Health & Body


What an odd week. It began with my judge gone (vacation at a dude ranch, seriously) and causing me to float, covering 2-3 courtrooms a day, with a holiday smack in the middle of the week, a par-tay on the rooftop with boyfriend, friends and coworkers to watch fireworks, my judge finally returning today, and ends with a funeral tomorrow. Some other oddities:
– met up with my childhood friend Lily and her husband Arnold for dinner on Monday at Market City Caffe in Brea, one of my favorite Italian joints, and had Crepes Suzette (butter, powdered sugar, orange zest, orange syrup, Grand Marnier, a la mode) at a new crepes joint on the same street for dessert. Spent the $30 giftcard I’ve had for 2-3 years at the annual sale of Bed, Bath & Beyond.
– at the gym on Monday, I was entering my stats on the elliptical trainer as I began my workout, and when it asked for my age, I had to put in 31 for the first time. How official it felt.
– I only worked out Monday and Tuesday since Wednesday was the holiday, didn’t do it Thursday cuz after driving to the gym, parking, and going around the car to get my workout bag, I realized I’d left my shoes and socks at home. The one thing you can’t just buy a quickie replacement for at the gym. Today, Mr. W talked me out of gymming at lunch cuz he didn’t feel like it, so we met up for Lee’s Sandwiches instead. But we did just return from a 3.25 mile run just now. He’s at the pool to cool off and I’m sitting here blogging in sweaty running clothes.
– I have a headache from my ears being so cold from the run, and uterine cramps from PMS.
– I actually sorted and did laundry this week. I didn’t complete The Laundry Project as after presorting, turned out I had 9 piles/loads of clothes to wash, but I did get approximately halfway done. The categories left to wash and dry and put away are handwash delicates, reds, regular lights, rough-and-tumble lights, and regular darks. I’d already done sheets, delicate lights, delicate darks, and rough-and-tumble darks. (What OCD? I really have that many clothes that need washing. Nearly a full load each category! That’s how much I hate and procrastinate on laundry.)
– James came by yesterday as I was working on The Laundry Project and brought my birthday present. He’d complained that I was taking too long retrieving it, as it was taking up too much space on his desk at work. Why was it at work instead of home, you ask? Because he has no room in his house for this, he said. He did indeed hand me a gargantuan wrapped box that should really be housing a 32″ TV from the 80s (i.e., NOT flat screen), and I told him it better not contain a life-size fully animated interactive electronic bust of a mountain gorilla. Mr. W and I had bought that from The Sharper Image for Mr. W’s brother for Christmas, and it was so lifelike it scared the bejezus out of people walking by the kitchen, where it was sitting all disembodied on the counter. It even broke my heart when everyone was playing Guitar Hero in the living room and it was lonely by itself in the kitchen, and would let out these sad elongated coos. But James reassured me that it did not contain any gorilla parts. Instead, I tore into the box to find…a big heavy coil of garden hose! Woohoo! And a new Zaino spray polish product, plus a new Zaino polishing pad. I had to laugh. Both the Accord and IS350 sitting in my garage are filthy, and my singular excuse for not doing something about it had been, “I don’t have a hose, I’ll have to wait till I go to my parents’/Mr. W’s/James’ house to wash cars together.” So much for that. The box is now a nice cat toy for Dodo in the living room.
– James and I had mall food for dinner last nite after he brought over my hose, since I was craving a particular little French cafe in the Brea Mall. I think it’s called the Le Diplomat Cafe. Afterwards, I finally spent the $50 gift certificate to Pottery Barn that college roommie Diana gave me for my bday in 2003. Met the most computer-unsavvy chick I’d seen since the 80s, and she was our age, so no excuse! We had to explain AOL vs. SBC Global DSL Internet Service to her. She was paying for both at $49/mo each. And she didn’t know what we meant by “uninstall AOL.” So she begged James to help her and he nicely gave her a business card, telling her to call if she “really, really can’t find anyone else.” She was cute, too. Too bad she’s married. (For James, I mean.)

So aside from the yet-to-come funeral of my coworker’s mother tomorrow morning, that concludes my irregular week in a (rather oversized) nutshell.

It occurred to me in my recent stats post that people may not be aware of the current scale for body fat percentage, so here it is as according to FamilyEducation website (sorry for the formatting; my blog spaces things funny so I couldn’t line up a chart):

IN WOMEN:
Body fat percentile provides the most accurate estimate of body composition. Body fat percentile is an indication of the percent of your body that is made of fat. Normal body fat percent for women is 20 to 30 (for men it is lower). In women, below 17 is extreme low body fat; between 30 to 33, high body fat; and above 34, extremely high body fat or obese. The recommended healthy body fat percentiles increase slightly with age.

Body Fat Standards for Women Recommended by Age Group
* Ages 20-29:
Very low: <16%
Low: 16-19
Optimal: 20-28
Moderately high: 29-31
High: >31

*Ages 30-39:
Very low: <17
Low: 17-20
Optimal: 21-29
Moderately high: 30-32
High: >32

*Ages 40-49:
Very low: <18
Low: 18-21
Optimal: 22-30
Moderately high: 31-33
High: >33

*Ages 50-59:
Very low: <19
Low: 19-22
Optimal: 23-31
Moderately high: 32-33
High: >34

*Ages 69+:
Very low: <20
Low: 20-23
Optimal: 24-32
Moderately high: 33-35
High: >35

This is what I could find on men, as compared to women, on another website:

* For “athlete” body type:
Men: <10%
Women: <17%
* For “lean” body type:
Men: 10-15
Women: 17-22
* For “normal” body type:
Men: 15-18
Women: 22-25
* For “above average” body type:
Men: 18-20
Women: 25-29
* For “overfat” body type:
Men: 20-25
Women: 29-35
* For “obese” body type:
Men: 25+
Women: 35+

Mr. W bought a new Tanita scale today, the Innerscan BC-533, that gives you incredibly comprehensive body readings. Here’s mine:

Height: 5’2.5″
Weight: 126 lb
Body Fat Percentage: 24.8%
Body Water: 52.3%
Visceral Fat: 2 – “good” is 1-12
Muscle Mass: 90 lb
Physique Rating: 5 – “standard: average muscle, average body fat”
Bone Mass: 4.8 lb
Daily Caloric Intake to Maintain: 2134
Metabolic Age: 19 (I’m not sure how accurate the metabolism measurements are, since there was no option for me to input that I’d messed up my metabolism with anorexia.)

Visceral fat is fat in the internal abdominal cavity surrounding the vital organs. High levels of fat here puts one at risk for heart disease, Type II diabetes, and high blood pressure. If the rating is 1-12, it’s healthy, 13-59 is increasing levels of unhealthy.
Physique Rating is based on the ratio of body fat to muscle mass, on a scale of 1 (“hidden obese: looks healthy but high body fat percentage to low muscle mass”) to 9 (“very muscular: lower than normal body fat with above-average body fat”).
Metabolic Age is based on basal metabolic rate (BMR, or “resting” metabolism rate, calculated by using a medically proven weight vs. age formula and then factoring in your activity level and current body composition), and comparing that to the normal metabolism of an average person from ages 12-50.

Here’s Mr. W’s stats:
Height: 6′.5″
Weight: 188 lb
Bodyfat Percentage: 10.2%
Body Water: 58.8%
Visceral Fat: 5
Muscle Mass: 160.4 lb
Physique Rating: 8 – “thin and muscular, athlete: lower than normal bodyfat, adequate muscle mass”
Bone Mass: 8.2 lb
Daily Caloric Intake to Maintain: 4621
Metabolic Age: 12

Mr. W is going to set up a spreadsheet to chart our progress. His goal is to get to a Physique Rating of 9; and mine is to get to a Physique Rating of 8 (unless I start losing curves, in which case I wanna be a 6, which is “standard muscular, athlete: average body fat, high muscle”). I also want my body fat to drop to 20%-22%, my weight to drop to about 118lbs, and my height to increase to 5’6″. *sigh*

This thing always happens to me when I peruse other people’s blogs. I look at their photos and I think, “Wow, that’s a really nice photo. I wonder if it’s really a photo of the blogger.” And I’d admire the composition of the portrait, and the clever poses and outfits, the beautiful figures and skin, and I’d think, “I wanna post a photo of me like that.” But I don’t have any. I wish I just had a recent nice pretty photo of myself. Something I’d look at and feel good about. Where some huge flaw wouldn’t wave at me, like maybe my thighs look huge, or I look midgety, or my face is pudgy, or my skin is horrid, or my upper arms look obese, or I look pregnant. It’s been awhile since I’d been pleasantly surprised by a photo of myself. Just now, I looked in the China photo collection, and what kind of photos did I take? Crap like this:

Times like this, I’m inspired to draw the way I wish I looked. Beautiful, slim, dreamily gazing into the distance of some beautiful horizon, hair long and floating around me, tall with slender (but toned) limbs, nice perky butt and boobs. Sigh…

Like, what happened to THESE days?…



These photos are from LAST YEAR!

Months ago, Vanessa signed up for the Marine Corps Boot Camp Challenge which is to take place Saturday, October 6 at Camp Pendleton in San Diego, California, and extended an invitation to me to do the same, which I’d declined. The event is described as such on the event website:

EVENT FEATURES
The first and best! A fun and furious 3-mile course featuring obstacles used only by Marine Recruits at the Marine Recruit Depot. Get “encouragement” along the way at each obstacle by MCRD Drill Instructors. Compete as an individual or a member of a 3-person or 5-person team.
Great post-race party with plenty of music, food, drinks and beer, awards to the top 3 finishers in each category/age group, official race T-Shirts to all entrants. A very memorable day!

A couple weekends ago while hanging out at Mr. W’s male best friend’s (both men are former Marines, btw) house, we watched a new reality show called “The Academy” that depicts Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department recruits go through their “boot camp” training at a training academy local to us. I watched these people struggle on obstacle courses and wondered aloud whether I could pull off that training course. Mr. W had replied, “Pssh. You could do that entire obstacle course blindfolded.” Really. Hmm.

And then while hanging out with Dwaine last weekend, he was so enthusiastic about the obstacle course Mud Run he’d done that day that I thought about Vanessa’s prior invitation to this event. This morning, I finalized the talking-Dwaine-into-Boot-Camp-Challenge and registered myself. Yay!! Just to keep Mr. W in the loop, I put him on the email mailing list to confirm my registration, and I just spoke to him, and HE registered!!! DOUBLE YAY!!! He’s familiar with the training grounds from his own Marine Corp training days, and said the obstacles “are a blast.” Anyone else out there wanna join?

I had an amazing weekend! Because my gym trainee was coming over to my house (for the first time) to help me clean out my closets, I was embarrassed to have her see my house as the mess it was, so I spent all Saturday morning before she got there cleaning, scrubbing, vacuuming (never could spell that word), Windexing, disinfecting, sorting, disposing, decluttering. My house is SO spic and span right now that I loved being in it all weekend. We spent 3 hours digging through four closets, and I’m donating 3 large trash bags full of clothes, plus one packing box full of undergarments. Man. I can’t believe what an ugly fashion period the 80s and early 90s were. There were some things I had no problems parting with, but there were many more that I had to look to her. “This still fits. What do you think?”
“That is OUT. I don’t see you wearing that now.”
“Really? Is it the box cut [with drawsting on the bottom], or is it the flannel plaid pattern?”
“It’s BOTH!!”
“Oh.”
All the oversized t-shirts, sweatshirts and sweaters caused her to exclaim over and over again, “I don’t understand. Who were you buying clothes FOR back then?! Some fat…man? If a guy today fit in that shirt, I wouldn’t date him!”
This made me examine my old wardrobe thoughtfully. “I wonder why my parents let me buy all this masculine, oversized stuff when I was in high school. They’re all really unflattering.”
“They were probably just happy cuz the less feminine you looked, the less they had to worry about.”
Funny thing is that I told my parents today about all the closet cleaning, and they even brought up that my clothes back 10 years ago were big and menswear, and my dad reminded me accusingly of the flannel shirts and sweatshirts I’d taken from him. Oops.

(as usual, rest mouse pointer over photos for captions)

After my gym trainee left, I took off to Dwaine’s house. We went to buy lasagne ingredients at the grocery store, and then went back to his place to cook it. He was an avid student, very hands-on, wanting to do a bit of most things himself so that he’d know how to do it again later on without me. The lasagne turned out very well, except that he was so exhausted by then from the earlier San Diego mud run catching up with him that I had a really hard time getting him to slunk from the couch over to the kitchen to take out and cut the lasagne. (The reason why he had to do this instead of me, was because he wanted photos of him doing the impossible — cooking and pulling homemade food that he’d made out of the oven.) As we ate dinner we watched puppet sex on a Comedy Central show “Team America: World Police”, by the creators of “South Park.” Its antics were laugh-out-loud funny in their ludicrousness. And lewdness. It was a fun night. I even got a surprise phone call from Mr. W in Vegas, at a bar with his brothers while waiting to see the topless show “Bite.” It was a surprise cuz Mr. W doesn’t typically think to call me when he’s on a trip. He called me once the entire 2 weeks he was in Alaska last year. I was so glad to hear they were getting some good quality brother time in, and also that they were seeing “Bite”, as I know Mr. W had been wanting to see it every time we’d gone to Vegas recently, but the timing never worked out. Plus, I wasn’t particularly interested in the show so in a selfish way, it worked out for me. Hee hee. Altho I don’t think one of the brother’s wives was too pleased that they had gone to a topless revue when she found out about it afterwards.

Sunday (today), guilt from having eaten like a pig but not worked out at the gym since Wednesday roused me from slumber, and I got up and hit the gym for 2.5 hours. I did about 1.5 hrs of warmups and weight-training, and a full hour of cardio. I would’ve done less on cardio because the boredom always kills me, but “American Pie” was playing on one of the TVs. That easily killed the hour. I’d forgotten how funny the first movie in the series was. Strangely, it turned out my weight’s lower than it had been in a long time, at 125 (rattlesnakes be damned!) and my fat percentage dropped 2% as well. After the gym, I showered up and went to my parents’ house, picked them up, and we went to get fitted for shoes at A Snail’s Pace. I got reconfirmed that I overpronate, my dad was diagnosed as an overpronator as well, and my mom’s gait was neutral. “HAHA!” she laughed at us. “I’m neutral!”
“That doesn’t mean anything!” I told her.
“I’m normal,” she insisted.
My mom got nice Asics, my dad got a newly engineered pair of Sauconys, and I got a brand I’d never heard of until now, Brooks. My parents were excited to go on their hilly neighborhood walk tonight to try out their new shoes. It’s so cute, they never acknowledged the importance of really good shoes so my dad was stunned walking around in his corrective, supportive stability shoes. “It’s like walking on air! So light!” he exclaimed. My mom was a bit perturbed at the orange-colored accents on her shoes because she’s the fashion queen, and kept migrating toward the “cute” or sale shoes that aren’t even neutral and being disappointed that they felt funny on her feet. I left them with their new birthday (mom) and Father’s Day presents after dinner.

After spending more quality time with the DodoCat, I took Mr. W up on his invitation to hang out with him at his house. And that’s where I am right now! Blogging to my readers instead of catching up with the newly returned Mr. W. Oh well. 😀

So I was listening to the radio this morning and Danny Bonaduce said that statistically, 99.9% of people who get bitten by a rattlesnake survive if the person is over 125 lbs. Well heck, I’M over 125 lbs (just barely), but my goal is to get way under that. And apparently it’s now rattlesnake season, as dogs are being rattlesnake trained so they don’t come yelping home with two puncture wounds on their nose. Maybe I should just maintain the weight I am now, you know, for life and death reasons. Heh.

I’d been recommended to watch Fast Food Nation by a few different people now, and these are people I trust who are close to me. So this weekend, Mr. W and I did just that. I thought it’d be similar to Supersize Me, a documentary about one man’s health deterioration as he put himself through a month-long McDonald’s-only diet experiment. Instead, it’s a mock documentary about a hypothetical fast-food chain called “Mickey’s”, has characters played by real actors like Ethan Hawke and Bruce Willis, and seems more like a socio-political commentary on illegal immigration and big industries. I thought it like a modern-day version of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle“, down to the details of the ankle-deep blood swept across the floors of the slaughterhouse. The plot opens with a marketing executive of Mickey’s being sent to investigate a Colorado meat processing plant, to figure out why some meat patties of their burgers are contaminated with manure. The movie audience is stripped of their American naivete along with the executive on his eye-opening journey.

At the gym today, I spent a good hour at the end of my weight-lifting training by watching the news as I pedaled away on the elliptical trainer. Coincidentally (or not), there is a current recall on ground beef that was packaged between a certain recent time frame, due to e.coli contamination. My mind went back to the movie, how the big meat-packing industry has untrained illegal immigrants from Mexico working as cheap labor on their meat processing line, and how these workers don’t understand the instructions given to them, and don’t work fast enough to keep up with the conveyor belt of meat, how they sometimes don’t pull out the intestines as completely or cleanly as they should when the meat glides by them, how intestines burst and drop manure all over the meat. How, in the movie, the executive was told that this happens “every day.” I’m glad I haven’t had ground beef for months, and haven’t had fast food in years. It’s enough to turn a girl vegetarian.

I think I’m gonna do it. Do what? Well, this. Cuz the more I thought of it, the more I liked the idea of reclaiming my childhood playground games. So once a week, for 10 weeks, $200 buckaroos. I’ll write it off as exercise.

The friend who invited me apparently spontaneously decided to go check out the studio yesterday and didn’t tell me, but she said everyone liked it and surprise, TurboTiger was right — they teach pole, standard, AND wall techniques. What the hell is a wall technique? I guess I’ll know when class starts.

Vanessa came by Saturday morning to drop off some delectations that will soon be on their way to Flat Coke’s residence. The three of us (plus Mr. W) donned our teeny weeny swimsuits and trekked to the pool and whirlpools. Mr. W took a flying dive into the pool as I was running up to him to push him in, but since I didn’t get to push him, Vanessa said I could push her. So I did. She popped out of the water clinging onto her arms with teeth chattering as she claimed the water was not that cold. Whatever. I decided to ease in from the shallow end, taking one little step at a time. I was up to my upper thighs when Mr. W, this evil grin on his face, walked to me from the deep end of the pool and as I whimpered, he threw his arms around my waist and slowly (slow for him, too fast for me) walked back to the deep end. I got about rib-deep, mock-crying over his shoulder, when Vanessa finally said that it was indeed too cold and that she was going to go in the jacuzzi. That saved me as I was released and I leapt out of the pool and ran for the jacuzzi as well. Ahhh, hot bubbling water!

After getting enough heat, the three of us laid out on the poolside lounge chairs to air dry. Then I decided I wanted to rinse the chlorine off, so I went to the pool showers. Vanessa joined me in a few minutes offering soap. So we showered together (enjoy that image, guys) while she told me about how she lost her “Sexy Challenge” bet to a coworker who claimed to have spent 90 hours at the gym in May, to her 78. We agreed he must be lying. (I told Diana about this on Saturday evening, and she thought he was lying, too.) 90 hours at the gym means 3 hours a day with no days off, plus full-time work, and Vanessa said he used to be a couch potato before that. How is this possible that you can work out for 3 hours and not be burnt out, especially when your body’s not used to that much activity? Plus, who gets a perfectly round number like 90? Of course, I calculated my average gym time and I sheepishly note that in May, I clocked approximately 10 hours to Vanessa’s 78. I can usually get in more than 30 mins at lunch, but since we’d been in trial the last 3 weeks, the judge has been running late into lunch but starting on time, so I had to either go late or not go at all. This weekend, however, Mr. W and I hit the gym both Saturday and Sunday, I did some pretty hardcore exercises that left me sore today, so I more than made up for not going last Thursday and Friday.

A note: here’s how spoiled I am. I called my parents Sunday after the gym, and asked if they’d had dinner yet. They had not. I said we were on our way over there, and to not eat until we got there cuz I was starving. I was thinking I could take my parents and Mr. W to dinner, but my mom instead cooked a nice 5-course homemade meal which was waiting for us on the dinner table when we got there, despite my parents not being hungry enough from their late lunch to eat yet. So Mr. W and I ravaged the food while my parents watched some teapot Chinese soap opera in the living room.

Oh yeah. Forgot to mention. After lounging by the pool, we introduced Vanessa to the Curry House and she really liked it, and also enjoyed the tofu cheesecake we got in the end. Yum.

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