Oct
7
Yesterday I had to do a periodic fitness evaluation at my gym, where a trainer leads me through a series of progressively terrible exercises in order to determine at what point my lungs start to actually protrude from my nostrils. No part of this is fun, from the 12-minute speed gallop on the treadmill to the arm-trembling bench presses, but the worst part by far is the fat test conducted at the beginning. In terms of grievous psychological discomfort, there’s nothing quite like having various parts of your fat pinched by another person, especially when said person is not in fact a matronly woman with a mustache and a nun’s habit but a handsome young GYM TRAINER.
The worst thing is he has to sort of grab ahold of my fat with his actual fingers before putting the calipers around it. I have to tug down my shorts slightly and hold my shirt up a bit so he can get at the flab hanging around my belly, which basically causes my brain to shear away from the horror of the situation and take up residence in the bottom of my left foot, leaving me slack-jawed and silent as he chatters away about whatever the hell he’s talking about. I try and take solace from the fact that he does these tests all the time and it’s probably like being a doctor or something, but truthfully that thought never helps me when I’m in the company of an actual doctor, especially when they’re peering at my jacked-open girl parts. Some things just aren’t natural, and I’d put “having a dude pinch my fat” in the same discomforting file as “having a medically trained, totally professional woman crank apart my hoo-ha with a metal duck bill and stick a giant mascara wand in there”.
The results of the test were unsurprising: I’ve been doing well on the fitness front, not so much on the healthy eating. I know this, of course—you can’t spend over a month stuffing crap in your Twinkie-hole without realizing there’s going to be some fallout—and actually this was already the week I vowed to get my shit together and re-focus on my diet. I didn’t really need the extra wakeup call of a fat test, but I suppose it’s useful all the same. The numbers confirmed what my jeans were telling me, that the junk food binge has not gone by unnoticed. Every part of me is measuring bigger, and while all the working out is making me stronger, all the pigging out is making me flabbier.
I used to have this vague notion that if you exercised a lot, you could pretty much eat what you wanted. Wrong! Those cookies will undo every goddamn mile you ran, and hey, breaking news from the No-Shit Gazette, LIFE ISN’T FAAAIR.
Anyway, if you want to join me in this renewed diet focus, maybe add your own tips or daily food diaries or whatever, I’ll be posting every day over here. As a related topic, if any of you would like to contribute an article to Bodies in Motivation, I’m looking to add:
– Success stories (anything you’ve done fitness or healthwise that you’re proud of)
– Challenges (questions about a fitness or diet issue you’re struggling with, to be answered by readers)
– Gear or clothing reviews
– Exercise write-ups (any kind of class or discipline you’re tried that you don’t mind describing)
Those areas have been a bit neglected lately in favor of ongoing personal blog posts, and I’d like to build them back up. Bodies is a labor of love, so unfortunately there’s no monetary compensation for contributing, but people will read and get inspired and give advice and, you know, that’s pretty awesome. So hit me up via email (sundry at gmail dot com) if you’ve got anything you’d like to share, I’d love to hear from you.
Oct
6
So hey, you know all that hemming and hawing I was doing over vaccinating my kids against H1N1? I think they already got it. Not the vaccination, mind you, which isn’t yet available, but the actual flu.
Dylan’s been dealing with a runny nose and cough for a while, and that morphed into a couple of barfing episodes on Monday. He was limp, feverish, and looked pink-eyed and terrible, then after a warm bath he seemed to completely rally—he was running around, eating, and he didn’t feel hot. Whew, I thought. Glad that’s over with! And with almost no sense of comedic foreboding, I put him to bed, along with Riley, who had just started complaining of a headache.
I don’t even know how to describe the events that eventually unfolded throughout the night, except to say that literally nothing in my four+ years of parenting had prepared me for what’s involved in caring for two children who are experiencing similar bodily misfortunes at the same time. They both ran high fevers (as tested by my lips-to-the-forehead method, which reports in three levels: Hmmm, Oh Dear, and Holy Fucking Shit), they both puked, they both required multiple baths and a truly epic and horrifying ongoing laundry cycle.
We ended up putting Riley in our room on a cot and until the combination of Motrin and Tylenol finally brought his fever down, he laid there shivering and moaning in a sort of half-sleep, which was . . . well, awful. Just awful and scary. Dylan woke up over and over and got weirdly chatty around 3 AM (“Horse?”) and oh man, the night just went on and on and on. Even when they were both sleeping, I wasn’t—I laid there for hours staring up at our dark bedroom ceiling listening for the kids while my heart whammed around in my chest like a bird in a chimney.
They both seem much better today, thank god. Runny noses and some lingering fever, but greatly improved.
After we’d all been up for a while this morning, I started thinking that if they didn’t have the flu, my decision on the vaccination was no longer a difficult one. Vaccinate away! Fill them with drugs! Stab them with needles until they look like porcupines! My god, anything to reduce the chances of another night like that, or worse.
I called the pediatrician’s office to see about making an appointment for getting them tested for H1N1, and you know what? They aren’t doing any testing. Unless you’re about to be hospitalized, doctors—at least around here—pretty much aren’t testing for the swine flu. “Not even to see if we need the vaccine or not?” I asked, and the nurse said they’re recommending everyone get the vaccine even if they suspect they had the flu.
So did they or do they still have swine flu? I think maybe they did, but there’s apparently no way to know for sure. But yeah, we’ll be getting those vaccinations. Even though, ironically, they may be totally unnecessary now.
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