A Brush with Buffness

A few years ago, Shape magazine put out a notice that they were looking for somebody for their weight loss diary.
Although I was outside of their demographic, which means that I am too old, I applied anyway, since I was and am overweight and
thought that they might realize that there are overweight people over 50 and that people over 50 read their magazine and do want to lose weight. I got a nice rejection letter that and a copy of a diet book.

The closest that I came to being the diary girl is knowing the diary girl. Shape readers were asked to vote on the two finalists. I, of course, voted for Dara, but couldn’t think of a nice way to tell her that she should definitely be the choice because the other contestant didn’t really need to lose weight. It seem no matter how hard I tried to come up with a statement about why I thought Dara deserved to be chosen, I couldn’t think of anything that didn’t imply that Dara really needed to lose weight more than the other applicant, which is true. Basically, I thought that Dara’s competitor was in the normal weight range for her height. That still implies that Dara really needs to lose the weight. So, I simply voted for Dara with no explanation to her. BTW, Dara was never what I would consider obese or grossly overweight.

Fast-forward to yesterday and I ran into Dara at a conference. She immediately rolled up her sleeve and displayed her bulging biceps. Ok. She didn’t really roll up her sleeves, because she was wearing a muscle shirt. That isn’t quite right either. It’s not appropriate to wear a muscle shirt to a conference. It is true that I got to feel that unflexed, yet incredibly firm bicep. My biceps aren’t like that when I flex them. They look and feel the same whether flexed or not.

Dara is a grim reminder that my level of fitness and buffness, or lack thereof leaves me rather unprepared for the bike trip. We are doing a shakedown tour tomorrow and then shipping the bikes to Astoria later in the evening. I am anxious to experience riding clipless and even more anxious to see if I can survive the 30-mile route.

I know that Dara could do it with her powerful quads and strapping hamstrings. I am just glad that she didn’t ask me to feel her glutes.

Check out Dara’s weight loss blog at:

http://www.shape.com/weightlossdiary/wldblog/22