Impossible is a typoRunning my pants off and loving myself along the way

I don’t know what I did to deserve such love.

Every now and again, a little package of love shows up from Larabar. This one is full of their new ALT Bars.

They’re made from Pea Protein. The debate about soy still rages on so it’s nice there are protein alternatives now. And of course, it’s Larabar so there’s no funky ingredients. Just dates, nuts, pea protein, natural flavors, you know the drill.

Yeah, yeah, I know, you want to know if they’re delicious? I had the Apple Cinnamon crisp for breakfast. Yup, tastes like apple crisp (with out the ice cream). The texture is a bit dry and crumbly when compared to the traditional Larabar. Not in an unpleasant way, but just different. You don’t get that chewy stick-to-your-teeth feel.

So I came across this “inspirational pin” on Pinterest. Sexy guy, with sexy abs, with sexy text saying “Rid your mind of can’t”.

I’m calling bullshit. You can’t rid you’re mind of can’t. That crazy inner fat girl is always gonna be there. Always gonna be whisper “you can’t do this” in you’re ear. It’s not about ridding my mind of can’t. It’s kind of a human response when faced with a difficult challenge. “Inspirational” posts like this just sets up a really dangerous senerio.

Ok, so let’s say I’m out on a run that I just “can’t” get through. Maybe this will pop in my head “Rid your mind of can’t”. You know what, maybe I can’t. Maybe I can’t finish this run. Oh great so I screwed up at “ridding my mind”. Great I can’t even do that so how the heck am I supposed to get over this little challenge.

The trick is, not ridding you’re mind of “can’t”. The trick is doing it even if your brain says “can’t”.

OK. Rant over.

Yet another huge weather event in the northeast. 12 hours before Storm Nemo even rolled in, the Weather Channel was calling it “Historic”.

“Historic” before it even happened?

WTF? You can’t call something that’s HASN’T HAPPENED YET historic. The media kills me sometimes, but that’s another post.

So yeah, there’s lots of snow.

About 18 inches right at the front door. Thankfully it was fluffy snow so I could get out the door to shovel.

108 minutes later and I was done.

108 minutes!!!!!

Sidebar: 108 MINUTES!! HOLY COW! 108!!!! Hurley should be with me pushing the button, but they didn’t have snow on the Island

How do I know I was shoveling snow for 108 minutes?

Weight Watcher’s Active Link.

108 minutes of snow shoveling gave me 61% of my activity total for the day.

Yeah, I’m nerdy and this kind of stats tracking makes me giddy.

Oh, and of course I did Nemo inspired blizzard nailart.

Snowy Blizzard nails!

So you know I’m sort of obsessed with nail art right? I mean, I go a little crazy on Pinterest about it (Follow my nail board!). Recently, discussing all things social media with the awesome Collective Bias team, Jay Berg offered to send me his wive’s hidden stash of unused nail products! Now that’s a good man!

So I’m testing out this press on manicure. So far, I think if you need your nails to look great for a single evening, this would be a great option, just press them on just before you head out the door. The packaging says they should last about a week, and I don’t have high hopes for that

At Dinner the other night with BUSINESS contacts…

Being introduced to the VICE PRESIDENT of something…

“This is Amy, she wrote that sex and running post…”

“Oh yeah, Fifty Shades of Running! I loved that post!”

Well, gee, that’s just precious. I am now known as the Blogger That Wrote That Sex Post.

For god sakes, I can’t be the only one that thinks about sex while running, can I?

I mean, half the country apparently is all fired up about Fifty Shades of Grey, the Today show is even talking about a “Fifty Shades Baby Boom”.

Prepare for a Fifty Shades of Rant Sidebar

For the love of all that is literary and holy, do not read Fifty Shades of Grey. First, it’s FAN fiction based on Twilight. TWILIGHT. Twilight has to be one of the worst bits of written fluff ever to masquerade as “Young Adult Fiction” as all it illustrates is that a young women will throw themselves off cliffs if they don’t have a man in their lives and the consequence of sex is death. Second, Fifty Shades is as poorly written as Twilight. Third, OMG the sex gets boring. Fourth, OMG really? A 27 year old foster kid reject becomes a billionaire, meets, courts, woos, gets obsessed with, marries and knocks up a virtual teenager? Great, now you just created yet another impossible to achieve romance standard that normal people will never live up to. Fifth, just because you like to get spicy in the bedroom DOES NOT mean you are mentally ill. Six, for god sakes when will women stop believing that they can change the men in their lives. I know many a fag hag who learned the hard way that you cannot turn your best friend straight just because you are secretly in love with them. Seven, oh wait, this is a running blog not a blog to rant about the impossible stereotypes that bad fiction have us believe is possible (you should hear my rant on porn, but alas, that is another post).

Anyway… sex while running. I can’t possibly be the only person who thinks about sex while running, can I? Maybe I’m the only one who openly admits it. I know, I know, fantasizing about sex is in the realm of “GUYS” and not a polite thing for a woman to admit to. But there comes a moment sometimes when you’re out running and the endorphins are popping about and you are hyper aware of what your body is doing. Each breath is big and real. You can feel your hips moving in their sockets, gravity pulling down at you, your legs pushing your forward, your clothes against your body. And it’s in that kind of moment that you can love and appreciate what your body can do, regardless of its size and shape. And Oh c’mon now, duh, you think about sex right?? OK, maybe it is just me, and maybe I just need to get laid.

A new year and a new manifesto

It’s January right? So as a fitness blogger I should have my pompoms out in full in New Year Resolution Mode. Yawn. I’ve done that. I’ve ridden the New Year high to lose weight, run a 10k, blah, blah, blah. But there is something fundamental missing, not only in this resolution nonsense, something fundamentally missing in my life. Brace yourself, this may hit a nerve.

After all the work I’ve done on myself – therapy, self-help books, journaling, empowerment classes – after all that, at the end of the day, I’m still waiting for that delicious, glorious moment when I’m thin enough to finally think I have the right to think I’m pretty and sexy and when I can finally be happy.
Yup, that’s right, I don’t think I have the right to be happy because I’m not thin and because I’m not thin, I’m not pretty or sexy. You see, when I’m finally thin, all those things will just magically poof into existence.

I walk around most days thinking I’m basically invisible, no makeup on, schlummy (yes, it’s a technical term) clothes, hair like the Wild Woman of Borneo. After all, no one is going to take notice of me anyway so what does our matter? Translation – I don’t think I matter.

But what if, now this may get a little radical and scary, but what if, just what if, I claimed being sexy and gorgeous and happy as my birth right? Right now? Right this very second?. What if I made that my Excalibur to heave from the stone and raise into the air with a these-boots-were-made-for-walking kind of growl? What if I fought for THAT instead of ticks on the scale or calories saved? What if RIGHTNOW I declared I was one sexy mother fucker and lived my life that way? What would my life then look like?
See, I keep piling up all this evidence that that I’m not pretty. Like beans I toss in a jar which is about bursting at this point. I collect all these moments that provide evidence that I’m not pretty or desirable. The dates that stand me up, the boys that don’t return phone calls, the plus size jeans, the bad hair days, they are all collected and noted in my evidence file like I’m building this Hoover era dossier on why I suck. I never ever pay any sort of attention to the moments that confirm I am a hottie. I disregard them as flukes, freaks of nature, tricks of the light. Like the day three random strangers complemented my legs when I had the balls to wear a short skirt, I mean three men, stopped, turned around walked back to me just to say I had great legs and I totally blew that off as meaningless. Those moments get discredited as abnormal, aberrations, people talking crazy and obviously delusional and doing drugs.

But what if? What if I lived life right now as if I was perfect and glorious and oozing with sex appeal? What if I lived every moment as confirmation of being powerful and happy instead of hiding out and waiting for some future moment of ambiguous glory? And I’m not talking about goofy affirmations in the mirror or cheer leader pompom talks before going out on the town. What if I woke up in the morning and put my vampy red Chanel lipstick and my killer holy-crap-you’re-over-6foot-tall stilettos to work at my home office? What if I took on this manifest of keeping your head, heels and standards high? What would my life look like then?

I don’t know. But I’m sure as hell going to find out.

Thirteen is kind of an interesting number. The number marks a lot of endings, which is always the beginning of something else. Shall we take a brief tour of the Number Thirteen on the first day of 2013?

 There were 13 attendees of the Last Supper.

13 is the last number in the Mayan calendar cycle.

A woman gets her period 13 times a year. (on Average

The assassination order for the Knights Templar was issued on Friday 13 October 1307

The Death card is the 13th card in the Tarot Deck.

The US Flag has 13 stripes.

Triskaidekaphobia is the fear of the number 13.

Zeus is the thirteenth Greek God.

13 turns make a traditional hangman’s noose. Anything less would not snap a neck.

Traditionally, there are 13 witches in a coven.

Lil Sis turned 13 on Friday the 13th.

I’m sure if we dug around we’d find oodles of other 13 references so send ‘em to me in the comments!

So ya know, it’s like New Year’s Day and whatnot. Every good heath and fitness writer is out there pumping out content about New Year’s resolutions and what have you – How to make a resolution, how to stick to it, why they are important,  why they are nonsense, “what’s your resolution and OMG lets get out our pom poms and cheer because we’re going to be pumped up about losingweightquittingsmokingcleaninghouseandalltheothernewyearresolutiontypestuff until I encounter the first real hurdle and then I’m screwed and will be right back where I started.”

I almost feel like I’m letting the world down because I’m not doing that. It’s really hard for me to get excited about Jan 1 as an arbitrary starting date for changing your life. If you think about it, Jan 1 is a really crappy day to start anything. Most of the world is hung over, tired, grouchy and left, if you’re very lucky, cleaning up after one heck of a party. Do you really want to be out there starting Couch to 5K or some other nonsense? Really, I did that last year and yes, I threw up.

Another weird thing about this whole New Years resolution phenomena is that the promises people often makes to themselves are a reaction to something negative. “I think I’m fat, so I’m going to resolve to lose weight”, “I’m afraid for my heath so I’m going resolve to quit smoking”. Resolutions are always a reaction to your past and are never a truly new creating. Almost never do you “resolve” to do something just because you want to for no good reason other than you want to. “Resolve” does mean to “settle or find a solution to a problem”. Just sayin’.

So I’m not resolving to do anything in 2013. I’m not fixing any problems, I’m not changing anything.  There are some things I want to do for shits and giggles, as it were, not because it’s going to better my life (though it might), not because it will fix something that’s wrong, but purely because I want to. Some of them, I will admit have a hidden personal meaning for me, that if I did it, would be a victory. Some are things that might very well be impossible, but as we know, that’s just a typo…

13 Things I want to do in 2013

So, apparently there are sex scandals in the running world too. Go figure. The story broke last week that three-time Olympic mid-distance runner, Suzy Favor Hamilton, was doing a little moon lighting as a high-priced call girl in Vegas. Sheesh, I only use naughty sex thoughts as a motivational tool. Apparently I’m doing it wrong.

I really don’t have an opinion on this being bad, wrong or “OMG how could you put your family and career at risk”. It’s not my life and I have long been in favor of legalizing and regulating prostitution, but at the end of the day, hey, it’s not my life, I don’t judge.

What I do find, I don’t know, amusing? A wee bit distressful? is that Suzy coupled her running appearances with visiting “clients”. The Smoking Gun reports she would book at $600 an hours so it’s not like she was hurting for cash. Now, everyone now and again piggybacks “pleasure” on to business trips, (OMG MOM not THAT kind of pleasure, sheesh), but writing off legitimate business expenses while engaging in illegal activities is just a little tacky dontcha think?

Well, it’s Christmas, with cookies, and presents, and food, and Santa, and more food, and wrapping paper, and snacks, and family, and dessert, and friends. It was probably really stressful getting to this day and it might even STILL be stressful.

But there is time to give one last gift…

You know there’s that person, that just did you wrong? It could have been yesterday or a year ago, or even a good portion of a life time. Yeah, THAT person.

Go ahead, forgive them.

It doesn’t make what happened right, there might be no justice, there might even be stuff you have to do about it. It’s really kind of a selfish gift, you don’t even have to tell them about it. Shhh, we can keep it a secret.

Give yourself the gift of no longer having that person or event have power over you.

Yeah, I know, it may be really really hard, and you might only get as far as “I’m trying to forgive you” and you might have to remind yourself a thousand times that you’re trying really really hard. It might require you pulling on an extra pair of Big Girl Panties.

And you just may find the person you have to forgive is yourself. Double points if that’s the case.

Happy Christmas.

FitGirl: What are you doing?

FatGirl: Eating cake! Look, it’s zero points

FitGirl: No cake is zero points.

FatGirl: Look. Pinterest says it’s ZERO points. It’s a Zero Point Cake.  You make it in a MUG. In the MICROWAVE. In 1 MINUTE. I could eat a dozen of these suckers.

FitGirl: (looking at three cake crusted mugs on the counter) Um, even if it is zero points, which it’s not, having three of them is not zero points.

FatGirl: OMG can’t you do math? ZERO times THREE is ZERO. It’s ZERO point cake. Pinterest said so.

So maybe you’ve seen this pin floating around on Pinterest for the ZERO point mug cake.

Don’t believe everything you pin.

I hate to break the news, it’s not zero points. How do I know? I got a little funky with a spreadsheet.

The info on the pin says:

IT’S 0 POINTS PLUS!! Genius! 1-2-3 Cake. You need 2 boxes of cake mix. 1 can be any flavor you prefer, but the other MUST be Angel Food cake mix. Mix them together (shake them in a big ziploc bag or stir them together in a big bowl). Then simply store the mixture in an airtight container until you get the urge for dessert. Then just put 3 tablespoons of the dry mixture in a big coffee mug and stir in 2 tablespoons of water. Microwave it for one minute

So that’s what I did, I mixed a Betty Crocker Angel Food Cake Mix with a Betty Crocker Devil Food Cake Mix and carefully weighed out three tablespoons in grams. It came out to 30 grams per serving.

Then since a serving of each cake did not match the servings in the Mug Cake, I totaled up the boxes, added them together and divided it into 30 gram servings to figure out the total nutritional values.

Then I put those into the Points calculator, and shaazam – 3 Points Plus.

So, this is a good lesson in not believing what you pin.

Now, I’m not knocking this cake. It’s simple, tasty, and hits the spot if you need just a little chocolate to get you though the night. I totally recommend having it on hand because it’s not like a bag of cookies, that remain open and just seem to talk to you late at night. Since you actually have to cook it, you’re lest apt to have say 4 than you might with an open bag of cookies.

TIP: only cook it for 45 seconds. 1 minute is WAY too long. Your microwave may vary, but keep an eye on it, once the top stops bubbling and it looks dry and just begins to pull away from the edge of the mug, it’s done, get it out of there. Also, for one more point, add a teaspoon of peanut butter, it makes it ever so rich.

OH and I’ve also used left over coffee instead of water, that will boost the chocolate flavor just a bit.