diet

May 6 #2: An assortment of bodyweight exercises

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It was a busy day, mostly on the computer, with a bit of time in the soggy garden. The grass still has many boggy sections, which reminded me of stomping across the Moors, which reminded me of this article about lovely gardens from The Guardian website. I’d like to go to Cerney House.

Even though the sun was shining and I should have gone for a run (even just to the tulips and back!), I decided to stay close to home and do 15 minutes of assorted exercises with my body weight.

Using video resources from various Instagram fitness accounts and the happy.challenges Instagram account, I mixed up mountain climbers, push-ups, squats and crunches with four sets of 15 repetitions each. Enough to get the blood flowing, for sure, but not enough for 15 minutes.

So I’m going to have to split my fitfor15in15 into two categories today – mentally fit with the book review and travelling light story (which took longer than seven minutes to write!) and physically fit with eight minutes of exercises. Cheating a bit? Perhaps!

I felt a bit cheated yesterday – two hours after eating a slice of very dense chocolate cake to finish off my lunch with Leonie, I felt quite ill. I think my body is trying to tell me to lay off the sugar! Which reminded me of this report from the Australian ABC.

Rocketing obesity is being blamed on poor diets laden with excess sugar and carbs, rather than a lack of exercise. Makes sense, although the opening line of the report made me feel dejected!

Fitfor15in15 is all about being fit in all its forms, with exercise playing the major part. Now I’m thinking I should forget shifting those pesky few kilos through exercise, and focus more attention on the role of healthier food.

Just writing it out makes me feel a bit silly, because it seems so obvious. Of course, moving everyday is beneficial for my overall health, like heart and bones, and I would never stop that. But is it time to totally cut out the crap from my diet? Could I live without chocolate cake and Berliners? Maybe, but would it be any fun? More food for thought.

Wishing you a wonderful day.

March 29: 20-minute yoga workout and food dilemmas

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What a lazy day it was! The wind was howling, it rained non-stop and the low-hanging clouds made it feel like it was dusk all day. It was hard to separate my arse from the couch. So I didn’t try much.

Now, it’s late and I need to exercise. Sadie Nardini comes to the rescue (again! Search for her name in the search tool on the blog and you’ll see some of her other workouts) with a 20 minute Booty Booster Flow. Seeing as mine had been flat all day, I figured it could do with a boost. Shake that booty.

Can someone else please do this and let me know if you sweated as much as I did? Maybe our heating is up too high? I had to strip off my socks, then my leggings, and then my t-shirt in order to get through this. How strange! Hopefully my arse will be awake tomorrow. But thanks again Sadie, for another good workout. (I did have to cut her short though, because for the first time, her constant talking really, really did my head in. I’m sure it’s because it’s late. I think.)

I’ve also been thinking about my diet, and by diet I don’t mean lettuce leaves and air but what I currently eat. The idea of changing my nutrition, which isn’t all that bad I don’t think, has always been part of the fitfor15in15 plan. But as I’ve mentioned before, things are slowly being changed in order to not be overwhelmed and fail everything at once.

After three months of daily workouts, an exercise habit has been formed. Once again, before the start of a new month, I think about when is the right time to tackle the nutrition side of things. It’s time to really start thinking about cutting out the crap. Even just for a short amount of time – say one, two or even three months.

Years ago, I did the Liver Cleansing Diet and felt quite healthy. By the end of three months, I even craved an apple instead of a chocolate bar as an afternoon snack. Unheard of for me! Now I’m thinking about encorporating some of those elements and additional things like smoothies and nuts and … oh it’s all so overwhelming!

Generally we eat quiet well (Leo jokes that he’s gained every gram of fat I’ve lost in the past three months) but it’s the snacks and treats which are the killers. Chips, chocolate, biscuits, pastries … mainly anything sweet and delicious. They’re not part of the everyday, but they’re definitely around a bit too much. It’s a constant battle against a sweet tooth.

Do you think it’s a good idea to try some sort of diet? Some kind of plan? I’m a bit loathe to do that, because buying new ingredients and making new meals every night is a bit overwhelming and tedious for me. I have a tendency to want to do things by the book or not at all, but the thought of all that time in the kitchen … ugh … I should be more positive about it, right?! Once again, I’ll keep thinking about it for a while longer. But I think the time has come to make a decision/change. Let me know if you have any thoughts on the matter!

Here are some photos from my trip to meet Claudia in Bern on Wednesday, that I said I’d post when the internet worked again.

And please stop by tomorrow when you can read the next guest contributor installment, from Sal Book, who has a lovely story about her change of heart from being a ‘never never’ to a ‘let’s do this’ exerciser.

Wishing you a wonderful day.

February 4: Tomorrow, I’ll be sore!

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Yes, that headline rhymes on purpose 🙂

Wowee, I found a good workout today! My friend Sandra and I were talking yesterday about Jillian Michaels, who’s very popular in America and has also been one of the trainers on The Biggest Loser USA.

I’ve done two of her workouts previously, on January 7 and January 19, and they took roughly 30 minutes each. Today’s workout, “Banish Fat Boost Metabolism Complete Workout”, was about 54 minutes of solid movement and I worked up the ‘best’ sweat I’ve had since beginning fitfor15in15. (No photos. Not pretty.)

These women are machines! If you can ignore the terrible, repetitive warm-up music, the rest of the soundtrack is pretty inoffensive … or maybe all my creaking, crunching and cracking and Jillian’s instructions filled my head. The workout is intense! Every circuit is done twice, which is good because for the first circuit you’re pretty much making sure you’re doing some of the exercises correctly.

When it came to all the jumping moves, I ended up just going with her beginner’s recommendation of squats for the second pass of each circuit. Jumping and coordination were beyond me in the final 10 minutes. As were the full planks. I was on my knees. Begging it to stop.

But I TOTALLY recommend this workout. You don’t need any weights, just a mat for the floor exercises and a full glass of water (how can these three trainers not drink any water in 50 minutes?! Phew!)

Exercising this afternoon really changed the day. When I woke up this morning, I was flat. It was a low day, a slow day, a shallow day, a hollow day. I couldn’t even be bothered to get out of bed to do my morning routine. I did it in bed. How slack is that? It was cold … I was cold … and I felt old.

But I (figuratively) slapped myself a bit and prepared to leave the house for my lunch appointment with a former German teacher, Claudia. Not surprisingly, forcing myself to shower, get dressed, put on some make up, walk to the bus (oh my, was that walk cold!) and talk German and English for three hours really lifted me up. Thanks Claudia!

And on the walk home from the bus, I was positively gagging to start exercising, and not only because the Siberian wind (well it was coming from the north east, so it has to be from Siberia, right?!) had frozen me through. I was keen to move, and sweat … and, ok, feel warm. That’s why I chose something I haven’t done before, and something more than 30 minutes long.

And you know why I think I felt so bad this morning? I couldn’t work it out, but then I thought about what I’d eaten in the past two days – Monday night pesto pasta, Tuesday morning muesli with natural yoghurt and Tuesday dinner leftover pasta … ahhh, not one piece of fruit or a vegetable in sight! All processed foods. I’m no expert but I think that very much had something to do with why I felt so bad this morning. Plus, I probably didn’t drink enough water yesterday …

So the better nutrition plan is gaining legs. And speaking of legs, I need to go rest mine!

Wishing you a wonderful day.

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Love the layers of snow on the pool edge

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This is the road to our house. It was a bit tricky walking on this today, but still better than the shortcut in shin-deep snow. Boy it was cold walking between these frozen fields

January 24: Bedtime yoga

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After yesterday’s four-hour cleaning effort followed by a boozy, cheesy dinner, I felt pretty average this morning!! My morning routine was done at midday, so that gives you an indication of how I was faring.

The whole day seemed sluggish. Mundane things like grocery shopping, doing the laundry and more vacuuming, this time at our house, preceded an afternoon on the couch eating Leo’s yummy chilli and watching crappy TV. I thought about using the step machine at some stages during the evening, but grabbed another piece of chocolate and pulled the blanket higher.

I haven’t changed my diet at all. This is something to address in the coming months (not that it’s terribly terrible), because there was no way everything could be done at once – I would have been a disaster. So I’m still drinking beer and eating dessert and having the odd bowl of chips/crisps and so on. Once the exercise habit is a habit, then I’ll look at the quantity and quality of what fuels me day to day. That’s also part of the course I’m currently enrolled in (my studies have been neglected this week. The lecturer said 40,000 people have enrolled in this MOOC, so I better pull up my socks!).

During the week, I read this simple but effective article about a woman who committed to doing 15 minutes of yoga per day for a month. Her outcome was encouraging and has also made me more inquisitive about yoga. Maybe I’ll add 15 minutes of yoga to my morning routine? 10 minutes of meditation, five minutes of stretching, and then 15 minutes of yoga … it could be possible. And then I’d do a minimum of 15 minutes of sweatier fitfor15in15 exercises later in the day … Hmmmm … It’s something to think about (but I’m worried about overcommitting myself time-wise).

The author, Grete DeAngelo, lightly touched on something I have been meaning to write about for a while. How the day could almost become a collection of 15 minute blocks; of 15 minute habits. Once you form one habit, it becomes easier to form another. Because when I think about how much I can achieve in 15 minutes with exercise, it almost becomes a game, a challenge, to start thinking of what else can be done in 15 minute blocks. It’s addictive!

Her story also sparked my desire tonight for a calming yoga routine before bed. I found this, and enjoyed it. It’s shot quite strangely – we’re looking at the man from behind and to the side, and he’s sitting a fair way away! Sometimes I had to look twice to work out what he was doing. But the exercises were just enough, the waves on the beach nice to listen to, and the rising moon pretty to see. Because this was the first time I’ve done this video, I had to keep checking my phone to understand his descriptions of some of the moves. If I do it again in the future, it will be more relaxing.

Here are some other things I enjoyed reading about this week:

Diagrams to help us understand some foods. This was very interesting, and helpful. As I said, I haven’t altered my diet at all yet. Baby steps, baby steps.

Technology is harming our brains. I think we all know this, but it’s an interesting read.

An interesting article about study and learning techniques. If you’re guilty of this, like me, it’s time to re-evaluate our methods!

A recipe for tumeric and ginger tea. Apparently it’s good for us. It sounds pretty delicious too. I’m trying to drink at least one (two-cup) pot of tea a day at the moment.

The Swiss finance industry caused a massive stir recently. If you can work out what it’s all about, can you please let me know? I’m still confused (was never good with money matters) but do know it means it will be more expensive for friends to visit us in Switzerland now. Sad face.

Wishing you a wonderful rest of the weekend.