Melkor

Ooookay, sure, constraints empower creativity but I'm not sure most people wanted to be *quite* this creative.

Melkor updated their business hours.

I lost the post I was going to share from a therapist that made this point; so I had to make my own graphic. I wish I hadn't lost it because it was much more eloquent but the gist of her post was that everything is hard right now because we're all here. In survival mode.

And as long as we're under legitimate threat where the only thing we can do is hide everything above "survival" is going to be difficult to impossible to focus on.

Working out? Home Schooling? Esteem or self-actualization - higher up the pyramid. Cooking, sleeping? Physiological, so it's something you *can* do.

Even your family will get on your nerves from time to time, because they're up the scale from survival.

I'm annoyed that I lost the post from the actual therapist who explained in great detail why trying to fake normalcy in an actual honest to god crisis isn't a virtue, because trying to recreate it from memory I'm sure I'm missing a *lot*, but the gist of it was that in crisis mode is not time to set expectations of yourself that are hard even at the best of times. This is not the time to learn Latin or the oboe.

Losing weight for the wedding is about performing the role of the Bride for the wedding guests - but f**k those guys and gals, you're not marrying them.

It's more important to avoid injury so you can keep training than it is to max out on the results from any single training session, so I don't like any training approach that advocates finding out exactly how much you can train before you get hurt. Because that generally involves training until you *do* get hurt and then backing down. I prefer keeping a safety margin during training.

I don't want to *be* right, I want to *get it* right. If you see something where you think I got it wrong, for Ghod's sake, tell me. *Mumble* years in, and not a week goes by when I don't learn something new. There are opinions I had ten years back or *last week* that I will freely admit weren't actually correct or the whole story.

Speaking of - have you changed your mind on something lately?

Note to Self: the coffee maker is more likely to produce coffee if you actually push the On button.

It's not a new supplement or even a big secret, but the most basic intervention that most people succeed with is to add an apple a day to your diet someplace. There's a study done a few years back that showed just doing that caused a modest weight loss of about half a pound a month. Nothing earth-shattering, but it's a small enough thing that it's a doable first step towards the long-term goal of increasing overall fruit and veggie intake.

Huh. I like this book. And now it's on sale for $1.99

The New Rules of Lifting for Women: Lift Like a Man, Look Like a Goddess In The New Rules of Lifting for Women, authors Lou Schuler, Cassandra Forsythe and Alwyn Cosgrove present a comprehensive strength, conditioning and nutrition plan destined to revolutionize the way women work out. All the latest studies prove that strength training, not aerobics, provides the key...

Huh. But how do you bottle and sell that if you're a supplement company?

"It's natural" would be a whole lot more reassuring if you didn't know that Mother Nature tests your survival skills by trying her level best to kill you.

Something David Dellanave wrote really struck a chord with me, "Constrains don't stifle creativity, they empower it". It's one thing to do Generic Workout Number One in a fully equipped gym, that's fairly straightforward - just follow the directions. The fun lies in looking around your home and working out how you can use your furniture, pots, pans, and stray small children to get roughly the same outcome as you would from a fully equipped commercial gym.

Your problem isn't knowing what to do, most people have a reasonable idea of what they *should* be doing. It's actually doing it that's the problem. Because you're trying to do *all* of it at once instead of doing one thing at a time.

Stop calling it Super, it's just food.

Have I mentioned lately that I'm BPFA-affiliated?

How to Make Any Workout More Body Positive Celebrate – don't punish – your body through exercise.

Monday the gym will be full of new people. I'm gonna smile and nod at them and then call the police because I work out at home and how the hell did they get into my living room? But if you're in a gym open to more people than yourself, skip that last step.

And today in superheroics.

Amazing Video Shows Boxing Girl Destroy Tree Nine-year-old boxing prodigy Evnika Sadvakasova stars in this remarkable clip showing her literally destroying the bark of a birch tree with a fast and furio...

Some days going back to your roots is fun. Pictured, my very first type of dumbbell

If you aren't competing your training can be fun, exiting and varied. If you *are* competing, your training should be boring, safe and with as little variety as possible, because injury risk in competition is bad enough without compounding it by taking risks in training.

Intuition can also be thought of as unconscious competence at a skill or area of knowledge. So "intuitive eating" should really be called "competent eating"; and if you think you need some instruction in how to be a competent eater, you should see Brenda.

As I keep telling people, what you eat is not a moral victory or a moral failing, it's just data to be recorded and observed for what effect is has. And then, once you know what that effect is, you can decide if it was useful, neutral or not useful.

If it was useful, well, do more of that. If it was neutral, well, who cares. Put it on the menu if the mood strikes you.

And if it was not useful, well then; FOR YOUR OWN SAKE don't do stuff that doesn't make you feel good. But that's not a moral issue, that's just figuring out what works for you.

Science, including exercise science, isn't unlike a connect-the-dots picture and any individual study is one dot. Sure, it *can* completely change the picture you're looking at, but it's more likely to just refine a little bit of the image that is already there. There are very few times when you're looking at the outline of a horse and a study comes along and puts a unicorn horn on its forehead.

Most people have a good idea of what they *should* be doing. The question is - why aren't they doing it? And no, I'm not talking about some silly "what's your excuse" nonsense from a meme; they're not excuses, they're *reasons*.

So today's a good day to run through Quick Circuit A, using a dumbbell if you don't have a toddler handy :D

And to finish off the week of toddler-based exercise, the one you're probably already doing: Toddler carries for time.

Pick up your whiny, grouchy toddler who refuses to walk one more step, and carry him or her around the rest of the day. Builds strength endurance, improves cardio function, and proves that physics is wrong and mass *can* appear from nowhere as your toddler spontaneously gets heavier through the day.

Toddler sled drag: place toddler on a large towel, grab hold of one end, and drag toddler across the room as fast as you can. Do until you're exhausted or toddler gets bored and wanders off.

Note that if you don't have a toddler, you can substitute a dumbbell, a weight plate or a couple gallon jugs of water.

Quick circuit B: Toddler floor press (like a bench press without the bench), toddler goblet squats. Four rounds, or until toddler runs away.

Quick circuit A: Toddler overhead press, toddler bent-over row, toddler deadlift. Each exercise done x10, three rounds or until the toddler squirms loose.