Generalismo

I am sitting here with a list on a piece of paper of muscle groups; legs, tris/bis, delts/pecs, abs/core, and then at the end I have tacked on “20 minute cardio.”

I am really getting too fluffy. Being away from full length mirrors has helped with the impression that I can eat anything I want and get away with it. So I have turned some ideas in my head over - running more, weight lifting, or just eating less. And I think the only solution is to start lifting weights again. Running I can’t always do on the road, eating less I will have to do anyway, but weight lifting seems to be a way to build muscle so you don’t have to eat that much less (because you’re burning more calories).

A few years ago I got really into Body For Life. I liked it a lot and it was challenging and resulted in “arms” and being able to get into jeans that are currently in the bottom of my closet at home. I was disciplined in what I ate for the most part (except on Sunday, on which I could eat anything.) I ate tons of cottage cheese and vegetables, and would go for heaping plates of salad at the beginning of any buffet meal and try to be stuffed full of that by the time I got around to eating anything else. I would read up on Skwigg’s blog regularly and read all of her articles. Then, after I sort of gave up BFL. I fell to the temptation of making every day Free Day. When I started feeling like I wanted abs again, I realized I had to eat differently again, but food on the road tends to be everywhere. My family and I get taken out to eat on occasion, and church dinners are loaded with desserts and food and that sort of thing. So I heard about Eat, Stop, Eat, and tried that for a few weeks; basically, whenever I felt I had overeaten I would not eat the next day. Instead of fasting from one night to the morning after the next day, I’d just do 24 hour periods, which meant I could eat breakfast one day and then breakfast the next.

Well, to make thing long story wrap up into a short ending, that kind of eating was too drastic and I fell off the bandwagon entirely. And ever since, I have been eating pretty much whatever I feel like. When I started BFL, I started realizing that most store-made cookies and such are just junk. Cakes, and all that, and plasticky stuff, well, it’s just junk. So I need to start off with that again - no sweets unless they’re really really worth it. (Chocolate is worth it).

Second, I need to up my protein and veggie intake. Metabolism needs to be kept up, but not with carby foods like bread. The more water in something, the more safe it is to snack on. I know my mouth likes to be occupied, and it’s bad habit, but if I keep it occupied with carrots or green beans, then it’s not so bad to be munching. Frozen greenbeans used to be a staple of mine, and then when we had the garden I would munch on bunches of lettuce and raw greenbeans.

I guess I’m a little late for this to be a New Year’s Resolution, but it really isn’t anyway. It’s much better to view it as a lifelong thing. That being said, I *know* I won’t be doing BFL for the rest of my life, or any other fitness program, but I can always go back to it, and I should be always shooting for something, whether it’s long distance walking, or pushups, or running, or BFL, or swimming, etc. It’s boring to stick to one thing, anyway. If I get tired of weight lifting I can take up running or something. Alternatively, I could just get a job as a construction worker and get paid to work out

When I was actively weight lifting, I didn’t really care how much I weighed - in fact, the more I weighed the better - but now I’m rather afraid because I know my body fat percentage has gone way up, and that means I can’t say “Oh, well I just weigh a lot because of muscle.”

Posted by Bonnie under exercise, food, goals, health, running

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I wrote up a post the other day and assumed it posted itself when I clicked the publish button. Not so! It disappeared

Very saddening, but oh well.

I had shared a recipe for Pannu Kakku and wrote out all the PRICES for the ingredients and my estimate for the cost. To put it shortly it cost about $2.80 for a pan that feeds 11! I guess I don’t know how much breakfast generally costs because I never do the math, but I’m figuring that’s pretty cheap. A lot cheaper than I though, considering it’s a “special” breakfast here.

So if you’re getting tired of eggs and toast or whatever you normally have for breakfast, try this It’s like a soufflé, I think.

This recipe is for two 13×9 pans or a giant pan.

Pannu Kakku

6 eggs
6 cups milk (using 5 cups gives a more firm texture)
2 tsp salt
1 stick butter
2 1/2 c. flour

Put one half stick of butter in each pan and put in oven*. Preheat to 425 degrees. Beat eggs, add milk. Add salt and flour. Pour into pans (in which the butter has melted).

Cook for 30 minutes or until lightly browned. Serve hot with syrup. Mmmm. Enjoy!

*Do not leave pans in oven with just the butter in there for an extended period of time! I left them in too long the other day (the butter started to burn) and when I took one of them out and put it on the metal plate on the counter it shattered instantly.

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Our weather has been, to borrow the local vernacular, wicked nice. It’s been blue skies, 80, dry, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. I need to stop in case any of you are getting nasty weather! Wouldn’t want to rub it in. I just can’t get over it. It’s like a dream come true - summer feels to have arrived. It’ll probably get cold again (we get frosts till May 31 sometimes!) but it’s nice while it’s here.

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I keep starting a new paragraph and then forgetting what I was going to say. I wanted to link to someone, or bring something to your attention. Well, I guess I’ll put a video up. This is old footage. I can’t do these now. I have done two workouts in my attempt to get the muscles back and the first time I went all out:

full pull ups (pulls): 2×3
full chins: 2×3
negative pulls: 3×6
negative chins: 3×6

By the end my muscles were shaking pretty bad and I was exhausted. I was so sore two days after I could barely clasp my hands behind my back. I had to swing them behind me. The soreness was still lingering after 6 days! On the 7th day I set my video camera up, stretched, and put my hands up on that perfectly sized branch that I need a chair to reach, and pulled. Nothing happened. Hm. Tried again. Nothing! It was so embarrassing. I talked with someone I know of from a women’s bodybuilding site I used to visit and he said try lower intensity, higher frequency. In other words, I should be doing something like just as many pulls/chins as I can, and then only a few negatives, and do it every other day. He said do high intensity if you want big lats (upper back muscles. They lend to the “V” look with a small waist and big shoulders). Heh…well, let’s not go there. I’ll just say I’d rather be able to do 25 in a row than look like Mr. Universe

So after all that explanation, here’s the vid.

Posted by Bonnie under exercise, food, health, recipe

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Is a blog without pictures really a blog at all?

Well to satisfy the picture cravings that might drive you to someone else’s blog in search of more interesting content (because mine almost never has pictures these days), here are some pictures.

First off the lovely chocolate bar with whole coffee beans. Delightful!

Here’s me looking rather green-y in my glasses and oops-I-have-dirty-hair-today emergency hat.

Yes folks, it’s all smoke and mirrors here. Bonnie actually doesn’t live at this blog.

My picks.

That is a book I’m supposed to review. Should be soon.

Can you tell I’m excited about my new, cool, lightweight, comfortable, CAMPING/HIKING backpack!

Now not picture related is a video I put up of almost 9 chinups.

Strongspo - Chinups on youtube

I am really hoping to get back into the swing of things and start doing these again. This is vintage (ha) footage that I had saved, but now I’m not able to do more than 4!

Well that’s it for today. That’s worth, like, um, how many pictures do I have? 6,000! Words, not pictures, that is. I mean, that’s how much this is worth today. Plus the video. That’s probably 60,000 words since it’s audio and visual.

Posted by Bonnie under books, exercise, pictures

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Baclava? Bakklava? I’m telling you, I got a lot of hits for those search terms at my old blog! I also got quite a few for gunshotwound (one word), which is GSW in abbreviation. And by the way, I made baklava today and it looks great! Smells great too. Taste? Well, I haven’t tasted it yet. But let me encourage you, if you have never made this before, to try your hand at it. It’s not hard at all if you have reasonably fresh phylo dough that doesn’t fall apart (before the expiration date). Ok…on from the mildly useless information to the definitely useless information.

I got up at 5:30am this morning to get a workout in before we went to help someone move. It wasn’t so bad, and I think I might keep that time. I spent too much time online at night (and doing nothing) and if I’m not up at 10pm, I can’t be online! If you live in a cold climate and don’t keep the heat turned up to comfortable summerlike temps, definitely consider getting a small coffee pot to put in your room (if you hang out upstairs for a while before breakfast.) Keep teabags on hand and make a pot of tea first thing in the morning. It really warms you up! I often drink two 4-cup pots of tea along with a cup or two of coffee. Great stuff in the morning!

Mini rant here. Why don’t Christians have more kids? Why are kids considered such a bad thing? Why are we letting other people outbreed us? Start having kids folks, you’re going to go extinct! I heard that Russians were giving folks a holiday to conceive on. I looked it up and I found it at newsfromrussia.com! I need to stop here in order to maintain a G rated blog

Posted by Bonnie under exercise, statistics, world

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Principles often apply to not just one, but many areas. Once in a while I’ll find an article online and think YEAH - that’s it exactly! This guy, who happens to be a great musician, has written a lot of articles at his site. While some of the things he writes about I don’t agree with, there’s a lot both spiritually and musicially that you can consider. Some of the things he says about music just strike a chord in me. They inspire me. Here is Ron Block,  a man of many talents.  

I put a sign above my desk where I practice and spend a lot of time. It reads “DON’T WORRY ABOUT RESULTS, JUST DO THE RIGHT THING.” It’s so easy to get caught up in the here and now pleasures of life. We eat until we’re fat because more than enjoying the pleasures of being thin enough to do normal things in life, we enjoy today’s chocolate (I just ate some!). Rather than saying no to sin, we’d rather enjoy it right here and now. When I get caught up in seeing RESULTS, I don’t do what I’m supposed to, because results don’t show immediately. But if you focus on doing what you know is right EVERY time, results will follow and you can enjoy them without worrying about them.

Posted by Bonnie under exercise, food, goals, health

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Most of us have done hard work or exercise and the next day felt sore, more sore even than during the activity. This is known as Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness - DOMS. What is going on in our muscles to make us feel pain?

Scientist don’t agree on what exactly is going on, but most agree that it’s in part due to the fact that muscle fibers are being torn. During exercise cell membranes are ruptured. This is the reason rest is so crucial when trying to build muscle. You need hard workouts, but you also need rest to recover and let your muscles repair themselves. The percentage of tissue torn is small, this site says less than 5 percent is affected.

Studies also show that eccentric (lowering) movements contribute more to DOMS than the concentric movement, or the lifting phase. An easy way to remember these two terms is to think “Eccentric” is “Extending,” such as during the extention of a bicep curl. When you push off the floor in a push up you are performing the concentric phase of the movement, when you lower yourself you are performing the eccentric part of the exercise. Both parts are important but eccentric movements only can be helpful if the exercise is too difficult to perform the concentric movement. Doing only the eccentric part of an exercise is also called a “negative”. For example, if you want to be able to do a pull up on a door frame but aren’t strong enough yet, get a chair and hoist yourself up to the “up” position of the pull up. Then curl your legs up behind you, putting your full weight on your arms and slowly perform the eccentric part of the exercise. If you work at this exercise consistently (allowing yourself sufficient time to recover between sessions), you’ll be able to do a full pull up before long even though you were not performing the concentric part of the exercise. Here’s a page with more on how to do a pull up, including a section on negative pull ups.

Why can you do a negative pull up but not a regular pull up with both the concentric and eccentric phases? Muscle fiber can handle 40% more weight during the eccentric phase than during the concentric and if used correctly can lead to a lot of muscle growth. That means if you weigh 200 pounds and can do a full pull up, you can do a full negative with an extra 80 pounds.

Posted by Bonnie under exercise, health

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I’ve got a variety of different notebooks around. Some have my math problems from 5th grade, others have journals, and still others music I’ve written, and notes from lectures.

My grandfather, who is a scholar and taught at colleges for many years, has always told me I ought to keep a notebook. In it, he said, you ought to write down observations and in particular prayers. Opening yourself up to write things down can make you look at what’s going on in your head from another perspective.

Leonardo da Vinci, according to his bio at Molecular Expressions, “kept huge notebooks of his fantastic designs, sketches and ideas.” After reading Michael Gelb’s How To Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, which encourages the practice of keeping a notebook, I decided it was time to open up my notebooking to a broader spectrum of writing. The page I have pictured above is part of a short list I’ve jotted down to blog about here at Generalismo. A random sampling of my notebook includes

1. How many eggs I need to serve eggs benedict to 11 people - includes ratio of eggs to butter for hollandaise sauce
2. A reminder to not focus every response I make on me, ask more questions of people
3. How to say “Hello” in Russian - which sounds to me like Preeviet so I wrote it down like that
4. My new bicep building plan
5. A question I want to find the answer to - why do some electrical appliances (like computer speakers) take a minute to die down completely when you push the off button?

I am currently using a small notebook. I find it’s easier to find things because you can make one thought on one page and not worry about wasting a whole large notebook page. You can also save the back of a page to return to and make related statements, or the answer to your question.

In your notebook you can write down whatever information you like but here are some suggestions to get you started.

1. Longterm goals
2. An idea you have - inventions, improvements, concepts, etc
3. Any observation you find important. This might be that the buds have come out on the trees, or that today was the coldest day in your locale in 100 years, or that you started your vitamin regimen.
4. Thoughts that keep you up at night - write them down and you don’t have to worry about forgetting them
5. A question about how something works, or why a particular phenomenon occurs
6. A word you need to look up in the dictionary
7. Books you’ve read recently, with author’s name and short review

You can also make particular notebooks for particular things - say, to track the progress and results of your consistent practice of an instrument, or to keep records of local weather. When I was running (and even now), this was a very useful thing to have. I would record whatever seemed pertinent (weather, how I felt), the data from my GPS (average speed, distance), and while I was traveling, what state I was in. Some places I returned to and I could look in my notebook and see what observations I made about the trail last time, and how fast or slow I ran it.

Posted by Bonnie under exercise, goals, organizing, running

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