Killer Beth: the perfect after-Thanksgiving Step instructor

It was fight or flight time at approximately 8:35 a.m. today when I walked into the aerobics studio at the Y. I had seen her in the life center during the past year, killing it on the elliptical like someone cross-country skiing away from a polar bear. But I hadn't seen her in this setting for five years.

Killer Beth.

Years ago, the first Step aerobics class I ever took at the Y was at 5:30 p.m., and it was so hard, I had to leave halfway through. I asked someone the next day if Step classes are always so vigorous, and the woman asked me which class I had attended. When I told her the time, she said, "Oh no, honey. That's Killer Beth. You have to work up to her."

Never were truer words spoken. During the past week, I have been incorporating Step classes back into my routine, proud of myself for jumping right in with the risers and being able to finish the morning classes without water breaks. But I was not ready for Beth. Many of us weren't. A few people left. We were all taking water breaks. It's amazing how different that class can be with each instructor, considering it's the same equipment and the same basic movements. But Beth uses a faster tempo CD, so every movement is a half step faster. She's a fan of double and triple movements, which ups the ante again. And when class begins, it's work time. No messing around getting warmed up with easy movements at first. She's all in. All bidness. And yet, from start to finish, she has the sunniest demeanor, kindest voice, never out of breath.

The woman is like a beautiful machine.

And I was like a dumptruck stuck in neutral, grinding gears to try and lunge forward ... then backward ... then forward.

It's as if she knew what we all had eaten yesterday. She saw the words "pumpkin cheesecake" written on my forehead, and she responded accordingly with lunges. So many lunges.

It was agony, and it was exactly what I needed. So at the end of class, I asked Beth if she still teaches regularly. She does, at 5:40 p.m. on Thursdays. So I told her, "Well, I better start coming because that about killed me."

And fittingly, as I gingerly lowered myself into my car, glasses fogging up from my hot, red face, the song "You Must Be Out of Your Mind" was playing on the radio as I turned on the car.

Yep.

My two-part Thanksgiving plan: the Y and FOOD

Last week I went to South Central College to talk to a weight-loss support group, which was really fun. It's always cathartic to commiserate with folks going through the same junk you are. (And incidentally, I've lost 61 pounds at this point, and they gave me a round of applause, which absolutely warmed my heart.) But at the end of the session, a woman asked me how I planned to handle Thanksgiving. Until that moment, I hadn't given it much thought, and so like I do with everything else in life, I just said what came to mind: "I plan to eat a lot," I think I said.

Of course, I qualified the statement by saying, "There are times when it's OK to indulge. The trick for me is just to make sure that I get right back on track the next day."

From her expression, I don't think it was what she wanted to hear. And I can understand why. For many of us -- including me in the past -- a bad day tends to lead to several more, and before you know it, you're back to your old bargaining practices: I'll do better starting Sunday ... I'll just eat what I want the rest of this month, since there's only a few days left, and I'll start fresh on the 1st ... etc. So a day like Thanksgiving can trigger those behaviors, especially when you tend to have copious leftovers for days.

So all of this led to me carving out a plan for this week. The two-fold plan involves the Reebok Step classes at the Y, and food consumption on Thanksgiving. Part one was Step, which began today ...

I've been doing an hour on the elliptical in the life center with relative ease lately. It sucks that your body gets used to certain kinds of exercise, especially exercise that you actually enjoy (somewhat). And I knew that was what was happening, because I'd find myself looking down at the clock on the elliptical and seeing that 30 minutes had gone by without me wanting to kill myself. It's important that you experience a certain level of discomfort while working out, otherwise you're not getting a very good burn.

That led me back to Step class this morning to up the ante on my workouts, give my metabolism a boost, and burn more and lose a bit more before Thanksgiving -- sort of a preemptive calorie deficit before Turkey Day. ... I walked in, and I was so excited to see Lynette leading the class. Years ago, and several pants sizes ago, she was the one who whipped my butt into shape. She has a way of making me love her for the first 20 minutes and not-love-her-so-much during the last 20, which to me, is exactly what a good workout experience should be like.

By the end of the 40 minutes today, I was red in the face, sweating profusely, and rubbing my quads for comfort. I did that drunken sort of walk to the car, sort of meandering and disoriented. "Do I drive a blue car? I think it's blue. Maybe I'll just wander this way and I'll run into it." Now THAT'S a good workout.

I plan to get three good workouts like that in before Turkey Day on Thursday, when the second part of my plan will come into play. And here it is, folks: I plan to eat a lot. ... I know, I know. It doesn't sound healthy. But folks, sometimes food DOES equal enjoyment. Some events ARE planned around food. We associate certain memories from our past with grandma's Christmas Eve casserole and mom's famous pumpkin cheesecake. I would hate to look back on Thanksgiving with my family and remember that I weighed the ounces of turkey before I put it on my plate, and I passed on the gravy, and I asked mom to go easy on the butter in the mashed potatoes, and I skipped dessert. For some of you, that might be what you need to make your fitness goals work, and that's totally fine. But for me, I plan to enjoy myself with food on Thanksgiving.

And then the very next morning, I'll be in the upstairs studio in the Y getting my butt kicked.

'Runway' finale: I guess I got what I wanted

In one of the most boring "Project Runway" finales in history, the best way for me to sum things up is to say, "I got what I wished for," and as we all know, that's not always a good thing.

I had been rooting for Anya from day one. Who wasn't? A gorgeous, exotic, sweet young woman with four years of sewing experience. You can't write a better underdog story. And yet, she kept performing better than some of these other designers who constantly knocked her about construction. I was so happy to see all season that the judges, for the most part, were more concerned about her incredible design skills than her ability to fully execute them with a needle and thread. As an aside, here, I find it very hard to believe that somebody like Michael Kors would sew ANYTHING these days. My bet is that designers have plenty of seamstresses to execute their ideas. So perhaps Anya isn't as much behind the curve as bitchy Josh would like to think.

Did I think Anya should have won, however? No. No, I did not. The collection was not her best work. Not one piece had construction work. It was the same note of flowy beach wear the whole way through. Beautiful stuff! Don't get me wrong. But not worthy of being crowned the champ.

I was actually pretty horrified when I saw how much the judges loved Josh's stuff. It scared me to death when he was left standing on the runway beside Anya, that there was a chance for him to take the win. Can you imagine? Josh being crowned the winner of "Project Runway"? It's enough to make a girl swear she'll never watch again ... although, I'm sure I've said that before.

Viktor, who I was sure was the clear front-runner, choked when it counted most. He had a lovely collection of print garments that were inventive and chic. And he had a cheap collection of black translucent hooker get-ups. Who needs to be a better editor now, Viktor?

All in all, I simply can't say there was anything very dazzling about the final runway show. Nobody wow'd me to any extent. But they strategically showed previews for the next season of "Runway," something they've never done before ... All-Stars, baby. How fun will it be to see all our old favorites and foes come back to dook it out yet again? Love it. I'm in.

17 is not a good number for some of you!

I'm on my way out of town for the weekend, but I had to pop in briefly to say, "Don't worry!" I've gotten a bunch of concerned folks coming forward saying something to the effect of: "Losing 17 pounds in less than a month isn't healthy!" Trust me, I'm not doing anything unhealthy. Remember, when your diet has consisted of high sodium and fat and sugar, you retain lots of water. I'm betting half of the weight I re-lost this month is water. So to borrow the words I say to my dog, Squishy, when she gets too worked up, "Heyyyy, heyyyy ...shhhhh. It's OK. Settle down." ; )

Some of you were also quick to email in response to my "Ang" anecdote, to counteract the negativity with positivity, as one reader said. You guys are awesome. Thank you.

I'll have a post Monday about last night's "Runway" finale, too. But all I have time for right now is a quick "Woo hoo!" for the surprise Anya win. Love it.

Be back soon! And thanks for all your messages!

Back in the game

I kept a folded-up piece of paper in a hidden compartment of my makeup bag while I was working with my trainer this year. She thought it would be a good incentive for me to write down my weight-loss goals, tied to completion dates, with rewards for reaching each milestone.

So I had outlined exactly where I wanted to be by the first of each month, and my prizes were things like a new mp3 player for the gym and a new pair of jeans because, as I wrote, “my old ones won’t fit anymore by the time July 1 rolls around!”

I found that list the other day. (I had forgotten all about it because I had pretty much taken the entire summer off from dieting and exercise.) I looked all the way to the bottom, at where I was supposed to be by now, the end of October.

“Goal weight! Now, the hard part: Maintenance,” I had written in mid-January, all bright-eyed and determined.

I couldn’t help but have a brief self-pity moment when I read that. Because, as many of you know, I am not at my goal weight.

But, as I said, the moment was brief. At the start of October, I had one of those bright-eyed and determined moments again. At the time, I had gained back 12 pounds of the 50 I had lost, and I decided it was time to do something about it.

So all this month, that’s what I did. I got my food in order. I got my exercise in order. I got my attitude in order. And I took off the 12 I had gained plus five more.

In total, I’m down 55 with two months to go before the end of the year.

On the Health & Fitness page on Jan. 2, 2012, I plan to run an update on my progress, as well as my “before and after” pictures. I plan to include Monty Meyer in that story as well. The story we ran on his incredible weight loss on the cover of the January 2011 Mankato Magazine was the inspiration for my “fight to be fit,” so it seems fitting to update his story right along with mine.

With that deadline looming, I truly feel like I have something to prove to all of you, which has been the real blessing about being so public about such a private issue: accountability. Another huge blessing has been the reader response. Thank you all for your supportive letters and emails, especially those who have told me that my column inspired you to lose weight. I LOVE that.

Thanks also to those who haven’t been so nice. A woman named “Ang,” short for Angela, wrote to the editor about how she’s had enough of “the fat lady with the big head to match.” I laughed when I told my coworkers about this, and several of them said something like, “Oh, I’m sorry, that’s really mean.” But it doesn’t embarrass me to get the occasional email like that. Seems to me the people who are capable of being so unkind are the ones who have something to be ashamed of. (I hate to call her out publicly, folks, but surely when someone sends an email to a newspaper they don’t expect it to be private.)

And, anyway, when Ang writes that reading my column makes her “lose her appetite,” it just makes me want to keep doing it. The best way to get me to excel at something is to tell me I can’t or shouldn’t do it.

So thanks, Ang. I hope you’re reading this after breakfast. I’d hate to spoil the most important meal of the day for you.

And just so you know, my head is a perfectly average size. It’s my tush that needs the work.

"The Biggest Losers" have left my building

Meeting and interviewing famous folks is one of the perks of my job. Highlights: talking with Rob Zombie for 45 minutes as he articulated the purpose of extreme and grotesque violence in his films. Sitting 10 feet from Mason Jennings for what I liked to refer to as a private concert as he warmed up for a show. Singing along with Carole King when she visited Gustavus (strong-armed into singing while she had a terrible cold). Sitting in an empty classroom with Peter Krause, discussing, in part, my favorite show "Six Feet Under." Sitting one on one with Elizabeth Edwards in a Mankato family's den, when she was helping her husband campaign for vice-president on Kerry's ticket.

What I love most about these moments is the constant rediscovery of what tends to be a letdown for others when I explain my takeaway each time: People are people are people are people.

In person, or on the phone, when it's just you and Famous Person, all pretense melts away. FP becomes just another friendly (usually) human being that you meet along the way. I love that about my job. I love realizing over and over with each person I interview, famous or not, that we all have so much more in common than we realize. That we all, pardon the cliche, put our pants on one leg at a time. What a great testament to the human condition.

Not that these two are humongously famous, but I found myself having these thoughts again when Rebecca Meyer and Daniel Wright stayed the night at my house. Daniel was a contestant on seasons 7 and 8 of "The Biggest Loser," and Rebecca was on season 8. The two of them met on the show and fell in love. Daniel, from North Carolina, moved to Des Moines, where Rebecca is from, and the two have since made numerous speaking appearances and have otherwise been planning a life together, unsure where they'll end up, but happy to be seeing the country in the meantime. They were in town to run the Vikings 10K (at Mankato Marathon) for Rebecca's campaign to run 50 races in 50 states by the time she's 30.

It didn't take long to learn a lot about the two. They're both open and kind -- not at all guarded, despite the world being a Google search away from seeing so much of their lives on display to judge at will. And you would think, staying in a journalist's home, of all people, would tighten those lips even more. But I found them to be candid and trusting, knowing I wouldn't splash secrets around if they chose to share one or two.

It was fun to gain some insight into the show and to learn what is "staged" and what's actually real. They confirmed my suspicion that, before the weigh-in at the end of each episode, the contestants are weighed-in behind the scenes so producers can order the on-camera weigh-ins in the most dramatic fashion for viewers. But the contestants themselves aren't able to see the results until it's filmed. They also told me that, while they don't know for sure, they think cameras throughout the house and in the bedrooms are monitored to find out when contestants get "deep" into emotional stuff so the trainers can be alerted and the camera crew can film those compelling moments in the gym when the trainers get to the bottom of why certain contestants overeat.

Other items of interest ...

1. Before the weigh-in, if contestants are dehydrated, they make them drink a ton of water, despite the extra weight registering on the scale.

2. They aren't allowed to listen to headphones in the gym, so some contestants in season 8 would sing to each other.

3. The food is provided on the ranch, but the contestants are solely responsible for preparing it and for what they choose to eat.

4. The show never shows how sore and stiff the contestants are in the beginning of the show, but THEY ARE. Rebecca joked that they practically cry when they just try to sit down at the beginning.

As far as Rebecca and Daniel's lives have been after the show, they seem pretty happy. Rebecca, as you may recall, won the $100,000 at-home prize. She bought a Mini Cooper and paid bills. Both get paid to come to towns and give talks, which helps pay bills. They live with Rebecca's parents right now, but are planning to buy a house. And they also are starting their own personal training business. They each have clients they're working with now, one of whom has lost about a hundred pounds. They seem so excited to be passing on what they learned at the Ranch and afterward to other people.

Both admit also to continue to struggle with weight. They always will. They've had lifelong habits that they finally were able to combat just two years ago, so naturally, they continue to learn and there will never be an "end point." With a lifestyle change, each day's renewed goal is to make healthy choices, which isn't always easy.

Rebecca got down to a very thin 140 pounds to win the at-home prize at the season 8 finale, and she has found that weight wasn't healthy for her, so she's found a happy medium, and she will always be "playing with about 15 pounds" up or down, she said. Daniel's goal is to lose about 30 more pounds. But needless to say, that's a far cry from the extra 100 or 200 they had before they started the "Biggest Loser" journey.

Over lunch at the Tav on the Ave on Saturday (I tried to give them the Mankato experience by keeping it local -- dinner at Number 4 the night before helped, too), they were eager and passionate about bringing up my own "fight to be fit" this year and help me pin down areas where I did things right and where I may have veered off track. It was nice of them to offer me their insight and also to offer me a discount to "The Biggest Loser" Fitness Ridge Ranch in Utah, although I have a feeling the price tag would be far greater than I could afford.

When they left Saturday afternoon to go camping with friends in Mapleton, I felt like I'd made a couple of new friends. And truth be told, had they just been a couple of kids I'd met in Mankato who weren't ever on a TV show, they'd be just the kind of people I would want to hang out with.

So while it's probably not what most people would consider the "best story," here's my takeaway from hosting a couple of "Biggest Losers" at my house this weekend: Rebecca and Daniel are a couple of nice, normal kids, who, as Rebecca put it, "just happened to be on TV."

America's sweetheart lets us all down on 'Runway'

Anya!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You're killing me!

How could she do so well all season only to choke when it matters most? I worried immediately when Tim Gunn made his house call to Trinidad during part one of the "Runway" season finale last night. All the other designers had about 10 pieces they had completed before he arrived. All Anya had was fabric. Just fabric. Not even a single sketch. What in the world was she doing for the few weeks between last week's episode and this finale?

When she got back to New York, Anya still wasn't ready. Her collection was completely uninspired. And I expected so much more. If she was able to create such inventive and beautiful shapes during two-day challenges, without much sewing experience, I could only imagine what she would come up with in her own time, at her own pace. I think America was sorely disappointed last night.

Viktor definitely fulfilled his prophecy as the clear front-runner. His clothes are always well made and innovative. I see him winning next week for sure. And I'm actually really bored with that thought. His work doesn't inspire me, doesn't fire me up.

I'll tell you whose work does fire me up, for all the wrong reasons: Josh. It pained my heart when the judges sent him through to Fashion Week FIRST. First. I agree that a couple of the pieces from the three-piece collection weren't horrible. But that "Olivia Newton John" unitard, as Michael put it, was absolutely hideous. The fabric choice was hideous. The peek-a-boo butt was hideous. And the plastic collar was hideous. My theory about how he made it this far is that he always performed one step better than the worst during each episode. He sucked, but just a little less than someone else during each challenge. In my mind, he's made it to the finale by default, alone.

I actually liked Kim's stuff. I was surprised the judges got on her case so much. I guess I was relieved, though, because between her and Anya, I think Anya deserved to go home Thursday night. So while the judges were cowardly in allowing all of them to go through, rather then sending home America's sweetheart like she probably deserved, I'm one viewer who's OK with that. I'm pulling for Anya to take these last couple of days before Mercedes Benz and do her usual last-minute miracle work.