Fat Woman and the number of the day

Fat Woman likes numbers, particularly 256 but that's just a personal quirk left over from her computer spod days. Numbers are quantifiable. They prove things. When things are valued numerically you know where you are. And if you don't like what you're seeing rather than changing the number you can measure something else, such as body fat percentage rather than weight.

Personal Trainer has two main ways of torturing Fat Woman. In her heart-raising muscle-building sweat-and-pain-inducing workouts Fat Woman usually either works to time or she works to reps. Fat Woman prefers reps to time for some unknown mental reason, probably because you are more in control with reps whereas working to time is a pain unless you can watch the clock because you have to know how much time is left to be able to conserve just enough strength to get through it. Fat Woman likes Tabata workouts because 20 seconds is easy to quantify .German interval training sends Fat Woman to sleep.

Personal Trainer used to give Fat Woman nice friendly little numbers. Fat Woman hasn't seen a number under fifteen for ages. Fat Woman can live with this as she is getting stronger all the time, as well as faster and better in form. Still, Fat Woman thinks fondly of the days when ten of anything was expected of her and she got a rest. Now Personal Trainer expects multiples of tens.

Personal Trainer has a new number. That number is 100.

It is lucky that Fat Woman appreciates the symmetry of numbers and how things multiply because she did non-stop sets of 20 TRX bodyweight squats to a depth that not even an Olympic lifter would sneer at followed by 20 dumbbell straight legged deadlifts five times in a row without rest or mercy. And if anyone is thinking that isn't a lot of squats Fat Woman would like to point out that when she's squatting her own bodyweight she's probably lifting more than you do anyway.

Fat Woman has the worst DOMS she's had in weeks and her only satisfaction is that having made her in pain and therefore grumpy Personal Trainer is going to have to put up with her for an hour. Fat Woman also has the Sesame Street pinball song about numbers stuck in her head and may have to sing it out loud to kill the earworm.

 

Fat Woman is also remembering 5-4-3-2-1 chocolate bars but can't remember how they tasted.

Fat Woman gets stress-DOMS

When Fat Woman trained on Monday she was extremely stressed. Fat Woman felt no pain or strain, probably because of the cortisol flooding her system. Fat Woman was doing lat pull downs.

Personal Trainer: "Does it ache yet?"
Fat Woman: "No."
Personal trainer increases weights.
Personal Trainer: "What about now?"
Fat Woman: "No."

Personal trainer increases weights.
Personal Trainer: "What about now?"
Fat Woman: "No."

Personal trainer increases weights.
Personal Trainer: "What about now?"

Eventually Fat Woman stopped because her palms felt very sore from the bar. The entire session was just the same. Fat Woman was a machine.


Fat Woman is now waiting for DOMS to kick in and hurt her badly. Fat Woman suspects it's going to be a hard night.

Fat Woman is injured

Fat Woman isn't really injured. Fat Woman had a severe case of Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness this week. It was caused by Swimming Coach. As Personal Trainer was away skiing Fat Woman asked Swimming Coach to train her on Monday. Swimming Coach made Fat Woman do more than 300 squats/squat-like movements. Fat Woman has been hurting the rest of the week.

Fat Woman has been used to aching after strength training. This week Fat Woman has hurt every single day. This ache was the hardest Fat Woman has felt since she went for a 4.5 mile walk. For the record, Fat Woman had no intention of going on a four mile walk. Fat Woman was told it was a two and a half mile walk. Fat Woman ached badly in the thigh for days after that outing.

Fat Woman has been hurting so much that every time she stood up or sat down she would make some kind of strangled noise. Alone in the house Fat Woman would say "ow! ow! ow! ow!" when going up or down the stairs. Fat Woman took cocodamol and ibuprofen, but they didn't take the pain away completely.

Swimming coach admitted that Fat Woman did slightly more than was optimal. Fat Woman is missing Personal Trainer's nurturing like crazy. Swimming Coach says he likes it when people complain. Fat Woman doesn't like to complain. Fat Woman likes to work very hard at a slightly lower level. This allows her to do other activities throughout the week. Fat Woman still gets DOMS but not so badly that she feels miserable all the time.

Fat Woman feels Swimming Coach made a mistake in not listening to her when she begged him to stop. Fat Woman think Swimming Coach knows he made a mistake but will not say so. Fat Woman admits that she didn't put her food down and say she wouldn't, but she doesn't believe this level of DOMS is normal or desirable.

Fat Woman is (a) still miserable even though it's now Friday (b) missing Personal Trainer quite a lot (c) really fed up with Swimming Coach.

Fat Woman is going to make Personal Trainer some brownies and not give any to Swimming Coach. So there.

Fat Woman is punished

Fat Woman is being punished for her infidelity to Personal Trainer. Fat Woman has Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness of such magnitude that 400mg ibuprofen plus 30mg/500mg cocodamol are not stopping the pain.

Fat Woman is going back to bed to think about what she has done.

Fat Woman goes walking

Fat Woman was going swimming. Fat Woman had the swimsuit on under her clothes, had filled up all her bottles with her toiletries and had edited the gym bag to reflect her trip to the pool. Fat Woman even had her waterproof MP3 player charged up ready to provide Power Ballads as she splashed up and down the gym pool in her best impression of a hippo. Fat Woman doesn't actually make hippo noises but suspects that the simile is accurate for those who actually see her in the water.

Fat Woman was feeling virtuous that she was on the way to fulfilling her goal of 17 hours of exercise in the month. Fat Woman has worked out this is four hours a week plus one extra hour on a Sunday, which she plans to do the day before she is called to account by her personal trainer - if the personal trainer remembers. Personal Trainer is young and good looking and awfully nice but not brilliant with paperwork and schedules. Fat Woman is committed to weight loss and fitness so is making a realistic effort to do everything that Personal Trainer recommends, short of switching her 20g of golden syrup for honey, because there is barely any nutritional difference between the two and she only has porridge once in a blue moon. This has become a point of principle between Personal Trainer and Fat Woman. Fat Woman reckons that anyone eating something called a "Power Bar" packed with whey powder and soya lecithin is not really in much of a position to comment on the nuances of processed food.

So Fat Woman had pulled on her swimming costume and was hot footing it to the gym. Actually, Fat Woman was driving to the gym rather than footing it or walking or cycling or any other healthy travel form. It was the driving, or rather the Fatmobile, which spoiled Fat Woman's swim. The Fatmobile was emitting an awful scrapping metallic sound from the rear passenger wheel. Fat Woman doesn't know much about cars but she does know when something is WRONG WRONG WRONG so Fat Woman drove all the way around the mini-roundabout and went back down the High Street to the nice local garage with the nice and knowledgeable mechanics. The nice garage mechanic took Fat Woman's keys and went for a short drive in the Fatmobile. Returning seven minutes later Nice Mechanic confiscated the Fatmobile as being dangerous to drive. Fat Woman was very glad Nice Mechanic had identified the problem but was rather sorry her swim was off.

Fat Woman was even more sorry that her nice swim in the 85F(29.4C) pool with a lovely hot shower afterwards was replaced by two 12 minute walks in the freezing cold. Fat Woman is claiming that walk as a whole 25 minutes for her exercise total and is not admitting to anyone in real life that actually the last thing she wanted to do on this cold day when she had severe Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness was go swimming.