Bye-bye Boy Beus

Getting baptized was a huge event in my life. I made a decision to try to do better and be better. That included making a conscious decision not to lie or hurt people. I also tried to let go of some bad habits. One of these bad habits was spending time on Instagram being thirsty in a dehydrated fashion. 

After many nights of my friends dodging my phone calls or not finding anything good to watch on Netflix, I am sad to admit that I have fallen backwards into my favorite naughty pastime: profile stalking really hot men with dark skin and abs on social media. 

Cigarettes can be addictive. I know that firsthand from watching my mom kick the habit cold turkey. And alcohol is a nightmare too. A couple of my college friends have had to dry out from the bottle. But is there anything more addictive than tall, muscular, Black men on IG doing deadlifts in hoochie daddy workout shorts? It's like kitty nip to me! 

I shutter to think how many nights God has watched me under my blanket, scrolling through hunks until my thumb started to tingle. And let it just be known: I love them all. The physical trainers that meal prep grilled chicken breasts topless. The professional men that do tutorials on how to style a suit. The bearded brothas that lather their facial hair in Shea butter. The social justice hotties with wild locks and afros that wear tees with Africa on them. And who can forget the trap guys that do little videos from the front seats of their Dodge Chargers? I mean, the list go on and on!

After I got baptized, I stopped following a lot of these guys. It was for the best. I didn't see how I could be lusty and Godly at the same time. So, bidding adieu to the cuties was an act of good faith on my end. Then it seemed like as I got more stressed out about school and life and friends and work and whatever, I desired to look up the eye candy again. Somehow, I was able to refrain...until about 40 of them came up on my Explore page one day. That was all it took. Now I have moonwalked back down the rabbit hole of the fit and the sexy. It's a sad story. 

Now it is time to get back on the right track and ghost these guys. Even the sexy one with the beautiful smile that I tell myself I follow because he gives out great workout advice. Oh please. 

I will keep you posted on my progress. 

Anna Kaiser Happy Hour Event

Celebrity Trainer Anna Kaiser is now collaborating with Target for an active wear collection called C9 Champion Limited Edition by Anna Kaiser. To celebrate, Anna's team traveled around the US doing their Happy Hour, an hour of dance-based aerobics in a pop-up location in Target parking lots. As fun as the music and dance was, I assure you, it was a workout, lol. 

The class exercising at the Happy Hour 

Me and the other ladies after class

Here are some of my favorite pieces from the C9 Champion Limited Edition by Anna Kaiser:

Review: Celsius Energy Drinks

Prior to coming across Celsius, I was not really into energy drinks. The only one I had ever tried was Red Bull, which made me feel jittery and made it difficult of me to focus. As you know, I do not work out regularly (although I should), but I do work from home, and by about noon, I have no energy and find myself fighting not to crawl back under the covers. Drinking Celsius, which comes in an array of yummy flavors, definitely gave me a boost and had me operating on all cylinders within a few minutes. The drinks include ingredients such as green tea and ginger, and doesn't drop you like a lot of products that give you energy. Celsius also has a big celebrity following. Jillian Michaels, Mario Lopez, and Khloe Kardashian all swear by Celsius!
Learn more about Celsius and their products here.  

Diane and the Plan

I met this adorable woman named Diane at the gym. She is an older White woman in her early 50s that, much like me, lives in the pool and stays away from the actual workout machines. In a nutshell, she rubs me as one of those women that has never said an unkind word about anyone...that wasn't true at least; the kind of woman who recycles and donates old clothes and pays fundraising high schoolers to wash her car.
The other day we happened to be in the pool together for about two hours, and we got to talking about her life. She has been divorced almost as long as I have been alive from a man that was not quite as nice as she is. Everyone including his family was sad about seeing them get divorced, seeing that she's awesome and they are Catholic and he was an asshole. She said that when they divorced he told her she would never find anyone else, and as of now, she hasn't.
She was telling me that she has gone on E-Harmony and Catholic Singles and found that most of the men were either nuts or sex-crazed. She even met a guy at the gym who turned out to be a stalker, and another one that seemed cool, but dropped off the face of the planet. She found that the men she was attracted to most, the gentlemen, always ended up being gay.
"Maybe I am just too old-fashioned to date," she sighed as we walked back in forth in the pool with our foam weights. She told me that she had only been with one man sexually her whole life, her ex-husband, and that she found herself confused by the sex-crazed mentality of today's dating scene, even in her age group. She is just into the little things: dinner dates, water aerobics, and taking care of her pet dogs and birds.
Something about Diane reminded me of myself. What do you do when you are too conservative for today's relationships? How do you actively date while maintaining your dignity? You don't want to be alone, so do you do as the other daters do and ditch the dignity for companionship? I blog about this all the time at 24. It saddened me that this is a situation that middle-aged women are even facing. I guess a part of me was hoping it was an issue that would solve itself with age. APPARENTLY NOT!
But unlike myself, Diane has a plan. She said that she is simply going to continue playing with her dogs and water-walking; she is going to continue to work on getting healthy. Then hopefully someone worth a damn will fall into her lap when the time is right. Reflecting on the guys that have hurt me in the past and the losers that I rounded up online, I guess that is all you can do.

Taming the Beast

I am going to be honest with you and say that I have pretty much fallen off of my workout regimen. It was like I was afraid of my progress. Every time I stayed on the treadmill a minute longer or lifted a pound of extra weight on the arm curl I would reward myself by going to the pool...until all I was doing was going to the pool. What is the consequence of this? Well, besides feeling like crap and being disappointed with myself and having to get totally reacquainted with the equipment, I now have to see results in women who started working out at the same time as me that are now like 50lbs lighter. I hate not sticking to things.
So yesterday, I went to the gym and decided to workout for real for the first time in like two weeks. But I went there with one goal in mind: to do at least fifteen minutes on "the beast."
"The Beast" is the nickname that this beefed up lady that I met in the gym has nicknamed the Stair Master. She competes in fitness competitions and can stay on that thing for hours at a times at high speed, burning over 1,000 lbs. She filled my head with stories of being able to lose major weight in like two months if I got on the Stair Master instead of the treadmill. So I tried it once and fell off. Literally, I hit the floor from the top step. Luckily, my head landed on a stray yoga ball, or I probably would have cried.
Yesterday, I marched into the gym ready to get on "The Beast." This time, I was determined not to fall because there would have been a huge audience. So I asked one of the trainers, Ms. Bernice, to help me. No exaggeration: I was on the machine for a minute and forty-two seconds before I was pleading to get off. And in that minute, which was the hardest minute of my life, I burned 41 calories. I burn that in fifteen minutes on the treadmill! Clearly, taming the beast is the key to my workout...if I stick with it.
Why am I not at the gym right now? No good reason. I am sitting at home, eating Peanut Butter Cup Keebler Chips Deluxe Cookies, buy one get one free, with some cranberry juice. I felt so crappy about my crappy workout, I fell into bad, old habits. No worries. I will go tomorrow. Promise.

Head Above Water

The past few summers that I have had have been generally unproductive, so now that I am part of a gym, I have decided to try to teach myself how to swim.
For the past two months, I have nearly drowned in three feet of water everyday, dipping my head in the water and losing my footing, or attempting to float and flipping myself backward. I have nearly choked to death on my own spit and chlorine, and at one point, actually thought I was going blind, for I had been in the pool for five hours and my vision was beginning to look cloudy.
I say all this to say that yesterday, I pretty much mastered doggy paddling under water. And yes, I can only do three quick strokes before I come up gasping and coughing for air, but it is a vast improvement from last week, not to mention a year ago. Unlike other overweight people, I did not stay from the pool due to body issues. I stayed from the pool because I have a legitimate fear of deep bodies of water. And forget the beach! Flesh-eating mammals live in that water. So every summer, I pretty much stayed in the house while all my friends skipped to the pool in their bikinis.
Needless to say, I have been proud of myself for how well I have been doing, and my progress has got me thinking about some other things I have wanted to do that I have been too scared to really consider. The biggest thing on this list is starting my own business.
Those who have known me since elementary school knows that I have always wanted to start my own magazine. I do not really know the steps I would take, but I think about it all the time. I even believe that I have the skill to make it work. Sadly, my fear of failing is even worse than my old fear of water.
Yet, the more I go to the pool, the more I see myself scribbling down ideas for issue topics and cover ideas. As I get closer and closer to achieving my summer goal, I feel that I already know what my fall goal is going to be.
And yes, it's scary. If this dream that I have harbored since my youth fails, I can't even imagine how devastated I will be. But how do you know what you can do until you try? What is the old saying: "Ain't nothin' to it but to do it?"
So do it I shall, with my breath held and my feet a kickin.'
But until it's time for this Fall goal to be put into action, you can find me in the L.A. Fitness pool. Today I shall master the backstroke...or at least attempt to.

Fat Frustration

I have been working out for two months at about five times a week for three hours at a time and I doubt that I have lost one ounce!
The only thing that is more frustrating than having to work out in the first place is not seeing any results. I have a goal here people! By next summer I need to be sexy enough to seduce boys that have passed me over, and by this December I need to be small enough to wear a tummyless toga to my birthday party. The clock is ticking!
I guess what is even more annoying than my lack of progress is again, the random people at the gym that cheer me on with every step that I take on the treadmill. I have never been one for encouragement, especially from happy, skinny, pretty people that I don't know. I know that they mean well, but they just get under my skin.
"Hang in there," some old buff man told me while I was working out on some thigh thingy. "It takes a while."
He patted me on my back and I wanted to bite his fingers.
The whole thing just blows! I feel like I practically live at the gym, and I am still just as fat and out of shape as I was two months ago when I started. I'm annoyed enough without the cheering on from strangers and the people telling me I look like I'm losing when I am not just so I don't stop working out.
I don't know. Maybe the bitchy, pissed off mood is just part of one of the stages of losing weight, which is fine I guess. I just would like to know what stage it is when I will actually start losing weight.

No thank you, thank you

If one more person tells me that they are proud of me for deciding to work out, I am going to throw up.
I was on the treadmill the other day at the gym, sweating and minding my own business, when I noticed this woman staring at me. Not checking me out staring, but staring at me all the same. I am used to people staring at me at the gym, and in life in general, so I decided to ignore her. Then I noticed her pacing back and forth, you know, the way you pace when you are thinking whether or not to say something. Finally, she walked over to me, introduced herself, told me what church she went to, quoted a scripture, then told me that I was an inspiration to her. I fear that she would have hugged me if I was not in motion.
Later in the week, I went to a Kickbox Cardio class taught by an instructor that I secretly refer to as "The Nazi." The class was so tough that, by the end of the hour, more than half of the class had walked out. I would have myself, but I was not close enough to the door, and did not want to go through the humiliation of the rest of the class seeing that I couldn't stand the heat. At one point, I was literally crying face down on my mat because I could not lift my body on my fists. So, at the end of the class, as I limped over to the back of the room to put my mat away, the other women came up to me to tell me how well I did and to "not give up."
And who can forget that woman who makes the samples at my neighborhood grocery store who insists that I try to go on The Biggest Loser. She just knows that I could win because I have "personality."
I am literally being suffocated by all of the support. I am tired of my friends telling me that they are proud of me. Is there nothing else that I have done in 24 years of existence that deserves more praise than my deciding to go to the gym three times a week? I could write a fitness book on all the tips the women give me in the locker room and biographies of all their family members who were big like me and did nothing, now they have diabetes. It's annoying!
I know that people are trying to be helpful or supportive, but I am doing this because I have to, not to be some thin lady's role model.