November 2008

Grateful: My Body is a Gift

November 28, 2008

This post was done as a joint endeavor with the inimitable and beloved MizFit as our tribute to gratitude. It seems like sometimes we fit bloggers get a bit obsessive about our bodies. (That would be the understatement of the year except that “Michael Jackson is a bit off” wins every time.) We tweak what we put into our bodies and catalog what comes out. We monitor the various ways, times and parts of it that we exercise. We love it, we restrict it, we dream about it, we punish it. We can even get obsessive about not being obsessive [...]

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My Day Off

November 27, 2008

Today I am partying it up with my family but I’d hate to leave you without T-Day entertainment, so head on over to Chris Illuminati’s blog. His wife just got talked into doing her first ever fitness competition (go Wife!!) and of course Chris is going along for the ride. He is a very talented professional writer and a hilarious blogger. Read all about their adventures and enjoy the day!Love,Charlotte PS> I think the recession is causing gyms to get pretty creative with their advertising!

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From the Research Files: Skinny People Die Young

November 26, 2008

Skinny people die young. Compared to overweight people, that is. Contradicting what I, and many of you, have come to feel is common sense, this study says that people in the “overweight” category of the BMI scale live longer, healthier lives than their “normal” counterparts with people in the “underweight” and “obese” categories having the worst outcomes. Okay, so ignore the underweight and obese people for a moment; I think we can all figure out why they might have health problems (Kate Moss & Chris Farley walk into a bar…). Um, OVERWEIGHT people have better health outcomes than NORMAL people!! [...]

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Health Conscious Holiday Gift Giving

November 24, 2008

Holiday gift anxiety- it’s one of those things about being a grown-up that nobody ever tells you. When I was a child I had two main worries come Christmastime. One was making sure everyone knew I wanted that special mermaid doll that both sings and swims in the bathtub (that I never got) and the second was that my chain-smoking, garlic stuffed olive-eating grandma might kiss me on the mouth. But at some point after you realize that Santa Claus (or the Hannukah Armadillo) doesn’t really exist, it sets in that you are responsible for giving other people presents as [...]

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Fitness Gear: Where to Spend, Where to Save

November 24, 2008

Socks and jellybeans. My two favorite things. If my feet are wrapped in the pelts of Muppets and my belly is full of sour simple sugars then I am a happy girl. Unsurprisingly I have a wide assortment of both but today I’m just going to talk about the socks. I have furry socks, loud socks, knee-highs, thigh-highs (with little bows!), invisible socks, patterned socks, holey socks and lacy ankle socks. But do you know what I do not have? Real athletic socks. I know. The tragedy is unspeakable. Despite owning – I kid you not – 30+ workout tank [...]

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Updates, Discounts and a Giveaway!

November 21, 2008

First, I am proud to announce that The Great Fitness Experiment has search functionality back (see top of page)! Due to my stellar computer skills (er, google search skills) I have fixed my own glitch and now you can happily search for all the weird keywords you like. I’m talking to you Mr. or Ms. “naked hip hop” – you know who you are! I am weirdly very proud of my coding accomplishment. As MizFit would say, please to enjoy:) Update Time The TRX: We’re halfway through the suspension training experiment and I am very happy with how it is [...]

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Fallible: On Making Mistakes in Public

November 20, 2008

Yep, that’s a person in there. During all my years of teaching, I’ve seen a lot. In a single quarter I had a student vomit, another have a stroke, and a third show up for the final with no teeth claiming police brutality. I was teaching as the Twin Towers fell and watched the chaos ensue via the Internet. I’ve even been mooned by an irate teenager who was upset that I wouldn’t let him take the quiz he missed by showing up late. But the image that sticks with me the most from my professorial days was of a [...]

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What To Do When Your Workout Plans Get Thwarted

November 19, 2008

Every family has their seasonal traditions and today we are commemorating a big one at our house. It’s annual Pink Eye Day. We celebrate this special day every year come winter – sometimes more than once! While this day doesn’t usually involve festive decorations or special foods, it does involve missing school (and, for me, the gym, the store, and all adult company). Pink is the color of the day and each child is gifted with his own bottle of Purel, a box of Kleenexes and the admonition to touch nothing, including themselves. The first thing we always do on [...]

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Better To Be Scary Than Weak

November 18, 2008

Parroting the oft-told axiom that men find strong women frightening, a personal trainer at the Y today said of Gym Buddy Allison and I: “Those girls scare me.” My first reaction was, “Us? Scary??” We’re about as scary as the Hamburgler. (Seriously, Ronald McDonald is scary. But if I met the Hamburgler in a dark alley? You know it’d start with “gimme your wallet” and end with fist bumps and “just messin’ with you, man!”) Perhaps the trainer was afraid that we’d do something stupid and make quadriplegics out of ourselves and sue the Y. But I’m pretty sure that [...]

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The Recession Makes People Eat Less Meat But More Fast Food

November 17, 2008

Too bad Johnathan Swift died before the Internet came about. This will thrill PETA right out of their naugahyde pumps: doing what no bag of thrown flour could ever hope to accomplish, the recession has caused the average American to cut their meat consumption. According to a survey conducted by Parade magazine (Yes, the cheesy insert in the Sunday paper. Yes, I read it. Shut up.), nearly 60% of respondents say they have reduced the amount of meat they eat due to rising food costs. In an unrelated but strangely appropriate survey, apparently the recession has also caused an uptick [...]

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