Fun weekend hiking & enjoying the fall colors
by Christine on October 10th, 2011
filed under Christine's Life Updates, Exercise
It was a very busy weekend for me, and I got lots of weird exercise in, which is great! It’s my favorite kind of exercise…the kind that happens by happenstance!
Saturday the hubby and I headed off to the Herkimer Diamond Mine. It’s a real working quarry where you bust up rocks and search for diamonds. (They aren’t real diamonds of course–just high quality quartz.) We weren’t overly successful and only found a few super teeny tiny diamonds. Still, the process of hammering the hell out of rocks for three hours was interesting, fun in a weird way, and great for some upper body exercise! Three hours of that burned about 1,000 calories!
Sunday we went for a hike with a group of the hubby’s friends. We went up Buck Mountain, overlooking Lake George. It was a somewhat difficult hike (very difficult for the three newbie hikers in our group), very warm, but with fantastic views at the top! Four hours of hiking burned maybe 1300 calories for me…not bad! It was just under a 7 mile hike, 2,000 foot elevation. Not one of the tallest peaks in the Adirondacks, but it was a very steady and unrelenting climb.
I was one of the carpool drivers, and man, driving after a long hike is really tough! All you want to do is kick off your hiking boots and sleep a little! I had a five-hour energy and some carrots and tried to make do.
After we went home and showered we all met back up at one of the friends’ house. Everyone had pizza (boo, I can’t have pizza! So I had some cereal at home before going over there) and played board games. I left early because I was pretty dang sleepy!
Today it’s Columbus Day and I don’t have the day off. I’m at work, but I’m feeling pretty tired. I don’t think it’ll be a very productive day at work!
Weight today was unsurprisingly down a little bit! 127.0 today, hooray!
I hope you all have a wonderful holiday!
Supersize Vs. Superskinny
by Christine on September 6th, 2011
filed under Christine's Life Updates, Diet, Food, Nutrition
Has anyone caught that British show Supersize vs. Superskinny (it was on the OWN channel this weekend)? Apparently it’s been around since 2008, but I hadn’t heard of it or seen it before. It was kind of an interesting show!
In the show, they take one underweight person and match them up with an overweight person, all while parading them in front of the camera repeatedly in their underwear for continual shock value. For two weeks they make the people swap meal plans. During that time they undergo nutritional counseling to tell them why their original diets don’t work for them and how to eat more healthfully.
The show also had some other segments, such as exploring different fad diets and exercise programs that are out there and measures their effectiveness. The show also quizzes average people about their knowledge of nutrition, such as “what plate has the most calories?”
Some things I thought were interesting:
- Skinny people often eat crappy junk foods. They aren’t necessarily skinny because they eat nothing but fresh lettuce and veggies. Similarly, overweight people often eat a more well-rounded assortment of healthy foods.
- With overweight people, it seems like the biggest issue that they needed to wrap their heads around was the concept of portion control. Again, their food choices were by and large pretty good, but it was just the quantity of food that was out of control. Once they embraced smaller portions, the weight started to fall off.
- Strangely, exercise wasn’t really covered with either of the two superfat or superskinny subjects.
- I guess I personally was surprised that the superskinny person was dissatisfied with their body shape. As someone that has battled obesity all her life, I’ve constantly quested for thin! thin! thin! It seems mind-boggling to me that a thin person might not want to be thin. Similarly, I have a hard time seeing “too thin” as a problem. I see a dangerously bone-thin person and still feel jealous longing for that kind of body shape. I wonder if this will ever change.
- An extraordinary number of people are unaware of how many calories are in the food that they are eating. How good are you at estimating the calories in the foods available to you at restaurants, parties, in your workplace lunchroom, etc?
- It seems that fat diets, although risky for many reasons, including medically risky, often seem to work. In the fad diet they examined, the person lost weight. In the fad exercise, the people lost weight. The problem with these diets is that they are hard to stick to and often cause people to binge out of control because they are hungry. The fad exercise programs (such as a specialized body vacuum while exercising) work but seems too expensive for an average person to use long-term.
- British people seem far more okay with being abused about their body shape on tv. I think American women would be sobbing for the way the tv show hosts abuse them. And they took random people off the street and paraded them in front of the cameras, too! I don’t think that Americans are as comfortable with their body shape and would not be likely to volunteer to do that. I wonder why there is such a sociological difference in our body perception and comfort level with our bodies?
Perplexingly, although the schtick of the show is to get the superfat and superskinnies to swap food while telling them how problematic each meal plan is. It seems hardly appropriate to give extreme meal plans to anyone–especially under the guidance of registered dieticians–much less people whose bodies are clearly not used to that kind of extreme change.
As we jump into September, let’s all take a moment to stop and re-evaluate how much food we are eating at any given sitting. Remember to measure and weigh your foods to keep yourself honest! Remember to eat off of small plates so you don’t fill the urge to “fill up” larger sized plates!
Orchestra & Working Weekend
by Christine on August 15th, 2011
filed under Christine's Life Updates, General Information
Good morning Revolutionists! I hope you all had a good weekend. What did you all do over the weekend? Hopefully something fun!
My weekend was filled with work, work, work. I worked my butt off on household chores! The bad part is that I didn’t get as much fun-time in as I would have liked, but the good news is that I got a lot of things done that sorely needed to get done.
Friday I did a ton of yard work: majorly trimming the shrubberies and weeding, primarily. I hauled six huge tarp-fulls of debris away from my work areas. It was a LOT of work! It involved a lot of over-my-head pruning (hello triceps muscles!) and bending over, up-and-down work. It took about 4 hours and whew, I was exhausted! Afterwards I met a friend for dinner.
Saturday was another big work day. I mowed the lawn with the push-mower (half an acre), which took me 4 fill-ups of gas, maybe 2 hours worth of work? I trimmed the grass under our little adolescent trees. I did about 6 loads of laundry and ran some much-needed errands. That evening I went to SPAC, which is an outdoor amphitheater, to see the last night of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra play their Tchaikovsky 1812 Overture and other Tchaikovsky hits. I think the picture of me from that night is hilarious! Compare this with a mere 3 years ago, when I went to another outdoor orchestral event:
What a difference 100 pounds make! (And oh my, look at those bags under my eyes!)
I actually have a friend that plays in the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, but he wasn’t playing that night: he was in D.C. with my husband playing in a card tournament! Still, it was fun to go to the concert even without Friend there.
Sunday was more work. We have an indoor hot-tub room that we use during the winter. In the summer I move all the plants onto our screened-in porch and we shut the hot tub down. In the fall we move all the plants back into the room and open the hot tub back up. Well, it was “Fall Cleaning” time, and I spent about 4 hours scrubbing the floor down there. Oh, I tossed four buckets of BLACK water! Where does the dirt come from?? That was hard work, scrubbing the floor with a stiff-bristled brush. After 2 hours, I took a short walk around the block to stretch my legs. I also did another 2 loads of laundry. Afterwards, even though I was dead tired, I went to the gym for an hour. It was weight-training for my legs, plus jogging on the treadmill. Man, was I tired! But I didn’t stop there. I put a movie on (5th Element was on Syfy) and hand-sewed a satin Christmas bag for our advent calendar ornaments. It turned out cute–I’ll have to remember to take a picture at some point.
According to HealthStatus.com, an individual my size burns 172 calories/hour doing housework. I”m sure that varies greatly depending on what kind of housework! It also says you burn 250 calories/hour mowing with a push mower. If that’s true, then I burned well over 1000 calories with my housework this weekend.
That’s a lot of housework-related-exercise that I did this weekend! The good news is that I can confidently say that I’m rocking out my 2-week XN Challenge!! I’ve successfully completed 10 out of my 11 days of exercise; I only have three more days to go!
Weight is still the same: 131.2 today. My size 2 pants don’t seem to fit, and my Size 6s are baggy on me. Must mean that I’m in the 4-range. Why don’t they make clothing sizes in half sizes? I bet a 4.5 would be just perfect!
Have a great week everyone!
XN Challenge update
by Christine on August 8th, 2011
filed under Christine's Life Updates, Exercise
Four days, and so far it’s been mostly a success.
Day 1: Walked with the hubby, so that was a success.
Day 2: Golfed for work.
Day 3: Fail. No excuse.
Day 4: Went to the gym with hubby. Success.
Well, that’s three out of four days of successes, which is good I guess.
It was pretty much a topsy-turvey weekend for me. Not all good; not all bad. I’m working on moving past shitty days and embracing Joyful living, but it doesn’t come naturally to me. It’s hard, hard, hard. Weekends like this make me wish that I belonged to some kind of religious community (preferably Buddhist, I think). Not one that preaches that some kind of diety in the sky will swoop down and make everything alright, but one that teaches how to find inner peace and joy within your own mind. Such a way of living would probably help with the weight loss conundrum as well.
The plan this week is to continue moving forwards with the XN Exercise Challenge and try to re-instill some healthy workout habits into my lifestyle. That’s going to involve re-prioritizing other events in my life to fit exercise in, but I think it will be healthy and good. I’m looking forward to it.
Here’s something that happened last night that might help other banders or weight-loss-seekers who find themselves in a similar situation. Hubby and I were out walking last night with our neighbor friends, and they invited us over for pizza at their house. We wanted to socialize, but I didn’t want the pizza (can’t do it with the band, and it’s not healthy for weight loss anyway). We agreed, but I just brought over my own food (a can of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup) that I heated up at their house. Was it awkward? Kind of, but nobody was offended and I didn’t end up going to bed feeling guilty that I ate crappy food for dinner.
Things I am grateful and joyful about today:
My wonderful husband. A healthy family. A job with a paycheck. My car maybe getting fixed, and cash in my wallet to pay for the repairs.
XN CHALLENGE: 2-Week Exercise Plan
by Christine on August 4th, 2011
filed under Exercise
I have been sitting here feeling somewhat sorry for myself. Do you ever read through some of your fellow bloggers’ posts, see how amazing they are doing going to the gym, all the calories they are burning and the weight they are losing?
And you look at yourself and you notice that you don’t go to the gym. And aren’t losing the weight. But you really really want to.
Well, yeah, that’s kind of been me for the last week or two. I’m being fucking lazy, you guys. So it’s time to cement some workout time. That means PUTTING IT ON THE OFFICIAL SCHEDULE. Cuz that’s the way I rumble. If it’s on the schedule, I do it. If it’s not on the schedule, I won’t remember or will give 10001 excuses why I won’t work out. Bullhonkey!
So I’m setting out a 2-week exercise plan for me. The goal is not to lose weight really; my goal right now is to get into the beginning of a routine. So don’t mock the lack of actual cardio. it’s not my goal. Movement is the goal. Every day. Period.
Thursday the 4th
Going to SPAC to the orchestra. Plan to get there early and get a few miles in around the golf course before going into the concert venue.
Friday the 5th
Golfing for work. Easy to plan this one!
Saturday the 6th
Gym in the morning, while hubby is off playing cards.
Sunday the 7th
Gym in the morning.
Hopefully something more active and fun in the afternoon, like canoeing or roller blading.
Monday the 8th
Rollerblading or walking at lunchtime. On the schedule.
Tuesday the 9th
I wan to try a walk-in yoga class after work this day. Hopefully I like the teacher. I’ve been missing yoga for a while now. I’m soooo sad my old center went out of business.
Wednesday the 10th
Out with a friend after work. Bicycle or go to the gym together. I’m lucky that a lot of my friends are agreeable to doing fun physical activities, not just eating or drinking!
Thursday the 11th (ONE WEEK DOWN)
Tricky day. Another orchestra event. Or pub trivia. This might actually require waking up early to go to the gym. I’m also putting rollerblading down at lunchtime on the official schedule.
Friday the 12th
Oh no. Another day up in the air. I don’t know what’s on tap after work, so I better schedule gym time in the morning.
Saturday the 13th
Either gym in the morning, or a fun activity during the day, such as golfing or hiking. Hopefully hiking!
Sunday the 14th
Same thing as Saturday. I’ll do the gym in the morning if I have to, but hopefully we can go hiking or biking or something.
Monday the 15th
Gym after work. Scheduled. On the calendar.
Tuesday the 16th
Gym after work. Scheduled. On calendar.
Wednesday the 17th (LAST DAY OF 2-WEEK CHALLENGE)
Out with a friend again. Hopefully go biking or golfing!
So there you have it! Two full weeks, actually planned out ahead of time, scheduled on the calendar, and made a priority in my life. The goal is to move and to create a better habit of exercising regularly. I’ll check in to verify that I’m adhering to the goal!
