It's out! Officially out!

More exercises than you ever imagined, impressive photography, top trainer created workouts

Maybe today will be the last day that your workout is a run to the bookstore, because this book will give you so many ideas for training, you will feel like you will never need another book.

What's awesome about this book?

It was put together by Adam Campbell, a man who knows the fitness world better than anyone else. He knows what works and knows how to get you to do it.

The world's top trainers worked hard to create individualized programs for any training need, so you never worry about the next phase of your training.

You will find workouts that will address every phase of your life, whether you are going to have a baby, or getting ready for a competition, or needing to lose a few pounds for a wedding party.

You will never again wonder how to progress from one version of an exercise to the next. The exercise variations and progressions in this book will open your eyes to a world of possibilities.

You will have the artistic enjoyment of looking at state of the art photography, and get inspired with the beauty of fitness.

Well, last but not least, you will read the workouts that I specifically created for you, moms to be. Prenatal training is not for the unprepared, but if you are prepared, then you will enjoy your new changing body every minute of the day and be ready to deliver safe! You will be in shape to enjoy your newborn and properly take care of her.

With the holidays just around the corner, this makes a perfect last minute gift for anyone in your family who may be looking to lose weight, get stronger bones, or just loves to read about fitness. This is one that should be on every healthy and smart woman's bookshelf!

GET THE WOMEN'S HEALTH BIG BOOK OF EXERCISES HERE

Or jog to your closest bookstore :)

A blog that needs sharing

Get inspired. Photos. Colors. Food. Amazing.

How many fingers?

5, and they are toes.

I fell in love with the Vibram Five Fingers the first time I saw them. Now that I have owned them for a few months and I have ran, jumped, lifted, walked, been on sand, mud and leaves with them, I have to say, I want more of them , and faster.

I truly loved seeing us on Birthday Shoes, an amazing blog with all the five fingers I lust after.

Blame it on the comfort, there is no going back.

Unlike other diets a CO2 diet is unavoidable

We've known for some time. Some of us say 'No' to the plastic bag in the supermarket and walk an unmeasurable distance to the recycle bins so they can securely place their hopes for the future, hoping that the paper box will turn into another paper box and then happily return years later to be recycled again. Some of us don't want Jeeps, we want Smart cars, Hybrids, bikes...

In Bulgaria, everyone says an individual is too small to change anything, ask the big companies, ask the government, but please let me drive my SUV and keep all the TVs on in my house, because I just made a hell lot of effort trying to secure my family the biggest screens ever made.

We are so caught up in surviving, that walking to work (which in my case would take an hour) is simply unthinkable. We are so late to pay bills that we end up buying cheap plastic cases instead of nice recycled ones, we are so busy with fashion, we spend our paycheck on fancy shoes, instead of investing in Simples.

We don't care because we are too busy, then asked if we care, we say, yes we do...but do we really?

We just watched the world premiere of Age of Stupid and before you say you are sick of green propaganda, please watch it, then shoot me an email and explain why it's all BS, but please at least care to back your inactivity with some valid reasoning.

If you weren't as lucky as us to witness the world premiere as well as witness the lack of local politicians in the audience, it's time to watch the movie and see what your part can be in making the world livable.



There are many things I loved about the way the world was portrayed, faceted, different and scarily validated for all the participants in its destruction.

Starting today, I am at least taking part in making our politicians sign the Copenhagen agreement in December. What are you doing? Maybe one of these things :)

On a more hopeful note, remember how things still are and how they could stay if everyone did their little part in saving the world.

People who don't exercise

Are the norm. Look at gym penetration rates, look in your park, ask your friends and coworkers. Then there are the ones who say they exercise, but the last time they did it was 4 weeks ago, and then there are the guys who can crank out 50 push ups, but alas, haven't done it since they did military service back in 1975.

So who are the exercisers? Those less than 10% of the population who exercise half as frequently as they brush their teeth? The ones who hike on the weekends? The ones who have less heart disease, rarely develop diabetes and enjoy wearing smaller size clothes than the rest of the population? They are the ones who actually enjoy being active.

I don't care what got you to exercise in the first place, whether it was because your parents showed you into the karate studio, whether it's because you lost weight for your prom, or because you married a marathon runner, what kept you in the gym, on the track, on the trail, or on a stationary bike in front of your TV was the fact that somehow you ended up enjoying exercise. You might enjoy the journey, or the end destination, but there is a feeling of happiness, fulfillment and enjoyment connected with it.

Of course, you'll say you know someone who hates exercising but does it because they have to. So how could they enjoy it? Well, they enjoy what they see in the mirror, or how productive they are after a workout, or how energized they feel, or how their backs don't ache anymore. Whatever the reason, they get some pleasure out of it.

So what have you found in exercise? Are you still using it for punishment after bigger meals? Are you still using it for anger management? Do you loathe going to the gym and what are you doing to change that into the simple joy of being able to move and create a healthier happier you?

More about the active lifestyle, here:

Fast Food Snob

I am one. So what?

I remember way back when I watched a John Berardi lecture, where he explained what a perfect day was. You wake up, you have your perfectly planned balanced breakfast, your post workout shake, your prepacked lunch, you afternoon snack in your car, then a great healthy perfectly acid base balanced dinner...and then you think oh I am having a perfect day, and another one, and another one, and then life happens.

Then you come home, starved, dehydrated, you've missed the last three meals, you are so stress ridden from traffic your hands are shaking, your back aches and you can barely remember waking up...was that even today? There are days, when you can't wait to get your veggies out of the fridge and cut them up, where all the meat looks bland, and the thought of an egg sounds like too much work to even start cracking on. If you were a normal person, you would have gone through the local drive through and enjoyed your local choice of fast food. А burger, or two, with fries, or not. Me...I'm a fast food snob, so I go by the store, pick up the best whole wheat bread with apples and cinnamon, a pack of the most delicious gourmet goat cheese, some fresh butter and I am off home, to make two pieces of toast with plenty of great tasting cheese and enjoy it with a glass of very well chilled Pinot Grigio. 100% satisfaction 0% crap 200% fast food.

Midnight Biker

I was coming home from a late dinner tonight and driving, I saw a guy on a bike, going pretty fast. He was wearing jeans and sneakers and t-shirt, no helmet or protection. He proceeded to ride in front of me, took a turn around my building and went to the playground they built for skating, biking and rollerblading. Picture the extreme competition type platforms.

As I was walking home from my car, I was listening to him do jumps and turns and flips...with no protection, in the middle of the night.

What drove him there? The midnight cool air. The lack of other kids. The feeling of being alone under the light with no one to watch. No one to watch him mess up. Yet no one to watch him do his best flip. Maybe he just had a fight with his friends and needs to be left alone. Maybe he's celebrating his new bike, or the start of summer break. Whatever he's doing, he can do that thing alone. I silently admire that. I have the same admiration for the 7 a.m. guy that I see in the gym, and the busy mom who ran for her appointment with me in her lunch break. Hats off to all these people for staying in touch with their bodies.

Gym Gems

Too bad that Guido and Luigi no longer exists as a comic strip. Neither does Unfit.
Those were very cool.

Little did I know that comic strip worthy people existed in the 24 hour gym that we go to, here in wonderful and crazy fit California.

I usually wear my headphones and don't hear much of what people say and while I have written about what some people do in the past, I have never heard what are best described as gym gems :)

Last night might as well have been a comic strip, featuring the following characters:

100 rep cable crunch PT

" Yeah man, I love this personal training job, before that I worked in a bar for a while, before that in real estate, but nothing is this good man, my client just lost 24 lbs in 3 weeks and I am like wow dude, the best next thing to this is being a doctor. Love the job, man..."

Formerly 236 lbs bodybuilder guy

"I lost so much weight last week, was very sick, couldn't eat man, so I am down to 225 lbs like a week later and everybody is saying man you look so huge...and I am like so much lighter. What's wrong with these guys?"

Manga hair wifebeater guy

" It's all about the protein, bro. You need to maintain your weight, this is at least 150 grams of protein and this is just to m-a-i-n-t-a-i-n. And alcohol dude, that stuff is catabolic. That means it eats your muscle, so if you drink it cancels all the muscle you made that week. And you must eat eggs, like egg whites and remove the yellows."

Spanish Diva

" So this is how you do this for your legs and they look great"

As she proceeds to do a romanian deadlift all wrong, even though her legs do look great.

I wish I could draw better :)

Buffet lunches, large waistlines and other jiggly thoughts...

This is a small dessert spoon. It's sitting on top of my coffee cup. The small dent in it is all I ate of that artificial tasting cube of jello, one of the desserts at a Sunday buffet. There wasn't really much choice, brownies, ice cream, strawberry mousse, muffins, apples and oranges.

There were all sorts of people at the buffet: families with macaroni and cheese eating kids, moms with lettuce laden plates, dads with two bowls of chili each...and then there were the really really large people next to our booth.

We were starved and exhausted from working out when we got there, so each of us got salad with plenty of cheese, soups with the most meat and some corn bread. We splurged on a piece of bread each, and I had two slices of orange for desert, while my partner had some ice cream. I did want to try the jello and you can tell how great it was from the picture of the leftover of my first and only serving of it. As I was trying to take that photo, I noticed that the girl from large couple sitting next to us was enjoying another serving of dessert, after ice cream. She was having 10 of these same jello things that I had just tried. They were the most nutritionally empty choice she could have made, given there were apples, ice cream and cottage cheese...so I wondered is it that people have no choice. I will admit that I love watching heavier people eat and shop because it gives me an insight into their choices and the power they have to choose what's good for them and what's not. This girl had already chosen a pink sugar drink, baked potato with chili and sour cream and cheese and now was digging into a second desert. Given the metabolic and mental complications most bigger people have to deal with, I can imagine those choices didn't help.

We can argue until tomorrow on the health and genetic origins of being heavier and having a hard time losing weight, but when you watch a couple engaging in the same behavior you can't ignore the strong relationship. Could we be the larger couple? Sure. We would just have to choose to not exercise and eat at much as we want at the buffets we go to. Oh, and I might need to learn to like jello.

Third World Squatter

We were at the annual JP fitness summit last week and looking over the pictures, Roland said I was a third world squatter. Squatting was never hard for me, pistol or no pistol, and believe it or not the only squat that makes me cry is the Bulgarian squat, but I hadn't noticed how I just dropped down into a squat every time I was tired and didn't feel like standing up. It made me read an excellent article over again, too, and also gave me the cruel idea of bottom up progressions of static low squat positions that my clients will surely hate once I make it back to Bulgaria.

No bottomless bowl

During a lecture at last week's Fitness Retreat we were discussing how much is enough to satisfy a craving. In the context of emotional eating, where we are filling a nearly bottomless pit, the answer is closer to infinity. And yes, every conscious eater finds the following to be true:

whether you have a little or a lot, you eventually come to the end

It could be the end of a piece of candy, a red vine, a bar of chocolate, a box of chocolates, the bottom of a box of ice cream, your safe stash of super duper healthy double organic raisins, or a bottle of juice, sooner or later, 50 or 500 or 2500 calories later, it's over, diet goals be damned.

In Mindless Eating, a brilliant book I picked up last year, they invariably show that if food is available and easy to see, it will be eaten. If you are one of those people that come home with the intent to eat clean only to finish off a bar of chocolate that was meant to last a week, consider the following no bottomless bowl laws:

1. Sooner or later, you've eaten it all. You'll digest it, assimilate it and some of it will go on top of your hard earned muscle. You'll see abs "some other time" as we say in Bulgarian. Knowing this, choose to beat the quantity, not the quality. Have a piece of chocolate, fully conscious that one more won't add more taste or more satisfaction, it will add more time to your goal. It will add more fat to your body. More dissatisfaction, more sacrifice. You don't want it THAT bad. Limit yourself to 10% of your calories for the day in happy foods and you've had enough.

2. Doughnuts aren't love. We all need to feel good. It just so happens that most feel good foods are not feel lean foods. Face the feelings that overwhelm you at moments when you want to eat. Find alternate ways to show yourself that you love your body and you give it the best it deserves. Some of us want to mask a feeling, by coating it with a thick layer of sugar, others want to make food disappear, because they want to make a problem disappear. Honestly, will it?

3. It's all in your head. Have you even spent the afternoon thinking of going home and destroying whatever is in the fridge. Taking a break. Doing it all for fun. Sometimes the thought of food excites us so much that it paints a picture we crave even more. Try this simple NLP exercise. Imagine your food like it's on a TV screen, watch it and think of how you are going to enjoy it. Then make the image black and white and shrink it to the bottom right of the screen until it's so tiny you almost can't see it. This simple tricks works great. If it doesn't work, go back to law 1 and use the 10% rule.

There is really no magic to beating emotional eating, sometimes it takes months and years to face the real issues behind it, if one is willing and patient, but I have seen the damage from food minimized, until real solutions present themselves.

Easter: West vs East

Easter comes a week later in Bulgaria. In the west of the Christian world, Easter lunches and early family dinners are long forgotten, digested, assimilated and worked off. Here, we are still battling the drama of Easter bread.

It's easy to spot the differences between the typical North American Easter meal and the Orthodox Christian traditional meal. Most people in the US, for example, will have one family gathering, where salad, ham and potatoes and possibly some cake will be present. Less of a feast than Thanksgiving and very similar to Christmas. If you happen to like Peeps, and end up roasting one of the poor things, you might have one before you've had enough.

Here, in the east, the nutritional drama begins with baking the traditional Easter cookies, usually on Thursday, ones rich in lard, butter and sunflower oil, sprinkled with sugar crystals and smelling so good, that all neighbors want to come and exchange recipes with you. Thus, Friday starts with coffee and one two or three of grandma's cookies. Saturdays see the making of traditional Easter bread, a yeast based fluffy, doughy treat, that is both sweet and not very filling, one that you can have a lot of and one that mates beautifully with butter and jam, dunks famously in milk and coffee and is best eaten with a bowl of fullfat plain yogurt. Since most families are serious about their Easter bread, they use the same dough to make mini scones and rolls and fill them with plum preserves, raisins, almonds and walnuts. These are best eaten warm out of the oven, and cause zero satiety. which is why two or more of them are usually what one eats while making Easter Bread. Dinner on Saturday is served after and before a piece of the aforementioned treat and Sunday breakfast is mostly the same bread with boiled eggs that fell victims of egg fights (in an egg fight, you just hit two eggs together, there is no throwing happening, much to the contrary of what some foreigners imagine). Sunday lunch is traditional lamb roast with rice stuffing, also followed by eggs and Easter bread. Of course, tea and coffee in the afternoon are accompanied by each faimily's traditional cookies and Easter breads, but now joined by their neighbors' and relatives's recipes too, since it's a tradition to bring those to people you love and care for...


To sum up, Orthodox Easter looks like your normal menu with the following additons:

Thursday night: warm cookies
Friday morning: cookies
Friday night in front of TV: cookies
Saturday: warm scones and rolls and Easter Bread
Sunday: now colder Easter Bread with butter and jam and plenty of eggs and lamb

After 4 days like this, most of my clients show up slightly bloated and needing extra training sessions to offset the calories they consumed.

Luckily, it's hard to eat over 4 lbs of Easter bread, which is how much it takes to put on 2 lbs of fat.

Commercial? All the way

I am grateful for the 4 years I spent working out in a personal training studio. But now I want to share something completely different.

The commercial gym, and it's wonderful absurdities:

1. The broomstick guy: only this time he is twisting left and right with a 22 lb barbell. And he's doing it sitting.

Better idea: try stabilizing your core through bracing your abs and actually rotate through the thoracic spine. You can do that without the stick, just so you know.

2. The incline chick: okay, I understand incline walking burns more calories that touring the mall, but c'mon girl, you must have noticed that walking upright where your whole body is leaning away from the treadmill isn't very natural. Let go of those handles and see yourself slide down like Borat in his YouTube treadmill debut.

Better idea: walk incline while leaning forward just a bit at the hip. Think climbing a mountain.

3. The machine tricep extension guy. It takes him a million seconds to adjust the pads to the right height, the weight to the right resistance and the form to something that doesn't look like a robot that was put together all wrong. He loads his triceps just enough to feel the burn, yeah right.

Better idea: push ups, and their variations using narrower positions for your hands. Works like a charm, every time. Bored? Try clap push ups. The go to the tricep machine guy and help him adjust his pads.

4. The behind the neck smith machine sitting shoulder press guy. WTH? There is no better way to shorten your neck muscles and overload your shoudler joints.

Better idea: standing military press. Works your whole body, spares your shoulder capsule.

I could go on and on and on. Just don't be that dude, or that girl. Try to justify the things you choose to do in the gym. If you can't, it might be time to get help.

Survival of the fittest

I've just been back from a half a day of work and running errands, that started at 6 a.m. and now, at 2 p.m. I am ready for a glass of hot tea, or better yet, a glass of hot whiskey, hoping it will bring my heart rate down. Why the physical over stimulation?

I start my day early, walking probably 100 feet to my car. I spend a serious amount of time uncovering it from thick snow. It's cold, the wind is blowing and I want to be somewhere else, like my bed, or at least a place with no winter. In my moonboots, I dig through snowdrifts to come back to my building, where I hastily fit in an early morning conversation, getting ready for work, grabbing meals in ziplocks, talking on the phone and getting dressed all at the same time. With 3 bags and a thermos of coffee, I make my way into the blizzard, get to my car and find it's covered again, so I uncover it one more time.

After about 10 minutes of snow and straining to find the path to drive in the tracks of other unfortunate cars, I finally stop shivering with cold and I can almost feel my hands on the wheel.

Half an hour of traffic jams and avoiding traffic accidents later, I arrive at the parking lot at the gym, far away from the entrance. Moonboot walkining again, and running for my late appointment with a client. Two workouts later, I run some errands, ending with shopping and carrying heavy grocery bags an unnamed distance to my covered in snow car...oh not again. I'm cold, tired from walking in the snow and whiny like a city girl.

I sit in my car, find that two or three contracts aren't going on time for me to meet some financial issues, talk to a few people that are wishy-washy, avoid some accidents, plough through more snow and dirt and after 100 feet of moonboot walking I am home.

I am officially wiped out and I still have half a work day ahead of me. Post office, workouts, lots of driving, picking up packages...

I am mentally and physically destroyed not by the tasks of today, but by the physical demands of this thick white cold natural mess that is this city. I think of myself as a wimp, but then think of оur ancestors, who only had the physical stressors, no meetings to be late for, no late payments, no deadlines and definitely no cars to uncover.

The paradox is that I am actually in shape to meet the demands of uncovering cars, walking through thick snow, facing the wind and doing it a few times today. What happens with all the people who never exercise? Your average Sofia computer bound guy?

I have no clue, and I hope I never find out for myself.

I've been tagged

My initial urge to complain about it is quickly overtaken by the feeling that this is fun. So here it is, my blog tag randomness.

I've been tagged by Roland, whose blog must now be moved to the "people who chain letter" section in my sidebar. No hurry though, he can stay in the Friendship section for a few more days.

The Rules of this game go like this:

• Link back to the person who tagged you
• Share 7 random or weird facts about yourself
• Tag 7 people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs
• Let each person know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog

1. I started drinking coffee when I was 13. There are some studies that show that coffee consumption may stunt growth, but since I grew to a notable 5 ft 3' I think we can cross that out as BS. My first coffee was boiled on the stove, and I drank espresso with a passion until I moved out on my own. After finding that filter coffee is something you can have lots and lots of, I quickly switched. There are some very expensive coffees that I find disturbingly nasty. My favorite blend is Jacobs Monarch, very simple and delicious, and I tend to like Blue Mountain Coffee, more for the origins than for the taste.

2. I was blond for the past 9 years. Going back to brunette was extremely depressing and stressful. For one, none of my outfits looked the same anymore and then hailing a cab became way harder. On a different note, I've had more people listening when I talk.

3. I own a pink computer. It was love at first sight at Best Buy. While most girls cringe at the girliness of it, many end up staring at it with the same eyes they stare at Josh Holloway, knowing they want him, but are too shy to confess. My next computer will be light brown. With flowers.

4. Growing up, I wanted to be an artist or a writer. I painted. Then I wrote. Then I became neither. Now that I want to be a full time writer, all my family members have taken on a : "she's so cute, oh...." attitude, maybe as a flashback to how they viewed me about a quarter century ago with my cute little notebooks scribbled up and down with illegible gibberish.


5. I suffer very well and very deeply. Being broken and put together on a daily basis is sort of an emotional hobby of mine, one that I have very well overcompensated with love for small things and true amazement at the craziness and beauty that life is.

6. I have order disorder. I like things to look nice, clean and organized. My closet is the only exception to this rule because of number of vertical challenges that usually end with a pile of t-shirts devastatingly scattered on the floor after the bottom one had been swiftly removed, as if from under of orderly deck of cards, which are no more. I have friends that swear I am as bad as Monica on Friends. "I take pride in that", I answer back.

7. The only dog that's ever bitten me was my very own Pinchi, a white and brown cocker spaniel who lived to the old age of 17 and passed along two years ago. He has attacked and bitten me many times, and my most memorable scars are on my feet and forearms. The places he guarded with ferocious ambition were his bowl of dog food and a particular armchair we were both very fond of. My blood spilled over that same armchair many times. Those are some fond memories.

Oh, now I have to tag 5 more people....oh man....

Emil Genov - also known as Emo Aerobikata....do it buddy

Petya and Kyle - a couple of unceasing inspiration, I can't wait to see 7 facts about you guys

Vanichka (Vissi) - a person who made chocolate the new diet food

Mr. Fass - you biomechanical genius, is there something we don't know about you?

Dianka - my favorite photographer in the whole world

100% natural

Double muscle, mmm...some bodybuilders would so take you up on that...

I think it's just scary how "natural" selection produces animals that weigh over a ton...

I have a few questions now...

Do you think they "naturally" select the guys who take care of the cows? It takes a certain kind of attitude to feel good about "shaving the animal to expose the muscle"

Does such "natural" selection happen in the human world? Doubt it.

Where does natural end, is it at the point where they mention artificial insemination or is it where we add the preservatives after we've got a hold of the "lean cuts" ?

Oh, and if the Belgian Blue was grass fed, how many acres of land would it take to grow one in 100 years?

My Math Sucks

and other random Jan 2 thoughts, some of which related to fitness and nutrition...


My math sucks, and it has sucked, my whole life. I got through high school all right, with a GPA of 6.0 (of a max of 6.0) because I got my math done by the guys, in exchange for A+ worthy argumentative essays in English as a second language. Calculators have always been there for me and before that we had these:


So here I am, googling "lbs to kg" trying to free my head of the three digit monster that was my weight on the scale...this morning, that is the morning of Jan 2, 2009, 6 months after I stopped working out.

I will spare myself (and you) the detailed story of WHY I stopped working out, since it's heavy on drama and even heavier on Kleenex, and I will just say, in the words of my shrink, that "that's life" and "sometimes things happen in the growing up process that may leave us quite surprised at who we really are" and "that to build something new you need to destroy the old to make space for it". One ended marriage, one ended business, one ended home, and one ended year later, I am ready to move on from "having fat is interesting, I've never had that before", to "okay life is not kicking my ass anymore, so it's about time to step on the scale..."

The scale said 134.6. If that was metric, I would be dead, or a whale...but it's not...so I'll likely live through this, at least until I find out what it is in metric. Then I might have an aneurism, because...

I know that's a lot, I know women that weight that and they pay me well to help them lose fat, so it must be a lot....I know that's a lot, because my very baggy linen pants are not so baggy anymore. I know it's a lot because I was 126 in spring and I was 120 in Cayman, and I was 118 when I was small and happy with my legs... I know it's a lot, because I only see the outline of my abs if the light's right and I know it's a lot because I really really haven't been looking or caring. I've been busy surviving. When life looks you in the face while its ugly twin sister is kicking your butt, you don't really care about fat. When you don't know if you slept or ate or if it's Monday or Friday, you really don't remember what calipers were either...

But I'm not surviving anymore, so it was time to look and find out. It's not like I freaked out until I found that google converter and finally got the number down to 61. something...and went...****, that's a lot for a small chickie.

Or is it?

My body's been very kind to have packed the fat well and pretty. I went through a huge hormonal crash where my pituitary took a long vacation and was not signalling my body to do anything but : "ground". So it grounded me. The months of July, August and September were months of imminent extinction for a few million hazelnuts and a few hundred balls of mozzarella. I didn't eat bad foods, I just ate more good foods than my bed ridden dragging remains of a body could deal with. And my mind was starving for answers, so they came ready, in neat little bags of nuts, packets of cheese and what I believe is the biggest jar of all natural peanut butter that ever inhabited the otherwise clean shelves of my tiny kitchen. I believe I put on over 10 lbs in 2 weeks in the form of very hard and not at all flabby fat. Most of my friends never noticed. I did, but I just rolled with it (no pun intended).

So is 61.something kilograms a lot...I don't know. Compared to when? Compared to who?

I did start working out a few weeks ago and to my amazement I can still do chin ups and pull ups. They come in singles, but they come. I can still deadlift 150 lbs, well below my 220 potential, but who cares...and I can still hold a plank...well. sort of.

But I've been so cured of the " I must" mantality now...I am so not willing to take the pressure or losing 1 lb a week for a contest, for my work, for a client, because I need to take it slow, enjoy it and make it work for me and my happiness.

So why am I freaking out, now in metric? Because I know how much work it's going to take. I know how much time it's going to take...to do this...

S

L

O

W

I am totally willing to give myself time. Take it slow. Freak out slow.

So I need to lose anywhere from 10 to 15 lbs. 10 sounds very good right now. 1 lb a week is 3 months. 0.5 lb a week is 6 months. I like this. I am not freaking out anymore. I need to google 0.5 lbs to kg to calm down even more. My math sucks, remember?

I am calm and happy. I have faith. I have no plan, since my body knows what to do. My appetite is very normal, getting me around 1300-1500 cals on most days. I fast some days, when I'm not hungry, so that works great. I am not doing anything with a goal in mind this time, I find this to be a great chance to look at things like we do at natural and spontaneous language acquisition, one word, one phrase at a time, until the paper doesn't look like random gibberish anymore, but foreign words start to clump into meaningful phrases, titles make you smile and you start buying the local paper in that once foreign language you now speak, without cramming grammar for days on end, very much like we cram workouts or torture ourselves with diet, just to prove that we're worthy of calling ourselves thin, pretty, strong, sexy...it's all an ego trip, like learning Spanish in 3 months. Can I do it...sure...will I...hell no :)

So I wrap this up with the same lack of urgency to change my body that I feel towards learning the language of Cervantes, and taken by the same craziness that Don Quixote might have experienced not knowing what's ahead of him, but knowing he's going there, all ramifications aside.