Category: Dating

Off track…featuring gummy bears and lemon drop martinis

Why am I posting exercise and fitness rants when I am supposed to be writing about dating, relationships and communication between males and females as well as female friends?  That was the focus, right? Well, I have found that the relationship I have with myself is pretty damn important. If I can’t be happy with the way I look or feel, how can I exude confidence? I can’t. If I can’t, how can I expect others to be confident in me and experience an attract to someone they want to get to know (male or female)? I can’t do that either. I am going go to be successful in the adventures of relationships with guys and my female friends when I am successful in the relationship I have with myself. Carrie Bradshaw (Sex and the City character) said this pretty exactly in the last episode of Sex and the City Season six, part two.

Enter fitness and exercise.  And diet (seemingly my albatross). When I have the tools in my tool chest, I have no excuses. Especially when I have used the tools with success in the last year. I have no one to blame but myself when I am to happy with the way things are going. I love the fitness part. I hate the healthy eating part.  Except, I love the way I feel and look when I am successful with healthy eating patterns and habits. I hate the way I feel after eating at  McDonalds. Why is it so hard? It makes total sense that I should be fully on board with the “eating right” thing. But I am not. So far from it. This weekend I have consumed the following in no particular order:

  • gummy bears
  • hot wings and sweet potato fries
  • two IPAs
  • movie popcorn
  • lemon drop martini
  • red wine
  • omelet with bacon and cheese (don’t forget the potatoes and bread with that please)
  • and some other stuff I can’t get remember.

So why is this so hard this year? If I could break through that, I think I could get to the crux of the problem. Just Saturday, I was reminded of my fat content when my personal trainer said “today, we are doing measurements”. Uh? What? I thought the fat caliper measurement was all that we needed to determine how out of shape I was. Clearly, not so much.

I have done the diet, the eating right, the changing of the paradigm. What happened over this last holiday season that got me so far off track? I am going to work on answerig that one, right after I grab a rice cake.  Seriously, they are not so bad when you  put some white cheddar cheese on top. Just kidding….Not.

 

Apologies….

I realize that I did not post a Throwback Thursdays post this week. It is something I am considering to be an experiment. I am not sure how popular it is. I would l love to take a poll. So for all of my readers, please leave a comment if my Throwback Thursdays are worth keeping. The posts are usually some type of retelling of an escapade of dating gone terribly awry. Throwback Thursday 5: AA and the homeless guy is a recent example. So the a look. Let me know. I usually post about two to three times a week, Thursday being one of them. If this is something you look forward to reading, please leave me a comment. That would be awesome!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend and stay tuned!

Enthusiasm & Amnesia

So I  mentioned my new work out plan: a gym and a personal trainer. I am ecstatic and I remain thrilled…six days in! I am so ready to do what ever my PT wants me to do on the mat, on a nautilus machine, or even, and especially,  the rower machine! Enthusiasm at its finest! I am so careful to avoid the use of “can’t”, instead carefully substituting it for the word challenging or “I’ll try that”. Often this word choice has taken a conscious effor. I am exercising my mind as well las my body. I am honest and tell him  everything I want to get from my work out and will work hard for: weight loss, body strength, all over tone, and yeah, of course: a flat stomach. My dream. I am on a mission and I have been focused and determined everytime  he adds another exercise to my work out plan.

At the end of my first three sessions, my  PT hands me the work sheet and says that my homework is now laid out for me. I can text him if I need to. The last thing I am going to do is be “THAT client, the one that’s bothering him all the time.  Today, I came home from work and walked my dog after changing into my exercise attire.  Totally psyched! All ready, get set go…..I get to the gym and do a little 5 minute cardio warm up on the bike. Then I stretch. So far so good. Then I read the Workout Plan aka my prescription for fitness. I am afflicted utterly  and completely. With work out amnesia………I lost any memory of what my PT had carefully outlined for me. I felt like a world-class idiot. Just days, correction, the day  before, I was following close instruction and could have sworn I was paying attention to all the moves. I drew a blank. So what do I do? I wing it. I stretch, I do the best memory of a few different exercises and did the reps for those. I hopped on my new favorite machine: the Rower. I rowed almost 350 meters in 2 minutes and called it a day.

Enthusiasm and amnesia and confessions. Confessions to my PT Saturday. When I tell him about my meager  amnesia in the face of  my genuine enthusiasm.

 

 

Spring training

So I took the first step and got off my ass to save my ass. I knew that these small walks around the lake weren’t going to shed sufficient pounds like they used to. I know that simply losing weight and shedding fat and calories are not going to cut it this time. I need an amplified plan. I must take more of an effort to not only make it last, but do it right. So, I had to do it last Wednesday after work.

I marched myself in to the 24 Hour Fitness and walking in, saw all kinds of membership sales and personal trainer packages on sale… I walked in and asked for help. Just for information, mind you. Just to fit it into my budget. They said “sure….”.  I met with a sales guy, who walked me through the membership gig and why a 12 month plan would be the most economical. Then I met my trainer. Former military, educated, and ready to work me to get me to my goals. Sign her up!

I walked out with a 12 months membership and a purchase of 15 training sessions. Yep, I am committed…. to good physical health! I marched to my car, the proud owner of a gym membership and a whopping dose of accountability, starting with my first training session the next morning at 0630. Here I go!

Fast forward to today: I’ve had two sessions now with my trainer and I am already loving it. I am getting a work out and I am definitely feeling sore, in a good way. I am pushing myself (or he is, rather). He is no babysitter while I do a work out.  He pays attention. He corrects my form. We start over and push my comfort level each time. Then we finished off the second session with my weight and entered my fat index. Uh-oh! I have some major kicking ass to do

I better get busy.

Do you wish to share how you started your success using a gym to increase your commitment to healthy living. Please leave  comments if you would be so inclined.

Thank you readers and enjoy what’s left of your weekend!

Symbiosis: Are the scales ever balanced?

via Daily Prompt: Symbiosis

Am I too cynical? When is symbiosis beneficial to both parties? I haven’t seen this often enough.  There is always some power play. Maybe we could be symbiotic in some equal-ish transfer of different contributions, money, emotional support, intellect, sex….the list goes on. The transfer can be fluid. I suppose if both people absolutely are equal in their need for the other’s contributions  to the relationship, then the symbiosis is copacetic. All good.

But when is it EVER a perfect balance of power? When we are so invested in the others success? Is it because our success depends too heavily on the others?  I wish I could think about all the lovely ecosystems and symbiosis in nature. That would be so cool here in the world of human behavior in relationships. It’s just now where my head goes.  My head goes to dysfunction in the so-called symbiosis of relationships I have seen (not just my own, mind you).

In human relationships (take your pick), when are the scaled perfectly balanced to create a genuine symbiosis?

 

Throwback Thursday 5: AA and the homeless guy

To preface this story, I have to disclose something. I am pretty sure I have mentioned this before in a previous post, but if you weren’t present for that rant, here it is: I used to think I had a drinking problem. For anyone who really knows me, they realize, as did I after nine years, that I simply had a lifestyle problem. I went to AA for a little over nine years till I realized I solidly  am NOT an alcoholic. That is a totally different post, or possibly memoir. This is simply one small snapshot from that time in AA. I made some pretty poor dating decisions, or just life decisions when I was in AA. While it changed my life for the better overall, the early  years were questionable!

Here we go! So I don’t know why I found this guy intriguing, but I did. I couldn’t come up with  a single reason other than he was tall, dark, and somewhat good looking. It’s quite the short story. He and I hung out a few times. I am not sure you would call them dates. He said he had a job. After one AA meeting, I eventually  agreed to let him come home with me. We stopped by ‘his’ house and he disappeared behind the back of the house, but refused to let me ‘come in’.  Odd, but as  I didn’t know him terribly well, I didn’t ask too many questions. We hung out at my place and all was fine. Since I wasn’t about to let him stay at my place, I gave him a ride back downtown when I went to work the next day and asked if he wanted to be dropped off at ‘his’ house. He simply said I could drop him off anywhere as he had some errands and had to be at work early anyway and he’d just walk around a bit. Odd, again….but who knows!  So, one of those fine days of dropping him off at my work, he just took off and it seemed in a different direction each time. Odder and odder. Each time. Where does he go? That morning, we  had decided to meet at the 5:45pm  AA meeting that night.

I met him at the meeting. After that, we went back to my place for dinner and would contemplate the later meeting. At my house, we were hanging out and his keys fell from his hoodie pocket. I picked them up for him. Only there were two keys. Very small keys. Almost like locker keys, but no house key. At all. Did I call him out on this? As I couldn’t find a house key to ‘his’ house where I let him pick up ‘a few things’ that first night? Of course I did! I can’t NOT ask him what the fuck is going on…with the locker keys, nowhere to go every morning…..

“I’m kinda homeless,” he says. WTF? I ask him about the house. He says he had hidden some clothes in the backyard and “kinda knows the guy that lives there”. Everything else explains itself pretty immediately once he tells me that he’s homeless. I tell him immediately, with no charitable blood in my body at that moment that we must go back to AA so I can promptly drop him off where I found him.  I should have been more compassionate. Maybe, just maybe, if he had been honest from the beginning I may have been more concerned, understanding, and/or helpful. No guarantees, but at this point, it was not happening. No sir.  I took him back to one of the big AA  meeting houses in Denver where we first met. We drove down pretty much in silence. What do you say?  I parked my little VW Beetle in the parking lot after unwittingly providing him a home for basically a week (at night anyway).

He says to me as I am getting out of the car, “Can I just stay in the car for a while you go to the meeting?”  Really? “No,” I said. Just no.

In the weeks, months,  and years that followed, I saw him from a distance at meetings and around the meeting house. He bleached his hair, he got a little stranger in his behavior.  I am glad I called him out on the key that night. Not that I wouldn’t  have figured it out sooner or later. Likely sooner. But at least when I dodged the bullet there, the bullet was much smaller.

Have a great day my readers!  I will catch up with you all this weekend!