Vicky Loebel's Blog, page 7

5x10x15 October Challenge: Day 1/31

Blogs are like diets. You start one…it goes along pretty well for a week or so…then reality happens. The cat vomits. The car won’t start. One of your kids throws the band teacher out the window….and blogs, diets, romance all fall by the wayside until the next time you take a minute to evaluate life.

Wait…did I say romance? In any event, the wheel turns, the weather becomes more compatible with walking the dogs, and I start to think…maybe…I should have stuck with the plan.

So I’ve issued myself an October challenge. Stick with 5x10x15 refit for 31 days. If accomplished this will be approximately 300% the length of all previous flings with fitness fidelity. Can it be done?

As a reminder, 5x10x15 Refit is this simple: 5 reps of  something good for you (a minute of yoga, a set of squats, a brisk minute walking the dog, even eating a veggie) 10 times per day, on a diet of 1500 calories.

I’m up to 9 things for today. That leaves just 5 minutes of exercise to go! Plus the calorie part. Oh yeah!

More tomorrow, unless the cat pukes on my computer.

And I don’t’ have a cat.

I Can’t Lose Weight no matter how much chocolate I eat!

First an announcement. My book “Keys to the Coven” is free for three days (August 2-5) on Amazon.com.

If you’ve got any interest in a spicy, possibly over-complicated but well-written (promise!) urban fantasy, please download and check it out.

And if you’re not interested, download it anyway to help an under-appreciated indie author give her rankings a boost. Next time we get together, I’ll buy you a coke!

Second: I think the blog title (and that coke comment) say it all. After five days of writing, my diet’s pretty much blown and I’m back where I started at the beginning of these posts.

Still, diet and exercise are the right way to go. So today I’m back on the plan.

Happy Thursday!

Brief Writing Retreat

Writer’s Retreat Courtesy of public-domain-image.com

I’m putting the blog on hold the rest of July while I do a writing push on my novel. I’ll be back August first, hopefully with a smaller waistline and a completed rough draft.

In the meantime:

Five vigorous things – ten times a day – 1500 calories not counting unprocessed fruits and vegetables.

It’s just that simple!

More on Balance

Freakonomics says (I roughly misquote) we look for information that tends to reinforce the opinions we already have, as opposed to looking for sources that will help us broaden or change our ideas.

In that tradition, I’ve been meaning to look up stuff about how great balance-work is for the brain. But it turned out “balance” and “brain” get used a lot in other contexts and so far I’ve been too lazy to pursue it.

So I’ll grossly summarize what Gretchen Reynolds–whose own research massively reinforces her (and not my) prejudice in favor of running (because I hate it)–said on p. 168-169 of The First 20 Minutes.

People who have previously injured their ankles have bad balance.
People who run most often injure their ankles by tripping
People with good balance are less likely to trip.

I won’t generalize to say people with good balance are less likely to run. But you know. If the syllogism fits.

Here’s a sneaky balance you can slip in while you’re waiting in line with that tub of chocolate-chip ice cream.

Check-out balance


Stand up straight. As always, suck your gut in and hug your leg muscles in toward your bones
Shift your weight into one foot
Lift the other foot very, very slightly.

The straighter you stand, the better the work out, and the less anyone can tell you’re doing something weird.

Twist and Shout

Today’s comment? Do the Twist!

This is a truly amazing (and fun) way to work in some cardio and core strength training, and it doesn’t take up a lot of room or special equipment. It’s also an exercise you can sneak in at your desk, either standing or sitting in a swivel chair. (Before you pooh-pooh, try it for 30 seconds in a swivel chair. Not so trivial!)

I’ve also been working the twist into my morning walk with the dogs. They’re cute and fuzzy. I figure nobody’s looking at me!

Tip: Borrow a page out of yoga and hug the muscles of your stomach, pelvis, and legs in toward your bones when you twist. This makes you more stable, protects your joints, and adds a kick to the workout as well.

Thirty seconds of twist, repeated 5 times, counts as one “Thing” in the plan!

You’re a Flamingo, Baby. Stand on One Leg

Balance postures are something I’ve struggled most with in yoga (partly because the postures that are even harder I avoid) but they’re also some of the simplest and most beneficial things we can squeeze into the day.

Balance is particularly an issue as people get older (I’ve felt the difference) so, logically, preserving good balance should help us feel younger, right?

Lately I’ve been working balance into my day as one of my “things.”  I stand on one foot (sometimes in “tree” sometimes just hanging out waiting for the microwave or folding laundry) for 10-30 seconds. Switch to the other foot, and repeat 5 times.

You know what’s scary? Even after a couple weeks I’ve felt a big increase in steadiness.

A few balancing tips that work for me:

Balance in the kitchen. Sounds dangerous, right? But having the visual orientation of all those straight lines, countertops, cupboards, etc. makes balancing much easier.
Or…balance by something else with a strong vertical line. I like to look out the window at the support beams for my patio.
Squeeze the muscles in to your legs to support bones and joints and increase stability.
Don’t fall down! Put your foot down if you feel too unsteady. Enter and exit any posture with as much grace as possible, since transitions are where it’s easiest to tweak a muscle or joint.
Hold on if necessary. I prefer keeping my foot low, because I think adding a point of contact (handhold) significantly changes the balance. When I do hold on in a posture, I try to place a finger or hand against a wall, rather than holding a counter or chair.
Count breaths, not seconds.Concentrating on breathing slowly and evenly instead of making it to the finish time. This gives your mind something constructive to do. And at 8-10 seconds per breath (my personal ideal) you count off a minute in no time.
Smile!

hGC d e f…?

This weekend I had an interesting brush with the Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (hCG) diet.

If you’re not familiar with it, hCG is a hormone produced during pregnancy, and a British endocrinologist named A.T.W. Simeons discovered it could help with weight loss in some cases back in the 1950s.

Fast forward to a couple of years ago, and hCG started appearing in wacky diet plans along with bee-venom injections (hmmm, I can’t find that on the internet anymore. Maybe the bee sting craze blew over?). I had a couple friends mention they were trying hCG but  they didn’t seem to be dropping pounds any faster than I was on my “stuff my face intermittently and hope for the best” diet, so I didn’t pay much attention.

However, I have another friend who’s had pretty good success with prescription-grade hCG. She’s a lot better organized than I am–a key ingredient in successful dieting–but claims it’s been easy.

What’s the system? Well, you take a bunch of hCG while sticking to 800 calories per day (not all of them chocolate). The claim is that taking hCG sends your body into “release fat for the baby” instead of “shut down you’re starving” mode.

And of course, you’re never hungry. So it’s a breeze. The testimonials say so.

So…am I going to change my 5x10x15 fitness plan to  5x10x8 instead?  I’m a sucker for pseudoscience, so I might buy a bottle of what claims to be real hCG (but is it  available over the counter, or is this a scam?) and check out the “no hunger” claim.

Miracles can happen. Right?

Here’s an interesting related article from US.News Health.

Progress: Spent most of last week nursing a sore shoulder and sulking, but I’m back on the plan. Because ya gotta keep trying!

Standing Evolution

I heard it on Marketplace this week. Sitting as much as three hours a day takes two years off your life.

To Kai Ryssdal’s credit, he did ask “How do they know?” He didn’t get an answer and I suspect by the time that information filtered from ACADEMIA down to radio-land it would have been horribly compromised in any event,

Popular media aside, there does seem to be a popular consensus that sitting is bad for you. It’s not something, we might theorize, our ancestors had a lot of time for (jogging around as they wove baskets and sharpened arrow points?).

In her book The First 20 Minutes (a goldmine for fitness blurbs) Gretchen Reynolds quotes a sports doctor guy as saying standing appears to burn calories without triggering the urge to consume more calories that plagues weight-loss efforts of serious exercisers.

I work at my (late) father’s antique desk, and I’m not likely to change it. As with most fads, I take the standing desk with a cellar of salt. (I spend at least 20 hours a week at the kitchen counter, cooking & cleaning, and I ain’t thin.)

Still, the reminder that it’s worthwhile to get up off our butts is well taken. Probably the more often the better.

Sneak in 5 reps of something invigorating while you’re up, and check of 1/10th of the 5x10x15 fitness plan!

Progress: Treading water. Wracked my shoulder and have been bobbing back and forth between the stick of public accountability with the carrot of chocolate, but at least that equation stays in my mind.

Upside Down

When I was twenty-five, I taught myself to do headstand in my own living room like this:

Place top of head on floor
Make a triangle of forearms and elbows, cradling back of head.
Kick one leg up as hard as possible. Second leg follows
Slam over onto your back groaning
Repeat.

Why it never occurred to me to practice against a wall, I can’t say, but eventually I learned that if I kicked less hard my legs would balance in an ungainly ‘V.’ From there it was pretty easy to learn to straighten out and I haven’t fallen out of headstand from then till now.

What’s the point? Well, Anusara yoga places an emphasis on going up-side down. It sends blood rushing places (like thyroids) that don’t normally get a lot of attention. It’s both empowering and scary, and helps teach us hard things can be worthwhile.

The Anusara inversion of choice is usually handstand–long on scary and empowering, short on potential neck injury and lawsuits. I cursed this asana (secretly, with a smile on my face) for many months before being reliably able to kick up against the wall. And then I sort of loved it. But  age, weight & increasingly arthritic hands have been advising me to drop this pose.

So I promised myself I’d do headstand and shoulder stand every day. I love these poses. Iyengar called them the “mother and father” of yoga (or something close). And 1-2 minutes in each easily fits my requirement of “one thing” under the PLAN.

I’ve been on the PLAN a week. I’ve done headstand and shoulder stand once. I’d like to up that, but there are just times you don’t feel like dealing with mom and dad, so here’s alternative for those who’d like to try an inversion. It’s got the highly technical name of “legs up the wall” and if you doubt the benefit, try it for 5 min and feel the blood pound in your chest and throat! And then tick off one thing.

I like to put on headphones and listen to my favorite relaxing music by Shantala for this pose, because it gives me the very un-yogic satisfaction of feeling like I”m multi-tasking.

Note: I am not a yoga instructor or affiliated with the Anusara style of yoga in any way.

Legs up the Wall:

(optional) Take a large towel or Mexican-style blanket, fold it  to give a little padding under your butt, and place it against a wall.
Turn on one side and scoot your butt up to the wall on top of the blanket.
Roll onto your back taking your feet up the wall.
Lie back, relax, enjoy.

Namaste!