Health and Fitness January, 2023

[Harriet]

Harmony, this is the same doctor I was posting about last month - first saying I was hopeful seeing her and what I hoped she'd touch on, then later saying the visit was a disappointment. The only thing that's happened since is that the delayed blood draw was finally completed through my own efforts, and the results came back with a couple comments.

The umbrella organization of hospitals, etc., largest anywhere around here and the one you will remember, includes now the word/specialty, "integrative" medicine, spelled with a small "i". This is what they are calling her office, in addition to "supportive medicine". Her M. D. was/is in Family Medicine. I'd have never been referred to her except that the surgeon's nurse is really impressed with her.

In my (admittedly limited) knowledge, "integrative" began with the growing reputation of Dr. Andrew Weil and his classes for already-accredited doctors, in healing-touch, acupuncture, some pharmacology, yoga, nutrition. I agree with some of his thinking, but he is more of an author than someone who publishes his own scientific studies or nutrition research, so I've not run across him very often. I'll probably never manage to get to all the books that are by those I do know. I believe Kathryn once posted that she'd read one of his.

I have looked at the food pyramid this integrative doctor gave me and assume Weil's influence is there. Not too strict, quite a few choices I haven't made in a long, long time, but in general sensible for someone who is just reducing animal products, not focused on limiting them. Heavier emphasis on reducing meat - he's fine with fish. You wouldn't feel good about all the nuts, but there's an alternative - oils. (smile. That would defeat my purposes but not everyone's. I find common ground with him on occasional avocados!)

K-2 - I haven't done the math on whether I get enough K in my diet or not, just assume that I do with the greens and fruits. I realize this is not K-2 until my intestines do the work to change from K-1 to 2, but I'm assuming I'm managing that. I also don't know if, at some age point, I may do a poorer job when I'm not a spring chicken anymore. (I usually figure I'm a spring chicken, until hit in the face with some reason to doubt it, then, after thought, stop doubting it, lol.) Good job researching this.

I don't know a lot about keto, except that HRH must never do classic keto because of kidneys. I have heard of plant-based keto, but don't know what it entails, except that within the paleo framework there's a lot of fiber, so nutritionists point to overwhelming plants in the diet to reach the "paleo fiber threshold" (but I don't know how much that is).

Oh, well, sitting here thinking nutritional thoughts and this man of mine comes in and says, "can you make some brownies?"

[Harmony]

Harriet, well I sure would like to have a Dr. like that. Mine have all been drug pushers (!) married to the pharmaceuticals. But then again, aren't the majority of Drs. like this nowadays. Which reminds me, I have a little container unmarked of a handful of white pills. I must look up the markings on them and see what they are. They showed up in DH's pill drawer, having been moved from something... I suspect it's something I put out for him to use during the night if he needed and then he didn't and they didn't get put back into something... no worries, we have none of the dreaded stuff of newscasts around here.

[Nancy]

Got my T. & whopping cough shot today and better Rx.
Will wait a bit to switch over on the later one.

Got my steps in pretty early today because of all the shopping today.
Looking for non existent places that closed or moved in the last 2-3 yrs.
was part of those steps.

One was by KFC so guess what I had for lunch.

-----
[ My arm was sore for 3-4 days after that shot. ]

[Harriet]

Kathryn had suggested an earlier bedtimes challenge and I'm certainly open to it - just never getting in here to chat.

I'll share that I had two incrementally earlier nights and then an engagement in the family, which threw me back to old habit, then much better last night. (I'm trying to change from "by midnight" to "by 10:00", with a soft deadline of end-of-month.)

I've had 3 perfect healthy habit days this month, of all 24 checkmarks. Hovering around 17 most of the time.

Doing T-Tapp most evenings. Last evening was a long workout, and I finished up with a YouTube tutorial of tips for the lunges.

I'm getting a lot out of brief YouTube T-Tapp videos from trainers these days. Obviously, there will be nothing new in videos from Teresa herself, but these ladies were personally trained by her to be trainers, and have excellent demeanor, offer a feeling of staying current. The main two who share on YT are Margaret and Renee. And it is not lost on me that these are free. I've recommended them to my two dds. I know dd42 does several of the workouts each week with the walking ones being her favorites. I am much more of an isometric/form person than she, so I like holding myself to slow muscle tensing, while she likes brisk movement. Dd24 likes anything that takes less than 15 minutes.

[Nancy]

My bed time is nine ish sleep till 5-6 some days 7:30 a.m when I wake up other days I am up at 5:00.

On errand days I get my steps in easily and and early in the day/ afternoon.
Today got my steps in. I am on a 37 day streak now with getting my steps in.

I have done well on getting my steps in this week.

[Harriet]

I'm back to Cronometer use, at least for a while. This is mostly because I found research that some calorie restriction would help make the doctor's plans more beneficial. Fasting helps, too, but I'm already meeting those studies' very easy fasting definition of more than 12 hours a day without food, noon being my first meal.

So, yes, now I'm into the weeds, lol, with exacting counts of stuff. Cronometer is interesting, but can take up time. I thought I remembered being able to separate into meals, but maybe not - anyway you can't do it now, at least not on the free version. You can go back and click on individual items, one by one, which is fine.

A disappointment was logging some small cookies I ate (the site happened to have the info for exact brand name and type) and seeing the truth about what that innocent snack did to my day. I was shocked enough just seeing the calories, but the saturated fat was huge - I must become more serious about knowing what I'm snacking!

But the burning question (smile) was mine to doctor about stopping some supplements but not bothering to ask about foods, no matter how much the food might include. He didn't believe my greens/fruits smoothie had all that much Vitamin C that it made any difference, and I took that as a challenge to find out.

Turns out, he's probably right.

I logged the smoothie I recently made, virtually the same one I have as a first meal twice a week. It had 460 calories with 88.7 mg of Vitamin C, which is 118 percent of RDA for an adult woman. So, was that what I expected? I don't know what I expected! That seems a lot for one meal but for the rest of the day, I eat completely different things, so I don't guess a day's total would be surprising. It's interesting to me that the veggie/tofu I make is not much lower at 96 percent, because bell peppers are so high in Vitamin C (with my 1/2 cup chopped hitting 80 percent by itself), cold cereals meal 26 percent because of strawberries, and my hot oatmeal/berries is surprisingly low with only 16 percent.

So, this is why doctor only asks about supplements. Those can have a LOT of Vitamin C, blowing past the highest intake of foods. I searched and learned that 1,000 mg is a common amount with more in some immune support ones - fine under most circumstances but not for his purposes. Now I suppose I could ask him, isn't my smoothie more bio-available than a supplement? Hmmm... lol. I think I'll let that go.

[Harriet]

Nancy, hurray for your streak!

I've backed my bedtime up to 11:15. Can't honestly say 11:00 yet. This has been more prone to difficulties than I thought it would be. Perhaps I should have dived in and just made myself go to bed at 10:00 from the first but I am trying gradual like he said. Oh well, continuing.

Reached a 25-percent reduction in calories for the first time today but my particular meals today happened to lend themselves to it. I'm not ready for that every day. 10 percent is about all I can do reliably yet, and even that's certainly not easy to make a habit. The mice in the studies I mentioned managed 30 percent every day, but then they had scientists providing the exact perfect amount of ideal mouse chow for every meal, didn't they? I bet if those mice had had to cook for their husbands, they wouldn't have been able to do it. Or if they had to go to birthday parties. Oh well, continuing. I take some solace in the fact that the mice did have their calories stepped down gradually in an attempt to keep them from even catching on.

Continuing to learn all kinds of interesting tidbits about food components. One-half Tbsp of cocoa has between 1 and 2 percent we need of every single amino acid. I never remember that it's from a bean, after all. Just one and one-half of the medium-sized Gold potatoes have 57 percent of your Vitamin C for the day. I never think of potatoes like that.

[Nancy]

Got my steps in today. Mon.
I over - did it on carbs. just had soup / broth for dinner.
I have started doing some wts. 1/5 & 2 lbs. arm wts. not every day.
Seems okay so far it is more like every two days. I am trying to give myself time to recoup between not over doing it but glad I can do these.

[Harriet]

Do be careful, Nancy. (I'm sure you will.)

I overdid exercise Thursday night and learned a lesson. Tried to boost my exercise time too much at once and did a long workout all the way through for the first time this year. By the next morning, obviously a mistake - I wasn't ready for a fast change on something so vigorous. Then I felt like I had to go easy for days. If only I had spread that same amount over two nights, I would have probably been fine, and in the long run I'd have been getting in more exercise time.

Green tea - I have found that if I put almond creamer in it like I do coffee, I like it fine. Heard something else good about it - wrinkles were reduced in a study of women. Gotta love that. But I don't know how much they drank and I'm not going higher than one cup, lol.

It's become easier to have calorie restriction and I hover at 20 to 25 percent reduction most days. Big meals, just trying to avoid the "easy" calories. Not always getting it right, but enough to feel good about it.

HRH is against this, btw. He is concerned about me lowering food intake, even perhaps losing any weight at all right now. He wants me to be cautious, but I don't do well mentally with that. I want to learn and put the things I learn into practice, and then it feels like I'm in control.

I must give HRH credit though. He did tell me not to overdo exercise as well, and I did pay for going overboard that one night.