Category Archives: fitness

The Shape of Things to Come

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Mylene Farmer could never be called modest

Mylene Farmer could never be called modest, but if YOU looked like that, would YOU be?

Followers of the ol’ raincoastersphere, specifically Manolofood.com, will be aware that I recently did a 48-hour hunger strike, and only cheated once. During this fast, I gained three pounds. I do not recall any victims of waterboarding complaining about weight gain, and most hunger strikers of my acquaintance have been precisely the sort of ectomorphs who should be raising awareness by running across InNeedistan or something instead of indulging in calorie deprivation. When you’re fat, seeing skinny people go on hunger strikes is really under the aegis of the Department of Insult to Injury. As is the gaining of three pounds on a hunger strike.

Okay, okay, when I took off my Thuggie I discovered that I’d actually lost four pounds (and also that Thuggies weigh seven pounds!) but still!

Given that I spent all of last year obsessively tracking my calorie input and output with the LoseIt app and averaged 1100 calories a day and did not lose a single pound, it’s quite clear that if I’m ever to get to my ideal, or even a slightly improved, shape, it’ll take actually breaking a sweat. More than once a month, too.

Speaking if ideal shape…the one in the above photo is pretty much it. Mylene Farmer is older than me, and she still has that figure. This one.

Of course, she has those legs; that helps. Unless my pal Anthony Youn comes up with a clever, painless and cheap leg-lengthening procedure, I will never have legs anywhere near that good, but mine when in shape are not to be sneezed at. Especially if you don’t cover your nose. But hey, I got a start on the look: I bought the lipstick!

The current fashion for bowlegged rickets victims is not one which meets with my approval, in case you were wondering. I’d love to know which photographer we can blame for a generation of starlets who all pose as if they were about to lose bladder control. When in doubt, blame everything on Terry Richardson.

Knock kneed hipster girl

Knock kneed hipster girl

So Mylene’s shape is not achievable for me, which is too bad not only for me but for everyone who has to look at me. My current shape is quite perogy-like, and everybody likes perogies, so that’s something, but it’s not what I want.

This is what I want.

Ginger Spice would be nice

Ginger Spice would be nice

Believe it or not, for me, this is doable. Hell, I already had the hair! This will take, if I keep on schedule (which I will not and let’s be honest about it, you wouldn’t either) about a year. So I’m giving myself two years, because I’m like that with myself and you would be too, if you treasured me the way I do.

And if I looked like that, you would, wouldn’t you?

If Perez Hilton can do it, so can I.

 

UPDATE 2017: Down 50 lbs. I might just make this by early 2018. Today’s a run and weights day.

The Horror! The Horror!

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I cannot even hint what it was like, for it was a compound of all that is unclean, uncanny, unwelcome, abnormal, and detestable. It was the ghoulish shade of decay, antiquity, and dissolution; the putrid, dripping eidolon of unwholesome revelation, the awful baring of that which the merciful earth should always hide. God knows it was not of this world – or no longer of this world – yet to my horror I saw in its eaten-away and bone-revealing outlines a leering, abhorrent travesty on the human shape; and in its mouldy, disintegrating apparel an unspeakable quality that chilled me even more.
HP Lovecraft, The Outsider

So, today I was shopping for a bathing suit and…

Disaster!

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Perhaps I may be ever so slightly melodramatic, but I blame California (doesn’t everyone blame California, no matter what we’re talking about? It’s your choice of California, Tories, or Global Warming where I come from). After all, they started it. How is anyone else supposed to make the news when they’re all, like, “Earthquake! Earthquake!”

I mean, I was all, “Yeah, it’s California. It’s not a headline: it’s a given.”

But whatever.

So tonight I went out for a nice skate with a nice bunch of people and it was…nice, despite the fact that I was, once again, the slowest in the group and didn’t even have the excuse of a hangover to blame, although it must be said and indeed will be said, and by none other than me, that my bearings have long since turned to rubble and need replacing. Should a couple more someones sign up for my blogging classes I might be able to buy some new ones next month in the Comor sale, but that is as may be, or may not be.

But whatever.

So, I get the skate in and have a good time and on my way home as I’m calmly skating along, both minding my own business and sticking to the so-called cycle-pedestrian “path” under Canada Place, a “path” distinguished primarily by two painted lines and a texture something like the surface of Mars, when what happens?

I thought you’d never ask.

Geekaerobics with Elijah Wood

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This isn’t a workout video, but it should be! This mashup of Yo Gabba Gabba and The Numa Numa Song (Dragostea Din Tei) would be an instant hit, whether released as a regular DVD or in specially adapted format for the WiiFit. We’ve all seen and enjoyed those videos, haven’t we?

So here is music geek Elijah Wood with the post-postmodern children’s television geek icons from Yo Gabba Gabba, prancing and dancing and even (apparently) moonwalking, a risky move that has been known to be fatal to street cred.

Enjoy?

on Marathons and Personal Dignity

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London Marathon Dalek. Good thing there aren't any stairs!

Not that we know all that much about either. But we have recently started running again (well, run/walking) and we are verily all fired up about it as we have made a deal with God that every time our computer crashes we will do something useful while waiting for it to come back up, whether that is laundry, washing dishes, straightening up the living room, or going for a workout.

And yea, verily, we hates the housework we does.

And so. So to the quote o’ the day, in which our protagonist (far too whingey and self-absorbed to be a hero) learns at least one of the many lessons that a Marathon can teach one.

From the Guardian:

Surrounded by very short young women, whose legs must have been half the length of mine, I told myself I was pathetic if I couldn’t keep up with them. Thompson is not impressed. “If you are then passed by the short-legged women that might be soul destroying,” he cautions…

“When you get overtaken by six vikings carrying their own boat it does take you down a peg or two,” says Loosemoore. “You’ve got to prepare yourself for that before the marathon. The real battle is against yourself. You are going to be overtaken. There will be extremely good marathon runners in rhinoceros costumes. Try not to be distracted by that.”

Maybe you had to be there, but I found it funny.

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