My Legs Hurt
For some reason, I'm very conscious of my body the last few days. It may be just the flip side of the fact that I've been doing a lot of thinking lately--some of it about some more complex issues than I've dealt with in a while, some of it emotional stuff. As such, I think I've also been pushing myself during my exercise time, and on my rides to and from work and such. I was actually pretty achey yesterday, as well, and I had decided to not exercise at the end of the workday, but by the time the end of the workday came around, I was raring to go, in need of some venting-exercise. Thing is, I think I'm also becoming sort of obsessed with the cardio. Maybe that's the way cardio affects my body, by making me sort of addicted to it? I guess I was that way with free weights for a while, too. At any rate, once I get on the stationary bike, I keep trying to up my miles/time that I keep my heart rate up/calorie burn numbers. Which is sort of strange, I guess...but the long and the short of it is that I've worked my body too hard and too fast this week so far. I may go do some weights after work, or do a little bit of cardio (maybe a ride around the lake), but I think I need to give my legs (at least) a bit of a rest.

This body stuff is weird. It's sort of like what Steve said recently talking about replacing the carpet in his house. Once you start to clean the place up, you start to notice other stuff that needs doing. I feel that way about my body lately, which doesn't feel exactly healthy. I need to keep focusing on the progress I have made, on the health aspects of it all--lately I've mostly been wanting to lose some of my belly. And it's strange, because I am healthier (though not as healthy as I'd like to be), I'm leaner in a lot of ways; you can see it in my face, in my arms and legs, in my torso in general. I can feel it as I ride up the hill on my way home from work. And yet, when I climb into bed at night, I feel my belly, I feel my whole torso not being what I want it to be. And that feels really weird to me, because I can also feel myself toning up in my torso--it's just not as fast as the rest of me; it's the last part of my body to feel the effects of getting more muscle and less fat.

I guess what I'm facing is that I'm hitting something of a wall as far as my progress visually goes--and that wall is making me feel more body (self-)conscous, not less. And again, that doesn't feel particularly healthy, emotionally. I've started to change my relationship to my body, and I'm not entirely happy with the new relationship.

On the other hand, I'm still on the slow-and-steady-wins-the-race kick, really; I'm eating (for the most part) what I want, not going hungry. Trying to eat more fruits and veggies, eating smaller portions; eating those little portions and snacks more often, so I can eat less and not feel hungry. And I'm exercising, enjoying that still. I just wonder if my body will ever be able to move up to a different level of fitness, or if I want it to. What I mean is: Do I want to be a person who is athletic, or a person who exercises so that he can eat more of what he wants to eat? False dichotomy, sure, but I still make decisions along these lines all of the time. A big part of me wants to be just more athletic--but my mindset is such that thinking of myself that way is difficult; also, I think given the fact that I haven't been that way in my life up until now, being athletic in the sense I'm talking about may not be possible(?)...it may be too much of a change of lifestyle for me to really do it.

Or maybe I'll do it slow and steady?
Filed under:Health

Posture-ing
I feel a rash coming on. No, not that type. A rash of posts about exercise and my feelings about my body and such. But that's likely just the endorphins talking.

So--I had to work a bit late last night, but I went to work out anyway, and did 10 minutes of weights and an hour of the stationary bike. The weights felt good to do--although I am suprised by how much my body reverted, as far as strength goes, to my pre-weights stage. I can still lift quite a bit more than I could a year ago, but man, I can't lift what I did 3 months ago.

Still, today I feel very good. That nice ache-yness that comes from doing some hard work or from doing curls. It's a funny thing--the sort of stereotype at a gym is that the men love to do the bench pressing and the curls. For some reason they are seen as the epitome of masculinity or some such; this stereotype holds to such a degree that you often see men with huge biceps and pecs and, say, no quads to speak of. I used to think this was all just sort of culturally created--and that may still be the case--but I will say that after doing curls and bench pressing some yesterday, my entire musculature feels different today. I recognize how much I use my chest muscles, and my arm muscles. That sounds silly perhaps.

Thing is, one of the things that may be happening with the relationship between exercise and my body image is that I may not even be toning up much, really--but I carry myself differently. Shoulders back. Standing straighter. Sure, I have a little belly, but I just put it out there, rather than trying to hide it by slouching and such. And the weights help me to change the way I stand, I think--even a moderate increase in strength makes me feel like walking taller and the like. I know I've learned this lesson before...but I keep forgetting. When I exercise harder, I just feel better. I have to keep it within moderate levels, I think, or I start to get sort of habitually tired, but in general harder workouts mean feeling better.

Now, I've been working out regularly--but I've been focusing pretty much only on cardio for a few months now. And it's the weights that actually make me feel like I'm getting into better shape, though I know intellecutally both weights and cardio are doing the trick. And, of course, they aren't mutually exclusive--I can increase the resistance on the stationary bike to the point that my muscles really feel it...and I do sometimes. But there's something about freeweights--whether it's just a gym culture thing (I did take one weight training class in high school, for which I'm pretty grateful, actually; I know my way around the freeweights, at least, and some of the basic exercises and traps people get caught up in) or not.

Filed under:Health

Weight for It...
So, after exercising fairly regularly for about a year now(!) and eating less, feeling more fit, being sick less often...basically feeling healthier than I have for a good deal of my life, I finally stepped on the scale again. I have made 'losing weight' not a goal at all, and have intentionally not weighed myself; mostly this is because I think it's a poor goal, in general, but also because I want to motivate myself, and losing weight just doesn't motivate me. Feeling more trim, yes. Feeling stronger, yes. Fitting into my clothes better, yep. Being lighter? Nope.

Still, I was curious. I had a hunch that I had either stayed around the same weight as a year ago or that I had actually gained a little bit (muscle weighing more than fat and all of that). Sure enough: I weight exactly what I did a year ago. And yet I still have friends and family telling me that I am looking much more fit, even having them tell me I look like I've 'lost weight'. Which just, you know, sort of proves that I'm on the right track, strategy/motivation-wise.

I have, however, stopped doing weight work for the most part. Mostly this is out of a combination of mental/emotional laziness (it takes very little mental effort to hop on the stationary cycle, vs. keeping track of a little weight routine, of doing that one last rep, etc.) but it was also because my body felt beat up. I think, even though I wasn't doing that much weight work, I was doing too much too quickly--and perhaps not supplementing my diet enough (not enough protein, perhaps?). I was constantly having achey and tired muscles, despite the fact that I was feeling better. So today I hop back on the weight bandwagon, but I'm only going to do 15 minutes of weights and then do my normal cardio stuff. I'm going to try this for a while and see how it works...and maybe a year from now when I weigh myself I'll weight 5 or 10 lbs more and feel all that much stronger.

Filed under:Health