Category Archives: take a look at me now

March of Dimes — March for Babies

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WE DID IT! I walked 6.2 miles with a small group of co-workers to raise funds for the March of Dimes March for Babies. It was such a great time. The local chapter’s fam­ily ambas­sadors told us their story of tri­umph over heart­break of hav­ing twin girls pre­ma­turely. Heart wrench­ing yet so inspiring.

The sun came out in full force by the time of the kick off. The wind had been cold and strong. It was at our backs most of the way. Hooray! Just like you’d wish for such an occasion.

Over 20 years ago I had made the same walk (dif­fer­ent route) and it just about killed me!!  It’s weird that I was much younger yet I was left suf­fer­ing from leg cramp­ing and sore­ness for not only days after the walk, but weeks to months for the effect it had on my feet., knees and hips.

Here I am at age 45. The after effects are com­pletely unlike that of my pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence. Twenty four hours later and I can hardly tell I walked 6.2 miles at an aver­age rate of 3.2 mph. Instead of wish­ing a bus would come by and pick up or run me over to fin­ish the job, I was feel­ing the sen­sa­tion in my legs that I had a hearty work out.

Prior to start­ing the walk the DJ played songs that were right up my guilty plea­sure dance lane: Toni Basil’s OH MICKEY came on and I danced like it was 1983! One day you might find it on YouTube com­pli­ments of an onlooker. Surely it was a sight to behold for any­one who didn’t know me. My co-walkers seemed to enjoy wit­ness­ing my play­ful side.

Here are some pho­tos from my Face­book album. It’s open to the pub­lic. It should not require you to have a Face­book account to view them.  Since we were walk­ing for an opti­cal retailer I bought every­one a pair of nov­elty sun­glasses to wear. A lit­tle kitsch goes a long way!

220604 10150162435439508 788529507 6308030 6419528 o1 180x300 March of Dimes March for Babies

    One year ago

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    One year ago today, March 27, my son woke up early to help me assess my fit­ness level. I was about to embark upon yet another quest to lose weight. He kept track of how many reps I could do on the first dvd of Power 90 with Tony Hor­ton. He helped me snap before pho­tos and took my bicep mea­sure­ments. In addi­tion, my eat­ing habits would dras­ti­cally undergo mod­i­fi­ca­tion. Gone were the fast food meals and diet soda. Michi’s Lad­der became my guide­post to health­ier eating.

    Fast for­ward a year. What has changed? Well, the quest isn’t so much about the num­ber on the scale or the size stated on the tag of my pants. While those are great mea­sures for how much weight I’m los­ing, they aren’t what this is about anymore.

    In the course of a year I have learned a lot about myself. It hasn’t sim­ply been about putting down the fork and press­ing play on the myr­iad of work­outs dvds I own. Through shar­ing expe­ri­ences with oth­ers who’ve lost weight and kept it off, I’ve man­aged to dig deeper men­tally and emo­tion­ally. While I have not pin­pointed when in my life I became a food addict, I have rec­og­nized that it’s a mon­u­men­tal issue. Like a drug addict, I can have a relapse at any given moment.

    I explained in my post of March 26, Get Seri­ous, that I had aban­doned lis­ten­ing to the wise voices that told me not to eat the chips or not to grab for the sec­ond piece of pizza. The jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of work­ing out per­mit­ted me to eat what­ever my addic­tion wanted to consume.

    You see, it’s a con­stant strug­gle. Instead of hav­ing an angel on one shoul­der and the devil on the other, I have a skinny girl on one side. She can eat any­thing she wants and never gains weight. She’s evil. On the other side is the strug­gling chubby girl who works out and eats to fuel her body … an ever shrink­ing chubby girl, mind you. She rep­re­sents the hard work it takes to lose weight, build mus­cle and increase energy. Clearly, she’s the good voice.

    Today, I recom­mit to that deter­mi­na­tion I had a year ago. I’m flick­ing that skinny bitch off my shoul­der so she can no longer shout and ‘woohoo!’ in my ear like a drunken coed at a frat party.

    There were months when I was so dili­gent. Forty-five pounds do not mag­i­cally dis­ap­pear.  When I bagged up all the size 20–22 clothes, it wasn’t because I had high hopes they’d never fit me again. I did it because those clothes DID NOT FIT. They were also reminders that I could go back to that. It’s not wise to keep the past ever present. Return­ing to that size is not an option. It’s so cathar­tic to phys­i­cally load up the past and remove it. Gone! No return.

    I want to thank all of you who’ve encour­aged me along the way and shared your own sto­ries of tri­umph. You’ve shown me that we’re all human and we stum­ble. No weight loss endeavor is not with­out a few trip ups. Set backs are inevitable, but get­ting over the hur­dles is eas­ier when you have help.

    Let me know where you are and how you’re doing. Visit my Face­book Maris­sol­ogy page. My wall is open!! Remem­ber you’re not alone nor should you think you have to do it alone.

      Burning Biscuits

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      Burn­ing bis­cuits isn’t about cook­ing. It’s about scorch­ing the flub­bery goo off my butt and thighs! There’s a new craze sweep­ing through Face­book and it is called Poke 4 Fit­ness. If you’re on Face­book and you want to make me work it, then let’s do this thing! You can find me in two ways. My per­sonal pro­file page (you’ll have to friend request me to make it hap­pen. Send a mes­sage along with the request) or the offi­cial Maris­sol­ogy Fan page. Click ‘like’ and then just post to my wall the word POKE!  Once I com­plete the exer­cise I will poke you back.

      Sun­day: 10 squats per poke
      Mon­day: 2 (l,r,l,r turn l,r,l,r) sets of lunges per poke
      Tues­day: 10 jump­ing jacks per poke
      Wednes­day: One Dreyarol      l per poke
      Thurs­day: Plank hold for 1 minute per poke
      Fri­day: 10 wacky jacks per poke
      Sat­ur­day: Bowler’s lunge 5/leg per poke

      All of that is in addi­tion to my reg­u­lar work­outs. This is a fun way to be account­able. Plus, for a food addict like myself, it will keep me occu­pied and away from the refrig­er­a­tor and cupboards.

      poke 231x300 Burning Biscuits

        Yoga X Marks the Spot

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        yoga Yoga X Marks the Spot

        P90X Yoga X is not your mother’s yoga. Oh heck no! When you’re not accus­tomed to doing much more than the req­ui­site stretch­ing prior to and after a work­out, this disc is a work­out in itself. NINETY min­utes of stretch­ing, bal­anc­ing — OK, most of my time was spent try­ing not to top­ple over. It’s tough if you’ve never done a lick of yoga before. Oh sure, I’ve done a cou­ple down­ward dogs, moun­tain poses, sun salu­ta­tions and war­rior pose one and two. But not all at once and one right after the other.

        I con­fess to stop­ping half way through because yoga requires a lot more than flex­i­bil­ity, sta­mina and bal­ance. It requires a clear head. Hence, my biggest obsta­cle. Crawl inside my brain for a minute and you’ll know that it never shuts down. True relax­ation is dif­fi­cult for me.  Next week I will get another chance to chal­lenge myself with this work­out. In the mean­time, I’ll con­tinue with each work­out on P90X accord­ing to the clas­sic pro­gram AND I’m going to prac­tice switch­ing off the remote con­trol in my brain.

          Ten Things: Fashion Fatalities

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          Hey there! I have a pretty lousy track record of actu­ally being con­sis­tent when I try weekly fea­tures. I’m like a lit­tle kinder­gart­ner who requires a note being pinned to her shirt.  How­ever, I will try to make this standard. 

          Today on this fine Thurs­day — actu­ally, it’s still dark out­side so I have no clue what the weather is like but let us assume the day will be delight­ful — our fea­tured list of ten things is:

          Top Ten Per­sonal Fash­ion Faux Pas 

          1.  Head to toe, skin tight cotton/Lycra ensem­ble: Oh dear God! How was I per­mit­ted to leave the house? I wasn’t going to the gym. It was my out­fit to go out on the town with friends.  Not Kanka­kee, either. Chicago!! With my big thighs and hips (even two decades ago).  The bold print was intended to dis­guise the sins of the body, but as any­one knows, if you’re not rail thin you do not wear cloth­ing that fits like a sec­ond skin.

          2.  Line-backer shoul­der pads:  It was an ‘80s thing and we can thank the female cast of DYNASTY for this insan­ity.  I’d wear over­sized shirts with thick shoul­der pads and leg­gings or a pen­cil skirt.  A hippy girls dream, those broad shoul­ders were. Oh

          yeah. Totally threw peo­ple off that I had big hips hidden.

          3.  Asym­met­ric ear­rings: Big dan­gle on one ear; just a stud on the other.  It looked like maybe I got dis­tracted while get­ting dressed.  I should men­tion that I had 3 holes in each ear and often added a cuff on the ear adorned with an enor­mous warrior-like shield.  Oh, yeah. Smokin’ hot.

          4. My wed­ding dress: Oh, it was a sweet, ivory, Jes­sica McClin­tock lace num­ber.  No alter­ations required. I just never should have worn it because I never should have been mar­ried … to that guy any­way. Per­haps this should be on a top ten list of biggest life mis­takes. Ha!

          mullet2 Ten Things: Fashion Fatalities

          5. Super short hair: Some have accused me of hav­ing a she-mullet. When tucked behind my ears, it did indeed look mul­letish.  Duran Duran was my inspiration.

          6.  Bleached out hair:  First of all, it was stu­pid because I did it for a dude.  Yeah, dumb. It nearly fried my hair because I did it myself.  In a day. My super dark brown, very long hair switched to blond in a day. Look for this on a list of biggest life mis­takes. As soon as he dumped me for hav­ing a big ass, I went back to a more nor­mal color. **we dated 3 months and truth be known, he broke up with me because he was hot for an ex-stripper he met online.

          7.  High waist pants:  I have a short torso and big boobs. NEVER! And I mean NEVER com­bine that with high waist pants no mat­ter how cute they are. These par­tic­u­lar ones were of the ‘paper bag’ vari­ety. Very ‘80s. I also had a skirt with the same style of waist band.  Super baggy through the thigh and uber tight at the ankle. Seri­ously a hippy girl’s enemy. Think Jeanie/Jennifer Grey in “Fer­ris Bueller’s Day Off.”

          8. Dresses with ankle socks and loafers:  Elaine on Sein­feld comes to mind when I think of this combo.  Flouncy almost grandma style dress with white ankle socks and comfy loafers.  Ugh! dreadful.

          9.  Over­sized, dec­o­rated sweat­shirts: I was bit­ten by the craft­ing bug and I painted, glit­tered and bedaz­zled any­thing I could get my hands on.  Sweat­shirts were cheap and with con­sid­er­a­tion that I worked in an ele­men­tary school at that time, they were on trend.  Noth­ing says sexy like a big, baggy sweat­shirt topped with mom jeans and white Keds.

          10. Dude clothes:  Sal­va­tion Army, sec­ond hand finds. Men’s jack­ets, trench coats, cam­ou­flage britches.  There was a time when Annie Lennox’s androg­yny appealed to me.  This eye sore fash­ion faux pas came along with the super short hair style.  Just for fun, toss a fedora on my nog­gin’ and a skinny tie around my neck.  Really? Really.

            Breaking the chain of pain

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            It was a rule in the house­hold that no one — at least the girls — was allowed to date before turn­ing six­teen.  Oh sure, of the five girls in our fam­ily I know at least one caused an uproar to change that law. Another may have dated but did so qui­etly under parental radar.  As for me, I usu­ally adhered to rules rather than cause a ruckus or ques­tion author­ity.  Being the youngest afforded me many lessons learned by proxy.

            As a youn­gin’ I always had friends who were male.  That’s not an uncom­mon sit­u­a­tion.  Once in junior high school boys became less appeal­ing for friend­ship and moreso for ‘going with’.  Nat­u­rally, the fam­ily rule of 16 kept me from openly pur­su­ing a boy to date.  I devel­oped crushes.  These would be big crushes on boys who pos­si­bly didn’t know I was alive let alone like me in return.  But, I’d spend each morn­ing primp­ing in hopes that I’d catch the object of my affec­tions glance.  Even if effec­tive it would have been point­less.  It wasn’t per­mit­ted and I surely couldn’t go behind my par­ents backs.  Lucky for me there was noth­ing to fear as no boys approached me with such inter­est.  I was their friend or some­one who was stu­pid enough to let them copy my spelling homework.

            High school rolled around and along with it came new faces and boys who were taller than me. Rule of 16 hung over me like a dooms­day cloud.  Crushes came and went. Most last­ing longer than nec­es­sary.  Because there was not a snowball’s chance in hell that I’d sneak around, I man­aged to become infat­u­ated with boys who were impos­si­ble to attain.  They all had girl­friends or were wildly pop­u­lar; out of my league.  I was a choir geek who still lis­tened to Barry Manilow while Pink Floyd THE WALL was all the rage.  If any­one had a crush on me it wasn’t made known.  Over and over this pat­tern repeated itself.  I was always told that this would help me develop health­ier rela­tion­ships when the time came to date.  That sug­ges­tion has proven to be com­pletely untrue.  What seems to have hap­pened is that I gain inter­est and infat­u­a­tion with men who are entirely unsuit­able or unat­tain­able.  It’s seems to have reached addic­tion proportions. 

            thinking+of+him Breaking the chain of painI know this makes me look like a com­plete dip­shit and a fool, but this the­ory came to me while I was doing dishes only min­utes ago. I dated a lot in the first part of this decade. I was, for lack of a bet­ter term, a ser­ial dater.  In other words, noth­ing blos­somed from a cou­ple of din­ners and a movie.  Since I returned to Kanka­kee in ’05 my dat­ing life has been six feet under. There were a cou­ple of mishaps two or three years ago. I wrote about them, nat­u­rally.  In that time of dat­ing doom, I have expe­ri­enced infat­u­a­tions only expe­ri­ence the famil­iar sting of unre­quited or unre­al­ized feel­ings.  A cou­ple of them have been long dis­tance. A recipe for fail­ure in this ‘must have it now’ soci­ety.  And one was a long lost love com­pletely and entirely unavail­able.  That hurt the most for a myr­iad of rea­sons that I can’t go into. It just did and now I have to get over it.

            This is where a new chap­ter in my life must begin.  Learn­ing what emo­tional fool­ish­ness has held me back and mak­ing cer­tain I do not repeat it again.  Einstein’s def­i­n­i­tion on insan­ity is doing the same thing over and over and expect­ing dif­fer­ent results.

              Fo’ realz, yo!

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              The sto­ries you see late at night while your hand infil­trates the con­fines of the Chee­tos bag are true.  The results are gen­uine.  They come from hard work and ded­i­ca­tion.  The sub­jects in the suc­cess sto­ries are acces­si­ble. The train­ers are avail­able for real time chats.  BEACHBODY is the real deal, y’all.  How do I know? I’m one of those suc­cess sto­ries (in the mak­ing). The peo­ple you see on the dvds are my social net­work friends.  The coaches who sup­port mem­bers of Team Beach­body are also my sup­port squadron.

              What can I do to help you become the next Beach­body suc­cess story?

              Beach­body Fit­ness sam­pler video