Tag: exercise

Don’t read this if you’re in a good mood

On By Chris SoutherIn Dad Blogs, Family, Life in these United States6 Comments

weights It’s a new year (almost) and I swear my mood is not improving. There are some things going on that don’t help, but even the little things that should make me happy, are driving me nutz!

For one, after the “Season of Splurge” as I like to call Christmas, I was really looking forward to getting back in the gym and dropping a couple of pounds. But wouldn’t you know it, on Thursday of last week, I had just started my workout and went to turn on my MP3 player so I could tune out the outside noise and the darn thing just froze up. Nothing I could do fixed it. In the end, I had to toss it. I can exercise without my music, but I can’t run, which is what really helps me shed the pounds.

In a panic, I went to Fry’s electronics the next day and selected an MP3 player from their depleted stock. Got it home and loaded it up and headed to the gym. Turns out, the darn thing had no “sort” function, so all my songs played in alphabetical order, with each band’s songs right after each other. The little unit also would not turn up the music very loud either. Apparently, like seatbelt and helmet laws, they are trying to protect me from myself.

No thank you…I’m doin’ just fine!

So I have now ordered another MP3 player online, after verifying the features I want and I’m waiting on it to come in.

Meanwhile, the “I got a gym membership for Christmas” crowd has shown up and it’s like the blind leading the friggin’ blind.

Clueless 50-year olds literally wandering around the gym with their headsets on doing nothing but taking up space. Add to it the people who occupy a bench that has a particular use (such as the benchpress) for nothing more than a place to sit while they are doing ab twists, and I’m literally about ready to scream!

Despite a supposed drought, we’ve gotten so much rain the last few months that I can’t do anything to repair my backyard where the rain has washed out some of my new landscaping and it’s really cold to boot.

I dunno, I’m feeling very cosmically dumped on right now and I don’t see things improving in the near future.

Thriving Ivory’s lyrics keep running through my head, “…if I can’t see the sun, maybe I should go.”

Don’t worry, I’m speaking metaphorically here. (too bad Xanax makes you gain weight…)
Send me some good news, a joke, nude pictures of Bee Arthur…anything! I just need to cheer up!

That fool on the elliptical, might be you

On By Chris SoutherIn Dad Blogs, Family1 Comment

Compass OK seriously! This getting old crap is bringing me down! What now? What now you ask? Well, I’ll tell you “What now…”

For a 35 year old father of two, I think I do pretty good.

I exercise. Often hard!

I do handy things around the house.

I take vitamins.

I eat healthy.

My hair is still dark. From a distance.

And yet I still have this…this thing around my mid-section that won’t let go.

My weight has been a battle since I was a kid. I briefly beat it back in ’94 for about five years. That is, until I got married and we started having children. Somewhere along the way, cereal and stir fry for dinner was supplanted by Stouffer’s Lasagna, salmon with cheddar mashed potatoes, and thick steaks with grilled asparagus and corn fritters. Oh…no…those are three different dinners…not one big Shakespearean buffet!

Now granted, as I’ve admitted before, I suffer from a small case of body dysmorphic disorder, in which I think that I think that I look worse than I probably do. Or perhaps I’m fooling myself and I really DO look like I think I look and I’m using the “BDD” thing as an excuse to tell myself that I don’t really look as bad as I fear I do.

Truly, it boggles the mind.

After looking at those pictures of me in the river this weekend, I’m beginning to think the latter is true.

I also blame my work. Sitting on one’s hiney for eight a lot of hours a day doesn’t do much for the metabolism either, no matter how good you try to eat.

But here’s the rub: I AM getting older. At some point, I’m going to have to face the facts that no matter how hard I work, there’s a fine line between being healthy, and doing more than a body, at a given age, is capable of doing without breaking down. But when exactly is that? I mean, 35 is NOT old.

If 60 is the new 50, does that mean that 35 is the new 25? If so, I should look a helluva lot better than I do now!! And then if you sleep with a 25 year old, is it really like sleeping with a…nevermind.

Anyway, I’m just curious about others’ thoughts on this whole staying in shape as you get older thing. How do you measure your success (or failures) against your peers? Or do you?

Just keeping my big mouth shut

On By Chris SoutherIn Dad Blogs, Family, MarriageLeave a comment

I work out in the gym about 4-5 times per week, going on nearly 15 years now. Since I’ve been in the gym for so many years, I’ve created an “as-of-yet” unpublished list of Gym Etiquette rules and whenever someone violates those rules, I get really annoyed.

Topping the Etiquette list are:

  • not using a towel (there’s few things worse than getting on a machine or bench and finding a wet, sponge-like spot of sweat on the bench where the previous person didn’t use a towel…ugh!)
  • standing right in front of the weight racks when you are exercising (hey, others are working out here too ya know!)
  • sitting around on a machine doing little more than people watching or reading the newspaper  (really folks, just stay home…)
  • talking on the cell phone (OMG! Get a life. Can’t you go 45 minutes without talking on the cell phone?)

My workout routine typically consists of 2-3 days of nothing but weight training, and then usually 1-2 days of half cardio/half weights. When my knees and back aren’t bothering me, I’ll jog for my cardio; otherwise I’ll use the elliptical. Regardless of what I’m doing, I always have my headphones on blasting my favorite tunes, but sometimes when you’re right next to someone being loud, you can still hear them.

The other day my knees were bothering me and I opted to use the elliptical machine rather than do my usual 2 mile jog before hitting the weights. I had been on it for about 10 minutes and I was in the zone. I mean, the music was pumping and I was tranced out staring at a spot on the wall across the gym. Peripherally, I could see people coming and going and part of me noted that someone got on the machine beside me, but I didn’t wanna ruin my buzz by looking, so I just ignored them.

About five minutes later, I noticed that I could hear this person talking on the cell phone. Trying to ignore them, I turned my music up and worked even harder. But like all annoying things, such as the theme song from The Wiggles, once you’ve noticed it, it’s in your head and you can’t ignore it. So, I turned my head to give the person next to me my most menacing stare, only to see that the person beside me was…drumroll please…CareerMom, my wife. Of course I didn’t say anything to her, opting rather to keep the peace and say, “Oh hi, didn’t realize you were there.”

I have since noted that she has a habit of talking on the cell phone while on the elliptical machine and while this still annoys the crap out of me, I just make it a point to avoid working out next to her. Needless to say, she has also NOT seen my Gym Etiquette guide, although I am tempted to print it out and just leave it lying about the house somewhere. But that would probably be mean…

Body Dysmorphia and Young Men

On By Chris SoutherIn A Boy's Life, Dad Blogs, Family, Life in these United States, SocietyLeave a comment

No fat swimmers allowed!Let me preface this blog by stating the following: I am woefully ignorant about the sport of swimming. I don’t know if there are weight classes and I don’t know what the age divisions are. All I know is that skinny, though usually muscular in the upper-body, people, do things in the water that my frame was not designed for.

Yesterday as I was changing clothes in the locker room at my local L.A. Fitness  (folks, have you ever heard of cleaning the carpets and deodorizers?), there was a group of boys from a local high school in there. As I listened to them talk, it became apparent they were on some local swimming team and one of them was even wearing spandex shorts, which I didn’t know was standard swimming attire, but hey…different strokes for different folks. The boys appeared to range in age from 13 to perhaps 16. The youngest was a tiny little fellow who couldn’t have been more than 4’ 7”. There was another boy in there who was probably 14 or 15 and he was pretty thin and close to my own height of 5′ 8″. Like I said, he was skinny; there were no telltale love handles…nothing to indicate that he was overweight in the slightest.

As I was changing, each of these boys hopped up on the scales (one of the worst indicators of true health if I ever saw one) and when this one skinny kid got up there, he yelled out, “125 lbs!?”  Then, all his friends started jabbing him about his weight. One even went so far as to run back in the shower area blurting it out.

Now as I mentioned, I’m no expert on anything related to swimming, but I am pretty smart when it comes to boys’ and mens’ health. I know for instance, that at 14 or 15 years of age, the male body is starting to put on weight in the form of increased bone density as it prepares for the onslaught of male hormones that will significantly increase the boy’s muscle mass. And I know that in order for any of this to happen as it should, the body needs energy. And unless there’s a new form of energy out there that I don’t know about, food is the only way for that energy to be made available to said young boy’s body. I also happen to know that swimming, especially when not combined with an adequate weight training program, can actually have an adverse effect on the body. Water is the closest simulation that normally people have to being in space, and when in space, the body loses both muscle mass and bone density due to the lack of demands on it. This combination of lack of adequate caloric intake, coupled with an activity that burns whatever energy is available to it, and which does not stimulate lower-body musculature, is a recipe for disaster in teenagers.

Now, I know that girls have been told for years to stay thin and the media haven’t helped that, but truthfully, a young girl’s body doesn’t require the same caloric intake that a boy’s does (if you wanna argue this with me, just look up the caloric requirements of boys and girls of the same age).

So I say all of this only to point out to parents that we need to make sure that we keep an eye on our sons as much as we do our daughters. Fathers especially tend to dote on their daughters while allowing their sons to just “be”, assuming they’ll take care of themselves. But I would say that the pressure to win and to look good (at any cost) is especially prevalent in teens and it’s important that we set the right attitude about nutrition and health when they are young.

Then, when they are older and decide to ruin their joints with weight training (like I have), it’ll be their own decision and they’ll at least have a solid foundation to start from.