I’m not really sure if this is good news or bad news. It’s been a week since I stopped eating chocolate, so I got onto my Salter MyBody scale, and it informed me that the only change from last week is that I have lost .1 of a % of muscle mass. My water % is the same, my fat % is the same, my weight is almost identical; I’ve just lost a tiny amount of muscle. I can understand how that could be – I’ve done a lot of cardio in the form of tennis this week, and this, combined with the heatwave and my cold, must have put a lot of stress on my body. But knowing that not eating chocolate makes absolutely no difference to me – is that bad because I just gave up chocolate for a week for nothing, and because I am now left wondering what more I can do, or is it good because it means I don’t have to quit chocolate?
So, nature is trying to throw a spanner in the works, by making sure I am infected with a cold. I’ve had a sore throat since the beginning of the week, which has resulted in less sleep but aside from that, not really much of a problem. Yesterday, however, it really kicked in with full force – tickling nose, congested head, stinging eyes – all the things that just combine to make one feel absolutely miserable.
I tried my best to stay on course, and managed to stick it at the gym for half an hour, which was better than nothing.
Yesterday, my cats flew out of St Louis, to my boss in New Jersey. He’s going to look after them for me until they get cleared to fly to me in the UK. Now, the only lingering problem is the house. Rusty is asking me to pay bills, which I am skeptical about doing, as doing so only gives him the ability to continue to reside in the house for free. Whereas, if the lights go out and the water is cut off, he’ll move out pronto! However, if nobody has yet been found to rent the house, I suppose he may as well stay there until somebody is found? I suppose it all boils down to whether or not I trust him to keep the house spotless and presentable to potential renters, or whether I think he will live like a slob. Experience, unfortunately, suggests the latter…
My workout and diet plan are going well so far, albeit with a little improvisation here and there. My main victory is that I have so far managed to resist eating any chocolate, despite frequent urges! My one slice of homemade coffee cake per day is tiding me over for now. My usual plan of alternating “cario” and “muscle-building” days has been altered slightly, due to a number of unexpected invites to play tennis with Billy.
On Sunday, I played tennis twice in one day, so I decided I’d probably done my fair share of cardio for the day. Yesterday I let myself off a little lightly for what should have been a “muscle-building” day, playing tennis once in the afternoon and then doing ten minutes of ab exercises in the garden in the evening. I can’t make up for it too dramatically today, as I have my first tennis match of the league tonight, and I don’t want to be too fatigued beforehand! So I just went to the gym and did some leg exercises – went on the abductor and adductor, did some deadlifts, calf raises, and leg lifts for my quads. I left my arms well alone, so they’ll be good for tennis, although my excessive tennis over the last few days has caused a blister on the side of my hand which really stings when the racquet causes friction against it (which is basically every single forehand…).
I hope I can keep the no-chocolate diet up for a full week, and see if it’s had any impact when I stand on my bodyfat:muscle ratio weighing scales!
Aside from sport, I also read a chapter of ‘Trading Secrets’ which I purchased after being stood up by Mark Anastasi, about how to recognise a bear market bottom. I’ll try and apply some of what I’ve learned to the FTSE100 tonight and see if I can spot anything important about to happen. Tomorrow, I am going to ‘Office Angels’ to get myself all signed up to do a bit of temping work, thursday I have another tennis session with Billy in the evening, and on friday I’ll be meeting up with John for a countryside walk. He wanted to go all the way to the Lake District or to France, I didn’t, so this was a compromise.
Yesterday I went to Megan’s parents’ house, for her daughter’s fifth birthday / father’s annual barbeque which he holds to coincide with the Biggin Hill air show. Megan was the same as ever, but obviously quite busy looking after her three children. I had fun taking lots of photographs of the children and the planes, and sitting in the sunshine!
In the evening, my mother and I went to see the comedy ‘England People Very Nice.’ It was bizarre. While it had a couple of thought-provoking points to make, the majority of it was very shallow, amateur and predictable. It made me think of myself, aged seven, running around in my bedroom composing plays.
I found parts of if extremely tasteless, such as the numerous rapes of women that went on and the non-stop swearing. Unlike some reviews I read about it this morning, I did not find its racial ‘jokes’ particularly offensive, because pointing out the ridiculousness in racism and the redundancy of intolerance was pretty much the entire point of the play.
It’s main fault was that, by going on for over two hours, this play clearly thought far too much of itself. The little substance it had to it could have been condensed down into a forty-five minute play, and I feel everybody would have been happier for it.
A few of my online friends have recently embarked upon the p90x exercise/healthy eating regime.
It was back in February when I was still living in the USA, that I decided I needed to visit the gym. I had begun working from home, and needed some structure in my life. The gym, and its fitness classes, became it. It was also my escape from a very negative atmosphere at home, where I was sharing a house with a(n ex-) boyfriend who was long-term unemployed, addicted to video games, and whose paranoia had him monitoring my every move, phonecall, etc.
I’ve always been small, never really had any weight on me, but I was shocked to find when I first joined Gold’s Gym, my bodyfat percentage was in the overweight category! I had no appearance of fat on my body – the reason for the high percentage of bodyfat, was the low percentage of muscle mass.
I was almost pleased when I was given this result. I knew it would be a huge motivator for me. I immediately quit my almost daily addiction to broccoli and cheddar soup from Panera Bread Co., and heavily cut down on my chocolate intake, which – combined with exercising only only once a week (tennis) – were the main culprits for this gloomy diagnosis. I don’t like junk food, I don’t like fizzy drinks, and I rarely consume alcohol, so once the soup and sandwiches were out of the picture, my diet needed no further adjustment.
I started visiting the gym on a daily basis – and more often that not, twice daily (to attend different classes) – and when I requested my next body test ten days later, I could see the shock on the employee’s face at the progress I had made. I had gone from ‘overweight,’ to healthy, and closer to the ‘athletic’ level than ‘overweight’ now!
I left the USA in April, and returned home to the UK. I have a gym membership here, and go every day unless there’s an extreme exception, but I no longer have a motivation or goal for going. I don’t need an escape any more. I don’t have a high bodyfat percentage any more. And I don’t see any change in my appearance, either, despite doing a lot of weight work. Like I said, I’ve always been slim. Apart from a possible slight increase in the size of my arms, maybe a slight decrease in the size of my bottom (which I can’t notice anyway, I don’t have eyes in the back of my head), I doubt there’s any change that can be observed.
I even purchased a Salter MiBody scale, but (almost disappointingly), it has me as healthy/athletic, which again leaves little to really aim for. Herein lies my dilemma!
However, I recently stumbled upon bodyrock.tv. Wow! Zuzana is really muscular, yet she clearly retains her femininity. I have been checking Google Images for “fit woman,” “athletic woman,” “muscular woman,” for weeks for inspiration – to make me think “yes, that is what I want to look like” – but all I ever get are semi-naked models, or gross bodybuilders. Zuzana, on the other hand (despite clearly using her body to make money, but hey, if it gets people into exercise, she’s doing something more constructive than most), is neither the typical supermodel look, nor a male-female hybrid. If she can have those kinds of muscles and still look feminine, so can I (although I admit her large chest helps her out a little while).
So, starting today, I am going to embark upon a stricter diet and exercise regime. I’m going to cut down on the chocolate, big time. Maximise on the protein. Work hard at the gym. Here is my ‘before’ picture. Let’s see what I can achieve in one month!
Exercise done today: 35 minutes of cardio (cycling).
Breakfast: 1 bowl of porridge with raisins.
Snack 1: 1 banana, peanuts.
Lunch: Protein drink.
Pre-gym: 1 piece of grilled salmon.
Post-gym: 1 bowl of porridge.
Dinner: 1 fillet steak, 1 small boiled potato, 4 green beans, 1 carrot
Dessert: 1 slice of home-made coffee cake (my mother made it, what could I do?!)
So, thanks to a spreadbetting workshop I went to once, by Greg Secker, I was on the mailing list to receive “free tickets” to a traffic generation summit with Mark Anastasi. As I am currently doing some work on SEO, I thought it would be worth going.
I purchased my £12 train ticket (the conference starts at 9am, so I couldn’t use my railcard and get a third off because I was travelling before 10am!), got up at the beautiful hour of 7am, and headed off to the Earl’s Court Conference Centre.
I’d wondered in the days leading up to the conference, “how do they make their money?” It’s a three-day 9am – 6:30pm conference – how can they afford to give all of that for free? A friend advised me they probably get a bunch of hits in the leadup to the conference, and this is what they’re looking for. Neither of us considered the possiblity that the entire conference may be a hoax.
So, I arrived at 8.30am, only to be told that the conference had been “cancelled.” No phonecall, no email, nothing.
I consoled myself by wasting yet more money on a book about trading on the stock markets. Mark Anastasi, you bastard!
P.S. If you’re reading this because you too got tricked, please leave me a comment! I can point you in the direction of some genuine SEO tools and sources of information.
Yesterday, around 10am, two men in an unmarked blue van pulled up outside my house. They rang the doorbell, but I didn’t answer because I was on my own and did not know who they were. They left.
Then today, the same blue van returned, this time with one man alone. He again rang the doorbell, I again lay low. He then went round the side of the house, and somehow managed to unbolt the side door and enter the back garden. I spied out the window whilst calling my mother to ask if she had booked any window cleaners or anything of the sort. She had not, yet he was there fiddling with our hose pipe!
I was about to open the window and ask the man what he was doing, when he left. He went first to the passenger side of his van and closed the van’s sliding door, then got in the driver’s side and drove off. I didn’t have enough time to get the registration, only that it had “HG” in it. But.. how weird? He appears not to have taken anything – what was this man up to?!
I’ve met two new people recently.
Person A shocked me with brutal honesty about his feelings, emotions, even his sexual history, within the first hour or so of meeting him. Although refreshing, his openness is perhaps his downfall. I find it difficult to identify with the sexually “liberal,” as well as anybody willing to spill their most personal thoughts and feelings out in front of me. It makes me feel that the person does not have full control over themselves.
Person B was clearly more reserved, though not guarded. He shared his thoughts on a number of issues and did not appear to intentionally withhold information. Through careful observation, however, I am coming closer and closer to the assumption that Person B is a man who knows not what he is. A serial liar (in a non-malicious way), if you like. On any given topic, his mind is undecided, but he will tell you with great conviction that he feels one way over another – picking, of course, the opinion that he feels you share.
How strange it is, then, that I would rather have a conversation with the man whose words have very little meaning, than the man who can be trusted to say what he means! I suppose there’s the added intellectual challenge there, in trying to work out where his true opinion really lies? But then, who wants to get to know someone who does not even know himself?
Ok, so a four year old boy flushes his puppy down the toilet, and for some bizzare reason, his mother decides this is a funny or cute story that she needs to share with the world.
Sorry, not getting it. Your child isn’t cute. The story isn’t funny. Your child is a criminal who needs serious help, and that’s not the kind of thing you should want to be advertising to everybody. At four years old, you know that flushing an animal down the toilet is not going to yield a positive outcome.
The kid claims he wanted to wash the puppy; has this child ever been washed by being flushed down the toilet? Has he ever witnessed ANYTHING being flushed down the toilet for the purpose of washing? No, he knows that things are flushed down the toilet to be destroyed. So don’t give me that “aww, how cute, he was trying to wash his puppy” nonsense. That kid is going to grow up to be one of these. That is about all I’m learning from that story.