Better Health Through Better Eating?

It's no secret now that I have noticed a difference in my overall health when I change my diet & eat better. It's led me to pay more attention when news articles talk about "eat this and not that". Totally fascinating. I don't buy into it 100% because for every article you find saying 'red wine is good for you', there's a corresponding one that says 'red wine is not good for you, especially women' or some such. I ran across this article the other week that continues to fascinate me: Better Together. I like all those food combinations, and I don't thinkit'll hurt any to try & eat those things together a little more often, though good luck remembering it all.... but what really fascinates me is the proposition on the first page that we may have evolved to like those combinations because it it more beneficial. I'd like to know more about studies that test that hypothesis.

Going Green?

This weekend we were up at Syracuse for J's grandfather's memorial service. We'll miss you Papa.

While we were up there visiting, I got to spend some time talking with J's aunt, dreamer. I've always enjoyed being with her and this time was no exception. She makes very nice jewelry out of natural gemstones and was talking about how she's had to learn about the different meanings or 'powers' of the stones since she does a lot of her selling at psychic fairs and such. One stone I've been drawn to a lot is Serpentine. It's just pretty, but for a lark, I looked up the meaning on Emily Gems via a google search. Here's some of the interesting things the site said... "Serpentine makes an exceptional meditation stone. It helps you to find inner peace. Some of the uses of serpentine include: Protection against poisonous creatures such as snakes, insects, etc; Balances mood swings; Encourages the ability to solve conflicts by peaceful means." Interesting coincidence considering I've been feeling under a considerable amount of turmoil until recently and have been finding a great desire to wear the serpentine bracelets that I have. Also, I've noticed that I've been drawn to a ridiculous amount of green items lately - a green purse, a green hat, several green shirts & sweaters, green jewelry etc.... Is it that there is a lot of nice green available this year or is there more to it? So I figured I'd look up symbolism of green too. "Green contains the powerful energies of nature, growth, desire to expand or increase. Balance and a sense of order are found in the color green. Change and transformation is necessary for growth, and so this ability to sustain changes is also a part of the energy of green.
Put some green in your life when you want: a new state of balance; feel a need for change or growth; freedom to pursue new ideas; protection from fears and anxieties connected with the demands of others"

Coincidence? Who knows. Maybe it all goes along with some people's theories that horoscopes and astrology are generic and seem accurate because you read what you want to into them. Maybe not. Maybe there's something to "all of it" - the ancient theories and arts. But regardless, none of that negates the fact that green is apparently making me feel good right now and there seems to be no harm in wearing it. : )

Barefooting

I find myself frequently facing questions about my crazy running shoes and Barefoot Running in general. The long & short of it all is that I think biomechanics is cool and I totally buy the theory that "supportive" shoes do more harm than good if worn your whole life. Regardless of how I feel, you can make up your own minds on the subject if it even interests you at all. I'll even make it easy for you and share my links that I've found either useful or fascinating.

• This guy's site has a lot of reading.... http://runningbarefoot.org/
• This has some opposing viewpoints... http://runningtimes.com/rt/articles/?id=5810 and http://www.runwashington.com/features/barefootrunning.html
• Blog of a barefoot runner... Has an interesting running technique video.... http://runbarefoot.blogspot.com/2007/10/form-video.html (the most fascinating part is at about 4:50 if the narration irritates you)
• Has some interesting stuff... http://completerunning.com/running-blog-mark/index.php/archives/category/barefoot-running/
• Also kind of interesting... POSE is frequently paired up with Barefooting since they use the same posture principles and POSE frequently makes use of running flats which are the next best thing to barefoot, mechanically... http://www.posetech.com/training/archives/000198.html
• Here's something from a marathon site... http://www.marathonandbeyond.com/choices/clift.htm
• a phys site... http://www.physorg.com/news84737938.html
• http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06157/696125-114.stm
• South African Medical Research council: http://www.mrc.co.za/mrcnews/july2005/running.htm
• NY Times articles: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/23/fashion/thursdaystyles/23Barefoot.html and http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/sports/othersports/08barefoot.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=barefoot%20running&st=cse
• These are interesting, but I am skeptical of anyone who refers only to excerpt and not the text as a whole, who knows what else was found... http://www.barefooters.org/medicine/
• From National Geographic: Oldest Footprints with modern anatomy found and Humans were born to run
  

That all being said/shared, I'll let you know how my "strengthen your foot for greater mobility later in life" experiment goes.... I don't think that one will be solved for at least 30 years though. : )

UPDATED: Thanks to Karina for posting this in the Comments: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1170253/The-painful-truth-trainers-Are-expensive-running-shoes-waste-money.html

Figuring Stuff Out

I've been figuring some stuff out and it's feeling really good. I had a "mental" week last week... I got some info early in the week that shed a lot of light on a problem that I've had for going on 2 years now, and it led to a lot of emotional ups & downs while I processed & figured stuff out. In the end, I'm feeling soooo much better, but it led me to figure some other things out as well. For instance, my shoulders started knotting up about 2 weeks ago. I know it was stress related. No matter what, I could not get them to relax out. Then I went mental, and that exacerbated it. Finally, I gave up & went for my first real massage yesterday - it's worth the money to me to get it worked out & relaxed now before I have a 7 hour drive and a maybe stressful/maybe not weekend. Anyway, that worked out he kinks & loosened up my neck and it was wonderful, but today I am noticing that my shoulders are so used to being knotted up that they are trying to revert to that. I'm having to fight my own body today and it's very weird. I keep noticing my shoulders wanting to hunch up near my ears and etc.... Secondly, I discovered, or made the connection rather, that my worst "Mental" days the past month have been days where I am excruciatingly tired. I KNOW I don't handle lack of sleep well... If I stay up too late I get psycho & depressed. Cast parties in Highschool, while theoretically fun, were when I usually scared myself the most by getting into unreasonable paranoias and depression. Needless to say that when I put 2 and 2 together, it made a whole BUNCH of sense that my "depressed" feeling days were when I had gone too long without good sleep. The result of this realization is that I've set myself a goal of trying to get at least 7.5 hours of sleep a night. It's a mid-year resolution? Well, anyway, out of the past 3 days, I've succeeded twice in 3 nights. Not too bad to start.... AND I've been feeling GREAT!!! (even though the weather's sucked & been rainy & I think I'm starting to get mouldy...) If all I need to do to be happier & healthier is to eat better and sleep enough, well DAMN!

Ah, lastly, Joy-of-joys! I can finally have that Peanut Butter Milkshake!!!!!!!!!! I made & have maintained my goal weight for at least a week! Woot! I will officially stop dieting now. I will still track what I eat to manage and maintain what I've done. I will be doing more Rock Climbing soon and keeping up with my running hopefully, so if you see me getting any skinnier from this point (doubtful), it'll only be due to toning. Well, Cheers, everyone!

What now?

I am bothered by this... more later.

Cherry Blossom 5K

Well, it was that time of year again. The Cherry Blossom 5K has come and gone. Three of us ran it this year: myself, J & Lori. (see pic). Yes, those are the infamous Run Fatboy Run Shorts again. A special thanks again to Jason (AKA PunkJr) for the kindly gifting of the shorts last-minute last year. He will forever have a special place in my heart. Our times were posted yesterday. You can either look for yourself, or I can tell you that I came in at 29:55 total with an avg pace of 9:38 per mile. I was #168 out of 1056 women. Not too shabby. I am happy with the overall improvement... A year ago: 11:44 pace, 196 lbs., 34 inch waist. Today: 9:38 pace, 136 lbs., 26 inch waist. I'd say this has been a productive year. So as far as running goes, I'm hoping to form a running group to keep me to it this summer. I'm setting a goal to continue to work up to a 10K by this fall & see how I feel. I'd also like to improve my pace a little bit. I can do one 8 min mile if I really want to and I'd like to see if I can work up to that for next year. That would be cool. Do I think I'll get to a 10-miler at some point? Who knows. The only thing I DO know for sure is that I won't have the same breakfast next year. I might go back to my Kraft Mac & Cheese at 5 AM breakfast.... This year, well I figured eating at 6 AM when my race would start at 8:40 would be fine since that's nearly 3 hr digestion time. I had 1 Luna Bar, a 1/2 cup 1% fat Vanilla yogurt, & about 3-4 tbsp. Hummos to get some extra protein. My stomach cramped up during the race. I hate my digestive system.

In other news, I had an awesome Hanami weekend with Luke and perfected my banana-PB-Nutella crepes. More to come later.

Are we married?

Today in the news is an article about a bill that passed in Vermont Legalizing gay marriage that will probably be shot down by the Governor and an Iowa supreme court ruling that overturned the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman as unconstitutional.

That got me to thinking once again if Virginia technically consideres J & I married. Here's the letter of the Virginia State Constitution (it's Article I, section 15-A if the link isn't cooperating). I remember when this law was on the ballot a couple of years back. It made me mad on a number of levels and I voted against it. Let's not even get into a discussion about gay Marriage and whether or not gays should be allowed to marry or if it should be called marriage or something else. There are a zillions ways you can argue and discuss the topic. I don't feel like going there. I'll be blunt and say that in my own humble opinion I believe in equal rights and equal treatment for all and leave it at that. As such, regardless of whether you think it's right or wrong, isn't marriage part of the "pursuit of happiness" for some people? How can you exclude that from some when the constitution if the state garauntees the pursuit of happiness? Here's the main thing... if you ARE going to write a law that's designed to exclude a particular group, OR if you're going to vote for a law that excludes a particular group. You sure as hell better write the language properly.

The intention of the amendment was to define marriage as between one man & one woman and then also prohibit recognition of a gay marriage legal status from another state. According to the wording of the section, the VA constitution now fails to recognize any status from another state that is not "marriage" but "intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance, or effects of marriage". Where does that leave heterosexual couples who get a civil union in another state?

It will probably never effect J & I since I don't think anyone will give two shakes about our legal status since we're still "one man, one woman", but they could. We did not get married by a religious official. I don't know if our union, by Pennsylvania definition, was legally a "marriage" or a "civil union" since it was performed by a Justice of the peace. If it's a Civil Union, we should not get the same rights as married people? And people voted for this thing without taking off their gay-blinders and considering how the language COULD effect others not intended as the target. This just illustrates how this whole thing is a load of bull shit and ignorance seems to overpower reason at every turn. I hope it all turns around soon.

Pretending like I'm going to Scotland.

I finally made the excursion to the Royal Mile Pub last night to try out their special scotch tasting night. Thank you to everyone who braved the trek with me. Sorry I got stuck in the middle of the table so I couldn't mingle - I was thinking we weren't gonna push all the tables together. : ( I was pleasantly surprised to find that the food was excellent and remarkably fresh tasting (not like processed US pub food at all). I TRIED THE HAGGIS!!!! And even more exciting: I liked it! *shhh... don't tell!* Now that I've spilled my tea on myself 3 times, I find I must swear that I am neither still drunk nor hung over. Lastly, and sadly, the Beef & Guinness pie was not a replacement for those that I loved across the ocean. It was good. try it, but it was more beefy-oniony-gravy than I was looking for. Maybe I should stop trying Guinness pies and just give up & make my steak & ale pie recipe I found online. Anyway, the wait-staff was lovely and efficient and I had a nice evening. I've also determined that when my friend Dave comes down, I MUST take him here & camp out for the night.

The other main reason I went was for the scotch tasting. They have an extensive list and a special pairing on Thursdays.
And this is how it went:

• Starter: 16 yr old non-chill filtered pairing of Glenlivet & Longmorn - I wish they had been paired with the regular equivalent... it's hard to tell the difference between regular & non-chill filtered otherwise.
• Inchmurrin - was OK, not my favorite, but drinkable
• Caol Ila 12 yr. - tasted more like a campfire than Laphroaig, and had no other body to redeem itself with
• Glenrothes Special - by far, one of the nicest of the night.. full bodied, yet sweet almost to the point of being like a sherry - it paired up extremely well with the Trifle that we had for dessert.

Experiment Update

Day 1: started with 2 qt. tea, worked 6 hrs., finished off 1-1.5 qt.
Day 2: Started with 2 qt. tea, worked 9 hrs., the 2 qt. was GONE by 11:30 am.
Day 3: started with a little under 2 qt. tea (spillage on way to work), regulated better, worked 8.5 hr. ended with 1/2 qt. left
Day 4: fell off bandwagon due to lack of sleep and went straight for soda. Started with 1.75 qt. tea, at 2:05 PM, I have 1.75 qt. minus 1 mug left.

The adding in veggies thing has definitely worked. Apparently my body loves veggies and hates everything else I put in it. Today I weighed in at 134.5.... the first time under 135. I'll see if i can hold under 135 for a week and if so, PB shake for me!!!! Yahoo! Today I made sure to get green beans with my bison cheeseburger and tonight will be nothing but meat & carbs (i.e. steak pie & scotch, and more scotch). But back to "being good" tomorrow! They had better serve the steak pie with Peas. Every steak pie we got in Scotland came with a side of peas (granted, that was the worst steak pie we had)...