Step into a Slim Gym.

As the "scrawny kid" in high school, I never really saw much point in going to the gym. For starters, I absolutely loathed working out. I was on Swim Team all throughout high school and loved the fact that there was no running or throwing or catching involved in that sport. Mind you, it isn't that I am lazy! I love doing outdoorsy stuff like hiking or riding bikes or rock climbing. And between us girls, the larger I got in the brassiere, the more uncomfortable running became for me. Ditto with any other sport that involves jumping, hopping, or flipping upside-down for any period of time.

When I graduated high school, I stayed at a relatively similar weight as I had been for the past few years. Sure, I gained (and lost) some weight my Freshman year of college (who doesn't?)... but for the most part I stayed around the same number on the scale. But something happened that I DIDN'T expect or notice for a while: my clothes fit differently. While the scale comforted me with familiar numbers, the numbers on my jeans went up and up. Where I was once a size 0 or 1, suddenly I was buying size 7 and 8 jeans. It isn't that this is a large jean size, but for a 5'4" girl who hasn't gained any pounds, it's a pretty big leap. I chose to ignore it and remain satisfied that my beloved scale was still nice to me, at least. I dabbled in working out once in a while... 20 minute yoga videos, an evening walk. But I never really "exercised." And quite frankly, I never really wanted to so why should I, right? Wrong.
Studies show that women of all ages are looking to the wrong things to determine their health. We do daily weigh-ins, we yo-yo diet, we suck in our guts. But it isn't the women who eat diet food and weigh in every day that are healthy. In fact, it isn't the women who society deems "thin," that are healthy at all! Many women out there depend on coffee and cigarettes or diets consisting of lemon juice to lose weight. But guess what? You're not losing the RIGHT weight! When you diet and don't feed your body the nutrition that it needs, you aren't losing fat at all. The first thing your body is going to dispense of is the muscle in it. This is why my jeans weren't fitting after high school. I was losing weight, and also gaining it at the same time. I lost a lot of that lovely muscle I had gotten from years of swimming, and gained that weight back in fat. The scale showed the same amount because muscle weighs more than fat, so that I would lose a pound of muscle but I was gaining more volume of fat.

Think of it like a pound of bricks vs. a pound of feathers. The pound of bricks can fit in a relatively small bag, right? Now think of a pound of feathers. That pound of feathers is going to need a lot of volume to weigh that much, so it takes a much, much bigger bag. Your body is that bag. Need me to be more specific? Your ass is that bag. Your body can weigh the same and either have that pound of bricks in it, or that pound of feathers... your choice.
Interestingly enough, I still wasn't motivated to change anything in my diet. I wasn't "fat," so why bother? It wasn't until I had an unrelated surgery that I started to really take an interest in what I was putting in my body. As I was saying before: women can be teeny-tiny thin and ultimately MUCH more unhealthy than what some people might consider "heavy." Try not to think of foods as "high-calorie," "low-fat," or "the all-evil carbohydrate!" Your body is a delicate system of give and take. You need energy to complete your daily tasks. Believe it or not: you actually need fat too!

Just be careful which carbs, sugars, and fats you put into your body. I'm working on a book by Dr. Oz called "You On A Diet," in which he goes over a lot of this information. No- I am not on a diet. I'm simply trying to make sure I take care of my body and am as informed on it as possible. In the chapter I'm on he tells you the 5 things to steer clear of: Simple Sugars, Enriched-bleached-or refined flour, high fructose corn syrup, saturated fat, and trans fat. These are foods that "trick" your body. They turn down the volume on the little speaker in your body that says, "Okay, I'm full!" and add more sugars to your body than necessary. AKA- bad girl. Don't do it! I will go over the why and how on this in my next post.

But this post is about the stuff going on in the outside part of you: get your lazy bum to the gym! I have, after literally years of refusing to do so, gotten myself a gym pass. No more procrastinating for this young thing. I've discovered the most awesome part of going to the gym: being alone in a room of people. Yea, this sounds like a recipe for depression, but I absolutely love it. It's exactly what I've been needing for the past few years.

Every day I go to work. At my job, I am told what to do. I am told how to do it. I am so busy sharing my time, in fact, that I have had to answer the phone IN the bathroom. I transfer the phones to my cell phone on my lunch break and have to answer with a mouth full of food. My time is someone else's time for 8 hours of my day, 5 days per week. I get off work and go home. Usually I end up meeting up with my boyfriend or roommates or friends. We sit and chat about every one's days. We listen to each other's little dramas. I try, as much as possible, NOT to hog the conversation. My ears become my friend's. My shoulder becomes theirs. I chime in on their lives and meet up at their houses and places of work to talk. My time is their time. But when I go to the gym a wonderful thing happens. My time is MY time. I set the pace. I listen to my iPod and control exactly what mood I will have for the next hour or two. I can go when I want and stop when I want. And it's lovely, and it's selfish, and it's exactly what I need.
To close out the longest blogspot EVER, here are a few pump UP songs to download for your (hopefully) new thirst for gym time, and a few cool down ones as well! (Ps- if you hate running like me, I have fallen in love with the bikes there. Try it!)

PUMP UP:

AFI: Beautiful Thieves

ALICE IN CHAINS: Would

AUDIOSLAVE: Show me how to live

BEYONCE: Sweet Dreams

BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE: Tears don't fall

CHEVELLE: Send the pain below

DEFTONES: Minerva

FINCH: What it is to burn

JAY Z/ RIHANNA/ KANYE WEST: Run this town

JUVENILE: Numb Numb

A PERFECT CIRCLE: Judith

RISE AGAINST: Dancing for rain

WIND DOWN:

THE BLACK KEYS: Psychotic girl

BRAND NEW: Sic transit Gloria... Glory fades

CALEXICO: Two silver trees

THE CARDIGANS: Explode

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: I'm on fire

THE DECEMBERISTS: Summersong

DEFTONES: The chauffeur

ERYKAH BADU: Bag lady (remix)

MURDER BY DEATH: Three men hanging

A PERFECT CIRCLE: 3 Libras

QUEENSRYCHE: Silent lucidity

RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS: Wet sand

REGINA SPEKTOR: Eet

SHINY TOY GUNS: Putting on the ritz

Love,

Lula Mae

Me, myself, and moi.

I believe that no matter what your physical appearance looks like, no one can be complete without having some kind of emotional and spiritual balance in their lives. I know that when I lose that balance I usually end up running myself into the ground, completely frazzled. Trust me, I am not here to preach any kind of religious belief to you- I have always felt that was personal within people. But there is ONE extra special person whom I feel you must make an emotional connection with in order to live your life completely and spherically: YOU.

I know it may sound selfish but I have always been one of my number one priorities. I don't see that kind of behavior as self-absorbed, but rather outwardly concerned. I feel that one can never give fully of themselves to the world in need if they don't have themselves relatively figured out. You have to be at peace within yourself in order to bring any kind of joy or peace to the people whom you care about. But herein lies the modern woman's dilemma... where on Earth do you find time for YOU?

I find it fascinating how busy I am, and I mean really amazing. I am young with relatively few health problems, no children, no spouse, and while I try to involve myself in the community- I'm not exactly heading up any PTA boards if you catch my drift. So why is it that I seem to be running around like a chicken with my head cut off at almost all points of my day? A typical day for me looks something like this:

Wake up, rush to get ready for work, commute 30 minutes to my office, work all day (usually without a lunch break), get off work, commute 30-45 minutes home, take a shower, tidy up the house/my room/what appears to be my boyfriend's indoor tornado, help cook dinner/help eat dinner that my loving boyfriend has cooked while I clean up his tornado, watch a TV show, fall asleep.

You will notice that nowhere in there does it say, "Take a relaxing bath surrounded my Lavender candles," or, "Brush my hair 100 strokes." It rarely even says anything like, "Go to the grocery store," because there never seems to be the time or energy to do any of those things. And it took me some time, but I finally realized why. It isn't that I have no time on my hands, it's that I don't have any ENERGY left to give to doing much towards the end of my day. I have nothing left to give once I have been answering phones and assisting customers all day. And the reason? Because I need to take some "me time" before I can give anyone or anything else my time.

Me time is important because it gives us a chance to stop and breathe. It allows us to collect ourselves and therefore have a better "us" to present to the world. If I don't have a chance to stop and connect my thoughts together I will inevitably proceed with scrambled thoughts until I do.

Interestingly enough, Me Time doesn't have to be spent in solitary confinement. You can squeeze in some small amount of self-meditation in the darnedest of places. I read an interview with a Tibetan Monk who emphasized the ability to basically stop and smell the roses no matter where he was. In Tibetan culture, they take over an hour to drink their morning tea. This is because it is about so much more than drinking tea for them. It's the process of enjoying the tea. Taking sip by sip, rolling the flavor around in your mouth, and considering what you like about the tea itself. This may sound unheard of to most Americans, but it sounds just lovely to me. We all know better than to think life is about anything else but the ride.

I'm not saying that we ought to disregard our jobs and families and sit around dwelling on the meaning of Tea all day. I simply think that if we can find a few moments to clear our minds and focus on enjoying the things around us that we can subconsciously collect our thoughts and throw out the unimportant things clouding our minds. I, for one, have two things that I do to relax and meditate: showering and laundry. Showering to me isn't just a way to get clean. It's a way to rinse off the troubles of my work day and start my personal day fresh and worry-free. I have a difficult time going from work to play without mixing in a shower first. Laundry to me is the same thing. I enjoy the organization of separating laundry, and better yet the smell of it when it's clean and fresh. I take that time to have some "me time," and not think about the world at large. If I have an hour to spend on nothing in particular, reading or painting serve as my Me Time. It's all about what you can fit into your schedule that day. Spa days at home are also excellent when you have the time to commit to it. No matter what I do, my goal is to come out of it clear-headed and refreshed. And I usually do.

I highly recommend spending time with yourself. At the risk of stealing a line from L'Oreal: You're worth it!

Love,

Lula Mae