Seduced by a vegan

I just consciously ordered vegan. I feel dirty. Like I’m about to grow a beard and my clothes will start to smell.

And I liked it. Like really liked it. Like mopped up everything on the plate – not just because there was hardly anything on it, but because it… tasted… good. Oh I can’t believe I just wrote that. It tasted good.

I don’t even know what it was. There was an avocado, a tomato and something – to be quite honest – which looked like a shit. Sorry for being so crass, but that’s one turd I can’t polish. That’s what it looked like. I’ve never eaten shit in my life, but if it tastes anywhere near as good as this shit-looking thing that I just ate, I’m surprised more people don’t eat it. See, I told you I feel dirty.

The waitress who served me was, thankfully, carnivorous. She looked down her nose at me, stared with her over-made-up-eyes, and sneered. Phew. That made me feel normal. Like it was right not to want to eat this stuff. Then she talked to me about bacon. How she would wear it, she liked it so much. How she had seen shoes with bacon painted on them, and a t-shirt, and bacon band-aids. Enough with the bacon, already! I thought, as my butter knife easily sliced through my pile of vegan poo. But on she went. About her friend who was denied a place in a share-house because – although vegetarian – the vegan landlords wouldn’t touch her with a bean-pole. Wars are fought over things like this.

I’m sitting here looking at the plate wondering what I’ve just done. Like I’ve woken up in a strange bed, incense burning, next to a skinny girl, tanned from spending too much time in Bali, with beads in her hair and a pierced tongue. Hmmmm. Guess it’s not so bad.

Coffee – the elixir of life

If black coffee made me fat, I’d be Stay Puff’d the Marshmallow Man. I can go without butter, milk, meat, candy, chocolate, sugary drinks – even alcohol. But coffee? Forget it.

Depending on which blog or newspaper or medical journal you read, coffee either gives you cancer or stops you from getting it. It’s either good for your brain or bad for your liver, it’s either a life saver or the kiss of death. For me, it is the elixir of life. If Christians took communion with a croissant and espresso, I’d be in for morning prayer without hesitation.

This blog is pro-coffee (and, though not anti-Christians, it is unsupportive of religion in general). I have an espresso machine at home that, if I were honest, gets handled more delicately, lovingly (and frequently) than any woman I’ve ever had. Oh go on, pour scorn on that – but it’s true. I have consistently blown off more steam with my beloved espresso machine than I’ve had hits from a lover – including a record 19 in one day…. coffees that is. So shoot me.

When I’m not at home, I’m doing it in public. I have a few little coffee bars close to where I live, where I’m known by name and by coffee. I’m in one of them now. It’s kind of like the gym, except people are wearing more, sweating less, and look happier.

I have tried to give it up, but then found myself wondering why? Sure it’s a drug, but it’s legal. Sure it’s a waste of money, but it’s my only vice (and it’s a relatively nice vice). Sure I could switch and drink herbal tea, or chai (blurgh) or just water… but then I would annoy myself as much as herbal tea drinking, chai loving, water nazis annoy me now.

So I’m afraid, my love affair will continue. Unabated. Raw. Frequently. Privately and publicly. If you’re ever in town, and you love a strong one, get in touch. Let’s do it together.

Eating Disorderly Conduct

There’s not much funny about eating disorders.  I’ve known bulimics (men and women) and at least one anorexic.  I’ve suspected a few more.  A lot more.  Once I even wished I had one – bulimia – but I just wasn’t brought up that way.  Oops.

The bulimics I knew at university all hung out together – between the cafeteria and the toilets.  They seemed to be otherwise quite normal people (well, they were otherwise normal – whatever that is), though most of them smoked and spent a fortune on breath mints.  The anorexic hung out in hospital, mainly, or at home when things were better for her.    I can remember shaking my head, trying to understand what was going through theirs, then just accepted that I couldn’t.  The life moved on, I went to work in the corporate world, and people got much better at hiding their disorders.

Then I entered this strange online universe, where people are either disturbingly honest, deceptively devious, or devastatingly disturbed.  I suspect many are all three.  And I accept that the real world is just the same.  But somehow, when it’s in print, it haunts.

There are some people I have followed on Instagram or Tumblr, because I’ve liked the look of their pics.  Ok, I’ve liked the look of the pics of their bums.  They are all impossibly thin.  Some of them have been born with them, some of them have worked for them, some of them have done both.  But some of them have spent their nights on hands and knees, fingers at the back of their throats, purging themselves of whatever they stuffed down there only minutes earlier.  When I work out that the slender bottom, in the seductive pose, with the fingers suggestively draped beneath the elastic of some skimpy black lace, belong to someone with an obvious eating disorder, I ‘dislike’  or ‘unfriend’.  I just can’t perve at purgers.

Same goes when a cry for help pops up on my screen.  A hand-scrawled note craving for someone to ‘like’ them, or they’ll slit their wrists; ‘comment’ or I’ll cry; ‘friend me’ or I’ll flip out.  It’s tragic.  I don’t know you!  I don’t ‘like’ you – I like your pic.  I comment on your pic, not you.  I’m not your ‘friend’, I’m just browsing…  If you need me, or people like me, you’re in trouble.  Big trouble.  And you should probably get off online and get on with things offline.

But don’t listen to me.  Get help.  Real help.  From a real person.

I wish my gym could make me come

Raw honesty.

I’m not in love with my gym. Not at all. Sure, we’ve only be dating for less than two months – perhaps she’ll grow on me – but for now, she’s a bore. Dull. Repetitive. Do I really want to get all hot and sweaty, and use the same equipment, every night? I’ll be honest: sometimes gym just doesn’t do it for me. Sometimes I don’t even come. Er, go.

We had a two week break there in the middle – I had a commitment to a holiday that I couldn’t back out of. While away, I cheated on my gym (and yes, fitness Nazis: on myself) with wine and cheese. But I ran. And hiked. And even did body weight exercises (which is really the fitness equivalent to masturbating, isn’t it?). Then I got home, ran straight into the arms of my gym, and… nothing. Absence failed to make the heart grow fonder… In fact, it probably just clogged it up a bit more.

That was ten days ago.

Since then, we’ve seen each other every day. Some days we’ve gone quick and hard, some days it’s been a more sustained sweat-up. Just the way she likes it. Tonight I’m pumping her like a… gym. But still: just no doing it.

I know, I know, I should give it time. Not rush into this thinking I’m going to be swept off my feet straight away. But something needs to give soon. Some result. Some magical feeling. Some glimpse of being… more. Better.

Anything.

But I’m no quitter.

(Actually, I am. But this time, I’m so determined not to be).

Sundae bloody sundae

Friday night and its sundae night for me.  So much for eating healthy.

I took the family out for some healthy burgers – home-made ones, not the stinky plastic things you get from that Olympic sponsor .  But the burger joint happened to be across the way from an ice-cream shop.  Resistance was futile.  And resistance training was even further from my mind.

Ice-cream is not usually a weak point for me: savoury tempts me more.  But tonight, I was weak.  A scoop of the magic icy stuff, a blob of hot fudge and squirt of cream on top.  Even my kids ate better – lemon sorbet.

I read on someone’s blog earlier in the week that you have to understand the difference between boredom and hunger.  Well, I don’t even have the boredom excuse tonight.  I think I just wanted to be bad.

Bad.  Ha.  Some people pierce their old fellas and ride a hog, I eat a choc-fudge sundae.  So macho.

In penance, I am doing burpees.  And just straight out burps, to tell the truth.  Neither are pretty.  But I’m not about pretty… just read my posting from earlier today.

Burgers and Big Butts

Portions out or proportion

My biggest problem is portion control. I can eat well with little difficulty, but, well, I find it difficult to eat little. But let’s be blunt about this: I lack self-discipline. Really, that’s all there is to it.

I don’t like the idea of doing those cleansing diets – because of that horrendous second word, diet, but in thinking if using one as a kickstart to change. A kick in the pants to my brain, which is a rather confused metaphor, but you get my drift. I’m starting tomorrow. Fruit. Veg. Herbs. Green tea. Water. Grains. Nuts. Legumes. That’s about it. Ten days.

Let’s see how we go.

The best way to respond to portion control is to respond disproportionately.

Look Boss! I’m plain, I’m plain!

I remember when tattoos were found only on sailors or Fantasy Island.  Most of you are probably too young to get the reference, and most of you will probably have ink somewhere on your gym-honed bodies. I don’t. It just wouldn’t suit me. I couldn’t carry it off. But I kinda like the people who can carry it off. Good on them, I reckon.

Problem is: not everyone can.  And not everyone’s a good judge of whether or not they can. And yet everyone seems to be getting inked these days.  Everyone.  Even those of us who shouldn’t.

If you know who you are, know what you stand for and want to express that by pricking your body with ink – go for it. I’m all for.  You’ll find some cool, Tim Burton kind of way of way of making your calves or clavicle  look ridiculously hot, and I will envy you from afar.  Or wish I got to touch it.  If you’re a bloke, then that sleeve (as long as it doesn’t look like an Archie comic, or include a portrait of your mum) or thing across your back (sans religious symbolism) will impress me.  But I won’t be so hot on touching it.  Admire from afar will do just fine, thank you.

But If you’re a messed up wreck, stumbling around in the dark night of your own life, desperate to find something about yourself to cling to: think again.  Tattoos are not a good way to find yourself.  The Pink Panther peering over the top of your undies could clash wildly with the tribal tramp stamp guiding your parter to your nether regions from behind.  The quote from Dawson’s Creek?  Sadly, I have come across each of these things on the flesh of an otherwise seemingly normal human being in the course of my relatively short lifetime.

Fit people carry it off better than most.  Not surprisingly, tight skin can wear a tatt better than blubbery, pasty skin. Taut and tatted? Terrific.  Inflated and inked? Icky.  And likely to get worse over time – as you swell, your skin stretches and… ugh… suddenly your Pink Panther starts looking like the mangy feral cat that stalks rats in the city sewer.

As for the hotties?  Well, I like something with meaning. A good quote (no Dawson’s Creek) or a symbol of some significance. If you a fourth generation Caucasian Australian who’s never set foot outside of Sydney – forget Aboriginal markings. Never been to the South Pacific? Then that swirly thing’s not for you.  Chinese calligraphy? Sure – if you’re Chinese. Or at least you know what it says. What it really says.  Just don’t get it done in Bali.  Just… don’t.

Tonight was an unusually tatt free night at the gym.  The young hotties must have all been out on the town (it’s Saturday), and it was left to the dowdies like me to hold the fort.  We who missed the tatt boat, and who navigated our late teens and twenties predominantly with pubic hair…

But then that’s another whole blog post right there…

Tatt’s all folks.

Friday Night Lighter

Blogging live from the gym tonight. First time here for two weeks, and expecting to hurt a little tomorrow. I weighed myself on arrival, which was a dumb thing to do after a two week holiday in cheese and wine country. Time to play catch up now.

There are only three other people here tonight. All guys. It’s Friday – I’m a father of three kids under 7 years of age, what’s their excuse for spending Friday night at the gym?

There’s a hairier, fatter, older bloke than me huffing and puffing his way through a weights circuit, like he’s going to blow this house down; a guy with a boy-band hair-cut splashing sweat all over the screen of his exercise bike; a tiny little guy doing HIIT on a treadmill – grunting like one of the little pigs the hairy guy might quite like to devour, and; oh, and a fourth, some guy staring into the mirror, willing it to tell him who’s the fairest of them all.

Well it’s not me. Not tonight. 14 days out of the sweatshop has left me saggier and baggier than a little elephant.

But I’m here. Like these other guys. Hairy, sweaty, big, small, pretty, neatly groomed or otherwise. We’re here.

For me, that’s a win.

Bibles and Barbells

I do not believe in a god of any description. If that bothers you, it’s probably best that you read no further. No, I will not mock you if you do believe. You have the right to believe what you want, and I have the right not to. Simple. Let’s be friends.

But I’m a little taken aback by all the god-believing fitness fiends out there. It seems every second fitness or health blog moves quickly from biceps to bibles, from alcohol-and-carb free living to the importance of including bread and wine in your diet… especially on Sundays.

I see more biblical quotes at the header of people’s blogs, facebook pages, tweets or instagram feeds than anything else – beside goal weights. “Jane Doe. Mom. Jesus Lover. UGW 100lbs” “John Doe. Loving Father. The Lord is my Shepherd. I want ripped abs”.

I guess when you don’t understand faith, it’s difficult to get how faith could be employed to make someone fitter. I don’t get the need to declare it. If your god is all-knowing (they pretty much all seem to be), then why do you need to tell anyone on Facebook? Surely your god doesn’t need a status update to know whether or not you still believe?

You see, I believe in me. I’d like to believe more in myself, and someday I will. I can see how the gym – not Jesus – could help me out there. I don’t think there is a higher being that can help will the fat around my waistline elsewhere. I don’t believe that his right hand man could spot me on the bench-press (or even cross-trainer, if we want to be really crass about it). And I don’t believe, wholly, in a spirit of any sort… other than the ones I now try to avoid at the bar.

But you might. And you’re probably fitter than me.

Hmmmmm…..