January: How to do better without the pressure of a New Year's Resolution Fest.

 What I learned about myself by not making any Resolutions, building habits instead, kick starting the year with a nutrition challenge, and doing less in my workouts (with bigger gains). And, my mantra for the year: "Just not all at once, and not right away."

I am part of Street Parking, an online fitness (programming) community that has its origins in the CrossFit world (at least, the founders do), but is not a CrossFit affiliate itself. It was designed as a program where if all you have is a pair of dumbbells and some determination, you can follow the program and get yourself fit. There are, of course, options for if you have more or all of the equipment, and options if you're pregnant/postnatal, or just starting out and not fit at all.

Their December mantra was Anti New Year, New Me:

In other words, don't wait for January to start your fitness journey; start / keep going in December. Build your consistency now. 

Of course, it's well past December. Did you make NY Resolutions, and now it's February, and you've already failed? Are you going to wait until next New Year? If you miss starting out in the first week of the month, are you going to wait until the next month starts? Spring? Summer? 

I hope not.

Just start now. If there's one thing I've learned over the years of trying to get fit, it's that I have to let go of my Calendar OCD. I don't have to start a yoga sequence at the beginning of a month, or on a Monday. I don't have to join a program/gym at the beginning of a year. Just start. Start where you are, and work towards your goal.

Street Parking (SP) hosted a Jump Start nutrition challenge for January.

Not going to lie, this felt a bit like a resolution thing, but it was more about learning about yourself and building consistent habits around nutrition.

Points were earned by:

• Hitting your nutrition goals each day. It didn't matter if you chose the 800g Challenge or Paleo etc.
• Drinking a set water target (of your choice).
• Walking 10 minutes/ day or reaching a step target each day.
• Starting each day with a protein and fruits or veggies at your first meal.
• Avoid Alcohol.
• Pay attention each day: 
• How was your sleep?
• How was your energy level?
• And each week, note what your biggest win and what your biggest obstacle was.

How I did on the Challenge:

I didn't choose a specific diet plan. I've been aiming for 800g of fruits and vegetables a day for quite some time now, and I've been trying to increase my protein consumption. But I didn't want to have to do it for a challenge. So I chose to log all food and beverages consumed in Cronometer because I hate logging my food, but I do so much better when I do. Sure, I still have the chocolate and the snacks, but not as much. Logging keeps me accountable, if you will. And after having to do it every single day for four weeks, I've learned that it really doesn't take that long to do (time yourself, you'll see).

Will I keep logging going forward? Yes. Forever? Hell no.

I hit my water target (80oz) every day, and while I thought I drank lots of water before, sometimes tea got in the way. And I do feel better (my bladder likes more water, too. Less UTI irritation). I can't promise myself that I'll do 80oz every day, but I think 2L is doable (64), so somewhere in between. I'm not going to log it, though.

I chose the walking 10 minutes per day option. My dog agreed that this was the good option.

I work a desk job, so hitting step targets over 6k is just so much pressure (but that 10 minute walk can get me over 6k every time), and my psyche can't handle the failure of not hitting 10k steps a day.

We often have protein (eggs and turkey bacon), and often a vegetable or fruit for breakfast, but I made sure that I had it every day, even on weekends when cereal is usually easier. Granola with yogurt and a banana works, though.

Avoiding alcohol was easy enough. Had the challenge been no honey in my tea, we would have had issues. Or no chocolate. That would not have gone over well.

One thing I learned about myself during this challenge was that reading before bed made me have a much better sleep than anything else. I mean sure, walking in -20° can make you sleepy, eating well calms you down, but reading an actual book just does something to my brain, and my sleep score improves every time. Unless it's a smut e-book.

Unrelated to the Jump Start challenge, I made a big decision about my workout plan.

If you look through all the tracks that SP has to offer, you can choose from the daily workouts, several different endurance programs, multitudes of strength programs, bodyweight programs, rucking, and recovery. You could do something every day, multiple times a day. Well, someone infinitely fitter and thirty years younger than I could.

Last Spring I found myself wanting to do it all. Program it all. 

I had to stand back and ask myself, why am I doing this in the first place? To keep up with my kids. Go hiking and biking and swimming with them. And I found myself giving it all in a few workouts a week to the point where I was wrecked on the weekend and couldn't do any of that.

So in late December I decided to back off.

I chose to do the Shift (easier) version of all the Vault workouts (the special Monday workouts that are super fun, but not easy, and if you do all 25 in a year, you get a badge) this year. I am making myself do the Shift version of the Vault this year, at least for the first time through (January - June). Even if I think I can scale the barbell version, I'm doing the Shift version. 

And you know what? It's still hard. But I'm not wrecked on a Monday.

Wednesdays for the first 12 weeks of the year, SP has decided to focus on Strength. I'm enjoying the Strength sessions. They work a lot of the body in 30 minutes, and again, I'm backing off on how hard I push myself through the workout, but in doing so I'm making bigger gains. I can't explain it. I'm not pushing myself to the point of not being able to move the next day, but each week I add a little more weight (if I feel like it), and I've improved so much in just one month. I'm not overloading my overhead movements--those gains take longer or I suffer with arms that fall asleep all night and all day. But I can shoulder-press two pounds more than I could last Fall.

The other days of the week are spent working on one or two of endurance, some Olympic lifts, swimming, stairs, and just getting out and doing things on the weekends.

It's all about building Habits.

My Perfectly OCD Calendar has all my Habit Curator bubbles filled in every day, and I hit 800g every day, and I eat enough protein every day, and I do yoga every day, and I do about five other things every day. And I'll paint my house this year.....

This whole challenge, my biggest wins have been sleeping better and having more energy, and my biggest obstacles have been my own desire to do it all now.

I did start January with the intention of doing yoga every day (mostly because my mobility is tanking), but so far that hasn't happened. And maybe it's the nightly walks, or that I've backed off on the intensity of my workouts a bit, or that I'm actually stretching a tiny bit after workouts, but I'm not as stiff as I usually am if I don't do yoga. 

Don't get me wrong. I still need to work on my mobility. But I can take it slower than every day. 

I've nailed the daily walk habit.

I am good with logging my food every day.

And even though I wasn't actively trying for it, I did reach 800g & protein macros almost every day by the end of the challenge.

I do want to work on Endurance every week. 

I want to hike etc. every week.

I want to paint my house this Spring, and garden this Summer.

But it doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be consistent. And more than nothing. Go Big or Go Home is not going to work here. And you can't have it all, not right away.

And every time I think I'm failing because I'm not doing it all right now, I think of the scene in Supergirl where Cat Grant explains how she does do it all, and I think, this actually is the very best advice:

Kara Danvers : It was very hard. Really, really very hard.... I just don't know how you do it, Ms. Grant. I don't understand how you juggle it all.

Cat Grant : Oh, Kira, you have stumbled upon the most annoying question of the century, and you are so young that you do not even realize it. How do you juggle it all? You learn, that's how. You start with two balls before adding another. I figured out how to be brilliant in business, and then I added being a brilliant mother. Far too many women burn out trying to do too much before they're ready.

Kara Danvers : So you can have it all?

Cat Grant : Of course. Just not all at once, and not right away. And not with that hair. Use conditioner, for god's sake.

Random Thoughts 2014-08-26

Trying blogger on my phone for the first time. I may or may not like it. It should make it easier to blurt out my random thoughts before I forget what they were. Sometimes they're really good and they make me laugh and I think that you might laugh, too, but then after a long day at work--where I don't post because I'm paranoid that work can see what I'm typing. Actually that's not the paranoia.  I KNOW that they can see what I'm doing online.  I'm paranoid that they ARE looking at what I'm doing online--and after a long evening of trying to get some wonderful but very busy and testy kids fed, bathed, clothed, cuddled, fed again, cleaned up, clothed again and in bed, and then after a long night of more work, I get to try to blog and I sit at my computer and try to keep my head from falling off my shoulders and I can't for the life of me remember what I had for supper, let alone what it was that made me laugh in the morning.

So I'm trying this on my phone.

What kinds of random thoughts do I have and then can't remember, you ask? Well, just this morning I was putting some canned chicken on my salad for lunch, and as I was putting the leftovers in a container I had a brief thought of just throwing the chicken in with my eggs and doing scrambled instead of basted on toast, and then I thought, I wonder what chickens would think about that? Would they think, hey, isn't it bad enough that you eat us, and our babies? Do you really have to eat us wrapped up in our children? (It didn't sound that gross in my head.) But then I thought, how would the chickens know what's going on in my house? I went with basted on toast, regardless.

I wonder what pigs would think if they knew that they were wrapped up in baby chicken omelettes all the time.

OH MY GOODNESS! ! Outlander is on Showcase. I set it to record the series. It didn't. Thank goodness Showcase repeats their episodes a lot. I will get to see the first episode, I reset the series recording, and I don't have to kill my cable box in a fit of rage (no anger management issues here).

I've been trying to cut back on the caffeine. It's not like I drink a lot of coffee--I only make four cups of half regular and half decaf, which is one travel mug and one large-ish table mug of coffee. So maybe I'm not cutting back on the coffee so much as I am cutting back on the cream that goes in the coffee.

This is probably a good thing because I don't use that half-and-half stuff that just waters down the coffee; I use the 18 percent (I had to spell that out because in the last phone update the third page of symbols disappeared and apparently the percent symbol was on it. Fucking Android) cream which adds a creamy richness to the flavour and the texture of the coffee. It also adds to the richness of my hips and ass, so I'm cutting back on the coffee.

I know what you're thinking: you can just cut the cream out of the coffee. Yes. I could. But then I'd be tempted to add more sugar and that just makes my face explode. Tea is more palatable black than coffee is. In my opinion, of course.

So I've been trying out Lady Grey tea. I love Earl Grey tea, and now I'm in love with the lady. Yum.

One small problem:

Despite the caffeine, which does perk me up eventually, while I'm drinking it and for thirty minutes afterwards, I feel like napping. I don't mean I'm a little drowsy. I mean I look and feel like I'm going to pass out. Or like I'm stoned, maybe.

This tea is soothing. It would be the perfect tea to sip on when putting my feet up while I'm reading a nice relaxing book, maybe even in the tub.

Not too sure when that will happen though...

Random thoughts 2014-08-02. As in August 2nd.

You know how most people have a hard time getting their kids to eat their vegetables? Well, I have a hard time getting K1 to eat in general except for when it comes to raw vegetables. All raw veggies should watch out! Especially the ones at fruit trucks. I had to weigh a couple of sweet banana peppers before they disappeared completely. Then, a trip to the grocery store opened my eyes to the idea that maybe, just maybe, I need to teach my kids a little better about how if you touch it, IE with your mouth, we pretty much have to buy it. I now have Indian Kalera [sp].

On the other hand, I don't want to harsh on their enthusiastic curiosity, especially when it comes to very. I'll let you know how the bitter melon turns out..

Ugh. I have a kid who gets up at 6:30. On a Saturday.

You know what else we learned at the grocery store? Kids' cereals are at eye level. Their eye level. You probably learn that in marketing 101. Or when you have kids.

The teachers in BC are on strike. The BC government says, hey, if they're still on strike in the fall, we're going to take a bunch of that money that we saved not paying any teachers in the spring, and we're going to give $40/day /5-13 yo child to parents to help offset daycare costs.

WTF? I took the yearly teacher's salary for my district, divided it by 10 months, then by 4 weeks/month, then by 5 days per week. Roughly, teachers get $190-350 per day. I think on average they have 25-35 kids per class. Let's pick 25. 25 kids x 40$ = 1000.00. Wait. Wait a second.  How long before those "savings" are used up? Every four days that the teachers were on strike pays for one day of childcare. Ish.  Oh right. The savings from high school students helps out with that.

Maybe the fuzzy math will all work out in the end.

I'd rather see the strike resolved, but like Christy Clark says, both sides have to be adults.

We're screwed.

101 Things to Do for your Children: #15: Let Them Grow Stuff

Number 15 of the 101 Things to do with kids is

If possible allow your child a plot of land or at least a flower pot in which to experience growing things.

K2 bought a seed potato a while back. I cut it into four pieces and he planted them. A few days later he dug a couple up to see if they were growing.

Now they're doing quite well. Three of them are, anyway. I'm not too sure what happened to potato piece number four. It's quite possibly rotting in the raspberry bushes somewhere.

I bought a couple strawberry plants, and as soon as the berries are ripe enough (any bit of red at all), they're picked. I think that they're even eaten. And I can't wait for the raspberries to be ready. I'm also hoping that the raspberries aren't too angry about the severe pruning job that they got this spring (which K2 got to help with as well--awesome!).

I think that this is a great Thing. It makes so much sense on so many levels. Your kids get to learn about where food comes from. They get to dig in the dirt. They get to learn how plants grow. They get to dig in the dirt and you can't get mad at them for it! They get to learn the responsibility of taking care of things so that they grow and flourish. And watering is fun, fun, fun!

I mean, after they get to dig in the dirt for a reason, and get really dirty which is the bestest fun ever, they get to water everything. Not just the plant, but the lawn around it. And the deck. And the sandbox. And maybe they can fill the kiddie pool a bit more while they're at it. And maybe now we can put the sprinkler on, Mom.

And while the sprinkler's on, you just go on thinking that we're occupied. Hey, is it okay that we moved these flowers over here? I know we already did it, so it must be okay, right? I think the sandbox needs more water, so I'll just move the sprinkler over there. Heck. Let's just put it right in the pool while we're at it. That'll help balance out the sand-to-water ratio that's in the pool.

Once everything's watered and tended-to, it's just a matter of letting the sun do it's thing, and we've had lots of sun so far this summer!

Now we just have to wait until the potatoes are ready for some more justified digging-that-happens-not-in-the-sandbox!

101 Things to do for Kids: #44--Talk about Food

44. When food shopping, talk to your child about what you see -- from kumquats to lobsters. Talk about where food items come from. Talk about the people who help us by growing, picking, transporting, and displaying food.

We rock on this one.  K1 (who is four) helps me bake all the time, and he knows the difference between baking soda and baking powder. My kids have eaten tamarinds. They aren't for the faint of heart. We even planted some potatoes (K1 bought one from the plant store--totally his idea!). They were then promptly dug up a couple days later so that he could see if they had grown any bigger.

Ha ha. Potatoes. That reminds me of the time that I went to a conference regarding GMO foods, and a health-food-store owner told a story about a woman who walked into the store, took one look at the bin of dirty potatoes (he'd heard that they keep better if you leave some of the dirt on them), and started chewing out the staff; how dare they be so horrible as to let the potatoes get dirty!

Um, yeah, potatoes grow in the ground. In. Under. As in, you have to dig them up and wash them in order for them not to be dirty. Onions, beets, and carrots are like that, too, by the way. Tamarinds grow on trees. Or at least, they do in the picture on the box that they came in.

Anyway, now I'm reminded of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. I watched the episode from the UK; one girl could identify a few of the vegetables, but most of the kids could only tell you the colour. That is kind of sad.

(I was talking about this with a coworker, and she told me of the time that some British exchange students were billeted at her house for a weeknight; they had their usual meal of meat, potatoes, and vegetables. The girls were mortified that the family had gone out of their way to prepare them a Sunday dinner for them. I remember that being a standard dinner at my house--meat, potatoes or rice or pasta, two veggies (one green, one "yellow" (cauliflower was in the "yellow" category)) and a salad. Every meal.)

That (two paragraphs up) reminds me of the kids in Super Size Me who all knew who Ronald McDonald was, but couldn't identify Jesus. Actually, my kids probably don't know who Jesus is yet, either, since we don't go to church, but also don't know Ronnie. At least, I don't think that they do. Whatever happened to the Hamburgler?

Anyway, what I think that I'm trying to say on this one is that yes, kids totally need to know where food comes from (beyond a grocery store), but if the parents don't know, and aren't interested in finding out, and would rather buy a pre-made salad instead of making one, those kids are going to grow up thinking that all food comes from a shelf at the store, and all you have to do is open up the bag or the box and pop it in a microwave or oven to "cook" it. I guess at least that's a slightly higher skill set than going through a drive-through every day. I'll give them that.

I'm still all for teaching my kids from where real food originates, how it grows, and how to prepare it. K1 is really good at stirring; most of the batter stays in the bowl, now. K2 is pretty interested, too, and he's 18 months; he's constantly dragging a chair over so that he can see what's going on. Pretty soon I may even get K1 prepping meals, and not just baked goods. As long as it's fun, he's totally in to it. And he's learning some fractional math already, and he doesn't even know it!

Now if only he was as in to the cleanup part like his brother; you cannot keep that kid out of the dishwasher. Sometimes literally.

Speaking of cleanup, I should probably run.

Oh, and I dare you to leave a few tamarinds lying around your house when you have company coming!!

Tee hee.

Kids Aren't the Only Ones Eating Silly Putty.

This is just so wrong.

Just How Bad Is Sugar, Anyway?

I just finished watching The Fifth Estate's episode on sugar. I have to confess that I haven't watched it entirely--I didn't start recording it until a few minutes in, and I cut it off because of child-related noise levels, but I'm still going to sum it up for you.

Sugar has two molecules: glucose, which feeds you, and fructose, which kills you. A ton of processed foods have added sugars; and a lot of those are sweetened with fructose, which kills you. Sugar makes you fat, gives you Alzheimer's, diabetes, Alzheimer's, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and it makes you fat.

The food industry wants you to eat more of their food, so they're adding sugar which makes it taste great, but it also makes you want to eat more. You never feel full from sugar. The associations dealing with most of the above diseases aren't standing up to the big foodies. They need more research. More people have to get fat, I guess. And slip into diabetic comas. And talk about--what were we talking about, anyway?

The American Heart Association is taking notice (the Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation hasn't come back from their coffee break at Tim Horton's yet). They believe people like Stanhope when they say that sugar--fructose in particular--will give you heart disease. So, the AHA is putting limits on how much sugar you should consume. Are you ready for it?

Women: 6 teaspoons/day.
Men: 9 teaspoons/day.

They aren't talking heaping, either. They're talking level measured.

Okay, I say, but the labels measure sugar in grams. How the many grams of sugar is a teaspoon? Four. That's right. A teaspoon of sugar is four grams. So the tablespoon of Kirkland chocolate chips I measured out right now has seven grams, or 1.75 (let's call it two) teaspoons of sugar in it.

How many chocolate chips are in a tablespoon? Twenty-six. 26. Twenty-fucking-six. That doesn't even cover the bottom of a glass prep bowl! I'd like to say that I put the chocolate chips back in the bag, but I don't want to lie to you. I probably sprinkled three teaspoons or more of coconut sugar on my oatmeal this morning. I get one more teaspoon of sugar today. It's not even ten a.m. I'm so fucked.

I'm going to have to start drinking my coffee with cream only, again.

Which, to be honest, if you do that for a long enough time (like while you're pregnant), when you can have sugar again, your husband's coffee, which was never sweet enough, is now really disgusting. You do get used to unsweetened foods.

Try it.

That's right, I said I'm challenging you to cut out some sugar.

Pick one thing that you eat or drink every day, and make it sugar free. I'm not talking about substituting one sugar for another--sugar is sugar is sugar (although fructose will kill you faster)--or about substituting sugar with a sweetener like aspartame or sucralose or even agave because those aren't any better for you (that's a topic for another day, but you can check out Food Babe and 100 Days of Real Food for more fun reading).

I'm challenging you to drink your coffee or tea black or creamy, but not sweet. I'm challenging you to eat an apple instead of drinking fruit punch. I'm challenging you to give up your favourite chocolate bar for a piece of fruit (I know, I know).

I'm challenging someone to find a food at Tim Horton's that doesn't have more than three teaspoons of sugar in it. That's twelve grams.

Hmmm. What gets culled....