Category: health/wellness

Oy vey, guys, July has been rough on the keeping momentum going on working out. I’m going to blame the heat (and not, you know, my total ennui and flopping around not wanting to do anything). As a result I slacked off the on the daily stepping but I did fire up the Wii Fit and so at least I haven’t been doing nothing.

Anyway, this week has been much better in terms of scheduling my exercising. I did the stepper Monday through Thursday like I’m supposed to and even managed to throw in a little bit of Wii Boxing, which I like for upper body, and some Wii Hula Hooping, which is good for your mid-section. It’s not so good for one of my knees so it’s not something I can do every day in addition to the stepping.

I got some new shoes which has been really helpful for the stepper, which no lie, I was doing in flip flops. (Whoooops.) (In my defense they were nice Teva flip flops.) So that’s been nice. They’ve also been great for our walks at the Lafayette Reservoir, which for the last three weeks have not hurt my feet at all. I had tried to break in my pair of Skechers that I bought a year (or more) ago, but they just turned out to be terrible. I gave them a good try but at the end of the day just didn’t work. They were a pair of those slimmer-cut type sneakers, not regular full-soled sneaks which I’ve never had a problem with. So I’m a little down on Skechers but probably not forever. Luckily I had my extra paycheck on my birthday weekend so I went to DSW and got some New Balance sneakers, which were NOT cheap but so far they have been really great.

I think mine are more a navy blue though (they’re the ones I posted on Facebook if you saw that) with fluorescent orange accents. I couldn’t find a picture of them on the NB website, but these are pretty close.

Anyway, I’m back on track for the most part and that’s really the only thing you can do. Tomorrow my office has been invited to a luxury box at the Giants game so there will be much food and fun… If you ever have an opportunity to watch a game from a box (where food and drinks are provided to you) you should take it, because it’s a lot of fun! I’ve never been to a box game at the Giants’ stadium but I have at the A’s stadium, and it’s a treat, even at that ridic park. Not gonna lie, after a week of relatively healthy eating (except that stop at Freebirds for lunch on Tuesday, *cough*) being handed beers and sliders sounds really great!

I’m now getting to the point in this lifestyle change where I’m going to have to address my diet, so bear with me while I figure that out. I’m a stress/bored eater, and I don’t really eat breakfast or fruit so it’s going to be a challenge to change that. I try to bring things to the office but I’m just not hungry in the mornings so making an egg sandwich isn’t totally the solution to that yet. I have oatmeal and a bowl at the office but…

Any suggestions on the breakfast problem would be appreciated! I’m willing to entertain the thought of shakes, too. Just nothing with banana in it as I loathe bananas. I could drink it if the banana flavor was mostly hidden though. I like yogurt and cottage cheese. Having protein bars (I like the Lemon Zest Luna Bars and a number of different Cliff Bar flavors) at the office has helped with my snacking but I’m not really sold on protein bars being an actual healthy thing to eat on the regular, considering all the sugar/chocolate that’s in so many of them. They do curb the hunger more than granola bars though, which are definitely not very good for you. I also don’t like crunchy snack bars – with all my teeth issues dating back 20 years to when I had braces, I just can’t with those even though they might be a little healthier.

So you can see I’ve definitely been giving this some thought. I have run into some dumb problems due to my lack of loving fruit. I have no problems BUYING the fruit but then it sits and I don’t eat it (unless they’re orange cuties/mandarins) and I even bought a bunch of apples to make applesauce, but that hasn’t happened yet. I did eat the white nectarines I bought because they were delicious but for the most part I’m pretty ambivalent about fruit. That’s why I think if I got into the rhythm of actually making shakes it would trick me into eating a wider variety.

Vegetables haven’t been an issue for me; I like most of them except the grainier types (e.g. lima beans) and cook/roast them on the regular. I mostly just have to remind myself to eat them if I have them or pick up a bag of brussell sprouts or whatever to have in the freezer if I don’t. The freezer’s kind of a black hole so I have to try to remember what’s in there to begin with. I think my non-issue with veggies is that they’re not sweet – I definitely prefer salt to sweet when it comes to flavors.

I wish I had a chef.

Yes you guys, I haven’t posted any Fitness Fridays in ages (years?) but I’m hoping to make this a regular occurrence. I actually have some things to write about!

Starting the first week of March, I’ve begun a workout regimen that I am still continuing and plan to continue from here until whenever. Sometimes it’s frustrating and I don’t want to do it but…

It’s really working. I’ve obviously lost inches (because my pants are fitting too big) and I weighed myself last weekend and am down 5 whole pounds! I know that doesn’t sound very impressive, but I have done all this only with workouts and adding more vegetables to my diet. I’m not on any food program, I’m just trying to eat a more balanced day-to-day diet. I’ve started to do a lot more research on actual nutrition and it’s becoming more and more apparent that I’m doing *everything* wrong.

Though I am proof you can subsist on burritos and spaghetti.

So: what exactly am I doing? I’m working out five days a week and kind of loving it, is what I’m doing. The fact that “workout” and “love” now exist in the same sentence is truly amazing and still surprising to me!

A few months ago, after Christmas, my mom got me a small NordicTrac mini-stepper for half off at Sears. I was like, ok whatever go ahead when she asked if I wanted one, and after I tried it the first time and nearly killed myself it went into the corner until the first week of March when I had to go to the doctor. Knowing I tend to get high blood pressure only while at the doctor I decided to try to exercise the first few days before the appointment to hopefully get the endorphins going or whatever.

This failed, totally, and I got into a big fight about blood pressure with the nurse practitioner and they not only took my precious birth control away and gave me shitty “mini pills” (which they weren’t even going to give me until I put up a fuss and it turns out a large chunk – the most important chunk – of my medical history hasn’t made it into my electronic records, but that’s a snit for another time) and also, since they apparently thought I was going to stroke out, even sent me up to the blood pressure clinic.

Once I was at the blood pressure clinic, having successfully retained some sort of birth control pill (I take them for health/quality of living reasons) my blood pressure had zoomed back down into the normal range and the nurses up at the BP clinic basically were like, why did they send you up here? Because nobody believes me that I have white coat syndrome, that’s why!

Anyway, so I decided that in order To Show Them (and to get my real pills back), I really had to stay committed to my own health. Revenge! It’s the best motivator.

And since I’ve been having luck and feeling so much better, I’m definitely motivated to keep going. I’m probably boring everybody with all my health/stepper talk, but I don’t care. Six months or a year from now I’m probably going to be seriously badass.

(Yes, I’m partly into this in order to be able to survive the zombie apocalypse). 😉

The Workout: 

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday: stepper and weights, alternately working chest/triceps and back/biceps. Sundays: 3 mile walk at the reservoir plus weights if I remember. [Note: depending on my schedule I will either work out Thursday OR Friday; Saturday is my dedicated “rest” day]