About the Authors

Getting Fit And Healthy – No If’s, And’s, Or Butt’s About It!

Welcome! No Butts About It and its merry band of authors are glad you stopped by! Our mission is to have a safe, supportive place in which to write about our experiences with health, fitness, and weight loss goals. This is by no means a website that is limited to talking about calorie counting and cardio blasting (though that stuff is certainly part of it). Anything goes, around here – losing weight, gaining weight, getting healthy, dealing with health conditions, picking apart workout DVD’s, posting recipes, bitching about how sucky it all is, crowing about our achievements, shocking you all with the TMI… we’re sure you get the idea. We actually meant it when we said, “Anything goes.”

Comments are enthusiastically welcomed, as well as e-mails!

Thanks for reading, and again, welcome!

The No Butts About It Gang

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About The Authors:

Kim of Laments and Observations:

I turned 40 this year, but that’s cool because people are still amazed when I tell them how old I am. But I noticed the numbers started climbing higher and higher on the scale and my clothes stopped fitting, so it’s hard to be proud of yourself when all that is going on. In the last two years several issues contributed to an over 30-pound weight gain and that horrifies me more than a little bit. Time to stop the bitchin’ and step away from the kitchen!

Goals:

• Lose the 30+ pounds and fit into my size 6’s & 8’s again.
• Make exercise the norm, not the exception.
• Improve my mental state through better physical health

Challenges:

• Hypothyroidism, something I’ve never had a problem with until this year. I’m sad that I’ll probably be on medication for this the rest of my life, but if it helps keep it under control, fine.
• Almost two years ago I switched from self-medicating using various substances to using food. It didn’t work out so well.

Tiffany of Snerkology:
I’m in my mid-30’s and have never really managed to prioritize my health and fitness over other, more interesting things (eating, watching TV, eating, surfing the net, eating). I’m a firm believer that a healthy body and a healthy mind are directly connected to one another, and I’m constantly striving to find overall balance in all things.

Tiffany’s Personal Goals:

• Make my health and fitness a priority.
• Back myself into my old wardrobe.
• Make myself proud of my accomplishments.

Tiffany’s Personal Challenges:

• Gallbladder surgery a few years ago that COMPLETELY CHANGED MY DIGESTION FOR THE WORSE.
• Diagnosed Depression and Generalized Anxiety Disorder – both of which make me want to eat.
• Food sensitivies that, despite the issues consuming them cause, I seem unable to give up. Like wheat. And brewer’s yeast. And beer, which is a double-whammy of both.

Dyskinesia of … Dyskinesia:

At 36, I’m a mother, wife, workaholic, and what was that other thing?  Oh yeah, a woman.  I’m 5’9″ and a lot of pounds, enough that it makes me (A) the heaviest of the bunch here at NBAI and (B) more than 100 pounds overweight.  I have a long road ahead of me, with some difficult challenges? obstacles? stuff in the way?  Suffice to say, after some surgeries and other life events, I need to start over with everything I’ve ever known or thought about food.

Dys’s Personal Goals:

• Get up and move.  Exercise has to be a part of my new life.
• Change my diet, physical activity, and sleep patterns so that they are not working against me.
• Feel better:  More energy, more comfortable.
• Believe that I am setting a good example for my son.

Dys’s Personal Challenges:

• Surgical menopause in my early 30s.  Hormones are important to every function in your body; therefore, lack of hormones is important to every function in your body.
• Insulin-resistance.  This is code for pre-diabetes.  My body no longer processes sugar correctly, which makes me a zombie if I have almost any carbs or sugar, and my body’s response to that?  Crave carbs and sugar.  It’s called addiction.
• Pepsi.  I don’t eat my sugar.  I drink it.
• 100% sedentary job.  Did I mention I’m a workaholic?

Taoist Biker (blog):

I’m a 35-year-old dude, husband to Dys and father of our 9.5-year-old son.  And occasional tugger-of-the-dog.  I’m 5’9″ and somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 pounds (or, if you’re Suzy, a little over 14 stone).  With the exception of a far-too-short bout of martial arts as an undergraduate, I’ve never been very athletic.  I enjoy lifting weights quite a bit, and hate (hate) ((HATE)) cardio.

TB’s Personal Goals:

• Reach a point at which I can once again tolerate seeing myself in photographs
• Get back into a routine in which my exercise doesn’t consist primarily of Rock Band drums
• Fit into my motorcycle leathers again.  Preferably without pain.

TB’s Personal Challenges:

• I have trouble balancing personal and family life.  I often feel guilty if I take time away from my family to work out, or if I change my diet and upset our family meals.
• I have a serious sweet tooth and a family history of diabetes.  These things are probably related.
• Ideally?  Meat is food.  Fruit and vegetables is the stuff that food eats.  Well, it may not be entirely true, but damn if I don’t wish it was entirely true sometimes.

Crisitunity of Mars is Heaven:
I am approaching 30 (please don’t throw tomatoes, it sounds old to *me*!) and trying to start good habits now to keep myself as healthy as I can for the long run. I am 5’4″ and weigh 132.

Crisitunity’s Personal Goals:

• Stay below 135.
• Keep my yoga muscles (triceps, abs).
• Be at peace with the mini-tummy that’s inevitable if I’m at a healthy weight.

Crisitunity’s Personal Challenges:

• I am hypoglycemic, which means to keep happy I need to eat every four hours or so. Keeping my calorie count down while keeping my body from a psycho freak-out is not easy.
• I also have IBS (diarrhea type), which means that if I make the wrong food or exercise choices I can find myself in severe pain and seated on the ol’ throne for a couple of hours.

My diet changed radically in early 2008, and since then I have been wandering through a strange forest of eating habits and home-cooked food, unable to settle on the perfect tree to climb. Too little meat, hi anemia! Too much meat, hey irritability and oversleeping! And so on.

Shari (aka Huladog) of Dashboard Hula:
When I turned 40 and wasn’t at my ideal weight, I was really disappointed in myself and I had it in my head to do something about it….but here I am about to turn 41 and am pretty much in the same place. I have a hubby and a 6-year-old daughter as well as an assortment of dogs, fish, and a cat. My body remembers being fit from step aerobics and yoga and in the super-fit from kickboxing.

Shari’s Personal Goals:

• Make time for myself. Get back in the habit of working out consistently. Lose 30 lbs.
• Be conscious of what I’m eating. I just came off of a year of No Red Meat, so I know I need to watch the fats in that area as well as the chips. Eat slowly.
• Wear my fave clothes again. Not to mention a couple of things that I never wore  but bought in hopes of wearing. Soon.
• 5K in the fall!

Shari’s Personal Challenges:

• Crazy schedule. My biggest challenge is fitting the workouts in.
• Also I have my girl home with me during the summer. She is very active and likes to do a lot of physical activity, but when I really am wanting to work out, I like to do it alone.  I feel like I’m playing otherwise, which is fine in itself but I don’t get into “the zone.”
• Inadequate sleep. I know this messes with your metabolism or biochemicals, but there’s not much I can do about it for the time being. So, I’ll need to work around this. I know meditation will help.

Suzy of Coping with Chaos :

I’m in my mid thirties, and was diagnosed a year ago with breast cancer. Whilst I’m making good progress with the cancer, the treatment (coupled with my own bad habits) has made me gain a lot of weight. My condition has made me seriously reevaluate my approach to diet and fitness, and I’m really just starting my road to recovery and (hopefully) sveltness! 😛

Suzy’s personal goals-

• Get down to, and successfully maintain, a healthy weight of 125-135lb
• Learn to enjoy exercise more!
• Become more aware of the effects of diet on serious illness like cancer, and the repercussions for all of us.
• Raise my children to understand the potential damage that sedentary lifestyle and poor diet can cause.

Suzy’s Personal Challenges-

• I am a victim of my own good cooking! I don’t own a microwave, and cook everything from scratch. Whilst that’s great on one hand, on the other hand I eat far too much and not of the right stuff most of the time.
• I love walking, but LOATHE running. I have the coordination skills of a gnat. Organised exercise classes are not for me. I need to find an exercise plan that fits with my insane life, that I will actually enjoy doing.
• I tend to be able to lose about 20lb before losing my way with a diet. At time of writing, I am 13lb down. My fingers are crossed that I can cross the line this time!

Steve (Morethananelectrician) of N*ked on the Roof

I am a 38 year old construction manager on the East Coast.   Since the Berlin Marathon of 1993, I had slowly fallen out of shape until the Spring of 2008, when I started running again and signed up for a half marathon.   Since then I have run in a full marathon and hope to continue unless I blow out one of my knees.

Steve’s Personal Goals:

• Continue to run at least one half Marathon every year.  A half and a full Marathon in a good year.
• Bring regular weight training into my workout routine.
• Not blowing out one of my knees.

Steve’s Personal Challenges:

• Cut down on the sugary drinks…especially Mt. Dew.
• Incorporate more smaller meals in my routine…my fear of public restrooms limits my meals to one a day.
• Not to NEED to wear size 32 jeans ever again.