Health and Fitness, February, 2015

[Harriet]

Welcome! This is a thread about gaining and maintaining strength for our wonderful calling, Homemaking. As we care for our own health, we grow more capable and competent to care for our families, our neighbors and our communities. As we become more effective, our hopes for ourselves and those we care about get the best chance!

February is the month to appreciate our many different caring relationships - and did you ever think - they bring us health!

"Positive emotions, compassion and happiness help us to feel better, particularly in stress, and further they improve bodily functions: Love, compassion and joy make our immune system function better and help to battle diseases. Engaging in joyful activities may activate areas in the brain responsible for emotion, attention, motivation and memory, and it may further serve to control the autonomic nervous system, i.e., stress reduction."

- Dr. George.B. Stefano, Neuroscience Research Institute, State University of New York

About Heart Month - Lots of new attention right now to resuscitation of the heart in emergencies, and how the average person can learn what to do. " Healthcare experts from around the globe are in Dallas for a once-every-five-years gathering to evaluate the latest questions and scientific research about CPR and emergency cardiovascular care, or ECC, " says the American Heart Asociation. Link to Concensus Conference article.

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

I'm going to post my fitbit numbers here so I have them recorded somewhere:

December: 316,464 steps, placed 41st in the Ottawa Fitbit group

January: 321,529 steps (5000 more than the previous month, yay!) placed 67th. Sigh....

Hopefully those January joiners will all quit this month!

[Nancy]

Wtg K in C.
I have done the gazelle this morning, posting from the ex bike.
still to do total gym for arms. X

[Lynlee]

Good work Kathryn. Suggestion - just look at what you control. Like you can't control what others do.
Also - How many are in the group now? 41 / 100 might be compared with 67 / 150, and show you are still in the middle of the pack.
chances are, competitive people who get big numbers might be telling others with the same physical bent, so that skews the figures.

I'm hoping to start tao tai chi on wed. Keeping on w tuesday yoga which still has me stiff on a weekly basis.

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

Good idea about my ratio in the pack.

In September, I was 100 of 150 'active' (i.e. used their trackers for about 30K steps over the month, so they used it some as opposed to others who have registered and had no steps at all.)

I haven't paid attention to how the group is growing until this month when we have 273 active members. So the group has almost doubled. But how many came after Christmas, I don't know.

I'll continue my goal of 10K steps a day and will miss it by 1K today because the housework didn't make up for the number of steps I had to do. I hate being short 1K because that's just 10 minutes on the treadmill but it is too late to be running the treadmill now. So my option is to go walk in the parking lot which I don't really feel like doing.

My newer goal for the month is to do my floor exercises daily. And so far today they aren't done and dh wants to go to bed so it seems I've missed my two goals for the month on day one.

[Lynlee]

walked 3k today

[Nancy]

Posting from the gazelle now nearly done w it.

[Harriet]

Goals for a healthy-habit January were reached, and so I can color in a segment of my 2015 apron image. I am envisioning that I am 1/12th closer to tying at a smaller, fitter waistline.

Today I'm seeing a water weight gain I need to dismiss quickly.

[Harmony]

I was down another pound this morning.

[Nancy]

Sigh forgot to take my a.m. insulin dose so now I am trying to deal with that. Did the ex bike miles today.. .. later ....On the gazelle glad I took care of me with a corrective dose and an early p.m. one that got me an on target reading yea!