Cranky Fitness: Blog Update!

Screw These Dumb Blocks, It's Time for Pie!

So, what's new at Cranky Fitness?

Hmm... same tired old cupcakes.... same unsophisticated design layout... same inability to post videos, create tabs, or move to a 3 fancy column format...

But wait!

What's that thing sitting there above this post? No, not the weird naked figures playing with blocks. Further up... Why yes, it appears to be a guest post, but nowhere on it does it say: Guest Post!

What does this mean?

Well, maybe nothing. It's an experiment. Cranky Fitness is trying to lure a new contributor to the blog, Mary, whom you already know from her witty comments, previous great guest post, and amusing blog Sheesh. Crabby is hoping to talk her into co-blogging, but for now, let's just say she's going to be hanging out here a bit and testing the waters.

Here's the deal: Crabby would love to have some company. She'd like Cranky Fitness to have plenty of Crab, but also other stuff too! She's thinking perhaps, eventually, a small team blog, one that encourages guest posts too, especially by writers who are funnier and better informed about Health and Fitness than Crabby is. So that readers don't have to put up with a million posts by Crabby, but can still check in pretty often and see new stuff posted.

Crabby, being both ambitious and slothful, would like Cranky Fitness to Grow and Grow, but she wants other people to do the work for her! Seems perfectly reasonable, doesn't it?

It's actually not all just laziness--Crabby would really like to spend some of the time she spends blogging getting back to her unfinished novel, or tackling her not-yet begun series of Crabby McSlacker self help books. But the blog has become a Really Important thing in the Crab's fairly uneventful life, and the last thing she wants to do is get too slacky and lose the great readers she already has.

(And yes, she is aware that normal people can do more than one thing at a time. But "normal" is an adjective very rarely used in the same sentence as "Crabby McSlacker.")

So Crabby will still be here, posting almost as much as usual, and maybe Mary will stick around too if we don't scare her off--and who knows, at some point there may be other regular or occasional contributors as well.

Of course this may be one of those ideas that Crabby announces with great fanfare and then fails to follow through on and has to retract later. But if somehow it happens, Crabby will have even more than usual to be thankful for next Thanksgiving!

(And if you haven't already done it, go read Mary's Holiday quiz!)

Have a Great Thanksgiving or a Happy Thursday!

Hell, Why Not--Everyone Else Is

Cranky Fitness was going to skip doing a "how to get through the big holiday meal" advice post, because everywhere you look, from newspaper to television to blog to podcast, someone's offering up suggestions, tips, or warnings about Turkey day.

Why add more noise? Because, well, Thanksgiving is tomorrow and Crabby loves to give advice! The temptation, much like the golden brown crunchy layer of marshmallows sitting atop the candied yams, is proving irresistible.

But rather than issue dire warnings about overindulgence, Crabby is feeling contrary this year and wants to suggest sort of the opposite. Instead, consider this:

Thanksgiving is Just One Day of the Year. So while advance planning may keep you from overdoing it to the point of puking and/or self-loathing (always good things to avoid), don't stress too much about what you eat for one dang meal!

Yes, Christmas is coming too, and there will be other holidays to contend with. But to repeat a point made previously about Halloween: the problem most people have with unhealthy eating does not come from thoroughly enjoying a holiday celebration. It comes from treating every damn day of the year like it's a holiday.

Traditional Thanksgiving dinners mix a lot of healthy ingredients (turkey, cranberries, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, green beans, fruit, etc) with more nutritionally questionable ones (butter, sugar, cool-whip, marshmallows, gravy, white flour, mayo, etc). Sometimes you have control over the ratio of healthy to unhealthy, and sometimes you don't. But as long as you don't totally pork out to the point of pain, and try to lean towards the healthy stuff that you actually enjoy, there's only so much damage you can do. So cut yourself some slack!

Maybe you can go ahead and have a roll and even put butter on it. Or pour some gravy on your spuds if you love it. Or whatever the particular pleasure is that you usually deny yourself. And perhaps the best motivation for not going totally overboard at dinner-- is so you can save some room for a small slice of pie for dessert!

But then it's probably NOT a good idea to treat the special Thanksgiving meal as an excuse to eat gravy-soaked mashed potatoes and stuffing and pie and other decadent leftovers in huge quantities for the next four or five days. Thanksgiving, like Halloween or Christmas, works best when it's celebrated as a Day and not a Season. (And sure, enjoy some leftovers later--but after the Big Day you may want to load up on the healthier items, skip the worst offenders, and supplement with salads and new veggies, etc).

Thanksgiving is already a healthy holiday in a lot of ways--it's about giving thanks and appreciating the people you care about, whether you all get to sit at the same dinner table or not. Maybe you can make it even healthier by going out for a nice crisp fall walk or run, perhaps joined by family or friends. Or not! Don't stress if it's just not practical that one day of the year.

Seems like it's a good day to focus on the positive, rather than making it a test of will power that you must not "fail" at. Just one Crab's opinion.

Crabby hopes, however you choose to celebrate it, that Thanksgiving finds you with lots of things to feel grateful about. (And high on Crabby's list of things to feel thankful for is getting to know, at least a little bit, all the wonderful people she's met through the blog!)

So have an awesome Thanksgiving, unless you are from somewhere else and are not celebrating it tomorrow. In that case, have an awesome Thursday!

***IMPORTANT BLOG UPDATE!***
There will actually be a new post up tomorrow (Thursday) and it may even contain an Announcement! So if you're around, please stop by Cranky Fitness to see what's cookin' besides turkey and candied yams with marshmallows.

Multiple Choice

Why Yes, This Is the Same Stock Photo
Crabby Uses Over and Over Again

1. The reason there is not a Real blog post at Cranky Fitness today is because Crabby was:

a) Busy preparing to celebrate the 17th anniversary of her (not-yet-legal-in-this-stupid-ass-country) Marriage-like Union with the most amazing Lobster in the world;

b) Too excited about Cranky Fitness being mentioned in Women's Health magazine to get much done;

c) Unable to think of anything good to write about;

d) Too busy dragging some of the nastiest, smelliest, heaviest, disgustingest carpet remnants and other bug-infested cat-pee-soaked items out of the basement for a dump run; or,

e) All of the above.


2. Since there's nothing much going on at Cranky Fitness today, you should go visit another better blog that Women's Health also mentioned, like:

a) Back In Skinny Jeans;

b) Sister Skinny;

c) Big Fat Deal;

d) Lose the Buddah;

e) All of the above.


3. And Crabby will be back soon with her usual:

a) Hastily-researched, sloppily-written health news summaries;

b) Questionable fitness advice;

c) Posts that have nothing at all to do with health or fitness;

d) Awesome blog comments by Smart Funny Readers since the comments are the best reason for stopping by Cranky Fitness in the first place;

e) All of the Above.


The answers to the Multiple Choice Quiz are, of course: (e), (e), and (e)!

And while Crabby will indeed be back soon, it may be a lamer, lazier week than usual due to the upcoming (U.S.) Thanksgiving holiday. She apologizes, especially to all her Canadian readers, whose Thanksgiving she missed entirely because she totally didn't even realize it was happening way back then.

Nifty Workout Tool Measures Damn Near Everything!

By now, regular Cranky Fitness readers know to pay little attention to extravagant claims made in the title of a blog post. (Because you've all figured out that it usually means Crabby's just messing with you!) But bear with her as she tells you about this awesome workout gadget.

You use it to use to track your workouts and eating plans and evaluate how you're doing. Just look at all the data it can factor in! Like: your current weight; your desired weight; the calories you consume and whether they are nutritious or junky; the amount of force your muscles exert; your heart rate; metabolic rate; your dehydration level; your available caloric reserves; the amount of sleep you require versus the amount you've been getting; your blood pressure; your stress level; and even your hormone cycles. This ginormous amount of data is all filtered, sorted, and weighed to give you incredibly useful information to evaluate your performance.

So what is this amazing device? Let's call it the "F-4", short for the "effortometer." It is, as you probably already guessed, something you already own. It resides in your brain, and it tells you whether what you're attempting to do is easy or hard or freakin' impossible. It alerts you to whether you need to stop whining and work harder; whether you're doing just great; or whether you're overdoing it and need to give yourself a break.

This complex measurement is also known colloquially as "how you feel." It's your subjective sense of how much effort you're putting in, and how much discomfort that effort is causing you at any given time. Readings range from "wow, this is easy" to "damn, this kinda sucks," to "ulp, this feels so awful I think I'm going to die, like, now... aaarrrgghh..."

If you're like most people, you've learned to ignore how you feel if it happens to disagree with a more "objective" measure of how you're doing, like the time it takes you to bike fifteen miles uphill or the number on the scale at your last weigh-in. If the gadget you bought says you're doing terrible or doing great, that's 'real.' Whereas that sense you have yourself of how hard you're working is only 'psychological,' and doesn't count as much. Right?

So if you woke up this morning feeling fatigued for no particular reason, and despite feeling dreary and unmotivated you put on your running shoes anyway and went out for a jog, but the stopwatch said your 4 miles took you longer than they ever have before in your life--well that's bad isn't it? It means you should have pushed yourself harder so you'd go faster. The stopwatch knows better than you do what you should be doing, doesn't it?

Well, no it doesn't. In every way that counts for the long haul, you did great. The stopwatch data is completely irrelevant. Your trusty effortometer says you completed a workout of extremely high difficulty--and it can factor in all kinds of complicated physical and psychological data you have no conscious clue about. So screw the stopwatch. Feel proud of yourself.

And sure, if you're running a big important race next month and running races is a huge part of your life, these objective numbers can be very informative. And Crabby is a great believer in heart rate monitors and body-fat measuring scales, and sports watches, and pedometers and all that stuff. But only insofar as they provide Positive Reinforcement for your efforts. They're great for letting you know that you're doing something real and measurable. And look, over time, you're making steady improvements, hooray!

But if you get too caught up in numbers, they can be very demotivating. In the long run, unless you're a professional athlete or have a lot of ego at stake, it's the subjective effort that's crucial and is going to pay off. Keeping going is the most important part.

So then, what about Accountability, something we were just talking about recently? If you only pay attention to how you feel and not what the scale or the stopwatch says, isn't that a sure road to denial and slacking?

Actually, not usually, if you're being honest with yourself. But your effortometer, like any piece of complicated equipment, may need periodic recalibration. Use your common sense to see if, generally, your own sense of effort is correlating with more objective measures. If it's been six months of "trying really hard" with no noticeable improvement, then maybe something's wrong. It could be a problem with your expectations, your plan, your commitment, or your goals.

Another thing that can mess with your internal effortometer is depression. Depression is a real and treatable medical condition that can make damn near everything feel effortful. Rather than berate yourself over it, be kind to yourself and think about getting some help.

So how do you guys evaluate how you're doing in working towards your goals? Do you obsess over objective measurements or even keep track at all?

Teen Sex Study: Surprise!

This is just a quick weekend toss-it-up-there post, but this study was just too interesting to pass up.

So if the newspaper articles are titled anything like this web story, are parents going to be hiding their local Journals and Couriers and Examiners and Independents for a few days?

Or are they going to clip out the articles and hand them to little Madison and Jason immediately so they won't miss finding out: "Early Sexual Activity May Curb Teen Delinquency."

Wow. This is not what everyone previously thought. In fact,we've been hearing pretty much the opposite all our lives.

So do you think the local school boards, PTA's, Church groups, social service organizations, etc, now armed with this new information, should start handing out condoms instead of anti-sex morality lectures? Hmm... that'll probably happen, lets see... when hell freezes over.

The study followed 534 same-sex twin pairs between 1994 and 2002, which would seem to filter out some of the confounding social and economic factors that you'd get if you just compared "kids who end up having sex early" with "kids who ended up waiting."

Said one of the study's authors: "There is a cultural assumption in the United States that if teens have sex early, it is somehow bad for their psychological health. But we actually found that teens who had sex earlier seem to have better relationships later. Now we want to find out why."

This being a Saturday, Cranky Fitness hereby absolves itself from checking out whether this was a peer reviewed study from a reputable source or something less reliable. (We will just note that it came out of the University of Virginia and was published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence--but that the lead researcher is still a Ph.D. candidate.)

Cranky Fitness just liked this study, even though it did not, itself, "start early."

However, those of you who are the parents of teenagers may not find yourselves quite as amused and pleasantly surprised by this information, should it turn out to be true.

Any thoughts?