3781

3782

My god damn fucking gym didn’t change my credit card info like I told them to, so I fucking get all of my gym clothes on, dig my car out of the snow to go and my fucking card doesn’t work because I haven’t paid for this month yet.

I CALLED LIKE 5 FUCKING TIMES AND NOBODY ANSWERED!!! In mid NOVEMBER I left a message, and nobody got back to me. Last week, someone took my info down, and I guess they decided to not put the new info in, because I don’t see a charge for this month…

fucking great. Now they are going to be all pissy and fine me for not paying for decemeber, even though I tried to.

God.

Damn.

It.

Do you want me to be fat god? Seriously.

3783

So, late last night I started to get a stomach ache that got progressively worse and worse until I found myself knelt over toilet puking my guts out - a position I returned to many times over the course of the evening. I was also shivering like mad, despite cranking my thermostat past 70 and layering up a lot. I feel more or less okay today (stomach is still churning a bit and I’m exhausted from not getting any sleep but it’s not so bad), so that leads me to believe that it must have been food poisoning.

I’m thinking back over the past few days and wondering what the culprit must have been. Outback, I’m looking at you.

3784

God says “Yes”.

3785

They, at least, want you to go elsewhere. After living in a small town for the last four years, I no longer understand why people deal with such terrible treatment from any place that takes your money. We have a name for places like that around here: Out of Business.

3786

I realize that’s unseasonably cold there and all, but come on. It’s 2 degrees here and it’s almost noon. 2!

3787

Dude, I got food poisoning from some fish I had at an Outback in SoCal a few years back, it was an awful experience. I was puking all night too, and apparently so much that the next day I couldn’t stand up straight because I had pulled a muscle in my abdomen.

3788

Srsly. Tell them that if they don’t want your money, you’re not going to force them to take it. And then find a new gym that will probably give you the first three months free.

3789

It’s a lot cheaper to just buy the John Candy cutout and drop the gym membership.

H.

3790

I just called them up and said that the charge probably went through. ANd asked for my credit card info… AGAIN.

It was the same lady on the line, so most likely scenario is that she got my info last time… and forgot to put it in.

Grrr…

This is the cheapest and closest gym to my apt, so I can’t go anywhere else really, it is about 1/2 the price of the other guys.

3791

I’m guessing you have these magical things called “winter wardrobes” and “heat” ;)

When I woke up this morning, there was frost INSIDE my apartment, my pipes were gurgling and sputtering brown sediment-filled water when I attempted to shower, and I could see my breath. We’re not really properly equipped for weather below 45ish here so when it gets down to freezing, it really is quite uncomfortable in most homes.

3792

Now you know why.

3793

Speaking of gyms, somebody stole my pants (an oldish, cheap pair of levis jeans) out of a gym locker last week. The 24 hour fitness I usually go to has lockers with locks you can use but I decided to go to a smaller one that is directly on the way home from work as opposed to the nicer one that is a bit out of the way because I was time-limited and this smaller one did have lockers, but they were “bring your own lock” lockers.

I left most of my non-gym stuff in the car but didn’t change into my shorts until I got into the gym and left my jeans in one of these lockers (unlocked) on the theory that nobody would steal random old pants that had nothing in them and I wasn’t going to be there for that long and the car was parked pretty far out in the parking lot.

Turns out people do steal old pants out of gym lockers.

Now I have a combo lock in my car in case this situation occurs again.

3794

My free advice is to examine your diet. By cutting out fast food and junk food from mine and keeping my sugar intake very low I dropped over 40 pounds.

Without any exercise.

I now jog every other day and I’ve lost four more pounds and have stabilized at my current weight.

Anyway, I toss that out because I would not have believed a diet change without exercise could have resulted in that kind of weight loss (I always thought you had to “sweat off” the extra pounds). YMMV and all that.

3795

I had the same experience as you, Ned, but there is a point where that stops working and you need to get exercise involved.

3796

Yeah, which is why I started the exercising, myself. Still, it was a great first step for me and probably easier than trying to start cold with exercising.

3797

Weight loss is a relatively simple calculation, just burn ~3,500 more calories than you consume and you’ll lose a pound.

You burn 1200-2000ish (lower end is small women, higher end is larger guy) calories a day just by laying around doing nothing, so yeah you can lose significant weight over time by simply dropping the amount of calories you consume.

Exercise does help though since obviously you’ll burn more calories faster by doing work than you will laying around, and also having lean muscle raises your resting metabolism rate so you’ll even burn more calories just doing nothing when you’re in better shape. But you do have to be careful not to fall into the trap of “I just ran for 45 minutes, now I’ll eat this 1500 pound meal as reward” because you are basically pissing away all of your effort there and as Ned alluded to there is something to be said for losing some of your extra weight before starting to do strenuous exercise regularly (especially things like running which really tax your joints).

3798

Yeah, I just started this new fad craze weight-loss program called “eating less and exercising” a couple of months ago, and I’ve lost about 10-12 pounds, I’m feeling better, and I’ve gone from having to squeeze into size 34 jeans into, as of yesterday, having to tighten my belt a whole extra loop to keep size 32 jeans from creeping down.

The interesting thing to me about that is that the biggest waist size change occurred while only losing about 2 pounds. So the exercise is doing a good job of helping me to keep muscle on.

3799

My weight has bounced around the last 6-7 years. I lost a bunch, mostly kept it off, and then gained it back recently (and then some). I tried going running–my primary exercise in weight loss mode–after gaining a significant amount of weight and it felt like I had sand bags tied to my arms and legs. I felt the weight gain much more (not just being out of breath) than in my normal day-to-day routine.

I’m going to go hardcore pretty minimal eating plus exercise over the next couple of months in the hopes of getting back into a better weight.

3800

I just joined our YMCA (I live close to the main one that has nearly everything, pool, rock wall, basketball, racquetball, bigass room of machines, etc.) but not to lose weight, just to get in shape. However, if I get in shape, I will lose weight, just by building muscle and not doing the destructive things I do at night as often.

I agree that the way to lose weight, the easy way, is to regulate what goes in rather than worry about what goes out. At 195 pounds, I walked/jogged for 20 minutes last night (4mph, 6mph) and burned about 200 calories. So an hour gets me 600 calories, if I could do an hour right now, which I can’t.

Or I could just drink one less beer a night (and yes, the beers I drink as pints are probably somewhere around 500 calories. Obviously it is easier not to drink the beer. When I quit drinking sodas I immediately dropped ten pounds with no other changes. I exercise primarily for cardio fitness and general strength, but unless you are spending hours in the gym, it’s not going to be the main factor in weight loss.

H.