Mostly an exercise rant

I did pilates for the second time yesterday, this time in a standard class rather than that super boring intro class. You know what? Still boring. I like yoga way better. I can't figure out quite what pilates is about, but I certainly don't feel euphoric afterwards the way I do after some good yoga. Maybe the class is bad, but it's all about matching breaths exactly with movements, and the pacing doesn't match my natural breathing at all, plus you're supposed to breath out through the mouth which is just irritating. There were a couple difficult poses (ones on our sides where both legs were rigidly held out straight) but for the most part I couldn't figure out what was challenging. I'll give it one more shot and pick a harder resistance thingy because it would be awesome to have a pilates body, but if that doesn't work my relaxing class time is all going towards yoga and tai chi. Sure, yoga has some breathing techniques, but it's all about deep slow breathing, not too-fast breathing where I have to completely contract my stomach muscles. And what's the deal with that pivoting pelvis stuff? She was like, "good, you're doing great." Yeah, thanks, I'm fucking rotating my pelvis. Of course I'm doing great. My pelvis was DESIGNED for this sort of action. Some sort of sex thing.

Today I get re-assessed at the gym to find out what all this effort has been going towards. Christopher forwarded us all this article yesterday claiming exercise has been proven not to help you lose weight, and people only think it does because of like 2 biased experiments 50 years ago and because most people going to the gym to lose weight also significantly alter their diets. Ugh. So depressing, especially since my mantra the past 2 months has been all, "Yay, I don't have to feel guilty about pigging out anymore because the gym is cancelling it out." Well you know what article? Suck it. What about the fact that I feel so much more energetic and happy now that I'm not as likely to stress-eat, huh? I feel good, I think I look better, isn't that really all that matters? I think we're gonna have to be careful about how we represent this article and focus more on, as Taisuke said, the fact that we eat so much processed crap when really we should be focusing on natural whole foods. Regardless of whether it's organic. God, I'm so sick of this organics debate, Australian papers are going nuts over the fact that organic food might not be better in any healthwise or environmental way. Can we please just worry about how we're treating our land and animals first, without throwing that pesky organic label around? Maybe some inorganic techniques are great for everyone, but they're certainly not what most of the agricultural industry is practicing.

I'm really in a saving-the-world mood right now. What would the icon for that be, a face with really bright flashing eyes? Maybe the face could be colored in to resemble planet earth. Heh.