Experience Whore

The other night, as I was hanging upside-down by my hips, I thought to myself, "I've turned into an experience whore."

I remember when bungee jumping started becoming popular. I scoffed at it. I'm only into mental thrills...from books...and knowing obscure trivia. Then every one got into mud runs and warrior dashes. Bah! Running. Only if I'm being chased.

Yet recently I've found myself trying things like:

Aerial yoga

An escape room

F-14 flight simulator

NASCAR driving (not a simulation)

Belly dancing (my hips lie)

Immersive theater

Indoor skydiving (on the to do list)

and a trampoline park.

Just because I have a subscription to Sunset magazine and almost bought a veggie spiralizer last week does not make me a lamewad grown-up (I said almost bought). Am I collecting random experiences so I can seem like a rare jewel in a sea of khaki? Perhaps. But it's fun. Some of these things also burn calories! 

I will, however, draw the line at a simulated Mexico / U.S. border crossing experience. You may have heard the podcast about this awhile back. If not, here's a brief overview. 

Makes you wonder how far these experience things will go. Perhaps one day we'll have a simulated Oregon Trail where you buy supplies from a hipster dressed as an old timey merchant and have a go at hunting your own food and sleeping in a wagon? 

I might do it... but only if I get to write what's on my tombstone. Want one of your own? Someone has kindly made this tombstone generator. 

Alternative Fitness, Calories and Cricket Protein

Has it finally come to this? It's been so long since I did a blog post that I kinda feel the need to apologize. But it's not like you guys have been sitting around, staring out the window, occasionally sighing and waiting for the next blog post.  Right? You're busy. Me too.

More specifically: I've been busy being an experience whore. More on that later...

The past few years, but especially the last several months, I've become obsessed with alternative fitness. I'm putting it right up there with self-serve yogurt as one of the unsung innovations of this decade.

I'm not talking hot yoga here... or even hot yoga with weights. I'm talking:

This isn't me, but I did this move.

Belly dancing
Trapeze
Aerial hoop and silks
...that sort of thing.

Later this month I hope to try a trampoline fitness class. If I had started this 20 years ago, I like to think I'd be a contender for some community theater version of Cirque du Soleil.

I've also tried a dozen varieties of alternative protein. Because that's what you freakin' do when you live in suburban breederville, okay? Fitness obsessions and overly-complicated dietary needs some of the very few things The OC and I have in common.

Purely for S's and G's I tried rice protein, hemp protein, chia, and even crickets. Honestly, the crickets weren't bad...when they were ground up into powder and formatted into a snack bar with coconut and ginger.

The rest of it was pretty terrible. It's all pretty bad though, even whey or soy, unless you buy flavored protein or mix it in with something. Personally I don't care for the flavored kind. There's always some kind of spooky artificial sugar like malitol. It may be perfectly fine, but the name makes it taste sinister.

The other thing I did was to record the calorie burn of some of the more heart-pumping activities.

Aerial silks (especially climbing) was intense. Aerial yoga, not so much.

In fact, I was disappointed by the calorie burn of pilates, belly dancing and aerial yoga. Each of these burned around 200 calories an hour.

Aerial, boot camp and spinning were all the top calorie-burners. My wristband registered 350-400 calories burned per hour for these.

Coming in at around 300 calories burned per hour: hot yoga, TRX kettlebells and kickboxing. 

still not me, but a move I can do