Health and Fitness, August, 2011

[Nancy]

Washing walls + paint prep. + yard work = exercise for me yesterday and today.
Felt great after painting yesterday and bs was awesome this morning!
WTG Harriet & everyone!

[lucylee]

I haven't forgotten y'all! I've walked 5 days this week -- just need to update my log here. It's on my bathroom calendar.

[Harriet]

Long post.
I've decided I do better when I post more stuff here.
So consider me generally skippable while I get back in the swing.

Total workout again this morning. Noticing that I am more tired the second day, which is to be expected. The original concept Teresa Tapp had for an ongoing commitment was a "bootcamp" of 14 straight days of Total or other T-Tapp full workouts (which I have done 3 times over the years), then moving to every-other-day, then after a few months, moving to 2 or 3 times a week, depending upon whether you had met your goals (2) or still wanted trimming (3).

But she is always tweaking, and over the years she learned that people did very well with as little as 4 days of "bootcamp" and that it is at the 4th day that the body has been taught what is expected of it and can move to every-other-day with the same potential. Btw, she says the 3rd day of any new every-day workout will be the hardest, but that having pushed through the 3rd day it will then begin to get easier. Anyway, I'll definitely stick with this for 4 straight days at a minimum before "graduating" to EOD.

I really had no muscle stiffness and felt fine to exercise again today. I'm sure that's because of all the stretching and also the "kicking out" of legs after some of the more tense moves. I had less lower back achyness as I got out of bed this morning. Things have been moving along quite well, if that's not TMI. I did not need a nap yesterday even though I was a little emotional through the day because my ddad needed so much extra care. Scale did not go up, which I guess was because I got enough water. Muscles should definitely be swollen, so I won't be surprised by a temporary gain.

Yesterday, I had a sandwich for breakfast of 7-grain bread and a veggie-burger patty with lettuce. For lunch, grilled whitefish, slaw and broccoli/cauliflower salad, pudding dessert. Snack was almond milk and supper was roast chicken, carrots, green beans. I had 3 cheddar crackers (like vending machine 6-packs) to take a pill last night before bed. So, I'm going to say 5 to 6 vegetables.

Sending out ~~~VIBES OF COMMITMENT~~~ to all!

[Harriet]

Sunday's meals were : Almond milk Smoothie with blackberries and 2 strawberries, sausage (no nitrite) and rice, homemade vegetable juice of carrot, celery, cabbage, apple and PURPLE kale (kinda fun to work with, like beautiful fall folliage), sweet potato with butter, chocolate pudding.

Marginally enough veggies/fruits but I don't think my protein was enough, and my fiber really might not have been, or at least wasn't until the late meal of sweet potato. So today I will look back to Monday's menus and borrow from those ideas.

Total workout done again today, but I was dragging, lemetellya! So theoretically, 3rd day expected to be most difficult is past - hope that holds true for tomorrow! On Wednesday, I can take an off day.

So far today, I've eaten an apple. I read yesterday an online opinion from Dr. Oz site: "A crunchy apple acts like a toothbrush as you chew it. The process of chewing an apple removes excess food and bacteria from your mouth while scrubbing away surface stains. Apples also contain malic acid, a chemical used in teeth whitening products, which helps dissolve stains." Now, this was good news, mostly, BUT it bugged me a little, because I had been shying away from eating apples without slicing because in the past I read ANOTHER opinion that said eating fruits without slicing (like biting into a pear or apple) could erode enamel!!! Gee whillikers. Oh, in a completely different article about babies ( smile), pregnant women who eat 4 apples a day decrease their baby's chance of asthma by more than 50 percent. No other food has yet been studied that has that effect during pregnancy.

Further eating today: the apple, 2 sandwiches (at different times) of veggie burgers on 7-grain bread with lettuce; Crowder peas, 1/2 serving of cooked squash, chocolate pudding, wheat crackers. I think chocolate pudding is, like, a food group. It's virtuous on so many levels.

[Harriet]

A little hard to brag much on my eating today, since I met an old friend out at a hotel for breakfast and we were the latest ones, so they basically had pancakes. So I had one pancake, which was just huge and thick, with syrup and butter. Also a piece of bacon that I wish I could undo. Apple juice and coffee with lots of creamer and sugar because it was awful. Then I had a chicken sandwich with lettuce and tomato slice for a late lunch. The rest of the day went to pot with interruptions and fires to put out, and I don't remember a thing I did. Just pecked at some rice side dish thingie and had a Pepsi. Sigh.

I did Total workout 55 minutes for the last sequential day, unless I just have a sudden attack of ambition. It was significantly easier on this 4th day. The plan is to take tomorrow off and start every other day.

[Harriet]

My dr's nurse is going to call me back. Evidently I forgot I was supposed to come in for blood work a few weeks ago for thyrold. Sigh. Oh well, we start from where we are. I am also going to request Vit D level blood test. I don't like supplementing in the dark for that - need to know where I am.

Very sobering Vit D level for HRH again. With the prescription dose of pills he only rose from 19 to 29 over 12 weeks, aiming for minimum of 50, which was supposedly very important in the doctor's plan, yet the doctor simply says he'll renew the prescription. So this is not good - in fact it is a failure if we continue this path until (and through) cooler months when we lose sunlight as a helper.

I caught just one scant mention on the nutrition board at T-Tapp about Dr. Mercola advising a spray and went searching. Sure enough, he has a video and article on the very subject of problematic absorption of D and recommends a metered spray (under the tongue) to bypass the digestive system entirely.

I have shown it to HRH, as if I will let him decide. I do not desire to be a pushy wife, but at this point, desperate times call for desperate measures and I am pretty much finished with waiting on him or dr to handle this problem. I will probably order today ($16) and stand over him to watch him take a spray every day even if it tastes like sardines with a pickle on top. (It's supposed to taste like spearmint, but it probably doesn't and I can already hear him complaining.) This business of nickel-and-diming around about his health is getting on my lll-a-s-t... nnn-e-r-v-e.

Off day for me on exercising. Breakfast was smoothie of almond milk and strawberries, cherries.

[Nancy]

Phew what a day!
I have the rec. room as clean as it's going to get.
Walls have been dusted and washed and I've vacuumed in there too.
I got the mop boards, plus I mopped.
Plus I washed the doors.
Counting that for today's exercise.

[Harriet]

HRH sent me a link to the 1961 Coca-Cola commercial with Connie Clausen that stated outright a Coca-Cola has "no more calories than half a grapefruit". The truth, of course, was that it had about 140 calories and half a grapefruit has 16. The company had easy access to the true facts but knew the consumer did not, evidently hoping we never would. Clausen shows her dressmaker's dummy from 5 years previous and says her figure is the same as it was then because her favorite drink, Coca-Cola, has so few calories. She reassuringly promises it is "a natural wholesome blending of pure food flavors".

It would be funny if it weren't such a serious injustice. That sort of preposterous lying was perpetuated by large food companies for a long time, because no one had the ability to find out nutrition facts for themselves, and watchdog reporting didn't yet exist. In 1961, at age 6, I was probably starting to get hooked on Coca-Cola, because my parents put one 6-pack of 12-oz colas on the grocery list every week during my childhood, limiting it for budget's sake. I remember thinking as a child, when I grow up I will buy as much cola as I want.

[Nancy]

Soda was such a rare thing I remember that grandma use to split her bottle three ways with my sister and I. Now kids & adults are such pop hounds aka hogs it's scary, except we have diet cola. I try to cut back from one a day to eod. Keeping diet cranberry juice around helps.

[Harriet]

That is so true, Nancy. When I was a child, no one thought those little glass bottles were just for themselves. You put it back in the refrigerator and treated it like a container, because, as my dmom would say, "other people want some, too". My ddad, I remember, was a stickler for prying the caps off carefully and then affixing them back on after pouring, slightly bent! Now, I doubt if there is anyone - in our country, at least - who is not keenly aware that the 2 liter bottle is always the one priced at the least per ounce, so you might as well buy it rather than anything small. Sigh.

I have finished 55 mins of T-Tapp, with today beginning my every-other-day regimen again. Ideally, I will keep this up for 2 months, so on October 11 I'll go to 3 times per week or, if I'm already happy with how my measurements are, just 2 times or the equivalent in shorter workouts more frequently.

I already saw a little improvement in the mirror, and I'm convinced when I put my hands on my waist they are closer together, lol. These things signal that I was getting out of shape!

Frozen raspberries in a smoothie with soy milk this morning. For lunch, 1/2 cheeseburger and Special K cereal blueberry flavor (don't ask me why - it looked good, I guess!). Evening, big salad, 3 large homefries, some Wheat Thins, banana sandwich with peanut butter and a little mayo. Wish there had been more fresh veggies today.