Bicycle Face: proof that exercise is bad for you (because a doctor said so)

Apparently, in Victorian times, there was a disease known as Bicycle Face

Once the bicycling craze took possession of bicyclists, many wheelmen and wheelwomen supposedly began suffering from a disease known as “bicycle face.” Doctors soon gave warnings that women, girls, and middle-aged men should avoid excessive cycling.

Well then. I guess I'll have to stick to the elliptical for a while. Just to be safe.
Exercise du jour:
a.m.30 minutes ellipticalling done!
noon30 minutes yard workdone
p.m.60 minutes ellipticallingdone!

Done!

I'm going to sit out on my patio and feel virtuous now.
And maybe a bit smug.
Gargoyle, presumably of the non-cycling variety, by SaraJB (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

I'm allergic to small talk... literally

"In a startling discovery that raises fundamental questions about human behavior, researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine have determined that the immune system directly affects – and even controls – creatures’ social behavior, such as their desire to interact with others." https://news.virginia.edu/content/shocking-new-role-found-immune-system-controlling-social-interactions So if I'm not chatty, it's not my fault? I'll just blame my immune system.

10 a.m. -- Get up from my desk. 15 minutes ellipticalling
12 noon -- Get up from my desk. 30 minutes cleaning the house.30 minutes ellipticalling.
3:30 p.m. -- Get up from my desk. 30 minutes yard work.
4 p.m. -- 60 minutes ellipticalling.
7 p.m. -- 15 minutes ellipticalling.
I'm still having trouble with taking breaks, and walking away at the end of the work day. Working on it. This was a day of mostly Fail. I did clean the house for 30 minutes, and I managed 45 minutes on the elliptical. But I spent the rest of the day trying to get work done. I know it's dumb, but when I'm tired I still try to push on through instead of taking a break or a nap or something. As if sitting in a chair like an ineffectual martyr ever solved anything.
Luckily, I'm told tomorrow is another day.

A body in motion tends to stay in... better shape

Quotes du jour: A body in motion tends to stay in motion. - Newton
A body in chair tends to stay there. - Me

When I first set up my new elliptical, I was surprised to find that I could feel the arm muscles getting a work out using the moveable arms. It was actually an effort to pedal for a few minutes. Not a huge effort, true, but the mere fact that it was an effort at all shocked me. This was not a lot to ask of my body. I hadn't realized quite how out of shape I'd gotten. I was also surprised, a day or so later, when I tried the elliptical again. This time, it was much less of an effort.
A few days after that, I ellipticalled for 30 minutes while watching a TV show. Didn't feel anything at all.
It is amazing how quickly a body can adapt to being in motion or being in chair.

Exercise du jour:

10 a.m. -- Get up from my desk. 15 minutes ellipticalling. Done
12 noon -- Get up from my desk. 30 minutes cleaning the house.Fail 30 minutes ellipticalling.done
3:30 p.m. -- Get up from my desk. 30 minutes yard work.Fail. My poor yard
4 p.m. -- 60 minutes ellipticalling.done
7 p.m. -- 15 minutes ellipticalling.done

Easy day

 Quote du jour: “We do not stop exercising because we grow old – we grow old because we stop exercising.” ~ Dr. Kenneth Cooper

Spent a total of 2 hours on the elliptical yesterday. I'm easing into this return to exercising, so I wasn't using high resistance. I got my heart rate up, even so. Have I mentioned that I love my elliptical? I even find using the moveable arms gives my arm muscles a bit of a workout.

Wow. I am surprised how tired I am today. I did not push myself yesterday as far as using resistance on the elliptical, and my muscles are not sore, but I have no energy today. Zero. Zip. Zilch. (Why are there so many 'Z' words for low energy?) So whatever I did, it must have pushed my body even though I did not feel like I was stressing out the system. I'm going to consider that progress.

Exercise du jour: Today, I want to go easy on the elliptical. A mere 15 minute stint. done

Joachim Martin Falbe [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Working from home = more work time, less home time

Quote du jour: Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.- Carl Sandburg

One thing I'm working to overcome is my tendency to sit down in front of my computer and stay there for hours. Working in an office, it's easier to control this. A co-worker wants you to go to the break room for a coffee, you go out to lunch with people, you need to physically get up and go to a meeting. Something. But working from home, my point of connection to the outside world is the computer screen and there I stay. So today, here's the schedule.

10 a.m. -- Get up from my desk. 15 minutes ellipticalling.-- done
12 noon -- Get up from my desk. 30 minutes cleaning the house. done30 minutes ellipticalling.done
3:30 p.m. -- Get up from my desk. 30 minutes yard work.fail. Last Minute Meeting, very important (yeah. so why was everything shelved until tomorrow if it was so important, hmmn?)
4 p.m. -- 60 minutes ellipticalling.done -- got to use up a lot of frustration
7 p.m. -- 15 minutes ellipticalling.done. Finally.
That's a hard schedule for me. Not the hour on the elliptical, the taking-a-break part.

Work is bad for blogging

Quote du jour: Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. - Steve Jobs

Sheesh, all it took was a job with a hellishly long commute and poof my exercise blogging went out the window. Update:

1. No, I'm not dead. Not yet, at least.
2. Working a job that involves a 3-hour commute and getting up at 4:30 in the morning is bad for your blogging schedule.
3. Jumping from that job to one that involves travel up to half a month is even worse.
4. Exercising or eating right when working 15 hour days is not always easy possible.
5. For the moment, I'm not working as hard so I'm going to go back to tracking exercise.

I bought a new elliptical. Broke the old cheap one, and fixing it would've cost more than it was worth, so I bought a fancy one with a fancy maintenance agreement. I've found that this is one type of exercise that I can and will do consistently. Go with what works, yes? Exercise du jour: 1 hour, ellipticalling -- done!

It's not Hugh, but I liked it

Friday! Holiday! Hugh Jackman!

quote du jour: I’ve always felt that if you back down from a fear, the ghost of that fear never goes away. It diminishes people. So I’ve always said ‘yes’ to the thing I’m most scared about. -Hugh Jackman

It's Friday,it's a holiday weekend, and I've gotten lil'ipad to play nice with blogger. Maybe.* So of course I needed a picture of Hugh.

*I still can't get the Preview button to work, and most of the text runs off the edge of the screen, so you have to guess at what it really says. But it's better than it was.

Photo: http://www.allaboutjackman.com/

Please don't let Blogger design nuclear power plants, 'k?

Quote du jour:
Arthur: "What happens if I press this button?"
Ford:"I wouldn't."
Arthur:"Oh!"
Ford:"What happened?"
Arthur: "A sign lit up, saying Please Do Not Press This Button Again."
- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Curse Blogger! They've changed the whole interface, and taken away all the text on the draft page. If you add an image, you can't see it, not even the HTML code. All you see is a bunch of icons. Presumably you're supposed to click each icon until you find out what it does. ("Oh, was that the Delete button? That must be why all my text went away.")

Not that Wordpress gets any awards either, as you might have discovered recently if you tried to leave a comment on a blog and got a message loop telling you to log in.

Luckily, I read another blogger's comments, which mentioned that clicking the cog icon gives you an option to revert to the old UI. Which has text, text being symbols that TELL you what will happen if you click a link BEFORE you click the link. Please don't let Blogger get the idea that it should design nuclear power plants. "Oooh, it's a shiny red button. What would happen if I press it?"

Interior dialogue, with gratuitous Hugh Jackman pic

Quote du jour: “I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.”
Mark Twain

Me: I need to put up a post on my blog.
Inner critic:Why? Nobody ever reads it.
Inner paranoiac: Besides, even if someone does read it, they'll give you advice!!!
Me: Because I need to hold myself accountable. I can go a few weeks keeping up the daily exercising without blogging about it, but something always happens to derail me, and once that happens, it's hard to get back into it.
Inner slug: Stop! I'm blushing.
Inner defeatist: Look, it's simple. This week, you've been working 10 hour days. Add that to the 3 hours of daily commute and 8 hours of sleep, and that leaves you one hour in the day to eat, exercise, shower, weed the yard, mow the lawn, and whine about how tired you are. What do you expect?
Me: The only solution I can see (aside from not working 10 hour days) is to build exercise into the commute.
Inner selves: Why not just put up a picture of Hugh Jackman exercising instead?



Exercise du jour: Callanetics this evening. Next week, plan B.


Photo courtesy of Cool Guyz

Eat to Live Weeks 5 & 6

Quote du jour: “If you focus on results, you will never change. If you focus on change, you will get results.” ~Jack Dixon

I didn't post last week, so I lumped that post in with this week's post.

Week 5 - Made it through week 5 of the Eat to Live diet. Lost the four pounds of sodium/ water retention, gained two pounds from swollen legs due to excessive exercising, lost that too. Um, where am I again? It's easy to lose track, but I think I ended up back where I was in week 3.

I think my body's having trouble adjusting. This past week, my old headache has come back repeatedly. This is a hormone-related headache that involves my face swelling up like a balloon. The upper eyelids especially become so swollen that the pressure on the eyes causes the headaches.

Week 6 -- more headaches. For two days, I went back to the non-vegan style of eating, which had three immediate results: the headaches eased off, I gained two pounds, and I got my period. This last is one of those side effects that I should have been aware of. Apparently it is quite common to stop getting your period when you first switch over to a low-fat diet. It's a reminder that what I eat has a direct effect on the hormones coursing through my body. And eating this way makes the cramps much, much, MUCH less painful. I'll take the occasional headache any day compared to that.

I went right back to eating vegan, because I really do like it. I started this six week diet as a way to tie in with Lent, but I don't feel like I'm giving up anything now by eating this way. The only thing I plan to change is to add in some more starchy vegetables or grains sometimes. Maybe meat or fish on special occasions. Dr. Fuhrman suggests using the 90/10 rule as a long-term eating plan: only eat 10% "bad" food. I like that. I've learned it's important for me to not feel restricted; if I think I can never eat a particular food, I'll feel deprived. If I think "well, not today", then I am fine with it. It doesn't matter how much the eyes and the imagination want fried chicken and chocolate-- once I've eaten the beans, greens and strawberries, the stomach is perfectly happy with the substitution. The body doesn't NEED fried chicken.

Summary: after six weeks, I've lost eight pounds and a couple inches. More important, though, is what I've gained. I feel better. I feel healthy. My nails used to be brittle and break easily; now, I've had to buy a nail file because they are growing long without breaking. I'm enjoying eating more than I used to, and I'm much more aware of everything I taste.

Final note: Since I've started eating this way, Damn Back hasn't complained once. Not a peep.I think all that pain was exacerbated by the inflammation, which was itself fueled by the high fat diet.

Exercise du jour: I've decided to go for another 30-day challenge. This month, I'm going to be doing Callanetics in the morning and evening. It's rather like Pilates, but it is supposed to be good for people with bad backs. No, I don't currently have a bad back. I want to keep it that way.


Posted from DPad on my iPad

Week 4, Eat to Live

Quote du jour: “Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, 'Where have I gone wrong'.
Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.”
― Charles M. Schulz

UPDATE:Done. I do feel a bit silly. Okay, a lot silly. But I did it anyway.

Made it through week 4 of the Eat to Live diet. Couple slip ups. Not with eating meat or grains or such, more a matter of eating things that I THOUGHT were low sodium, but turned out not to be. I shall avoid all sauces for the next couple weeks.

Usually, I don't track my weight this closely, but for the six week diet I decided to make note of how well it works. On Sunday, I gained four pounds overnight. An overnight gain like that suggests water retention, hence my suspicions about the sodium levels in the sauce. I'm not asking for advice on how to change this; I am merely keeping track.

Otherwise, I am enjoying the simplicity of this diet. Lettuce might not be very exciting to eat, but I like how it makes me feel full without feeling weighed down by greasy food. I don't have any qualms about eating with people who are downing French fries and cheeseburgers. So long as they don't expect me to join in, it's all good.



Exercise du jour: 15 minutes waving my arms around with an exercise band and trying not to feel foolish. If people stare I will smile and nod and Act Confident. What the hell.



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Armed and dangerously silly

Quote du jour: “Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”
― H. Jackson Brown Jr.


I've got a new idea for making a fool of myself in public. I spend three hours a day sitting on a train. Why not work some exercise into that time? So I've packed an exercise band in next to my lunch. The Wes train in the afternoon starts out with few enough passengers that I can do some arm exercises without putting someone's eye out.

I tried it last Friday. The conductors suggested some good exercises. And what the hell. Haven't been deliberately foolish in a while now.

Exercise du jour: 15 minutes waving my arms around with an exercise band and trying not to feel foolish.



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Do over Day

Quote du jour: This must be Thursday,' said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his beer. 'I never could get the hang of Thursdays.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy


FAIL on both exercising and organizing and eating right. Decided to get a migraine instead. Today is a do-over. Just pretend yesterday didn't happen.


Exercise du jour: 45 minutes elliptical, 15 minutes cleaning/organizing. It will get done!!!



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Eat to live, week 3

Quote du jour: I consider the 70s to be the youth of old age. So all you women out there who are afraid of getting older, just keep your orgasms in place, eat a lot of vegetables, take exercise, and you'll be fine.
- Betty Dodson

Finished the third week on the Eat to Live six week diet plan. Only lost a pound and a half this week. ("Only," she says.) I blame the pizza. (Yes, I could blame myself for lifting the pizza to my open mouth, but that's far less satisfying. Anyway, blame is boring. Done now. Moving on.) Had a little problem with the innards when I introduced ground up flax seed into the diet, but other than that the transition to eating high fiber has been amazingly stress free. I am pleasantly surprised.

Interesting note: Friday, the day of the Dreaded Pizza Encounter, was the first time in weeks that I felt hungry. I knew in theory that a diet of mostly rabbit food makes me feel full more than a high-fat low-fiber diet would, but this brought it home.

I'd eaten only low-fat food that morning to balance out the pizza, so I was quite hungry by lunch time. For about five minutes after I ate the pizza, I felt satisfied. Then I was hungry, a gnawing hunger that wouldn't go away until I ate a couple cups of lettuce. Then the stomach was happy, purring instead of growling. Damn. I really am turning into a healthy person.

Exercise du jour: 45 minutes elliptical, 15 minutes cleaning/organizing. Maybe if I post organizing up here, it will get done.

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Sleep savings time

Quote du jour: If people were meant to pop out of bed, we'd all sleep in toasters. - Jim Davis, attrib.


I propose a new time system: Sleep Savings Time. Why bother with saving daylight? It's all going to be gone once night comes around.

Actually taking the day off exercising. My legs feel swollen from the steady regime of nothing but elliptical, so I'm going to spend my exercise time clearing things up so that I have room for exercise DVDs or using the rower. I've done so much exercising lately that I don't feel lazy for taking the day off.

Exercise du jour: 15 minutes stretching.

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Onward and downward

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

Survived the pizza peril. As expected, suffered a reversal temporarily on the downward progression. It helped that I was prepared for it. Back to being good. Onward and downward.

Exercise du jour: 60 minutes on the elliptical. It shall be done.
Update: DONE

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Perils, pitfalls, pizza... and a plan.

Quote du jour: And Jesus saith to him: If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. And immediately the father of the boy cried out with tears, I do believe, Lord: help my unbelief!
- Mark 9:23-24

Today is a short day at work, but it's a day filled with perils and pitfalls. Yes, today is pizza day. One is expected to attend. One will feel obliged to partake. It's showing Team Spirit, or something like that. I know that when faced with the pizza, I'll probably end up nibbling.

What I'm most concerned with is not losing momentum. I'm almost halfway through the six week diet plan; this is about the time when I'd expect doubts & difficulties to start dropping by for a visit. I've been losing weight at the rate of a steady 2 pounds a week, which is a great way to stay motivated. I've been averaging an hour a night on the elliptical. Things have been good.

Even a vegetarian pizza that's been commercially made is going to be stuffed to the gills with enough sodium to choke a horse. I've learned enough to know that it's going to add pounds on the scale, that I'm going to feel most irrationally annoyed, and that that I'm going to feel irrationally discouraged. Even though I believe the diet works, I will start to disbelieve in my ability to follow it in faith.

So the plan is this:
ALL DONE

• Eat a ton of fruit and vegetables for breakfast
--DONE

• Start the day with 15 minutes on the elliptical --DONE!


• Work in 15 minutes of walking while waiting for the morning train --DONE!


• 45 minutes on the elliptical this evening

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Second week doing Eat to Live

Quote du jour: The bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late. ~Charles Caleb Colton


Survived another week on the Eat to Live eating plan. Lost another two pounds, despite the Unfortunate Chinese Food Incident, which is not to be sneezed at even if it is allergy season. One thing I've noticed is that my weight is not fluctuating wildly up and down as it used to before I started this. Is it just reduced salt intake? I'm curious.

Another curious thing is how sensitive the taste buds are getting. Is it because so much of the diet is green, leafy, unspicy? I had a bowl of sweet, sweet early strawberries with some tart blueberries mixed in. Even ten minutes later, my taste buds were acting like a bunch of stoned hippies in a brownie factory: "whoa, man, that was, like, intense, dude.*"

Of course, that is not always a good thing. Yesterday I went out to eat at a restaurant with a bunch of people. It was the first time I'd eaten out, since I've been on this eating plan, at a place that didn't have a salad bar. All you could get was stir fry, though you could pick out what you wanted them to put in the wok. I thought I was playing it safe by getting a vegetable stir fry, but that sauce! Argh! I can still taste it. Forget Chinese food making you hungry, I was full for the rest of the day.

Update: exercise done!


Exercise du jour: Going for distance. 60 on the elliptical.

*Yes, my taste buds are Californian. They talk like that.

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The Joy of Exercising

Quote du jour:

And if tonight my soul may find her peace
in sleep, and sink in good oblivion,
and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower
then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created.
~D.H. Lawrence

Very strange thing. Last night, I'd planned a short 15 minutes on the elliptical. But once I got going, I didn't want to stop exercising. Don't ask me where my Inner Slug was; he must've taken the night off, because my body felt full of energy. I wanted to work out. I ended up doing 40 minutes on the elliptical for the sheer joy of movement.

I'm trying to remember the last time I worked out for the sheer fun of it. It's the kind of thing I associate with childhood. These days, fun is hanging out with friends or playing a game, not exercising. I'm not complaining, not by any means. Just wondering when that joy went away. I'm glad it came back last night.



Exercise du jour: No plan. At some point this evening, I'm going to get on the elliptical and move, but how hard and how long, those details I will leave up to my inner child. Might be fun.

Posted from DPad on my iPad