I went to my old place of employment yesterday and worked out with my buddy, Hank, and this morning I am trying to recover and feeling the pull (finally) to get back to work.
I had avoided going there for a couple of reasons. The first reason is I knew I would be barraged with questions that I don’t have answers for. ( “Are you coming back to work?” “How was it?” “What was your favorite place?”, you know the usual questions, and I was hoping to have answers ready by the time I showed up there again.)
I was worried that going back to ye olde place of employment would make me decide either “NO WAY” I was going to work, or “OK, sure I’ll come back” before I was ready. I expected re entering that building would look like an albatross landing (it’s not pretty). I feel like the timing was good, and even if I did reenter the building imitating the albatross, no one was looking or cared anyway. Just the way I like it.
We worked out with the kettlebells, which are becoming really popular here in the United States. Kettlebells originated in the Russian Navy and the Russians have been using them for fitness for something like 200 years. The kettlebell looks like a cast iron cannonball with a big handle on it and the kettlebell workout is much different than any of the typical workouts most of us have seen.
For more information on training with kettlebells, a fun website is www.irontamer.com. Advantages of the kettlebell over our typical american style workout is it takes just the kettlebell (though a dumbell would work fine too) and the workout strengthens the whole body, burns fat, and gets the heart rate way up. Most people are one and done, meaning they do a real kettlebell workout and then go back to the machines because the machines are way easier.
Some of my old friends came by to chat while I was working out and asked about workouts during the year. I was pretty happy that I didn’t hear the “I though you would lose weight” that I had been hearing for the first month. Now I just hear “you look the same”. I was hoping to lose more weight this year as I have said before, but now I feel like I am making progress to look like a personal trainer again, for the first time in 3 years.
My favorite questions now are about the food and why I didn’t lose weight. I can’t blame the stress of living in community or traveling, because I am not a victim (right?), but I have learned just how important the routine and being able to control the environment I live in is to me. Being able to plan ahead for meals, get enough sleep…on a comfortable bed.
So…all the fried starches didn’t help. Rice soaked in oil doesn’t do much for the physique. Drinking soda daily, how many pounds of sugar do we take in over the course of the year just from soft drinks? The travel days, hours of sitting still and snacking…. Cheap cookies and potato chips are everywhere and they are comforts for stress, comfort the weak in the head like me. The soft drinks and ice cream. Two ‘foods’ I don’t even eat here at home but I had daily around the world.
Then what was some of the weirdest food? Guinea pig in Peru, fried guinea pig guts…yum. Zebra, giraffe, warthog, crocodile, and all types of antelope (Kudu, springbok, gemsbok, impala) in South Africa. Goat stomach wrapped in goat intestine in Mozambique. Then the goat stew where I got the mouth full of goat poop, the worst taste I have ever had in my mouth, that I can remember.
In China we roasted chestnuts over the open fire and had roasted peanuts washed down with a sweet sugar drink. We drank whiskey for breakfast (actually it was just me, and I thought it was more of the sugar drink). Frog soup and fried bees at the end of the journey were two highlights. I will tell those stories at another time.
I weighed in today, 244 pounds, so I am 4.8 pounds lighter since Jan. 2, but I miss the adventure of last year and when people ask how the year was it is easy to say…”an experience, it was tough, it was awesome, its good to be back, I am glad I did it”.
Well, gotta go lift, upper body day today.
