jaeleslie

Physical therapy is how I am trying to think of my regimen lately. It is surprising to me lately how very little food I seem to actually need. When I started the non-dairy diet I lost a bit, but now I seem to have worked out how to feed myself again, not entirely a good thing. But feeling better is sure nice. Now that we are going to the gym Jon tells me encouragingly that of course muscle mass weighs more than fat, so you can be shrinking while you're actually getting heavier, which seems to be how it works for me. But one would think there were a limit to how densely packed a person could be, which limit I should have passed long ago. How clothes fit now seems a more reliable indicator of my size than the number on the scale.

I always took to weight training well. But I have to think, Physical therapy, physical therapy, to defend against being sucked into Bodybuilding! That mindset is contagious at the gym. It is a subtle effect of how the machines and the workout program encourage one to increase, progress, onwards and upwards, and not only the social environment. It's just like when you're driving a car, and the gas pedal naturally encourages you to go faster and follow the flow of traffic with drivers who are all exceeding the speed limit. The young fellow at the front counter was probably a toddler when I was last lifting weights, and that was several generations of exercise machines ago. Old people can't work out with quite the abandon that young healthy people can. So it is good to have some older people at the gym who are really trying to get over their bad heart or surgery or whatever.

I told Jon about replyhazy working out at home, and he agreed it is pretty impressive to go to the trouble to do that with free weights, but, whatever works. I like the machines now that they are a bit more familiar to me, and I just try not to get in the way of the big serious guys with the big free weights. I can see the social thing at the gym is only beginning to unfold, which is interesting to me. The gym we go to is a little one, with all different ages of people at it. Several weight rooms, a lap pool and a whirlpool and a dance/stretching room, and lots of treadmills and bicycles and step machines. Most everyone listens to their own walkmans instead of the muzak. Eye contact issues are complicated. It turns out that I am more intensely competitive than most other parts of my life would suggest. Yes, I am one of those people who looks at the weights on the other people's machines. I want information. But then I just work my program. I have it all written down on a chart that I carry around still because I can't remember it all.

And it is good to have a pretty direct chain of reward in an exercise program. Mine is Do It = Feels Good. I like using my body (e. e. cummings wrote somewhat on this subject). Of course later at home after the endorphin high wears off it may be another story. I ride the recumbent bicycle for fifteen minutes, then spend a little more than an hour doing eighteen different exercises, three sets of ten for the most part. About half-way through I get to a state when all the blood seems to be occupied elsewhere than my brain, where I can still count to ten if I pay attention, but I forget if I've done the second set or am on the third. The reason I do this much all at once is because I don't want to go every day! which is what Jon does, three different workouts in rotation, but he goes every day -- and sometimes twice a day.

You know I think weight training is a natural for people who have been to many years of school, because the motivation is mostly internalized, and the schedule of reinforcement graduated in tiny increments, with absolute numbers in pounds, repetitions, sets, and timing. Jon knows quite a lot about practical body mechanics, but I have read all about it, so we have quite the jock-like intellectual discussions. He comes from the old boy school of pain, and I come from the new age school of many many many repetitions.
"That's two!"
"Just one more"
"But I'm tired!"
"Maybe you should try shrugs instead"
"I don't want to!"
It is fun to have my own trainer to argue with, just like a rich star.