“It’s me, it’s Buddy… I’m cold.” -Truman Capote, American Writer
I have a friend, and I think I can call her a friend at least, named Dana. We met as she is the best friend of one of mine and she is into fitness. We have talked about fitness before, during my review of her Bachelor’s thesis, I asked her a few things and she answered my questions. However today her and I talked about fitness, nutrition, my goals and more but a Ybit more in-depth. We kind of made a plan and afterward, I asked and she kindly accepted my question if she would like to be my gym buddy.
She lives about thirty or forty minutes away by train so it’s not like I would commute to where she lives to go to the gym with her but it would be more of a “long distance” gym buddy thing. Specifically talking about what we have done, how we are feeling and most importantly, at least for me, how I am keeping up with nutrition and eating better.
My goals, as she and I talked about with the gym is to gain muscle, while training for this half-marathon I will be doing in the summer. Often people talk about it’s either cardio or muscle, as in, either you can gain muscle, or you can increase your endurance and cardio. If you do too much weightlifting, you running and cardio will fall, and if you do too much cardio, it will eat away at your muscles when your body is looking for energy. I am now going to try and find the middle ground, where I eat better, supplement some protein and fill extra calories with shakes and oatmeals.
This is kind of my style, jump in all at once. Rarely do I ease into a situation. I wanted to make a blog, so now I am doing daily blog posts. I need to run a half marathon, so my friend Hannah, a marathon runner, was kind enough to offer to help train me and she will be creating me a training program that I will follow and get myself to half marathon capabilities. I want to gain some muscle and be healthier, so I ask Dana, my friend who is by far the most outwardly involved with her gym plans and actions and how she keeps herself fit and looking good, and she will help me understand what I should be doing but also will motivate me and keep me honest.
Now, I have been told and understand the concept of bulking and cutting but I don’t think I am ready for that. I just want to be happy with how I look in the mirror and be healthy while doing it. I will not be like Mac and just cultivate mass until I am a balloon, mainly because unlike him, I don’t get paid to gain a ton of weight than in one “off-season” cut all the weight and be super ripped. I have to do things a bit more gradually.
My ultimate hope is that the running that I will be doing will help eat some of the fat on my body, the weight lifting and protein will help build muscle, and the healthier eating will keep me energized and safe from breaking down my body with the added exercise and activity.
Another good friend of mine, Amber is kind of going through something similar, both with the desire to write, but also with the desire to eat healthier and she is another great bit of motivation for me to truly commit to doing this. She does a blog which is more of a general life blog that, if you like mine but want something longer, better written, and more interesting, I think you will enjoy it. You can find it here at modernamber.wordpress.com.
I never do “New Years Resolutions” mainly because the first of the year is really just so arbitrary of a place to behind and I don’t see the use of starting on 01/01/20xx when you can start now, or at least in 2 or 3 days. and that’s why I am making these changes to my life now. I wanted to write more because I enjoy engaging my brain like that and I think it is a much better use of my time than say, watching my least favorite James Bond movie: Quantum of Solace which makes me want to die but it is the next Bond film on my list so I have to watch it next but I digress…. and it is just fun to do. I want to run a half-marathon, so I will, I want to eat better and work out more, so I will and that is that.
About my history with the gym. I never was seriously into the gym and my fitness. In the military, we did workouts every morning so I didn’t have to worry about much, I would go to the gym in the evening occasionally because I wanted to hit a specific thing but it would be maybe once or twice a week. After the military and at university I would go to the gym almost every day, wake up, gym, shower, then class or work, and that how I’d do it. It was always super casual where I would go, lift a big, then go home. I never really changed, just stayed the same. Now in Germany, I have a gym membership but I can only rarely use it and I find myself at the gym doing the same thing I did at University, maintaining and not going hard. Sometimes I’m not even sore after the gym and really, what is the point of that? I mean, that’s the best part of it, I never feel better than the days when I am so sore it hurts to walk or pick things up.
I want to push myself to that more regularly and that is what I will do. As I write this I am on the train to Düsseldorf for a reunion with some friends but Monday is my D-Day, at least my winter 2017 D-Day. (It’s just fun to call days when you put plans into action as D-Day) The plan is, run in the morning, work, gym in the evening and see if I have to work from my bed on Tuesday because my legs should be nothing but useless goo. I will update you all on Tuesday.
My new gym buddy Dana can be found on Instagram @daniinchen and I would recommend following her, even if you can’t speak German(which all her posts and stories are in) because it is at the very least good motivation to get out and do something just from the photos and videos.
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Again, my friend Amber’s blog can be found at modernamber.wordpress.com
Check them out because they are great and deserve a bit of love.