Inveterate Experimenter

My community center is sponsoring their 2nd Annual Biggest Weight Loss Challenge, and since I stalled at a fifteen pound loss, I thought it would be a good idea to join. Sunday the 2nd we weighed in, were measured, and did a six-minute walk test to see how far we could walk and/or run in six minutes. Being a competitive sort, I just had to push it and so I mostly walked with about .10 mile of running added, for a total of .45 miles … Not a marathon-winning pace, but respectable. My feet were convinced we’d run a marathon.

Last Friday I decided to take my workout out of the pool and back onto the track. The muscles in my right leg felt healed (after a strength training move I should never have done) and I missed my walking sessions a lot, so I walked for 30 minutes, fairly quickly, and then moved to the elliptical for ten minutes. I stretched out and went home. My feet were hurting a bit.

That afternoon I had to do a bit of minor repair at the back fence line. A section of my neighbor’s fence had blown down and I needed to put a temporary fence up so that my dogs could be out in the backyard off leash. I was out in the cold wind for half an hour or so hammering 16-gauge galvanized mesh to fence posts. My fingers were numb from the cold, and my feet were aching from the stress of bending on an uneven surface. By evening my feet were screaming!

Saturday also took a toll on my feet since I was on them all day. A few friends had decided to have a progressive New Year’s Day event so we could share our holiday decorating with each other before we put everything away. My house was first on the list so I spent Saturday cleaning and preparing food for guests. This was a great way to share hospitality … half the work of having to prepare an entire evening and really FUN! My feet had toned down the cacophony, but were still being heard.

On Sunday when I went to workout, I walked 1.2 miles, had my scheduled Challenge weigh-in, then cycled for 20 minutes and headed down for the orientation meeting and initial team meetings with our newly-assigned team leaders.

My team leader is a meat, fat and green leafy veggie sort whose diet plan is contrary to almost everything I follow. His plan includes meat, seafood, fish, eggs, green and root vegetables and tubers, and includes saturated animal fat along with healthy fats. Basically his plan is a modified Atkins, with root vegetables and tubers being the only modification. He stresses in all caps, NO FRUIT, NO GRAIN, NO DAIRY, and NO LEGUMES. And, he said that exercise wasn’t critical … WHAT??

I find it interesting that I ended up in this group. The other two teams and all of the Challenge’s printed materials espouse Bob Greene’s ‘The Best Life’ plan. Go figure. I’m considering sending an email to the program organizer asking for his input on the discrepancy.

We discussed our differences after the evening ended and I agreed to give up gluten, but that was it. My vegan diet stands. I’m concerned that the individual support he offers will be subject to his bias. I’m taking a wait-and-see approach.

However, credit goes where credit is due and it was my team leader who got me interested in a gluten-free diet experiment. According to research that we discussed (and I researched online), gluten is inflammatory, and so a diet without gluten should significantly lessen arthritis and asthma because they are both responses to inflammation. Being an inveterate experimenter, I decided to adopt a gluten-free diet and gauge it's impact on my arthritis and asthma. I have experienced a significant reduction by eliminating dairy and eggs; however when I add a bit of running to my walking, I end up experiencing minor asthma attacks and my feet still ache. I am definitely hoping for a positive impact on these.

It will be tricky … gluten-free and vegan. Most of my comfort foods involve noodles. I see a lot of rice, quinoa and corn tortillas in my future. It’s being done by many, but it will be challenging to get started. Stay tuned!
Here are a few links if you are interested in more information. Huffington Post,  Mission Hills Integrative Therapy Newsletter, eHow.

The Gift of Time (And Some Great Tea!)

It's been awhile. This year has been a year of change. My company took medical insurance off of the benefit list, and I have a long string of pre-existing conditions which exist in the medical world, but not very much in my physical world. In the past I have been diagnosed with, and suffered from fibromyalgia, asthma, back trouble, a cancerous polyp, hypertension, and hypercholesterolemia (high cholesterol), and I had a total hip replacement in 2008. All of this adds up to being uninsurable by today's standards. 

Unfortunately for me, insurance companies don't ask what lifestyle changes a person has made. I work out, eat a vegan diet, and lead a less stressful life. My blood pressure is fine now, and my cholesterol (apparently more genetic than diet related) is getting closer. I haven't had an asthma attack since I quit ingesting dairy products, and the fibromyalgia is gone or so mild that I don't even notice it. Both of my hips, new and old, are doing fantastic, and my back doesn't bother me if I don't do anything stupid like lift a 50-pound sack improperly. My colon ... well, really, do we want to go there? 

In an effort to even the score, so to speak, I decided to semi-retire by taking Social Security Survivor Benefits. (For those of you that don't know me personally, my husband passed away in 2003. I qualified for benefits when I turned 60.) I would make the same amount of money, and with medical insurance off the table, I couldn't come up with a good reason to continue to work full time. I cut back to what Social Security allows me to make per month without losing any benefits. In my case it works out to three, six-hour days a week. 

So, the biggest change has been the gift of time. I manage to get everything done around the house, joined a community center and workout several times a week, take my dogs for a daily one-mile walk and still have time to read, take classes, volunteer, play flute in the New Horizons Band and enjoy life.

I recently decided to schedule my daily tasks such as working out, walking the dogs, and actually writing my blog! So, I got out my Blackberry and put recurring appointments in for each day of the week. I'm hoping that by adding this level of organization I will be able to get more out of this gift. So far, so good, I'm writing an entry today!

The weather was awful a couple of weeks ago and so I decided to stay in the entire weekend, during which I got my recipes organized ... YAY! I had them in a binder, but with the switch to eating vegan came a love of recipe collection and they quickly outgrew the binder. I had some room in a file drawer, so I made a hanging file for each category and now I just drop them in. Sweet!

Speaking of recipes, Kansas City has a magazine, Enhance, that is a wellness-focused publication. In the Nov/Dec issue they had a recipe for Ginger-Lemon Tea. It is my new favorite winter beverage! Here's the recipe: 1tsp of freshly grated ginger, 2 lemon wedges, honey & cayenne pepper to taste. Grate the ginger over the cup, fill with hot water, squeeze in the lemon juice and add honey and pepper to taste. It's awesome and provides a powerful immune system boost!

That's it for today. I have Blogging scheduled for Monday and Wednesday morning ... Y'all will know how well my new schedule works! ;)