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During my weight loss journey and often when people hear what I do “at my age” 
, I am asked how I can keep doing it. This question always catches me by surprise as I rarely have a conscious thought about not doing what I need to continue to reach for optimal health. A day wasted is a day lost.
Don’t get me wrong last week we helped some wonderful friends back and move their house. This was a 4 day project after work. Was a lot of lifting, stacking, packing, bending and all kinds of exercise. So after the first day, I didn’t do my morning workout for 3 days. I went to bed each night exhausted and feeling good about how well this old man humped all that stuff.
This morning I realized that my workouts are a lot like my life in general. I have come to realize over the years that life is lived in moments. Some moments are like the next rep of curling a dumbbell to my chin. If it is the first few reps it seems easy enough, but as the set nears completion, it will become harder for me to complete that set with the full number of reps. Now if I don’t increase the weight, it stays easy, but no progress is made.
- Image by Neeta Lind via Flickr
Life is that way isn’t? If we glide through it we get comfort zone results. We live from what is easy. There is little challenge, little growth and often no or very little progress. Kinda of boring don’t you think? That is where I used to survive from. It seemed like it was all I could do. Perhaps as you read this it is where you feel you are now as well. Well I have some good news for you, it isn’t that hard to get more from life.
When obesity limited my life, I had no energy, no motivation and struggled each day with pain, depression, and various concerns of my health. Had I given up I would have lived out my life in a much shorter time span. I would have allowed the doctors and the pharmacy to control how my body “survived” for the time I had left. I just had to make new choices and become more conscious that it really is about moment to moment living.
So ask yourself right now, what choices do I make in each moment to have a fuller, more fulfilled life. Notice I didn’t ask where you are now. I didn’t look for the reasons you got there, I asked what are you going to do to change it? I don’t believe in being stuck in the past, or what someone just said that hurt my feelings. I believe in the statement “If it is to be, it is up to me!” What say you?
Today my legs where killing me from the workout I gave them 2 days ago. The workout is designed to take the muscle to near failure and was one of the toughest leg workouts I have done in a long while. So I have a lot of lactic acid burning up my muscle. I thought a slow walk was a good idea.
Now normally I would have my Nike+ shoes and my Ipod Nano to record my mileage. Gotta get those miles logged so people can see I live what I preach. I am kidding, well kinda, I have to admit I like seeing the miles add up. But, when you really take a look at it, it really only matters that I am working on my health to continue the journey I started. So off I went for a slow, maybe painful walk to get some circulation going in my legs. No music. No measurement of time (how fast or slow I was going). Just a walk to feel better was all I was after.
It is a sunny day in Boise today. My walk during the day is almost always on the greenbelt and today was no exception. It was a sunny 88 degrees and humid. Little did I know that more than my legs were about to get restored.
- Image via Wikipedia
I looked around, there where all kinds of things to see and hear. First was the kayaker floating and bobbing along down the river. A reminder of things still on my “bucket list”, one day to take either a white water rafting trip or lean to kayak and venture the wild waters in Idaho. Then there was the man and his dog walking along the banks. This one took me back to the recent lost of my dear pet and friend that recently passed away after being with us for 20+ years.
I walked on as my legs started to free up a bit and each step seemed a bit lighter. I started thinking about some of the recent events in my life that needed quiet contemplation to come to some sort of decision. No music, no concern about a pace, just walking along the river on a hot summer day. As I searched my soul, that still quiet voice (note to self, you still have to get quiet to hear it) led me into the next steps and an inner knowing what to do next.
Getting ready to go around the bend I noticed the bike rider coming around the turn and waited in case he would go left instead of right. He actually stopped for me to cross and we exchanged smiles that acknowledged we where both courteous to each other’s journey. On across the old steel bridge, the boards creaked and bounced as I looked up and down the river noticing for the first time all week that the water level had changed and enjoy the flying cottonwoods as they floated through the air like angels guarding us along the way.
Image via Wikipedia
On to the home stretch, sun beating down and body getting warmer now as the sweat started to form on my brow. Half way and my walk would be done. I was almost sad for it to be over till I hear all the birds signing and I became lost in the harmony of their song. Be still they sang and enjoy the day. Each step, took me closer to my destination.
Last bridge and only a few yard to the door. As the real world approached I realized that the walk had done more for my health than getting the blood moving in my aching legs. It had renewed my spirit. It had reminded me of the sights and sounds of life being enjoyed around me. As the sweat poured down my brow it also reminded me of the days when I would have never thought of walking off those aches and pains of life that I had just been released from. And often never took the time to enjoy the sweet moments being active has to offer.
I hope in some small way this reaches one person and makes a difference in their life. It reminds them to take a moment and enjoy their walk. It doesn’t have to be for exercise. It doesn’t have to be around a park. It can be just for a brief moment when you hear the birds sing out to you or smell the fresh scent of the lilac trees as they send their scent through the air. Oh and that still small voice, it is always in waiting for when you take the time to listen. Be blessed and enjoy the journey!
Often I am surrounded by people who think I live such a naïve form of life. I have faith, I have hope and I am rarely concerned about my life in many ways these days. This was not always the case. If you have read this blog you often will hear me refer to the days before I lost my weight and changed the focus in my life.
I didn’t like the way I felt back then, but I still never gave up working on being excited about life and finding a way out. Struggle is tough! It sometimes takes all we have to keep going. Heck there are still some days at the end of the day I am glad that day is over. The good news though is even those days have something exciting happening and progress is made in some area of my life.
What’s the difference? I get to set the pace! I make the choices to stick to the plan I have or to take some time off from it. I had to laugh yesterday I was told that I sure have myself in a lot of areas. I work with clients, I am part of a team putting together a revolutionary life coaching plan, I do clinical hypnotherapy, have a full time IT position that put me on call, I watch what I eat and exercise, and recently have been asked to go back into ministry work. Sounds like a full plate. My response was that in one of my favorite life giving books I often read that if you are given talents you should use them or they may be taken away. In the same book it tells me to whom much is given, much is expected.
With all that said than I control my life with choices. I choose into my life to get all life has to offer. Diet and exercise take time and planning. So does being ill, it robs hope and joy along with time. Everything has a cost. I just look for the results rather than getting bogged down in the effort. It is more fun to be fit rather than struggling with carrying around all that extra weight. It was a small price to pay for the fullness of life I experience now.
Want control of your Life? Take it, plan it, work it, and live it. Start replacing disempowering thoughts with empowering thoughts. Learn to breath. Find out what faith and hope is again. Stop the excuses, stop the self abuse, and take one step at a time. Do it and keep going at it. Perfection is not the mantra here. It is all about the journey and what you learn along the way. After all whose life is it anyways?
Not sure where to start? Fill out a contact form and lets talk. No charge! Yeah, that is one more thing I do, help others to find a way to get started to enjoy their life. After all, to whom much has been given, much is expected.
This morning looked like yet another rainy day in Boise, Idaho. I decided if I was going to get in my exercise today I had to either take the bike or walk. It looked like rain so I decided to walk while I could and get my exercise done on the way to work. Little did I know how enjoyable it would be.
Image via Wikipedia
When you don’t walk around your neighborhood much you miss things. These are things you might drive by every day but you just don’t really notice them. Sure you see the neighbor’s yard with the flowers and the gardens being started. But you miss something. You miss the smell of the flowers and the sound of the earth waking up in the early morning.
Image via Wikipedia
So on my 2.5 miles into work I enjoyed several flowers, animals and even some funny human behavior. Imagine watching a bike rider who with all the gear and gadgets it was obvious that they were riding for their health and the environment, however when you look at the see-thru pouch of their backpack you see a load of soda and junk food. I find it amusing that they would work so hard to keep in shape and fuel their body with junk. But everyone makes choices I just observe.
Another added benefit was how clear my mind was when I got to work. I enjoy the mornings as that is my most productive time of the day, but this morning was even better. My energy was ramped up as was my metabolism. It made for a great start to my day. I even made it to work 10 mins early even though the boss wasn’t here today to see it.
It wasn’t all roses but it was all interesting. There is a segment of the walk that goes through where many of our city’s homeless hang out for early morning coffee and donuts (yeah don’t get me started on food programs) but even this has it’s own sights, sounds and things to learn. I just keep walking and looking around to stay on task to get to work because there but by the grace would I be.
Lesson for the day everyone is I burned off over 300 calories on the way in. I felt great. I improved my body and my health. Better yet, I was reminded of how great the earth is during a time where all I hear is bad news and how we are destroying our planet. I got to enjoy the peace and solitude of walking and seeing all that has been created around me. I got more familiar with my neighborhood at a pace slow enough to enjoy an observe the beauty of life around me.
Peace of mind, exercise, and some lessons along the way. Not a bad way to start a day. What can you do for all of that? Share your ideas with us!
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Ultramarathons are increasingly popular. But do they also pose a health risk?
This Sunday in New York, a small knot of runners will start running around the block. They will resemble any other running club although they might look a little slow. They will run one lap of the 0.5488-mile block. Then they will do it another 5,649 times.
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The 3100 Transcendental Race is the longest certified foot race in the world. Every day for the next six to eight weeks, the entrants will race from 6am until midnight – averaging 75 miles a day. For no payment or prize.
While few subject themselves to the lunacy of the 3,100 mile race, ultramarathons (anything longer than a marathon) are becoming increasingly popular, with races popping up all over the world. Keith Godden, editor of ultramarathonrunning.com, says there are already more than 100 such established races every year in the UK; with, he estimates, “a couple of thousand” British ultramarathon runners. “The sport now offers a great variety of very different challenges,” he says, “whether it’s 32 miles on the roads across Dartmoor, 24 continuous hours going around in circles on a running track in London, 145 miles non-stop alongside the Grand Union Canal in less than two days, or a marathon per day for three days along the Jurassic coast.”
Just finishing one of these punishing events is an achievement – but may come at a price. Personal trainer Rob Blakeman, who has trained boxers Ricky Hatton and Mike Tyson, explains: “We’re very specific organisms, with very specific requirements and very specific limitations. More training is not necessarily better training. If you do a really tough workout, the next day you often feel as though you have the flu. It’s a systemic stress. If you don’t allow that systemic stress to subside before you go back to the gym, you break the cycle of improvement.”
These flu-like symptoms, says Geraint Florida-James, senior lecturer in sport and exercise sciences at Edinburgh Napier University, are explained by the “open-window theory” which suggests that a prolonged bout of running weakens the immune system, leaving the window open for infections to attack the body. “Any stress that you come across, whether physical or psychological, will cause a response in the immune system. If you saw any of the interviews before the London marathon, everybody’s carrying a bit of a niggle, or they’ve got an illness. People trying to do ultra endurance events are taking it to a further extreme level.” If you keep on pushing yourself, disaster can strike. “If they go into overtraining syndrome, it can take years to recover from. We’re not sure, long-term, with an ultramarathon runner, how much damage they may be doing.”
Worryingly, ultramarathons could affect athletes’ hearts, says Florida-James. “Research has looked at cardiac damage within ultramarathon runners, and has shown that there are some temporary changes in terms of the functionality of the heart.”
One of Britain’s most celebrated ultramarathon runners, Geoff Oliver, president of the 100km Association, seems to bear this out when he says of the days following a long race: “I feel very weak. My heart rate is normally 48-52, and it goes down to 40-42 for a few days – I certainly feel more tired. The body is not functioning properly. It also affects my liver and my kidney sometimes. There may be blood either in my urine or out of the other end. Usually within four days I’m back to normal.”
He confesses that this has caused him to question whether he’s pushing himself too hard, but says “I’ve spoken to other runners and it’s quite common. It never lasts long.” And it’s clear that Oliver is in remarkably good shape – he recently ran the London marathon in “a disappointing 3:45.” He’s 76.
Florida-James is quick to point out that, with the proper preparation, ultramarathon running need not be unhealthy. Many people can run 100 miles without damaging themselves. That means adequate training, but also sufficient recovery time. “Everybody is different, and it will affect some people more than others.”
So why do some thrive under these harshest of regimes, while others simply crumble under the physiological stress? This, it seems, is the area that fascinates scientists and athletes alike. “I do it out of sheer interest. What can the human body cope with?” says Oliver. “I’ve always had this nice little mantra, an Alexander Pope couplet: “Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.”
Five tips for ultramarathon runners
1. Go for long runs, on consecutive days, bookended by two days of total rest.
2. Splice running with periods of walking. That’s how you’re likely to complete the event.
3. If you’re finding the going tougher, the instinct is to push harder, when you should ease off.
4. Eat and drink on your runs. You should take on 400-500 calories per hour.
5. Taper off training three weeks before the race. In the last week, do almost none.
No this is not an article on how to raise pot and lose weight, it is about growing your own food and getting some exercise while doing. An added benefit has been some quality time with both my wife and son as we work together to completely redo our backyard.
For the last 4 nights (with many more to follow) we have been working on moving what would be a dump truck load of dirt around the yard. Because our back yard was part of the Boise river many, many years ago, it is full of rock of various sizes. We have to shift the rocks out as we prepare it to go into some raised beds we are doing square-foot gardening with this year. There is also the digging out of spots to put the new sifted dirt into the raised bed area.
- Image via Wikipedia
Come to find out the approximate calories per hour for a 150 pound person (not me) is 350 calories per hour. For me it is closer to 460 but we will use the 350 number to illustrate a point. One hour of digging would then equate to the following food intake to put things into perspective: The numbers on the right under the Cals column are the calories per serving.
These numbers from Calorie Count at About.com
| Quantity | Description | Cals |
| 1.3 | Grande Starbucks Caffe Latte – Made with whole milk | 272 |
| 0.5 | McDonald’s Big Mac – With cheese | 704 |
| 4.3 | Glasses of wine (3.5 fl oz) | 79 |
| 1.2 | Snickers Bar | 273 |
| 1.6 | Cans of Coca-Cola | 207 |
| 11.3 | Carrots | 30 |
Translated, it means that it would take a 150 person two hours of shoveling to burn off a Big Mac or 1.3 cups of a Grande from Starbucks. We wonder why 15 mins on a treadmill and a few other exercises don’t cut it for weight loss. It all depends on energy in versus energy out. I tease my wife that each night I have earned the right for a donut. Truth is donuts are once in a while treats these days and figured into the total for that day. Unlike in the past where it was nothing for me to eat 6 or more in one sitting and eat the rest of my meals that day.
Lesson for the day, it takes a whole lot more effort to burn off calorie dense food than it does the few minutes that it takes to eat it.
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This last week was the first time in months that I was feeling so bad I had to take some time off from work and workouts. I came down with a cold or flu and just before that I had pulled something in my back during one of my last weight trainings. Reminder to self remember to stretch more. So imagine for a few short moments coughing and sneezing with your back spasms that would normally bring me to my knees if I could just get out of bed. That was just two days ago and this morning I was back up and walked out 2 miles.
No, I am no superman. I did have to dig in and find that hero I wrote about recently. I had to get back at it as soon as I was able. Why you ask? Well because it was the workouts and the weight loss that turned what would have been a full weeks worth of illness to just half a week. That’s right my recovery was faster because my body was stronger. It wasn’t hauling around an extra 100 lbs. It was not in the constantly worn down condition of no sleep and no reserves. When I got back there where still people out from the same or similar bug.
- Image via Wikipedia
I went and got my back adjusted as I had gotten it out of alignment. Feels much better today. Again a recovery that would normally take a couple of weeks before I would even think of going back to working out. In talking to the chiropractor we talked about recent vacations he had taken this last year and I commented that I used to think that action, fun-filled things like hiking and snorkeling where out of the question for me just one short year ago. That this last year I had hiked the Grand Canyon for the full day and loved every minute of it. I look forward to my next tropical vacation where I can get back in the water and enjoy the fish and swimming without feeling like I was going to run out of breath.
To answer the question I used for the title, I realized on my walk this morning that the way to recover is to start back at it. It doesn’t matter if it was illness or lack of weight loss that slows us down. It doesn’t matter that we are discouraged or feeling a bit let down. It matter how we overcome that feeling. It matters that we do what we can do. Last week it was keeping the hands out of the chocolate jar at work. This week it was going for a walk rather then slacking another day. All of it based on choices that stacked up over this last year that made it even possible to do it in the first place.
That’s right loosing weight and working out made me stronger and recovery was faster. Small price to pay to have along with it more energy and determination to keep going. What goal are you working on today? What are you willing and able to do to get there? Think about it and DO Something about it today!
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