Todays' workout brought to you by...

I think that I've mentioned that I've started theming my work outs with things that I want.  It helps when Khloe and Lamar are on the DVR and I just don't want to tie on those shoes to conjure up the sundress I'm hoping to wear in NYC in August to get my butt in gear. Shorts, muffin-tops, not hiding behind friends in pictures, beer on Sundays and taming the urge to scream and shed my own skin have all gotten me out the door over the past couple of weeks. 
Today however, was special.  I know I've already used muffin-tops before but this charming ensemble give "muffin-top" a whole new meaning:

Today's workout was brought to you by extra large muffin-tops and some other stuff that I don't have a name for.

Rise and Shine!

"Almost nobody wakes up feeling like a million bucks ready to tackle the world. It is a conscious choice to decide how you want to feel and think each day."

And in accordance with this very positivie, go-get 'em attitude I bring you: a pot of braising kale!

March 20, 2012

This healthy dinner (and todays workout) was brought to you by Muffin-tops.  A delightful baked good to be sure but far less charming when hovering over the waistline of your jeans. 

Please sir, may I have some more

One of my new life resolutions has been to eat breakfast.  I hate breakfast.  Actually hate might be too strong of a word, but at the very least I loathe eating breakfast.  I'm not hungry when I get up and it goes against every I-want-to-be-thin bone in my body to eat when I'm not hungry (you know, when it's not french fries or dessert) but the side of me that is swayed by evidence based arguments knows that I need to eat it.  

So here is evidence that I'm eating not only breakfast but a healthy, protein-y, complex carb-y and fruity breakfast. It's the fuel for my mother fucking day and I'm eating every single god damned morning. This had better be worth it.

January 19, 2012

In the Interest of Doing the Bobcat Pretzal

Dear Future Hotter Anna,

I will have you know that today, instead of going home and watching Gossip Girl on the couch, I chose to go to Big Ron Yoga.

Just in case you don't remember, the first time you went to Big Ron's Yoga you hated it because Big Ron's Yoga is Hot Yoga.  But you've continued to go (albeit a bit irregularly) because it's hard. It's harder than running and it's harder than graduate school and something that hard warrants a little effort no?  Come to find out you don't take well to being bad at any kind of exercise.  Despite your complete lack of athletic prowess up to this point, you seem to pride yourself on being a physically strong-ish and capable person and sucking at yoga was a bit of a blow.   Honestly, I did this today (and every other day) with the hopes that you might exist one day.

I've been dreaming about pancakes since this afternoon.  Specifically, I'm dreaming about the homemade banana pancakes with warm butter, maple syrup that are literally EVERYWHERE on Pinterest today. Even more specifically, I want these pancakes:

Even though all I wanted today was these banana pancakes I still went to 100 minutes of yoga in a 105 degree room.  Truth be told, as usually, I felt pretty awesome once it was done.

I tell you all of this so that maybe in five or so years I can do this:



When this happens, I really hope that you take a minute to thank the current, soon to be former chubby, not so strong or coordinated Anna for todays decision.

Love,

Still-Getting-There-Anna


oh the things that you will learn

Karen: God. My hips are huge!

Gretchen: Oh please. I hate my calves.

Regina: At least you guys can wear halters. I've got man shoulders.

Gretchen: My hairline is so weird.

Regina: My pores are huge.

Karen: My nail beds suck.

"I used to think there was just fat and skinny. But apparently there's lots of things that can be wrong on your body."

- Mean Girls

 
Like most women in their twenties, I'm pretty good at cataloguing my physical flaws. Actually, if psychological self abuse was an olympic sport, I'd probably have a decent shot at a gold medal.  After four years of college prep school and another solid decade living in a climate where minimal clothing is not only acceptable but at times, essential, I'm extremely proficient at identifying my own physical flaws. 
 
So imagine my shock, imagine my amazement when in the course of conversation I discovered something that had never even crossed my mind to be insecure about: nipple placement.
 
A friend of mine recently saw a plastic surgeon in consult (ludacris in and of its self) and was told that she had good nipple placement.  Correct me if I'm wrong but good nipple placement in turn implies that there is such a thing a bad nipple placement. 
 
Seriously? SERIOUSLY!?  The mind literally whirls with dismay.
 
Do we really need to add nipple placement to the list of things to worry about when / if someone sees you naked?
 
Sometimes I'm just not sure that this is a world that I am okay with living in.

Quote of the Day: God-I-wish-I were-that-balanced edition

"In all the years that you've ever undressed in front of a gentleman, has he ever asked you to leave?  Has he ever walked out?  No. That's because he doesn't care, he's in a room with a naked girl, he's won the lottery.  I'm so tired of saying no and then waking up in the morning and recalling every single thing I ate the day before.  Recalling every calorie that I consumed so that I know exactly how much self loathing to take into the shower with me.  I'm going for it, I've no interest in being obese, I'm just through with the guilt."

--Eat, Pray, Love

Adventures in Hot Yoga

When a friend texted me yesterday to see if I wanted to go to hot yoga I thought, "oh...well that might be fun." Wrong.  So very very wrong.

The first time I heard about hot yoga I couldn't help but wonder why.  I live in Florida where it's a virtual sauna four months of the year and during the three months that it's cool and breezy and wonderful, I'm going to go sit in a stuffy 105 degree rooms that smells like sweat?  Right, awesome idea. 

I think there might be something to yoga that I'm missing though and so I went.  I am increasingly convinced that there is something very awesome about practicing yoga that I just can't quite put my finger on yet but last night the only thing that was missing was oxygen.  I'm not sure if my heart was racing due to exertion or because it was about to explode from over-heating.  It was around the time that I got dizzy wiping sweat from my shins that I started wondering if maybe there's also something to the whole concept of hell too, because if there is, I'm pretty sure it's an eternities worth of hot yoga...and in hell there won't be Jolly Ranchers either. 

I came home feeling like a rubber band that's been stretched out and then let to snap back.  I swore I'd never go back and then the next day happened.  It was awesome.  I didn't wake up even once in the middle of the night and then the next day, well it wasn't necessarily a good day but it was....smooth.  It was a busy day and while I generally hate recruiting to multiple studies simultaneously (keeping them straight makes my brain ache) today it felt, productive and doable.

I can't help but think that maybe it was the yoga, next time I'll go somewhere not-hot instead.

Thinking that Kelly Osborne might be a good candidate for my posse...

In the most shameful act since forming a staunch opinion on whose better for Bella, Edward or Jacob, I started watching Joan Rivers’ Fashion Police on E.  I caught it on TV one night when I was waiting for Chelsea Lately to come on and I’ve developed a love-hate fascination with it. 

I know that this may come as a shock but Joan Rivers is bat ass crazy.  Generally crazy with a battleship sized mouth wouldn't endear a person to me but I’ve discovered I am kinda a fan.  I won’t go so far as to include her in my posse because I’m not sure that I have the armadillo-like armour that would be necessary to have her in my imaginary crew, but so long as I remain nondescript and relatively unknown, I think we’ll be good.  


Guiliana Rancic now, needs to eat a stinkin’ cracker already because she’s starting to look like skeletor.  I know that it is unkind to judge a person based on weight but her skinniness has become plank-like and while pre-famous photographs indicate that she has fantastic genetics to start with, she’s also clearly exercising some seriously insane self-restraint at meal times, and I can’t help but drink the hater-ade a little.  Rachel Zoe always talked about how Guiliana’s body is like a clothes hanger” and how fabulous fashion looks on her.  Call me nuts but I just don’t think that we should aim to have our bodies look like wire hangers.  Needless to say Guilian will not be in my posse either because those who can’t appreciate a cupcake now and again need not apply. 


Then there’s Kelly Osborne who despite thinking that this fashion stuff is very very serious business and that celebrity stylists have “one of the toughest jobs out there” comes off as a genuinely kind person with a penchant for talking about “knickers” all the time.  She avoids the low blows and manages to be pretty darn funny all the same.  Oh what a sad, sad state of affairs we’ve fallen to when Kelly Osborne is the voice of reason and sanity.

ah to be cool someday...

Some day, I think that I'd like to be cool. Full of pith, wit and bite, I'd be mysterious and intriguing as I lurked in corners sipping on a cool glass of something. My friend Nicole is in fact cool.  Not only does she have amazing and impeccable personal style, she also just flew to Miami a few weekends ago to style a celebrities hair.  While Nicole also does my hair, that doesn't really make me cool, it's just her lending me an iota of her coolness every 6 to 8 weeks.

Recent events has brought it to my attention the past few weeks that despite my most fervent hopes to be cool, it's probably not going to happen. 

Cool girls have Bitch Face and I do not have Bitch Face.  Instead of Bitch Face I have Let Me Feed and Snuggle You Face.  While it's fail proof in seducing parents, cops, teachers and puppies, it is most assuredly not cool. 

Cool people manage to take things in stride and keep their shit in check, they're...for lack of a better descriptor...coooool.  I on the other hand tend to get inordinately excited over common place or even mundane happenings.  The little old lady who waved and gave me the thumbs up from the passenger seat of her car while I was running?  Yup, completely made my run and to be honest, the rest of my day.

I'm not particularly graceful, I have a penchant for attempting maneuvers far above my skill level and then masterfully landing on my butt or hurting myself in front of lots of people.  Its one of many reasons that I can most often be found in flip-flops.  I can't hold my liquor and I can't take shots, two must have skills for the cool girl set so I'm told.  I still love the Anne of Green Gables books series, and while I've admitted that I might as well cop to the Twilight series and the Little House on the Prairie books.  I like museums and libraries and would rather spend a day at either one rather than attend the Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party for even one more minute of my life. I think that someday I'd really like to learn to knit, it seems like a productive and useful skill to have.

So yeah, I think that maybe it's time to give up on chasing the ghost known Coolness. I think that I'm pretty well okay with that too.

Oh no they didn't

Sometimes, I like bad TV.  Yes, yes, I said it.  I like bad TV, the crap kind that rots my brain, whittles away at my self respect and encourages a life of depravity and sin. There's several levels of crappiness and for those days when Jersey Shore is a little too much, but Gilmore Girls isn't?  I turn to Say Yes to the Dress.  Just in case you have been living under a rock, Say Yes to the Dress capitalizes on the wedding mania that has seemingly gripped the under-40, female portion of the nation.  A 'reality' show based in Kleinfelds in NYC, each episode follows several brides while they try to find the wedding dress of their dreams.  If there is any show that elevates the Wedding over the Marriage, it is this one. 
The triumph of The Wedding over Marriage is nothing new but the glorification of it seems to be reaching a fever pitch.   There is a rhetoric that seems to surround weddings lately ( i.e. "MY special day" or the day that "I am a princess") that is lacking in the concept of 'we' that I thought was inherent in matrimony.  Please don't get me wrong - I've been to many heartfelt, sincere and beautiful weddings the past few years and I know that the concept of marriage is alive and well.  It's just this idea perpetuated by shows such as Say Yes to the Dress in which women, who identify having a more than ample budget of 3 thousand dollars with which to purchase a dress, throw all caution to the wind and spend the equivalent of the down payment for a house instead.  All because it is what they want.

My disdain for the ideals being portrayed in this show is hypocritical because it in no way, shape or form dissuades me from watching it.  The dresses are beautiful, there's just no way around that.  The people range from from blase to dramatic, completely normal to flaming insane.  They yell, they cry and then they just start making shit up.  It's always a good time, mostly because I can almost always find the entertainment value in the unwarranted tears of the self-absorbed and insane. 


While watching Say Yes today I saw an add for a special episode called "Say Yes to the Dress: Big Bliss."  A special show that showcases plus sized brides searching for their dream wedding dresses.

Excuse me?

I have to admit, my first reaction was positive.  The average size of a bride-to-be on this show is a size 4, four full sizes below the national average.  A more realistic pool of women searching for dresses would be welcome indeed, thank God for it!   Then it hit me.  Our own show?  Really?  My ass actually needs to be separated from smaller asses in IT'S OWN SHOW?

Oh. No. They. Didn't.

This attempt to be culturally relevant, to not perpetuate the image of starving, bony women as the ideal of beauty does the exact opposite.  It says that maybe it's okay to be larger than a size four, but while you are not exactly inferior, you are most certainly not equal.  In fact, you need your own show, because if we put you in the regular show then people wouldn't watch.  Yes, obesity is an issue in this country and yes it should be addressed, but it should not be divisive.  Fat is not a whole different demographic. If you want to support women of all different sizes then do it, but don't separate them into categories. 

 There has been a lot of press lately regarding a comment made by an actress from the HBO series, True Blood.  When asked about her diet and exercises regimen, Kristin Bauer admitted that she is, and for as long as she continues to be in show business will continue to be, hungry.  This is the price she willingly pays for being an actress.

I am glad that Kristin Bauer was honest.  I am glad that she did not toe the line of every size two actress out there who insists they eat cake and carbs and everything delicious, just "in moderation." I am glad in the way I was when Gwen Stephani told reporters that her body was not accidental, rather it was the result of hard work and never taking a day off from her diet.  Women are telling the truth about what they pay and sacrifice to be "beautiful" even when its insane, yet they continue to do it.  Somewhere along the way we decided that not eating was an okay sacrifice, that thin tastes better than cheesecake.

There is something that tastes better than being thin.  It's called self-respect.

Attack of the Irrational Fatsies

USUALLY a good work out is good for at least 5 hours of that je nes sais quoi that I like to call "psychologically skinny."  No matter how great the work out, you didn't actually loose 5 pounds, the endorphins just make you feel like you did. 

Could someone please e'splain to me why, not even 2 hours post-work out I looked in the mirror and I swear I am larger when when I started. 

Grawr.

when will I learn?

When will I learn that THIS:

ACTUALLY IS THE DEVIL!!

Thinking...

I was totally born in the wrong decade.

I TOTALLY could have rocked out a poodle skirt and sweater set.  But no.  I was born into the era of Kate Moss, heroin chic and skinny jeans. 

I was robbed.

The day that I wore shorts

I wore a pair of shorts for a full 5 hours today.  I know, stop the presses right?!  But seriously, this is actually an oddly significant thing for me.

I stopped wearing shorts in high school when a guy that I was talking with told me that my legs were too chubby to wear shorts.  I know that I may have chubby legs but TOO chubby for shorts?  I think that's an exaggeration.  And while we're on the topic of high school romance, how insanely unjust is it that our generation doesn't date but rather, we "talk"?!  See when you "talk" you do just that.  There are no flowers or dinner or even movies for crying out loud!  It's group dates and hanging out.  As someone who wasn't taken out on a genuine, honest to goodness date until I was 22 years old, let me just say that in retrospect I feel totally gypped. But I digress. 

So - for the past decade at least I've worn pants almost exclusively, and in the muggy sauna that is Florida 10 months out of the year this is not a small feat.  I don't even wear shorts to the gym, that's how bad it is.  It only took me about two years to consciously disregard the comments made by said douchey-mcdoucherson but subconsciously I just wasn't okay with my legs anymore and shorts felt awkward and uncomfortable.  They say that hindsight is twenty-twenty and in this case I would agree because looking back, I could seriously kick myself.  My legs might be on the short side but when I was 18, they were strong, toned and cellulite free.  They might never have or will rival those of Meghan Fox but they were (and are) far from repulsive.  I should have been reveling in them but rather I was covering them up in shame. 

So here I am at 26 and I still don't wear shorts.  My legs are less impressive now then they were then but they're also probably far more impressive then they may be a some time in the future.  In honor of this and in an honest attempt to not look back with measured regret in another 10 years, my goal for this summer is to re-integrate shorts into my wardrobe.  Today wasn't SO bad but it wasn't great either and after 5 hours I was definitely desperate to have my jeans back.  Maybe next time will be easier.

WTF Mate

My admittedly trashy magazine just advised me to brush bronzer vertically through my abdominal muscles and and horizontally just below my hipbones to "make the bones appear to stick out more" thus making me look thinner.

My hip bones are supposed to protrude!?! 

I am doomed.

One of Many Reasons that I Love Laura

Very pregnant co-worker Laura is pretty awesome on a number of different counts, she is a founding member the Gainesville Florida Clinical Research Branch of Piss and Moan after all.

Previously recognized awesomeness not withstanding, today I discovered yet one more reason to love her:

When we're waking into the hospital and someone asks "when is your baby due?" I (ahem...we all) can assume that question is directed towards her and the cauliflower sized fetus currently residing in her belly.

yeeeessssssssssssssssss!

mild bahamian guilt

I'm feeling mildly guilty at the mo' for the skin that is currently peeling off my face and all the skin that will soon be peeling off my shoulders and chest.  I may have gotten a bit of a sunburn while in the Bahamas last week and now it is time to let the peeling begin.  The real guilt is that I'm just not very sorry for this en fuego dermatitis and skin peeling.  I may seriously regret this in about 20 years but for now I stick by my guns and say that it was: totally.  worth.  it.

sometimes the Universe just wants what it wants

I have officially stopped drinking the water at the University of Florida and it's not because it tastes bad and it's not because of the leigionella bacterium scare a few months back. As gross as back-spray born legionella is it pales in comparison to what is CLEARLY in the water now, because what is in the water now is nuclear strength baby-making, birth control thwarting germs. Babies, human babies, newly made, unborn and recently born are EVERYWHERE. Babies that will become human children are growing in the bellies of a shockingly high percentage of my female friends. While I share in their excitement and delight in starting or adding to their families, I sure as poopin' don't want to join their ranks.

Don't get me wrong, there are lots of amazing things about pregnancy. I think Hale Berry put it best after the Grammies in 2007: "It was amazing - I didn't have to hold in my tummy and I actually got to eat my dinner AND some of my husbands dinner too!" Still, I don't know that any amount of food can make up for things like episitotomies and until that changes I'm not drinking that damn water!

Then I was on the elevator this afternoon with three bottles of water brought from home when the other woman on the elevator opened her giant yap and said..."when is your baby due?"

Um...EXCUSE ME?!

"When is your baby due?"

I thought for a split second about making up a date just so that the remaining three floors worth of elevator ride wouldn't be insanely uncomfortable but fuck that, I'm already uncomfortable and she needed to share in that:

"I'm NOT pregnant."

Let's pause for a moment to appreciate the really uncommonly uncomfortable silence that then descended upon the 1329 Building elevator 3. She tried to break it and I have to say that in a moment of sheer self-serving vindictiveness I let it ride. The kind thing to do would have been to respond to her desperate attempts to dig herself out of the giant hole of Anna dislike. Apparently I am not kind. So lets take a moment to appreciate the deafening silence that settled
like quick dry cement around the woman who has earned the first permanent spot on my dislike list for the remaining three floors of ride:

.....

.....

.....

Okay, so I will admit (and hold on to your nipples because this may shock you) that I do not in fact have a super flat tummy. There may be a little bit more to love about me at the moment but pregnant? really? One would think that while cataloguing all of my other physical flaws in the mirror that I would notice a stomach protrusion large enough to house a human child no matter how fetal in nature.

After getting off the elevator I did what any reasonable person would do. I joked maniacally with my co-workers, pretended that it was funny instead of awful and then came home for a gut wrenching floor cry. Once I was finished with that and a good hour and a half of cardio I came to the only conclusion that a sane and rational person could come to: purify your water and take the damn stairs.

Thinking...

While staring at my now empty lunch container I can't help but think how darn sad it is that it's a solid 5 1/2 to 6 hours until I get to eat another meal.

Sigh...why must I love food so?

How can you whine about cold weather when there's soup to be eaten!

There's this really incredible thing about Florida, and it's called flip-flops in January. It's a truly beautiful thing. So far this winter there's been nary a flip-flop to be seen as we are in the midst of an atypically frigid and atypically enduring cold snap. Thankfully, in lieu of flip-flops this January there have been warm blankies, cozy sweaters, afternoon coffee, cuddling (my favorite!), fires and soup. Ahh...soup, last on my list but definitely not least in my heart.

I remember when I fell in love with soup. Soup always seemed, well, rather lame as a meal to me. In downtown Iowa City, about a five minute walk from the University of Iowa campus there is a soup restaurant. There may have been a small selection of sandwiches or salads but they took a significant backseat to the array of steaming, aromatic and flavorful soups. After my roomie and suitemates, this soup restaurant was the high point of that grey, cold and depression laden fall.

I found the soup restaurant (actual name unknown) through my my mom's friend Julie. I grew up with Julie's daughters and in true surrogate-mom fashion she took me there for lunch one day in an attempt to drag me from the doldrums I had fallen into. It didn't pull me all of the way out but it certainly helped, far more than I even recognized at the time. After finding it, I went to that soup restaurant almost every other day that fall and winter. In the worst and darkest days of an eating disorder, soup was pretty much the only food that that I didn't feel guilty for eating, I can only guess as to why. Without being dramatic or exaggerating I can honestly say that for over a month, this soup was the only food that truly ate. I'd go after my super femi-nazi English lit class and with a bowl of soup and the most humongous Diet Coke possible, sit at a small table by the windows. There, eating my soup and reading my way through Joyce, Kafka, Woolfe and Bronte, I was warm, fed and felt protected from loneliness, anxiety and doubt.

Even now, from a so much better place that it's unrecognizable as part of the same life, and with a distinctly more 'foodie' sensibility I get that same feeling from soup: warmth, comfort and insularity. This past week I've been reveling in the cold weather that has made soup a dinner option, and oh the options of soup! French Onion, spicy lentil, hearty vegetable and potato leak soups have all graced my dinner table the last few weeks. Last night it was a white bean and kale soup, sourdough bread with melted goat cheese and a glass of white wine. Curled up with a book on World War One, I again felt warm, fed and safe from loneliness and all doubts.