ferrousland.com - daily news archives
Sunday, March 05, 2006
three cute pics - 05:48 PM
(filed under 'smiley')
three really cute pics of smiley, all taken with my camera phone:
- looking very cool
- sleeping sideways
- toy sink
excercise is fun?! - 05:19 PM
(filed under 'healthy living')
okay, well, the excercise itself wasn't fun as such, but i actually did enjoy my very first time at the gym.
justin, one of the trainers there, started me off with a couple of stretches & then put me on the rowing machine for five minutes. then i went to the bike for ten (i handled it far better than i thought i would), did some weights (two sets of ten each & four different types. sorry, i'm not up with the lingo yet) & then went on the treadmill for twenty minutes where i walked mostly at about five kilometres an hour (about 3 miles) & jogged for about thirty seconds. i really hate running, so that was about all i could take. i increased the incline slightly for a little while as well until i could feel some different muscles working & then put it back down almost flat.
i can't say that the time i spent on the machines was interesting. it was pretty boring, in fact, but it's a means to an end & i can see that what i'm working toward is worth the effort. i brought along my mp3 player but very cleverly forgot to put my headphones in my bag. there was music playing at the gym, but nothing i could really get into. some people were reading magazines while they were on the bikes or the treadmills. great idea. maybe i'll bring in a good book somedays.
it wasn't such a bad thing that i couldn't listen to my mp3 player anyway since justin was checking on my progress regularly & i would have just had to keep turning it down. i do want to use it, but i'll have to see how well my way of holding it will work out. there's no purpose built body strap for it (unlike the ipods which have a strap or a fixture for every conceivable purpose) so the only thing i have is a little shoulder bag thing but the strap is a bit long & so it might hang too low & get in my way.
actually .. i just realised i do have a holster style shoulder bag thing which i used to use to carry around my cameras. that could be perfect! i'll have to try that out for tomorrow.
on the way there, i was planning to stop at the juice shop to get a very healthy banana, chickoo (weird kind of fruit which i've never seen before) & mango juice, but the juice shop was closed! i hadn't had lunch since i'd only just woken up from a sleep with smiley, so i had to buy the only other slightly filling & immediately available food (what with most of the shops around here being closed between 1pm & 4pm) which was a packet of chips. not terribly healthy, but at least i was going to work it off. lol! 
i'm pleased to say that once i'd finished my workout, i didn't feel like tucking back into the rest of the bag of chips & i did end up getting my yummy & healthy juice.
starting at the gym - 09:52 AM
(filed under 'healthy living')
today will be my first day at the gym.
this is going to be a long entry, so if you're in for the long haul, click the 'read more' link.
i found out yesterday how much i thought i was going to exercise in bahrain & how much i've exercised in the past when i went to look for a pair of sneakers, runners, trainers - any type of shoe designed for something active - & discovered that i didn't even bother to bring a pair with me. in fact, i can't even remember what the pair looked like that i'm sure i must have had before i left australia!
mind you, before we knew we were going to leave australia, i didn't really have much reason to need to exercise or lose weight. in the month between when we found out shroom got the job & when we actually left, i coped with the whole idea & the stresses involved with moving to another country & having to get rid of 90% of our belongings by eating comfort food: fish & chips & icecream (not all together) .. & lots of it! i put on heaps of weight.
even as i was eating all of that, i had already decided in my mind that i would eat much more healthily once we got here. mostly, i have, although i've discovered the joys of chocolate custard, conveniently available just across the road at the cold store, so that hasn't helped me to lose any weight.
around the corner is the very elite british club (note useless animated intro & inappropriate use of an apostrophe). it's oh so snobby. it's the sort of place that you can't even join unless you have two signatures from existing members. ordinarily i'd avoid places such as that like the plague, but since it's very close by & has a very good health club with trainers & personally designed programs for members, it's exactly what i need. so we joined the british club.
although it goes against every grain in my body to be a member of such a place, i have to admit that it does have some very good facilities. it has a tots & toddlers group on tuesdays (i took smiley there last week & will probably make it a regular thing), a decent outdoor play area for the kids, a good sized pool with swimming lessons in summer, tennis & squash courts, restaurants, etc.
since i'm determined & committed to getting back to a more appropriate weight, i went out last night & bought a pair of trainers. it's a workout just lacing the things up! why do those sort of shoes have to have the laces cross over & over the front so many damn times? i understand it's probably something to do with the shoe fitting correctly while you're being active, but surely there's a better system than laces which taken ten minutes to do up. they're worse than doc martens .. & they're not anywhere near as funky!
maybe more expensive shoes might be able to be slipped on a little more easily, but i'm not going to pay bucketloads for a pair of shoes like that until i know i'll get good use out of them. yes, i am planning to go to the gym at least three or four times a week, but until i know for sure that i'm not going to detest it, i'll opt for cheaper shoes.
the ones i bought have the brand name of daltech printed on them, are made in china (as i'll bet almost every shoe is these days, now matter how expensive they are) & the tag is written in what looks like russian or ukranian or something, but i'm pretty sure is neither. i can usually guess the language, but this is something obscure enough for me to not recognise it. i've never heard of daltech before, & i suspect it's just a low end brand name that doesn't even exist beyond the one style of shoe, made by some huge conglomerate organisation that makes everything else as well as shoes.
i wonder if i should make a new category for this topic? perhaps it could be called 'healthy living' since i'm sure i'll mention other things to do with trying to become fitter & healthier, such as eating better. hmm. i'll think about that.
[edited to add that i now have the healthy living category & this entry is now the first one in it.]
so wish me luck & persistence. i'm committed to the idea enough to not need the encouragement, but it certainly doesn't hurt. 
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