[FFF] Biggest Loser

Date: 2012.01.19 | Category: Fat Family Fitness | Response: 2

Yeah, that’s kinda me right now. I got the Biggest Loser Cardio Max Weight Loss DVD for myself last week, and I did (most of) my first workout with it tonight. I’m starting way low because, well, I’m a big, giant, fat slob and I don’t want my partner to find me dead of a heart attack when he comes down in the morning.

The thing I love about this line of videos is that the people in the videos, aside from the trainer, are big people. They’re not Evil Blonde Aerobics Bunnies and Giant Humpy Muscleheads. They’re people who need these videos. It’s kind of inspiring, to a point.

I got 25 minutes into a 35-minute workout before I had to stop because I just couldn’t finish. I’m… kind of a self-loathing mess right now. I know I should be proud that I did what I could, that 25 minutes today is better than the zero minutes yesterday, that it’s better than the zero minutes that I’ve done for the last six weeks. I’m having problems getting myself into that mindset, though, and I don’t know how to get out of this shame-and-hate spiral.

Cross-posted from Fat Family Fitness

[FFF] Once More Around the Sun…

Date: 2012.01.08 | Category: Fat Family Fitness | Response: 1

Here we are again, at the beginning of a calendar year. My biggest goal for 2012 (I don’t do resolutions; that’s just setting myself up for failure) is to lose 5 pounds a month. I’m hovering right around 240 pounds right now. That would put me at 180 by December. That’s where I want to be, to be honest. That’s a good weight for me.

I also want to reboot my Couch-to-5K, as well as add a Jillian Michaels workout with resistance bands, as well as a body weight workout that I snagged from SparkPeople. I’m also hoping to mix in a couple of the Biggest Loser workout DVDs (if anyone’s buying, I’m looking at the At Home Challenge, Last Chance, and Cardio Max Weight Loss workouts) and my Wii Fit and Just Dance 2 (and maybe 3, if I get it). I’ve got at LEAST one 5K run planned this year, and I’m hoping to be able to finish a 10K. I’ve got a five-year plan to be able to at least run a half-marathon. I’d love to see a full marathon so that I can jump on Team Reeve and support the Roller Skate a little bit, but I’ll be happy with 13.1 for now.

I need to start making more healthy choices about food. It’s difficult to eat healthy when you’re doing it solo. Hopefully, I’ll be able to convince The Leon to get on the bandwagon with that. Wish me luck. He doesn’t like whole wheat pasta (which I love), and we eat a lot of pasta. That would help our food problems a great deal.

I’m tired of being approximately twelve thousand pounds (I rounded up). I’ve got some great friends behind me on this to keep my fat ass moving. I just need to make myself do it when they’re not around to kick me.

Mirrored from Fat Family Fitness

Brotips

Date: 2012.01.07 | Category: Random | Response: 0

You know, I kind of find the whole “bro” subculture kind of offensive. That being said, BroTips is kind of a fun site. If you can look past the whole “bro” thing. My favorite, so far, is this one. Shout-out to Clay (probably the closest thing I’ve got to a “bro”, if I had them) and Neil Patrick Harris. Just because I dig NPH, and because I’m pretty sure Barney Stinson is the reason for the bro subculture.

More posty, less ignorey

Date: 2012.01.03 | Category: Random | Response: 4

I don’t make resolutions. Or, at least, I try not to. I do like goals, though. Nice, easy-ish goals. Stuff like “lose 5 pounds a month” sounds easy and attainable. If I do that, do you realize that that’s SIXTY POUNDS this year? Yeah. I’m at 240. That takes me to 180, my personal goal weight. So, here we got with the goals for 2011.

1. Lose 5 pounds a month.
2. Finish the knitting projects you have on the needles. The ones you can remember are:
   • Sweater
   • Sweater
   • Sweater
   • Sweater
   • Fingerless gloves
   • Fingerless gloves
   • Fingerless gloves
   • Fingerless gloves
   • Blanket
   • Lace scarf
3. Finish Run a 5K. Start to finish. You finished one already. You need to run the whole way. Even if it takes you a million years to run it, you will run it. Even if you get passed by every stroller or walker, you WILL run it. You’re already locked into the Jingle Bell Run for December.
4. Put your degree to work. Seriously. And soon.
5. Find a prosthedontist who won’t destroy your wallet. Finish your smile.
6. Blog more. Yew rite guud. Doesn’t matter if anyone reads it. Write for the love of writing. Get the words out of your head.
7. Care less about things and people you can’t change. They will continue to be who and what they are. (And yes, this is probably the hardest one.)
8. Talk to The Princess and The Drama Queen more. Kick them in the ass to run.
9. Win another frickin’ blue ribbon in the Ohio State Fair. You’ve got MAD FUCKIN’ KNITTIN’ SKILLZ and you have a fantastic shawl… around here… somewhere… Shit.
10. Find the shawl. Before May. (Oops.)
11. Finish the playlist for The Awesomest Niece Ever. Send her the CD.
12. Don’t be such a homebody. There are people who would like to see you. Go see them. Even if it’s in a bar.
13. Be good; it sounds like you’re built for it.
14. …and see more movies. You’ve been watching the same ones way too much.
15. Love like a crazy person. Lose yourself in it every once in a while.
16. Go dancing. Yes, you have a rule about fat boys dancing. Break it.

Sure, I think I can do that. And more.

Happy 2012, y’all. May we all hit our goal weights before the world comes to an end. Because the world needs more skinny, hungry corpses.

College Football?? YOU?!

Date: 2011.12.05 | Category: Random | Response: 0

(This is a repost of a blog post I made in 2009. A friend on Facebook made a post about a couple of this year’s bowl games, and it all became relevant again.)

Yes, me. I love football, and the more amateur it is, the more I love it, right down to the PeeWee level. Those kids are (mostly) playing for the pure love of the game. Once you get up to pro ball, it’s a job, and then it’s awesome because of the possibility of the Star Factor, but not as awesome because you have to bust your ass more to stay employed.

I saw this article yesterday, and started with a split second reaction of, “Legislation for college football? Really?” which quickly morphed into, “Well, that might be a bit extreme, but I can see why they’d want to regulate it a little bit.” and into “The BCS is completely skewing football.” And they pretty much are.

Take a look at that article again. Five conferences — Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West, Sun Belt and Western Athletic — get the chance to send one team total to a bowl game, where the other six conferences can send multiple teams. How is that fair? Granted, one of my teams is Big Ten Conference (Wisconsin!) but the other is Mountain West Conference (Wyoming!), and most likely will never see a bowl game.

Do I think that legislation is the way to go? Probably not, but you know what? There’s gotta be some frivolity every once in a while. Kinda like the President “pardoning” the turkeys on Thanksgiving. I do think that some reform is needed for anything called a National Championship. If the NCAA does it for basketball, why can’t they do it for football? Sixteen teams to eight teams to four teams to two to a true national champion, complete with banners and parades and bragging rights. Let the teams themselves figure out who’s the best, not some arbitrary choice of who goes where. Let the bowl games be the quarter- and semi-finals and then pick one to be the Championship game. Would it take time to restructure? Sure it would. But that’s why these people get paid the big bucks.

48:01

Date: 2011.12.03 | Category: Fat Family Fitness, Running | Response: 6

48:01 was my time for the Jingle Bell Run.

Here’s the map and my activity level. Started at Nationwide and High. Ran to State street, walked to Fulton, ran to Blenkner, walked to Rich, ran to Gay, walked to Chestnut, ran to the finish.

And still it took me nearly a fucking hour to finish.

Everyone will say that they’re proud of me, that I finished the race, that it’s an accomplishment, that I should be proud of what I did.

Except I’m not. In October, I walked a full 5K two weeks ago in 45 minutes. Seriously, there was no running involved in that 5K, and it was slower than today’s.

I feel like a miserable failure at this, and I don’t know how to not feel like a miserable failure at it.

I do know that this is not the end of my running, and it’s not even the end of me doing 5K running. By next year, I want to be able to run the whole 5K. I may re-boot the Couch to 5K program and call it my C25K Boot-in-the-Ass program.

This is seriously making me feel shitty. More than anything, I feel like I let down my donors. I know I let down myself.

Crossposted from Fat Family Fitness

One Mile

Date: 2011.10.31 | Category: Fat Family Fitness, Running | Response: 0

I went out to do a run today, but instead of the regularly scheduled interval C25K run I had planned (W6D1), I decided I was going to clock my time for the SparkPeople Trick-or-Treat Trot Virtual 5K that The Mom posted about for which I’ve been signed up for a while. I also wanted to kill off a quest over on Fitocracy (Go For A Jog: Run a mile in under 12 minutes; +50 XP).

So I got out there, and I started out on a nice easy jog. My park trail is a quarter mile, so I figured I’d do two jogging laps followed by a walking lap and repeat that four times, and finish off with half a lap of jogging. I also wanted the one-mile time, so I figured I’d start with that.

I’m dumb.

First of all, I didn’t have anything to eat all day before I did this at 5:30pm. I also had only had about 16 ounces of water and a 20-ounce Mountain Dew, so I was clearly not hydrated enough. Disaster befell.

Well, not exactly a disaster. I only made it the one mile instead of the full 5K before I decided to head home. However, that one mile? Yeah. 10m30s. I’m 235 pounds and 38 years old, and I haven’t done any running since high school. I played racquetball in college the first time through, and I did a lot of biking in my 20s, but not anything extremely healthy since then. And I ran a mile in under 11 minutes. I’m pretty damn proud of myself for that!

Feeling a little sick…

Date: 2011.10.30 | Category: Fat Family Fitness, Running | Response: 0

I registered for the Jingle Bell Run today. Here’s my personal page. If you’d like to donate, I’d gladly accept donations. If you’d like to pimp out my page for donations, I’d really appreciate it.

I put on there:

If I make my first goal ($500), I will run in a pink sequined Santa Hat. If I make my second goal ($1000), I will add a pair of green Victoria’s Secret long johns to the ensemble. If I go higher than that, well, we’ll see what I can come up with.

I don’t know what I’ll do if I go higher than $1000, but there will be something. Possibly.

Also, if anyone wants to get me these shoes to run in, I wouldn’t say no, and I’d be very happy. Size 9.5 mens, please.

Mirrored from Fat Family Fitness

A lie? From a corporation??

Date: 2011.10.26 | Category: Random | Response: 0

Say it ain’t so! And before we go any further, let’s leave the moralizing about it being Wal-mart and OMG HOW CAN YOU SHOP THERE!!!!1eleven!! elsewhere, shall we?

Wal-mart has a “Match it!” commercial that’s been getting a lot of airtime lately. They’re trying to pimp out their price matching policy. It is, for the most part, a decent policy. Until you try to use it to price match something on their website with the same product in the store.

I’m trying to lose weight. We all know that. So I’m looking for more accoutrements to help in that quest. So I went in search of said items. I found this item on walmart.com. It’s a good setup. I talked with a friend who’s more fitness-minded than I am (HI, MATT!) and he said it’s a good gateway price and to go for it. So I trekked on down to my local Ghetto Wal-mart and found the item on the shelf. I took it to one of the price-check scanners, and it said that it was $21.37. Not a terrible price, but not the $15 it was advertising online. So I took it up to the service center and asked the guy behind the counter about it. He said that they don’t price match any websites. “Even your own?” I asked incredulously. “Even our own. It’s stupid, I know, but they won’t let me,” he said. So I trekked my happy fat ass back to Sporting Goods, put it back on the shelf (because I was taught to put things back where I found them, and I worked in retail long enough to know that it’s a raging bitch to have to put stuff away after rude customers have just left them wherever they want), and left the store, fuming.

Incidentally, I did check the walmart.com Ad Match Guarantee when I got home, and it does state that they don’t match Internet pricing. I can see that, when it’s from some other company, but to not match your own site? REALLY?? Why would you do such a thing? I can buy it online for $15 and have it sent to the store for pickup for no cost in shipping. How does this make any sense at all??

FFF: Have you seen my motivation?

Date: 2011.10.26 | Category: C25K, Fat Family Fitness | Response: 0

I’m still not doing any exercise. I need to figure out how to motivate myself. It’s… suckful, not having the motivation I need to keep going on this. I hate it, and I know that I’m only five weeks from the JBR.

GOALS:

1. I need to do more Wii Fit stuff. I mean, seriously, I’ve got the indoor activities at the click of a Wiimote. Why am I not using it? Because I’m fat and lazy. Ta dah!
2. I need to find out if the parks nearby have any jungle gym equipment. Again, get off my fat ass and walk over there. There are two parks that are 3/4s of a mile from me. That’s a 10-minute walk. Hell, I can take the dog. She’d probably love a good long walk like that. Maybe. Or she’ll hate it and poop on the bed.
3. I need to find out if the nearby high school will let me run on their track. I have the number. All I need to do is call them. I was told that, since they’re public structures, I should be able to walk or run on the track any time. We’ll see.
4. I need to come up with a body-weight workout. Fitocracy has easy tracking stuff on the site. I could rack up metric assloads of points just be doing some easy routines. I need to figure out what I could do. Stuff like push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, stuff from elementary PE classes. It’s not rocket science.

This shouldn’t be tough. I just need a kick in the ass.

We’re not going to discuss food yet. One giant hurdle at a time.

How do you keep motivated to work out and/or eat better?

Mirrored from Fat Family Fitness