Here It Goes Again...

If I were posting from somewhere that I could access YouTube, I would put the OKGo treadmill video up for your viewing enjoyment. However, since school/work is lame and uses the most annoying web-filtering program ever, it's impossible. So, please pause for about 4 minutes, hum the song, and picture four nerdy hipster dudes doing a well-coordinated treadmill dance.

Done? Good.

Weight this morning? 289.7 pounds

Finally back in the 280s. I was there before I went home over Christmas, but being at home over the holidays (for the first time in five years), would probably be enough to screw up even the most diligent of healthy lifestylers.

So, with that HUGE success on the scale this morning, I had to push my way through my daily routine and drag myself kicking and screaming out the door to come to my own personal hell. It's over an hour commute to get to this school and there are five other high schools in the area, all with a hefty supply of rowdy teenagers just STARVING for some victim to chew on. I had one group of nattering girls on the train discussing my size and wondering if they could manage to get a photo... and a boy staring and saying "WHOA HUGE!" in Japanese pretty much as loudly as he could.

My 0.3 pounds under 290 success was no match.

Still, I carry on. I fight the good fight in my head and I'll fight it tomorrow morning on the pavement when I go out to continue week two of C25k (www.c25k.com). Cardio is where the calorie and fat burn is, but I'm going to have to work on strength training, too, to up that resting metabolism.

Within the next month or so, I will probably add in one or two or all three of the following programs:
One Hundred Push-Ups - www.hundredpushups.com
Two Hundred Sit-Ups - www.twohundredsitups.com
Two Hundred Squats - www.twohundredsquats.com

I'd completed about a month of the One Hundred Push-Ups program... before I went home for Christmas. Needless to say, everything about healthy living fell apart, there, after the first week or so.

I've also started to add in the dreaded "Pink Yoga Bitch" (so nicknamed because of the pink leotard Jennifer Kries is wearing on the cover) video to my weekly routine, at least once or twice a week (three would be optimal, but I think that's pushing it, really). I absolutely love it, as does anyone else I've ever done it with. It's hard to find, now, but you might be able to get it on Amazon or eBay with a little searching - The Method: Target Specifics with Jennifer Kries.

And because I like books, here's my review of Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food:

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars

Having read The Omnivore's Dilemma just last year, a lot of the information in In Defense of Food was more like a pared down review than groundbreaking journalism for me.

However, that didn't make the information any less shocking or effective.

If Omnivore's Dilemma is too daunting a book for you to consider picking up, then this compact version may do the trick.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. That's not so hard, is it? I think we all instinctually recognize these three key points of the eater's manifesto as common sensical... but sometimes common sense isn't enough to convince the refined carb addict (or grain-fed beef addict or low-fat-chemical-food-stuff addict, etc) that the three principles should be followed.

That's how three simple instructions pan out into a 200-page journalistic exploration - answering the WHY. Why should we eat food? Don't we already eat food? (No, we don't.) Why not too much? (Duh?) Why mostly plants? (People aren't meant to live on vitamin supplements, but rather vitamins. Found in? Plants!)

Read it. Appreciate it. Follow the basic tenants, but take a few things with a grain of salt (it's really just a long persuasion paper, so the cited sources were handpicked to serve a persuasive purpose, not to present a balanced look at both sides of the story).

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Go.

View all my reviews.