How I Rebel

Since I've grown up and retired, I've become quite the rebel.  Don't tell me what to do.  Don't tell me where to stand.  Don't tell me what to go along with.

I've even given over my new old-lady car to Ted and taken to driving his old Prius, because the newer Avalon has too many automatic functions.  For example, it AUTOMATICALLY SLOWS DOWN when you're in cruise control and you get too close to the car in front of you.  That's just bullish*t.  If I wanted to slow down, I'd have stepped on the brake.

I have admired this trait in myself - I'm an independent thinker, I make up my own mind.  If someone sends me a quiz with 8 questions, I only do 7.

This is not to say I don't listen to people who know more than I do about a particular subject.  For example, I listen to Tom the Trainer's instructions and follow them as best I can.  I listen to my doctors (with some skepticism, but I listen).  I listened to my EMT instructors.  I give people the benefit of the doubt, unless and until I learn that their knowledge of a particular subject is no better than my own.

Yet while this rebellion/skepticism has served me well in my life, it sometimes gets in the way of my success.

For example:  After rigidly adhering to a certain protein/carb/fat ratio for a week, I'll feel like splurging with, say, an entire bottle of wine.  I'll justify this splurge by saying I've worked hard all week and so I deserve it, when what I'm really doing is rebelling AGAINST MYSELF!  WTF!

Looking back over all the weight loss programs I've done in my life (and there are many), I see this seed of rebellion cropping up as I finished each one.  "I've been so strict for six months, enough is enough."  And you can guess where I was six months later.

I started out this morning writing about how I love Fridays because it's two days off from the gym, when I realized that while at the end of Friday's workout I do look forward to two days off, I still do my cardio every day (or make up for any day I miss before the end of the week), and I don't really mind going to the gym.    In fact, I miss it when I'm traveling.    Then I starting thinking about HAVING to do something versus WANTING to do it, and how I sometimes need to change my perspective.

The same is true with my rebellions.  Some are good.  Some, not so much.

I'm not sure my fitness regimen has become an addiction or obsession, and I'm not sure it ever will, but I know that I'm loving the results of my program.  I can remember when just biking the upper loop around my subdivision was too much for me, and I'd have to walk my bike up the steep hills - or I'd talk myself into a rebellion and walk my bike, I'm not sure now which it was.  Just the other day, Ted and I did the figure eight on our bikes, twice, for ten miles.

Is it tiring counting protein, fat and carb grams every day?  Yes.  Can it be a drag going to the gym when it's a beautiful day outside?  Sure.

Do I love being strong and fit, and becoming even more so?  Absolutely.  So there's one person who gets to tell me what to do.

And that's me.

Update

200 Floor pull ups
200 Knee push ups
200 Dead lifts

30 crunches, 30 reverse crunches, 30 bicep curls, 30 tricep kick backs.

That is all.

The Life of Mohammad

That was the topic of training today - while I could still talk, that is.  I'm watching a documentary by this name via Amazon Prime while on the treadmill/cycle for cardio and it's quite interesting.  Muslims have as many zany stories about their prophet as the old testament does about its.  I was telling Tom about one of them involving a flying horse as I lunged across two parking lots and back - kind of ironic that I'm lunging toward the McDonald's drive-thru, but there you are.

Lunging....

...toward McDonalds.  While discussing Islam.

Tom the Trainer is a devout methodist (in fact, he attends the same church our former neighbors took us to when we first moved here, for free workouts.  We called it Sweatin' with the Methodists), but doesn't try to talk theology much with me, because he knows I'm not a christian, but I'd like to think my sharing this documentary with him enabled him to learn a few things, too.

Anyway, after lunging across the parking lots (did I say there were two?) , we went back into the gym to commence the weights.  More effing bicep curls with the 45 pound bar,

then some tricep extensions with 12 pound weights,

Some chest presses with 70 pounds on,

Me:  Didn't we work the chest Monday?
Tom:  And the back.  Eight....

Alternate those with body squats

Which are a little painful after lunging,

and some more of these blasted things.

To say nothing of twenty sets of one-minute planks on Monday.  Today,

Tom:  And you're finished!
Me:  What, no planks?

HA!  I'm a riot!  And my upper arms are now too big for my medium tee shirts, that I struggled and Medifasted myself into two years ago.  Oh well - Onward!