Warning--This Post is About My Uterus

Dear Uterus--

I find your lack of regularity disturbing.

Last month you decided to surprise me by having Aunt Flo show up early.  4 days early.  This month, we're right at 28 days, and she is nowhere to be found.  How do you actually make these decisions?  24 days, 27 days, 31 days.  I know that you're not susceptible to the usual external influences, boldly setting your own schedule even in the face of synthetic hormonal pressure.

I expect that perhaps you're cranky at me for not providing you an embryo to nurture.  Let's face it, Uterus, that while I trust you to do the right thing with an embryo, you really should trust me with the aftermath.  Do you realize that mammals occasionally eat their own young?  Do you want to take that risk with something of your own creation?  Do you?  Let me remind you that I have killed before.*

Is it not enough that I put up with your periodic tantrums?  Soothing them as best I can with hydration, exercise, favorite foods, occasional analgesics, and additional rest when I can attempt to achieve such a thing.  I certainly won't demand anything in return for my care and attention, but you're disappointing and confusing me here, so I would greatly appreciate some logical consideration from your end.

Sincerely--
  Me


*Technically insects, mostly mosquitoes, but also one or two trout.

*Facepalm*

Please, please people: can we stop with the negative food talk already?

Here are the two egregious incidents, which took place during lunch yesterday.  I was in an all-day training session, and they brought us boxed lunches.  The box lunch includes: sandwich (selection of various meats or vegetarian), bag of chips, piece of fruit, and cookie.

First exchange, as I was deciding on which type of sandwich I wanted:
  Woman: "Ooh, bacon and avocado.  But I'd better be good, and stick with the turkey."
  Me: "Well, I think that you should choose whichever one would be most satisfying."
  (She stuck with the turkey, probably a bit mystified that one could make food choices not based on food policing.)

Second comment, as I was walking away with my lunch:
  Woman: "Carbs, carbs, carbs."
  Me: (In my brain.)  "Yes.  Carbs.  It's what cells crave."

At that point, I proceeded outside to enjoy my lunch in the sunshine, while looking out over the pond, which was complete with ducks, geese, seagulls, and a grebe.  I'd gone for the turkey sandwich, because I looked at it and thought, "Turkery and cranberry, that looks really good."  It was really good, with sunflower seeds adding a nutty crunch along with the turkey, cranberry sauce, lettuce and tomato.  I ended up not eating 1/2 of one slice of bread, 'cause there was just too much bread.  While I sat, a co-worker strolled by with his lunch, and I was able to unload my chips, which I really didn't want.  Then I decided that I would hold onto the apple until another day, but I did want to eat my cookie, along with a cup of coffee.

Lunch: delicious.  Feeling of satisfaction: high.  Food police: zero.  While it's rough being so familiar and aware of negative food talk, because it is indeed everywhere, it also makes me happy that I don't feel any need to engage in it myself, and I can express my contrary opinion when it seems suitable, in the hopes that perhaps, someday, other people will learn that it's just food, not a means for damning yourself.

On the weight-lifting front, we've started a new phase.  Phase 4 has moved away from the high-volume days of Phase 3, and instead is incorporating some variety in the lifting styles.  We have an exercise for power (less weight and more speed during the motion), one for strength (the typical heavy weight, for 5 sets of 5 reps), one for strength endurance (less weight, but 3 sets of 20 reps, and having to deal with definite muscle fatigue), and two on a circuit (to round things out, as far as I can tell.)  There's also some cardio intervals on the non-lifting days, though I need to figure out the best way to do them.

I'm dealing with some low back pain right now.  Nothing severe, just enough to make squats problematic.  I've got a massage scheduled for Monday, and I'm planning to book a session with my chiropractor on Thursday or so.  The neck is sore, too.  Maybe I can convince someone to give me a backrub this weekend.

Remembering

It's funny the way that little things can trigger old memories and feelings.  Seeing a picture posted by a FB friend nearly made me start bawling (combination of sad memory and hormones).  Oh, the feels, good and bad.

Here's the story: five years ago, I was with my family in Utah, getting ready for my sister's wedding.  It was a lot of typical pre-wedding fun and craziness: getting pedicures all together, planning and buying supplies for a post-wedding brunch at my parents' house, rehearsal dinner and meeting the in-laws.  So much fun, so much family togetherness.  Gotta love it.

In the midst of this, I received a text message from my good friend and roommate, C.  A good friend of hers, and friendly acquaintance of mine, was coming off of life support after a prolonged stay in the hospital following complications from H1N1 influenza.  "Yay!" I thought, "Kitty's finally doing well enough to come off life support!"

*Sigh*

It took me a while, reading what people were posting on FB, to discover that it was quite the opposite.  She was not coming off of life support, she was being taken off of life support because it was time to let go.  There was not much I could do to process it at the time, a death intruding into a bright and happy whirlwind of life and love and weddings.

I give a lot of credit to Kitty's friends and loved ones who were so much more deeply affected.  They have been remembering her at the start of October every year since.  It's the only way that anyone can achieve immortality in this world.

All Part of a Balanced Lunch!

I bring a home-made lunch practically every single day.  Even on those occasions where I'm going to be in a work meeting during the twelve o'clock hour and lunch will be provide for me, I still bring my own food from home just in case the catered lunch is something I wouldn't care to eat, such as pizza or anything with insufficient vegetables.

Today I have items from total ends of the spectrum.  Cauliflower soup, from a "paleo" recipe cookbook.  Creamed kohlrabi and dried apricot cake from my 1940s cookbook. Plus cocky-leeky-ricey soup, of my own creation.  This is, to me, balanced because it contains a good source of protein, some whole-grain carbohydrates, and about 2 1/2 servings of vegetables.  And I'm counting on it holding me through my workout this afternoon.

There's merit to be had in my 1940s cookbook of the standard American diet, even though I don't eat exclusively from the menus presented.  There's also merit from the "paleo" cookbook, even though I'm not a "paleo" advocate.  You can take the good from a variety of options and make it your own.

Last night I was watching "The Supersizers Go...Regency", and the episode made me a bit cranky.  First up, when Giles goes to the doctor to discuss his diet for the upcoming week.  The doctor has looked at the list of foods/meals and comments that Giles is going to consume ~5000 calories a day.  How did he even come to that conclusion?  Even if there is a list of all the dishes prepared for a single family meal, I think it's impossible that there are not leftovers.  Looking ahead from the Regency into the Victorian era, the dictates of fashionable society resulted in a ludicrous number of dishes being served at a dinner party in order to cover the table in the correct manner.  These would not be entirely consumed by a single group of diners, and there would typically be one or more additional dinner parties, with other guests, in the subsequent evenings in order to eat up the leftovers.  Also, cookbooks of the day include many recipes of made-over dishes, designed to use up extra roast meat, potatoes, etc.  Though I like "The Supersizers Go..." for their attempt at immersion into another time period, they quite often fail at real historical accuracy.

Mountains or Molehills?

I've discovered that I have a problem when people think something is going to be much more difficult and time-consuming than I think it is.

Case in point: as a corrective action for a problem I investigated at work, a team is required to identify all instances where the problem occurred and correct them.  I led a meeting this morning to make sure they had a plan in place for this corrective action.  (I'm not actually required to do anything for the corrective action, I just wanted to make sure they knew exactly what needed to be done, and could start on it instead of flubbing things at the last moment.)  The meeting ended with them talking about how much work it was going to be, how they might not have time; it just seemed insurmountable to them.

Seriously?  It took a lot of tact and professionalism to point out that I could do it myself, start to finish, in 2-3 working days.  It's not like the information will be difficult to dig up.  It's not like there's any risk of scope creep.  Just three batches of material, a few rounds of testing for each, do it methodically and logically and it'll be done with no problems.  They've got an entire month to sort it out.

Not that I need to translate everything over into the realm of fitness, but apparently it's in my brain.  Perhaps this is why people back out when they're given a task which seems to be too challenging, such as running a 5K or, heck, even starting to exercise in the first place.  They see the big difference between where they are and where they think they should be and the gulf seems wide, too wide.

But every challenging task can be broken up into small, obtainable milestones.  Once I am comfortable with squatting 75 pounds, I increase it to 80.  Probably won't get the same number of reps, but that will come in a week or two.  Even though my goal may be a squat weight of 100 pounds, I don't see the 25 pound difference between 75 and 100.  I see five 5 pound differences, and know that it will take two or three months to get there.

So, I will continue to shake my head at my coworkers and hope that, once it takes hardly any time at all, they freak out less the next time this comes up.

Still Working on my Relationship

Go ahead and answer the following sentence.  Having a healthy relationship with food means...

For me, as evidenced by the past few days, having a healthy relationship with food means that I can ignore an array of donuts two mornings in a row because they don't have the kind I want.  Actually, this morning there was a glazed old-fashioned, but it simply didn't look as delicious as I wanted it to be.  Plus, I was already full from breakfast (lentil-rice goat soup, a hard-boiled egg, and some strawberries.)

Having a healthy relationship with food also means that I can have two slices of home-baked apple pie in the same day.  Mmmm...pie.  The traces of autumn I could detect in the air made me long to snuggle down in my house and do some wonderful fall activities.  So, inspired by a FB post, I invited a (thoroughly attractive) male friend to come over and bake the first pie of the season with me.

Having a healthy relationship with food thirdly means that I desire foods for what they are, not because they are "clean" or "healthy" or "forbidden".  At dinner yesterday evening I had the sweetest, most delicious red bell pepper I have ever tasted.  There are three more in my fridge from the same source, which I now plan to savor raw because cooking with them would just ruin the sweet, peppy crispness.  I also keep making the same coleslaw recipe over and over again because it's just so darned good!  (And so easy!  And it helps me use up the stockpile of cabbage I keep receiving from Fifth Crow Farm.)  Plus, I can cook the recipes I like out of a "paleo" cookbook and eat them alongside distinctively non-"paleo" things, and think nothing of it.  It is just food.

In muscle news, we've started Phase 3 of the body recomposition project.  I never expected to spend 50 solid minutes lifting weights, but that's what I did yesterday after work, and for only the upper body.  It was something like four different exercises for the upper back, three for shoulders, three for chest, and then one each for biceps and triceps.  There was some serious fatigue going on.  It'll be interesting to see what kind of delayed-onset soreness kicks in as today wears on.  Tomorrow's symphony rehearsal could get really interesting.

Numbers Are In!

This morning contained a voluntary health screening put on by my company.  They'll knock off something like $20 per month from my health insurance premium if I either attend the sponsored health screening or visit my doctor for the same basic tests and upload the data.  It provides a forum for intervention if the numbers aren't in the desirable range.  Sometimes I wonder whether the numbers are used for some fiendish planning, but I go for the superficial here: it's free and quick and saves me money.  So they're welcome to prick my finger for a little blood and compare my results to the recommended health limits.

Of course, it certainly makes me feel good that my results continue to be awesome!  I have the results for the past three years here, so I can see how things compare:

	10/11/12	10/10/13	9/16/14	Recommended
Total Cholesterol	140	160	158	<200 td="">
HDL	70	60	69	>60
LDL	61	81	80	<130 td="">
Total/HDL	2.0	2.5	2.3	<3 .1="" td="">
Triglycerides	45	75	45	<100 td="">
Fasting Glucose	81	83	86	70-99
Weight	148	146	148	Whatevs

Also, my blood pressure was great this morning.  One thing that makes me happy is the way that my weight has been so stable for the past few years, and, indeed, the years before that.

What's my secret?  Well, it's not a secret.  It is a sound genetic constitution plus a lifestyle that actually follows all the recommendations that the health professionals hand out.  I exercise 5-6 days per week.  I eat more than five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, and minimize my consumption of processed food.  I sleep for about eight hours per night, going to bed typically before 10 pm.  I engage in a variety of hobbies that make me happy and keep me engaged with the world around me.  I'm still working on flossing every day, but I do have a dentist appointment next week.  :)

Pick up heavy thing...check.

This morning was my first day in the weight room after a week-long vacation.  Everything was heavy; it was not easy.  (Of course, it's never "easy".)  I'm in week four of the second block of my training program, which is a de-load week.  I was supposed to de-load on reps, rather than weight, but for this morning I chose to de-load on weight as a necessity.  Kicked everything down about 2.5 - 5 pounds.  I'll see what happens tomorrow.

Honestly, I've been having problems with food while on this program.  We're supposed to keep track of protein, fat, and total calories, and periodically eat at a calorie deficit to support any fat-loss goals, but all of that took me much farther away from Intuitive Eating than I'd like to be.  I'm trying to figure out a good way to keep track of things without letting the numbers drive my eating.  I already have the patterns built in to ensure that I'm getting plenty of protein.  My plan is to try logging foods in all at the end of the day, so I only see the numbers after I've finished eating.  That way I can focus on intuition but still track some numbers.

On the cooking front, while doing a little antique shopping for the Gatsby Summer Afternoon, I picked up a cookbook published in 1940.  (Lemme try to remember to take a picture of it.)  I haven't cooked anything yet, but some recipes have caught my eye.  What's particularly amusing is that the section on game includes such delicacies as squirrel and opossum.  Also, the vegetable chapter contains kohlrabi, an excellent vegetable that has fallen out of popularity in our modern times.

If you see kohlrabi at the farmer's market or grocery store, give it a try!  I like to eat it raw.  Just cut off the outer peel (the root end is particularly fibrous, so you might have to pare away more at that end), slice into chunks, and eat.  If you like raw broccoli, you'll enjoy kohlrabi.

1950s Experiment

While we were waiting in numerous lines at California's Great America amusement park on Saturday, my friend mentioned that he should send me a link to a "1950s Housewife Experiment".  Since he has a limited capacity for remembering tiny details, especially after 96 ounces of beer and an exciting iPhone versus Gravity adventure (iPhone 1, Gravity 0.2), I decided to look it up myself.

"1950s Housewife Experiment" made for a quick and easy search on Google, and I read about both of Jen's adventures in semi-immersive 1950s housewife living.  You can chose to read it all yourself here.

What vexed me just a little bit were her descriptions of 1950s cooking.  Not the molded salad abominations--we all know those are scary--but what she perceived as the unhealthiness of it all.  Describing a simple white sauce as heart attack-inducing, coming up with an uncited recipe which uses 1/2 cup each brown sugar and butter to sauce cooked carrots for two people, serving bacon practically every single morning, claiming that dessert is served after every dinner and canned vegetables are used in every recipe.

Attached as I am to my own copy of "Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book"--a facsimile edition of the 1950 original--I could not tolerate having the good name of c. 1950 meals besmirched in this fashion.  If you take a look at the nutrition guidelines presented in the Meal Planning chapter, there's some very reasonable suggestions:

"Be sure that these Basic Seven Foods appear on your table daily to fill in the circle of Good Nutrition:

Group 1: Green and Yellow Vegetables...some raw--some cooked, frozen, or canned; one serving a day
Group 2: Oranges, Tomatoes, Grapefruit...or raw cabbage or salad greens; one serving a day
Group 3: Potatoes and Other Vegetable and Fruits...raw, dried, cooked, frozen, or canned; two or more servings a day
Group 4: Milk and Milk Products...fluid, evaporated, dried milk, or cheese; 1 pt. a day
Group 5: Meat, Poultry, Fish or Eggs...or dried beans, peas, nuts, peanut butter; 1 serving each day
Group 6: Bread, Flour, and Cereals...natural whole-grain or enriched or restored; three or more servings a day
Group 7: Butter and Fortified Margarine...(with added Vitamin A)"

So, let me get this straight: Betty is advocating 4 or more servings a day of fruit and veg, protein sources, whole-grain cereals, and consumption of Vitamin A.  This is unhealthy how?  Since it was published in 1950, it's based on cooking habits coming out of the 1940s, where there was much less dependance on pre-made ingredients, like canned mushrooms and cake mix, and a lot more basic recipes using easily-available, real-food ingredients.

Oh, there's also some basic meal planning for "adequate meals" and "abundant meals".  (I'll put the "abundant meals" add-ons in brackets.)

Breakfast: Fruit, Cereal and Milk, Bread and Butter, [Egg or Meat]
Lunch: Main Dish, Vegetables, Bread and Butter, Fruit, [Cake or Cookies or Pudding]
Dinner: [Appetizer or Soup], Meat and Potatoes, Green or Yellow Vegetables, Salad, Bread and Butter, Fruit, [Pie or Cake]

So, "abundant meals" means a couple hundred more calories in the shape of carbohydrates.

In addition, if you look at Betty's serving sizes, they are very modest compared to what we're accustomed to eating today.  Recipes involving 1 lb of ground meat (filled out with eggs and milk) stretch to serve 6.  Ham and egg pie uses 1/2 lb ham and six eggs, and once again serves 6.  She offers three ways of making a basic white sauce: thin, medium, and thick.  The thin sauce uses 1 T butter, and can be used to make creamed vegetables to serve 4.  That's less than 1 teaspoon of butter per person.  Cookie recipes make 4-6 dozen cookies--and you might get two cookies from the cookie jar if Mom is feeling generous; otherwise that's one 2 1/2 inch oatmeal cookie that you're eating per day.

In fact, I feel so good about these recipes that I'm going to start cooking more of them.  I've started already.  Last night I made creamed vegetables using a medium white sauce and steamed potatoes and green beans.  Tonight I whipped up "New Netherlands Cole Slaw" to pack in my lunch tomorrow.  I've got my eye on the "Green Rice" supper dish, replacing the spinach with some baby kale I received in my CSA box last week.

How about you?  Do you have any favorite recipes from early cookbooks?

Angel Island 12K & 25K Recap

Long time, no writing, I know.  I'm stealing just a few minutes to talk about last Saturday's race.

It was awesome!  I had a great run: challenging, rewarding, and fun.  The weather was perfect--nice and cool, overcast but still light, a great breeze on occasion.  The trail was awkward in spots, where I figured it was going to be awkward, being a very narrow dirt trail on a hillside with high poky plants on either side.  I did have to walk on some of the uphills around mile 4-4.5.  It was steep enough and my legs were tired enough that I just didn't want to push myself to the point of foolishness.  I would walk for 10 paces, then run for 10 paces and decide if I needed to walk again.  Deciding that it would be more fun while dressed as a superhero, I put on my Hawkgirl-inspired costume from the superhero trampoline adventure back in January.  Yellow leotard, green tights, red briefs and tall socks, plus black sleeves because I knew it would start off cold.  No one recognized me as Hawkgirl--several people called me Robin.

This is Hawkgirl.

This is Robin.

My official time was 1:15.36.  I was aiming to come in under 1:20, so hooray!  I also thought this was a pretty good time for running 7 miles.  Then I realized that 12K is nearly 7.5 miles, so double hooray!  Also, it was nice to see that I was fourth in my age group (females 35-39) out of 26 runners.

Maybe I should put the 25K run on my calendar for next year.  I'm definitely scoping out a half marathon to do next spring, if I can find a reasonably flat one.

Stuck in the Middle

Within the past week, I have been on opposite sides of the FA/HAES world.  I was able to interact personally in one incident, and decided to remain outside of the second.  It was an interesting firsthand experience with 1) thin privilege and 2) exercise hatred.

First was the positive experience.  While hiking with my college chums last weekend, while they were talking about their favorite forms of activism, I spoke up about the activism that I'm interested in, which is combating sizeism.  The first comment of one friend was along the lines of, "Well, fat people are okay as long as they're not unhealthily obese, and they should all work to lose weight."  After a few teaching moments on my part, on the issues of size acceptance and HAES, and because this friend has the capacity for rational thought, she realized that her initial statement was a knee-jerk reaction based on her life experiences, so she took it back and was understanding of why I feel the need for activism on this subject.

Second was a more negative experience.  On an online FA forum, a woman wrote in about a friend/cousin/someone, a dancer and frequent exerciser, who had fallen and done some damage to her low back, including a broken L5 vertebra.  Her doctor had said something along the lines of, "Good thing you've been exercising, because the damage could have been worse."  The responses within the forum were 99% in the vein of, "My fat gives me extra padding from falls.  Maybe if she hadn't been breaking down her body with so much exercise, she wouldn't have been hurt so badly."  Needless to say, as someone who both loves to exercise and has suffered from back problems over half her lifetime, this response upset me.  I know for a fact that I have recovered from minor back injuries faster and have had fewer problems and less pain because I have strengthened my back.  But I'm afraid to write in and have my opinion discounted because of my thin privilege.

It's just interesting to see the herd mentality on both sides.

Water, How I Love Thee

One aspect of the High Performance Body Recomposition project which I am doing, is that all 16 or so of us participants, along with the two online coaches, are together in a secret group on Facebook.  This does provide a useful means for the coaches to share files regarding our workouts and diets, and for everyone to have an opportunity to learn from one individual's question.  The disadvantage, as far as I'm concerned, is that there are a few highly vocal individuals who like to step in and make my question about them, or who are trying to be at the head of this imaginary class by somehow finishing the second workout of week two before week one is over.  (Seriously, are you lifting weights every day?  Did you not read the bit where the two plans are classified as "three workouts per week" or "four workouts per week"?)

As I mentioned, one of our tasks for month one is to establish our maintenance level of eating: the number of calories that will sustain us at our current weight, performing the workouts as delineated.  A couple women (there is only one man in the group) were thinking that they'd need to add in some calories because in the first week they'd lost...drum roll...one pound.

*Sigh*

Do you know that two cups of water weigh one pound?  So if I chug a pint of beer after a run (The Judge has declared that beer is the perfect post-workout recovery drink), I will increase my weight by a pound.  Or if I don't drink very much in the evening and sleep in a warm room for eight hours, sweating and respiring all that time, I can wake up a pound lighter than when I started.  Or, frankly, if I have an epic trip to the loo.  One pound of difference, in the short term, does not signify weight loss to me.

Or perhaps my thinking is just flawed.  When I stepped on the scale at the gym this morning, it indicated that my mass versus the earth's gravitational pull was producing a weight of 147.0 pounds.  This is after consistently weighing in at 150.0 pounds for all of last week.  Did I think to myself, "Hey--I've lost three pounds.  Better up my calories a bit."  Nope.  I thought, "Hey--I've lost three pounds.  I must be a little dehydrated."  Warm night, peed a lot yesterday, sweated during my morning treadmill workout => dehydrated.

However, if my weight stays at 147.0 every time I weigh myself for the next couple of weeks, then I'll believe that it represents actual weight lost, and I'll need to add some calories.

In other news, you may think that water is the best liquid for hydration...and you'd be right.  Yet another study, published by the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, has demonstrated that "neither coconut water nor sports drinks were better than water in hydrating young men after hourlong workouts."  I learned this over at Marion Nestle's site Food Politics.  Her write-up is here, and the original paper is available (free access!) here.

This morning, I spent some time hydrating myself with my favorite water of choice, tea.  :)

Reminder: Food Does Not Have Moral Value!

First, let me up and apologize for all those times in the past when I was locked into my own personal low-grade eating disorder.  I was wrong.

While out at lunch with coworkers last Friday, there were two incidents of, well, food shaming.

First up, one fellow commented on the fact that he ate a bowl of ice cream for dinner last night.  My response: "Well, if that's what you wanted to eat and it satisfied you, then no worries."  His reply was that he only ate ice cream because there was no other food in the house, and he couldn't be bothered to go shopping or out to a restaurant.  Well, at least he was honest.  :)

Second, a woman was deciding on her lunch, and was talking about "being bad" by ordering the salad + quesadilla combo.  Another woman, seated across from her, agreed heartily.  I didn't butt in with a response at the time, but it would have been along the lines of what I said above.

You are not a bad person for eating food.  Food is not inherently good or bad, or absolutely healthy or unhealthy.  Even the unhealthiest foods I can think of still provide calories, and our bodies run on calories.  I don't beat myself up anymore if I eat something containing white flour or processed cane sugar.  A bagel simply is.  A doughnut simply is.  A strawberry would be a poor choice for someone who is allergic to them, while a cheesy breakfast burrito would be a fine choice for someone who likes having a hearty breakfast.  No single meal, or single day of eating, will undo an overall balanced diet.

Counting

Things have been very busy and non-routine lately, thus the large gap in posting.  Hopefully things will get back to normal soon, maybe even today.

Spent four days with my family back in Utah.  We visited Idaho on a whirlwind trip (drive up on Saturday morning, drive back Sunday afternoon; fortunately only ~5 hours each way) and saw lots of relatives.  And lots and lots of relatives' children.  There are only a three adults in my generation who have not spawned, and given the nature of LDS families (7 of my cousins are Mormon), that makes for a lot of wee ones running around underfoot.  Of course, I like kids when they want to run around and play, so I was frequently escorting anklebiters down to the creek or joining them in a jump on the trampoline.

After the Saturday of family togetherness was finished, I took the opportunity to do a long run, to keep up with my training even while away from home.  It was about 5.5 miles from my aunt and uncle's house to the motel where I was staying, on a mostly downhill road with very minimal traffic.  Thank goodness it was mostly downhill, because there is a big difference between running at sea level and running at over 5,000 feet.  Normally the first mile is the hardest; this time, the first two miles had me huffing and puffing for air before I hit my stride.  Of course, if I could have stayed there and trained for the next three weeks, I would be in great shape for the race!

In other news, the "High Performance Body Recomposition" program that I joined officially started on the 20th.  (Technically, I started executing it on the 22nd.)  The first month is all about getting introduced to the level of weight lifting we'll be doing, and establishing a baseline of nutrition that maintains our weight.  In terms of the nutrition, to keep track of everything I have been recording my diet over at fitday.com.  I'm doing my best to have a relaxed attitude towards what I eat, and not let the total calorie count (aiming for 2100-2200, a maintenance level determined by two different formulas for my 5' 7", 150 pounds) or my macro goals (~20% of calories from protein, 25% from fat) overcome my intuitive eating.

Since no single day of "unhealthy" eating can overcome a majority of healthy days, I figure that I'll also calculate a weekly average and focus on that, rather than any single day.  I know that on Wednesday, my fat consumption was up around 35-40%, whereas yesterday it was more like 20%.  Wednesday involved a company-provided lunch, including potato chips and a chocolate chip cookie.  If I'd completely forbidden the chips, I probably would have eaten my own bag and grabbed one of the extras, feeling guilty about it the whole time.  Instead, knowing that I could have potato chips if I wanted them, I chose the flavor that was most appealing (hot jalapeno!), and then I ate a few alongside my sandwich until I was no longer hungry, saving the rest of the bag to be eaten when I was hungry again later.  This was a great psychological victory for me!  Every time I can approach a highly-palatable food and eat it in an intuitive fashion, I smile.

In the weight room, I'm back into squats and deadlifts, plus a few new exercises I'd never heard of before.  I'm doing my best to follow the program, but realizing at the same time that my short-term goal is keeping up with the running training needed to succeed in my 12K coming up in...21 days.  When one's quads are aching from a morning of squats, it's awfully hard to run.  Plus, it's awfully hard to recover from heavy lifting by running.  So I'm working on maintaining some level of balance.  Tomorrow will be a rest day (hooray!) with just some pleasant walking planned, plus housework.  Sunday I'll do a trail run, and then Monday I'll be in the weight room again.

I'll close with this shot taken by my Dad, of me explaining to a 3-year-old cousin that the flower is, sadly, too short to wear in my hair.

An Inconvenient Truth

I could blather on for several paragraphs to lay the scene for the cold, hard truth, but instead I'm going to flat out say it: really building muscle, increasing stamina, changing your body composition from fat to lean is hard work.  You can't do it with light weights, going for an easy 30 minute walk every evening, or pedaling on the recumbent bike while reading the latest issue of Elle or Men's Fitness.  You have to challenge your body, really challenge it, dealing with discomfort and frustration, push yourself to the limit more often than not.

Fighters from Giganti's Scola overa Teatro from thearma.org

Back in the days when I did a lot of historical European martial arts, my friends and I would joke that the style of Nicoletto Giganti was lazy man's fencing.  The postures were very efficient, utilizing body mechanics to defeat one's opponent in the smoothest way possible.

The human body likes this; like many natural phenomena, it will seek the lowest energy state.  Not engaging in a lot of physical activity?  Slow down the metabolism.  Not using those muscles?  Recycle them for their proteins.  Ingesting extra fuel?  Burn some of it, then store the rest as fat for later.  Unlike other mammals who can rest for months during periods of hibernation without significant muscle loss, humans must use it or lose it.  Even a few days in zero gravity will leave one weaker.

So, especially for a woman in her mid-30's who has never been particularly athletic or even believed that she could be athletic, it's an uphill battle all the way.  I won't lie: right now I'm battling some pain.  Active trigger points in my trapezius, overworked hamstrings, and pectorals and triceps that will be really sore tomorrow.  It was all I could do to reach 6 reps in my third and last set of push-ups.

Why?  Why am I battling myself just to do 6 push-ups?

Because, a couple months ago, I could only only do 3.

It's hard to see the gains when they come so slowly, but they're still there.  I am stronger than I was.  I can lift more, run farther, climb higher.  While it is a work in progress, and hard work at that, I can see the progress, slowly but surely.

Last week, I decided to sign up for 6 months of online coaching.  It was at a reduced price, to be a beta tester for a trainer's new body recomposition program.  The program officially starts on Sunday, July 20th; I have yet to see any of the details.  I had to take photos of myself: front, side, and back, and send them in.  That was psychologically very difficult, as much as I love myself and my body, I have no delusions of my photogenicity, especially under fluorescent lighting in the gym mirror on a cell phone camera.  :)  I am excited and optimistic, keeping my goals realistic, and believing that I can really be fitter than I ever thought I could be.

Angel Island Pre-run Hike

Yesterday, two friends and I took the ferry over to Angel Island in order to hike the route I will be running in August.

What I really wanted to do was ascertain the intensity of the elevation changes.  The profile looks moderate, but how steep are these inclines, really?

I'm so glad we did this hike, because I really gained a lot of useful information to enable me to have more effective training.  I felt like the inclines are very comparable to the ones I get in my county park.  However, I definitely need to work more on duration.  Running up hills is difficult enough; running up hills for over a mile is serious work.  What I can do is park in a different spot and enter the park on particular trail which will give me around 1.2-1.4 miles entirely uphill.

At least half the trail is very narrow (one person wide) which will make passing etiquette very important.  There are also many portions with dangerous footing--dirt trail breaking away from the hillside, tons of rocks to trip you up--and other running hazards like low-hanging branches and underbrush.  It will require a lot of focus to ensure my feet land in the safest spots and I lift my toes enough on each stride to avoid tripping.

I'm really looking forward to the mostly flat portion from 1.2 to 3 miles.  The fire road is wide, smooth, and open to wonderful vistas all around the bay.  I'll be able to relax and really enjoy the run, pretend like I'm flying even.  Also, overall, the terrain is very conducive to imagining being chased by, say, a Utahraptor, or pretending to be one myself.

(Image from Smithsonian)

Feelings

You know that feeling you get after completing a challenging workout?  Feeling like you're Wonder Woman, ready to take down any villain that crosses your path; feeling like you're as fast as The Flash, feeling like you could dead lift Iron Man.  I feel so great after my morning workouts--they always put a positive spin on the rest of my day.

You know that other feeling, after completing a challenging workout that was also the first workout you'd had in several days?  Feeling like every muscle between your waist and knees is cursing your name?  Feeling like you have to use the handicapped stall in the bathroom because you need the assist bars in order to find the least painful ways to maneuver into a sitting position?

Delayed-onset muscle soreness, you are literally a pain in my ass.

(Asses courtesy of Free Pictures.)

I Put It In a Spreadsheet

I ran on a treadmill this morning.  Ideally, I was supposed to run outside, but what I really wanted to do was have an easy workout on the elliptical, so the compromise was running on the treadmill.  Turned out to be great and I really enjoyed myself.  I did a variation on the 3, 2, 1 combination; it's a little too complex to explain easily in words, so I made a spreadsheet:

Walk, 2 minutes, 4.2 - 4.3 mph, then...

Run [mph]
30 sec	20 sec	10 sec
6.0	6.3	6.6
6.1	6.4	6.7
6.2	6.5	6.8
6.3	6.6	6.9
6.4	6.7	7.0
6.5	6.8	7.1

And repeat.  I did 5 blocks, for a total of 40 minutes, then walked for 4 minutes to cool down.  Ran 4 miles in 40:40.  That's a lot of fours.  (I like the number four.)  During the last block of running, I started at the top speed and worked my way down.

You want to see a number that is not a four?  150.  That's how much I weigh, and I'm amused by the fact that it keeps showing up on the scale as exactly 150.0 pounds, whether analog or digital.

No word about when folklorico dance classes will start up again.  My interests are wandering to additional, never-before-attempted forms of physical activity.  Battling for top billing are horseback riding and pole dancing.

A Story About Donuts

As I was walking down the corridor towards my cubicle this morning, I noticed a catering fellow leaving the area with an empty cart.  The group admin has a tendency to feed us treats at random, so I wandered over to see what had been dropped off to welcome us back to work after the holiday weekend.  As the title indicates: donuts.

These are my favorite kind of doughnut, the old-fashioned style, either plain, or iced with chocolate or maple.

(Image from RoadFood, Annie's Donut Shop in Portland, OR)

These are the only kinds of doughnuts I actually care about.  There are other kinds I will eat, like cake doughnuts covered with rainbow sprinkles, but the old-fashioned varieties are the only ones that really tempt me.

I ate doughnuts a lot when I was a child.  They were a popular weekend treat in my house, and they were a cheap breakfast occasionally during the week.  In other news, I was a fat child.  (My sister also ate donuts, and she was a skinny child.  Every body is different.)  I feel as though if I were to eat doughnuts frequently nowadays, I would backslide into a world of processed junk food, full of sugar, white flour, trans fats, and a lack of anything resembling an essential vitamin or mineral.

However, a great way to make something more tempting is to make it forbidden, thus I am totally allowed to eat a doughnut if I want one.  Or half of one.  I personally feel that they have no nutritional value whatsoever, therefore I would never try to make a meal out of them, but treats are fine.

The doughnuts available this morning looked similar to the ones from...ugh...Krispy Kreme: poofy and covered in too-sweet frosting.  Even though I am receptive to the lure of highly-palatable foods (mmm...fried and sweet), these were not exactly what I wanted, so they were not tempting in the least.  I instead enjoyed my breakfast of buttered toast, hard-boiled eggs, apricots, and tea.  Instead of feeling deprived, it was quite the opposite: feeling that I was eating intuitively.

Taking it to the Streets

This morning I went outside my comfort zone, that is, outside the gym.  Instead of running on the treadmill, as I have been doing for the past many weeks, I felt that I'd better do some "real" running.  For those of you who've never run on a treadmill, or who have only run on one, there is a big difference between having that belt moving beneath you, where all you have to do is lift your feet, and the stationary earth staying stationary beneath you, where you get to do all the work.

There's no way to keep up a perfect, constant pace.  No flat surface to rest one's water bottle.  No pre-set  incline or climate-controlled indoor atmosphere.  And no television screen in front of one's face to provide a distraction.

On the other hand, there is fresh, cool air circulating around the bay, providing a headwind in one direction, and not much of anything in the other.  Various wetland plants brushing up against one's shins and bringing forth a scent to the air.  Assorted stray cats taking their morning promenade.  Bicyclists sharing the trail, on their morning commute.  And the knowledge that it's just you, out for a run on your own two legs.

I did 38 minutes total, an unmeasured distance somewhere between 3.5 and 4 miles.