Monday Thoughts

Happy Monday everyone! I know most of you feel pretty good because this week is going to be a short work week with Thanksgiving and all.  I’ll be going home for it, but my brain may not check into work at all these next three days. What a shame.

Hey, if you didn’t read Friday’s post about working out, I’d like you all to read it please.  I know a lot of people like to set fitness goals come the beginning of the year because they feel guilty for being sessile and gorging themselves on turkey, dressing, gravy, greens, mac and cheese, yams, rice, green bean or broccoli casserole, cabbage, sweet potato pie, cake, and whatever else big mama decided to cook, but Hottest Batch brought up a very important point that I should have spoken more about.  It is best to make a fitness a part of your lifestyle, and not just “I need to fit into this dress” or bathing suit to get right for the warm weather.  It is really beneficial over the long term.  As a brief aside, this may seem funny, but one of my motivations is not having to buy new pants.  Hey, we’re in a recession.  Also, I love my dingaling.  I love it so much that I like to be able to look straight down and see it smiling back at me.  If I had a belly that covered it, I’d be sad.  I would think that most women would like to look straight down to see their coochie hair, or what’s left of it if they wax…  

She probably hasn't seen her coochie hair in at least 20 years.

A few more points I wanted to mention about working out:

1) DO NOT DEPEND ON A WORKOUT PARTNER – Look, I understand that for many of you, having someone to workout with gives you motivation and is more  comfortable.  In the beginning, having that other person there could provide a buffer from feeling all alone and not knowing what to do in the gym.  But if you both don’t know what you’re doing, what help would your partner be?  It would be like two virgins having sex for the first time: potential for an awkward nightmare. See the last post to see how I address the lack of knowledge with working out.

But the real reason why I say don’t depend on a partner is because it is near impossible for both people to maintain identical levels of dedication. Someone will drop off and there will be someone left standing.  Or it may be that someone’s work schedule changes or something comes up, once or twice, eventually turning into weeks, months, and then m.i.a.  So you may find yourself not wanting to go to the gym because you don’t have your partner, and eventually your body will fall to sh!t. Why? Because of SOMEONE ELSE being a slacker? THAT IS NOT THE MOVE. You must look INWARD for motivation.  It’s YOUR body. It’s your health. Be responsible for it and don’t place blame on anyone else.

2) CARDIO IS NOT THE BE ALL END ALL OF WORKING OUT – This is a CLASSIC female move.  Not trying to sound sexist, but if I had a dollar for every woman that prescribes to this belief, I wouldn’t be working on my corporate plantation.  I emphasize that in order to REALLY workout right, you MUST do weight training.  More times than not, I hear women say “I don’t want to lift weights because I don’t want to get all big”   Look….if “getting big” were THAT easy with the lightweight levels of weight training that she’d probably do anyway, every dude on the face of the planet would look like King Beef. It’s just not that easy. It takes high levels of intensity, heavy weights, and protein supplementation to grow big like women fear.  Weight training will provide the “tone” that 999/1000 women seek.  (That’s another word that would make me a millionaire if I got $1 for every time a woman said it.)

Weight training also burns more fat.  It’s like this: when you get on your elliptical and are on for an hour, you burn 600 or so calories, and when you get off, the fat burning and calorie burning attributed to the elliptical ends. That’s it. However, when you weight train, you’re burning fat and calories during the exercises, and your body also keeps burning long after to repair and strengthen the muscle.  The benefits far outweigh those of cardio.  Do a combination, and it’s best to weight train before you do cardio. 

3) KEEP YOUR INTENSITY HIGH- Look, you don’t want to go to the gym and just go through the motions. If you do, you just wasted an hour or more.  You should have just stayed home with a bag of funyons and a tall, cold pineapple Faygo.  When you get in the gym, you want to maximize your effort.  If you don’t break a sweat and if you don’t feel any fatigue that causes you have to take a minute to gather your strength to go at it again, you have wasted your time and just taken up space in the gym.

Ok I’ll get off my soap box for now.

Some random thoughts I have:

1) Kanye West’s new cd sucks ass – I think all this retro 80s and T-Pain-esque vocoder stuff is wiggity wack.  Don’t get me wrong, I loved the 80s.  But I loved it because of how dorky and outrageous the whole decade was.  However, it cannot be recreated without being lame.  The fashion, the sounds, the culture, should have just been left alone.  All this retro stuff is just people trying way too hard to stand out, and you really can’t stand out in an uglier, tasteless way than mimicking everything 80s. Kanye’s cd is one manifestation of it and it’s just terrible. I hate it when non singers sing too.  First John Legend cd sucks and now Kanye’s.  That whole camp is falling to sh!t.  Hopefully Common will make something worth listening to.

2) I HATE IT WHEN PEOPLE WALK OUT OF CHURCH EARLY – It’ll be right after the pastor finishes the word, and as he starts to make some church announcements.  Then it’s like an exodus of a good 20 or so people that will get up and leave.  I HATE THAT SO MUCH. My pastor at my church back home in Georgia did not play that.  If you got up and tried to leave he would say over the microphone “Usher’s, don’t let them leave.  Close the doors.”  And then the offenders were left standing up in a line at the doors for everyone to see.  I think everyone knows by now not to do that in his church, but I wish this pastor would do that because that is BEYOND rude.  People are SOOO hot to get out of the parking lot that they are going to distract people and distract the pastor with their walking out the church?!!?

3) I feel sorry for coaches – My pastor was saying how coaches can’t even discipline kids any more because they are scared they may get fired and/or sued.  That is sad. When I was in little league we had some REAL coaches.  They were like another father to us.  We had to bring our report cards to them, and if you acted up or talked back, there was hell to pay. I remember there was one time, one dude on my little league team talked back to coach and he got his chest rocked in front of everybody.  Now you all out there may think that’s abuse or whatever, but you should know that when you get your chest rocked, it doesn’t really hurt as much as it stuns.  It takes your breath for a second, sounds off with a loud THUMP, and makes everyone around you go “oooooooooh!”  It was pretty embarassing for him and he cried, but there was none of this sueing and firing bullsh!t because our society respected teachers and coaches as authority figures.

4) What do you do when you witness someone sh!t on themselves??  That is what a friend of mine told me happened to her.  An old lady that stays in her building got on the elevator with her on the way up.  She always has an odor like ben gay, ripe booty hole, and a less than thorough job of taking a birdbath with the washcloth .  After a few moments, she heard a rumble sound coming from the lady’s stomach, and then…..doo doo ran down her leg and onto the floor of the elevator.  When the door opened on her floor, she left the elevator and on to her apartment, leaving a trail on the way.  It is so unbelievable, I couldn’t even really imagine my reaction to it.  I know one day God willing we’ll all get old, but if I can’t control my bowels, I don’t think I’d want to live.

I guess that’s my question, what would you do??