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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Well folks, it’s a new new year. It isn’t an old new year.

Just a note of interest here - I installed a new antispam plugin here at my blog and I have found many comments that had previous slipped my notice to approve. So if you have been commenting and not seeing your comments here, my apologies! It will help if you use the same name and contact info - once you’ve been approved once, your comments will show up immediately without moderation.

That is good news indeed, since the plugin took care of thousands of spam that I had been planning on going through  -all 255 pages of it - to delete them and check if I had any real comments to approve.

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Last night everyone was watching a movie and I remembered that it was New Year’s Eve and there is a sort of party downtown where they have lots of concerts at different buildings, and ice sculptures in the park. So I decided to go out and figured it probably wouldn’t be that cold because it had snowed all day, and of course it doesn’t usually snow when it’s dreadfully cold. I was so wrong. As soon as I got out and felt the snow crunch under my feet, and felt the inside of my nose freeze on inhalation, I knew I had underestimated. I decided to go check if the free coffee I had heard about was a rumor, and I found that there was indeed free coffee, which I thought would warm me up. But that meant that one of my hands had to hold on to the coffee and remain outside of my pocket, in the -14 degree windchill

I got a schedule and walked down to where a bluegrass/folk/blues group was playing - Amy Black and the Red Clay Rascals. To put it shortly, they had nice instrumentalists and nice voices. No public critiquing, though. She sing nicely in tune! (Which is a relief, always You never know with the little concerts that go on at different places.).

Secondly, at the same church I listened to Adam Bergeron, who is a local and who I am acquainted with but I haven’t seen in a long long time. It was really a great concert. It made me feel. And I got to sit in the front row, which was just a few feet from the piano - it was as if he was sitting next to me, actually, because of the way the piano was situated with the piano bench being in the left aisle between the pews. He played Reverie, To A Wild Rose, Minute Waltz, a waltz by Greig (if I remember right), a variety of other classical pieces, and a few compositions. He ended with a classical improvisation. I don’t know why, but the waltz was just incredible. If I closed my eyes, I could see the chords differently - and it was fun to let the music carry me, to listen without conscious anticipation, but following the notes. It’s like being lead around the keyboard - sometimes fast, sometimes slow, sometimes to  discordant chords and other times to flowing like a waterfall with sweet major chords and runs, others running with tears, with percussive left hand octaves pounding out thunder. And if you consciously analyze this stuff too much, I wonder if it wouldn’t go away! So I’ll stop talking about it now

Posted by Bonnie under Uncategorized, health

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No kidding.

This picture is from earlier today. I think it might be just a bit worse now, but that’s to be expected as far as my brain can rationalize. The pain was pretty bad about 6 hours after the surgery - before I had gotten the painkiller from the pharmacy and after the novicane had worn off. I alternated between humming and moaning and groaning, paced the floor and wrapped my arms around pillows and my exercise ball. I don’t know why any of those things seemed to help, but they just did. But anyhow, today my mom went shopping for me, which was so nice, and came back with all kinds of soft foods to eat. So I’m not going to starve! I made some vanilla pudding which turned out pretty good considering it was basically reconstituted powdered milk, sugar, an egg yolk, a little butter and some vanilla. And on a whim I sprinkled some clove in there. The month of food has come to a close though, if you haven’t noticed, so I guess I’ll move on
Some lady said it took 10 days for the swelling to go away. We have three different places to sing at  on Saturday. THREE. The middle one will only be a few songs, but the morning (8 am!) and afternoon ones are going to be extremely interesting. I wonder how effective Ibuprofen is at relieving swelling. No trumpet playing, of course. But I can’t just stand up there and not do anything!

All in all, I’m so thankful that this happened to me. I haven’t been in a car accident, I haven’t contracted a fatal/chronic disease, and it’s all temporary. And I have access to modern painkillers if I need them, and plenty of good food and water! It is really nice to get them out after I’ve had so much trouble with them at inconvenient times (on the road far away from my dentist, for example). The pain is amazingly bearable and I haven’t been on pain killers very consistently. I’ve taken half a dose so I can get to sleep better.

I have some interesting footage from various points in the road, including before I got to the office to have them pulled, and after the novicane had worn off and I was really feeling all the lovely stuff they did in there. I’m going to hold off just a little longer so I can have footage from all parts of recovery, and then put them together in one video.

One of the strangest things is the way my gums back there ‘itch.’ It’s not a real itch, it just feels like it’d feel good to go and pull my teeth out again. I’m not sure how to describe it. But it’s much more preferable to pain!

Posted by Bonnie under health

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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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I house-sat with my mom recently and to put it shortly, it’s hard to sleep in someone else’s house when it’s storming outside and the dog is crying and barking for hours in the middle of the night. And you have a toothache. The schedule went something like:

10pm go to sleep
12pm wake up  with a toothache, thinking (hoping) it’s almost morning
1:00am wake up to check if morning is any closer
1:30am wake up because tooth is really hurting
2:00am wake up because dog is barking - just after falling asleep
2:30am dog is still barking and whining. I start to wonder if there’s something
out there. Of course at that point, I think all of the hairs in your ears must
stand on high alert and I must have heard every creak in the house. My blood
pressure probably also rose!
3:00am remember that the last time the dog barked in the middle of the night
there was a rabid racoon on the grounds and realize she doesn’t normally bark
all night (but what can I do about it, as I can’t see anything out there?)
4:30am wake up and realize it’s only a few more hours to morning! And amazingly,
sleeping with on my back with my head straight up and down alleviates some of my
toothache
5:00am still dark. No point in getting up and waiting around for hours to leave
6:30am alarm goes off and I realize that I actually have slept for a few hours during the night!

The drive over was really neat (if I could put it that way.) It was almost whiteout conditions in the valleys of the road where the fog almost completely obscured the way. And it was swirling fog. It was whiter than I have ever seen, and kind of spooky! Like something from a movie. I somehow managed to drive there, although it was slow going and I had to look at the posts on the side of the road to see where I was going at some points, with almost no idea where I was in the road.

Now yesterday during the day I went shopping, and I bumped into a ton of people I haven’t seen since we went on our last tour, and some I haven’t seen even from before then. One person told me I looked tired. I think I’ve been getting less sleep now that I’m getting up earlier. I intend to go to bed early (9:30pm or 10pm?) so I can get up at 6:00am without a thought of remaining in bed, but I always tend to find
something to do, and end up staying up till 10:30 or 11pm. Someone has said “If you burn the candle at both ends it’s brighter,” but it’s also said that it extinguishes faster that way!

Posted by Bonnie under health, sleep

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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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Who hasn’t popped a mint or a piece of gum containing peppermint in it and felt that
rush of coolness? I had done this thing mindlessly in the past, but while eating a piece
of minty chocolate I wondered, what exactly is the peppermint doing in my mouth? We
all know that water evaporating off skin can cool the body, but when you
put something with peppermint oil in it, there’s not necessarily any water
in it to evaporate, and it happens in your mouth also, so what’s going on?

What I found about this one was quite interesting. It turns out that even
though peppermint is not physically cool, it turns on “coolness” receptors,
called Cold Menthol Receptor Type 1 (CMR1).  These CMR1 receptors turn
on between 8 and 28 degrees celsius, or 46.4-82.4 fahrenheit.

This article says scientist have been working on a substance that turns on
these CMR1’s and is 250 time more cooling than peppermint when applied
to the skin. How would that feel applied on a 110 degree day? Ahhh!

It’s interesting to note that there are two other temperature receptors
that have been discovered, these being on the other end of the scale - they tell
you your chilli pepper is hot. These two receptors are VR1 for hot, and VRL1
for super hot.

Next time you help yourself to a peppermint patty you can tell yourself you’re just testing
out your CMR1’s and making sure they still work.

Posted by Bonnie under food, 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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Check out this article about a 29 year old woman in China who
recently found she had 23 needles in her body, allegedly stuck
into her by her now dead grandparents, who were disappointed
by the arrival of another girl in the family.

Doctors suspect they wanted to kill her because her family preferred a son. Some of the needles were pushed into the fontanelle, the soft spot on the head all babies have before the bones knit. Ms Cuifen, now 29, was a second granddaughter, leaving the family no chance to produce a treasured boy child.

The Chinese government reckons it has prevented 400 million births,
abortion being a widespread method of family planning, and sometimes
infanticide. These killings have contributed to unbalancing the population
of men versus women, men outnumbering women by 37,000,000.

During the fiscal year 2005-2006, Planned Parenthood performed a record
264,943 abortions, making a profit of $55.8 million and using $305.3 millions
of our tax dollars.

For a little comparison, in the Revolutionary War we lost 25,324 of our troops.

In World War II, spanning several years, we lost 405,399.

What’s the difference between killing girls because they are considered a
nuisance to society, and killing babies in general because they’re a nuisance
to our lives?

Posted by Bonnie under health, statistics, world

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There are approximately 301,139,947 people in the United States of America. The national population in 1900 was around 76,094,000.

The largest American city is New York City, with about 8,168,338 people. I tried to find the stats on the smallest town, but the results seem inconclusive with many claims to the smallest town. The people at Yahoo pointed out there are some ghost towns - would those qualify as the smallest, having no residents at all?

An American woman has an average of 2-2.1 kids each, having dropped from 3.5 in the 1950s. 2.1 children per woman is considered the minimum for maintaining a population.

44% of women aged 15-44 are childless, with the highest percentage of childless women being made up of those with incomes over $100,000.

Read more stats on child/woman stats at this report from census.gov

Try to find out what the population of your own town or city is. Consider looking at older records as well to see what the current trend is.

Posted by Bonnie under health, statistics

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