Sunlight glints off the side mirror on the car next to me and catches my eye.
The woman inside sits there at the stoplight, both hands on the wheel, staring straight ahead. Her dark hair is pulled back ,tightly, accentuating the curvature of her jawline.
I can see the tears streaming down her cheeks from a car length away.
I don’t know where she’s going.
I don’t know where she’s been.
But I am mesmerized by the stranger crying at a stoplight on a random Tuesday afternoon.
She glances my way and our eyes meet.
She surprises me by holding my gaze. I offer a small smile.
Something intangible passes through tempered glass. Me to her. Her to me.
A chill travels the length of my spine.
The light turns green and she is gone, moving on to what lies ahead.
What I learned: This shit is harder than it looks, y’all. My entire body would start shaking after only a minute of holding each pose. I had a really hard time getting the arm and leg placement right, so I ended up holding the poses for a few minutes each to get them just right. The good news is, I got to use my favorite Q word, quiver. Always a silver lining, right?
** Many thanks to my talented photographer friend Kelly, who is learning more about fitness photography than she ever wanted to. Especially since I shove my camera at her every time she happens to stop by.**
Questions & Answers:
disclaimer: I am not a doctor. I cannot tell you what is healthy or appropriate for your unique situation. Always check with your physician before starting a diet or fitness regimen.
Rachel asked: What kinds of exercises can I do at home to “engage my large muscles” since you say that’s really important?
For legs, I highly recommend squats and lunges. The great thing about these is that you can do them anywhere, although if you’ve never done them before, you should start out doing them in front of a mirror to make sure you’ve got the correct form. You can seriously hurt yourself if you cheat on form, and you won’t be engaging the muscles the way you want to, so pay attention to foot and knee placement, on both of them. Click on the exercise to go to a tutorial: Squats and Lunges.
For back, Dumbell Rows and a Reverse Fly are the easiest to do without benefit of exercise machines, but do require hand weights. If you don’t have access to any kind of weights, good old fashioned Pull Ups will do the trick. Again with the importance of correct form, so watch yourself in the mirror at first to make sure you’re not holding your body at a funny angle. Click on the exercise to go to a tutorial: Dumbell Rows, Reverse Fly and Pull Ups.
You can also go to youtube and find hundreds of examples and variations of those exercises.
Cindy asked: What made you suddenly decide to get in shape?
Fitness and Nutrition have been a passion of mine for nearly 15 years, and have been a huge part of my lifestyle for the majority of that time. Life being what it is, though, I go through periods where things are chaotic and I fall out of some of my good habits and pick up a few, shall we say, bad habits. Typically something will trigger my desire to get back on track, and this particular time it was the cancer scare I had earlier this year. There’s nothing like being faced with your own mortality to make you appreciate your health!
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Any questions? Bring ’em! Just leave a comment or email me: meatfordinner (at) gmail (d0t) com
It probably would have been wise for me to do a little research before announcing to the Internet that I was planning to compete in a Women’s Figure Competition.
It turns out that in the years since the huz was involved in the bodybuilding community, figure competitions have become pretty hardcore, resembling women’s bodybuilding a little too much for my taste (click to see up-to-date Women’s Figure Competition Photos). There is a new category now, called the bikini competition, which is more my style (click to see Women’s Bikini Competition Photos) . Unfortunately, though, the competition coming up in October doesn’t actually include that category. Of course, right?
So…. what I’m going to do is follow the 8 week training regimen for the Bikini Competition just for the hell of it, and that twenty-something blonde can go ahead and have the figure competition to herself. I am just not interested in having 10% body fat. Ick.
This week was really hectic, so unfortunately I missed a few workouts. Such is life!
Week 2
Questions & Answers:
A couple of questions came in this week, and I’ll do my best to answer them without putting the interwebs to sleep in the process. If you’d like more details, let me know and I can either elaborate in next weekend’s post, or we can carry on a private conversation.
disclaimer: I am not a doctor. I cannot tell you what is healthy or appropriate for your unique situation. Always check with your physician before starting a diet or fitness regimen.
Erin asked: I know back then you mentioned a site….what else is your secret?!?!
The site I mentioned in a previous post is Fitday.com, and I highly recommend checking it out if you need help figuring out how to reach your fitness and/or weight loss goals. You plug in your information and it calculates everything for you, and keeps track of your food intake, exercise and progress, all in one place. It’s completely free and easy to navigate, so why not take advantage of a great fitness tool?
I have several “secrets” that I am more than happy to share with anyone who is willing to listen to me talk about them. Today I’ll share the three I consider to be the most important.
#1: Engage your large muscles. A lot of people stick to a cardio-only exercise routine when trying to achieve weight loss, and that is a huge mistake. When you prod your back and leg muscles (and chest muscles if you like working them – personally, I don’t) into “production” mode, rather than “idle” mode, your metabolism will speed up. Any cardio you do, once your large muscles have been engaged, will be two to three times as effective.
#2: Take your vitamins. Because of my complicated medical history, I take nearly 30 vitamins every day in order to keep my body functioning at its best. This is fairly extreme, but if I skip my vitamins I feel it within twelve hours – they are that important. Take at least a daily multivitamin formulated for your gender and age, and talk to your doctor or nutritionist about adding any other vitamins to help you feel your best.
#3: Clean up your diet. This is huge, my friends. A clean diet is rich in lean protein, fruits, vegetables, whole grains and gallons of water. I realize that this is easier said than done, and a complete change in eating habits can take time. Start small by just asking yourself, every time you think about putting something in your mouth, whether it’s helping or hurting you.
Please note: I do not mean that you should consume “diet” foods that seem to fly off the shelves at every store in the country. A clean diet is (at least relatively) free of preservatives, and if you look at the nutrition information on those “diet” foods, you are consuming a bunch of shit, pardon my language.
Think about it. Preservatives were created for the sole purpose of preserving. You eat them, and they don’t just forget about their job. They just change their focus. Instead of preserving whatever food they were put into, they go looking for something to preserve inside your body. Namely, fat. A fat cell surrounded by preservatives is going to be ten times harder to lose than a free-floating fat cell.
As a side note, if you’re serious about getting rid of the preservatives and toxins that are holed up in your system, a cleanse is a good place to start. Trader Joe’s has a great one that is pretty inexpensive, and all natural to boot!
Ellie asked: What is your workout schedule? I am ready to start toning.
I try to work out for a minimum of twenty minutes every day, with one hour-long, full-body work out once a week. I call these my “marathon workouts” and they seriously kick my ass. Working from home, my schedule changes not only by the day, but by the hour. So I squeeze in my workouts whenever and wherever I can.
I plan my rotation based on when I have the time to do my marathon session. The next day I will do low-impact cardio and a good long stretching session. The next work out will be abs plus cardio, followed by upper body plus cardio and lastly legs plus cardio, lather, rinse, repeat.
I love going to the gym. I walk in the door and I’m like a kid in a candy store: so many options! But the fact is, I rarely have time to get in there. So, I work out at home 98% of the time. I have a mat, hand weights in 3, 5, 8, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 25 pounds, and several DVDs that are incredibly effective – for me, anyway. The one I recommend the most often, because I use it the most often, is Jackie Warner’s Power Circuit Training DVD. It’s great for beginners, because you can start out doing everything without weights and add them as you’re ready.
I also just want to add that you don’t have to work out every day to see results. Doing something is always better than doing nothing. Set a reasonable goal, start small and work your way up. You’ll be glad you did!
Fifteen years ago, I almost became a sailor. And then I saw the sailor uniform and changed my mind.
Every year, just before my birthday, the U.S. Navy sends me a postcard to commemorate the anniversary of my blatant rejection of their style sense. They call it a birthday card, but I like to pretend that they’re still pining for my attention.
The Navy recruited me pretty heavily there for awhile, many years ago, because tests indicated that I showed an aptitude for Nuclear Physics and Mechanical Engineering.
They promised me an awful lot of things in exchange for joining their ranks, especially because I’m a woman and those particular fields are fairly well dominated by people with a whole different set of genitalia. Just before I got ready to sign on the dotted line, however, they decided to try and impress me by having some Naval Officers come over and fill me in on how wonderful my life was going to be.
That’s when they lost me.
I’m sure those Officers talked up the Navy like there was no tomorrow. The travel! The education! The experience! Plus, Nuclear Physics = fun stuff!
All I can remember about that meeting, though, is how ugly and out of date their uniforms were. I grew up Air Force, and spent time stationed at an Army base, so it’s not that I was unfamiliar with the concept of uniforms. But I was used to dress blues and fatigues, not all of this white polyester with big dangly ties, bell bottoms and funky hats. In a word, they looked like Sailors. From the seventies.
I honestly can’t tell you why I expected them to look like anything else, being that they were in the Navy. What can I say?
I quietly and humbly turned down the Navy’s incredibly generous offers, all because I didn’t want to look like a sailor. From the seventies. And for the record, if I had voiced my displeasure? They would have informed me that I wouldn’t be dressing like a sailor at all.
Too little, too late, Navy! May I suggest a well-placed disclaimer on the sailor hats?
Every year when that postcard arrives, I spend a little time thinking about aptitude, and about how different my life would be if I had signed on that line. Would I have enjoyed Nuclear Physics? Mechanical Engineering? My aptitude and ASVAB scores indicated that I would have.
As long as I didn’t have to dress like a sailor, of course.
It is so far removed from what I chose to do with my life, that it’s almost impossible to imagine.
