Gym Report

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted one of these. Let’s face it, getting laid off knocked the wind right out of my fitness sails. It’s not that I lost interest exactly, more like I lost the physical and emotional energy to do anything about it.

A four-and-a-half month hiatus later, I’m getting my butt back in gear and starting again. Here’s the good and the bad:

In four months of not working out I gained about five pounds. Five pounds in four months sucks rocks. My biggest dietary sin during that period was copious amounts of beer, but just the simple act of not going to the gym resulted in a five pound gain. Fuck that.

That having been said, I actually expected it to be more. Based on the way my clothes have felt in the last two weeks I had convinced myself that I’d probably gained 10 and, until this morning, was incapable of making myself get on the scale. So, in the face of my 10 pound fear, five seemed okay for a minute.

However, I’d also like to add that a process like this really lets you know beyond a shadow of a doubt where your trouble spots are. All five of those pounds apparently landed right on my hips/butt. Lovely.

Fortunately, I also know from previous experience that I lose inches really quickly through there so with any luck I’ll be able to drop that back to pre-March numbers in a matter of weeks.

I joined the California Fitness around the corner from us on Tuesday and after our little excursion to Eaton was over, began hitting the gym daily again. This morning Jenny came over at 8:15 and we did an hour of cardio, which is what I plan to spend the next week or so doing exclusively before hitting the weight machines again.

Not having any money to eat out makes regulating food pretty easy–you can’t eat junk if you can’t pay for it. So I’ve been cooking and am back to my “no beer on weekdays” rule. With any luck I’ll be back into a solid routine before the winter weather comes and makes me want to hide under the bed for several months.

Speaking of Winter…I’d been dreading the cold months here and wondering how I’ll deal with them. Some of you probably know that I tend to get funky and depressed when the sun doesn’t come out for days at a time. Anyway, I read an interesting article about the link between Vitamin D deficiency and depression.

Anybody with any personal experience with this, e-mail me. I’m looking at options for safely supplementing without having to drink a gallon of milk everyday. At least one study suggested that Vitamin D supplementation was more effective than sunlamps for treating seasonal depression. I’m completely intrigued.