Confusion

...in which things are slightly odd.

(Observation 1 in a series of n, where n is a number between 1 and as many as I can be bothered to do: Why do people assume "all natural ingredients" in e.g. shower gel means "good"? Arsenic is natural, but you wouldn't want to bathe in it).

Not odd in a bad way. Just...odd. For this post to work, you have to imagine that the below is said a slightly puzzled way. I am not showing off, I'm just...perplexed.

As you might have read, I joined the gym last week. If you had told me at the start of this year that I would have joined a gym by August I would have looked at you as if you had just told me that you were training an elite defence force made up of ferrets. If you'd then told me that I would not only have joined a gym but would actually be using it and enjoying it I'd have looked at you as if you'd gone on to say that you were training the ferrets to combat an army of space badgers that were about to land and take over the world.

Now, I am firmly with Jennifer Lawrence on the subject of people that claim they're addicted to working out. ("I hate people who say 'Oh, I’m addicted to working out', I just want to punch those people in the face." - from Pinterest). I'm working out as a means to an end (to tone up my tummy and chest a bit); I'm certainly not addicted to it. It makes me sweaty (and not in a good way), it's hard work and the gym is often full of people that could easily give you an inferiority complex, but...(there was bound to be a but)...it does give a certain satisfaction to challenge the limits of your own body, and there is documented evidence that exercising does actually make you feel better (since 90% of the time when I'm exercising I feel like I'm about to collapse in a heap I assume they surveyed people after they'd finished exercising rather than during).

I've actually started reading articles about how to exercise. That deserves the italics, believe me. If you only know me through the blog then it probably looks like I'm a pretty fit, healthy kind of guy, but until the start of this year the only thing I was fit for was moving around slowly and eating a lot of food. Seriously, I once ate 15 pieces of pizza at Pizza Hut to win a departmental competition (there was no prize, other than the pride of being the winner and preventing PH making any profit on their "all you can eat" buffet).

So, the point, inasmuch as I ever have points to these posts. Today I took the younger kids swimming (the eldest was at OsFest, a local music festival), and I swam 1 kilometre (with quite a few breaks, because swimming is hard work). Then this afternoon I felt like I wanted to do more exercise. Wait, what? That makes no sense even to me. 

I still don't know why, but I went back to the gym (and remember I'm not showing off here - this is said in tones of complete confusion) and I did 2km on the rowing machine, 3km on the Octane (I'm not sure what this is called "officially" - I guess an elliptical trainer? It's like a cross trainer except the movement feels more like running and it has bizarre settings designed to hurt exercise your arm muscles (edit: I looked it up and this is indeed an elliptical trainer)), 2.75km on the treadmill and 1km on the cross trainer. Before that lot I did a bunch of what's apparently called "resistance work" (machines with weights). If you'd told me even a month ago that it was even possible to do that much exercise in just over an hour I'd probably have taken my chances with the space badgers.

Anyway, there we go. To sum up: I'm going to the gym and exercising quite a lot, and finding it...um...what's the word? Enjoyable? Err, no, that can't be right, surely. Satisfying....yes, that just about fits.

Right, food. This week I've made some rather nice pork loin medallions with jacket wedges - I fried the pork as per the instructions (using low fat cooking spray, of course), but added some dark soy sauce (about 2 tbsp), a good sprinkling of paprika and fried onions, mushrooms and red pepper in the pan at the same time. I served this with broccoli and sweetcorn and it was really yummy (it doesn't sound like diet food, does it?). 

I made something similar tonight, but we had no soy sauce left so I used teriyaki sauce; this means there were probably a few syns in the pork/veg but they would be very low (call it 1.5 per portion).

Tomorrow is weigh-in day. I'm hoping to get my 3.5 stone award, but it's possible that all the exercise may be counter-productive (when A joined the gym she maintained for a week or so after). Also I had a really big piece of chocolate cake on Monday after weigh-in and it's just possible that I may have had a few packets of crisps this week...we shall see.

Edit: In "other news" today I bought a pair of underwear that are "small" in size and they fit. Small victories (no pun intended).