Honest to goodness, I needed serious motivation on this Monday morning to get up & go to the gym. I ended up sleeping past my alarm (read: my normal morning routine) and was severely discouraged when I realized I had like 15 minutes to get my butt out of the house if I wanted to work out before work.
In my groggy half-sleep state I seriously almost didn’t get up. Then I read a text on my phone from my friend Natalie who confirmed that we were getting together tonight. I was not going to have time to work out after work. Bummer.
Still, I wasn’t convinced (still not completely awake) that I should, in fact, get up today. Then I remembered something. I remembered that last night I had put some old episodes I hadn’t seen of Doctor Who on my iPhone just so I could watch it at the gym. Score. Motivation = ? Done. Hey, whatever works, right?
Sprang up out of bed, shouted to Mom was downstairs to ask her to brew me a cup of coffee, and did my “I don’t have to look good, I’m just going to the gym” quick get-ready routine. Which literally, by the way, just consists of getting my hair out of my face, brushing my teeth, putting contacts in, and putting on a clean set of gym clothes.
Ran downstairs, grabbed a thermos of coffee, a bowl of cereal (which I ate on the road, eep.) and sprinted out the door. I really, really don’t like having a rushed morning but as soon as I was on my way to my work out, I felt better about it.
At the gym I did a little bit of weights then elliptical-ed away to Doctor Who ( I watched Series 2, episode 3, if you’re wondering)! It was SO awesome. I was sweating and pushing myself but I was not bored in the least. Though, I do think that perhaps some people may have been weirded out when, at a few different parts, I giggled, gasped, and got goose bumps. Yes, I am a mega-Whovian.
Here’s the break down of what I did at the gym:
Weights:
110 lb\10 reps\3 sets
60 lb\10 reps\3 sets
60 lb\10 reps\3 sets
- Chest Press (on an Inclined bench)
12 lb\10 reps\3 sets
- Chest Fly (on an inclined bench)
12 lb\10 reps\3 sets
- Bent-over Rows with Triceps Kickback
8 lb\10 reps\3 sets
Then I hit up the elliptical for 45 minutes with intervals of Crossramp 6 Resistance and Crossramp 10 Resistance 10.
Ta-da!
In other news, I do think I am going to try out posting photos of all of my meals + snacks in here. I want to start using this as a food journal, of sorts. I hope this will help hold me accountable for my choices and also to help me sort out if I really am hungry for the things I want to eat. So I apologize in advance if my meals are super boring.
Good night!
I have some bah news. Day 6 of the 30 Day Shred did not happen for me. I had school on Sunday, walked home (about 2km) and had to pack up to go see my mom so I could work a shift in my home town. My shift was from 5am-2pm so I chose sleep over exercise.
Today has been very hard everything-wise. I have a test tomorrow that I have yet to study for and I’m super exhausted from my dumb shift at work. I did manage to do Day 7 and guess what?! I have an injury. My left knee is messed up and whenever I put pressure on it it feels like needles. However, I kept on goin’ - probably not a good idea in the long run. I did the 30 day shred plus some modified versions of different cardio moves that I know so that I don’t get bored. I guess I burned maybe 200 cals? plus standing for 9 hours today….how many calories does that burn? and does that even count? Probably not.
Now, let me tell you problem #2. My wonderful mother brought me Arby’s for dinner yesterday and made me feel guilty if I didn’t eat it. So I did. I should also mention that I have celiac disease. I can’t eat gluten without getting sick. My family thinks its okay for me to have it once in a while because they have witnessed me eat bread, etc. (Although its very rare). So, to make a long story short: sick to my stomach. Ugh. Sucks!!!
Plus, I think Boston is winning…dammit.
Other than that, I have been trying to eat well. Although, I’m not seeing much of a difference. In fact, I feel fatter than before. I went to the mall and I felt like a whale. Maybe I’m retaining water? Well, I feel even less sexy than I did before and I’m not sure why. I don’t want to give up though. I’m just scared of keeping it up and achieving nothing…
Oh well. I hope your fitness goals are going better than mine.
Until tomorrow,
-Sandy
Yay!
Your skin is the gateway between your inner and outer worlds and has the power physically to absorb all that it comes in contact with. In this way and others, the largest organ in your body, wields way more power in the fight for overall wellness than you may think. All day we literally take in all that is around us, including lots of air pollutants. If you live in the city, this constant barrage can be particularly harsh.
In addition to this many of the products that are available to us in the way of cleansers and soap, are factory made, with harmful additives and the “cleansing” that occurs does more harm than good, stripping your skin of its natural oils and leaving it dry, flaky, or inflamed. This scenario works in a consumerist society because if soap leaves your skin dry and flaky, then you’ll be forced to buy a moisturizer! But it shouldn’t be this way, there is nothing wrong with your skin there is something wrong with the environs and elements it’s being exposed to. You shouldn’t have to buy multiple products to do the job of one. Our bodies are programmed not just to survive, but to thrive at their fullest potential. When given the right tools, your cells have an amazing ability to bounce back. I think of Three Graces Organics as quite literally the best food you could possible give your skin. You are feeding the largest organ of your body, the one that exists for the sole purpose of protecting all your internal organs from the dangers of the outside world! It is so important and so unrecognized in the picture of overall health.
The great power of the skin to absorb all that it comes in contact with is one that can work to your benefit! By choosing to use soaps and other beauty products that support your skins natural abilities to heal itself, namely those that are all-natural and not overly processed you can give your body the tools it needs to do the best job on your behalf. Everybody should and can have that healthy glow.
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Why Fibromyalgia Has a Credibility Problem
- Trigger warning: Discussion of depression, death.
- Note: This is a long and winding
road post. Also, I’m from Canada, and my story is rooted in that locale, with all its attendant privileges, cultural and economic.
I live with my parents. It’s increasingly common for people in their twenties, and even their thirties to stay at home longer, or to return to the nest after living alone. So what happens when your parents get older? I’ve had the experience of taking care of my parents, though not through old age. Caring for them was rewarding, because it really meant taking care of each other. It was also challenging.
When I was in my second year of university, and just starting to think about saving for my own place, my mother’s knee and hip problems were officially declared a disability. She was given a cane, put on the waiting list for surgery, given a modified exercise regimen and so many pills. She was in pain every day, sometimes all day.
Months later, my father was struck by a car while riding his bike to work. After the ICU there were weeks in a hospital bed, and then months of recovery at home. He was instantly retired—declared unfit to work ever again. This, I should point out here, is not quite the case. He has issues with memory and concentration, infrequent bouts of debilitating vertigo, and his temper is worse, but faced with early retirement, he pursued recovery relentlessly and eventually went back to school for a French studies degree.
With all this going down, I exchanged my job for a more flexible one, and threw myself into taking care of my family. Later, with my dad slowly recovering and increasingly independent, and my having taken over the burden of household chores from my mother, I had my second bout of major depression. After a solid year of suicidal ideation, general misanthropy and paranoia, I moved into a year of shaky recovery. I dropped out of school. I took up yoga and running and changed my diet. I did cognitive behavioural therapy and even tried giving up caffeine. It was years before I even considered going back to school. I’d left it in a mess and had lingering anxieties associated with class, matters bureaucratic and talking about my problems—probably that was the worst.
While I did the laundry, cooking, shopping and took my parents to doctor’s appointments, they took care of me in turn. They checked up on me—was I sleeping? Eating right? Getting exercise and sunlight? These things matter. When you’re dealing with depression, they matter a lot.
Our relationship wasn’t without difficulty. It’s hard to live with your parents in your early twenties. You want so much to be your own person; demonstrate your entirely grownup independence. It’s hard too, to help your father to the bath. Help your mother off the toilet. But not so hard as all that—probably not so hard as being taken care of by your daughter, so many years before you expected to need that kind of help. There was a lot of tension in the house, not least because we were all in pain, but slowly things got better.
These days we’re in a comfortable state of cohabitation. We split the bills and the housework—post surgery, my mother is far more able to do the sort of every day chores that used to wipe her out completely—and we’re all preparing to make another set of changes in our lives. My mother can now take the stairs without trouble, though problems with her right hip suggest another surgery may be in order, and it seems that arthritis is something to watch for. But she’ll be retiring in two years, and she’s got plans and determination. Now years after the accident, my father is studying at University of Toronto, and volunteering at a school part time. He’ll never work full time again—a half day is enough for him—but he’s busy and intellectually challenged. I finally went back to school. I’m slowly easing my way into grad school, and the gods willing, developing a career as a writer.
Between one thing and another, I never did leave home permanently. It wasn’t economical, but more importantly, it wasn’t the right thing for my family. These days, I’m thinking about it again, looking at my budget and options all over the city, but—let’s be honest—preferably close to my parents. I’m thinking about a career and about having kids. It’s a strange to find myself on this particular cliff, quite a few years late.
My parents are in their sixties and I’m in my late twenties. Perhaps too early to worry about what will happen twenty or thirty years from now, but having that experience, and having so recently seen the older generation of our family through old age and death, it’s on all our minds. I wonder sometimes what it would be like if we stayed together, and saw each other through the next stage of our lives. Or if I bought a house, and they moved into my home when the time for it came. I think about it a lot, and they do too.
My grandparents’ generation left a mark on us—my grandfather, who died alone but at home; my grandmother who died in a long term care facility, miserable and poorly cared for. Their successes and failures; our successes and failures. The difficulties that elders face in homes, nursing homes, hospitals and everywhere in public are on our minds, because disabled people are faced with similar indignities, frustrations, and abuses.
I wonder a lot about how we millennials will do, when it’s our turn to step up and care for those who cared for us. What happens when ‘failure to launch’ and ‘returning to the nest’ meets retirement, old age, and eventually death? So much will depend on class, race and community. The narratives we’ve been treated to so far are light and airy, white middle class romps through delayed development. It all comes down to clinging too tightly to childhood, it seems. I wonder when we’ll see the stories of people of colour, or working class millenials who simply never broke through that glass ceiling. Stories of rural folks who’ve watched their local economies slow to a trickle, moved back in with their parents, and now must see them through their twilight years—but how? What will government austerity and the decline of the welfare state mean in twenty years? Thirty years?
I don’t meant to suggest that the experiences of my generation are unique, or even that we’ve got it worse than our parents did, or their parents before them. Life is struggle. We’ve been struggling since we slithered out of the primordial muck, and we’ll be struggling right up until our star burns out. But I wonder, and I think that many people close to my age do too. I’d like a better metaphor than battle, but what else can we call the current political climate but class war? And too, a social cold war, where issues of race, sexuality and personhood are played out in some other neighborhood, some other city, some other country, but certainly not in my backyard. We are post racial. Post discriminatory, period. Political correctness is last decade’s problem, and we’re done with all of that, thank you. These days we’ve got to worry about all those pensions that are about to come due.
My family has been everything to me, and I feel strongly that building bonds of family and community should be a priority for us all. Not just as individually, operating as private citizens, but through the state and through local, national and international organizations. I feel strongly too, that we are all of us up to it. So much of what we hear about baby boomers retiring is media panic, I think. The world will not implode because a lot of Westerners are set to retire at once.
I didn’t have a conclusion in mind when I started writing, and I don’t think I’ve quite managed to find one. So I’ll just ask you guys to tell me your stories, if you’d like. Your worries, plans, theories and whatever else you’ve got.
Eating healthy (: Today going strong and same with yesterday.
You(WE) can do it :D
a great face mask for normal skin can be made by combining 1/4 cup of oatmeal with 100% grapefruit juice.
just add enough juice to create a thick paste.
spread the mixture over your face and neck. leave on for 20 minutes, then rinse with warm water, followed by a splash of cool water. use this treatment once a week to help your skin stay balanced and revitalized.
djm !
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