Long Bones

This one comes from the lovely fit Nelly Plum

Congratulations on your decision to lose weight and begin a more healthy lifestyle!

I would like to share a simple exercise that can be done at the gym or at home, even while you are watching tv. It requires no equipment, although it can be done with a stability ball. It is called a Bridge, or a Glute Bridge, and works both your abdominal muscles and your gluteal muscles, helping to build a strong core.

Lie on your back on an exercise mat or the floor in a bent-knee position with your feet flat on the floor. Place your feet hip-width apart with your toes facing away from you. Gently contract your abdominal muscles to flatten your low back into the floor. Imagine you are pulling your belly-button into the floor. Try to maintain this gentle muscle contraction throughout the exercise.

Gently exhale while holding your abdominal contraction and press your hips upward off the floor by contracting your glutes (butt muscles). At the same time press your heels into the floor for more stability. Keep your spine straight, not curved. Maintaining your abdominal contraction helps avoid excessive arching in your low back.

Inhale and slowly lower yourself back towards your starting position. Repeat 10 times, rest for 60 seconds, then repeat sequence. See if you can do three sets.

Try it with a stability ball. You may put the ball against a wall for more stability while you are learning this exercise. Instead of putting your feet flat on the floor, lie on your back with the backs of your calves on top of the ball, then proceed as above, pushing your hips up off the floor.

I really liked this interview with Crystal Renn from the Frisky. http://www.thefrisky.com/post/246-frisky-qa-crystal-renn-interview/ I really really want to read her book but between the onset of winter and a cat with health problems (poor guy is probably going to need eye surgery!) and the fact that my dividend is going to be late (do not look gift horse in the mouth, most states don’t pay people to live there at all) I am really really broke. Good thing I stored tons of food for the winter. Sometimes I wonder if I’m part squirrel. Still, Crystal Renn is beautiful and damn inspiring, at least to me. I have kinda wanted to be a plus sized model in the past but my plus size was always beyond their plus size and I have dermatillomania and my face while very pretty isn’t shaped the way most model’s faces are (that is a weird way to describe it – I’ll post pictures one of these days soon) and now I’m 28 and live in Alaska…so probably no modelling career for me.

I also ran across an author on the Atlantic named Jim Fallows who has done a lot of writing on obesity…but I haven’t yet read any of his articles so I can’t say whether I recommend him to you or not. I promise to do the reading though and let you know.

The big news today – the big big big omg!! awesome news of awesome awesomeness that has me wanting to go out dancing in the streets (and it’s awful pretty outside today…) is that on this beautiful lovely late fall day I have officially lost 75lbs and I am wearing size 12 jeans for the first time…ever? Certainly since high school. Easily since I started paying attention. Maybe sophmore year of high school? Nelly, do you have any idea? Granted, these are hand-me-down jeans and stretched out from the previous owner and the brand new pair of size 12’s I accidentally bought when I was buying size 16s that I decided to keep because I knew I’d hit it eventually don’t quite fit yet. But these jeans fit perfectly and look sooooooo good on me. So I’m happy. Maybe I can have Shondar take a picture of my butt later for you.

I rock so hard sometimes.