There is only one problem with my resolutions for 2010, and that is the fact that I have loads of them, and I don’t really see days being expanded to 36 hours to accommodate all that I want to do.

First, I want to record new music. Not just go on about it and about how I haven’t got inspiration, but, like, sit my lazy ass at the Big Mac and DO IT. I have done some exciting stuff in the past, and most of it happened when I wasn’t trying to do commercial music but just did it because I was feeling creative. I am feeling like being creative again. Whether it is the loooooong elaborated over triphop record or a Depeche Mode circa 1986 record, remains to be seen, but at least one of them has to be completed in 2010.

Second, and that’s kind of connected, I have to write more. Not just blog more, although that could be good as well (seeing as Typing in Stereo turned into Here’s Where I Post My Chart blog). Fiction perhaps? (I’m a bit too young for memoirs, no matter what Geri Halliwell with two to her name before the age of 14 has to say about that.) Perhaps the long-rumoured fitness blog with REGULAR updates? I’ll see. But, again, one of those has to happen in 2010.

Third, I am going back to my “challenge” and by that I mean that I haven’t quite been asked to participate in the six-pack competition that my workmates are having, but that doesn’t mean I can’t win it anyway. I’ve been going on about how I will one day have visible abs that I can as well put the beer away and do it. (Note: I am NOT going to not drink anything on New Year’s Eve. There is dedication and there is sheer masochism.) Here’s my 2010 resolution: abs inspiring teenage girls to spontaneously combust.

Fourth, raygrant.com has to actually get some content. Other than “coming soon”. And by the way, I redesigned Typing in Stereo, but it never progressed past Photoshop. Time to turn that into code. Both have to happen in 2010.

Fifth, I have looooooong wanted to go to a hip-hop dance class, and always thought, I’d soooo like to do it, but really, I’d probably be the oldest kid present. They would point at me, laugh and call me “grandpa”. Thing is, I keep on thinking that I would love to go and I also keep on not becoming any younger. In 2010 I will join a dance class. (And that’s in addition to Manfriend’s suggestion that we should join a ballroom dancing class.)

Sixth, I will buy new underwear. Yes I know that sounds easy, but I have a rather refined taste, and nothing that I have seen in the last four months satisfied it with the exception of underwear that is so obscenely outside my budget that I had to censor it out of my head (and my credit card statement). There must be wearable underwear below 100 euro a pair in the world, and I am determined to track it. In 2010. (This one has to happen, because I am not yet ready to become one of those men who wear stretched boxers with holes in the crotch area.)

And seventh, which is kind of connected with third, I am sticking to the gym. I paid for a year in advance Mozdammit and I am not letting that money go to waste. I will not be one of those heterosexuals people who age gracefully and dress their age and grow beer guts and say things like “my metabolism slowed down after thirty, that’s why I’m no longer thin” while eating pizza and trying to beat their own record in sitting down without getting up.

Eighth, ninth and tenth? I’ll keep on the good work and improve the weaker bits. I’ll be an amazing designer, even better boyfriend, get more tattoos (you can never have enough hats, gloves and tattoos), do some courses, continue with yoga on a weekly rather than “erm, I promise to come to the class sometime soon” basis, and generally I will be like a cross between Madonna (minus crotch-pumping and cameltoe), Hugh Jackman and Marian Keyes. Mind you, with my luck that could mean being regularly mistaken for a 50-year-old, becoming all hairy and spending some time in rehab, but hey! if it makes me bloody rich and gets me piles of awards, I’m going to try.

What are your resolutions? Anything particularly unusual?

So people are talking to me about my 30 day challenge. Some are impressed. Some are pissed off. Some are condescending. Some are laughing about it.

The most familiar reaction is actually irritation: “It’s easy for you.” Or: “Well, I would do that too, but I have children/I live in a small town/I don’t have time/I don’t know how to do that.” When I start to explain how to do that, the person dismisses me with a quick “oh nooo, I really don’t think it’s my thing”. Then they grab a donut.

(True story: I had a flatmate who was trying to lose weight. He would approach it like this: breakfast — a few grapes; lunch — a few grapes; dinner: a big cake since he was so good all day. That was years ago. Apparently, though, he is still doing it — a friend told me they went to a party together and ex-flatmate was going on about his healthy lifestyle while consuming an entire bag of crisps.)

I know all about excuses, because I was a king of excuses for 29 years. I couldn’t work out because: it was tiring, time-consuming, I didn’t know how to do it, everybody would stare at me, I didn’t like people who went to the gym, I didn’t have time, didn’t know any gyms nearby, didn’t want to look like a bodybuilder, and — above all — my weight gain was simply a result of old age, I told myself, eating my pizza with side salad, because I was a healthy eater after all.

Original motivation for me to start working out was of two kinds: 1. it was either that, or buying new wardrobe in larger sizes — I couldn’t fit into any of my pants anymore except for one size 34 pair that was threatening to burst any moment; and 2. my boss, who told me he worked out five times a week, which I found a scary, unnatural and… exciting idea. Is it POSSIBLE to work out five times a week? I wondered. Doesn’t that KILL people? But my boss looked very much alive.

That was three years ago. My motivation changed. First, I wanted to lose weight. Then I wanted to gain strength (let’s face it, you don’t become a huge bodybuilder unless you use steroids and work waaaaaay harder than 99.9% people going to gyms do… but a nice muscular figure has NEVER gone out of fashion, and it’s so handy to be able to lift your own luggage). Then I just fell in love with the lifestyle, with lifting, sweating and relaxing at the sauna afterwards and the pleasant ache and feeling I did well.

Food-wise? Protein shakes and meat form a large part of my diet. People who complain about how disgusting protein shakes are, obviously never had one, or not since the Nineties. The new brands are cheap and taste like melted ice cream, which is very much up my alley, I love ice cream.

So why do I need to do the 30 day challenge? First of all, there’s focus; it’s easy to tell yourself “yars, yars, I am eating healthy, so there’s no harm in another glass of wine” or “yars, I had a leg workout today, so there’s no harm in having a huge bowl of spaghetti for dinner”. It’s okay if you do that once or twice a week, but if you do it everyday, you are quite unlikely to become ripped. Second of all, I like to prove to myself that I can do it. And third, I lost over 1.5 kg fat within the first 9 days. Unlike people on stupid diets consisting of grapes, ice cubes and “bowel relaxing tea”, I didn’t lose water or muscle tissue. I lost fat. And suddenly, 9 days later, I went from “you’re not fat, darling, just a bit… rounded here and there” to having a nice, flat stomach. Beat that.

It is okay if people laugh about it. It is okay if people roll their eyes and mutter something about insanity. It is okay if people say “I wish I had your determination” while munching on a donut with double glazing. It is okay when they say “I wish I knew how to do it… BUT DON’T TELL ME”. Because it’s not about them. It’s not even about boyfriend (although I suspect he might enjoy the end result). It’s not about anyone else. It’s about me. My motivation is me. Sure, pictures of ripped men that I put on my fridge, mobile and computer wallpaper help in a way — they help me stay in focus when I have impure thoughts about pizza — but at the end, I am my own motivation. And if you don’t have that kind of motivation, you’re doing something wrong.

Lalalala, what a beautiful morning. By golly, I have an amazing idea! Let’s measure my waist and other bits, as I used to do every week for a long time and neglected recently, to see how I am doing after four weeks of missed yoga, missed workouts and hardly any cycling, coupled with eating pancakes in bed (due to flu — good excuse) and drinking beer (after the accident — need to calm nerves — good excuse).

EEEEKKKKK!!!!
GROSS!!!!

Back to clean eating and working out 4-5 times a week it is.

EDIT: Oh hell. If Hannah can do a 30-day yoga challenge, I can do a 30-day clean eating challenge. Here are the rules:

• No alcohol
• No coffee
• No black tea unless green/white/camomile is unavailable
• No carbs after 6pm unless dining with boyfriend
• No sugar, chocolate, sweets of any kind (this is the easy bit)
• No fried foods (this is the difficult bit)

It will be easy peasy! (Not.) But that’s why it’s called a challenge. If it was meant to be easily completed, it would be called pizza.

I started yesterday, so the end date is Dec 2.

I used to hate my body.

I used to do insane diets where I would only eat cabbage soup for a week. Well, for five days. After five days of that I would devour a pizza with double cheese and mayonnaise sauce and drink high-sugar apple juice from a carton. After five days of cabbage soup the last thing I wanted was another two days of cabbage soup.

(This, by the way, is how yo-yo effect happens.)

I used to go to the gym and jump on the cardio machine with a goal such as “burn 530 calories in 30 minutes”. If I only did 528, it didn’t count as a workout, I thought I didn’t do enough. That I was a fat lazy git who failed. Failed, failed, failed. And I would go home and drink wine, because, you know, that’s something failed gits do. And I would eat a pizza, because, well, I worked out so I deserve a treat, right. And I would end up in a vicious circle: eat crap, feel guilty, work out, feel a failure, eat crap, feel guilty, etc.

I can’t recall a specific turning point where the vicious circle turned into a lovely circle (this phrase is shamelessly stolen from Hannah with whom I had an amazing chat today). It had to do with therapy and Magical Training Courses, generally, and the most important bit was getting rid of guilt as a part of my life altogether. That brought the realisation that I am not a failure for burning 528 calories instead of 530; that I am a major winner of Grand Prix of Amazingness for burning 528 calories instead of 0. That I am not a failure for lifting 45 kg and not making it to 50; that I am a major success for being at the gym and lifting anything at all while there are people who don’t lift anything else but TV remote. And that food isn’t a God-sent torture device meant to be used for self-punishment; it is something I can use to fuel my amazing, strong, powerful body which at the age of thirty two is in better shape than it has ever been before.

Nowadays my breakfast on a weekday is a protein shake with oatmeal. Not because I am punishing myself; on the contrary, I am rewarding myself. It tastes like Nesquik cocoa with biscuit crumbs in it. It makes me feel like a kid indulging on sweets when mom isn’t looking. And it happens to be low-fat, high-protein and full of slow-burning carbs, which is the best thing you could possibly have in the morning. If I am feeling very adventurous, I add some fruit. Because, dammit, I’m worth it.

Sometimes in the evening I drink. (A workmate was recently shocked to discover I drink beer. Oh, had she known. LOL.) But I don’t drink because I hate myself and I want to punish myself; I drink because it’s an enjoyable thing to do, and then I stop in time to eat something and have tea before going to sleep. As a result, I haven’t had a single hangover in almost two years — my last one was in December 2007 when I visited Poland, drank 748724 beers with an old friend, then decided cherry vodka would round the evening up nicely. There’s a lesson in there my friends, and that lesson is: cherry vodka is so much nicer when it goes in than when it goes out.

I don’t have the super-toned body that Madonna has, and I probably never will. That would require much more motivation and determination than I have. I still love pizza and a pint of guinness. But I have a body that makes me proud and happy, and it makes my boyfriend happy too, and to tell you the truth, that’s quite enough.

First, as the non-googlereader-y of you shall notice, the design problem has been solved. Yay.

Now that the IMPORTANT bit has been taken care of, let me tell you something deep and personal.

My Austrian friend and me have discussed a few times a possibility of us giving up our careers a few years from now for a business that Can Not Fail — moving to Berlin and starting a gym there (because we know for a fact that there are not enough gyms in Berlin). In actually connected news, the gym I used to frequent has been closed and moved to a new location, which is a very good thing because it showed me how to NOT approach our Berlin gym business.

The old place has closed on August 7 and the new one opened on August 10. As someone commented, the thinking process was obviously “the builders said they will be finished until the end of July, but hell, let’s give them, dunno, 10 more days”. This will surprise and shock you, but today, on August 27, the gym is far from finished. In many, many unexpected ways.

First, the men’s locker room is in a broom closet. This would prove very amusing as a porn scenario, i.e. accidentally rubbing against hot muscular hunks in a tiny closed space, if not for the fact the guys who frequent that gym are on the wrong side of hotness, except for me of course, and that it is actually real life, not porn, hence tiny closed space has a bit less appeal than it otherwise would. The actual men’s locker will, of course, not be in a broom closet. It will be, erm, somewhere else I suppose. In one of the rooms that are not finished.

Second, the men’s showers that should be in the men’s locker room have proved difficult to move to the broom closet. But — fear not! — a solution has been found. In order to shower, a hunky muscular tattooed man (i.e. me) needs to pass through the corridor, then between the door of the ladies’ locker room and ladies’ toilet on the other side, through another dodgy corridor. Then the hunky tattooed man reaches the sauna, which a) bears a legend “this sauna belongs to dance club xxx” and b) is switched off. And then two very tiny showers are available. But that’s okay, because most people, once they realise they are bound to moon the ladies sooner or later, give up and go home to shower. No queues whatsoever.

Third, the equipment is all brand new and shiny. It’s just that what I expect from gym equipment is not to be brand new and shiny. It should be comfortable to use, safe and adjustable to any height. Instead the machines seem to have been produced in Asia — which is not a bad thing except I imagine average Asian men to be less tall than 184 cm, which results in me feeling like I am exercising in Gulliver’s gym when I am trying to do certain exercises. They were also produced for people who wear rubber while they exercise, so they don’t slide off nice slick plastic benches. I wear Nike sport pants, which gives me unexpected mobility from time to time. You don’t want unexpected mobility with 60 kg of iron directly over your face. You want to be very, very stable. Which is why the old gym with leather benches in a very forgettable shade of blue was much better than the new, shiny, slick plastic one.

The gym is at the moment available for free. It is disputable whether that is a good thing. You might say that they keep their customer base while slowly finishing off the rooms. You might also say that admitting “we’ve made a mistake, we’ll close down for a week and reopen when EVERYTHING is ready” would be a better idea. I am in the latter group. Except due to plastic slick benches made for people much smaller than me I am going to move to a different gym regardless of how beautiful the men’s locker rooms are once they open — whenever that happens.

Dear Ray,

I’ve heard that you go to the gym a lot. I am a complete n00b and have no idea how to behave at the gym. Can you give me some hints how to become a queen king of popularity and be universally loved by staff, gym rats and other n00bs alike?

Yours,

Fifi de Plomme, Esq., also known as FutureMuscle79

Dear Fifi,

I am truly delighted that you have asked me. I have, you see, devoted a lot of thought to this topic. I have observed fellow gym rats, newbies and you, Buenita Aurelia, and I have come to the conclusion there are in fact no universal rules common for every human being that feels a strange, unexplainable need to lift heavy objects every now and then. Nevertheless, here’s a few rules that I have many times observed in action. (Yes, this is based on observation of real, living, breathing humans.)

You too can be a popular bodybuilder!

1. When you see a sign saying “please clean the machine when you are finished”, they don’t mean you. That sign is for other people. Other people’s sweat is disgusting. Your sweat is like cologne, and it has power to heal people. You should distribute a layer of your sweat everywhere, on every machine. And if anyone (weirdo!) doesn’t like it, they can wipe it themselves. Right?

2. Putting weights and dumbbells back in place is for dorks. Honestly, who would have time for that? Your time is limited. If you’re a heavy lifter, especially, you know how tedious it is, putting back all those weights. Better leave 20kg plates loaded to the squat machine, there’s a thin bloke next, he’ll gain a lot by taking them off. And if he decides they’re too heavy for him to remove from the machine, that simply proves he shouldn’t be here.

3. A real popularity booster: show how serious you are about the gym by simultaneously using as many machines as possible! Put your towel on the bench press, your water bottle on the pec deck, your sweaty t-shirt on the incline press and go somewhere, preferably to the other end of the room, to work your shoulders or something. When you come back to collect your stuff, you might notice people giving you looks. They stare in admiration — they know you are so much more important than them, they wouldn’t even dream of using the machines you decided to “reserve” anyway. Plus, chicks really dig the guys who can work out on four machines at once, especially if those machines are in different rooms.

4. Since I mentioned sweat already: it really makes no sense at all to shower before the workout. So what you’ve been out last night, came back smelling of cigarette smoke, stale sweat and booze? It still makes no sense to shower in the morning before working out. You’re going to need to shower afterwards anyway! Plus, maybe other people’s sweat smells bad, but yours, as we mentioned, is like cologne. If I were you I would stop showering altogether. Water is expensive and there are many people who don’t get any drinkable water. You owe it to humanity to never shower again.

5. Nothing says “I am a grown up man who doesn’t live with his mommy and often has sex with actual other human beings” like taking off your clothes after workout, dropping them on the locker room floor in colourful smelly piles and departing towards the showers. In fact, you become more manly the more space on the floor you manage to take with your trainers, sneakers, underpants and socks. Too bad most gyms don’t seem to offer mixed dressing rooms, chicks would be SO impressed. (If you’re gay, you have an advantage here. Use it!)

6. It is perfectly okay to occupy machines such as crosstrainers or treadmills not using them and instead use the opportunity to talk to fellow gymgoers. Especially the ones that look busy — they love answering your questions, but only the ones that aren’t related to training itself, I mean — who would want to talk about lifting and cardio when you can comment on the size of the arse of that hot chick in the other corner? Plus, you don’t really have to exercise at the gym, the fact that you got there at all burns calories already.

7. If you happen to be on a crosstrainer or bike and nobody sits next to you so you don’t have anybody to chat with, just train very slowly. It’s totally okay to pedal on a bike as if you were racing a turtle and wanted to make sure the turtle wins, and crosstrainers, well, I know that THEORETICALLY they have like 20 degrees of difficulty, but nobody uses degrees 2-20. If anybody wanted to get that kind of tired, they would… well… erm… I’ll get back to you. Plus, you look silly when you get hot and sweaty, who would want to risk that? (Especially for ungrateful swines who tell you to wipe the machine at the end. As if you had time for that.) Use the time to read a magazine, correct your make-up or hairdo, talk on your mobile or text, etc.

8. Your gym is like your home so act like you’re living there. Like for instance — the sauna and the dryer are almost the same, both get hot and you can put items in both! So what else to do but put your post-workout clothes in the sauna to dry? So what if you use two out of four benches to distribute your sweaty t-shirts and the next person who wants to join doesn’t have anywhere to sit? They should have been faster. That will teach them. And anyway — what the hell are they doing at YOUR home?

9. Speaking of sauna, that sign that says “towel and flip-flops are obligatory”? It’s like with the sign that says “do not use mobile phones” and “wipe your sweat from the machines when you are done”, it’s aimed at other people. You are special and don’t need to follow it.

10. The most important: be loud! Nothing, I say nothing makes your fellow gym goers love and admire you as much as loud grunting, singing along with your ipod, shouting or dropping weights to the floor so hard that the entire building vibrates. There’s this gorgeous specimen of a hunk at my gym who likes to shout his repetitions during a workout: ONE!!! TWO!!! THREE!!! FOUR!!! It serves many purposes — everybody notices him and admires his amazing form, also — they can just start their sets together with him and so he does the counting for them so they don’t get lost, and — this is especially true if you are doing the bench press and have 80 kilograms of iron hovering over your face — you wouldn’t believe how stress-resistant it makes you when you need to be alert at all times not to drop a heavy weight on your face! And the girl who sings along with her ipod (which seems to be loaded with Mariah Carey songs, judging by the sounds the girl emits)? She is like sooooo popular. Everybody loves her! Do the same and you won’t believe how many people will want to hold your hand and tell you they want to be just like you when they grow up.