My father and I went to Dugan's Pub the other day so I could get my annual celebratory Buffalo chicken sandwich in honor of my upcoming birthday. This isn't a long-standing tradition. I discovered the sandwich somewhere in the last decade and, knowing that eating it on a regular basis would shorten my lifespan, have assigned it formal designation as a birthday treat.
The sandwich is a model of perfection. A full breast of chicken, butterflied, deep fried and Buffalo-ized in an amazing spicy, yet flavorful, red-orange sauce, covered with melted Swiss and served on a bun butch enough to hold up under pressure. Since I was already throwing caution (and several major arteries) to the wind, I went ahead and ordered the beer-battered fries as my side and didn't forget the bleu cheese dressing. It's Buffalo chicken, after all. Any other condiment (with the possible exception of ranch) is un-American.
The end result of eating the Dugan's Pub Buffalo chicken sandwich should come as no surprise. Sensations of burning, bloat and discomfort are immediately visited upon you, and again several hours later when the alien vacates its host body. Sweating, congestion, tears of shame and joy -- all the things you hope for when over-indulging in your favorite flavors and seeking a satisfyingly trough-like experience, leaving you emotionally drained from overwhelming satisfaction and self-loathing.
This year, all the effects were magnified exponentially.
Not only am I growing older, finding myself slightly less capable of tolerating such unbridled over-eating with the passing of each year, My Lovely Wife and I have also been making an effort since the start of 2016 to eat less like hormone-charged teenagers and more like responsible adults interested in meeting our grandchildren. Since January, I've lost close to twenty pounds and dropped two inches from my waistline. Shirts have gone from extra-large to large and I'm as close to not having a pot belly as I've been since graduating high school. While we have cut back on certain foods (I'm looking at you, breads and starches!) and reintroduced ourselves to daily portions of fruits of vegetables, the biggest factor for me has been portion control.
Left to my own devices, I'd eat and nibble and pick and peck and nosh and munch and crunch all day long on all the things I know I shouldn't be eating. Then, I'd sit down to a table three times a day and stuff myself. Even during past diets, I'd replace pretzels and chips with apples and carrots, yet I'd still cram those healthy items down my pie hole like a starved hyena gulping down a baby gazelle. This time around, I'm taking it seriously. Meal portions are reasonable, snacking is down to a bare minimum, water consumption could flood a small Texas town, exercise is more strategic, and foods and sundry ingredients are chosen with greater care.
Which is exactly why Dugan's Buffalo chicken sandwich and beer-battered fries were such a delicious, spice-coated, deep-fried offense to the senses. I've always known fries weren't good for me, but this was the first time in 48 years I could recall ever wishing I had ordered the broccoli florets or fruit cup instead. Not that the fries weren't awesome -- they were, and I ate every last one. Not that the chicken sandwich didn't meet my expectations -- it did, and I smiled and snorted all the way through it and went home with a red-orange tint around my mouth and finger tips. It's just that I was uncomfortably full for several hours.
You might be wondering what lesson I learned from this experience. As I'm fairly dim, with a memory that can be measured in nanoseconds, the answer is: probably none. Next May, I'll go to Dugan's Pub and order another Buffalo chicken sandwich. I might think about a healthy side, but that insanity will pass before the waitress arrives to take my order.
© 2016 Mark Feggeler
Showing posts with label exercise. Show all posts
Showing posts with label exercise. Show all posts
Friday, May 20, 2016
Monday, October 26, 2015
Remote Conditioning
The gym is a place where you're supposed to sweat. I understand that. I get it.
Few people should expect to leave the gym without sweating. If you do, you probably haven't exercised to an extent that your visit to the gym was worth getting out of bed. Going to the gym and expecting not to sweat is like going to your favorite restaurant and expecting to leave hungry, or watching a Jack Black movie and expecting to be entertained. It doesn't compute.
I, for one, am a free sweater. Forget lifting weights or running the track, I'm the guy who works up a sweat changing his clothes in the locker room. Sweat brakes on my brow just lacing up my sneakers. I'm fairly certain I had to reapply deodorant the other day because I thought about climbing a set of stairs, so what happens when I really do exercise? By the time our spin class at the gym is over I've cycled enough sweat out of my body it looks like I'm personally trying to create a new Great Lake on the floor around me.
I'm perfectly accepting of the idea I'm going to break a sweat at the gym. What I don't expect is for the gym to make the decision for me. That's what happened the other day when My Lovely Wife and I arrived for our non-cycle day of non-aerobic strength training. By strength training, I mean we planned to hit what I think of as the "old people" machines.
You know the old people machines, don't you? They're the machines hidden away in a deep recess of the gym that work only one or two muscles at a time. They don't get your heart pumping, they apply their own non-adjustable hydraulic tension, and they leave with you with absolutely no sense of gratification at having completed a rigorous morning workout because, let's be honest, you haven't. You sit, wiggle your extremities for two minutes, then move to the next machine when the light turns red. It's essentially a timed game of musical chairs during which there's no music, no knocking anyone to the floor, and no winners.
The old people machines are a great day in our weekly workout for several reasons. For starters, less laundry. If I'm not sweating straight through my cycle shorts like I've lost bladder control, then there's no reason to wash the gym shorts I wore for less than two hours. And if my shirt isn't soaked through like a live sponge at the bottom of the ocean, then there's no reason to wash the hoodie that keeps the crisp fall air from hitting my paper-thin drenched shirt. Second, the kids might actually hug us like we're not covered in some grotesquely horrid bodily fluid, because we're not. Finally, no sweating. Not even a healthful, shimmery glisten.
The other day, however, the temperature in the gym was hovering somewhere between tropical and solar flare. Turns out, like so many large buildings these days, the thermostat is remotely controlled by a system five states away that, on this particular day, was combating an Arctic front moving through North Carolina that none of us realized had befallen us.
Somewhere in Atlanta, Tallahassee or Terre Haute was the solution to our heatwave, only it's doubtful anyone that far away cares much about an emergency air conditioning adjustment at five-thirty in the morning just so I don't have to get clammy while pretending to work out.
© 2015 Mark Feggeler
Few people should expect to leave the gym without sweating. If you do, you probably haven't exercised to an extent that your visit to the gym was worth getting out of bed. Going to the gym and expecting not to sweat is like going to your favorite restaurant and expecting to leave hungry, or watching a Jack Black movie and expecting to be entertained. It doesn't compute.
I, for one, am a free sweater. Forget lifting weights or running the track, I'm the guy who works up a sweat changing his clothes in the locker room. Sweat brakes on my brow just lacing up my sneakers. I'm fairly certain I had to reapply deodorant the other day because I thought about climbing a set of stairs, so what happens when I really do exercise? By the time our spin class at the gym is over I've cycled enough sweat out of my body it looks like I'm personally trying to create a new Great Lake on the floor around me.
I'm perfectly accepting of the idea I'm going to break a sweat at the gym. What I don't expect is for the gym to make the decision for me. That's what happened the other day when My Lovely Wife and I arrived for our non-cycle day of non-aerobic strength training. By strength training, I mean we planned to hit what I think of as the "old people" machines.
You know the old people machines, don't you? They're the machines hidden away in a deep recess of the gym that work only one or two muscles at a time. They don't get your heart pumping, they apply their own non-adjustable hydraulic tension, and they leave with you with absolutely no sense of gratification at having completed a rigorous morning workout because, let's be honest, you haven't. You sit, wiggle your extremities for two minutes, then move to the next machine when the light turns red. It's essentially a timed game of musical chairs during which there's no music, no knocking anyone to the floor, and no winners.
The old people machines are a great day in our weekly workout for several reasons. For starters, less laundry. If I'm not sweating straight through my cycle shorts like I've lost bladder control, then there's no reason to wash the gym shorts I wore for less than two hours. And if my shirt isn't soaked through like a live sponge at the bottom of the ocean, then there's no reason to wash the hoodie that keeps the crisp fall air from hitting my paper-thin drenched shirt. Second, the kids might actually hug us like we're not covered in some grotesquely horrid bodily fluid, because we're not. Finally, no sweating. Not even a healthful, shimmery glisten.
The other day, however, the temperature in the gym was hovering somewhere between tropical and solar flare. Turns out, like so many large buildings these days, the thermostat is remotely controlled by a system five states away that, on this particular day, was combating an Arctic front moving through North Carolina that none of us realized had befallen us.
Somewhere in Atlanta, Tallahassee or Terre Haute was the solution to our heatwave, only it's doubtful anyone that far away cares much about an emergency air conditioning adjustment at five-thirty in the morning just so I don't have to get clammy while pretending to work out.
© 2015 Mark Feggeler
Monday, July 28, 2014
You're In my Bubble!
Personal space is one of those things I often believe to be overrated.
We all want enough elbow room to feel like we can breathe, and we all need some small place to call our own that is not subject to the intrusion of others. Beyond that, if you can't accept the fact that there are many people sharing your world who will occasionally, if not frequently, invade your personal space, then you run a high likelihood of needing psychotherapy, or medication, at some point in your life.
A reasonable approach to personal space can keep us from sounding like the first-grader I heard a couple years ago when picking up my sons from school. Another kid was hanging on him, talking non-stop, not picking up on the visual cues that his friend didn't care what he was saying and didn't want want to be followed. When he'd finally had enough of the yammering in his ear, the kid on the receiving end stopped and yelled:
"You're in my bubble!"
Lately, there have been times I've wanted to yell at people about my bubble. I can talk myself out of the temptation most of the time, but there is one situation that has been seriously testing my resolve to behave like an adult. I should explain.
The gym locker room and I are not old friends. It's only been in recent years, thanks to My Lovely Wife, that I have gone to the gym with any regularity. My participation in fitness classes has nothing to do with a desire to go to the gym. Instead, my participation is motivated by two things: (1) wanting to spend time with My Lovely Wife, and (2) not wanting to die. You can't eat the way I like to eat without exercising and not expect to add an inch to your waistline every year, so physical fitness had to enter into the picture before insulin and stomach stapling were required to.
For those of you not acquainted with a men's locker room, it is a spacious area that smells like feet and houses several hundred clean lockers, only five of which are ever in use at any given time and they are always directly next to one another.
Regardless of which locker I choose, someone will enter immediately after me and choose the locker next to mine. When I return to the locker room in my poofy-butted cycle shorts after having sweated out the weight of a small child and try to change into my street shoes for the ride home, there undoubtedly will be a gaggle of men teaming around my locker and using up all the free bench space.
Now, it isn't the fact that I am a magnet for all the whacked-out weirdos in the locker room that bothers me. It's the fact that I am a magnet for all the naked whacked-out weirdos in the locker room that bothers me.
Chalk it up to my years of not playing interscholastic sports, or to my never having spent any quality time in a federal penitentiary, but I would rather not be in such close proximity to other men who are naked. I don't even like being in close proximity to myself when I'm naked. If I could make me wait in another room while I got naked, that would be a major enhancement to the quality of my life.
And, personal space aside, if you're going to plant your naked ass on the locker room bench while you spend the next twelve minutes drying the webbing between your toes and powdering your privates, please put a towel down first. Freshly-showered or not, I do not need to be subjected to any particular matter left behind, or to hear the suction release when you finally hoist your keister from its perch.
So I'm going to take a deep breath (before entering the locker room), try to choose a locker in a corner of the room no one else knows about, and keep clear of the naked men, because I'm not sure how well it would go over if I were to yell at scantily clad septuagenarians to get out of my bubble.
© 2014 Mark Feggeler
We all want enough elbow room to feel like we can breathe, and we all need some small place to call our own that is not subject to the intrusion of others. Beyond that, if you can't accept the fact that there are many people sharing your world who will occasionally, if not frequently, invade your personal space, then you run a high likelihood of needing psychotherapy, or medication, at some point in your life.
A reasonable approach to personal space can keep us from sounding like the first-grader I heard a couple years ago when picking up my sons from school. Another kid was hanging on him, talking non-stop, not picking up on the visual cues that his friend didn't care what he was saying and didn't want want to be followed. When he'd finally had enough of the yammering in his ear, the kid on the receiving end stopped and yelled:
"You're in my bubble!"
Lately, there have been times I've wanted to yell at people about my bubble. I can talk myself out of the temptation most of the time, but there is one situation that has been seriously testing my resolve to behave like an adult. I should explain.
The gym locker room and I are not old friends. It's only been in recent years, thanks to My Lovely Wife, that I have gone to the gym with any regularity. My participation in fitness classes has nothing to do with a desire to go to the gym. Instead, my participation is motivated by two things: (1) wanting to spend time with My Lovely Wife, and (2) not wanting to die. You can't eat the way I like to eat without exercising and not expect to add an inch to your waistline every year, so physical fitness had to enter into the picture before insulin and stomach stapling were required to.
For those of you not acquainted with a men's locker room, it is a spacious area that smells like feet and houses several hundred clean lockers, only five of which are ever in use at any given time and they are always directly next to one another.
Regardless of which locker I choose, someone will enter immediately after me and choose the locker next to mine. When I return to the locker room in my poofy-butted cycle shorts after having sweated out the weight of a small child and try to change into my street shoes for the ride home, there undoubtedly will be a gaggle of men teaming around my locker and using up all the free bench space.
Now, it isn't the fact that I am a magnet for all the whacked-out weirdos in the locker room that bothers me. It's the fact that I am a magnet for all the naked whacked-out weirdos in the locker room that bothers me.
Chalk it up to my years of not playing interscholastic sports, or to my never having spent any quality time in a federal penitentiary, but I would rather not be in such close proximity to other men who are naked. I don't even like being in close proximity to myself when I'm naked. If I could make me wait in another room while I got naked, that would be a major enhancement to the quality of my life.
And, personal space aside, if you're going to plant your naked ass on the locker room bench while you spend the next twelve minutes drying the webbing between your toes and powdering your privates, please put a towel down first. Freshly-showered or not, I do not need to be subjected to any particular matter left behind, or to hear the suction release when you finally hoist your keister from its perch.
So I'm going to take a deep breath (before entering the locker room), try to choose a locker in a corner of the room no one else knows about, and keep clear of the naked men, because I'm not sure how well it would go over if I were to yell at scantily clad septuagenarians to get out of my bubble.
© 2014 Mark Feggeler
Friday, February 7, 2014
My Aching Back
Regardless of what you might think of my physique, I do exercise regularly. Five days a week, in fact, down at the local fitness center I will have burned hundreds of calories and stretched various dormant muscles beyond their comfort level well before the Sun has even begun to think about cresting over the horizon.
The staple during the past several years has been my willing participation in RPM classes. I've never researched if RPM stands for "revolutions per minute," because I'm fairly certain it really stands for "rectal pain motivation." If you've ever sat on one of those rock-hard bicycle seats for more than five minutes you'll know exactly what I mean. You could slam me square between the legs with a sledgehammer after a 45-minute class and my numb prostate probably wouldn't even register the impact.
The trick to succeeding at RPM is to buy those goofy-looking shoes that clip onto the pedals and don't stop cycling until you black out. If you don't need a paramedic to revive you with crash cart paddles at the end of the class, then you aren't doing it right.
Lately, we've decided to try a program called Body Flow, a maniacal mix of yoga, Pilates and torture rack stretches. I don't know why the name of the class is Body Flow, since the last thing my body feels like it's doing when I leave the fitness center is flowing in graceful movements. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the class and know it increases my limited flexibility, but I'm the only person in there struggling to bend like a double-jointed circus freak and breaking out in flop sweat. And no matter what anyone says, down-dog is not a resting position.
SEATED is a resting position.
PRONE is a resting position.
Propped up like an idiot on your palms and toes with your ass hiked up high toward the rafters is not a resting position. It's an upper-arm-stressing, all-the-blood-to-the-top-of-my-head position that would get me cited for lewd behavior if I did it in the middle of a crowded shopping mall.
A new core-strengthening class we've been attending called CXWorx is slightly more kind to those of us not born with the natural ability to slip our ankles behind our ears. I'd like it even more if those rubber stretchy tubes we use didn't pluck every last hair out of my calves.
Somewhere in the past few weeks, one of these self-inflicted, self-improvement classes inspired me to pull something in my lower back. I've never had lower back trouble before and I can tell you from the heart that I am not enjoying it. In the last few days the pain has spread from my lower back, around my left butt cheek and through to my groin.
That said, I doubt My Lovely Wife should start planning her funeral home-sponsored singles cruise yet, because my doctor's concern when I called earlier today for an appointment registered at a Level 4.
That isn't as bad as it sounds. Level 4 simply means they can't see me for four days. It's when you reach Level 0 -- like I did last year when my throat was closing up for no apparent reason -- that you might have something to worry about. If I'm in good enough shape to wait four days, then I doubt I'll be kicking the bucket any time soon, which is good because the way my back feels right now I probably wouldn't be able to kick it very far.
In the meantime, I'll keep attending the exercise classes and scale back when it comes to anything involving the lower back. I'm sure to get a few stares from those self-righteous workout-a-holics who'll cast disparaging glances my way when I skip a move here or there, but I don't really care what they think of me. If I did, I'd change into fresh underwear before going to the gym.
© 2014 Mark Feggeler
The staple during the past several years has been my willing participation in RPM classes. I've never researched if RPM stands for "revolutions per minute," because I'm fairly certain it really stands for "rectal pain motivation." If you've ever sat on one of those rock-hard bicycle seats for more than five minutes you'll know exactly what I mean. You could slam me square between the legs with a sledgehammer after a 45-minute class and my numb prostate probably wouldn't even register the impact.
The trick to succeeding at RPM is to buy those goofy-looking shoes that clip onto the pedals and don't stop cycling until you black out. If you don't need a paramedic to revive you with crash cart paddles at the end of the class, then you aren't doing it right.
Lately, we've decided to try a program called Body Flow, a maniacal mix of yoga, Pilates and torture rack stretches. I don't know why the name of the class is Body Flow, since the last thing my body feels like it's doing when I leave the fitness center is flowing in graceful movements. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the class and know it increases my limited flexibility, but I'm the only person in there struggling to bend like a double-jointed circus freak and breaking out in flop sweat. And no matter what anyone says, down-dog is not a resting position.
SEATED is a resting position.
PRONE is a resting position.
Propped up like an idiot on your palms and toes with your ass hiked up high toward the rafters is not a resting position. It's an upper-arm-stressing, all-the-blood-to-the-top-of-my-head position that would get me cited for lewd behavior if I did it in the middle of a crowded shopping mall.
A new core-strengthening class we've been attending called CXWorx is slightly more kind to those of us not born with the natural ability to slip our ankles behind our ears. I'd like it even more if those rubber stretchy tubes we use didn't pluck every last hair out of my calves.
That said, I doubt My Lovely Wife should start planning her funeral home-sponsored singles cruise yet, because my doctor's concern when I called earlier today for an appointment registered at a Level 4.
That isn't as bad as it sounds. Level 4 simply means they can't see me for four days. It's when you reach Level 0 -- like I did last year when my throat was closing up for no apparent reason -- that you might have something to worry about. If I'm in good enough shape to wait four days, then I doubt I'll be kicking the bucket any time soon, which is good because the way my back feels right now I probably wouldn't be able to kick it very far.
In the meantime, I'll keep attending the exercise classes and scale back when it comes to anything involving the lower back. I'm sure to get a few stares from those self-righteous workout-a-holics who'll cast disparaging glances my way when I skip a move here or there, but I don't really care what they think of me. If I did, I'd change into fresh underwear before going to the gym.
© 2014 Mark Feggeler
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Yoga Broke My Clutch Muscle
I am not averse to trying new types of exercise.
Long ago -- twenty-one years ago, to be precise -- I broke free of my comfort zone for the sake of true love and thoroughly embarrassed myself in front of a room full of strange women by attending my first-ever step aerobic class.
Long ago -- twenty-one years ago, to be precise -- I broke free of my comfort zone for the sake of true love and thoroughly embarrassed myself in front of a room full of strange women by attending my first-ever step aerobic class.
The experience was not unlike running naked outside the glass-walled cafeteria of my college campus at noon. Not that I ever did that, but one of my roommates seemed to make a hobby of it. One day I saw him flash by as I dined with friends near the windows. If he could have overheard the comments people were making, he might have opted to find a new hobby. And it seemed natural that the people surrounding me in that step aerobic class twenty-odd years ago probably were thinking similar things about me. At least I did everyone the favor of keeping my pants on.
As I stepped and grunted and sweated profusely to music I hated, avoiding the judgmental eyes of women who clearly thought the only reason I was attending their exercise class was because I couldn't afford to buy porn, there was no misunderstanding that I was a fish out of water. The next morning drove that point home when every muscle in my body that I ever knew I had, along with dozens of other muscles in places I never expected muscles existed, launched a massive protest. Since then, I have alternately exercised and not exercised depending entirely upon time and desire. Maybe I simply couldn't find room in my schedule to hit the treadmill, let alone walk around the block. Or I might have had the time, but not the inclination. Be honest, sometimes it feels really great to throw fad diets and cautionary medical wisdom to the wind and eat unreasonably satisfying quantities of pizza and chocolate.
But lately, despite a slightly protruding potbelly, I have been dedicated to the whole exercise thing. Four mornings a week at the gym for cycle class, plus one morning on the treadmill, and even though my belt might still strain a bit under the pressure, I feel pretty good about my overall physical condition. Even my doctor agrees, and he almost always finds some vitamin deficiency, hormone imbalance or predisposition to some condition or other to lecture me about.
So, when My Lovely Wife suggested I try yoga, I was all in. She has tried in the past to talk me into trying hot yoga, but I was too smart for that. I break a sweat when I blink too fast. And not a glistening movie star sweat, either. When I sweat I mean it. Sweat pours from my head like water from a ruptured dam, my shirt quickly soaks through (front and back), and my sweaty palms can barely grip the handle bars of the exercycle without risking slippage and a concussion. Hot yoga? Exercising in a room cranked to one-hundred-plus degrees? Ummmmmmmm, no. But regular old yoga in an air-conditioned room with industrial size fans? Why not.
I honestly didn't know what to expect from yoga, other than it would stretch me beyond my limits. Halfway through the class, after getting the hang of downward dog, warrior, flying eagle, and half a dozen other slow-motion disco dance moves, I was sweating and grunting and doing my best to hold position. But when the class ended it all seemed to have gone by rather quickly, leaving me wondering whether or not I had actually worked any muscles at all.
Later that day, however, various muscles around my body began to voice their objection -- upper back, right buttock, thighs, abdomen, arms, left buttock. Driving was an interesting experience, particularly since my car has a manual transmission. I squeaked like a dog's chew toy every time I had to shift gears. Several times it crossed my mind that driving the eight miles from our house to the pool in second gear wouldn't really be an imposition for the cars behind me. Patience is a virtue, right?
But after several days and a return to the routine of early morning cycle class, my body has recovered and I find myself eager to return for another yoga session. Something about the calm pace of the class has me hooked. And how bad can any exercise regimen be when you can do it in bare feet? And when the class ends, you get to lay back on the mat, close your eyes, and fall into a relaxing mini coma.
The only way they could improve on that is to have waitstaff standing by serving pizza and chocolate.
© 2013 Mark Feggeler
But lately, despite a slightly protruding potbelly, I have been dedicated to the whole exercise thing. Four mornings a week at the gym for cycle class, plus one morning on the treadmill, and even though my belt might still strain a bit under the pressure, I feel pretty good about my overall physical condition. Even my doctor agrees, and he almost always finds some vitamin deficiency, hormone imbalance or predisposition to some condition or other to lecture me about.
So, when My Lovely Wife suggested I try yoga, I was all in. She has tried in the past to talk me into trying hot yoga, but I was too smart for that. I break a sweat when I blink too fast. And not a glistening movie star sweat, either. When I sweat I mean it. Sweat pours from my head like water from a ruptured dam, my shirt quickly soaks through (front and back), and my sweaty palms can barely grip the handle bars of the exercycle without risking slippage and a concussion. Hot yoga? Exercising in a room cranked to one-hundred-plus degrees? Ummmmmmmm, no. But regular old yoga in an air-conditioned room with industrial size fans? Why not.
I honestly didn't know what to expect from yoga, other than it would stretch me beyond my limits. Halfway through the class, after getting the hang of downward dog, warrior, flying eagle, and half a dozen other slow-motion disco dance moves, I was sweating and grunting and doing my best to hold position. But when the class ended it all seemed to have gone by rather quickly, leaving me wondering whether or not I had actually worked any muscles at all.
Later that day, however, various muscles around my body began to voice their objection -- upper back, right buttock, thighs, abdomen, arms, left buttock. Driving was an interesting experience, particularly since my car has a manual transmission. I squeaked like a dog's chew toy every time I had to shift gears. Several times it crossed my mind that driving the eight miles from our house to the pool in second gear wouldn't really be an imposition for the cars behind me. Patience is a virtue, right?
But after several days and a return to the routine of early morning cycle class, my body has recovered and I find myself eager to return for another yoga session. Something about the calm pace of the class has me hooked. And how bad can any exercise regimen be when you can do it in bare feet? And when the class ends, you get to lay back on the mat, close your eyes, and fall into a relaxing mini coma.
The only way they could improve on that is to have waitstaff standing by serving pizza and chocolate.
© 2013 Mark Feggeler
Monday, December 17, 2012
Exercise Shmexercise...
Some people go the gym looking like they have no need for it. I see those frustratingly healthy folks five mornings a week without an ounce of fat on their bodies and I want to smack the crap out of them.
Other people go to the gym looking like they accidentally stumbled into the place while trying to find the nearest all-night bakery. I fall into this latter category. Four mornings of 500-calorie-burning, 22-mile-distance-covering RPM classes in the indoor cycling room, plus one morning on the treadmill, and I still rival the Pillsbury Doughboy for body shape and muscle tone.
I know what you're going to say:
"Cut out the carbs!"
"Count your calories!"
"Stop eating 27 ounces of dark chocolate every day!"
Now that you've got that out of your system, let's start the return trip from LaLa Land with acceptance of the fact I will never, never, ever, never cut carbs out of my diet.
Bread, for example, is awesomely delicious and last I checked, most breads are made of carbs. And not just regular old white bread used to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, carbs can be found in many different varieties of bread. Bagels, banana bread, challa, ciabatta, dinkelbrot, doughnuts, hushpuppies, hoecakes, monkey bread, matzah, pretzels and pumpernickel all are wonderfully effective methods for delivering carbs to my belly. If bread is delicious, and bread is made of carbs, ipso facto carbs are delicious.
It's not as though I haven't made the effort in the past to scale back. I've tried wraps but they aren't satisfying. I've eaten vegetarian burgers without the bun, but every time I do I end up wondering why I did it. And not to go all religious on you, but Jesus didn't tell the disciples he was the gluten-free, sugar-free, rice-flour, non-cross-contaminated specialty diet loaf of life. He said he was the bread of life. How much more of a product testimonial do you need than that?
Maybe making better fashion choices would help my self-esteem.
Just the other day, not long after cycling like a maniac for 50 minutes and feeling really good about myself, there I was walking the dog down the street wearing white socks, black sandals, gray shorts, bright red sweatshirt, and a sweat-stained black baseball cap, with my hand shoved down my pants to free a fistful of leg hairs from the deathgrip my cycling underwear had on them. It's difficult at times like that not to suddenly experience an overwhelming self-awareness. All I needed to complete the ensemble was to drool a little and urinate on myself.
I must face the fact I will never be the trim, wavy-haired, strutting-around-the-locker-room-naked-because-he's-totally-comfortable-with-his-body kind of guy. I will forever be the pudgy, balding, one-towel-to-cover-my-fat-ass-and-a-second-towel-to-drape-over-my-shoulders-to-hide-my-moobs kind of guy. I will always leave the gym after a strenuous workout looking like a dishevled, crazy, homeless man who just ran five city blocks to outrun the cops.
© 2012 Mark Feggeler
Other people go to the gym looking like they accidentally stumbled into the place while trying to find the nearest all-night bakery. I fall into this latter category. Four mornings of 500-calorie-burning, 22-mile-distance-covering RPM classes in the indoor cycling room, plus one morning on the treadmill, and I still rival the Pillsbury Doughboy for body shape and muscle tone.
I know what you're going to say:
"Cut out the carbs!"
"Count your calories!"
"Stop eating 27 ounces of dark chocolate every day!"
Now that you've got that out of your system, let's start the return trip from LaLa Land with acceptance of the fact I will never, never, ever, never cut carbs out of my diet.
It's not as though I haven't made the effort in the past to scale back. I've tried wraps but they aren't satisfying. I've eaten vegetarian burgers without the bun, but every time I do I end up wondering why I did it. And not to go all religious on you, but Jesus didn't tell the disciples he was the gluten-free, sugar-free, rice-flour, non-cross-contaminated specialty diet loaf of life. He said he was the bread of life. How much more of a product testimonial do you need than that?
Maybe making better fashion choices would help my self-esteem.
Just the other day, not long after cycling like a maniac for 50 minutes and feeling really good about myself, there I was walking the dog down the street wearing white socks, black sandals, gray shorts, bright red sweatshirt, and a sweat-stained black baseball cap, with my hand shoved down my pants to free a fistful of leg hairs from the deathgrip my cycling underwear had on them. It's difficult at times like that not to suddenly experience an overwhelming self-awareness. All I needed to complete the ensemble was to drool a little and urinate on myself.
I must face the fact I will never be the trim, wavy-haired, strutting-around-the-locker-room-naked-because-he's-totally-comfortable-with-his-body kind of guy. I will forever be the pudgy, balding, one-towel-to-cover-my-fat-ass-and-a-second-towel-to-drape-over-my-shoulders-to-hide-my-moobs kind of guy. I will always leave the gym after a strenuous workout looking like a dishevled, crazy, homeless man who just ran five city blocks to outrun the cops.
© 2012 Mark Feggeler
Monday, August 9, 2010
Topless At The Pool
I've never been a model of physical fitness.
As a little kid I was skeletal. In elementary school I was short and fat. In junior high I went from being short and fat to tall and emaciated skinny in the matter of two weeks.
All through high school I remained bone skinny -- 5'10" and barely 150 pounds -- despite the fact I thought a one-pound bag of sour cream & onion Doritos contained my daily servings of fruits and vegetables. You might not remember the sour cream & onion Doritos. They were a variation of the present-day ranch flavor and turned you green up to your third knuckle. Delicious...
It doesn't help that our skinny Italian enjoys reminding me, in a very loving way that I do think is adorable, how fat I am. Just a few weeks ago he was hugging me and in the cutest voice said, "Daddy, I love you cause you're fat and soft."
I recall being self-conscious about my appearance since grade school. Some of it does relate back to being either too thin or too fat, but some of it also comes from my natural lack of pigment. I have none.
My feet could be used for road flares. If I were to ride my bike at night, rather than reflective tape on my clothes, I could just take off my shirt and illuminate an entire city block, that is if I weren't self-conscious about taking off my shirt in public.
Actually, my extreme paleness has afforded me a ready excuse to not take off my shirt in public, which should be a horrible crime anyway. There's usually no cause for it and it only disturbs people.
Fortunately, when I go swimming at the beach or in a pool, a shirt is required unless I want to spend the next three days recovering from a third-degree sunburn.
Doesn't matter what level of sunblock I use, either. I've lathered up with 45 SPF, 50 SPF, 70 SPF and recently tried 100 SPF. While effective, it does sometimes feel like I'm choking my skin with pore-clogging goop just so I can go out in the sun. And despite which SPF level I choose, an hour in the pool is enough to wash it off, especially from the shoulders where the children grab on. And in the past few years I've even taken to spraying sunscreen straight through the remaining hairs to myscalp.
So, the other weekend when we traveled to Concord, NC, to bring the kids to the indoor water park at the Great Wolf Lodge, I knew I would need to make a decision about going shirtless.
I started off thinking I would wear my blue sport shirt throughout the entire weekend since it dries quickly and would help hide my pudginess. The first dousing from the giant bucket took care of that, however. Once the air hit that forever-mildly-damp shirt, I would freeze and remain freezing the rest of the day.
So, the shirt came off for the rest of our time at the waterpark. Amazingly, no one's retinas were burned out by my paleness and no children's psyches were damaged from the site of my flabby gut. That is, at least none I'm aware of.
2010 Mark Feggeler
As a little kid I was skeletal. In elementary school I was short and fat. In junior high I went from being short and fat to tall and emaciated skinny in the matter of two weeks.
All through high school I remained bone skinny -- 5'10" and barely 150 pounds -- despite the fact I thought a one-pound bag of sour cream & onion Doritos contained my daily servings of fruits and vegetables. You might not remember the sour cream & onion Doritos. They were a variation of the present-day ranch flavor and turned you green up to your third knuckle. Delicious...
It doesn't help that our skinny Italian enjoys reminding me, in a very loving way that I do think is adorable, how fat I am. Just a few weeks ago he was hugging me and in the cutest voice said, "Daddy, I love you cause you're fat and soft."
I recall being self-conscious about my appearance since grade school. Some of it does relate back to being either too thin or too fat, but some of it also comes from my natural lack of pigment. I have none.
My feet could be used for road flares. If I were to ride my bike at night, rather than reflective tape on my clothes, I could just take off my shirt and illuminate an entire city block, that is if I weren't self-conscious about taking off my shirt in public.
Actually, my extreme paleness has afforded me a ready excuse to not take off my shirt in public, which should be a horrible crime anyway. There's usually no cause for it and it only disturbs people.
Fortunately, when I go swimming at the beach or in a pool, a shirt is required unless I want to spend the next three days recovering from a third-degree sunburn.
Doesn't matter what level of sunblock I use, either. I've lathered up with 45 SPF, 50 SPF, 70 SPF and recently tried 100 SPF. While effective, it does sometimes feel like I'm choking my skin with pore-clogging goop just so I can go out in the sun. And despite which SPF level I choose, an hour in the pool is enough to wash it off, especially from the shoulders where the children grab on. And in the past few years I've even taken to spraying sunscreen straight through the remaining hairs to myscalp.
So, the other weekend when we traveled to Concord, NC, to bring the kids to the indoor water park at the Great Wolf Lodge, I knew I would need to make a decision about going shirtless.
I started off thinking I would wear my blue sport shirt throughout the entire weekend since it dries quickly and would help hide my pudginess. The first dousing from the giant bucket took care of that, however. Once the air hit that forever-mildly-damp shirt, I would freeze and remain freezing the rest of the day.
So, the shirt came off for the rest of our time at the waterpark. Amazingly, no one's retinas were burned out by my paleness and no children's psyches were damaged from the site of my flabby gut. That is, at least none I'm aware of.
2010 Mark Feggeler
Sunday, July 25, 2010
A Sock In My Shorts
First of all, Ewwwwww.
Get your mind out of the gutter. I'm not talking about trying to impress anyone. I'm talking about self preservation.
A little over a week ago, my Lovely Wife asked if I would like to join her for a Saturday morning cycling class at our local fitness center. She has been going to these classes several times a week for many months now. In addition to being a great aerobic workout, they have done wonders for her back, which takes a beating from hours each day with her arms in the air cutting, coloring and styling people's hair.
It isn't as though I have been resisting her efforts in the past. When we first started dating almost twenty years ago, I joined her for step aerobic classes. The day after the first class I could barely walk. Muscles in places I never knew had room for muscles hurt. I had a choice to make: go back for another class or roll over and die like a big weenie. I went back and that's all it took. The soreness immediately disappeared and we regularly attended classes together.
Since then we have lived what I imagine is the typical life of a young American middle-class couple. House, marriage, dog, second house, first child, second and third children on the same day (twins maybe not so typical), second dog, third house, etc. Many of those listed items (by which I mean the children) have a way of eliminating time normally spent exercising. A decade or so of trial diets and dusty exercise equipment purchased with good intentions kept us from ballooning as we continuously fought the good fight to fit in our clothes.
In the last year or two, the growing self-sufficiency of our children has afforded my Lovely Wife and me some free time to reclaim our lives. For my Lovely Wife, this has translated into time at the fitness center. For me it has translated into time spent writing. Not that I haven't been getting my exercise. Each morning I (try to) get on the treadmill for a quick walk/run to burn off several hundred calories. This hasn't turned me into a GQ model, but it has kept me about five pounds lighter on average than I had been.
So, I agreed to join my Lovely Wife for a cycling class. I had my reservations.
First of all, I don't have a pair of cycling shoes that clip onto the pedals. This was easy to get over because, after all, I have ridden bikes since I was a young kid and never had these high-tech shoes. The lack of shoes that clip to the pedals never caused me harm on a moving bike, so not having them on a stationary bike should not be a problem.
My greatest concern, based on what everyone has told me, is how the bike seat will treat my nether region. My sweet cousin Betsy has likened cycling without the proper equipment to being educated on how it feels to be gang-raped. I have never had the need to feel what it might be like to be gang-raped, so I went into the class with inadequate padding and genuine fear.
I enjoyed the class. My Lovely Wife and her brother helped me select and set up my bike. We climbed on and warmed up, waiting patiently for the instructor to begin the class. When she did, she explained that the program would take us from comfortable, to breathless, to uncomfortable. To be honest, if uncomfortable were the goal of the class, it would have been achieved as soon as I saw my brother-in-law in his padded biking shorts.
Maybe my time on the treadmill has not been for nought because after the class and even the next day I did not experience rubber legs, aching calves, or severe chest pains. The only negative reaction came in that lower area, between the front and back, which is an area you really don't want hurting. It's amazing, considering how generally useless and private this area of the body is, how much involvement it has with everyday living. Sitting, standing, walking, crouching, climbing steps, they all seem to agitate this nether region when it is sore.
When this past Saturday rolled around, I was asked again if I would like to join in. I said yes and immediately started wondering how I would avoid another few days of posterior pain. While in Greensboro on Friday, we almost stopped at a cycling shop to purchase some padded pants for me, but even the idea of my pasty white butt crammed into tiny black sausage casings made me more uncomfortable than remembering how they looked on my brother-in-law.
As the time approached, I developed a plan. Adding a second pair of underpants would surely do the trick, I thought, so I pulled some on and then put on my gym shorts. I walked around for a few minutes. I sat and stood and crouched and climbed and tried in every possible way to test the effects. The end result fell short of my expectations.
Then I was struck by lightning!
There, floating in my underwear drawer, alone and useless, was the answer: a single, solitary white sock. I took the sock, folded it in two, and quite unceremoniously but with surgical precision inserted it directly over the very place that the week prior had felt violated. I immediately knew this would work. Who could have known that proper cycling protective gear could possibly involve a white sock and an extra pair of Fruit of the Looms?
Sure enough, I left the class later that morning feeling confident, energetic, healthy, and proud to tell the world about the sock in my shorts.
Get your mind out of the gutter. I'm not talking about trying to impress anyone. I'm talking about self preservation.
A little over a week ago, my Lovely Wife asked if I would like to join her for a Saturday morning cycling class at our local fitness center. She has been going to these classes several times a week for many months now. In addition to being a great aerobic workout, they have done wonders for her back, which takes a beating from hours each day with her arms in the air cutting, coloring and styling people's hair.
It isn't as though I have been resisting her efforts in the past. When we first started dating almost twenty years ago, I joined her for step aerobic classes. The day after the first class I could barely walk. Muscles in places I never knew had room for muscles hurt. I had a choice to make: go back for another class or roll over and die like a big weenie. I went back and that's all it took. The soreness immediately disappeared and we regularly attended classes together.
Since then we have lived what I imagine is the typical life of a young American middle-class couple. House, marriage, dog, second house, first child, second and third children on the same day (twins maybe not so typical), second dog, third house, etc. Many of those listed items (by which I mean the children) have a way of eliminating time normally spent exercising. A decade or so of trial diets and dusty exercise equipment purchased with good intentions kept us from ballooning as we continuously fought the good fight to fit in our clothes.
In the last year or two, the growing self-sufficiency of our children has afforded my Lovely Wife and me some free time to reclaim our lives. For my Lovely Wife, this has translated into time at the fitness center. For me it has translated into time spent writing. Not that I haven't been getting my exercise. Each morning I (try to) get on the treadmill for a quick walk/run to burn off several hundred calories. This hasn't turned me into a GQ model, but it has kept me about five pounds lighter on average than I had been.
So, I agreed to join my Lovely Wife for a cycling class. I had my reservations.
First of all, I don't have a pair of cycling shoes that clip onto the pedals. This was easy to get over because, after all, I have ridden bikes since I was a young kid and never had these high-tech shoes. The lack of shoes that clip to the pedals never caused me harm on a moving bike, so not having them on a stationary bike should not be a problem.
My greatest concern, based on what everyone has told me, is how the bike seat will treat my nether region. My sweet cousin Betsy has likened cycling without the proper equipment to being educated on how it feels to be gang-raped. I have never had the need to feel what it might be like to be gang-raped, so I went into the class with inadequate padding and genuine fear.
I enjoyed the class. My Lovely Wife and her brother helped me select and set up my bike. We climbed on and warmed up, waiting patiently for the instructor to begin the class. When she did, she explained that the program would take us from comfortable, to breathless, to uncomfortable. To be honest, if uncomfortable were the goal of the class, it would have been achieved as soon as I saw my brother-in-law in his padded biking shorts.
Maybe my time on the treadmill has not been for nought because after the class and even the next day I did not experience rubber legs, aching calves, or severe chest pains. The only negative reaction came in that lower area, between the front and back, which is an area you really don't want hurting. It's amazing, considering how generally useless and private this area of the body is, how much involvement it has with everyday living. Sitting, standing, walking, crouching, climbing steps, they all seem to agitate this nether region when it is sore.
When this past Saturday rolled around, I was asked again if I would like to join in. I said yes and immediately started wondering how I would avoid another few days of posterior pain. While in Greensboro on Friday, we almost stopped at a cycling shop to purchase some padded pants for me, but even the idea of my pasty white butt crammed into tiny black sausage casings made me more uncomfortable than remembering how they looked on my brother-in-law.
As the time approached, I developed a plan. Adding a second pair of underpants would surely do the trick, I thought, so I pulled some on and then put on my gym shorts. I walked around for a few minutes. I sat and stood and crouched and climbed and tried in every possible way to test the effects. The end result fell short of my expectations.
Then I was struck by lightning!
There, floating in my underwear drawer, alone and useless, was the answer: a single, solitary white sock. I took the sock, folded it in two, and quite unceremoniously but with surgical precision inserted it directly over the very place that the week prior had felt violated. I immediately knew this would work. Who could have known that proper cycling protective gear could possibly involve a white sock and an extra pair of Fruit of the Looms?
Sure enough, I left the class later that morning feeling confident, energetic, healthy, and proud to tell the world about the sock in my shorts.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Second-Fattest Man In The World
Early last year, my sons were killing the last few minutes before the mandatory 6:30 am weekday rise-and-shine time watching a motivational story on television. The report told about a young boy who lost 40 or 50 pounds by getting involved in a variety of physical activities. I entered their room to rouse them out of bed only to be hit by some direct advice.
I should pause to explain that my sons are fraternal twins. The older looks and behaves stereotypically Italian, the younger looks and behaves stereotypically German. For purposes of storytelling, they will be referred to by their respective stereotypes.
I walked through the glow of the television. The Italian looked at me and stated, point of fact, "Daddy, you should take the fitness challenge so you won't be so fat."
"Really?" I said, looking from him to the German and then my waist.
"Yes," he said. The German nodded.
It was that simple. Over and done with. No joking, no judgement, no mean-spiritedness. Just simple observation and conclusion.
"I didn't know I was that fat," I said. Truth be told, at the time I was carrying at least 20 extra pounds, mostly around the belly, and the best you could say about my physical condition was I did not yet need a man-bra. My fatness reconfirmed by both nationalities, I pressed the Italian for a point of comparison.
"Do you know anyone fatter than me?" I asked. I expected one of many possible choices from among family and friends. Maybe even a random celebrity. Was I thinner, perhaps, than Tom Hanks? He seems to have packed it on recently. But would the Italian know who he is? Okay, then, maybe Mr. Incredible from the first half of the movie, or Uncle Vernon from the Harry Potter films.
The Italian put his hand to his chin, screwed up his 8-year-old face and gave my question serious thought. After several seconds he answered with some uncertainty: "The fattest man in the world?"
Since then, despite miles on the treadmill and spending much of the fall dieting, I occasionally remind my wife she is married to the second-fattest man in the world.
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