Lost 70 pounds, and running my first marathon in 2012.
Live from New York City, a blog about running, healthy living and seeing past your own ass; also obesity politics, exotic foods, self-esteem and general life improvement.
Email: 94monkeys (at) gmaildotcom
"I'm in the hall already, on the wall already/ I'm a work of art, I'm a Warhol already." --Jay-Z
Must-read: RunnersWorld.com: Tips to get you motivated to run
This was a quick and fairly boring read I plowed through this weekend while trying to keep myself from either eating all the things or shopping for a robot leg. I know, Weight Watchers is so awesome, you can still eat wings (real example from text), it’s not like any other diet out there, et cetera. (I tried it, it didn’t work for me, I’m not mad. And I expected the hard sell.) The chapter of testimonials from her other family members who have gone on Weight Watchers after seeing her success was cute, except for this passive-aggressive passage about her sister who lost a little and gained it back but should really take it seriously. If one of my sisters wrote about how disappointed she was in my diet in HER OWN AUTOBIOGRAPHY I would seriously question her sanity. (LOVE YOU B. & H.)
Also, I’m sure it was traumatic for her to think about, but the absence of any discussion of her mother, brother and nephew’s death (apart from one offhand reference) creates a weird emotional void in this book that no amount of “Yay, fitness!” can fill.
I’m overthinking this. Anyway, the one good thing I got from it was this quote: “Loving yourself means caring enough to make the hard decisions in your life.” Whatever ghostwriter wrote that one should get a raise.
Super excited about this book (out in April). I guess after the author read the encyclopedia for a year and tried to follow every Biblical commandment for a year, this was the next big thing!
Look what my DailyMile Secret Santa got me! (No, I haven’t read it yet because I am Behind On The Trends. But not for long!)
I just picked this up from the library. Sweet! I’ve only read a few pages but it follows a handful of participants (no pros) as they train for Ironman Arizona — sort of like A Race Like No Other does for the NYC Marathon.
Philosophers have explained space. They have not explained time. It is the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible; without it, nothing. The supply of time is truly a daily miracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it. You wake up in the morning, and lo! your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life! It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions. A highly singular commodity, showered upon you in a manner as singular as the commodity itself!
For remark! No one can take it from you. It is unstealable. And no one receives either more or less than you receive.
You have to live on this twenty-four hours of daily time. Out of it you have to spin health, pleasure, money, content, respect, and the evolution of your immortal soul. Its right use, its most effective use, is a matter of the highest urgency and of the most thrilling actuality. All depends on that. Your happiness—the elusive prize that you are all clutching for, my friends!—depends on that. Strange that the newspapers, so enterprising and up-to-date as they are, are not full of “How to live on a given income of time,” instead of “How to live on a given income of money”!
The new Decemberists video “Calamity Song,” features the sport of Eschaton, a sort of in-person RISK played on a tennis court as invented by author David Foster Wallace in his novel Infinite Jest. Wallace was a very good (if not nationally ranked) tennis player in his youth and the book is set in part at a private high school outside of Boston called Enfield Tennis Academy.
Why isn’t this a real sport yet? Fellow nerds, arise!
Christopher McDougall held a barefoot run to his reading in Colorado the other night and accidentally ran (PUN!!) afoul of the law. McDougall admits it was a mistake not to get a permit… but still. Haters everywhere.
Speaking of yoga though! I just finished this book and it was a lot more thoughtful than I expected. I saw the author read last year from a chapter that was mostly about farting, so I didn’t hope for much… but it both made me want to do more yoga, and look for his other books.
This is one of the weirder health and fitness blogs I’ve ever come across, but if you can suspend your disbelief…
Meet Lüc Carl, a party promoter in Brooklyn best known for being Mr. (on-and-off) Lady Gaga. He just signed a book deal for his memoir, also called The Drunk Diet and obviously with a title like that I sat up and took notice. And I started reading:
There is a giant misconception separating a “runner” from “someone who runs.” This misconception is that “people who run” find running difficult -forcing themselves through a few miles here and there throughout their week -and that a “runner” is someone who can do 13 miles like it’s just another walk to the bus stop. Wrong. I put in anywhere from 20 to 40 miles nearly every week of the last 2 years, and it never gets easier. The second it gets “easy” I know I’m not pushing myself hard enough.
And reading:
Why the fuck did I wake up this morning and start drinking beers? I was supposed to put in 3 miles and I’m on my 3rd beer. How the fuck did this happen? It’s only 8:00am and I’m three beers deep? Yes, I’m having fun next to the pool, but I’m really disappointed in myself for fucking up. Thank god it was just a dream. Time to put my fucking shoes on. After the run…. All you can drink.
And still reading:
It has nothing to do with being fat or being skinny. It has everything to do with not being happy. You can work out all day long and have flat abs and still not be satisfied, or you can eat a half a quart of Ben & Jerry’s and be ashamed of yourself. Both are symptoms of unhappiness.
You must choose between the abs and the ice cream, and choose which un-happiness works best for you. If you want the truth, neither one is more difficult than the other.
Out of all the celebrity diet books that come out in a year, this one I might actually want to read. He just did the Empire State Building run-up, 85 flights of no joke, and is training for the Flying Pig marathon (for which he’s trying to drop 8 pounds). Lüc Carl, I salute you.
