I got some flack for ragging on Zuzana on my post on unhealthy body images. Actually, I got some flack for ragging on Gwyneth, too. Look, I am not ragging on these women’s characters. I am sure they would both post a nice message on my facebook wall on my birthday. Hopefully with a picture of a puppy. Truth still stands, though, that a lot of women use them as body role models and I dont find either of them to be sporting healthy levels of body fat, muscle or no muscle.

So now I am going to post images of women who I think have healthy bodies. Mind you, I am personally drawn to women with more athletic physiques. Women with muscle tone are sassy. This is, obviously, just my opinion and I don’t want anyone coming back at me saying that I think your squishy bits are ugly.

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Originally published at batty.us. You can comment here or there.

In my travels around health/fitness forums, it seems that most females have two body types as their *~inspiration~* for their body goals. In some cirles, it’s this:

And in others, it’s this:

Neither of these, to me, are particularly healthy. The first is Barbie, and the second is Barbie with the Fun Lovin Workout Girl Muscle Add-on Pack. Gwyneth Paltrow’s diet is absolutely atrocious, and Zuzana’s “workouts” remind me of the parts in Jumpin’ Jack Flash where Whoopi Goldberg’s computer transmits the Russian Exercise lady.

I would like to ply them both with sammiches.  And I don’t even eat sammiches.

There are too many people out there with the fear of eating and wanting to be skinny. They cut their caloric intake to alarming levels and push themselves to exercise. For a few days, it works great, and then all of a sudden they dive face first into a cheesecake and then hate themselves for not sticking to it.

That’s not failing. That’s your body trying to reclaim what you keep depriving it. Your body will always win out.

Last week, while dining out with some friends, I encouraged a female friend of mine to eat up. She said, “I would eat like you do if I worked out like you did.” I didn’t say anything at the time, because I’m horribly slow like that, but what I really should have said was “If you ate like me, you’d *want* to work out like I do.”

People need to get out of this “eat less, exercise more” mentality and start focusing on getting your body to expend more energy than it consumes. You might be thinking, “duh, isn’t this saying eating less?” and I will say absolutely not. If I eat too little, I’m on the couch and mentally forcing myself down to the BGOD. Bump up my food intake, and I’m hitting new PRs and then wanting to run a couple miles afterward. Continuous and severe calorie restriction will only make you fatter later on.

People need to think less about calories and more about nutrition. Cultivate your metabolism with proper eating habits. Focus on these:

instead of trying to get by on these:

And if your exercise routine consists of only things where you are able to watch a movie, post on facebook, or talk on your cellphone while you do them, then you are doing absolutely nothing for your body.

Stop abusing, and start respecting. If you don’t change your mindset, whether its a worry about eating too much, or fearing a category of macronutrients, or wanting to be just “skinny”, you won’t get anywhere.

Originally published at batty.us. You can comment here or there.

This is mostly to my women friends who I lovingly yell at all the time because they don’t eat enough, focus too much on that number on the scale, or say something like “Oh, I have about 15-30-12408264 lbs to lose” when they just might not.

Sometimes women will say their pants are fitting looser, they feel good, and then they FLIP THEIR CRAP because despite those looser pants, they’ve gone up a few pounds on the scale. Usually I will then blast them with this age old image, of which I am sure a lot of you have seen before:

Which, you know, kinda helps, and I know there’s another one with a ruler in it somewhere. But, I still dont think a lot of people actually understand just how big these models are, so I took a better picture for those of you who have been in my immediate physical presence:

scuse the crappy pic and hair. it was windy that day.

It is pretty stinkin huge. Look at yourself again and see if you really have that much to let go.

Originally published at batty.us. You can comment here or there.

In my travels around the intertubes, I’m seeing a lot of women treating themselves not very nice. They’re eating the caloric equivalent of what boog eats [remember, he's 5], if anything at all, and spending more time on the treadmill than they need to, and then absolutely flipping their shit when the scale so much as go over a pound of what it said last time.

Women are told, time and time again, how they are allowed to be healthy, and 200% of the time it’s the complete opposite of what men are allowed to do. Just spend about 2 minutes watching TV and you’ll see it. Men are encouraged to eat their bodyweight in steak and lift a VW bus and GET HUGE.  Women are told to do yoga and eat Special K 100 Calorie Vitamin Water Packs. And be small. The smaller you are, the better. Don’t you dare be over 120 pounds or you’re a fat sack of shit.  The lower the number on that scale,  the more valued you are in society.

Don’t you dare try to build any muscle. If you so much as breathe on a dumbbell that weighs over 20 lbs you will instantly turn into She Hulk and be TOO BULKY.

9 times out of 10, when I accomplish a particularly challenging lift in the basement gym of doom and share my success with others, I don’t get “wow, awesome, good job!” or any other encouraging words. I get told that I’m scary.

Strong women are scary. Strong women are not feminine. That cheeses me off.

There is more to being healthy than losing weight. You can squeeze your ass into a size 00 pants, but you can still be 34% bodyfat and that isn’t healthy for you. at all.

I regularly go on at length to any female within earshot about the importance of muscle building.  And I could take an hour or two to write out why, but one of my role models has already done it for me. Ladies, please read.

Heh, with that being said, here’s the state of my ****GUNSHOW***:

The pic on the left was taken in September. The pic on the right was taken last night. That is an inch and a half of muscle gain in only 4 freaking months.  Now, I realize this is kind of not helping my case with the women, because I know that 80% of the women reading this see a GIANT ASS MEATHOOK and if weight training does this to Batty, it will happen to them, too, and OMG BULK.

But it won’t, and here’s why:

1. Your diet probably sucks and you are starving yourself. If you are eating food with labels that have the words ‘light’, ‘fit’, or ‘healthy’, they are actually not making you any of those.
2. I probably lift weights heavier than your entire bodyweight. And, maybe to the chagrin of the guys, I don’t spend days and days in the gym. Over the past 4 months I’ve been lucky to get into the basement gym of doom 3 times in a week, IF that, but when I go, I make it count.  Most of my sessions MAYBE last 30 minutes. Lifting this heavy is something I choose to to because I DO want a lot of muscle. You will not get like this if you’re using 5, 10, or even 15 lb dumbbells. I promise.

It’s not about that number on the scale. It’s about having the right body composition to be healthy. For the record, last time I weighed myself, I came in at 165. I’ve put on a good 10 lbs. since the summer. This is the weight I was pre-boog. The difference? Back then, I was a size 14. I’m still a size 6.

Food for thought. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go “be scary” somewhere.

Originally published at batty.us. You can comment here or there.

this was taken just after I had it done years ago. There's lots of arm flab here.

It really bugs me when people get some kind of amazingly cliche tatoo and then put some elaborate bullshit reasoning behind it. For instance, they’ll pick the tiger eye/butterfly combo off the wall of flash and say that its an homage to their long gone grandma that they only saw at Christmas and more than likely had no taste for butterflies or tigers. Or, the people that get their astrological sign because THATS WHO THEY ARE and yet don’t even read the horoscopes.

I am somewhat guilty of this, as I have a phoenix on my right arm. At least I drew it myself? And yes, I do have some bullshit reasoning behind it. He is blue, and emerging from not naturally colored radioactive flames because I am constantly reinventing myself. Me of 10 years ago is not me of 5 years ago which is amazingly not me of today. I believe if you cannot say this about yourself then you are not really living.  And, true to myself, my changes are never subtle, they always occur in some spectacular fashion.

I wish more flames would be involved, but that is neither here nor there.

Yesterday, I met with someone who, if all goes well, can combine my past knowledge, current experience, and future passions to carve out the new direction in life I’ve been desiring to take.  It’s still in the tadpole stage of a concept, so I don’t want to say too much because I am a superstitious asshat like that.

However, I will soon be helping people, and changing their lives, and showing them the strength they didn’t even know they had in them.

And that’s all I’m going to say. Positive thoughts would be appreciated as I piece things together.

Stay tuned.

Originally published at batty.us. You can comment here or there.

Christmas was excellent.  When you’re dealing with divorced families, Christmas gets kind of extended over a few days, with all the scheduling and the planning and the shipping of the kids. I am just happy that my sister and my son were able to spend some time together. My Christmas haul was all food related, with a shiny new crock pot and a frying pan and some other odds and ends that I’ve been wanting. Oh, wait, I also got some Salomon boots, and they are the most beautiful things ever. They have minimal soles and will do me a heck of a lot better in the snow than my docs or my 500 lb. hiking boots.

I had wanted to do this huge introspective end of the year post, but as usual, life gets in the way.  This year was full of huge changes for me, and most people would see them as negative. But, in all honesty, it was the whittling away of  things that were not giving me that growing room, and all I gotta say is thank god it’s gone, because I was getting cramped.

D continues to be a huge source of love, support, and inspiration for me.  To say I cherish him would be an understatement.

My kid. Oh, my kid. he continues to amaze me. I did get a text from Jeremy last night that his first loose tooth FINALLY came out. So, he gets to ring in the new year with a new hole in his face. Fortunately, that’s not a piercing. None of those until he’s at least in 5th grade.

I got a facebook message from an old friend the other day. One of her friends sent her a link to a blog, telling her to check it out because it was awesome, and that blog just so happened to be mine. Sometimes, that just blows my mind because I don’t think I write a lot of inspirational stuff. But apparently, I do, and I am glad that putting my life in the public eye helps people.

I like helping people. You will see more of this next year, I guarantee.

But – thank you. Thank you for reading, thank you for letting me know I make a difference. Thank you for texting me out of the blue, or inviting me to your parties in the shadow of a nuclear power plant, or showing up at my favorite restaurant at a moment’s notice, or showing up at our house for a meat fest and a hike in the woods.  You are the people that make a difference in *my* life.

To be honest, I have absolutely no clue what I am doing for 2011. I am not making any New Year’s resolutions and I’m rather liking that.  As I sit here typing this at butt ass o’clock in the AM while watching random infomercials for power tools, I realize that 2011 is a completely open book for me. I am a woman of many talents, and I think my biggest challenge for next year is going to be deciding where I get to go next. Some people might freak out over such uncertainty, but I am rather excited about it.

I delcare 2011 The Year We Kick Ass, and you should too.

Be safe tonight and I will see you next year.

Originally published at batty.us. You can comment here or there.

Being the overachieving overachiever that I am, I volunteered to be a room parent for Boog’s class. Well, I was assigned the honor of HEAD ROOM PARENT. And, as I now have experienced, being HEAD ROOM PARENT actually means PICKING UP THE SLACK OF THE OTHER PARENTS WHO VOLUNTEERED BUT WONT RETURN YOUR CALLS.

Today is the last day of school for the year. Boog’s class is having a party at the end of the day, where they will decorate cookies. [yeah, dont get me started. heh] Because of budgets, pretty much everything has to be donated – cookies, frosting, etc. Cue the ROOM PARENTS. They help provide these things so that the little ones can have a good time. I did my HEAD ROOM PARENT duties and feverishly called the other parents for assistance, and the response was rather underwhelming.

So I did it myself. Mind you, I have not touched any conventional baking dough in over a year. After about 3 burned batches, I mustered up 36 cookies, and put them in bags, along with little treat bags that included winter stickers and silly bands. And maybe a candy cane or two.  Each bag got each child’s name along with some extra stickers. And prepared cups of sprinkles for the tables, and frosting, and cups for the drinks, and fun straws.

I walked the supplies up to the school this morning. Apparently it’s also jammie day, as I entered a room full of kindergarteners in their jammies. And they came up to me and said HELLO BOOG’S MOMMY and showed me their stuffed animals. Boog’s teacher was wearing a rather nifty pair of red leopard print pajamas that I covet.  And I gave her the rundown on what was in the boxes, and she was ever so grateful and gave me a hug. Being the huggy person I am, I appreciated that.

Boog is with Jeremy this week so I enjoyed seeing Boog even if it was brief. I would also like to give a shoutout to Jeremy for stepping up to the plate with helping at the party because I could not make it.

All of this came out of my own pocket. Did I mention that my contract with UH ends at the end of the year? Right now, though, I was just happy I could help.

In the winter, we tend to hole ourselves up a little more, maybe spend too much time in front of the computer, are less inclined to go outside as much, maybe slack on interaction with other people. The time spent wrapped up in our own heads might be a little too much, and maybe our perspective of the world shifts as our only witness to the outside world is the douchebaggery going on in the news.

And sometimes all it takes to rejuvenate your perspective is taking a bunch of cookies to a room full of kindergarteners.

If you’re feeling the same, go do good for someone today. No act of kindness is too small. Hold the door open for someone. Bring soup to a friend. Do good for someone else so they, in turn, can do good for someone else, and maybe this world can suck less.

Anyone can write a check. Do something.

Originally published at batty.us. You can comment here or there.

I am absolutely slacking on blog updates. So much stuff to type and not enough time to do it. Right now, my life is being taken up by lifting, being a mom, and getting all OCD on the website for St. Peter’s.

But I digress. Last night I received an email from myself. Said email happened to be written in 2005. It was part of the Forbes email time capsule and to be honest I dont even remember writing it.  I mean, time capsules are not a new concept by any means, but receiving an email from my former self was kind of mind blowing.

I won’t get into the details of the email because it was kind of deep, but when I wrote it, I was a 200 lb. baby milk making machine getting very little sleep and was…just absolutely miserable.

The last line of the email read: i hope you can look back on nov. 7 2005 and see how far you’ve come.

I can.  I have it pretty good now. I can squat 235 [heh], I have a wonderful, loving and caring Significant Other and a kinda-stepson, boog is growing into this amazing little boy with a sense of humor that would have rivaled my father’s, I am well on my way to new life occupations, and sure, there are ups and downs, but when I look back…yeah.  I can see miles from here.

That email made me really think today. It made me think and appreciate what I got right now, and to perhaps reassess what I’ve been taking for granted.

I am fortunate. And right now I wish I could go back in time and give past me a big hug, because I know she really needs it.

Originally published at batty.us. You can comment here or there.