Chubby Mommy

For years now, my doctor and I have been sporadically trying to pinpoint the reason for my fatigue, aches and pains. I say “sporadically” because my pain itself isn’t a constant: there are days when even brushing my teeth seems like a Herculean task, and weeks when so full of energy my body practically vibrates.

Naturally, I only call the doctor when I’m in quite a bit of pain but she rarely has an appointment available until the following day. Inevitably, I’ll wake up the next morning pain-free. Isn’t that the way things always seem to work, just like how an awful hairstyle will suddenly look perfect on the very day you’re seeing the stylist to get it cut again?

Finally, lacking all other explanation, my doctor has announced last week that I have fibromyalgia, which I’m pretty certain is Latin for “We don’t know but we know it bothers you.”

Her recommendation? Try a memory foam mattress to help ensure a more comfortable, better night’s rest, and exercise.

Exercise when every bone, joint and muscle in my body hurts? When walking the short distance between my bed and the bathroom produces a long stream of grunts and groans? When I have to actually rest up before making the bed so I don’t just climb back into it?

Great. Just freaking great.

Of course, I’m fully aware that recent studies have shown that exercise reduces symptoms of fibromyalgia, but being told that the best way to combat pain and fatigue is to do something that ordinarily produces more pain and fatigue seems, well, counter-intuitive.

I want drugs, dammit, and not just Tylenol (which I can’t take due to liver problems, anyway). I want bona fide 21st century pharmaceuticals that will wrap my pain receptors in a nice, hazy narcotic-induced blanket of indifference, freeing me of the wincing agony that accompanies every movement when I’m having a flareup.

I explained this in detail, with rather more colorful language, to my doctor. She finally agreed that, yes, she’ll prescribe me something — she didn’t say what — just as soon as I’ve tried exercising daily for 30 straight days to see if that has any positive effect on my pain. And I, being in the midst of one of the worse flareups I’ve experienced in quite some time, am actually thinking about following her direction and working some moderate exercise into life on a daily basis.

I think I might just begin with kicking her ass, then seeing what I feel up to doing after that.

While I was sleeping last night, the Mess Fairies must have raced through our house. Or maybe it was the cats chasing each other. Hard to say.

Regardless, I woke to find my sofa throw blankets strewn across the living room floor, vases knocked over, shredded newspaper throughout the kitchen, and a box of my son’s favorite toys spilled all down the staircase.

Naturally, no one else was interested in helping me pick up the mess, so I wound up spending a good 30 minutes first thing this morning trying to set the house straight.

The good news? I’m pleased to say that, chubby or not, I can still lean over and reach the floor without bending my knees.

The bad news? After repeating that, oh, five or six dozen times, I now feel like my midsection’s been caught in a vise clamp. Talk about an abdominal workout!

I may have to start paying the Mess Fairies (or the cats) to do that on a daily basis until my tummy’s finally flat again.

Office workers — and even bloggers — find it difficult to fit exercise into their day. Let’s face it, when you’ve got a hard 8 or 9 hour workday, putting in another hour sweating at the gym just doesn’t always sound like that much fun.

But what if you could combine the two, turning your work day into workout time?

Now you can, thanks to the PC-Sport from Gamercize, a nifty little gadget that fits under your desk. Use it as an independent step machine to burn calories while you work and speed up weight loss while getting paid. Need more motivation? Connect the PC-Sport to your USB hub and you’ll have to exercise to keep your keyboard and mouse working.

At roughly $290.00 USD with international shipping, the machine’s guaranteed to lighten your wallet, too.

Winter’s just around the corner, and here in Kansas that means we’ll be mostly house-bound for the next couple of months. I’m far too cold-sensitive to consider daily walks when the temps are below 50, so I’ve been thinking of ways to continue getting exercise even once the chill sets in.

I’d love a treadmill, but they cost so much money, and there’s just not space for one in our family room — the one place where I’d be most likely to use it since I could also watch TV.

So, I’ve been thinking of getting a mini-trampoline or a “rebounder” as some people call them. I know my son would love it. He’s a jumper — as in, from the top of the stairs or kitchen table — and is far too familiar with Mom telling him to knock it off. Being able to jump on a trampoline indoors, much less being actually encouraged to do so? He’d be ecstatic!

There’s only one problem as far as I’m concerned. OK, make that two: boobs. They bounce. This, my husband assures me, is a good thing. (Not surprisingly, he likes the idea of a mini-trampoline, too.) But the discomfort, if not downright pain, of jiggling all over the place — and particularly in the chest area — definitely makes the thought of such exercise a little less appealing.

Lots of people suggest wearing two sports bras at a time to minimize the bounce. Since struggling into one sports bra is almost an aerobic exercise itself, I’ve yet to actually try shrugging into two.

What are your suggestions for minimizing the bounce? Does it bother you at all when you exercise?

UPDATE: The comments themselves weren’t enough to assure me that other women suffer the same problem, regardless of cup-size. Apparently, the NY Times thinks it’s a problem, too: their article about the very same topic says that breasts move in — get this — a figure 8 while we exercise. No wonder they hurt so much!

I was crazy about roller skating when I was a kid. My mother? Not so much. Her ankles were weak, or so she said whenever I begged her to take me to the roller rink. I half-suspect now that she just couldn’t stand the music, or perhaps it was the monotony of going around and around in circles.

Me? I loved it. Even as an adult, I find rollerskating to be one of the more fun ways to get exercise.

Unfortunately, the local roller rink is as bad as the one my mother took me to. It’s crowded with pimple-faced teenagers trying to strike a pose that makes them look cool enough to hang out wearing skates they’re too cool to use. The music is mostly unintelligible lyrics set to a heavy base hip hop beat that seems less conducive to skating than to the group head-bobbing thing that goes on throughout each song.

Which is why I don’t take my son there, even though I’ve been dying to teach him how to roller skate.

This past weekend, I lucked out at a garage sale and found two pairs of roller skates: one for each of us. The price was too good to resist, so I bought them with the plan of teaching him how to skate in our cul de sac.

Big mistake.

At seven years old, he’s just enough socially aware to recognize how silly he looked after I’d duct-taped a pillow onto his rear end and refused to be seen outside suffering such an indignity.

So I did what my own mother did before me: I backed the cars out of the garage, set up a radio in there and told him we’d made our own roller rink. I even offered to serve snacks once he’d made it around the garage a dozen times without falling.

One thing I didn’t consider: how hard it can be to learn to skate on old garage floors. Ours is mostly smooth cement, but with two rather large, prominent cracks running smack down the center. Each time he was halfway through a circuit he’d encounter one of the cracks and, sure enough, wound up needing that pillow to cushion his fall.

After a while I did manage to teach him to hop a little when he came to the cracks. By the end of the day he’d actually made it around a dozen times, but it proved to be a far more frustrating experience for him than I remembered enduring when I was a kid. Of course, my husband has since said we ought to just tile the floor, but I don’t think I’d ever be willing to fork that kind of money over for a garage when my kitchen’s been in need of new tile for years.

Which is not to say that he’s given up roller skating altogether. In fact, we just came back inside from another 30 minute session doing circles in our garage while listening to one of his favorite Disney CDs. I’m sure my neighbors — who were outside raking leaves in their yard — wondered what on earth was making all of the thumps and giggles in my garage.

I’m not going to tell them about our private roller rink. Unless they’re willing to pay $1 admission, that is.

For many years, of my favorite outdoor activities has involved camping. This never ceases to surprise my friends who tend to think of me as a high-maintenance, electronic-dependent, pampered diva. Last year, as a matter of fact, I threw quite a few of my readers on Electric Venom for a loop when I announced my family was going on a three week camping trip. I do believe they began placing bets on just how long before I raced back home to my creature comforts.

Truth is, some of my fondest childhood memories involve camping and hiking trips, although my parents were the type who believed “roughing it” meant sleeping 6 in a 4-person RV. Now that I’m the parent, I’m made of much sterner stuff… much to my family’s annoyance.

Until I became a parent I considered a tent to be purely optional camping equipment. I was the kind who believed that camping did not involve pulling up to a nice, paved parking space in the midst of a national park and unloading the trunk. The way parks are so crowded these days, you might as well sleep in your front yard and call that camping. Bathrooms? Why, they were behind every tree… just be careful which leaves you used, if you know what I mean.

Ironically, my husband and son (who seem to prefer living in squalor indoors) consider my notion of camping to be a bit too primitive. They expect a tent, and preferably an expansive one. They don’t want to schlep supplies more than a couple of yards from the car, and bathrooms? Well, my husband makes sure our site is just a hop down a paved road from one.

Wimp.

I’ve finally convinced my husband that we need to take a real camping trip. One that involves hiking and an actual experience of nature beyond the great gray expanse of asphalt that most National Park camping sites have become.

I, personally, would love to do a Rocky Mountain backpacking trip, perhaps near Colorado’s majestic Fourteener’s. I waited a bit too long to suggest it for this year, but we’re giving serious thought to a trip next Spring, right as the temperatures start warming up again. Talk about a perfect way to spend a Spring Break: not only would we get away from it all, but I’d get plenty of exercise, too!

It’s no secret how much I hate to exercise. It’s not that I don’t understand the health benefits: I most certainly do. I just always feel like there are other, more enjoyable ways to spend an hour out of my day. (OK, so cleaning house isn’t necessarily more enjoyable than aerobics, but the results are obvious so much more quickly!)

Experts advise that folks in my situation just need to find ways to make exercising fun. Skip rope, they sometimes say, or jump on a mini-trampoline while watching TV. But any woman with an ample chest can tell you, aerodynamic engineers have yet to create a sports bra that can take such strain without being so darned tight they threaten to break the wearer’s ribs.

Last weekend, a friend of ours mentioned something that actually does sound like it might fit the bill: paintball. Here in Kansas City, we’ve got a huge paintball fan base, thanks to a cave structure down near the Missouri River. There are, it turns out, a half-dozen or so businesses down there which have bought underground space and sell tickets to folks looking to play. My husband was clearly enthused about the idea, and my son hasn’t stopped asking whether we can go check out the paintball park.

So I’m thinking this year I might spring for a paintball gun package for the family as a Christmas gift. There are some truly awesome paintball guns available. We’re talking wicked-looking things that would light up my 7 year-old’s face, since he’s now in a “GI Joe and all things military” worship mode. My husband, a retired soldier, would no doubt love one as well.

Now, I’m not ordinarily a big one for messy games, but I do have to admit it sounds kind of fun. After all, under what other circumstances would I legally be allowed to shoot at my husband, relieving myself of all sorts of tension while also getting a good workout in the process?

I spent yesterday cleaning house. That counts as a workout, right?

OK, even if it doesn’t, the point is that my home is now far cleaner than it’s been in a while. Cleaner, but still fairly cluttered.

Until recently, my bedroom had been a sanctuary from clutter, a pleasant room kept “Mommy clean” and free of the toys, food wrappers, dirty clothes and other detritus that follow in the wake of my husband and son as they move through the place.

(No, the mess isn’t mine. If there’s something of mine out of place it’s because I’m leaving it there until it’s more convenient to put it away. There’s a difference. Trust me.)

Since dragging my exercise bike up from the basement to our bedroom it’s done nothing but act like a clutter magnet. Yes, there’s the requisite nightgown hanging from it. It’s one that I wore just last night, so it’s not like the thing’s turning into a glorified clothes rack.

It’s also surrounded a half-dozen free weights, some ankle weights, a yoga mat, my exercise ball, some of those stretchy rubber bands that should’ve taken the place of the free weights but didn’t, a pair of tennis shoes, a face towel and countless exercise videos that are all gathering dust.

What isn’t there in the corner where my exercise bike is actual room to exercise. It’s just too crowded with stuff that doesn’t have another place yet.

I need to figure out some storage solution — something that’s stackable and easy to open. They must also be clear — all around — otherwise I know darned well I’d forget about all of that gear being stashed away inside of them. As they say, “Out of sight is out of mind.”

Much as I hate to exercise, I’m afraid I’d use that excuse to get out of it, too.

Not long ago, I found myself in the middle of reading a newspaper article about some new diet supplement that’s supposed to be an all-natural way to effortlessly lose weight.

Riiiight, I figured, and my BS-detector went into hyper drive. The byline, Universal Media Syndicate, sounded legitimate enough but the language was so over-the-top that I just couldn’t understand how something so as amazing as they described wasn’t being discussed 24/7 on every news and radio station.

Sure enough, it’s a paid advertisement in the form of a news “article”, only it’s not being run under that handy little “Paid advertisement” blurb that magazines and newspapers usually use. Apparently, I’m not the only one to have had a problem with the way this supplement, Apatrim, is being marketed.

Apatrim, according to the story, is a “newly released diet pill” which contains an extract of Caralluma Fimbriata, a cactus-like plant widely grown in India where it is eaten as a vegetable and used as an ingredient in curries and chutneys.

What we can confirm is that Caralluma Fimbriata, like the South African “succulent” plant Hoodia Gordonii, has indeed been chewed for many years by Indian tribesmen during long hunts to suppress appetite and enhance endurance.

But from there, the breathless weight-loss claims for Apatrim not only become more suspect, but seem likely to ultimately involve its distributor, PatentHEALTH, LLC , with the judicial system.

I started to rant about this marketing method to my husband, who replied that it’s not much different from getting paid to review sites and products on blogs, something at which I’m making some decent money each month.

But the difference, as I explained to VH, is that I’m not making money by selling a product — like the makers of Apatrim are attempting to do with their disguised ads. I make money by writing about a site or product, regardless of whether anyone buys it. A fine distinction, perhaps, but the latter doesn’t involve hoodwinking people into taking any action whatsoever.

At any rate, the point is that even with a highly-refined BS detector, the Chubby Mommy within me still wants to believe in a magic weight loss pill, despite experience proving otherwise. Repeatedly. Even the Alli I’m taking has been far less effective than hyped, and if it weren’t for Janet giving me her starter pack I probably wouldn’t be taking it still, having decided that it’s simply not worth it.

Which is why, I’m pleased to say, I just finished a 30-minute stint on my exercise bike, and the only “magic pill” I’ll be taking today is an aspirin. Make that two. Having used some muscles this week that have been neglected far too long, I ache just about everywhere.

Thanks to a migraine, my only exercise yesterday involved shaking a few Excedrin out of the bottle. I figure I burned less than a calorie at that, but fortunately the accompanying nausea meant I only ate a bowl of oatmeal (and even that didn’t stay down).

I feel much better this morning, though. No, I haven’t put in time on my exercise bike yet, but I did squeeze in a little yoga.

Funny how my morning “Snap, crackle and pop” has nothing to do with breakfast cereal and everything to do with aging joints. Next thing you know I’ll be dying my hair that odd shade of blue and having out with the other 4 p.m. dinner-eating, slot-machine loving golf apparel ladies.

Great.