tegid’s BodyBlog

I have just watched the videos that accompany the body dimensions page… Looks like I’ve been doing it wrong. This explains why there’s been an overnight decrease in my arm, thigh and forearm measurements - and an increase in my waist measurement. No, I haven’t hit middle age overnight (it’s been creeping up on me for months now). This has been a real wake up call for me as I now realize how huge everyone else’s arms are and how huge my gut is!

It just makes me more determined to overcome the constraints that epilepsy and its treatment places on me - an yes. I’ll be going for a 20 minute jog everyday now, to rid myself of the spare tyre around my waist…

I’m going through a whole lot of **** here at the moment - the medics and (even worse) the benefits agency have really been a bunch of ******s recently. The effort of dealing with them takes up a lot of time & energy. I have been without any form of income now for 9 months and it’s getting pretty bad.

The people that have helped me out most, over the past 9 months have been bodybuilders. They include Dominic (dpd555) and Matt (Gallaman). Dominic figured out that I was on the wrong epilepsy drugs and Matt realised that my body doesn’t regulate temperature well - it overheats and that’s what triggers epileptic seizures. The doctors here just stuck pills into me that really ****ed me over. (Luckily I flatly refused to take the antidepressants that they wanted me to take back in February). Eventually I got to see tyhe top consultants in the land and they admitted that Dominic and Matt were right. Doesn’t that say something? The advice I get from bodybuilders on the internet is as accurate (and far more rapid) that the advice I get from England’s ‘finest’ doctors/brain surgeons?

One of the things that is hitting the UK at the moment is the exchange rate. £1 is worth $2. This means that everything is miles cheaper in the USA and there are people going across to America with empty suitcases for a short holiday and coming back with laptops, iPods and clothes galore.

A guy in the gym has ordered a load of stuff from BB.Com on the internet and has had it posted to England - it still works out miles cheaper than if he bought it all here. He bought a ‘Manta Ray’ barbell adaptor, which clips onto an Olympic bar and spreads the load across your trapezius when you are doing squats. He proudly brought it to the gym and started using it, insisting that it was really good. Ever the sceptic, I test-drove the thing and - I hate to say it- it worked brilliantly. I suspect that it kept the barbell closer to my own centre of gravity than balancing the bar across my shoulders on its own.

Has anyone else tried using one of these bits of kit?