Thursday, August 11, 2011

This week's best horoscopes courtesy of The Onion...

Taurus Apr 20 - May 20
Your crude and primitive sense of humor will offend lots of people, but just wait until they get a look at your crude and primitive sense of justice.

Leo Jul 23 - Aug 22
You'll learn the value of patience, compassion, and tolerance next week and be rather disappointed that it's actually so low.

Pisces Feb 19 - Mar 20
Mars rising in your sign indicates you are something of a coward, mostly because of the way you keep flinching at it.


The other signs can be found here.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

The thing about working out is...

Once you start, it's easy as hell to stop. I have always admired people who enjoy excercising, and I've come to terms with the fact that I'll probably never be one of them.

Confession: I am on an uncharted, scary mission. I have two public events this fall that I have to go to that will require me to wear a bathing suit. (See above for why this mission is scary.)

The first is a bacholorette party in Vegas with a pool/spa day. The bride of said wedding is in awesome shape and so are most of her friends (that does not include me). I have decided that I will not be the one to sulk at the amazing bodies that these women have so hard for. I don't want to feel that shameful embarassment that can wash over you so quickly when it comes to self image. I want to feel confortable and think that I look good. Not as good as them or good in comparision to them. Just good about myself with confidence and self-esteem.

The second is a destination wedding in Mexico for a high school friend of mine. Now in this case, I just don't want to be the cute girl that fell off after high school. This event is for my pride and vanity, not self- esteem.

So, I have taken up a cause to work out and eat better (but there are just certain things I will not give up, hello mac-n-cheese, I am talking about you!). We have a treadmill in our garage, a park that has a track for walking or running, I bought a Jillian Michaels "No Trouble Zones" work out DVD (OMG, I almost died), and a friend of mine has let me borrow the Yoga X DVD from her P90X collection.

Now, before anyone gets impressed, I completely failed the first time I tried to get super serious about this campaign. I mean, seriously?!? Who has time for all that? Then I realized that my expections were WAY too high. How can I go from not working out at all to expecting to do 2 DVDs, run on a track and lift weights all in the same day? I realized that if I plan not only did I have enough time to do this right for the events, but that I have enough time to do this right, period. These changes should be life changes, not temporary modifications so I "unveil" myself at these events.

With that realization, I have modified my working out expections. My goal now is to do a minimum of 30 minutes of something physical everyday. And it can be whatever, like walking the neighborhood with my husband or getting on the dread-mill or cursing at Jillian Michaels on my TV while circuit training in my family room.

With all the pressure to do 5 bazillion excercises-a-day out the window, my behavior is changing and the results are motivating. One day I ran more on the treadmill than I ever thought was possible and when I finished, I was beaming with pride and a sense of accomplishment. Less surprisely, after doing all that work, the last thing I wanted to eat was mac-n-cheese. I wanted something lighter and healthier, so the effects of my run would last.

Oddly enough it's not just my behavior that is changing, it's also my mind. Maybe I could be one of those people who enjoy working out. You know the thing about working out, is that once you start enjoying it, its easy to keep going.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

This week's best Horoscopes, Courtesy of The Onion

Leo:

Often it feels as if everything is too hard for you and that anything you try ends in failure, but take heart: Those feelings have to be wrong eventually.

Scorpio :

Decent people everywhere will be shocked and appalled by the treatment you received and the conditions under which you were held, but it's not like their jobs are any better.

Aquarius:

You've been fooling yourself for so long that you've lost track of your sense of identity, your joy in life, and which one is actually the real Shroud of Turin.