low because there’s only a low repetition reached at that point.

I will be starting with lifts at 10# and ending with lifting 15#, which is a 50% increase over the course of 12 weeks, which actually isn’t bad at all. Once I can do the 15# for more than 6Reps (that’s why the 1RPM number is small, is because the 15# is only at 6Reps, a low number), my 1RPM will be a higher number. Then I could start again.

I’m not really sure of all the logic of this. I mean… well I’m just going to do it and see how it works out.

***

I have a chronic insecurity about having no idea what the hell I’m doing, combined with an understanding that if anybody can hurt themselves overdoing things it’s me, full owner of the ‘Anything worth doing is worth overdoing’ motto.

Finding an outline that lets me put in what I’m doing and calculates stuff for me, for an allegedly safe and gradual and varied workout, a methodical approach to an increase in capacity, sounds good to me. It’s still ‘my’ workout; where I am now, the exercises I choose, etc. And I can vary the details like the intensity of the plan if it seems necessary.

So far I’ve had two weeks of workouts and each week has morphed into something new before it came around, but it’s worked out ok. I think I found this periodization stuff at a good time to pick a good starting place for the next 12 weeks.

***

Either that or I just want someone else to tell me what to do.

Last night I noticed an occasional phenomenon. I wonder if this is because I am so new to the weight lifting thing.

In one case, I was doing this set and it wasn’t hard at all until I’d done like 6 reps, then the last two were very hard. I barely finished 8 reps each of three sets. Then after resting a bit more I decided to try more. A rocking song was on. And suddenly, it was like it had lost half its weight. I still had the muscle scream around rep 6.5 on each set, but as I was lifting the weight, it just seemed so… well, just so NOT heavy the way it had been the first three sets. It made me wonder if there is such a thing as a ’second wind’ in weight lifting like in running.

Last week I did a couple kinds of rear deltoid raises and this week, oddly, I couldn’t really do any at the 10# weight. I finally dumped the weights, worried I would hurt myself, and I could not for the life o’ me keep decent form, and just practiced doing nothing but my arms, muscles tense, decently far back (I couldn’t get them far enough back with the weights), and I really felt it bigtime, this with no weights at all. Which is odd. I don’t think it’s possible to get weaker is it. Anyway, no big deal, moving on.

One thing about working out at this size is that a lot of exercises that are isolation exercises (working one muscle group) become accidentally compound exercises (working multiple muscle groups). Anything with a knee bend becomes compound for me because holding my body up with a bent knee is easier said than done. And one done lying on the ground on my side becomes compound as it takes both my legs scissored a bit to maintain balance against the lift. Some are just plain hard, like the seated rear deltoid raise requires scrunching over and putting the dumbells behind your legs; my body proportions are just in the way.

My weight continues to stay the same or rise slightly, despite that I couldn’t be more lowcarb (or more low calorie for that matter) short of fasting. I am slightly bloated, I have a couple areas where I can totally tell how much fluid I am carrying; my fault, not drinking enough water. But I could swear my stomach seems smaller. Maybe I’m imagining it. Well, I measure again at the end of next week, so we’ll see.

My goal for today is to get the big desk with sewing machine and boxes out of my room, and into the living room, and then get this slant-desk/table I bought for myself like a year ago, out of the box and assembled fully and put in my room. Now that I finally almost feel up to kneeling, squatting, getting on and off the floor, etc. the number of things that need doing around my house are suddenly starting to pop into visibility!

Every exercise I do seems to hit my back or obliques in some way. They are chronically exhausted muscle-wise. They don’t hurt like being in pain or anything; I’m not worried that I am injuring myself, and I’m being pretty nice to them. It’s just that even walking to the kitchen or opening the refrigerator uses them. I have been so insanely inactive for years that any movement is more than they are used to. Now I am not only working them out with weights, targeted no less, but everything else I do that moves me around more, affects them as well. My entire torso from under the shoulders to over the hips constantly is telling me, “Let’s just go lie down or something” even when the rest of my body feels fine.

But my body is demanding sleep. I’ve operated on basically 2-5 hours sleep most nights for most of my adult life. I have permanent black circles under my eyes, and that doesn’t even start on sleep apnea and being oxygen deprived. Well normally, I work on the computer, I can sit motionless nearly from the time I awake till the time I go to sleep. Lack of sleep sucks, but I make do, because it’s the life of a single mom: you don’t have time for stuff you need to do let alone want to do. But now, I can’t seem to do that anymore. Since I started working out, it’s like my body demands 8 hours of sleep. If I don’t get it, I will be so utterly wiped out that I literally have to go back to bed, spend my lunch hour sleeping, etc. I’ve overslept twice for work, and took part of a day off once and slept on my lunch hour twice, just for sheer must-have-sleep in the last 7 days of work! This has never happened to me before, so although the timing could be coincidence, it happening just after I finally started working out with weights makes me think it is somehow related.

I have a really good dehydrator. Not the $30 round kind at walmart, but the $170 kind that is square. I’m thinking maybe if I made some of that homemade jerky I would always have something to munch on; maybe that would improve metabolic rate a bit, since I’m still working on — and not yet fully succeeding in — eating as often during the day as I need to. It just seems like there’s probably a lot of carbs in any jerky mix that tastes decently. If anybody knows of a good recipe I’d be glad to hear it.

Lastly for today, I have a question. I was going to ask one person but couldn’t find her email. I asked another but apparently didn’t phrase it well enough to make sense. Maybe if I try again here I will eventually get more than one response and different perspectives are always good. The question is this:

Is there any reason why I can’t work out more than one time a day on the same muscles, if I give that muscle group a full week to rest? In other words, if I do torso exercises on Wednesdays, can I do a workout in the morning, and early afternoon, and evening, same exercises, if I then am not working out that body part till next Wednesday? This week I am trying all my exercise with at least 10# (I went through 3, 5, 8, sometimes 10, last week when I began). Next week, unless there is some compelling reason why not, I intend to do my work out 2 or 3 times a day. Since I can’t work a lot of weight or a lot of reps right now, doing the overall workout more times in a day is about the only way I can get more use of that muscle group in. There seem to be many opinions on how many days between working a given muscle set, a person should rest. But I haven’t heard much about the idea of working out more than once in a day.

After waking up for days so aching I could barely move, and not getting a whole lot done, yesterday turned out more constructive than usual. Once I finished arm-wrestling my new CD/DVD writer into actually writing all my “uptempo” songs to a playable MP3 disk (which took hours of experimentation, 4 kinds of media, 2 software programs…) I took it into my weights room and turned it on, sat on my recline bench to the music and thought about the room a little more.

Big dolls and some stuffed animals belonging to the kid were stuffed in the corner and on the floor along the wall. There was various ’stuff and junk’ stashed here and there; the room’s been “the extra room” for awhile after all. A rickety wire shelf held the DVD and VCR that attached to the TV up on the wall swing-arm, and all the wires looked kinda messy. The weight cage still sat in a dozen pieces in the corner, its bag of hardware forlornly dropped by it. I thought of all my daydreaming about the room.

After sitting there for awhile, I suddenly had the realization — I know this sounds stupidly obvious — that not one damn thing is going to get done in my life unless I do it. I’ve spent so long paying someone to help me with my house, because I wasn’t physically able to do much, that I think I’ve kind of forgotten that I am not helpless. Or rather, I am considerably less helpless right now than I was even a week ago, let alone a year ago.

I’m suddenly realizing how much of my surroundings I’ve been chronically unhappy with because changing them meant paying someone money to help me, and most stuff is time consuming. I’m always daydreaming of the time when something won’t be a disaster or all cluttered and stacked, but there never comes a time when all that is done, because there’s just too much; more grows while I’m paying for the first thing. If I wasn’t decently employed my house would probably be a danger. I want to do more now. I want to get stuff DONE and make my world like I want it to be.

So with all this awesome pounding fast music, from the early 70’s to the present, from hard rock to disco to alternative rock to driving country to latin beats (I love the Gypsy Kings!), I got inspired. FIRST, I had to put together my weight cage. Whoever did it last time, I think my ex, actually did it wrong, and left ’some’ pieces together, which made figuring it out easier said than done, and in the end I literally got part of it upside down, as it could not have been done any other way based on the pieces still connected, but by that time I wasn’t going to change it — it works fine. It took me a couple solid hours and I was sweating hard with all the squatting and manually bolting and moving the whole thing around. It felt good. I felt like a mechanic, cranking bolts everywhere.

My kid walked in and said, “I can smell your sweat from over here!” I said, “Good! That means it’s doing something for me!” I felt like I was ‘cheating’ by getting a workout in, on a day scheduled for no workout. Imagine that. When a happy cheat is working your ass off and sweating, and I felt like I was getting away with something great.

Once I got it done and moved and stood up where it’s to go, I tightened all the bottom bolts. I have to do the top today once I get my ladder from the garage. I didn’t want to go out there in the dark… and I need the ladder to replace the light in the garage as well. I’m afraid to try and stand on the chair. I have a nice medium-height heavy-duty sturdy ladder my dad got me.

I got everything that wasn’t exercise equipment OUT of the room. I moved the mini fridge over in front of the window, it is just above the bottom sill, and put the water dispenser on top of it. I turned the TV swing arm so it puts the TV in front of the window and happily, the slight bend doesn’t show when it’s this way, so it no longer looks stupid. My kid got into the spirit with me and cleaned off one of the 72″ black wall units in the living room (5-shelf), and I dragged it in and put it next to the window, making one shelf big enough to hold the DVD, VCR, and my MP3 boombox on top of that. I’ll put books on the middle shelf and exercise DVDs/VCRs etc. on the top shelf (time to search eBay!) and who knows about the bottom two. It actually looks rather nice, and I have remotes for all the equipment I think I can hang off my exercise bike if I want to watch something while on it.

(The bike is partly disassembled still, awaiting tech support help.)

I had to clean everything in the room, it was like some combination of dust, dirt, fingerprints, and kid-spills maybe?, had just made everything pretty yucky. So that took awhile. I got all the tons of media out that my kid had in there from watching the TV, I put my weights along the wall and my plate tree in the corner, moved the bike a little, and then vacuumed the room probably better than it has been in years. It has a dark red carpet (not MY choice as you might imagine) which highlights every piece of lint, so the difference is dramatic.

It actually looks like a room that someone serious about working out would have. There is still a lot of open floor space in the middle so aerobics with the TV is plenty workable.

I was so delighted with it that I didn’t want to leave it. It’s unfinished in planning, but feels great aesthetically.

***

This morning I got up at 6:10. I can’t remember what I was doing, some wrassling with the covers, but I actually bent my knee and lifted up my leg and moved them and then realized, leg still in the air, that I have not been able to do that for like 10 years. I mean a real ‘leg lift’ like that. The muscle is just suddenly there. Not that it was super easy, but the fact it was humanly possible at all astounded me.

I got up, drank a high-protein low-carb slimfast and then went into the weights room, and hit the pause button to continue my MP3s… there’s 151 songs on there and I haven’t worked through them yet. I left the light off, and opened the curtain to the window on the south side… it just faces the non-window’d side of my neighbor’s house, no direct light, but it was enough. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.

Thinking about the leg lift in bed, I discovered if I stand facing the cage and hold the the vertical posts with each hand, I can lift each leg up, like pull the knee up so the thigh is nearly horizontal, and then kick it back and up in the air behind me. The fact I could do this once is really incredible. I was able to do ten, granted imperfectly and with momentum helping, but still. I just couldn’t believe it. I did it with the other leg. Then I had to sit down on my bench and just ponder how amazing that was for awhile. My legs are HEAVY. That’s a big deal!

I got out my bean and did a variety of stretching, and some mild exercise I’ve been doing I call “froggy-holds” that I suspect is behind the new strength in my abductors (hip muscles). I was able to throw my leg over the bean for the first time (it is extra wide and I was always afraid to try before) and did all the kinds of stretching I could come up with while on it.

I got on the floor (the floor is VERY HARD when you carry a few HUNDRED extra pounds, lemme tell ya!) and managed to do typical side leg lifts, 10 on one side and 8 on the other, before I max’d out. Still. I could not do ONE of these when I tried last January, and that was when I was the same weight as I am now. It’s hard as hell getting OFF the floor, but never mind.

I sat on my knees in front of my recline bench and held the seat and did an odd form of nearly-push-up off it till I couldn’t anymore. Then I danced around the room like an idiot for awhile just to MOVE. I just honestly felt like I needed to MOVE.

***

I went into the kitchen and made breakfast (3 scrambled eggs and 2 oz soyrizo with a bunch of red pepper flakes) and a diet mountain dew. (I know, I know. WATER!)

I wondered, while mixing it all up, why it is that when I’m drinking slimfast I don’t seem to lose weight. Is it too few calories per day? The sodium isn’t really that high in them. I know I’m probably sensitive to casein and it has a massive dose of that, that is its source of protein, but it feels like I’m doing ok. I had this gut feeling, not a voice in my head but darn near, “There is no reward for poisoning yourself. Eat real food.” I thought gee whiz… my subconscious has a guilt complex about slimfast.

I thought about my workday. I sit on my bed with my laptop computer. This is not quite as unreasonably slothful as it may sound; at my weight, nearly any seat cuts off circulation which is horribly dangerous (my father can’t eat anything green ever again, due to his medication for a blood clot, and he is not even overweight), and that bizarre displaced condensed fat-lump in my right inner thigh (which by the way is like 10% the size it was a month ago, yay!) was caused by sitting all this weight on the wrong thing for too long. I finally ended up just sitting up against the wall on my bed, since it’s soft, which allows me to happily sit for 4, 8, 12 hours without moving a muscle, I’m so focused, if something doesn’t disturb me I don’t even realize I need to pee. My kid makes fun of me. “Mom, you’re bouncing — go pee!” then I snap out of it. I move and it sounds like my body is cracking all over.

Needless to say, that is not overly healthy either.

I had this weird desire to STAND and MOVE AROUND today. While working.

I went and redeemed the wire shelf from the living room and put it back in the exercise room, but this against the wall by the door. I put my own laptop on one shelf, my biz laptop on the next shelf, and my external hard drive and DVD/CD drive on the bottom shelf. I can sit in a folder chair and work on the middle shelf.

Or, I can stand, like I’m doing now, and type on the laptop on the top shelf. I plugged them in from the outside so it takes all of 10 seconds to switch which shelf they are on.

Yes, various toes/feet fall asleep if I stand too long, too much weight not to be otherwise, but I can walk around, shift around, and sit when I need to. The chair is not comfortable. GOOD! It makes me stand up and MOVE more.

Today is shoulder day on the weights. That’s later.

So I’m not just building muscle. I’m building my room, and seem to be even building new ideas and new behaviors. It’s a mystery what I’ll be in the end, but I like it already.

I was looking for inspirational posters. I can’t afford the few I find, but even those are severely limited.

I’m something of a Marilyn Monroe fan. I wasn’t until I found some really old b&w photos of her in a thrift store like 25 years ago, sans makeup. She was so beautiful and photogenic that for the first time I truly understood what photographers saw in her. I had never been fond of her overcommercialized publicity stuff, but these b&w pics (on a beach in a sweater) genuinely had that “inner beauty shining through” quality, and I was in awe at the Woman As A Work Of Art. Alas I had no money at the time, and by the time I went back to the store, the prints were gone.

While looking for bodybuilding pics, I came across this one. Neat pic don’t you think. Not like she was remotely a bodybuilder, but it’s not like her average photo.

Meanwhile, I wasn’t able to find any particularly inspiring female good-body photos, aside from overmuscled masculine looking women in bikinis, and non-muscled women in posters that look like porn flick outtakes. Aside from not actually wanting to be quite that buff, I mean ever, plus my lack of interest in the T&A of the meatmarket silicone chicks, I also would like a room that doesn’t make every visitor think I’m a lesbian or something. I’ll never get laid if I frighten any man I bring home.

I could find only little things here and there. A couple worthy of my attitude. If it were combined with a good pic it’d be an awesome poster.

Meanwhile back at the ranch tract home in nowhere Oklahoma, I’ve been feeling like a total sloth, since I’m not working out.

My exercise bike is in pieces waiting to be fixed. Dad and I couldn’t find the problem but we ruled out the brake/pulley/flywheel part. I’m suspecting it is something to do with the thing that talks to the control panel and runs the pulley belt through it. You can spin the flywheel with ease, but if you try to push the pedals it’s hard as hell. He took pics, hopefully tech support can help.

My weight lifting is on hiatus until Monday when my new plan starts. Now that I went through all the options to see what I could do, I have removed the duplicate target exercises, so there’s just one for each specific muscle, and broken it up into a different body part(s) each day, with each body part only being worked once a week. That way I can work it to failure… maybe a couple workout points in that one day.

I’m really not sure what is best on this. I read the internet and I swear every imaginable possible combination of lifting vs. resting is stated as the best or most ideal. It’s got nearly as many different interpretations as the bible. Lift on a muscle more than once a week and you overtrain, oh, doom! Don’t do it and you undertrain, you pansies aren’t serious! Work out twice a day, many ’serious’ bodybuilders do.

But wait, there’s more. You need carbs. Protein. Creatine. Nair. (No, wait, that wasn’t in there.) You gotta eat 5 times. Six times. Six and wake up twice a night to supplement. It’s gotta be fast-absorbing whey protein. No, long-absorbing caseine protein. No, “real food” protein and lean like white meat chicken. No, instant after a workout. No, before the workout! No, it really should be in the middle of it if it’s more than 20 minutes. No, you don’t need carbs for an insulin response, just protein. Yes, you absolutely need carbs right after lifting. No. Yes! Maybe. Where’s my Nair?

You get the idea.

Update: OK, this at above/left is a pretty beautiful pic, not quite what I had in mind, but deserves mention. Martha Laber is her name. Unnamed (as usual) at right is another nice pic-poster, of a man.

The last couple days I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how I can make my weights room into something that is really cool, cool to be in and work in. Something that’ll make that corner of my house, feng shui = ‘wealth’, really rock.

Maybe a few floor length cheap wal-mart mirrors put side by side across the wall. A few cool posters, I hope. I want an alternative softer light in there. You get the idea. A real sanctuary of sorts.

So far it’s the cleanest room of the house regularly, which with a kid is a big deal of course, and that alone makes it nice to be in.

I’ll leave you with one of my heroes, who considering his race and need for speed was built pretty darn well:

Bruce Lee

Last night when I found myself lying in bed unable to sleep, the clock said it was 2am. The house was dark and quiet. My little girl, who’d watched something scary then begged her way into my bed, slept peacefully beside me, taking up far more than her fair share of the bed. I shifted positions. My muscles were hurting a little. Nothing serious. I was calm but wide awake and motivated, despite needing sleep, as if extra testosterone had snuck in through the dark. I slipped out of bed and went quietly into the weights room, the extra bedroom in our little house that I have commandeered for exercise.

I stood in the doorway for a minute. I wished I had a soft light, a dim light, maybe a colored light, instead of the bright overhead. For that moment, my weights room seemed as much a place of peace and spirit as a place of sweat.

I sat down on my incline bench and slowly looked around. I considered every item in the room, every weight, dumbell, my exercise cycle and mini-fridge, everything. I realized that somehow, the space where I lift weights has become the temple of my future. A suburban back-room shrine to the glory I can be. This is the place where I shape the big blob of clay I call my body into something formed and healthy and powerful.

I wanted to work out. Right then. Even with my aching muscles. I wanted to do Arnold Presses until I couldn’t lift another inch, do bent-over rows until my whole leg trembled and my arm refused to move. But I can read the internet as well as any other single-mom overweight self-training wanna-be: I knew if I did that, I would have interrupted my recovery time. I would be putting off the time when I could go back into full-on building again on those muscles. The temptation was strong, but I told myself that rest is part of the discipline, too. I really want to do this right.

After awhile I decided to do something constructive. I opened a box that had my fractional plates, took the packaging off, put them back in their neat little cloth pockets. I went and found the shipping box with a weight plate-tree. I opened it up and put it together. My kingdom for a second wrench to hold the front of the bolts, darn it. Ah well. That is finally set up.

I made plans for other changes in that room. I’m going to put a couple cords on the curtain brackets, clips on the end, and hang my inflated ‘Bean’ up by the handles so it’s stored vertically up on the wall instead of taking up a lot of floor space. I’m going to change the shelf and put exercise books on it. Maybe encourage myself to get some videos. I wonder who I can convince to buy me that awesome Schwartzenegger bodybuilding book for Christmas. Maybe I can find the move that I ‘made up’ in it, and see what it’s really called.

I had a protein drink and realized I’m half on a liquid diet lately. I’d rather eat real food, obviously, and every bodybuilder would tell me so. But I’m new to this, and if it helps me keep down carbs, keep up protein, not be hungry, is vitamin fortified, and beats my not eating at all, then I’m not going to complain. “Do the best you can, where you are, with what you have, and live another day to do better.” I’ll do what I must until eating six times a day becomes normal.

I laid back and did some long, slow, very gentle rocking with my obliques and abs. It was strange… more like a meditation than an exercise. Like I just felt like ‘communing’ with my body. For some reason I remembered an old account I read from George Harrison (of the Beatles), talking about being in a rowboat on the sea and starting to sing ‘My Sweet Lord’ and getting so into the zone with it. I felt like I could do that all night.

I realized that if there were a soft light and comfortable place, I would have curled up in there to sleep instead of going back to my bed. It was a sudden warmth for everything: for the whole room, for my equipment, for my body working on it, and for the spirit that finally, thank God, truly moves me to do so. I wanted to curl up and drift off in the feeling of rightness I felt blooming inside me.

I did a lot of imagining during the night. Imagining myself getting thinner, getting stronger, getting ‘cooler’. Imagining the room itself reflecting my ambition. Imagined putting tons of those mirrored squares on the main wall, and maybe some pics of great body-built bodies on another, and gradually building up my equipment so I can do more than free weights, too.

Somehow when I’m in that room, working hard, I feel like for that moment, I am taking my life back. Really doing something powerful. Man, it’s sure long past about time. That reminds me of my favorite quote about this. It’s from Charlie Moody, on misc.fitness.weights as quoted by Mistress Krista over at Stumptuous. As one of those people who has spent most of my life not having a life because I was doing what I thought I “should” do, it just really hits home with me.

I look in the mirror: if I see any trace of the sad, exhausted, pale, weak, fat, whipped wage-slave desk-jockey I used to be, I’m ready to lift some weight. I’m reminded of my sister (nothing personal), who’s spent her life doing all the stuff other people want her to do, and all the stuff she figures she should do. A couple of weeks ago, she asked me with tears in her eyes when would it be her turn to have a life and do what she wants? All I could tell her was, “It’ll be your turn when you get off the hamster wheel and take a fucking turn.” It’s up to you. No one else. You’ll find the time to work out when you DECIDE you’re gonna work out. You’ll eat and rest and take care of yourself because you decide you deserve it, you need it, you want it, and NO ONE is going to keep you from it. Not even you. I’m a beginner, too, and no-one’s gonna watch what I eat for me, no-one’s gonna lift an ounce of my weight. I can make up any story I want about it, but stories are bullshit: I can be a warrior, or I can be a victim. For the warrior, no excuses; for the victim, only excuses.

Yeah. What he said.

When I’m lifting weight, I feel like I’m the boot-wearing, butt-kicking soldier of my own fortune. The feel of heavy metal in my hands, of sweat dripping off me, makes me feel like the kind of person I always wanted to be, but until now wasn’t sure I could be. Someone who takes their destiny into their own hands and rocks a hard press until they’ve shaped themselves, and their lives, into whatever they choose.

For me it’s not just pumping iron; it’s pumping life into my body and my future with every rep. I’m not just building my muscle here, I’m building my character. An “iron will” — yes. Damn right!

Weight lifting rocks.

Well I did it. Six days in a row I did a planned weights workout, starting at only 3# and working up with the dumbbells I have to 10#. Some days didn’t seem hard, and some seemed overwhelming. I split each body-part up into two pieces: shoulders the 1st and 4th day, torso the 2nd and 5th day, arms the 3rd and 6th days. Lower body was supposed to go with arms but since they are all knee-bending exercises I can’t do, for now I am just working on a sort of 1/3-kneebend “hold” isometric-style exercise as often as I can remember to do it. I learned what I needed to: what kind of weight is right for me, what I can do and can’t, etc.

Next week I’m revising the approach. I’m doing all of one body part on a given day and then not working that body part again for a week. So I’ll be working out 3 days instead of 6. The tiptoe/abdomen/kneebend “holds” and the exercise bike should be daily I hope.

I made up an exercise today. It was just messing around but it was so hard — instantly made me notice the effort, similar to compound exercise ‘impact’, that I decided to add it. I’ve no clue what to call it. I call it the butterfly because my arms bent with elbows out feel like wings sorta. You take a single barbell, place it vertically right in front of your heart, with both arms holding it palms facing outward, one hand above the other, arm-elbows level. Actually you hold it just like you do a Flag if you’re marching in a parade or something. I tried it lying down, in my bench’s recline, and sitting vertically on the edge of a flat bench. You push the bell out forward, or, you raise it straight up — two diff exercises. Depending on the body position it seems to hit diff muscles. It really got me with 10# so I’ll be doing that from now on. Eventually I’ll figure out exactly what muscle that hits. I actually suspect it might hit more than one. Either that or I was just tired out from all the previous stuff.

Somewhere there is probably an encyclopedia of weight lifting forms that has that. I’d like to know the real names of both forms (pushing out and up), I just don’t know how to find them.

Today I finally used the ‘Bean’ in the way the ad sold me on it: lie on your back on it, legs bent at knee and feet on floor off the end (mine a bit spaced out), and then just ‘rock’ slowly forward toward your feet (like sitting up) and back (pushing up with your toes). If you hold your stomach in tightly during this, you can feel the muscles as you go through the rocking motion, that start from the groin-area obliques (part of the stomach muscles) and grow all the way up to the abdomen and a tiny bit of back. It can be done to fit whatever the person can do… it does work those muscles, but only as hard as you can hold it, push it, push the duration, etc. That was the example that caused me to dish out three $25 payments for that blow-up sucker! (Course my version holds up to 800# and has handles and is extra-wide — the regular size is not that much.)

Then today, I was frustrated. I was not dripping sweat, I was not in pain, and I really felt like I must not have done anything at all, and I’d have done something else but it would have screwed up my recovery times no matter what other exercise I chose, so I decided to kick back. It was hard though. I really want to ‘feel the burn’ and the sweat and so on, haha!

My cage (a Weider pro 400, which is not that good of one, but I’m a girl-beginner so I’m unlikely to out-use it) sits unassembled in the corner. My housekeeper told me she couldn’t do it because she didn’t have a manual, but then said because she couldn’t find the hardware. I found the hardware. Tomorrow I hope I can figure out how to put the thing together. It took both of us last time, years ago. I bought it for the sole purpose of having something to hang onto on both sides while doing kneebends, which I won’t do quite yet, but it has a chin-up bar on the front, and I’d like to partly-hang from that, plus it’s messing up how cool my room looks with that mess in the corner! I’d like to get a barbell so I can do a few recline moves with it and I’d like to have the safety of the cage in that case. Not like I’m doing massive weight but still. I think it would FEEL cool. Priorities! ;-)

Hot damn. I think I like this working out stuff. I still consider cardio a curse, but I LOVE THE WEIGHTS!

Music for the day: STYX Greatest Hits. Renegade and blue-collar man rock!

I’m feeling ok about things at the moment. Downright cheerful, even.

My food has failed abysmally to be anywhere near my count plans. It’s generally a mile short of every number, especially calories, as I’ve been having a hard time eating enough and if it weren’t for high-protein/low-carb slimfast in a can I might not have ingested anything several days the last week. But I’m working on keeping at least protein up sufficiently high, if nothing else, and today I’ve done ok. My only problem is a lack of prepared food, plans, etc.: a problem of my own making.

My exercise (see Tomboy Tough) has been somewhere between hilarious and traumatic, as I realize I’m not qualified to get on and off an exercise bicycle, let alone ride the damn thing. If I do a back exercise with light weights, such as the bent over row, the stress of other things — my bent leg holding my body, my arm on the bench, contribute so many working muscle groups to the overall exercise that it becomes a highly compound core exercise that makes me pant and sweat, instead of something simple. I can’t get anywhere near the exercises I wanted to do most — lunge and squat — so instead bend my legs so I’m about 1/3 of a kneebend, then just hold it as long as I can. Today set a record: 40 seconds. Heh. Let’s just say the entire experience is as much an adjustment for my ego as it is for my body.

But you know what? I’m doing it. It’s hard as hell sometimes to not want to just get JUNK because it’s quick and there — Taco Bell is literally like a family food group for me — but I don’t. It’s hard as hell to do the working out stuff, which is so exhausting, sweat profusely drips off me on everything to the point where I have to wear a towel now, that’s how exhausting it is — and yet, I like the feel of doing it and I like the feel of accomplishment when it’s over.

I feel like I’m on the road again: on the path to that big “doing something good with my life.” The details are fuzzy still. The close up journey is decidedly imperfect. The goals are so far away I can’t begin to read the signs. But the sweat and the soreness and the scale gradually going down (now at lowest weight ever since I first began losing weight) tells me I must be doing something right.

I can’t tell you when I’ll be even halfway there, but I’m kinda proud of myself, to be able to say that I am truly on the road.

Today was Torso Group #2 (pullover, bent over row, straight leg deadlift, and side bend). And as always, ab-holds, kneebend-holds, and tiptoe-holds. I thought the deadlifts would be harder. By 4th set I was up to 10# and it was still not hard to do, although it made me breathe hard — when I crunch over it’s hard to breathe and my heart is not happy about things real heavy on extended forward bending.

I didn’t go near the cycle, aka The Monster. Maybe later. I contacted Vision Fitness today. That exercise bike still retails for $2000, so it’s worth worrying about, but I swear it just canNOT be normal that 30 seconds trying to do 60RPM is nearly killing me. I told them, I swear level 1 feels like level 12, at least! I remember when I got it. Level 1 had almost zero resistance. It’s killing me. It sat in the garage for 6 years, do you think this would matter? Heh.

The rep is probably telling her coworker what an idiot I am as I type. She said YES, heat, cold, humidity, dust, are major issues. Take a crank puller and pull off the casing, clean it, and look at the brake, it sounds like it needs adjusting, the heat and cold can definitely change its tightness, even in a retail gym environ, never mind a midwest sweltering summer and subfreezing winters!.

So I asked my dad what the heck a crank puller is and could he please bring me one so I can play fix-it man. And as an added bonus, crawling around the floor to clean and fix the thing will be a workout all on its own, I suppose!…

So the workout went pretty well today. On the pullover, I forgot to start at 3# and work up through 5 and 8 — I started on 10#, and then realized it, and decided to just go with it. I was having a problem with the muscle in my left upper arm until I realized the problem was I was letting my elbows go too wide. When I pulled them in I had no more problem. I’ve been trying to be careful and not hurt myself because I want to be able to keep doing this stuff and get more intense with it.

I felt much, much tougher today than I did yesterday. Tomboy tough! Was cool.

I didn’t have any carbs to eat after. I didn’t really schedule them in this menu. Not like I’ve done well on the menu so far. I ate a stallone pudding (20g protein) and a lowcarb highprotein slimfast (20g protein) right after though. At least I got protein.

Yay! I need to get bigger barbells. The 10# is too small for the deadlifts and the bent over row and probably a couple others. I want to use all the little plates I have for my — are you ready? — KETTLESTACK! That sounds like fun. Gotta try that.

I might mention that my “Bean” — a heavy-duty inflateable thing — made it possible for me to do the pullover. My bench isn’t nearly long enough for me to have done that and I can’t hold myself up on it sideways (with only my back on it). So it has turned out to be a useful investment for a few things. I do a funky “frog-squat” thing as I get gradually up off it, holding in various positions as I stand up. I think it’ll be even more useful as I get a little more limber, but even now it’s pretty cool.

Music for the day: Leann Rimes, Greatest Hits (then I snuck in a whole bunch of New Jack Swing, like My Prerogative, Reversal of the Dog, and then a little music from The Clash, to wash out the insipid pop and wannabe-country. (Not that this low opinion of it kept me from singing my head off to it, mind you. Should I admit I know all the words to the old Debbie Boone song ‘You Light Up My Life’? ;-))

There must have been a moment when David was standing there with his slingshot, facing the giant, where he suddenly thought, Oh man! What the bleep am I doing?! Am I CRAZY?!

I felt like that today.

I’m here to tell you that at my weight, tying your shoes and walking to the car is not easy, never mind anything officially called “exercise”. Today it hit home for me what a monumental task I have undertaken, with this determination to exercise and get in shape. My gosh. I mean… huge. I suspect people who have to learn to walk all over again after an accident might feel a bit like this, though I imagine even worse.

It’s not like Rocky the little guy coming from behind as the underdog and you know he’s gonna make it because he’s determined. It’s more like Jabba the Hutt taking on Chuck Norris. It might be fun for Chuck but there’d be nothing of ‘ol Jabba but a bunch of jiggly flesh to mop up when it was over. I was wondering if that is what would become of me before my workout was over today.

To start, today was the arms group #1 (incline curl, kickback, hammer curl, wrist curl). I forgot the wrist curls altogether in my distracted exhaustion, whoops. This was a harder workout. I don’t think the kickback is the target muscles planned, because anything that has to go around the side of my body means I have to hold my arm farther out than someone normal-sized would.

Then was the legs group #1 (split squat, calf raise). Alas. I couldn’t do either of them. I mean… I just don’t have the muscle. And in the case of the squat, it actually invokes fear. Like my knees tell my heart, “Don’t go there, man! Don’t dare!” and I could hardly even get myself to try.

I was kind of demoralized by that. That I couldn’t even do half of one. Finally I decided I would have to do something else instead. On my legs, I stood, bent my knees so I was about 1/3 down, which was hard for me to hold. Then I held it as long as I could before the muscles were giving out, which was 30 seconds. I know. Pitiful. I had one hand on the top of my weight bench (in sitting incline position so it’s tall) for that. A couple times my left knee and right hip twinged but I just held it, and that went away instantly. I’m calling them “kneebend holds” so I have some label to reference in my workout log.

For my lower legs, I sat down on my Bean, which is low (below my knee level), and then hold my feet up on their toes, supporting as much of my full legs’ weight as possible, and hold it as long as I could. Which was about 30 seconds. I’m calling those “tiptoe holds”.

I was feeling just ridiculous by then. I did another set on a couple of the arm exercises using the next dumbell poundage up, just to reassure myself that I was truly a man. I mean, hu-man. Like, worthy of my skin.

I’m glad I did it, but it was such a shocking reminder of the real state of things with my body. I need to get in shape, in order to get in shape for getting in shape. I was drenched with sweat, felt exhausted and kinda spaghetti-weak, and this before I got to the bike, let alone after. My legs weigh so much, damn! I had been kind of hoping for some halfway decent number I could write down about my progress, and set as a goal.

But maybe I should be more realistic. Maybe my first goal should be “being able to get on and off the damn exercise bicycle.” Maybe my next goal should be, “able to do even one, count them ONE, lunge squat.” Maybe I was an idiot to think I could really make any goals whatsoever besides,

“Survive to try another day.”

MUSIC for the day: Eli & The 13th Confession — by Laura Nyro

Although I “felt” the incline shoulder raise well yesterday, and although the bent over row made me stop and rest and breathe kinda hard and sweat a little, I only had a tiny bit of “feel-this-soreness”, about 12 hours afterward. Then none. Today I feel fine.

I’m disappointed. I want to feel some pain. I want to feel like I really worked it. I want to feel like I have definitely pushed the boundary of what my muscles are used to doing. I want to feel like when I heal from that I’ll be stronger.

More pain! More pain!

Maybe I’m getting twisted and sick. I’ve been weightlifting for two whole days, and barely at that, and I’m already getting masochistic. Some would suggest that I must have already been pretty twisted before this came along.

Shhhhhhh.

Finally! I can finally (again) say “I lost 100 lbs!”

I can’t find my bleeping sewing tape measure to take my measurements. Probably some kid stole it to play with it. Hmmn, I wonder which of my only child that could be, since she will insist it’s not her if I ask. ;-) I want to get a body fat measurement (using the measurement method linked on the sidebar) as of now so I can use that as one of my main “measures of change” (as opposed to weight).

Yesterday I did the shoulders #1 group (upright row, seated rear lateral raise, arnold press, front lateral raise). I think 8# is enough to start. I’m so embarrassed. I mean really, that’s just pitiful! But what the hell. You gotta start somewhere. The Seated Rear Lateral Raise was kinda hard, my body gets in the way, I can ’sort of’ do it. I’m just going to keep doing it. I suppose eventually it’ll get more elegant. For the moment I feel kinda like I’m doing some bizarre variant of the bomb drill where kids crunch up under their desks.

Today I did the torso #1 group (bent-over row, fly, side bend, incline shoulder raise). That was harder than the arms. Actually I thought the bent-over row was going to do more for my leg muscle than the ones I was supposed to be working (as in, it wasn’t the weight, it was the time taken to lift it that was a problem for it!). Nice, though. By the time I was finished with the group, I was breathing kinda hard and sweating a little, and I had to rest between the row sets. And this was with the first two (3 and 5 #) being way too easy, and probably 8 as well, next week I’ll start at 10# for all the torso group and see what the true max should be.

Gods I love free weights. I had kind of forgotten how much. I used to love just working so hard and sweating and feeling the muscles so clearly. I was so young then it seems like a million years ago. Which I guess about 22 years nearly is, in a lifespan.

I can see I need to get a couple more dumbells of >10 lbs. I do have dumbells you can put plates on, and at higher weights I’m sure that’s good, but it’s sure a lot easier to just pick up what you need. I gotta be sure and get the metal kind from now on, not the coated kind I got for 10#, because I have fractional weights that’ll magnetically stick to the ends if I need between-weights.

Besides. Those coated dumbells make me feel like some dumb chick in “shape” magazine who would talk about toning… in designer pink spandex. Puhleeze.

Well my food has sucked, though today is looking to be slightly better. For a few days I just barely ate, didn’t feel like it, and then yesterday, my first day to really make an effort, I was so totally swamped at work I didn’t even have time for a potty break let alone food. If it wasn’t for the high-protein/low-carb slimfast, I would be seriously up a creek for ingesting anything at all. I know it’s imperfect, it’s processed, it’s not food, but it beats not eating. Do the best you can with where you are, and live to do better another day.

I came up with a menu for next week though, and a shopping list for it, which I wouldn’t be able to afford if I didn’t already have chicken and hamburger in my freezer. I’m going to see how I do actually eating 6x per day. 2 are slimfast, 1 is a big cobb salad for dinner, so only 3 are actually something to make — and the food is the same the whole week. It’s a lot cheaper that way, a lot easier to prep all or partly ahead of time. We’ll see. So far, aside from the SF and cobb salad, the three meals for the first week are red mexi-chicken mix, burger with blue cheese mixed in it (quick on the foreman grill), and 3eggs/2oz Soyrizo in the late morning. I have other options but I’ll try those week after next.

If I can keep that menu up for the week, the nutrition count numbers are just awesome for me, the protein is very high which I really want, and all of them can be at least partly pre-made, so it’s superfast to grab ‘em. I even have enough room in my numbers that I could have a chocolate protein muffincake, plus a mocha (get this: 100% Kona coffee, made in a french press, with some 24% butterfat cocoa, and some half&half… sound good? :-)), and still have my numbers be fine. Yay.

Is it fair to get chocolate and coffee and STILL lose weight? I say yes. Getting insanely fat on starvation response is like getting poorer the harder you work. It’s just profoundly unfair. So I figure I deserve to be able to eat really WELL and lose weight. In some bizarre way, this seems like a proper balance.

Tomorrow is arms and legs on the weights. Wish me luck on the legs. Right now just my body weight is generally too much for lower body work without a machine. But I’ll work it out… eventually I will be there. I have faith in myself.

OK. I’ve lost enough weight now that I have to exercise.

Dammit.

I did some research on starting basic free weight forms that I could do with just a couple little weights they had at walmart. Most of these can be done just standing, or with a chair, or in one case a counter to lean against.

I made a nifty spreadsheet with all the info for a bunch of good starting forms, including details on doing it and links to a visual of how-to online. Find a sample of it and info at my new blog, Tomboy Tough. It is just for my exercise stuff.

And no, for the deviant males who have asked after seeing the title and design, it is NOT a lesbian blog. Sheesh. Men! ;-) (But what if it were? So?? Heh.)

I’m starting where I am, which is pretty much at ground zero.

“Exercise is not negotiable.”
– Dr. Richard Atkins