Le Diet, Week 3
Now that I’m into week 3 (I think, it’s summer after all) of my diet, I’m back at the gym on alternate days.
Not to be confused with at the gym every other day. I tried that once, but I was reading Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There at the time and it just didn’t work out (pun intended) for me.
“The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday—but never jam to-day.”
“It must come sometimes to ‘jam to-day,’” Alice objected.
“No, it ca’n’t,” said the Queen. “It’s jam every other day: to-day isn’t any other day, you know”
So heading to the gym every other day, let’s just say, was a bad idea.
By the way, I love jam.
The Gym
I joke about the gym because I’m kind of embarrassed by the following:
I’m a gym rat.
Lifting
While running on the treadmill bores me to tears (and NO, I’m NOT going to run outside in public, thank you very much) it at least provides me with something I lack in my day-to-day: cable television. Oh, and a cardio workout. Heart and stroke issues are the most likely thing to take women out of this time-space continuum.
Pumping iron and boxing is my thing. I don’t box any more but I still lift.
Too late, I heard you giggle. You thought I didn’t hear you say:
The only weight Tracey lifts is when she gets out of the chair.
Hey! Heaving my tush from my cozy couch IS a workout some days. 🙂 I’m 34% more gravitationally enhanced than I was ten years ago. The good news is when you’re on the heavy side, your bones get some nice stressing.
Having said that, better just to do some proper weight-bearing exercise.
Not a fan of weights? Here’s a tip: count your reps in binary. You’d be amazed how quickly they add up!
1, 2, 3, 4, 5?
Base 10 is for chumps. How much better does this sound?
1, 10, 11, 100, 101
By the time you hit 10, you’re actually at 1010. Double your pleasure!
Sweating and Glowing
For those of us in (or beyond) the throes of menopause, we’re already sweating and glowing and that will just validate those outrageous rep numbers.
Nothing says “good workout” more than a red face and sweaty bits. No one needs to know you’ve just arrived. They see you’re sweating, hear you go to “11” they know, KNOW dammit, you’re a peri-or-postmenopausal force to be reckoned with.
Taking it to 11
And chances are, those obnoxious kids hogging the machines snapchatting themselves will get the bleep out of your way.
Sweaty menopausal women are scary.
Goals
The Body Mass Index (BMI)
We tend to get up in arms about weight goals and the dreaded BMI. I know that the BMI and I are not one, and I’ll never be my ideal weight from my twenties despite the fact that I’m still the same height.
The BMI goal doesn’t work for me anymore, largely (pun intended) because I’m bulkier than I was at 18. For one thing, I’ve been lifting weights for 30 years. Sure, I joke about my large arms, but the fact is, I boxed for 20 years and pumped a lot of iron. So guess what? I’m bulky. And I have a large frame (peasant bones!). So the BMI is only a slight indicator.
Weight
See note above. I’m “dense” (it’s ok, you can laugh). Hard to have weight as a good indicator. Frame counts for a lot (or little) as does muscle mass. I used to weight 103 at this height. And I’ve hit 185. Neither are good, that much is obvious. but I doubt I can pull off 120 again.
If I have to choose between my bum and my face, I’ll choose my face is all I’m sayin’.
The Towel Target
So my goal for this diet? To be able to wrap a towel about my midrift and have little or no embarrassing gaps as I walk to the shower.
And lest you think I mosey about the change room with “the girls” flopping about, willy-nilly, I always drape a second towel tastefully over them. The towels provided by the gym are too narrow for the armpit-wrap.
Right now, if I suck it in, I can get that towel around my belly, tuck in the edges, and almost make it to the showers before the towels bursts open like a time-lapse flower in bloom (and the towel flutters shamefully to the floor and the glare from my stretch marks blinds all those within a twenty-foot radius).
Making it to the showers without flashing my lady business is a tangible, measurable goal. So far, I can get to the loo before the towel drops.
By next month, I’m thinking the water fountain is do-able. I’ll letcha know.
I made the cartoon panels using the Bitstrips app.
