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My Aunt sent me this just recently. It’ll give you a good laugh!

A WEEK AT THE GYM

Dear Diary,

For my 50th birthday,which I will be celebrating on October 10th, my daughter Jillian (the dear) purchased a week of personal training at the Body Rocks for me. Although I am still in great shape since being a high school football cheerleader 33 years ago, I decided it would be a good idea to go ahead and give it a try.

I called the club and made my reservations with a personal trainer
named Nancy, who identified herself as a 26-year-old aerobics instructor and model for athletic clothing and swim wear. My daughter seemed pleased with my enthusiasm to get started! The club encouraged me to keep a diary to chart my progress.

MONDAY : Started my day at 6:00 a.m. Tough to get out of bed, but found it was well worth it when I arrived at the health club to find Nancy waiting for me. She is something of a Greek goddess - with blond hair, dancing eyes and a dazzling white smile.

Woo Hoo!! Nancy gave me a tour and showed me the machines. I enjoyed watching the skillful way in which she conducted her aerobics class after my workout today. Very inspiring!

Nancy was encouraging as I did my sit-ups, although my gut was already aching from holding it in the whole time she was around. This is going to be a FANTASTIC week-!!

TUESDAY :
I drank a whole pot of coffee, but I finally made it out the door.
Nancy made me lie on my back and push a heavy iron bar into the air - then she put weights on it! My legs were a little wobbly on the treadmill, but I made the full mile. Nancy’s rewarding smile made it all worthwhile. I feel GREAT-!! It’s a whole new life for me.

WEDNESDAY :
The only way I can brush my teeth is by laying the toothbrush on the counter and moving my mouth back and forth over it. I believe I have a hernia in both pectorals. Driving was OK as long as I didn’t try to steer or stop. I parked on top of Hummer in the club parking lot.

Nancy was impatient with me, insisting that my screams bothered other club members. Her voice is a little too perky for early in the morning and when she scolds, she gets this nasally whine that is VERY annoying.

My chest hurt when I got on the treadmill, so Nancy put me on the stair ‘monster’. Why the h*ll would anyone invent a machine to
simulate an activity rendered obsolete by elevators? Nancy told me it would help me get in shape and enjoy life. She said some other sh*t too.

THURSDAY :
Nancy was waiting for me with her vampire-like teeth exposed as her thin, cruel lips were pulled back in a full snarl. I couldn’t help
being a half an hour late - it took me that long to tie my shoes. Nancy took me to work out with dumbbells. When she was not looking, I ran and hid in the restroom. She sent another skinny b*tch, Leslie, to find me.

Then, as punishment, she put me on the rowing machine - which I sank.

FRIDAY :
I hate that b*tch Nancy more than any human being has ever hated any other human being in the history of the world. Stupid, skinny, anemic, anorexic little cheerleader! If there was a part of my body I could move without unbearable pain, I would beat her with it.

Nancy wanted me to work on my triceps. I don’t have any triceps! And if you don’t want dents in the floor, don’t hand me the D*mn barbells or anything that weighs more than a sandwich. The treadmill flung me off and I landed on another skinny b*cth, CJ the yoga instructor.

Why couldn’t it have been someone softer, like an accountant or IT expert?

SATURDAY :
Nancy left a message on my answering machine in her grating, shrilly voice wondering why I did not show up today. Just hearing her made me want to smash the machine with my planner. However, I lacked the strength to even use the TV remote and ended up catching 11 straight hours of the Weather Channel.

SUNDAY :
I’m having the Church van pick me up for services today so I can go and thank GOD that this week is over. I will also pray that next year my daughter Jillian (the little b*tch) will choose a gift for me that is fun- like a root canal or a hysterectomy. I still say if God had wanted me to bend over, he would have sprinkled the floor with diamonds!!!

Do you guys watch The Biggest Loser? In case you didn’t know, it’s a reality show that brings 12 people to a weight loss ranch and puts them on a weight loss program. The contestants compete against one another to see who can lose the most weight.

I’ve watched a few episodes here and there. I admit it…I do watch some reality TV, like Extreme Makeover Home Edition, The Biggest Loser, and The Amazing Race. Most of the other ones aren’t really my style, although I did unfortunately get sucked into watching The Bachelor last season…(it won’t happen again).

Anyway, I think the biggest loser is a good show. It’s good to see people whose are obese be empowered to do something about it. And I think putting the show on television helps people all over the country to believe in themselves and their ability to achieve their own weight loss goals.

That being said, let’s talk about the reality of the Biggest Loser. Most of the contestants, on average, weight about 287 lbs., & not unlike the 60% of Americans who struggle with obesity, they have a lot of weight to lose. That similarity between the contestants weights and that of most Americans is about the only “reality” of The Biggest Loser.

The contestants on The Biggest Loser are away from their families, their jobs, and all their home responsibilities while they are at the ranch. Unless I missed the episode where they clean the toilets, I the only thing they do while on the show is workout, eat portion sized meals, learn about nutrition, and get some type of psychological coaching during their “off time”.

Let’s be honest about it, most of the people struggling with obesity in this country have jobs, homes, and a family that they must take care of. They don’t have time to work out for 4 hours a day like many of the contestants on the show do prior to the “weigh in”. They don’t have access to the best nutrition experts in the country, they don’t have a personal trainer living at their house & forcing them to get out of bed and get to the gym.

The contestants on The Biggest Loser are isolated from everything in the world while they focus soley on weight loss. They are in their own little world, it’s not “reality” at all.

The reality is that if you aren’t on the show and you want to lose weight, you have to find a way to transform your entire lifestyle from healthy to unhealthy and manage all the other aspects of life at the same time. That is the real challenge that most people in America–and all over the globe–are facing.

It’s a big challenge, but I think The Biggest Loser is actually a part of helping people face that challenge. People can realte to the contestants and their struggles with obesity and it inspires them to achieve similar things. That’s why I like it. I love seeing people achieve their weight loss goals and inspiring others to do the same.

If you have the time, check out this audition video for the biggest loser. It’s cute…you’ll laugh and you’ll be touched by this woman’s reason for wanting to be a member of the biggest loser cast.

Today I did a Google search for lower back exercises. If you are familiar with searching on Google, you’ll know that “lower back exercises” (in quotes) and lower back exercises (no quotes) will deliver slightly different results when you enter them into the search engine. The reason I did the search is because I like to check out other fitness sites and blogs around the web, it makes me better.

Unfortunately, what I found today was kind of a let down. I guess I just expected more from Google and the Internet since things are so advanced these days, but what I’m about to share just goes to show you that you can’t trust everything you read.

If you type “lower back exercises” into Google, the second site listed, which is the site that is supposed to have second highest relevance on the Internet, will show up. This little link was the source of today’s let down.

I clicked on the site, assuming I would see some really fantastic lower back exercises and maybe even learn something. No way…4 out of the 10 exercises shown are not even lower back exercises, and a few of the exercises given have a very high risk to benefit ratio, especially if you are trying to do any type of rehabilitation for your back or have previously experienced back injuries. I was totally disappointed and it made me mad!

This type of thing really bothers me, basically because I know there’s a lot of unsuspecting people who want to learn about fitness and specifically lower back exercises, but instead they get directed toward this site (which I won’t share my true feelings about). The reason this site is rated so highly in Google is because the site owner has done a great job optimizing it for certain keywords that are searched on a regular basis in Google, NOT because they are an authority on lower back exercises.

It just goes to show that you have to check the credentials of the source your referring to and take your time in trusting them (including me). There is no way I would take fitness advice from this site. The unfortunate thing is that this is just one of many sites out there giving half true information to the unsuspecting public…I wonder how many more sites like this are online???

p.s.
If I ever post something you don’t understand or would like more information about, please let me know and I’ll do my best to clarify it for you. I am very experienced in the fitness industry, but I certainly don’t know every single thing there is to know about it and sometimes I am wrong. So please, don’t be afraid to ask questions or call me out once in a while.

I’m not sure if I expressed it or not, but if you happened to read my recent post on the Spartan ‘300′ workout you may have noticed that I thought it was cool to find something new and challenging to add to my workout routine.

Since writing the post and reading a few comments about it, I’ve noticed that this workout is being searched by people all over the web (about 500-1000 searches per day I think, if my estimations are correct). It must be the fact that the actors all had six packs combined with the article published in Men’s Health.

I recently learned another tid-bit about this workout. I received a comment on the blog about the ‘300′ workout that I couldn’t quite understand, so I visited the commentors website. There I read his full article, which was pretty interesting I might add, about the ‘300′ workout being simply a fitness test for the actors…not a workout. The writer says the media misinterpreted what was a fitness test as a workout because they wanted a story.

Although I don’t know if it’s true or not (I never read the Men’s Health article because I can’t stand that magazine), I think this type of stuff happens more often than we realize. Our media is sales driven, the writers jobs depend on ad sales and ad sales depend on selling magazines. The fact that money controls almost everything the media says isn’t such a big deal, except for the fact that we as a society seem to trust what they say so implicitly. In reality, who knows what is being embellished or suppressed. Ok, enough of that speech, I guess we have to be careful on what to believe.

Whether or not it was a fitness test or a workout, I tried my own variation of the ‘300′ workout and I think it’s a great way to add variety to your routine. I personally don’t care too much about following what the actors in the movie ‘300′ did or didn’t do to get six-pack abs. In fact, I’m sure they had to do a lot more than just a daily workout to get the physiques they showed off in the move.

I enjoyed reading about the ‘300′ workout/fitness test either way I’ll still ad some of the exercises to my routine. So thanks to Men’s Health for showing me a great way to stay in shape and challenging myself in new and different ways.